Prince George’s County police have charged a 61-year-old man in the 1993 murder of 10-year-old George “Junior” Burdynski Jr., closing one of the county’s oldest unsolved cases after detectives said a new witness came forward more than three decades later.
Joseph Lynch, who lived in Junior’s Brentwood neighborhood at the time, was charged Wednesday with second-degree murder, second-degree rape, second-degree sex offense and third-degree sex offense in connection with the boy’s death, according to the Prince George’s County Police Department. Junior was last seen riding his bicycle in the neighborhood on May 24, 1993; his disappearance triggered an extensive search involving PGPD and federal law enforcement, but his body was never found and the case went cold for years.
According to police, detectives from the department’s Cold Case Unit reinterviewed a man who was 13 years old and living in the same neighborhood when Junior vanished. The man told detectives he had been in a home with Junior and Lynch on the day Junior disappeared, and that Lynch directed him to sexually assault Junior while all three were in the room. Junior was killed during that assault, according to the account detectives said the witness gave. Because the witness was himself a minor at the time and Maryland law bars prosecuting him for conduct committed as a 13-year-old, he is not facing charges in the case. Police Chief George Nader said publicly that the encounter “involved a sexual assault and physical abuse that led to critical injuries,” followed by the removal of Junior’s body from the residence.
The breakthrough traces back to a separate, more recent case. Earlier this year, PGPD charged Lynch with sexually abusing two teenage boys — both known to him — multiple times between 2007 and 2014 at a home in Mount Rainier. Lynch remains in custody in connection with those charges and a related 2012 arson case. It was the investigation into those newer allegations that led two Cold Case Unit detectives back to the 13-year-old witness from 1993.
Lynch is not a stranger to Prince George’s County investigators. He was one of three men — along with Stephen Bruce Leak and James Kowalski — convicted in 1994 of sexually assaulting multiple boys in Mount Rainier, Brentwood and Hyattsville, a case that at the time was tied to a broader child sex-abuse ring operating in the same neighborhoods where Junior lived and disappeared. Lynch was released from prison in 2006. At this time, only Lynch is charged in Junior’s murder.
Police said detectives believe Lynch may have victimized others, either in the 1990s or after his 2006 release, and are asking anyone with information relevant to the case — including possible additional victims — to call detectives at 301-772-4930.
