00:00:00
[Music] On the 13th of June 1993, I was on call as a team leader for our crime scene
00:00:19
team. We had pagers then, no cell phones, and um I got a page. who was a sergeant requesting our assistance on
00:00:29
the 21st floor of this high-rise apartment building. When you entered into the apartment, you didn't really see
00:00:40
anything. You wouldn't have known that a crime had occurred. When you went a little
00:00:46
further and you ended up going into the bedroom, it was catastrophic. When I proceeded to where the body was
00:00:56
on the side of the bed, I looked down. I could see the imprint in blood that looked like a left foot and a right
00:01:03
foot. It's an actual bare foot. I mean, wow. I turned the TV on. I saw the apartment. They said they just found a
00:01:17
young woman in her early 30s. Oh my. I just got chills all over. Don't tell me that was
00:01:30
Jean. I called the corner's place and he said, "Are you all alone? You better get
00:01:35
somebody over there with you because it it was your daughter." I couldn't believe
00:01:46
it. Jeanie Childs had defensive wounds on her hands when they found her. She had been stabbed at least 65 times,
00:01:55
including after she had died. Investigators took DNA evidence at the time. They could not find who it
00:02:02
belonged to, and they hit a dead end at some point and moved on. And it wasn't until 2015 that a cold case unit
00:02:08
reopened the case. A DNA profile was uploaded into myheritage.com and they found what could
00:02:17
be a match. Jerry Westerm is a husband, a father of three, a businessman. He attended
00:02:26
church. He was a hockey dad. Police expect Western to be charged with murder by noon tomorrow. Jerry doesn't
00:02:34
have a demeanor of being a violent person. Have you ever seen him lose his temper?
00:02:42
No. I believe it's tip my toes. He's not capable. Okay. He didn't do it. There was DNA from other individuals
00:02:51
that did not belong to Jerry Westerm, but clearly belonged to a male source. We know that there were experts that
00:02:58
viewed multiple footprints, and they're in her blood. The person who put the footprint down had to step in wet blood,
00:03:11
and it had to be after she was stabbed or bleeding. How important did those footprints in blood become in this case?
00:03:19
Without the footprints, we would not be sitting here. I think that the footprints defined the path of this
00:03:26
case. [Music] [Music] Minnesota crime scene investigators captured this footage when
00:04:23
they got their first look inside a high-rise apartment in Minneapolis. The camera is pointing uh west at this time.
00:04:31
According to police reports, at around 5:30 p.m. June 13th, 1993, a tenant reported water seeping
00:04:41
into their apartment. A building caretaker and a security guard were called to check it out and discovered
00:04:48
the water was coming from apartment 21104. They went into the apartment and they
00:04:55
found that the shower was still running and causing all this flooding next door.
00:05:01
After the shower was turned off, they came upon a gruesome scene in the bedroom. 35-year-old Jeanie Child's body
00:05:09
was partially under the bed. That's when police were called to investigate. This
00:05:15
was a violent, bloody crime scene. This is one of the bloodiest that I'd been to.
00:05:23
Retired forensic scientist Bart Epstein says carefully documenting that scene was crucial. Blood stains and blood
00:05:32
spatter tell a story. Yes, they sure can. In this case, we could establish that Genie Child's was hit in front of
00:05:40
the bathroom door. Epstein says Jeanie then moved into the bathroom. She was stabbed and slashed dozens of times. She
00:05:50
was down on the floor smearing blood along that area. While the shower had been turned off earlier, investigators
00:05:58
noticed water was still running from the sink faucet. There was a lot of activity
00:06:04
going on there. Why was the sink faucet still dripping? Was he trying to clean up? Jeanie apparently made it back to
00:06:11
her bedroom where her body was found. The blood wasn't confined to just the area where she was. The blood was on the
00:06:19
walls. The blood was on the comforter. The blood was on the floor. Julie Rendleman is a defense attorney
00:06:25
and legal consultant for 48 hours. It leads one to believe that a struggle happened, that she was fighting to save
00:06:33
her own life. The living room appeared untouched, a sitcom was still playing on the
00:06:40
TV. There was no evidence of forced entry. If Jeanie knew her killer, what could have prompted so much violence?
