The Jacob Wetterling Story: What Went Wrong (Part 1 in a 5-Part Series)

When he was snatched by a masked gunman on Oct. 22, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was at the age when most boys begin thinking it might be OK to like girls. The possibilities were endless on the crisp evening that Jacob, his brother and his best friend hopped on their bikes and pedaled to a convenience store near their home in St. Joseph, Minnesota, a rural town about 70 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

Whatever dreams lived in Jacob’s head were snuffed out on that date, a painful milestone date for parents across Minnesota.

Parents who lived in Minnesota at that time often remark, “I know where I was when I first heard Jacob was kidnapped.” His abduction was a defining moment that would dramatically change how parents kept tabs on their children, neighborhood relationships and even federal policies.

Jacob Wetterling’s abduction “ended an age of innocence for central Minnesota and beyond and had a dramatic impact on how parents raised their children,” Sterns County Sheriff John Sanner said in a statement earlier this year.

Many of the details in this tragic story of an innocent life snuffed out were only revealed a little more than a month ago, when Jacob’s murderer confessed in excruciatingly painful detail how Jacob’s last hours were spent. Until then, there was no evidence that Jacob had died, and many clung to hope that he would one day be found alive.

About This Patch Special Report

Today, we begin a five-part special report about the abduction and murder of Jacob Wetterling and other missing children in Minnesota and the Midwest.

From the very beginning, Jacob’s case had a significant and immediate impact on how parents raised their children.

In the months after the kidnapping, the toll Jacob’s abduction took on St. Joseph was evident. In a November 1989 issue, People magazine reported that after the kidnapping, the bike racks at the local schools were empty, a sign that anxious parents worried that what happened to Jacob might soon be repeated. Parents became much more suspicious of even their own neighbors.

“We’re sending a message,” Patty Wetterling, Jacob’s mother, told the magazine. “You can’t do this in Minnesota. You can’t take our children.”

Rudy Perpich, the governor of Minnesota at that time, ordered the National Guard, aided by state investigators, to conduct the largest ground search in Minnesota history.

Minnesota Vikings wore caps bearing Jacob’s name at football games. Residents across the state held prayer meetings and wore white ribbons on their arms to symbolize “Jacob’s hope.”

A group of Minneapolis business executives offered a reward of $100,000 for Jacob’s safe return, and the figure was matched by a local Lions Club.

“When I heard about the kidnapping, something clicked in me,” Vern Iverson told People in 1989.

Iverson, 41, began working the phones on the Wetterlings’ behalf 15 hours a day after he heard about the kidnapping.

“I had to help. Every parent sees their children in Jacob. It’s terrifying to people to have this happen here.”

What Happened

On the night of Oct. 22, 1989, Jacob Wetterling, his younger brother Trevor, and best friend Aaron Larson were biking home after renting a movie from a local convenience store, Tom Thumb.

It was after 9 p.m. They had rented the “Naked Gun.”

But the trip to the movie store almost didn’t happen. Parents Patty and Jerry Wetterling were at a party when the boys called to ask if they could bike to the store.

Patty initially said no.

“But then they called back,” Patty told People, “and Jerry said they could if they wore reflective clothing, carried a flashlight and all stayed together. We thought we were protecting them from everything.” The movie store was less than 1.5 miles away. Patty and Jerry were worried that they might be hit by a car while riding their bikes, but the threat that a child abductor would strike never crossed their minds.

On the way to the movie store, the three boys biked past Danny Heinrich in his car. After seeing them, Heinrich turned around and waited.

In a new podcast produced by American Public Media titled “In the Dark,” host Madeleine Baran recently interviewed a man named Dan Rassier, who was wrongly suspected in the case and lived on a farm on the route the boys took to the movie store and back. Rassier remembers being alerted by his barking dog and seeing a car turn around in his driveway, which was near the spot where Jacob was abducted. Rassier said it was the second time that day that he saw a car do that.

On their way back from the store, the boys were stopped by a masked gunman (Danny Heinrich) who told them to lie face-down in the gutter. Then he asked them their ages.

The man then told Trevor to run into the field or he’d shoot. Then he asked Aaron to turn over, and he looked at his face and told him to run as well. He then grabbed Jacob.

