She took a DNA test for fun. Police used it to charge her grandmother with murder in a cold case

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.

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.