Westrom was found guilty Thursday of killing Childs. But for almost three decades, the case had left authorities stumped. They’d found a gruesome crime scene covered with DNA that couldn’t be traced to anyone at the time. Years had dragged on with more questions than answers — until 2018, when law enforcement enlisted the help of a genealogist and a commercial genealogy site.

“Today’s guilty verdicts show that we will pursue convictions for serious crimes, even if it takes years to gather the evidence,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said in a news release.

Police may have cracked a 1975 killing — by digging through trash

Westrom’s attorney, Steve Meshbesher, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post. He told CBS that “somebody sick, pathological” had killed Childs, adding that Westrom “isn’t the guy.” During the trial, he argued that Childs’s alleged pimp, who died in 2017, could’ve been the killer since some of his hairs were found in the woman’s hands.

Click here