A woman was shocked when a simple DNA test led to her grandmother’s arrest for a decades-old crime.
TikTok user Jenna Rose Gerwatowski, who goes by @jennarose, shared how an ancestry test she took ended up solving a 27-year-old murder mystery. This unexpected discovery connected her family to a cold case from 1997.
In her viral video, Jenna explained that she never knew her grandmother, not even her name, until she was about 15 years old. She shared that her grandmother had been a suspect in the Baby Garnet case.
The case began in June 1997 when authorities found the remains of a newborn baby in a pit toilet at Garnet Lake Campground in Michigan. The infant, known as “Baby Garnet,” was full-term or near-term, according to reports.
Jenna, now 23, said she decided to take the DNA test about two years ago just for fun. “It seemed dope,” she said. But a year later, a detective from Michigan State Police contacted her at work.
“I thought I was in trouble,” Jenna admitted. She recalled the detective telling her that her DNA was a direct match to the victim of the 1997 case. “I was speechless,” she said.
Further testing confirmed that Jenna’s mother was related to Baby Garnet. This connection led investigators to Jenna’s grandmother, Nancy Gerwatowski, whom Jenna had never met.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Jenna said. “The woman they had been searching for all these years turned out to be my grandmother. And it’s all because of a DNA kit.”
Jenna explained she couldn’t share much else about the ongoing case. Her grandmother, now 61, was arrested in 2022 and charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter, and concealing the death of an individual.
The case was reopened in 2017 when police used familial genetic testing and worked with private labs and the FBI to analyze the baby’s remains. A DNA profile developed in 2022 finally linked the crime to Jenna’s family.
Nancy now faces trial and, if found guilty, could receive a life sentence.
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