DNA test kits have risen in popularity over the last 10 years or so. It’s been a great way for people to connect with their roots. And some people have found unknown family members through these tests. But sometimes, these DNA test kits have unexpected results.
One young woman learned just what could come of the results when she was contacted about a cold case from many years ago. Thanks to her DNA, police connected her grandmother to the crime, leading to her arrest.
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The woman had never planned to take a DNA test.
Jenna Gerwatowski had decided to do a FamilyTreeDNA test in early 2022, after a friend had done one. She had no idea when she did, that nearly six months later, Michigan state police would be calling her. The now 23-year-old woman told CNN that she doesn’t normally answer calls from unknown numbers, but for some reason, this time she picked up.
“He was like, ‘Have you heard of the Baby Garnet case?’” she told the outlet.
The Baby Garnet case happened almost 30 years ago.
Jenna Gerwatowski had indeed heard of the case. In 1997, a deceased infant was found in a pit toilet at Garnet Lake State Forest Campground, right in the area where she grew up. According to a news release from the Michigan State district attorney’s office, there were no leads on the infant or who may have left it there at the time. While the case went cold, the story was well known in her small town.
“Your DNA was a match,” detectives told her on the phone. She was in shock, and more importantly, wondering how they got her DNA. And then she remembered the test.
Detectives reopened the case in 2017 with the help of a forensics company.
The young woman was told she’d be contacted by someone from Identifinders International, a genetic genealogy investigation firm, about the DNA from her test. When she got home from the flower shop where she worked, she told her mom the whole story.
“It was just crazy,” she 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.”
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Soon, all the pieces started to fall into place.
Fearing this all to be a scam, Jenna Gerwatowski hung up on the liaison from Identifinders International. “I wholeheartedly did not think that it was real,” she admitted. But it was. And about a week later, she got a frantic call from her mother. The young woman had a cousin who was contacted by the police, convincing her to get her cousin to answer the call. It wasn’t a scam — she was the half-niece of Baby Garnet.
On June 1, 2022, her mother Kara agreed to take a DNA test. Baby Garnet was her half-sister. “She told detectives that, if it’s going to be anybody, it would be [her] mother.” Kara hadn’t talked to her mother Nancy Gerwatowski since she was 18. Jenna had never even met the woman, who was living in Wyoming.
“I had grown up knowing about the case my whole life and then come to find out it was my grandma that did it?”
Nancy Gerwatowski has been charged, but it is unknown if the charges will stick.
According to the Michigan state district attorney’s office, Nancy Gerwatowski “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.” Nancy claims she went into labor unexpectedly in the bathtub and the fetus “became trapped inside her birth canal.” She “attempted to pull the fetus out of her own body,” but lost consciousness “at some point in the delivery.” The fetus was dead when she was able to deliver it.
She admitted to putting the fetus’ body in a bag and taking it to the campground, but her lawyer argues that she was in shock. 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. The judge hopes to have an answer about whether or not they will drop the charges soon.
Jenna called the experience “very traumatizing and very nerve-wracking.” “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,” she said.
