Welcome back to postmortem. I'm your host Anne Marie Green, and I'm joined by 48 hours correspondent, Aaron Moriarty. We're going to be discussing the murder of 35-year-old Jeannie Childs.

She was stabbed over 60 times in her Minnesota high-rise apartment in 1993.

Her case went unsolved for over two decades until advances in investigative genetic genealogy

led authorities to arrest a local businessman and father. His name is

Jerry Westram. Aaron, thanks again for joining us. Oh, I'm really grateful to be here because this is

one of those stories. People who love forensics love this story. We want to remind everyone,

of course, if you haven't listened to

this hour, head on over to your feed. You'll find this episode of 48 hours right above this one.

Go listen and then come on back and we can talk about it. When I started watching this,

the case reminded me of actually the first 48 hours I ever did. Several years ago, it was the case of Angie Dodge, a teenager, an 18-year-old who was killed in her brand-new apartment, and the case went unsolved for many, many years until they used genetic genealogy to track down her killer. It was kind of newish then. This is a very similar case.

But the thing about this case is, you know, you think you find the DNA, you find the match,

it's a home run. But in this case, in the apartment, there was a lot of DNA. So not necessarily

a home run.

No, what's so interesting is I think jurors sometimes think that it's a slam dunk when there is DNA that has been obtained through genetic genealogy.

But the truth is, DNA, if it is collected and tested properly, it could show that somebody was there,

but it can't tell you when they were there. And in this case, this case, as you said,

Emery, happened in 1993. That was when DNA was in its infancy, at least being used as a

investigative tool. And so they did collect DNA,

and they collected those bloody footprints

that are just so important in this case.

But the DNA didn't match anyone back then.

They did have a person of interest.

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