00:06:50
This to me seems like more rage. Someone who got upset at the time that the crime
00:06:56
was committed. Jeanie's mother, Betty Aman, was watching television news when she saw a report about a woman who had
00:07:04
been murdered. I called my husband at work. I said, I just seen them on the news taking a stretcher out of that
00:07:12
building that she lives in. Betty soon got the news no mother wants to hear. The victim was her eldest child.
00:07:22
I just wanted to hold her. I couldn't believe it. Betty says she spoke with her daughter
00:07:30
the day before her murder. Jeanie, she says, wasn't expecting visitors because she was nursing a toothache. What were
00:07:38
her plans that weekend? She went to the emergency room. She was in so much pain.
00:07:44
Jeannie always had problems with her teeth. and I don't know why. So I said, "Let me come and get you." No, Mom. Stop
00:07:52
worrying about me. Jeanie was dead by Sunday afternoon. As the crime investigation continued,
00:08:01
authorities focused on gathering evidence. A blue washcloth, a red t-shirt, a bath towel, blood scrapings
00:08:11
from the sink along with a comforter were collected and taken for DNA testing. Investigators observed dishes
00:08:20
in the kitchen sink and a knife in the drying rack. Did you take that knife in? Did not take that knife in. I looked at
00:08:28
it and there was no apparent blood on there. We never found any uh actual weapon there that uh was a murder
00:08:36
weapon. Investigators were able to identify some blood stains found in the stairwell near Jeanie's 21st floor
00:08:46
apartment. Did any of the blood belong to the victim? Genie child. Do you think it's possible that the person who
00:08:53
stabbed her was also cut? Well, it it could be. That's why we took the samples. Epstein says whoever murdered
00:09:00
Jeanie Childs unknowingly left behind something investigators rarely encounter. Bloody bare footprints under
00:09:09
the bedroom window. That drew my attention right away. And right next to it, I see the socked foot
00:09:16
of Jeie Childs. The footprints were dusted with black powder at the crime scene. When you first saw these, you
00:09:24
said because she's wearing socks, this these belong to the killer. That that would be my feeling. That's most likely
00:09:31
the perpetrator's footprint. If there's the friction ridge on the feet, like the
00:09:37
friction ridge on your fingers, there's potential to identify the person's foot that made them. That was very, very
00:09:46
significant. I knew that God was going to make sure that I was going to know what happened.
00:09:59
[Music] Everyone said she looked like me. These are pretty precious. Very few pictures I have of us
00:10:17
together. Cindy Blamer remembers the deep loss she felt after the murder of her big sister,
00:10:25
Jeanie. A lot of sadness when you wanted to pick up the phone and call your sister. I needed my sister. I wanted to
00:10:32
talk to her. Wondering what actually took place. Who did this? Although her sister was 12 years older,
00:10:41
Jeanie's playful spirit made an impression on Cindy growing up. Lionel Richie was one of her favorite
00:10:48
and as soon as she would hear him play, I mean, her fingers would start snapping
00:10:52
and she would dance around. But those good times were few and far between. Betty Eggman says she
00:11:00
first noticed a change in her eldest daughter when she was a pre-teen. She kind of lost her way when she was
00:11:11
probably around 12, 13. Betty says it wasn't until decades later that Jeanie claimed she had been abused by a male
00:11:19
relative. Jeanie started running away from home. I took my life in my own hands many a times to track her down. I
00:11:29
could have been killed, but I had my great Dne and a gun. Would you sometimes find her? Oh, yeah. When she would come
00:11:37
home, she was like a cat on a hot tin roof. She was so antsy she couldn't stay very
00:11:45
long. [Music] As the time passed, she feared her daughter was using drugs and soon
00:11:53
learned how Jeanie was making ends meet. And what did your daughter do? Prostitution. I just hoped and prayed
00:12:04
that she would stop. At one point, it seemed she settled down long enough to get married, but her
00:12:13
family says it didn't last long. Soon after, she married again to a man with children, and Jeanie became a stepmom.
