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科技和「天網恢恢，疏而不漏」 - Emma Tucker
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瀏覽121 ｜回應1｜推薦1 |
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genetic genealogy：也請參看GG1、GG2。
A woman was murdered in 1974 while hitchhiking to a Chicago art show. 50 years later, investigators found her killer
Emma Tucker, CNN, 11/09/24
(CNN) -- Investigators in Wisconsin used genetic genealogy to solve a 50-year-old cold case this week, charging an 84-year-old Minnesota man with killing a woman who was found dead in 1974, authorities said.
Mary K. Schlais, 25, was found dead at an intersection in the township of Spring Brook, Wisconsin on February 15, 1974, according to the Dunn County Sheriff’s Office. Her death was ruled a homicide and the initial investigation revealed she had been hitchhiking to an art show in Chicago when she was killed, the agency said.
Jon Miller, of Owatonna, Minnesota, was arrested on Thursday after he “confirmed his involvement” with Schlais’ homicide, according to Dunn County Sheriff Kevin Bygd. He’s currently in custody in Steele County, Minnesota, and is awaiting extradition to Wisconsin, Bygd said.
“This is a huge victory for our agency,” Bygd said at a Friday news conference. It’s the first time the agency has used genetic genealogy to solve a case, the sheriff said.
For decades, detectives from multiple law enforcement agencies who were assigned to the homicide case received various leads and tips and conducted interviews, but no “viable” suspects were identified, according to the sheriff’s office.
Evidence was also examined and reexamined over the years, but it wasn’t until the agency started working with a team of genetic genealogists at Ramapo College in New Jersey in recent years, investigators were able to identify Miller as the suspect using genetic evidence, the department said.
Forensic genetic genealogy can generate leads for unsolved cases by analyzing DNA on top of traditional genealogy research, according to the US Department of Justice.
It combines forensic genetics, or DNA analysis, with conventional genealogy, or one’s family history, for human identification.
“Agencies can spend thousands and thousands of dollars sending DNA samples to private labs across the country to try and get results and we had a college very willing to step up and help us with this process,” Sheriff Bygd said.
Two sheriff’s investigators who have been working on the case, Dan Westland and Jason Stocker, said at the news conference they spoke with Schlais’ family, who expressed relief and gratitude for the investigation.
The sheriff’s office did not go into detail about what piece of DNA evidence investigators used to solve the case or the genetic genealogy process leading them to the suspect, saying they would leave it for Ramapo College representatives to address at their Monday news briefing.
The sheriff said investigators were thrown a “curveball” while assessing Miller’s family lineage because he was adopted.
“It takes a lot more work that these guys have put in over the last couple of weeks to try and dodge that curveball … We were able to sit down with him and let him confirm his involvement in her homicide yesterday,” he continued.
Westland said when he and Stocker spoke with Miller Thursday, he was “fairly calm about what had occurred.”
“I believe it’s got to even be a relief for him after 50 years of living with this. It’s had to have been on his mind almost every day. You would think anybody with a conscience, it would. So, I think he was done fighting it, personally,” said Sheriff Bygd.
Many of the detectives and former sheriffs who worked on the case over the years have died, said the sheriff, who added he was “elated” to tell some of his former coworkers who are still alive the case was solved.
“I was actually sitting in a deer stand when I got a text from investigator Westland yesterday and I had a difficult time controlling my excitement,” Bygd said. “… I’ve been through with every investigator that’s picked this up and ran with it and got to a dead end.”
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科技和「家庭悲劇」 -- Taylor Galgano
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報導中的棄嬰顯然是「婚外情」的結果。在我看來，「謀殺」的可能性遠大於「過失致死」；棄嬰母親的辯詞九彎十八拐，以致疑點重重，不足採信。
She took a DNA test for fun. Police used it to charge her grandmother with murder in a cold case
Taylor Galgano, CNN, 12/12/24
It was the middle of Jenna Gerwatowski’s workday at the local flower shop in Newberry, Michigan, when she got a call from an unknown number.
The now 23-year-old doesn’t usually answer unknown calls, but says she decided to pick this one up in May 2022.
To her surprise, it was a detective from the Michigan state police.
“He was like, ‘Have you heard of the Baby Garnet case?’” Jenna told CNN.
Jenna had heard of it. In 1997, a deceased infant was found in a campground pit toilet at the Garnet Lake Campground – right where Jenna grew up. Investigators couldn’t find any leads on the identity of the baby or anyone who witnessed a person abandoning an infant, according to a news release from the Michigan attorney general’s office. The case went cold, and the “Baby Garnet” case became a known murder mystery in Jenna’s small town for decades.
