by Dennis Dalman
editorial@thenewsleaders.com
It was a dreaded announcement and yet to some it was a long-delayed relief.
Jacob Wetterling’s remains were recently found by investigators on pastureland just northeast of Paynesville next to CR 85. Danny James Heinrich, 53, of Annandale confessed to abducting and killing the boy in a courtroom just days after he led authorities to the buried remains. (See related story.) They were found in a grove of trees in the pasture.
It took three days of digging with a backhoe and shovels to find the remains.
The case of the boy who was missing for 27 years caused horror, agony, anxiety and sadness locally, nationally and even worldwide.
“Our hearts are broken; we have no words,” said Patty Wetterling, the mother of Jacob after news that her son’s body had been found and identified.
There is an outpouring of sympathy from throughout the world and especially from St. Joseph for the Wetterling family, even as some are relieved the case might finally come to a close and lay to rest so many doubts, fears and uncertainties.
Wetterling, who was 11 at the time, was kidnapped near his St. Joseph Township home on Oct. 22, 1989, by a masked man wielding a handgun.
According to a recent statement released by Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner, dental records proved the remains are those of Jacob. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office also confirmed the identity. A DNA analysis is also in process.
Last week, Heinrich, a man arrested last summer for possessing child pornography, led investigators to the place where they would find Jacob’s remains. Heinrich had been a person of interest in the Wetterling disappearance just weeks after the kidnapping in 1989. At that time, a man in the Paynesville area had groped and molested several boys during a period of years, and one of the boys was forced into a car and sexually molested. (See related story.)
There were similarities in all the cases: a masked man with a raspy voice, holding a handgun and threatening to shoot at least three of the victims. On the evening of Oct. 22, 1989, Jacob, his brother Trevor and friend Aaron had biked to a Tom Thumb convenience store in St. Joseph, about a mile from their home in St. Joseph Township. On the way home, on the rural road, a man approached the boys on foot, told them to lie down in the ditch, asked them their ages, then told Trevor and Aaron to run across the field and not look back or he would shoot them. When the boys did look back, Jacob and the man were nowhere to be seen.
News of Jacob’s kidnapping exploded like a bomb in St. Joseph, Central Minnesota and beyond. The disappearance gave rise to “Jacob’s Hope” and to the determined efforts by Jacob’s parents, Patty and Jerry Wetterling, to help prevent child abuse and abductions. They and many supporters founded the Jacob Wetterling Foundation and Resource Center, which lobbied legislators for law changes and helped educate the public about child abuse issues.
Sheriff Sanner said those involved in the renewed investigation into Wetterling’s abduction and murder include the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the Stearns County Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
This missing photo of a happy, smiling Jacob Wetterling haunted people for years as everyone wondered, “What could have happened to Jacob?”
