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2024 marks 35 years since an 11-year-old boy was abducted from a dark rural road in 1989 in St. Joseph, Minnesota, a small community with a population of less than 3,000. This case terrified the community, stripping their safety & sense of  innocence. This case went on to become one of the biggest mysteries in the state’s history & was unsolved for nearly 27 years. 

Jacob Wetterling was born on February 17, 1978 to parents Patty & Jerry Wetterling. They lived in the small, rural community of St Joseph, known to the locals as St. Joe, Minnesota. The couple had four children & in 1989, Amy was 13, Jacob was 11, Trevor was 10 & Carmen was 8. The Wetterlings purchased a peaceful house in the woods & life was chaotic but joyful. Jerry worked as a chiropractor & Patty was a stay-at-home mom & adored her role amongst the chaos; their schedules were jam-packed with school, sports & various activities. Patty & Jerry described Jacob as a sweet, innocent boy who had an amazing spirit. 

It was the night of Sunday, October 22, 1989 & Jacob was riding his bike alongside his younger brother, 10-year-old Trevor & his best friend, 11-year-old Aaron Larson. It was a dark, moonless night & the trio rode down the rural street on their way home from the local video store where they had rented a VCR tape of The Naked Gun & had picked up some candy to enjoy as they watched the movie. Jacob & Aaron rode bikes while Trevor used his push scooter. The boys were taking advantage of the fact that they didn’t have school the next day because of a teachers’ conference. Earlier that day, Jacob had hockey tryouts for his youth league in nearby St. Cloud & he felt that he skated poorly so Jerry took his son to go fishing at a nearby lake, figuring it would be a nice distraction for him. After, the family gathered at home to watch the Vikings game.

After the game, Jerry & Patty headed out to a dinner party with friends & asked Jacob if he wouldn’t mind babysitting while they were out. 13-year-old Amy was staying at a friend’s house & they weren’t going to be gone long. Jacob agreed & asked if he could invite his best friend over which Patty & Jerry had no issue with. When Patty & Jerry arrived at their friend’s house, they called home to check-in & give Jacob the phone number to where they were. Initially, Trevor called & spoke with his mom & asked if they could ride their bikes to rent a video, but Patty said no since it was getting dark outside. The boys had ridden their bikes to the local Tom Thumb convenience store many times before, but never at night. The boys didn’t give up & this time, Jacob called & spoke with his dad; it was a straight shot down a quiet road, but Jerry worried since sometimes cars could drive fast & was concerned they wouldn’t be seen. Jacob, being a persistent 11-year-old, assured his dad that he would wear his reflective vest & Aaron was wearing a white sweatshirt while Trever would carry a flashlight.  

When Jacob’s 8-year-old sister Carmen didn’t want to come with them, he called his mom & asked if he could have their neighbor, Rochelle Curtis, come over to watch her while they were gone. Knowing it was a ten minute max bike ride each way, Patty agreed & the boys headed out at about 8:30 pm.  

Just after 9 pm, the boys were only a half-mile from home when they approached a particularly dark stretch of road where a long gravel driveway led to a farm when Trevor’s flashlight caught the movement of a figure coming from the driveway in front of them. They suddenly heard a gravelly voice shout, “Stop! Turn off the flashlight, I have a gun.” They were met with a man who appeared to be wearing a nylon mask, holding a gun. He ordered them to place their bikes in the ditch & lay face down. For an initial moment, Aaron was convinced that it must be a high school kid playing a joke & remembers his first reaction was to let out a laugh. This feeling faded fast & reality quickly set in that this was no joke.

The man asked the boys how old they were & then instructed Trevor to run into the woods & not look back or he would shoot him. He then turned his attention to Aaron & repeated the same question of his age & instruction to run to the woods. This was the last time Jacob was seen alive; when Aaron caught up with Trevor after running about 100 yards, he looked back but there was no sign of Jacob or the man. Aaron & Trevor never saw any cars in the area, including one driven by the man. 