00:12:22
And they depended on her. She was the only mother they really knew. Even when Jeanie split with their father, she
00:12:29
remained in the children's lives. They needed anything, they knew how to get a hold of her. She was really good that
00:12:36
way. At the time of her murder, she was living with a man named Arthur Gray at that apartment
00:12:45
complex. After Jeanie's murder, he became a person of interest. Investigators immediately looked at uh
00:12:54
whether Arthur Gray was involved in the murder. Retired FBI agent Chris Boers would
00:13:01
later join the investigation. According to police reports, Jeanie, who was a sex
00:13:07
worker, claimed she worked for Gray and there was a history of violence between them. At the crime scene, authorities
00:13:15
found hairs stuck to Jeanie's left hand, and one of those hairs matched Gray. But
00:13:22
Boer says the case against Gray started to fall apart pretty quickly. Arthur Gray as a resident of that
00:13:32
apartment, uh, it makes sense that his hairs would be throughout the bedroom. And Arthur Gray said he wasn't even in
00:13:39
town, but on a motorcycle trip in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the weekend Jeanie was murdered. He had a really solid
00:13:46
alibi that he was out of town that weekend. Um, that was corroborated by others. Authorities compared the unknown
00:13:54
bloody footprints in the apartment to Gray's footprints and determined they weren't his. Do you know how many other
00:14:03
possible suspects, persons of interest, whose footprints were compared to those left in Jeanie's apartment? There were
00:14:10
multiple people whose footprints were compared to the footprints that were left in Jeanie's apartment. You could
00:14:16
see that in the case file that a lot of effort was put in attempting to solve Jeanie's case.
00:14:25
According to the case file, on the day of the murder, a witness in the apartment building told police she saw
00:14:32
Genie with a tall blonde man wearing a trench coat. We had no way to track down who that may
00:14:40
or may not have been. Investigators never found the man despite efforts to find Jeanie's killer.
00:14:48
The case slowed to a crawl. Months turned into years and then decades. How often would you call the
00:14:58
police trying to get an update to find out if they had anything new on this case? Many times as I could, but I never
00:15:05
let a year go by without reminding them. [Music] In 2015, the Minneapolis Police
00:15:14
Department began digging deeper into unsolved cases, and Jeanie Child's murder was one of them. Jeanie's family
00:15:22
had no idea, but investigators were hoping science would help them solve the case.
00:15:30
Technology is so much more refined and rigorous than it was in 1993. Agent Boker says they discovered that a
00:15:40
blood sample found near Jeanie's blood in the stairwell of her apartment building had matched to a man named John
00:15:48
Eswine. In 2015, investigators interviewed Eswine, who was in prison for violating
00:15:56
probation on a drunk driving offense. Do you have any idea why your DNA would be
00:16:02
in that building? Your blood would be in that building? No. Okay. My blood was in
00:16:06
that building. Yeah. If you found my blood somewhere, all I can think of is that I I must have fallen down
00:16:13
somewhere. And Eswine told investigators he was in the building once in 1991, 2 years before Jeanie's murder. He
00:16:23
easily volunteered his DNA. He also uh allowed himself his footprints to be taken. Then his footprints were compared
00:16:31
to the foot bloody footprints in Jeanie's bedroom. According to a lab report, the
00:16:38
footprints were inconclusive and Eswine's DNA was not found inside Jeanie's apartment. The mystery only
00:16:48
deepened. Investigators knew from the case file that there were DNA profiles discovered at the crime scene that had
00:16:56
never matched to anyone. Andrea Feya, a forensic scientist with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,
00:17:05
performed additional testing on the evidence that was collected back in 1993. And she noticed something unusual
00:17:13
about one of the unknown DNA profiles. That DNA profile repeated itself throughout the crime scene. It was on
00:17:22
the comforter. It was on the blue towel. It was found on the blue washcloth and the red t-shirt. Correct. And on the
00:17:30
sink. Yes. Those were the only areas that we tested that ended up matching each other essentially. Investigators
00:17:38
then turned to investigative genetic genealogy for answers. The unknown DNA profile was submitted to genealogy
00:17:47
websites, including myheritage.com. The forensic genealogologist indicated that she had a match, potentially two
00:17:55
brothers here in Minnesota. And one of the brothers was a man named Jerry Westerm.
