2021 IACP/AXON Police Officer of the Year Award

In June of 2018, Detective Ginny Georgantas of the Cook County Sheriff’s Department began a cold case review of a double homicide from 2003. This case involved the homicide of twin male infants who had been delivered at full term and later died from asphyxiation. Their remains were recovered in a lift bucket by a waste management company. A forensic DNA profile was developed for the infants and biological parents. The Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) did not yield any probable matches for the mother’s DNA profile. Detective Georgantas exhausted several other potential DNA leads from the crime scene and reinterviewed persons of interest identified at the time of the crime, all without success. Detective Georgantas then began a two-year extensive investigation utilizing a genealogy database to model family trees of potential suspects before identifying a relative with genetic matches to both sides of the unidentified mother’s family tree.