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All right, we're going to begin with an inside look at 48 hours, an investigation into a decades old cold
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case. This is back in June of 1993 when Jeanie Childs was found dead in her apartment in Minneapolis. No
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fingerprints, no DNA matches, and the case went cold. But footprints left at the crime scene eventually led police to
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her killer. Aaron Morardi gives us an early look at her 48 hours report. On June 13th,
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1993, Minnesota crime scene investigators were called to a Minneapolis high-rise where 35-year-old
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Jeanie Childs had been found stabbed to death in her apartment. Retired forensic
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scientist Bart Epstein. I looked down. I could see the imprint in blood that looked like a left foot and a right
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foot. It's an actual bare foot. I mean, wow. The footprints were dusted with black powder at the crime scene. When
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you first saw these, you said because she's wearing socks, these belong to the killer. That would be my feeling. That's
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most likely the perpetrator's footprint. Along with the footprints, investigators
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collected unknown DNA from the bedroom and bathroom, but found no match. WCCCO TV reporter Jennifer Merrill. They hit a
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dead end at some point and moved on. And it wasn't until 2015 that a cold case unit reopened the case. In 2015,
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additional testing of the evidence collected back in 1993 determined an unknown DNA profile
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was found throughout the crime scene. A few years later, that profile was uploaded onto a genealogy website
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leading to a man named Jerry Westerm. Jerry Westerm is a husband, a father, a businessman. He attended church. He was
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a hockey dad. People were surprised. DNA linked Westerrom to Jeanie's apartment,
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but he denied killing her. And 48 Hours legal consultant Julie Rendleman points out that Wester's DNA was not the only
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DNA recovered at the crime scene. Jeanie had been a sex worker. There was DNA from other individuals that did not
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belong to Jerry Westerm, but clearly belonged to a male source. How important did those footprints in blood become in
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this case? Without the footprints, we would not be sitting here. I think that the footprints defined the path of this
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case. Aaron Morerti joins us now. Aaron, so great to have you here. Barefoot killer.
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That's a new one for me, especially in Minneapolis. It was June, but yeah, you know, you just don't see that happen
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very often. It's rare. It's rare. So, but the fact that there were multiple DNA profiles there, how did that
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complicate things for investigators? Well, because yes, that DNA, the fact there was a hit and connected Jerry
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Westerm means that he was likely in that apartment at some time, but you can't date DNA. And so, there was other DNA.
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There's actually DNA on her purple panties that was never been identified. So, that was complicated. And that's why
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those footprints became so crucial in this case because those footprints were left in her blood. So that meant they
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were left by somebody who either killed her or came right afterwards. So speaking of footprints, are footprints
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like handprints and fingerprints and toe prints? Are they all the same? Well, that was so interesting. So the experts
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say that we all have that friction ridge skin on our fingers and it's also on the
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bottom of our feet. But because experts run into it so rarely, the state expert had only seen it one other time. There's
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no large database. They say it's the same. It it's it was really an interesting your feet when you're bored
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and that's about it. Yeah. It's like they'll take fingerprints when you apply for a job and that goes in a database,
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but they don't take our footprints. Really interesting. Eron, thank you very much. I need to know what happened.
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Well, you can. I will. You can watch 48 hours report the footprint tomorrow night at 10:9 central here on CBS and
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streaming on Paramount Plus.