“Your DNA was a match,” Jenna says the detective on the phone told her. She was related to the dead infant from 1997.
Jenna was in shock. The detective sounded sure, Jenna said, but she wondered how he had even obtained her DNA.
About six months earlier, her friend had gotten a FamilyTreeDNA test for Christmas and Jenna decided to order her own. DNA from other Baby Garnet relatives led detectives to Jenna’s FamilyTreeDNA kit, according to court documents.
The detective said a woman from Identifinders International, a genetic genealogy investigation firm, would call her about her DNA to help with identifying closer relatives, according to Jenna.
According to court documents, detectives reopened the cold case in 2017 and then worked with a forensics company to extract DNA from Baby Garnet’s partial femur, before sending the results to Identifinders International.
Jenna explained the situation to her mother when she got home from work.
“It was just crazy,” Jenna said. “We were both sitting there like, I don’t even know who (the mother or father) could’ve been. We were both so confused and we’re like, it’s got to be somebody that we don’t know, you know, like a distant cousin or something.”
Jenna said her mother, Kara Gerwatowski, started to wonder whether the detective call was a scam.
Jenna’s grandfather had just been scammed by someone claiming to be a detective, so Kara told Jenna to be cautious about giving out personal information or passwords.
Misty Gillis, then a senior forensic genealogist and cold case liaison from Identifinders International, called Jenna that night, according to Jenna and court documents filed later in the case.
Jenna claims Gillis requested her FamilyTreeDNA password to be able to upload her DNA into a separate database. Jenna was concerned it was a scammer and refused to cooperate, according to court documents.
“I hung up the phone on her, not even thinking twice about it. And we went about our day. I was like, how weird. What a weird thing to scam people about,” Jenna said. “I wholeheartedly did not think that it was real.”
One week later, Jenna was working at the flower shop when she got a distressed call from her mother.
“She was like, ‘I really need you to come home. … It’s an emergency. Like, just please come as soon as you can,’” Jenna said.
Jenna rushed home thinking someone died. Her cousin was sitting with her mom at their round wooden kitchen table. Police had contacted her cousin, who works as a victim’s advocate in the county prosecutor’s office, to explain the Baby Garnet situation to Jenna. It turned out it wasn’t a scam.
“My mom had tears in her eyes,” she said. Jenna’s cousin had “just pure shock on her face. … You could hear a pin drop in there.”
Even though Jenna knew she had nothing to do with the Baby Garnet case, she was terrified police would think she was trying to hide something because of her refusal to speak with Gillis. She immediately called her.
An analysis of Jenna’s DNA kit showed she was the half-niece to Baby Garnet, according to court records.
On June 1, 2022, detectives spoke with her mother, Kara, who agreed to provide her DNA. Kara was the half-sister of Baby Garnet, according to court records.
“I feel like that is when, like, all of the puzzle pieces kind of started falling together for her,” Jenna said. “And she told detectives that, if it’s going to be anybody, it would be (her) mother.”
Kara, now 42, had not spoken with her mother, Nancy Gerwatowski, since she was 18 because they had a bad relationship, and Jenna had never met her grandmother. Regardless, both were shocked Nancy, who was living in Wyoming when police questioned her, would be the one behind their town mystery.
“I had grown up knowing about the case my whole life and then come to find out it was my grandma that did it?” Jenna said.
The Michigan attorney general’s office alleges Nancy “delivered the newborn alone at her Newberry home, during which Baby Garnet died due to asphyxiation, and that this death could have been prevented by medical intervention (Nancy) Gerwatowski did not seek.”
However, in a court filing, Nancy’s defense argues she unexpectedly gave birth while in the bathtub and the fetus “became trapped inside her birth canal.” She “attempted to pull the fetus out of her own body,” the filing says, but couldn’t deliver the fetus and lost consciousness “at some point in the delivery.” When she was finally able to deliver the fetus, it was dead, the filing says.
Her defense argues that Nancy, like the average person in the county in 1997, did not have access to a telephone or cell line, so she couldn’t call 911. While she concedes in her legal filings she placed the stillborn fetus in a bag and left the remains at the campground, her defense attorneys argue she had been in shock after having had no pain medication during the traumatic birth.
Nancy is charged with one count each of open murder, involuntary manslaughter, and concealing the death of an individual. Open murder carries a potential life sentence. Her defense is hoping to get the case against Gerwatowski dropped in its entirety Thursday, arguing the “state cannot prove the fetus was born alive,” according to the court records filed by Nancy Gerwatowski’s defense lawyer.
“It was a very hard time … very traumatizing and very nerve-wracking,” said Jenna. “I’ve never met this woman, so it was hard for me to even grasp that concept, but even harder for my mom because that was her mother.”
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