by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Two men, who claim their civil rights were violated, plan to sue local law enforcement for actions taken after two notorious murder cases – that of St. Joseph boy Jacob Wetterling and of Cold Spring-Richmond Police Officer Tom Decker.
A man who lives just down a driveway from the rural road where Jacob Wetterling was abducted 27 years ago intends to sue for alleged defamation against him. Dan Rassier plans to sue the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office, Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
Rassier is claiming those law-enforcement personnel and agencies treated him unjustly for years, implying he was a person of interest in the Wetterling case when there was absolutely no credible evidence against him.
Another lawsuit is pending in a similar case, brought against the same law-enforcement agencies by Ryan Larson, who claims he was defamed after the murder of Cold Spring Police Officer Tom Decker almost five years ago.
Both men are suing in separate lawsuits because they claim their reputations were ruined by speculations, causing nearly intolerable pressures in their lives for themselves and their loved ones.
Wetterling, 11 at the time, was abducted on Oct. 22, 1989, by a masked, gun-wielding man on a road leading from the boy’s home to a convenience store in St. Joseph. After being sexually molested, Wetterling was shot to death by Danny Heinrich, a man who admitted to the crime and who showed authorities just last September where the boy’s body was buried near Paynesville.
Rassier, a long-time music teacher in Cold Spring, had long proclaimed his innocence, telling authorities again and again he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Wetterling. In fact, Rassier told law enforcement about a car that turned into his driveway and then turned around and drove off at about the same time Wetterling was kidnapped. Rassier lives on the farm place where he grew up just down a long driveway from the place on the road where Heinrich saw three boys on their bicycles – Wetterling, his brother and their friend.
Rassier was interrogated as a person of interest after the 1987 crime and even agreed to be questioned twice under hypnosis. Rassier was never arrested. In 2010, investigators with legal permission used heavy-duty equipment to dig up and haul away many tons of dirt from the Rassier property to search for possible physical clues in the Wetterling case. Nothing was found. The excavation, Rassier has noted, caused suspicions against him to deepen in the years since, until Heinrich finally confessed to the crime of abducting, molesting and killing Wetterling.
After the excavation of his property, Rassier told the St. Joseph Newsleader he had never had anything to do with Wetterling’s disappearance and that he, his parents and others had suffered terribly because of the aspersions and speculations against him. He claimed law enforcement since the first days following the kidnapping did not fully investigate or connect leads that were offered, causing the actual perpetrator to go undetected while suspicions unfairly fell on him, Rassier, merely because his family farm was near the scene of the crime.
Rassier’s lawsuit is expected to be filed formally sometime after Jan. 1.
Larson lawsuit
After losing a lawsuit against media, Ryan Larson intends to sue law enforcement for allegedly ruining his reputation.
Larson is the man who was a person of interest in the days following the ambush murder of Cold Spring Police Officer Tom Decker in 2012.
Larson recently lost his lawsuit against KARE-11 TV, the St. Cloud Times and the Times’ parent company, Gannett Publishing. A jury in that trial ruled those media not guilty of defamation, that they had merely reported – accurately – the information provided by law enforcement. Larson had claimed those media had broadcast and published stories that implied carelessly he was the killer.
Larson spent several days in the Stearns County Jail after Decker’s murder. At the time of the killing, Larson was living above a business in downtown Cold Spring when officer Decker drove up to the parking lot in back of the business on assignment for a welfare check after someone called concerned about Larson. Someone then ambushed Decker in the parking lot, killing him at the scene.
Later, Larson was released from jail without being charged. Still later, while police were questioning Eric Thomes of Cold Spring, he allegedly ran to an outbuilding on his property and hung himself. That man, investigators later said, would have been charged with the murder of Decker had he not committed suicide.
In his lawsuit, Larson is asking the Decker murder case be officially closed and release to the public all details of the investigation and the return of his property confiscated by law enforcement.
Like the lawsuit Dan Rassier intends to file, Larson is also claiming those law-enforcement agencies and personnel violated his civil rights.
Dan Rassier