00:18:04
He was a wellrespected member of the community. People were surprised. [Music] [Music]
00:18:26
More than 25 years after Jeanie Childs was murdered, unknown DNA at the crime scene was matched to 52year-old Jerry
00:18:35
Westerm. What did you know about him? He was living north of Minneapolis St. Paul. That he was working for a company
00:18:43
up in St. Cloud, Minnesota area. He'd been a businessman. Retired FBI agent Chris Boker says the married father of
00:18:51
three wasn't hard to find. Had a Facebook account that we could follow. He was leading a seemingly normal family
00:18:59
life. Westerm had grown up in rural Minnesota. He and I were on a 4 trip when we were
00:19:07
14 to Washington DC. Wayne Triplet and Jerry Westerm were farm kids. They later became college buddies. And when Wayne
00:19:16
got married, he was one of the groomsmen in our wedding. That means he was a good
00:19:21
friend of yours. Yes, that's true. He got along well with a lot of people. Very low-key gentleman. Easily could
00:19:30
make friends with people. Westerm and his family were well respected inanti, Minnesota, about 40 miles away from
00:19:39
Minneapolis. They owned a Sears store. And in the year 2000, Westerm built his own Field of Dreams, a convenience store
00:19:48
and gas station known as Westerm's Corner. But in 2008, the turbulent economy took it all away. Was that tough
00:19:57
on him to lose Westerm's Corner? I think it was tough on him. It'd be tough on anybody.
00:20:05
Westerm returned to his roots. He began raising organic corn and soybeans and cultivating a business selling crop
00:20:14
insurance. He's a very good salesperson. He understands the need to fill the need. He understands how to communicate
00:20:21
and people have to be comfortable with you to close on business. Wayne never imagined that the
00:20:28
eventempered friend he's known since their teenage years would become the prime suspect in a violent murder case.
00:20:36
Did he have any history of violent crimes? No apparent criminal history involving violent crime. Jeie was
00:20:44
stabbed over 60 times and here's this man and no history of violence and this is the guy who might have killed her.
00:20:54
Well, it gave some pause that that level of violence and that type of crime. We kind of expected it would be somebody
00:21:02
that maybe had been arrested multiple times. So yes, that does give a little pause.
00:21:10
Investigators were anxious to confirm that the unknown crime scene DNA was indeed Jerry Westerms. But to do that,
00:21:19
they needed to track him down. We needed to obtain DNA from Jerry in order to compare it to the unknown DNA from the
00:21:30
scene. Forensic scientist Andrea Fya. And what did you tell them would be the best DNA
00:21:37
if they could get it? Best DNA is something that has been in a person's mouth. Like if they drank out of a
00:21:45
drinking container, a straw, if they spit out chewing gum, anything that could have saliva on it. Why is
00:21:53
saliva the ideal? Why did you say get something that had touched his mouth? There's a lot of DNA in saliva. Westerm,
00:22:02
a devoted hockey dad, frequently attended his daughter's college games. In January 2019, Westerm traveled to a
00:22:11
game in Wisconsin. Agent Boers along with his partner surreptitiously followed him there. Westerm went out to
00:22:20
the lobby concession stand and made a food order. We watched him sit at the table and eat his order. And when he
00:22:27
finished, he took a napkin and he wiped his mouth. Westerm tossed that napkin and food
00:22:35
container in the garbage can. And when he returned to the rink, Agent Boers made his move. I was gloved. I just
00:22:43
reached down and got the container and we bagged it up for evidence. I tested and got a DNA profile from that napkin
00:22:53
and compared it to the unidentified profile on the comforter and the blue towel. And what was the result? They
00:23:01
were consistent with each other. A month later in February 2019, Jerry Westerm was arrested and charged with
00:23:11
the murder of Jeanie Childs. As you sit here right now, Wayne, do you believe that Jerry Westerm is the one who killed
00:23:19
Jeanie Child? Definite no. Not a chance. Definite no. Definite no. Not a chance.
00:23:24
In a videotaped interview at the jail, Agent Boers and his partner question Westerrom. Does this lady look familiar
00:23:33
to you at all? Okay. Her name is Jeannie Childs. Okay. And she was found in her building in her
00:23:40
apartment deceased. Do you know anything about that at all? No. Okay. Do do you think you would have ever had sex with
00:23:46
her? I doubted it. In 93, would you have been with a prostitute? No. No. WCCCO TV senior investigative
00:23:58
reporter Jennifer Mayorly. He doesn't give much in the interview, but what he doesn't say almost says more. What do
00:24:06
you mean? He doesn't ask any questions about what happened, about why he's there, about why they're looking at him.
