
How DNA technology broke open the cold case in Minneapolis woman's 1993 murder
More than three decades ago, police found Jeanie Childs brutally killed in her south Minneapolis apartment. Betty Eakman learned the victim was her daughter.
"I was doing hospice at the time and the lady decided she wanted a television on, and they said there had been a body taken out of the building that was murdered. And I looked at the building, and I said, 'Oh, my God,'" Eakman said.
June 13, 1993 is a day that lives in Eakman's mind.
The WCCO Original, "Footprint to Murder," follows the Minnesota cold case story that captured worldwide attention when DNA, social media and dedicated detectives ultimately led to the killer. Watch in the player above and on YouTube.
"I know that my daughter was crying for me. I know she was. That hurts the most," Eakman said.
Someone stabbed the 35-year-old roughly 65 times.
"What makes you kill someone and afterwards cut their stomach open to the point where your intestines are showing after a person's dead, you got to be really angry," Childs' sister Cindy Blumer said.
Childs led a troubled life, but her family loved her and said she was happy. She started running away at 13 years old and later worked as a sex worker.
"She made some bad decisions in her life, and we all have, but she didn't deserve to die that way," Blumer said.
Bart Epstein responded to the scene at the Horn Towers in 1993. At the time he worked as a forensic scientist for the BCA.
"It was a scene that had, you know, a lot of blood distributed, and there was some movement around and pretty brutal," Epstein said.
Crime scene investigators collected what would become key evidence, including Items to be tested for DNA. The science wasn't widely used in 1993.
Initial evidence included a bloody footprint
"One of the reasons DNA makes a difference in these long-term unsolved cases is witnesses are sometimes unavailable or have changed, but DNA is a compelling piece of evidence in that it can put somebody at the scene," FBI Special Agent Chris Boeckers said.
Bloody footprints were also left behind. A bloody footprint would become the footprint to murder.
"That's significant, because clearly it wasn't coming from her. She had socks on. And if this is an identifiable footprint, just like fingerprints, you could identify what would appear to be the perpetrator that was there," Epstein said.
Investigators tracked down leads in the years after the murder, but the case went cold. Eakman always held onto hope her daughter's killer would be brought to justice.
"And I was not about to sit back. I had to know why and who did it," Eakman said.
"And I give my mom a lot of credit, because she never gave up," Blumer said.
Cold case investigators reopened the case in 2015. Another case halfway across the country gave investigators an idea.
"In April of 2018, we heard and read and followed the Golden State Killer case in which investigative genealogy was used. It was really striking when we called out to California. He immediately said, 'You are going to identify who did this using this technique,'" Boeckers said.
DNA technology, napkin's role in breaking open case
The team used DNA and forensic investigative genetic genealogy to identify a suspect. It led them to a hockey dad with a checkered past. Investigators followed Westrom and eventually obtained his DNA by grabbing a napkin he threw away in a garbage can after eating a hot dog at a hockey game in Wisconsin.
"He sat at a table, and he ate it, and when he finished, we could see that he wiped his mouth with the napkin. He reached up and wiped the left side of his mouth. He walked over and he set the napkin in a container, in the garbage can in the lobby, and went back into the arena for the second period of the game," FBI Special Agent Chris Boeckers said.
The DNA from the napkin matched the DNA left at the crime scene. Police arrested Westrom in February 2019. During an interview, he denied ever being in the Horn Towers. They got known samples from Westrom, which BCA Forensic Scientist Andrea Feia tested.
"The known sample from Jerry Westrom ended up matching the semen that was identified on the comforter and the towel in the bathroom. It was clear that he was part of a mixture that was in on the washcloth. And then there was a DNA profile that matched him on the red shirt and on that blood on the sink. It was the first suspect that we had developed in the state of Minnesota, using forensic investigative genetic genealogy," Feia said.
Minneapolis Police Supervisor of Forensic Science Mark Ulrick got footprints from Westrom and did the analysis, saying he's confident Westrom's footprint matches the bloody footprints left at the crime scene.
"The science of friction ridge skin doesn't change between fingerprints or footprints or palm prints. It stays the same. It's friction ridge skin, just in a different place," Ulrick said.
The Hennepin County Attorney's Office charged Westrom with second-degree murder a few days after his arrest.
"Sometimes speculation about why the person did it, or why here, or why then, is of great interest, but it's not key to us, because our job is to pull together the facts to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt," Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said at the time.
After Westrom's murder charge, his attorney Steve Meshbesher told WCCO, "They picked the wrong guy."
WCCO learned the hockey dad had multiple convictions for DWI, along with two arrests for soliciting a prostitute. One was dismissed.
