A Michigan woman revealed in a viral TikTok video how her Ancestry DNA test helped solve an infamous 25-year-old cold case murder of a newborn in her hometown, leading to the arrest of her grandmother.
Jenna Rose Gerwatowski, 23, posted the 7-minute clip Wednesday, in which she explains the at-home DNA kit was the break in the case detectives needed all along.
"This case was very popular in the town that I grew up in, because it was so f----d up," Jenna began, explaining its significance to residents in northern Michigan.
As backstory, Jenna said she had never met her maternal grandmother and "didn't even know her name until I was 14 or 15 years old, for reasons that are not my business to tell."
In 1997, a woman gave birth to a baby at a home in Newberry, Michigan and dumped the remains at the Garnet Lake Campground in Hudson Township, according to the Michigan Department of Attorney General.
The baby's body was found in a toilet by a campground worker that June. It was determined the infant was full-term and strangled to death.
At the time, investigators were unable to identify the victim, and dubbed the newborn "Baby Garnet," according to officials.
With no leads, the case grew cold.
Jenna later went on to identify her grandmother as Nancy Gerwatoski, who authorities charged with one count each of open murder, involuntary manslaughter, and concealing the death of an individual, earlier this year, in connection with the case.
"Obviously I can't talk about everything, but I can tell you my story," said Jenna, who took the DNA test two years ago.
"A year later, I'm at work, and I get a phone call, and it's a f-----g detective from the Michigan State Police. So I start freaking out," she said.
The detective explained he had reopened the "Baby Garnet" cold case, "and, your DNA is a direct match to the victim," Jenna said in the video.
The detective connected Jenna with a woman in Chicago who ran a worldwide DNA database. At first, Jenna thought she was being scammed after the woman asked her for a password, and she dodged her phone calls for a week.
Her family convinced her to call the woman back and she agreed to have her DNA uploaded into the database. The results proved she was a distant relative to the newborn victim, so investigators requested Jenna's mother's DNA sample.
"We ended up finding out that it's not a distant relative to my mom, but a direct relative, and the only other people that it could have been was my mom's mother," said Jenna. "So, we were mind blown. Mind you – I've never met this woman before."
"She is literally the f-----g person that they've been looking for for 25 years – and it's all because of an Ancestry DNA kit."