00:24:14
Jerry Westerm had no history of violent crime, but it seems he had been keeping a few secrets from his friends. Westerm
00:24:23
had told Wayne about two DWI arrests, but never shared he had been arrested twice for soliciting sex workers. You
00:24:33
didn't know anything? No. What was your reaction? It was hard to understand. That's the hard pill to
00:24:41
swallow. Meaning, how does a person with a good family and loving wife has the need for solicitation? What's going on
00:24:48
there? Investigators questioned Westerrom for 11 minutes until he asked for a lawyer. He was then handcuffed and
00:24:57
spent the night in jail. And the following morning, we went to the jail with Minneapolis Crime Lab personnel and
00:25:06
they obtained his footprints. 48 Hours legal consultant Julie Rendleman says the footprints were important because
00:25:14
Westerm's DNA was not the only DNA recovered there. DNA that was recovered was from multiple individuals. If you
00:25:23
don't have anything else, that in and of itself does not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Jerry Westerm is
00:25:28
the person that committed this [Music] crime. For more than 25 years, Betty Ecman had prayed for a break in her
00:25:53
daughter's unsolved murder case. In February 2019, her prayers were answered. I got
00:26:02
phone call and he said, "I'm the detective that worked on your daughter's case." And I said, "Okay, what's going
00:26:12
on?" We found him. And I I got goosebumps all over me. And I said, "Are you sure?" He said, "Yes, we got him."
00:26:26
But when Cindy Blamer learned the name of the suspect in her sister's murder, she had trouble believing it. I said,
00:26:33
"No way. No way." Jerry Westerm was a familiar face who lived in their town of Isanti, Minnesota. I'd seen
00:26:44
Jerry because our boys played hockey. He's tall. He kind of stands out. He also owned the business, the gas
00:26:51
station. The hockey dad and local businessman was now charged with murder. Westerm was
00:26:59
later indicted by a grand jury and pleaded not guilty. Westerm's DNA, according to forensic scientist Andrea
00:27:08
Fya, found on the comforter and towel in the bathroom, was identified as seaman.
00:27:16
But she says her team couldn't determine the type of DNA that she says Westerm left on the red t-shirt, the bathroom
00:27:24
sink, and the washcloth. You can't say definitively that his blood or any other kind of DNA was found at the scene. You
00:27:33
know, it's his DNA, but you don't know what kind. Is that correct? Correct. I don't know how it was deposited.
00:27:40
Essentially, you say DNA to general joke public. Well, that's a slam dunk. Wayne
00:27:45
Triplet, however, has questions about how and when the DNA was left there. There's no timestamp on DNA. Despite
00:27:55
advances in DNA technology, there's no way to know how long Westerm's DNA had been there. And Wayne says the evidence
00:28:04
only suggests one thing that just doesn't mysteriously show up. He had to be there. So, you think he probably was
00:28:11
in that apartment at some point? You know, you can't run from that evidence. He had to have been there.
00:28:18
Don't get there by accident. You don't believe he was there the day that Jeanie Childs was murdered? I I don't.
00:28:27
48 Hours legal consultant Julie Rendleman says the evidence in this case does raise questions. According to lab
00:28:35
reports, there was other DNA from Seaman discovered on Jeanie's purple panties that does not match Westerrom. Whose DNA
00:28:45
it is remains even today a mystery. And that wasn't all. There was DNA from other individuals that did not belong to
00:28:55
Jerry Westerm, but clearly belonged to a male source. Rendleman points to that DNA found in the stairwell close to
00:29:02
blood stains identified as belonging to Genie Child's. Jerry Westerm's DNA is not in the stairwell, but we know that
00:29:09
there's at least one other person whose DNA blood is found in that stairwell. Remember that stairwell DNA
00:29:19
matched John Eswine. When investigators interviewed him, he couldn't recall how his blood ended up in the stairwell not
00:29:28
far from Jeanie Child's apartment on the 21st floor. His answers were a bit peculiar. I I found and the reason I say
00:29:36
that is because he actually describes being there one time. And why does that bother you? So, it bothers me because
00:29:43
how the heck would he remember when he's interviewed all these years later that he was there, but only there once. And
00:29:47
the one time he says he was there was years before the murder. It just it felt a bit convenient.
