What If The Person of Interest in The Jacob Wetterling Case Had Been a Black Guy?

Amid all the unanswered questions and lingering speculations about the Jacob Wetterling Case, there’s something else we all should be wondering about. Oh, it’s almost too embarrassingly politically incorrect to even ask. But still, it should be considered. What would have happened if any suspect in this case had been a black — and not a white — guy?

Think about it. Your knee-jerk reaction probably would be something like “So? What difference would that have made? Anyone who kidnaps and kills a child like that should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, regardless of his skin color or ethnicity!”

Uh-huh. Think a little more about the question. Then think about how our criminal justice system actually works.

Here’s the harsh reality: if ANY of the suspects in this investigation had been Black or Hispanic or Asian or of Middle Eastern descent, we wouldn’t have had to wait THAT long for a confession. We wouldn’t have had to wait almost 27 years to find out what happened to Jacob Wetterling. No way. This case would have been solved in record time — certainly in less than a year’s time, anyway.

You know what I mean. So does everyone else in the law enforcement hierarchy. When it comes to Black or other minority suspects, expediency rules. Arrest them, incarcerate them, then come up for some reason to keep them in jail — that’s how it works for non-whites most of the time these days.

You don’t believe me? Pick up a newspaper once in a while and read it. Turn on your TV and check out the video du jour of the latest Cop vs Black Driver incident. It’s all there, sometimes even streaming live, for all to see. It’s. happening. every. day.

Every day you hear about cops stopping Black drivers because they “resemble” suspects involved in robberies and shootings. Or so the cops say. Then when the surprised and confused and upset black “suspects” protest — or merely ask questions — they get arrested. There’s always a reason, always a charge, that will ensure a lock-up. Even if the “suspects” are cooperative, they still get hauled down to police headquarters and detained longer than what’s legally necessary. If nothing else, there’s some trumped-up charge that the “suspect” is a jaywalking terrorist or gang member who didn’t completely stop at the stop sign.

And then, there’s this white guy Danny Heinrich: child killer who just confessed only a few days ago to the rape and murder of Jacob Wetterling back on October 22, 1989.

He’s the same guy who couldn’t get arrested or seriously considered as a prime suspect for this murder decades earlier. Why? Because authorities keep saying “they never had enough evidence to prove he actually killed Jacob Wetterling.” Really?

Here’s where our story turns from crime thriller into Law&Order absurdity. Authorities DID have enough evidence for a conviction. Over the decades, mounting circumstantial evidence against Danny Heinrich did ensure a lifetime behind bars for him. But the crimefighting braintrust in the land of the St. Cloud Syndrome decided to go on a witch hunt. They decided to waste valuable time and resources to harass the Wetterling’s next-door neighbor — a highly functional yet mildly autistic loner we might as well call the Boo Radley of St. Joseph. His real name, though, was Dan Rassier.

Yes, this unmarried music teacher who lived with his parents and helped them out was an odd duck indeed. Like Danny Heinrich he was a white guy, but he was also, well…different. The only thing worse than being Black in predominantly white small-town Minnesota is being the weird white guy. And Rassier was weird simply because he was different. He was a sensitive new male who shared his feelings and wept openly about the Wetterling’s tragedy. He also was a dedicated marathon runner who taught music to young girls — and boys. He was just different. And it didn’t help matters much that nobody got his lame, quirky sense of humor, either. When you don’t fit in and don’t think and act like everybody else in rural Minnesota, you ARE a minority group of one.

Because Rassier’s home and driveway were areas located closest to little Jacob’s abduction site, he immediately became a suspect. Investigators not only had him under surveillance, they repeatedly interrogated him and people he knew. Of course, you could always rationalize those actions by saying law enforcement officials were merely doing their job. Even going through Rassier’s house, personal effects, computer, and yard might be understandable. So would getting his DNA. But when they hypnotized Rassier and got Patty Wetterling to wear a wire during conversations he had with her, you know they really were out to get him, lack of evidence be damned.

( Take heart, O Weird One. Now you can write a book about this injustice, and Clint Eastwood can direct a movie about it.)

So we know what the law enforcement community in this case did to Rassier. They went after the different white guy they didn’t like. For decades, they probed him, despite the fact that he had no history of criminal behavior or no record of current criminal conduct.

Meanwhile, in Feburary, 1990, Heinrich got arrested for assaulting yet another young “juvenile male,” one ID’ed only as JNS. But Heinrich said he was innocent. So authorities released him — no charges, no further investigation, no problem.

Wow. All he had to do was say, “I didn’t do it,” and the cops let him go home? Gee, I wonder what would happen if the brothers in Chicago tried this approach…Never mind. They already have, and the cops keep shooting them, anyway.

Maybe the problem here isn’t that there are too many unanswered questions in this case. Maybe the real problem is that the answers given by the law enforcement community are too incomplete, too disturbing, and too puzzling.

