A Minneapolis, Minnesota man has been found guilty of a 1993 murder after being linked to the crime DNA via taken from a hot dog napkin at a hockey game.
Jerry Westrom, 56, was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree intentional murder on Thursday in the death of Jeanie Ann Childs, who was 35 at the time of her death in South Minneapolis, according to CBS News.
Westrom was arrested in 2019 after authorities tailed him to a hockey game and grabbed a napkin that he’d tossed in the trash, according to the Star Tribune.
Prosecutor Darren Borg said the attack took place in the Horn Towers apartment building, in which Westrom and Childs moved from room to room, with the woman sustaining defensive wounds. She was stabbed 65 times, Mr Borg said.
The prosecutor told the jury that Westrom’s semen was discovered on a comforter with blood on it, adding that his DNA was found on other items covered in blood, including a towel, a washcloth, a T-shirt, and the sink.
There was also a bloody footprint near the body of Childs.
“How do you get a bloody footprint? You step in liquid blood and you put your foot down,” Mr Borg said. “His footprints were in her blood because he killed her.”
Defence lawyer Steve Meshbesher tried to discredit witnesses in the case, point toward what the investigators neglected to do, and put the focus on another suspect. He also raised doubts about the DNA evidence.
“Somebody sick, pathological, murdered her. [Westrom] isn’t the guy,” Mr Meshbesher told the jury. “Don’t compound the tragedy by convicting an innocent person.”
The defence attorney argued that Childs, a sex worker, could have been killed by her alleged pimp who was staying in the same apartment block. He died in 2017, but some of his hairs had been discovered in one of Childs’ hands.
The lawyer said he’ll appeal the verdict and that he was “very disappointed. The jury did not see all the evidence. We had presented all the evidence, the judge said no”.
“Whatever happened was brutal, it’s a question of who did it,” he added, according to CBS News.
Childs’ mother, Betty Eakman said, “I know that the law is finally going to take care of him for what he did, and I hope he can sleep at night”.
“Jeanie was a wonderful person even though she had problems. She had a big heart,” the mother added.
The jury deliberations only lasted for two hours.
Juror Derek Fradenbergh told CBS affiliate WCCO that “it’s undeniable that he was in that apartment, and the footprints place him in the apartment at the time of Jeanie Childs’ death”.
“There will always be questions because no one saw this crime happen, but at the end of the day, the evidence against the defendant is so overwhelming,” he added, noting that Westrom’s guilt was nearly unanimous shortly after the case was handed over to the jury.
Alternate juror Monyou Taye told WCCO that “in the deliberation room I was going to find him guilty of first-degree murder for the case because of all the evidence”.
Fellow alternate juror Dean Zimmerman told the local station that “I think it’s very clear that he was there, made the footprints at the time she was murdered, and it’s just too hard to argue with that”.
“They have had to live without justice for her brutal murder for nearly three decades,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said in a statement. “Today’s guilty verdicts show that we will pursue convictions for serious crimes, even if it takes years to gather the evidence.”