A grand jury would later indict Westrom on first-degree premeditated murder.
The case went to trial in August 2022. A jury convicted him after two hours of deliberations.
"Very disappointed. The jury did not see all the evidence. We had presented all the evidence, but then the judge said no. Whatever happened was brutal. It's a question of who did it," Meshbesher said.
Jury foreperson Derek Fradenburgh said everyone came to the same conclusion: Jerry Westrom was guilty.
"What ties him to the scene and why we convicted him is the bloody footprint, in conjunction with his DNA being found at the scene," Fradenburgh said. "She was a sex worker, there's plenty of reasons why anyone could have left DNA there. There was obviously, there was DNA from her live-in boyfriend. There would have been her DNA. There's DNA from other people there. But that bare, bloody footprint that you know is that we had three different people say, this is for sure, Jerry Westrom's footprint. We know he was there, kind of indisputably. We know he was there at the time when she was murdered."
"She was still a human being"
"I just hope that he can close his eyes at night and see her face every night. That's how I feel. I want him to suffer. And I really don't want her being blamed for what happened, because his choice was the wrong choice," Eakman said.
Blumer says some people probably think that about Childs.
"They're like, well, she lived a lifestyle that led to, unfortunately, her fate. But I don't believe that," Blumer said.
"She was still a human being. Did not deserve to be slaughtered like an animal. I want people to know that he could have left the apartment, and my daughter would still be here," Eakman said.
Westrom is eligible for parole after 30 years in 2052. He will be 86 years old.
Westrom appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court. The court upheld first-degree murder, but vacated the second-degree murder conviction.
U.S. Supreme Court justices declined to hear his case.
Westrom asked the Great North Innocence Project to take his case. In an email, Westrom said he'd sit down with WCCO after his conviction is overturned.
Childs' family is finding more peace while still feeling the loss.
"When you lose a child, part of your heart leaves with them," Eakman said.
"You don't really recover from that," Blumer said.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
More accusations added to federal sex trafficking case against Alexander brothers
Three real estate brothers accused of a scheme to sex traffic women across multiple states and Mexico were in a federal courtroom in New York on Tuesday to face a third superseding indictment. An added count against Alon Alexander and Oren Alexander brings the total to 10 counts against them and Tal Alexander. They pleaded not guilty to all charges. The brothers appeared in hand and leg shackles, wearing olive prison attire. They greeted their parents on their way in and out of the brief arraignment. Federal prosecutors have accused the men of working together to drug, sexually assault and rape dozens of victims from 2009 to 2021. The charges allege that the brothers promised women luxury experiences to lure them to locations where they were sexually assaulted and raped. Seven victims are included in the indictment, including a minor. Federal prosecutors have said they have spoken to more than 60 alleged victims of the men. The new count alleges that Alon and Oren gave a drug, intoxicant or other substance to a woman without her knowledge to cause her to engage in a sex act on a Bahamian cruise ship that departed from and arrived in the United States. An attorney for Alon, Howard Srebnick, said his client had not drugged a woman to have sex with her. "On Jan. 13, 2025, a retired FBI polygraph examiner tested Alon while in jail. Alon was asked if he ever had sex with any woman he knew had been covertly given drugs, which Alon denied," Srebnick said. "The polygraph examiner opined that Alon passed the lie detector test, there were 'no significant reactions indicative of deception' by Alon." An attorney for Oren said his client will continue to fight the charges. "The court reiterated that the government must now comply with its obligation to produce evidence exculpating Oren and his brothers. We look forward to a time when we can present all such material in a public forum," said Richard Klugh. An attorney for Tal declined to comment Tuesday. Earlier Tuesday, attorneys for the three brothers appeared in circuit court to appeal their detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where they have been held since December. "They did not agree to provide sex in exchange for the travel or accommodations,' Deanna Paul, defense attorney for Tal Alexander, wrote in a dismissal motion filed Monday in the Southern District of New York in Manhattan. "The alleged travel and accommodations were not conditioned expressly, or implicitly, on the victims' participation in the sex acts; and the travel and accommodations did not represent compensation for the sex acts,' the motion says, citing four federal court decisions on the sex trafficking law requiring that connection to hold up. Their next hearing is set for Aug. 19. The Alexander brothers filed a defamation lawsuit this week against The Real Deal, a real estate publication, seeking $500 million in damages for what they say has been a 'smear campaign' against them that 'has relentlessly published articles containing false and misleading statements.' The Real Deal strongly rejected the allegations. "Let's be clear: this lawsuit is not about justice. It's an attempt to stop investigative journalism and bully a newsroom for doing its job,' founder and publisher Amir Korangy said in a statement Tuesday. 'The Real Deal's reporting was fair and conscientious, and we are confident the courts will see this for what it is — a frivolous and cynical attempt to weaponize the legal system." This article was originally published on


