Jury finds Isanti man guilty of first-degree murder in 1993 Minneapolis cold case killing

A Hennepin County jury on Thursday found an Isanti man guilty of first- and second-degree murder in the 1993 slaying of Jeanne "Jeanie" Childs.

Jerry Westrom, 56, was immediately taken into custody after the verdicts were read in the cold case killing of Childs, who was found brutally stabbed to death in her south Minneapolis apartment.

The jury was given the case Thursday morning and reached its verdict at 3 p.m. It was read in court about an hour later.

Westrom, who was free after posting bail, was jailed pending sentencing.

The businessman and hockey dad was arrested in 2019 after investigators tested his discarded hot dog napkin from a hockey game for DNA that matched a hit from a genealogy website.

His attorney, Steve Meshbesher, tried to convince the jury that Childs' boyfriend, Arthur Gray, was the killer. He argued that Gray's hair was found in Childs' left hand and he allegedly had a history of abusing her. In addition, the apartment was leased to Gray, and Childs allegedly used it for prostitution. Gray has since died.

Westrom did not testify in his own defense.

In closing arguments Thursday morning, Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Darren Borg said the forensic evidence was indisputable: Westrom's semen was found on the bed comforter; his DNA was on bloody items throughout the apartment, and his bare footprint was inked in Childs' blood mere inches away from her "lifeless, hacked nearly disemboweled body."

"His footprints are in her blood because he killed her," Borg said. "This is no coincidence, ladies and gentlemen."

He said Westrom's claims that he was never in the apartment or knew Childs were "wholly inconsistent" with scientific evidence.

To prove intent and premeditation, Borg said Childs was stabbed 65 times, all the wounds were along her torso and neck, and they took a significant amount of time to inflict.

"What are you intending to do to another human being when you cut and stab them 65 times?" he said.

Meshbesher opened his closing argument with a quote from former President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani regarding the 2020 presidential election: "We've got lots of theories; we just don't have the evidence."

Meshbesher told the jury that if things didn't make sense, then they had been paying attention. He asked why it took more than an hour for security to call police to the scene and said the apartment's caretaker brought a mop to clean up the bloody water leaking into an adjacent unit.

"This crime scene was not secure," he said. "Evidence may have been lost."

But alternate jurors who were excused from deliberations said they weren't convinced by the defense. Dean Zimmermann, 80, of Robbinsdale said he didn't believe Westrom went to the apartment that day planning to kill Childs. But, he said, "the evidence I think was very clear that he was there. He made the footprints at the time she was murdered. It's just too hard to argue with that.

"This looked like it was a crime of anger, and something happened during their encounter together there that somehow set him off. He just lost it."

Monyou Taye, 33, a nursing assistant from Brooklyn Park, said it was a scary, hard case to go through. But she said the evidence was against Westrom.

"He said he was never there, but then they had his semen there, his blood and footprints all in the apartment," she said.

A first-degree murder conviction in Minnesota carries an automatic life sentence.