A court date has been set for a Wyoming woman charged with the murder of her newborn daughter, who was found in a Michigan campground toilet in 1997.
Nancy Gerwatowski, 60, was charged with one count each of Open Murder, Involuntary Manslaughter, and Concealing the Death of an Individual in the cold case involving the infant dubbed Baby Garnet. If found guilty, Gerwatowski could face a life sentence.
The State of Michigan alleges in a press release that “Gerwatowski delivered the newborn alone at her Newberry home, during which Baby Garnet died due to asphyxiation, and that this death could have been prevented by medical intervention Gerwatowski did not seek.”
“She then, allegedly, concealed the deceased newborn in an outhouse at the campground in Hudson, more than 20 miles out of town,” the press release continues.
Since 1939, Michigan’s Safe Delivery law has allowed newborns up to three days old to be safely and legally surrendered at a hospital, fire department, police station, or by calling 911.
A judge ruled in May 2024 that the case would be brought to trial. A court date is set for December 12, 2024 to determine whether a statement Gerwatowski made to police, as well her abortion consideration and lack of prenatal healthcare, can be used in the trial.
Investigators say Gerwatowski confirmed to them she is the child’s mother.
Baby Garnet’s remains were discovered at Garnet Lake Campground in the Upper Peninsula by a worker emptying the septic pit on June 26, 1997, CBS News reports. An autopsy revealed the baby girl was “term or near term” at a gestational age of 36-42 weeks. While full-term is now considered to begin at 39 weeks, previously any baby born after 37 weeks was considered “term.”
“The guy that was cleaning out the outhouses used, obviously the suction,” Mackinac County Sheriff Ed Wilk told 9&10 News, “and it got clogged and once he went to undo the clog, that’s when he noticed that he had sucked up the baby and that obviously he had called 911.”
Police believed Baby Garnett may have been placed in the toilet as early as June 1, 1997.
Wilk explains that while “DNA … really wasn’t the thing” in 1997, investigators had the foresight to gather it nonetheless.
Investigators at the time followed leads but were unable to make an arrest.
The community raised nearly $1,000 to give Baby Garnet a proper burial at Hudson Township Cemetery, where she was buried in a white casket at a service attended by around 40 people.
In 2010, Wilk reviewed the case. “I thought this was a very solvable case as time had progressed,” he said in an interview. A few years later, investigators got the idea to try forensic genealogy. They uploaded Baby Garnet’s DNA to Gedmatch and Family Tree DNA, and forensic genealogists working on the case were eventually led to Gerwatowski.
In a viral TikTok video, a woman claiming to be Gerwatowski’s granddaughter tells the story of how investigators found her through an Ancestry DNA test she took. She does not say whether her DNA was also uploaded to Gedmatch or Family Tree DNA.
Gerwatowski, then living in Wyoming, was extradited to Michigan on murder charges in 2022.
Investigators say they have identified Baby Garnet’s father, who was unaware of the pregnancy and is also considered a victim in this case.
In 1997, abortion was legal throughout pregnancy in Michigan. Since 2022, abortion has been protected by the Michigan constitution and is again not restricted based on gestational duration. This means that both at the time of the crime and now, the abortion of children Baby Garnet’s age is legal, while children of the same age outside the womb are protected by law.
