Discarded hot-dog napkin leads to arrest, conviction of 1993 murder suspect

A Minnesota man whose discarded napkin led to his arrest in a murder committed nearly 30 years ago has been convicted.

Jerry Westrom, 56, was found guilty of first-degree and second-degree murder in Hennepin County last week for killing 35-year-old sex worker Jeanie Childs in 1993, according to a press release from the county’s attorney.

Westrom was jailed pending a sentencing date that wasn’t immediately set. In Minnesota, the automatic punishment for first-degree murder is life imprisonment.

Childs’ body was found on the bedroom floor of a Minneapolis apartment that she regularly used for prostitution on June 13, 1993, after a shower left running in her unit had leaked into a neighboring apartment, according to a 2020 press release from the county attorney.

An autopsy determined she had died from multiple stab wounds to the torso, neck and arms. Authorities had collected DNA evidence from the scene at the time, but the profile was unknown.

Advances in DNA testing motivated detectives in Minneapolis and an FBI special agent to reopen the case in 2015. Three years later, DNA samples that had been sent to a private genealogist pegged Westrom as a potential suspect.

Because Westrom lived in the Twin Cities metro area between 1991 and 1993 and had previously been convicted of soliciting a prostitute, he became a viable suspect in the case, according to charging documents from 2019.

In 2019, detectives tracked Westrom to his daughter’s hockey game in Wisconsin. That’s when they retrieved a napkin from the trash after he used it to wipe his face after eating a hot dog.

The saliva from the napkin produced a DNA match to the samples taken at the 1993 crime scene, according to the Hennepin County attorney’s office.

Westrom was arrested in February 2019 on second-degree murder charges. He had posted the $500,000 bond, but after a grand jury indicted him on first-degree murder charges in June 2020, Westrom turned himself back in.

“My condolences go out to the victim and her family. They have had to live without justice for her brutal murder for nearly three decades. I hope this brings some closure to them,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said in a news release.

“Today’s guilty verdicts show that we will pursue convictions for serious crimes, even if it takes years to gather the evidence,” he said.

• This article was based in part on wire service reports.