by Frank Lee
operations@thenewsleaders.com
There will be a community memorial service for Jacob Wetterling, the St. Joseph boy who was abducted in 1989 and whose remains were recently located on a Paynesville farm after almost three decades after he went missing.
The College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph will host the community memorial service at 10 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 25. The service is open to the public, and the community is welcome to join the Wetterling family for “an ecumenical prayer service of remembrance, hope and healing.” (Doors will open at 9 a.m. that day, according to officials.)
Because of limited seating for the memorial service, the College of St. Benedict is asking attendees sign the guest book online at www.csbsju.edu/wetterling-memorial/guestbook to indicate their plans to attend the memorial service. (Parking and location information will then be sent via email to those planning to attend the service.)
The Sept. 25 service will also reportedly be streamed live on the above website, where people can also leave an optional private message to the Wetterling family of St. Joseph.
“Memorials are preferred to the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children or your favorite children’s organization which focuses on building a better and safer world for children,” according to the St. Ben’s webpage devoted to the community memorial service.
If you have any questions, contact the staff at the College of St. Benedict at 320-363-5198 or jwmemorial@csbsju.edu.
Danny Heinrich, 53, of Annandale, had been a person of interest in the Wetterling disappearance just weeks after the kidnapping of the boy, who was 11 years old at the time. Heinrich was arrested last summer for possessing child pornography. As part of a plea agreement, he led investigators to Jacob’s remains earlier this month.
About the time of Wetterling’s disappearance, a man in the Paynesville area had groped and molested several boys during a period of years, but it was only recently Heinrich confessed to kidnapping and fatally shooting Wetterling as he pleaded guilty to child-pornography charges in a federal court in Minneapolis on Sept. 6.
Jacob Wetterling was only 11 years old when he was abducted in 1989.
