Minnesota man linked to cold case killing through discarded napkin convicted of murder

A Minnesota man who murdered a woman decades ago was caught after he wiped his face with a napkin during a hockey game and was convicted of the killing last week. 

A jury convicted Jerry Westrom, 56, on Aug. 25 of first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree murder in the death of Jeanne Childs after a few hours of deliberation. 

Westrom was arrested 25 years after the June 1993 killing of Childs, who was found stabbed to death inside her apartment. 

“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,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said in a statement. “I hope this brings some closure to them. Today’s guilty verdicts show that we will pursue convictions for serious crimes, even if it takes years to gather the evidence.”

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Westrom was arrested in 2019 after investigators retrieved a napkin he discarded during his daughter’s hockey game. He was eating a hotdog and wiped his faced with it. 

Westrom, who denies involvement in the murder, got on to the radar of investigators after they took advantage of advances in DNA technology in 2015 to take another look at the unsolved murder.

A search of an online ancestry website turned up Westrom as a possible suspect. The FBI assisted in the case.

Childs was found naked in her apartment with multiple stab wounds. Blood was found on the walls of her bedroom, living room and bathroom. 

After scoring a DNA match on the ancestry website, investigators looked at Westrom’s social media accounts and learned that he would be at the hockey game. He is scheduled to be sentenced