The Footprint | Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

A woman is murdered in her home and the pivotal clue at the crime is a bloody footprint her killer left behind. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty reports. Watch more full episodes of "48 Hours" on Pluto TV.

True crime. Real justice. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com

Brief Summary

Jeanie Childs was murdered in 1993; Jerry Westerm was arrested and convicted in 2022 based on DNA and footprint evidence.

Key points

Jeanie Childs' Gruesome Murder. Jeanie Childs was found brutally murdered in her apartment, leading to a complex investigation.
DNA Breakthrough in Cold Case. In 2015, a cold case unit reopened Jeanie's murder, leading to a DNA match.
The Arrest of Jerry Westerm. More than 25 years later, Jerry Westerm was arrested for Jeanie's murder based on DNA evidence.
The Shocking Suspect. Cindy Blamer learns the suspect in her sister's murder is a familiar face.
DNA Evidence Raises Questions. Forensic scientist Andrea Fya discusses the complexities of DNA evidence in the case.
Trial Verdict. After eight days of trial, Jerry Westerm is found guilty of first-degree murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just wanted to hold her. I couldn't believe it.

A mother's grief over her daughter's death

7:18WatchMay 22, 2025

Tension

80/ 100High tension

More from 48 Hours

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.