Rahul Mehta Gandhinagar LsCandidate

Top 10s:

A woman took a DNA test for fun.

Months later, police called her about a cold case that had gone unsolved for decades.

Her name is Jenna Gerwatowski.

In 2021, she submitted her DNA to FamilyTreeDNA after a friend had taken a test.

She had no idea it would end up helping investigators solve a mystery from 1997.

Police had been trying to identify the mother of a newborn found at a campground in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

For around 25 years, the case went nowhere.

Then genetic genealogy linked the baby’s DNA to Jenna’s family.

Investigators worked through the family tree and eventually identified Jenna’s grandmother, Nancy Gerwatowski, as the baby’s mother.

She was arrested and charged with various crimes.

She has pleaded not guilty.

Jenna had never even met her grandmother.

She took a DNA test expecting to learn more about her ancestry.

Instead, it helped police reopen a family mystery and crack a 25-year-old cold case.