Trevor and Aaron ran the last half mile back to the Wetterlings’ house, where Rochelle Jerzak, a neighbor who was babysitting Jacob’s sister Carmen, 8, called her father, who in turn dialed 911. The massive effort to get Jacob back had begun.

But Jacob’s disappearance would remain a mystery for nearly 27 years, until September 2016.

Heinrich Recounts Jacob's Last Moments

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Heinrich said he was driving on a dead-end road outside St. Joseph on the evening of Oct. 22, 1989 when he saw three young boys on their bikes.

Heinrich’s story matches those of the boys who got away. He said he confronted the three boys and told two of them to run. Heinrich then took Jacob into his car, where he handcuffed him to the front passenger seat.

According to Heinrich, Jacob asked, "What did I do wrong?" Heinrich had a scanner in his car and heard police responding to the kidnapping. He told Jacob to duck down to avoid police as he drove out of St. Joseph.

Heinrich then drove into an area near a gravel pit in Paynesville, a town 23 miles out of St. Joseph, walked with Jacob to a stand of trees, and molested him. Jacob asked to go home, but Heinrich said he couldn’t take him all the way home. Jacob began to cry.

Heinrich told investigators he "panicked" as a patrol car drove by.

"I pulled the revolver out of my pocket. I loaded it with two rounds. I told Jacob to turn around. I told him I had to go to the bathroom," Heinrich told investigators. "I raised the revolver to his head. I turned my head and it clicked once. I pulled the trigger again and it went off. Looked back, he was still standing. I raised the revolver again and shot him again."

KARE 11 reported that Heinrich said he left Jacob there and went to his home in Paynesville.

He said he returned hours later and dragged Jacob about 100 yards from the site to bury him.

Heinrich tried to dig a hole with a shovel, but it was too small. He went to a construction site, where he saw a Bobcat digger with keys in it.

He used the Bobcat to dig a larger grave. He buried Jacob in all his clothes, except his shoes, which he threw into a ravine.

About a year later, Heinrich returned to the site and noticed the spot where Jacob was buried was partly uncovered. Jacob’s jacket was visible, and so were some bones. It appeared that someone had dug up part of the grave. Heinrich put Jacob’s jacket, bones and skull into a garbage bag to move them to a new location.

When Heinrich found a new spot, he dug a hole and put the bones and jacket inside of it, with the jacket on top.

Heinrich led authorities to the second site while he was handcuffed in September.

At the scene, authorities found fabric from a St. Cloud State University hockey jacket and a shirt with "Wetterling" written on it. Bones and teeth that were found matched Jacob's records.

How the Wetterling Case Might Have Been Prevented

The Jacob Wetterling case is often looked at in isolation. However, it’s possible that Jacob was one in a long line of abductions in Stearns County at that time. In the plea deal investigators struck with Heinrich this year, he admitted Jacob wasn’t his first victim.

Stearns County includes St. Joseph, Jacob’s hometown, and Paynesville, where Heinrich lived for a time and where he assaulted and shot Wetterling.

In October 2015, Heinrich was arrested and charged with possessing and receiving child pornography. These charges were pivotal to authorities striking a two-part agreement with Heinrich.

According to the Pioneer Press, the first part of the deal with Heinrich was that he show authorities the location of Wetterling's remains and confess what he did to him. The second part was that Heinrich must plead guilty to a child pornography charge and admit that he abducted and assaulted Jared Scheierl in Cold Spring, Minnesota, nine months before he killed Jacob.

Without Jacob’s body, prosecutors weren't able to pursue murder charges against Heinrich. Until Heinrich led investigators to Jacob’s body, the only physical evidence authorities had against him were tire tracks and a shoe print, but they weren’t scientific matches. There wasn’t even evidence proving that Jacob had died at all.

Heinrich can't be charged in Scheirel's case because the statute of limitations has expired, but the plea deal required Heinrich to publicly confess to the assault of the boy.

In January 1989, nine months before Jacob was abducted, Heinrich abducted the Scheierl boy in Cold Spring, another small Stearns County town about 10 miles from St. Joseph. Jared was walking home from an ice rink when a man who later turned out to be Heinrich forced him into a car, sexually assaulted him and eventually let him go.