00:29:54
We reached out to John SW for comment, but he didn't respond. He has never been charged in this case. Rendleman also
00:30:03
points out that before Jerry Westerm's DNA was identified at the crime scene. Authorities had discovered a mixture of
00:30:11
DNA types on the Comforter. According to a 2012 lab report, a man named James Luther Carlton couldn't be excluded as
00:30:22
one of the contributors. We know this was an individual that had committed multiple sex crimes in the past. And
00:30:28
what makes Carlton so significant? A little more than a year after Jeanie Child's murder in July 1994.
00:30:37
Sometime between last Thursday and Monday, someone entered this one-bedroom uptown apartment and murdered Jodie
00:30:43
Dover. 26-year-old hospital worker Jodie Dover was stabbed to death in her Minneapolis apartment. Jod's murder was
00:30:52
eerily similar to Jeanie's murder. Jod's killer had also left behind bloody footprints.
00:31:01
Authorities arrested Carlton and determined a footprint found inside Jodie Dover's apartment belonged to him.
00:31:08
He was convicted of her murder in 1995 and is serving a life sentence. 48 hours can't confirm if he was ever questioned
00:31:18
around the time of Jeanie Child's murder. We reached out to Carlton. He declined our interview request.
00:31:26
Carlton's criminal history was a red flag for Westerm's defense team. Attorney Steven Meshbasher told our CBS
00:31:34
station WCCCO that it was a rush to judgment in this case. You need to do the investigation first. Find out what
00:31:43
the facts are. Find out what the evidence is and then determine the charge. Now, they're charging it first.
00:31:51
Were the footprints Jerry Westerms? As both sides prepared for trial, it became clear that it would all come down to
00:32:00
this unique evidence. In Minnesota here, people are not committing crimes a lot of times with their socks and shoes off.
00:32:08
Mark Olrich, a supervisor with the Minneapolis Police Forensic Division, examined the footprints. He says he
00:32:17
focused on the friction ridge skin, the arrangement of ridges and furrows unique
00:32:22
to every person. Friction ridge skin is found on your fingers, your palms, and the soles of your feet. Seven bloody
00:32:29
footprints were photographed and labeled A through G. Defense attorneys hired their own forensic scientists, Alicia
00:32:37
McCarthy, a professor at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, to analyze the bloody footprints for them.
00:32:45
You called this case a beast. It was a beast. It was definitely very challenging. What conclusions would the
00:32:53
experts [Music] reach? Was Jerry Westerm just a customer who had left his DNA in Genie Child's
00:33:17
apartment previously? Or was he the one who stabbed her to death more than 60 times?
00:33:25
Investigators believe the bloody footprints found in her apartment would provide the
00:33:31
answer. That looks like a left foot. Correct. I completed the reference files. Mark
00:33:38
Olrich at the Minneapolis Police Lab was tasked with comparing the crime scene prints to Westerrom. He determined that
00:33:46
four of the seven prints were suitable for comparison. One of them, he says, revealed the impression of a left foot.
00:33:54
He labeled the heel E1 and an area below the big toe as E2. When Alrich analyzed
00:34:02
it, this was his conclusion. E1 and E2 were identified to Mr. Jerry Westerm. And he says there was more. This one B,
00:34:12
that one was identified to the right foot of Mr. Jerry Westerm. Alche E1, E2, B, and another left
00:34:21
footprint he labeled D1 belonged to Westerm. As the trial date approached, forensic
00:34:32
scientist Alicia McCarthy, who had been hired by the defense, was asked to verify work. They wanted me to come in
00:34:40
and look and doublech checkck the work that was done by the Minneapolis lab. McCarthy believed that only the print
00:34:50
labeled E2, the area below the left big toe, was suitable for comparison. This is the crime scene photo. This is E2
00:35:00
crime. During her analysis, she began comparing E2 to the footprints of alternate suspects and didn't get
00:35:09
anywhere. I was sort of in limbo for about a year where I was comparing to other people. And then I said, I'm
00:35:17
inconclusive. I can't say it's these people. I can't say it's not these people. McCarthy showed us what unique
00:35:24
characteristics she was looking for. We have um what we call a recurve. Yes. It comes down and recurves back up. And for
00:35:32
a friction ridge examiner, that's pretty exciting. When she compared E2 to Jerry
00:35:38
Westerm's footprints, she followed the curves. And finally, and who do you believe left that footprint at the crime
00:35:48
scene? That was Jerry Westerm's left foot. And you're sure of that? Positive. McCarthy agreed with Mark
00:35:57
Olrich. E2 the small area below the left big toe had been placed there by Jerry Westerm, but she disagreed with Olrich
00:36:07
on the other three footprints. I went through and did the comparisons um that Mark had made identifications with. I
00:36:15
didn't agree with him. She believed those three prints didn't have enough detail. there wasn't enough for that
00:36:21
very high threshold to say an identification and go to court in front of a jury and tell them that this
00:36:27
impression belongs to Jerry Westerm. That's her decision and I have no qualms about what she did. I just know the
00:36:33
quality of my work and I know what I stand by. When McCarthy determined E2 belonged to Westerm, she was immediately
00:36:41
released by his defense team. Both experts would then testify for the prosecution. Opening statements today in
00:36:49
the trial of a hockey dad accused of a murder nearly 30 years ago. In August 2022, Jerry Westerm went on
00:36:59
trial for Jeanie Child's murder. He had been out on bond. The judge ruled there'd be no cameras in the courtroom.
