FamilyTree DNA test results are sometimes full of surprises, but that’s nothing compared to what Jenna Gerwatowski experienced. In Michigan, in the United States, this 23-year-old young woman solved a 30-year-old cold case and caused the arrest of his grandmother after taking a recreational DNA test to learn a little more about its origins.
It all started in the spring of 2022. While working at a florist in Newsberry, Michigan, Jenna Gerwatowski receives a surprising call. On the line, a Michigan police inspector told him that his DNA, taken a few months earlier for a FamilyTree recreational test, had been connected to a cold case almost 30 years old. “He said to me, ‘You know the affair of Baby Garnet?”, relates the young woman in the columns of CNN.
She is the great-niece of a baby found dead in 1997
The so-called “Baby Garnet” case is a murder case that shook Michigan in the 1990s. In 1997, the lifeless body of an infant was discovered in the toilets of the Garnet Lake campsite. At the time, the police had not found any clues that could put them on a trail. Neither the identity of the baby nor his murderer had been identified at the time.
A little shaken by the detective’s call, Jenna spoke about it with her mother, Kara Gerwatowski, who thought her daughter was simply the victim of a prank. But a few days later, Jenna received a second call. This time, from Misty Gillis, a forensic genealogist specializing in cold cases. “I hung up on him and didn’t even think about it, Jenna remembers. I got my life back. I thought it was weird. Who tells people things like that? I really didn’t think it was true.”
Yet it was. A week later, the young woman received a call from her mother informing her that the police were at their home. “She told me: you really need to come home. It’s an emergency. Come home as soon as you can.”
At her home, the police explained to Jenna that her DNA was close to that of baby Garnet. She was to be his half-niece, which made his mother Kara the baby’s half-sister. The latter then suggested to the investigators to speak to her mother, to whom she had not spoken since the age of 18. Kara explained that she did not have a good relationship with the latter, and even never introduced her daughter Jenna to her.
His grandmother arrested and prosecuted for murder
Without waiting, the police arrested Jenna’s grandmother, Nancy Gerwatowski. It appeared that she gave birth to a baby in 1997 before abandoning her body. “She would have given birth at her home in Newsberry and the child died of asphyxiation. This death could have been prevented if Nancy had called for help. the Michigan attorney general’s office said in a statement.
Prosecuted for “open murder” (the qualification of voluntary or involuntary remaining undetermined) and concealment of the death of an individual, Nancy Gerwatowski faces life in prison. She claims that during her delivery, the baby would have remained “stuck in the birth canal”. She says she has “tried to get it out” before “lose consciousness”, following which the baby would have died.
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