Behind the Footprint: Reporting Jeanie Childs’ Story
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Show Notes
In this bonus episode, I sit down with investigative reporter Jennifer Mayerle, the journalist behind the WCCO documentary Footprint to Murder. Jennifer spent years following Jeanie Childs’ case, building trust with Jeanie’s family and navigating the emotional and ethical challenges of reporting a story this complex.
We talk about what it was like to cover this case from the inside: the relationships behind the reporting, the tensions around forensic genetic genealogy, and how the footprint evidence shaped the investigation. We also get into the questions that still linger, and what it means to center a victim’s humanity in a story often flattened by headlines.
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