00:37:06
48 Hours asked Westerm and his family for on camera interviews, but they declined.
00:37:13
Jerry's wife and three kids were there for most of the trial. Jennifer Merrily covered the trial. Jerry and his wife
00:37:21
would walk into the Henipin County Government Center holding hands. In the courtroom, prosecutors painted a
00:37:29
different picture. They said the evidence points to Jerry Westerm is the killer. The bloody footprints combined
00:37:36
with his DNA is proof, they said, that he was in her apartment when she was murdered.
00:37:44
The bloody footprint put a timestamp of when the killer was there. But the defense tried to poke holes in the
00:37:51
footprint evidence. They also called that witness who had told police she saw Jeanie Childs with a blonde man wearing
00:37:59
a trench coat the day she was murdered. And she said she saw the same man later running down the stairwell without a
00:38:07
coat. Jerry Westerm has dark hair. There's no evidence he ever had blonde hair or anything like that. The defense
00:38:13
also named Arthur Gray, who died in 2012, as an alternate suspect. Jeanie had accused him of domestic abuse. And
00:38:23
then when you put the hair of Arthur Gray in her hand, it starts to become more significant. The defense, who
00:38:30
declined our request for an interview, was dealt a blow when they couldn't introduce James Luther Carlton and John
00:38:38
Eswine as alternate suspects. The judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence against either man, and prosecutors
00:38:46
cleared them both. So, the jury never heard that expert analysis of their footprints had been inconclusive.
00:38:55
I think it was incredibly damaging to the defense's case. Prosecutors declined our request for an
00:39:03
interview. Jerry Westerm did not testify and after 8 days, the jury quickly reached a verdict. Guilty. Jerry first
00:39:13
and second degree murder. The jury came back quite quickly and convicted Jerry Westerm of the top count, which was
00:39:19
murder in the first degree. They also found him guilty of murder in the second degree.
00:39:23
Prosecutors didn't present a motive. Wayne Triplet says he still believes his lifelong friend is innocent and says
00:39:31
that both families have paid a terrible price. The victim didn't deserve what they got. It's terrible saying here
00:39:39
Jerry's paying for that, but it's not Jerry. On September 9th, 2022, Jerry Westerm was sentenced to life in prison
00:39:49
for the murder of Jeanie Childs. As we said in the beginning and we're saying now, you've got the wrong
00:39:58
guy. We are sorry for the loss of Jeannie Child's [Music] life. Jeanie's mother, Betty, believes
00:40:07
justice has been served and that the right man is behind bars. But her grief will always be there. She poured her
00:40:16
heart out in a letter, a love letter she never got to send. My emptiness will never go away. Since you were taken that
00:40:26
fatal day, it wasn't fair. You had to die. I never got to say goodbye. I love you and miss you so
00:40:39
much. Love and peace, Mom. [Music] [Music] I can only describe it as evil, something horrible. From 48 hours, this
00:41:07
is trained to kill the dog trainer, the ays, and the bodyguard. He couldn't control his obsession. Who was the
00:41:14
hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:41:22
[Music]