Man sentenced to 206-230 years in cold case

LARAMIE (Wyoming News Exchange/Green River Star) – A man who was previously sentenced for a sexual assault in Sweetwater County was recently sentenced for a similar crime in Albany County.

Mark Douglas Burns, 70, of Ogden, Utah, was sentenced Feb. 17 by Albany County Second Judicial District Court Judge Tori Kricken for the 1996 sexual assault of a Laramie resident.

Burns pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual assault in the first degree; one count of burglary; and one count of kidnapping-confinement. He received a sentence of 206 – 230 years in prison.

In May 2015, after DNA entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) linked nine cases to the same offender, several law enforcement agencies in Utah and Wyoming created a task force to collaborate on their cold case investigations.

Through the collaborative efforts of the task force, and the assistance of the Cold Justice program, Mark Douglas Burns was arrested Sept. 25, 2019 in Ogden, Utah.

Joel Senior, a former Laramie Police Department Detective who had been working on Laramie’s cold case for several years, worked with the task force and traveled to Utah with Laramie Police Department Officer Matt Leibovitz for the arrest of Burns and collection of evidence.

Burns was convicted of multiple charges stemming from the 1991 sexual assault of a 14-year-old Rock Springs resident. While many of Burns’ crimes occurred in Utah, he was convicted of a murder that occurred in Uinta County, which occurred as the result of a botched armed robbery.

Burns was sentenced for the Sweetwater County crime in January, being sentenced by Third Judicial District Court Judge Richard Lavery to 229.5-255 years in prison, with 468 days credit for time served.

 

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