American Public Media reports that Heinrich’s parting words to Jared were "If they come close to finding out who I am, I'll find you and kill you."

Scheierl was one of many young boys who reported being abducted in Stearns County in the late 1980s, though Scheierl, nor many members of local law enforcement, were aware of all of the incidents and weren’t able to piece them together. At least eight attacks were reported in Paynesville.

A breakthrough in the investigation of Scheierl's case came when Joy Baker, a Minnesota blogger, did some research in the last few years and began connecting the Paynesville attacks to Jared’s assault in January 1989. After Baker made the connection, investigators were able to link Heinrich to the Cold Spring assault through DNA testing, the Star Tribune reported in 2015.

Patty Wetterling told the Star Tribune that she and her husband, Jerry, and Baker spent a Sunday morning talking with three of the Paynesville victims. She said then that she was struck by the similarities of their stories, except for one crucial difference: The Paynesville victims were let go.

“So if it was the same guy, what went wrong?” she said then. “What happened?”

Assault Cluster

According to the Star Tribune, investigators in 2015 called what happened in Paynesville in the late '80s an “assault cluster.”

Troy Cole was another one of the victims of that "cluster."

As a 13-year-old in 1986, Cole, of Paynesville, was pulled off his bike and sexually assaulted not far from the location where Wetterling's remains would be buried three years later.

Cole believes Heinrich assaulted him, but nobody was arrested in his case. Cole also told WCCO that he and the seven other boys who reported attacks between 1986 and 1987 were ignored by Paynesville authorities.

Cole was one of the victims who began speaking out about their stories in 2015 to help with the Wetterling case. Cole questions why officers at the time of his attack weren't more helpful.

"Why? We were kids back then,” Cole told WCCO. “Why didn’t they help us out?" Cole said he and his father reported the attack to the Paynesville police, but as far as he knows, police ignored the case. They never followed up with him.

Another victim from Paynesville, who identified himself as Craig, told WCCO that he believes if authorities had done more to find his attacker, Wetterling would be alive today.