The boys ran home & Rochelle remembers Trevor followed closely by Aaron, busting into the house, frantic, explaining that a man with a gun had taken Jacob. Rochelle called her father who came over & called the Wetterlings to alert them of the situation & immediately dialed 911. Over the phone, Jerry was told that a man with a gun had taken Jacob. He immediately grabbed Patty & said, “We’ve got to go. Somebody took Jacob.” Patty grabbed her purse & they rushed out the door without saying goodbye to the others at the party.

As Patty & Jerry made their 20 minute drive home, the drive seemed endless & Patty kept thinking, “Who would take a child? Who would do this?” She continued to yell at Jerry to drive faster. They had no idea what they were walking into as they arrived home. 

Police immediately started their investigation & began searching for clues at the abduction site. They found tire tracks on a long driveway that sat adjacent to the road along with adult & child-sized footprints that were similar to the Nike shoes Jacob had been wearing, about 75 yards from where the boys had been confronted. The prints were in more of a shuffling, pulling motion than a typical walking pattern. 

The hunt for Jacob quickly became one of the largest searches in Minnesota history with a task force consisting of multiple agencies & multiple investigators. The governor called & offered up the National Guard who conducted a ground search, covering about thirty miles. The driveway where Jacob was taken was only a few miles from the interstate which meant that Jacob could be long gone by this time.

The officers asked for a photo of Jacob & Patty removed his framed school photo from the wall. After, Patty remembers looking up & seeing the smiling faces of her three other children on the wall surrounding Jacob’s empty frame as an utterly heartbreaking moment. Patty thought back to the night before Jacob was abducted; he apologized to her for being a little crabby about the issues he felt he was having skating. He asked her if she wanted to play a game with him, but Patty was busy & told him she couldn’t. Looking back, she wishes she could take it back, never fathoming that her son would be gone the next day.

10-year-old Trevor went to the police station the next day to give a taped confession about what happened the night before. Trevor & Aaron told police that the man was about 5’9”-5’10”, about 180# with a low, rough voice as if he had a cold. He wore a smooth nylon mask to cover his face, a dark coat, dark pants, dark shoes & carried a silver handgun.

Jacob’s case became national news because of the nature of what happened. It was a group of young boys, innocently riding bikes in their quiet, seemingly safe town when a parent’s worst nightmare became reality & their child was abducted by a complete stranger.

As the search for Jacob continued, investigators learned of a similar case that happened nine months earlier. 12-year-old Jared Scheierl was walking home from a cafe at 9:45 pm on January 13, 1989 in Cold Spring, Minnesota, 10 miles away from where Jacob was abducted. That evening, Jared had been at the ice rink playing hockey with friends & after, they all headed to a cafe for milkshakes & fries. Since Jared was so close to home, he decided to walk & when he was approximately three blocks from home, a white man stopped his car & asked Jared if he knew where the Kramers lived. As Jared tried to help the man with directions, he got out of the car, grabbed Jared & placed him in the backseat of his car where he was then driven to a remote location 10-15 minutes away & sexually assaulted. The man threatened him with a gun which Jared never saw. Jared noticed a “walkie-talkie” type handheld radio device on the passenger seat of the man’s car & he could hear a male & female voice coming from it, but the driver turned it off as he drove.

After the assault which took place in the backseat of the man’s car, the assailant dropped Jared off & told him to run & not look back or he would shoot him. He threatened that if he went to the police, he would get him after school & shoot him. During the sexual assault the man had removed Jared’s snowsuit, pants & underwear & only allowed Jared his snowsuit back, keeping his pants & underwear. 

Investigators couldn’t deny just how similar this case was to Jacob’s, down to the same words he yelled to Aaron & Trevor when he told them to run & not look back or they would be shot. Since Jared survived the attack, he was able to report what happened to police, giving a detailed description of the suspect’s car, clothing & voice. 

