A DNA investigation has identified Larry Burney as the suspected killer of William Jenkins, who was found bound and suffering multiple stab wounds in his East Orange apartment in 1982. Burney died in prison in 2005, according to NJ.com.
What the new testing established
Investigators revisited biological evidence from the killing after an unknown male DNA profile remained unresolved. Othram, a Texas laboratory, used single-nucleotide-polymorphism analysis to develop a profile from degraded material. Investigators then used investigative genetic genealogy to look for distant family relationships, rather than depending only on a direct hit in a law-enforcement database. The New Jersey State Police Cold Case Unit and FBI narrowed the possibilities to one of three brothers with Newark ties; by June 2026, a reference sample associated with Burney matched evidence from the Jenkins case, NJ.com reported.
That result identifies Burney as the suspected source of the forensic evidence, but it does not substitute for a criminal trial. The report does not state whether Burney was charged in Jenkins’s death, and officials have not publicly described a courtroom-tested account of the killing. The identification therefore provides a long-delayed answer about the suspected perpetrator without producing a verdict.
The institutional path behind the review
The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office brought the case to the New Jersey State Police Cold Case Unit in 2024 through the Garden State Cold Case Network, according to the case reporting. The network gives local investigators a route to state-level forensic and investigative assistance. The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office describes it as a statewide initiative led by the State Police Cold Case Unit, with one full-time Mercer detective assigned to it and a focus that includes unsolved homicides, suspicious deaths, long-term missing-person cases and cold-case sexual assaults: Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office.
That structure matters in a case like Jenkins’s because the investigative question changes over time. A decades-old file may contain evidence that was unsuitable for older testing but can later support a modern profile. Genetic genealogy can generate a family-based lead; investigators must still identify a specific person and obtain confirming evidence before treating the lead as a prosecutable connection.
Rules limit what a genealogy lead can do
The U.S. Justice Department’s interim policy addresses forensic genetic genealogy and distinguishes SNP-based genealogy from STR typing: Justice Department policy. The reported reference-sample comparison is significant in that context, although the publicly described results do not answer every question about the sample’s collection or the investigation’s full evidentiary record.
New Jersey’s grant guidance includes a note concerning forensic genealogy searches when federal Coverdell money is used, according to the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. The available material does not establish that Coverdell funds were used in the Jenkins investigation or disclose every privacy measure applied in the case.
A historical identification is not automatically a reported clearance
New Jersey’s homicide-reporting form says an offense may qualify as cleared when an offender is arrested, charged or meets exceptional-clearance criteria, according to the State Police. The state’s reporting system credits a clearance to the municipality where the offense occurred even when another agency conducts the investigation, the State Police says in its Uniform Crime Reporting materials: New Jersey UCR guidance.
Those definitions provide administrative context but do not, by themselves, determine how the Jenkins case will be classified. What is publicly established is narrower: investigators used modern DNA analysis and genealogy to identify a deceased man as the suspected killer. The family receives an investigative conclusion, while the available account does not describe charges, a plea or a trial.
NJ.com reported that Burney was serving a life sentence after a 1982 Newark-area armed-robbery case and died in custody in 2005. Police are still seeking information about Jenkins’s killing. Tips may be submitted anonymously to the New Jersey State Police Cold Case Unit at 1-833-4NJ-COLD or [email protected], or to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office at 1-877-TIPS-4EC.