Timeline of the Paynesville Assault Cluster
Source: KARE 11

• May 17, 1987: A boy reported that a man in Paynesville grabbed him from his bicycle and groped him. He left behind a baseball cap that was kept as evidence and later tested for DNA. The report was the first of eight similar cases investigators would document in Paynesville from August 1986-Fall 1988, all within a few blocks of Danny Heinrich’s residence.
• Jan. 13, 1989: Jared Scheirel told investigators he was kidnapped and sexually molested at 9:45 p.m. in Cold Spring, Minnesota. He said his abductor was wearing camouflage fatigues and having a scanner in his car.
• Jan. 16, 1989: Investigators name Danny Heinrich a suspect in the Scheirel case. He was a member of the National Guard and often wore military fatigues
• Jan. 17, 1989: Jared picked Heinrich and one other person from a photo lineup as looking like his kidnapper.
• Jan. 18, 1989: Investigators located Heinrich’s vehicle, but it did not have a luggage rack. (Documents do not specify if this caused police to back off Heinrich as a suspect.)
• Oct. 22, 1989: Jacob Wetterling was abducted at about 9:15 p.m.
• Dec. 13, 1989: The FBI met with Jared Scheirel to create a sketch of his kidnapper. The sketch of the suspect in a baseball cap bore an eerie resemblance to Heinrich’s mugshot.
• Dec. 16, 1989: The FBI interviewed Danny Heinrich for the first time, questioning him about the disappearance of both boys. He told investigators he couldn’t remember where he was on the days of the kidnappings, denied knowledge of either kidnapping and said he lived at 121 Washburne Ave. in Paynesville until November 1989, when he moved to his father’s house.
• Jan. 8, 1990: Paynesville police chief told Wetterling investigators of the Paynesville molestations, and named Heinrich as a suspect in those incidents
• Jan. 15, 1990: Heinrich allowed investigators to remove rear tires of his car, which he would have owned at the time of Jacob’s kidnapping. Law enforcement also tracked down and impounded the car Heinrich would have been driving at time of Jared’s kidnapping. (It had been repossessed from Heinrich two months after that incident.)
• Jan. 16, 1990: Jared sat inside the impounded vehicle and told law enforcement it felt like the car he was abducted in.
• Jan. 18, 1990: Carpet and seat samples were taken from Heinrich's impounded car.
• Jan. 23, 1990: Authorities obtain a search warrant for Heinrich’s father’s house at 16021 County Road 124, Paynesville, Minnesota, where a family member claimed the suspect had moved in October 1989, when Jacob Wetterling was abducted. On the search warrant application, a police officer noted the shoe prints at the Wetterling scene had the same pattern as Heinrich’s, and the tire tread on his vehicle also matched tracks left at the Wetterling kidnapping scene.
• Jan. 24, 1990: During the search, investigators seized two police scanners, a portable scanner carrying case, scanner documents, black boots, brown caps and camouflage clothes. During the search, Heinrich was interviewed for a third time.
• Jan. 26, 1990: Jared was unable to positively identify Heinrich as his kidnapper from a lineup that included five other males. On the same day, the FBI lab said tires seized from Heinrich’s vehicle are consistent but not an exact match with tracks found at Wetterling scene.
• Feb. 9, 1990: The FBI lab said fibers found on Jared’s snowmobile suit matched those recovered from the car Heinrich was driving at the time he was kidnapped. Heinrich was arrested in connection with the kidnapping and sexual assault of Jared, but claimed he was not guilty and had been framed. He refused to talk with investigators and invoked his right to an attorney. He was later released without being charged.
• April 13, 1990: The FBI lab said Heinrich shoe impressions "correspond in design" with tracks taken from the Wetterling abduction scene, but could not provide an exact match.
• Feb. 8, 1991: Property seized from Heinrich’s father’s home was returned to him, and the case officially went cold.
• July 18, 2012: The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension found DNA on Jared’s snow pants, sweatshirt and his shirt.
• March 5, 2014: The BCA found DNA on a baseball hat recovered from a 1987 Paynesville molestation case.
• May 12, 2015: DNA collected from Heinrich in 1990 was tested and matched with DNA on Jared’s shirt sleeve, to a degree of certainty that the profile would not occur more than once among unrelated people in the world population. Heinrich’s DNA also matched the Paynesville baseball cap to degree of certainty that 80.5 percent of world population could be ruled out as suspects.
• July 25, 2015: Investigators searched Heinrich’s home in search of evidence for Jacob and Jared’s abductions, but didn’t find any. They did discover a large collection of child pornography, and Heinrich was arrested and charged with possessing that pornography.

Why did victims in the string of Paynesville attacks feel ignored by police? And why weren’t investigators able to connect the numerous abduction cases, all taking place in one small Minnesota county, when the man responsible for at least two of them was right in front of them? Heinrich was a suspect in Wetterling’s abduction from the very beginning, and yet it took 27 years for prosecutors to get Heinrich to confess, and by that time, it was too late to hold him accountable.

Because of the plea deal investigators were forced to strike, Heinrich won’t be charged for Jacob’s abduction or murder. And that wasn't the first time authorities let go of a key suspect in a Stearns County investigation.

In the seventh installment of her new podcast, American Public Media’s Madeleine Baran suggests that the lack of accountability for county sheriffs may be to blame.

“County sheriff's aren't like city police chiefs, who are usually hired and can be fired. Sheriffs are elected, which means they are accountable to the public only every four years, at election time,” Baran reported. “It also means that once they get into office, they have a lot of power. Often, they aren't taken to task for poor police work.”

Baran said that she found that Stearns County Sheriff's Office doesn't analyze unsuccessful investigations to figure out what might have been done differently.

“I’m not going to concern myself with the things that weren't done by the investigation more than 25 years ago,” Sheriff John Sanner said of the Wetterling case before Heinrich confessed. “It’s counterproductive. It’s not helpful at all.”

Up Next in This Series
Jacob Wetterling’s kidnapping may have dramatically affected how kids spend their leisure time. But the risks of spending too much time before electronic devices may be greater than the risk of being abducted by a stranger.

The Jacob Wetterling Story: Are Parents Too Cautious? (Part 2 in a 5-Part Series)

Photo of Jacob Wetterling via MissingKids.org, used with permission