Consider poor Jared Scheierl’s experience at the hands of Danny Heinrich on January 13, 1989, in Cold Spring, Minnesota. When Heinrich confessed last Tuesday (on September 6th) to killing Jacob, he also admitted to kidnapping Jared. According to Heinrich, he asked Jared for directions, then forced him into the back seat of his car. After sexually assaulting him, he ordered Jared to get dressed. But that was impossible because Heinrich kept his pants and underwear as souvenirs.

Stop right there. RED FLAG ALERT, RED FLAG ALERT. How exactly does a 12 year-old boy without any pants whatsoever run away from his kidnapper’s car in January, in Minnesota, without anyone noticing? Even if no adults were home when he got there, someone must have noticed his loss of clothing later on. Someone also had to have seen the inevitable chafing, redness, or frostbite that Jared developed, even if we might have had a mild winter that year.

Furthermore, how did it happen that no one at the local police department or county sheriff’s office believed Jared’s story? Why wasn’t Jared’s case prosecuted when the descriptive details he gave to authorities resulted in a police sketch that looked exactly like Heinrich? Why did Jared’s case — along with Jacob’s — become cold for so long?

The real answers to these questions are not forthcoming at this point. Maybe they never will be.

What’s happening now is that the participants in this investigation are trying to recreate a CYA reality that’s kinda truthful and kinda makes them look good. It might not be accurate, but it won’t get them into any trouble, either. As long as the media goes along with them and uses their self-serving PR to report this story, nobody in law enforcement will lost his or her job.

That might not be the case with the legal participants in this case, however.

Now, 27 years later after Jacob Wetterling’s disappearance, there was finally enough circumstantial evidence to convict Danny Heinrich. Heinrich’s shoe prints and tire tracks from his vehicle matched the ones from the crime scene. Heinrich’s DNA was found on the sweatshirt Jared Scheierl was wearing when he was abducted and assaulted. Moreover, Jared could identify him as his assailant. The statute of limitations had run out on the Scheierl case, but Heinrich’s history of kidnapping and sexually assaulting young boys could be established. And because a search warrant of Heinrich’s home had led to volumes of kiddie porn, Heinrich could now be tried and convicted on 25 counts of possessing child pornography. Finally, all this evidence was available. And what did these legal beagles on the case do?

They opted instead to plea bargain away any jail time for little Jacob’s murder and the other 24 counts of child porn possession in exchange for Heinrich’s cooperation. All Danny Heinrich had to do was confess to killing Jacob Wetterling and show authorities where his body was. And for that admission, this child killer would have to serve 20 years in prison for only 1 count of possessing child porn.

Of course, there would be no chance of parole. There would also be a real possibility of civil commitment if the 53 year-old Heinrich were still alive after serving his sentence. But who wouldn’t agree to such a sweet plea bargain?

Sure, this deal sent him to hell, but it also sent him there with his own customized state-of-the-art air conditioner.

To make matters even more complicated, this braintrust actually consulted the Wetterling family and got their approval for this deal. As if their approval would make this manipulation of our justice system all right. As in, we did it for the family, we did it to spare them from any further suffering. And now they have closure. “Now they can take Jacob home.” As though “closure” can actually exist for the family of a murdered child.

How is hearing that the killer handcuffed, emotionally tortured, and raped your loved one before putting a bullet in his head EVER going to bring any kind of closure? It can’t. It won’t.

Child killers should never have this much bargaining power in the first place. And the families of victims should never be placed in the position of making prosecutorial decisions the way the Wetterlings did in this case. My heart goes out to the Wetterling family, but no family should ever be granted this kind of approval or veto power.

Not only was involving them highly questionable and inappropriate, it also established a problematic legal precedent. If grieving families are allowed to determine how those charged with their children’s murder should be prosecuted, where do you draw the line? What if the grieving parents don’t believe in the death penalty and their child’s confessed killer is sentenced to be executed? Should we abide by their wish for life imprisonment? Or their wish for commuting the sentence altogether if their religion dictates it?

How much input, specifically, should the parents of murdered children be granted in America’s judicial system?

What’s especially troubling in this case is how Danny Heinrich might, theoretically, land in legal limbo. The lawyers who decided to put this child killer in prison without having him do any time for killing said child missed a real important point. They forgot that a judge had to OK their legal scheme. When Heinrich is formerly sentenced on November 21st, the judge still must approve this plea bargain that allows Heinrich to serve no time at all for heinous child rape and murder, along with no time for the other 24 counts of possessing child porn.

Even if a judge does agree, there are enough holes in this agreement so that it could be challenged or thrown out at a later date by a higher court. Heinrich could even try — in theory, anyway — to get his conviction overturned on the grounds he received inadequate legal representation or advice. It could happen…unless Heinrich would get shivved in prison. Stay tuned. Heinrich’s sentencing date is only a little more than two months away.

In the meantime, we can all keep scratching our heads over this one.

When was the last time a prosecutor refused to try a case for a heinous child murder just so he could work out a plea bargain that would allow the accused to do no time for the murder, and no time for his other crimes? I don’t know. I don’t know if such a convoluted legal maneuver has ever taken place before. I only know this much is true: IF ANY BLACK PERSON OF INTEREST HAD BEEN INVOLVED, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO PLEA BARGAIN.