A businessman in Minnesota was charged with second-degree murder in 2019 after investigators used DNA recovered from a discarded napkin to connect him to a killing that had gone unsolved for more than 25 years.
The victim, 35-year-old Jeanne Ann “Jeanie” Childs, was fatally stabbed in Minneapolis in 1993. The case went cold for over two decades despite the original crime scene DNA evidence being preserved. Investigators eventually ran that DNA profile through a public genealogy database — the same general technique that had recently drawn national attention through the Golden State Killer case — and used the resulting family-tree leads to narrow their suspect list down to Jerry Westrom.
To confirm the match without alerting Westrom to the investigation, detectives collected a napkin he had discarded, extracted a DNA sample from it, and compared it against the crime scene evidence. Investigators said it matched. Westrom was subsequently charged and released on bail after posting bond in Hennepin County; his attorney has said the case was charged prematurely.
The Westrom case is one of a growing list of homicides resolved through forensic genetic genealogy, a method that combines traditional crime-scene DNA analysis with consumer genealogy databases populated by people voluntarily searching for their own ancestry. Investigators build out family trees from partial genetic matches, gradually narrowing a wide pool of relatives down to a single plausible suspect — then confirm the match using a fresh DNA sample, often collected from something the suspect has thrown away, like a napkin, cigarette butt, or water bottle.
Similar methods were used in a 2026 case in California, where DNA from a discarded cigarette helped convict a man in the 1982 murder of 13-year-old Sarah Geer, more than four decades after her death. FBI investigators there also used genetic genealogy to narrow their suspect pool before confirming the match through discarded evidence.
Legal experts and genealogy researchers have noted that these cases signal a fundamental shift in how time affects unsolved crimes. Cases once considered permanently cold are increasingly reopened as investigators are able to build family trees from crime scene DNA that would previously have led nowhere.
Sources: Global News, CBS News, Newsweek