Indianapolis Star
41 minutes ago
- Indianapolis Star
Corvette goes airborne in dramatic drag race crash video
A drag racer walked away from a harrowing crash after the Corvette he was racing at World Wide Technology Raceway in Illinois went airborne. The video, taken during a high-speed test run on May 31 for the VP Racing Fuels Heads-Up Shootout Series, shows driver Jason Hoard's car lift off the ground and crash into the track and tumble onto the embankment on the side of the raceway. "Everything was fine absolutely until the second that it wasn't," Hoard said in a June 4 YouTube interview on "The Wes Buck Show." "I was fine, then it literally felt like the car was going backwards. And I (made) myself small in the seat and I immediately thought this is not good.' Drag racing outlet Extreme 660 Drag Racing, which captured the video and posted it to Facebook, called it "the worst wreck we've filmed." Hoard credited the car's safety gear for walking away with minor injuries following the crash. He noted in the interview that the impact left him unconscious. "I'm super sore, and if you saw me moving around, I'd look like a 95-year-old dude," Hoard said. He added that he had searched the internet for concussion symptoms. "I've been in a bit of a brain fog this week ... I have some floaters in my right eye. I went to the eye doctor, and she said there's some bruising," Hoard said. NewsNation reported that track staff and the National Hot Rod Association have launched an investigation into the crash. Drag Illustrated reported that the crash took place during a test pass at non-NHRA sanctioned event, though it took place at an NHRA-sanctioned facility. "Each WWT Raceway drag racing event features an ALS (Advance Life Support) Ambulance Unit staffed by paramedics specially trained in responding to racing crashes," a statement provided to the network reads. "The WWT Raceway Safety teams were rolling to the crash site while Jason was still rolling and were at the scene of the crash less than 30 seconds after it occurred."
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
FBI Director Kash Patel sues MSNBC columnist Frank Figliuzzi for ‘fabricating a specific lie' with outlandish nightclub claim
FBI Director Kash Patel has filed a lawsuit in Texas against an MSNBC columnist who falsely claimed the official spent more time in 'nightclubs' than inside the Bureau's headquarters in Washington, DC. Patel is suing Frank Figliuzzi for 'fabricating a specific lie' about him, according to court documents, namely that 'reportedly (Patel has) been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover Building.' Defendant knew that this was a lie when he said it,' Patel's attorneys alleged. '…Since becoming Director of the FBI, Director Patel has not spent a single minute inside of a nightclub.' The suit also claimed 'there was no basis for Defendant's fabrication, and Defendant's use of the weasel word, 'reportedly,' is itself a fabrication.' 'Defendant did not rely on reporting by any other person,' attorneys said in the filing. 'Defendant made up the story out of whole cloth, and by using the word 'reportedly,' attempts to distance himself from what is a maliciously false and defamatory statement.' The attorneys allege Figliuzzi's claim constituted defamation, noting that Figliuzzi previously wrote, 'Patel is one of the most ill-suited Cabinet nominees—not just now, but of all time.' 'Defendant fabricated this story to discredit Director Patel because of Defendant's clear animus toward Director Patel,' his attorneys said. 'Defendant previously wrote, 'Patel is one of the most ill-suited Cabinet nominees—not just now, but of all time.' And, 'The FBI's motto is Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. The record suggests that Patel doesn't possess any of those traits.'' 'Defendant also wrote, 'It isn't just that Patel is wholly unqualified to lead the pre-eminent law enforcement and intelligence agency in the nation and perhaps the world … Patel's particular problem goes far beyond competence: His record shows no devotion to the Constitution, but blind allegiance to Trump.'The FBI director's suit also alleged that 'as a partisan commentator, (Figliuzzi) was motivated to sensationalize, and in this case, fabricate a story to self-promotingly advance his own name recognition, at the expense of Director Patel.' Representatives for Patel declined to comment. The lawsuit came just a month after MSNBC was forced to retract Figliuzzi's claim on May 5. 'This was a misstatement,' MSNBC anchor Jonathan Lemire said at the time. 'We have not verified that claim.' The NBC and MSNBC national security analyst had alleged that Patel's absence from the FBI headquarters was 'a blessing and a curse.' 'Because if he's really trying to run things without his experience, without any experience level, things could be bad,' Figliuzzi said. 'If he's not plugged in, things could be bad. But he's allowing agents to run things, so we don't know where this is going.' Figliuzzi didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.