Martin Regley
12/16/2024 at 4:55 p.m.
In 1997, a baby was found dead in the toilet of a Michigan campground. Finally, a woman was arrested and will be tried after a DNA test carried out by her granddaughter, which made it possible to incriminate her.
The story would have its place in a suspense series, imagined from scratch by a fanciful screenwriter. However, it is far from fiction that a 23-year-old American, Jenna Gerwatowski, solved a 25-year-old cold case in the state of Michigan.
After a recreational DNA test, she allowed investigators to get their hands on the suspect in the murder of an infant in 1997, who is none other than her maternal grandmother.
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His DNA matches that of the infant
Aware that the story is completely ludicrous, the young woman decides to tell it on TikTok. In this video that has gone viral, which has 17.3 million views and spotted by Le Parisien, she explains that two years ago, in 2022, she decided to treat herself to a recreational DNA test after the one carried out by her best friend .
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Some time after doing hers, she received a call. On the line, a Michigan police investigator. The latter asks her if she knows about the affair of the infant, named Garnet. In 1997, the baby was found dead in the toilet of a campsite in Naubinway, not far from the town of Jenna's birth.
“Your DNA matches and is directly related to that of the killed infant,” the police officer explains to him. A major breakthrough since since 1997, the identity of the victim remained unknown.
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His maternal grandmother arrested and soon to be judged
During this first call, the young woman believes that the man on the other end of the line is playing a joke on her. It was only a few days later that the hoax hypothesis was ruled out: investigators went to his mother's house to carry out additional DNA tests.
The second results confirm the first. Jenna's mother is the victim's half-sister, Jenna her half-niece. Which means that the mother of the infant killed by asphyxiation is the young woman's maternal grandmother, whom she does not know: Nancy Gerwatowski.
Arrested by investigators, she is now accused of murder, manslaughter and concealment. With these charges, she faces life imprisonment.