A composite sketch had been made & released after authorities noticed the similarities between the two boy’s abductions. The abductor was a man approximately in his 30s, had a distinctive, deep, raspy voice & said he had a gun. He was about 5’6”-5’7”, weighed about 170#, had dark brown mid-length hair, brown eyes, fat ears that stuck out, a fat nose, bushy eyebrows, rough, wrinkled skin, thick hands, a pudgy “beer belly” & crooked bottom teeth that Jared described like “cheese teeth”. He had an indent on his ring finger, wore a brown baseball hat, a dark zip-up vest, camouflage fatigues, black Army boots & a military-style watch. 

The search for Jacob continued & investigators looked into a man named Dan Rassier. Dan was a 34-year-old neighbor who lived with his parents on a farm whose driveway was near the location where Jacob was abducted & where police located the tire prints & footprints. Dan worked as a band teacher & on the night that Jacob was abducted, he was home alone as his parents were out of town. He told investigators that between 9-9:30 pm, his dog began barking at a car coming down the road. Dan looked out & saw a small, dark blue car that quickly turned around & then it was gone. Soon after, Dan went to bed & the next thing he knew, his dog was barking again. This time, he saw people gathered in the area with flashlights. When Dan learned of Jacob’s abduction, he told police about the car that turned around on his driveway on the night that Jacob was taken & was convinced that this car must have been involved in the case. 

After finding the shoe prints & tire prints, police soon hit a dead end in the investigation & found no sign of Jacob or his abductor. Fourteen years went by & a man came forward in 2004, claiming to be the driver of the car that turned around on Dan’s driveway, which led police to turn their attention to Dan. He was brought in for questioning & accused of being the man responsible, but Dan denied any involvement in Jacob’s disappearance. 

On October 20, 2009, two days shy of the 20th anniversary of Jacob’s abduction, Patty wore a wire & purposely “bumped into” Dan at the gym where he worked out. As they sat in the lobby of the gym talking, Patty asked Dan to look her in the eye & tell her that he had nothing to do with her son’s disappearance & he did. The two spoke for forty-five minutes & Dan calmly answered all of Patty’s questions. He told Patty that he wished he had been more alert on the night that Jacob went missing & paid more attention to what his dog was barking at that night. Later, Patty told the FBI that Dan was either innocent or a psychopath. After police searched his property & conducted digs & found no incriminating clues, he was eventually cleared of involvement though his clearance didn’t truly come until the case was solved in 2016. Sadly, Dan’s reputation was tarnished in the years Jacob was missing.

More than two decades passed when blogger Joy Baker found an article from 1987 which detailed five incidents that involved young teenage boys being followed or assaulted by an unknown male in the nearby town of Paynesville, Minnesota. Oftentimes in these cases, the man involved told the boys not to turn around or they would be shot. Paynesville is 18 miles from Cold Spring where Jared was abducted & 28 miles from St. Joseph where Jacob was taken. 

In one incident that took place in Paynesville, two boys were riding their bikes in the dark of night in May of 1987, two years before Jared & Jacob’s cases, when a man lurched out from the trees & knocked one of the boys off of his bike. This very boy had already been attacked by this exact man in February, three months earlier when the boy was leaving a pizza place. At that time, a masked man grabbed the boy & threw him down a stairwell & groped him, speaking to him in a deep low whisper. He told him that if he made noise or moved, he would kill him. He asked him what grade he was in, took the boy’s wallet & left on foot. In May, when the same man grabbed the boy off his bike & began to fondle him, the boy screamed, “You already got me!” The man fled the area on foot & left his blue baseball hat behind. These attacks were investigated but no arrests were made & no connections were made between these instances & Jared’s or Jacob’s cases.

The descriptions that the Paynesville victims provided were similar to Jared’s description as well Trevor & Aaron’s who described the man as having a gruff voice. Before Jacob was abducted, Aaron had been briefly fondled by the man which led investigators to believe that he was a child sexual predator. 

Joy began investigating & blogging about Jacob’s abduction in 2010 & Patty & Jerry were completely unaware of her existence until 2013 when Joy approached Patty at a speaking event. Patty was initially wary of this woman who had taken such an interest in her son’s case, but they quickly began talking & formed a friendship that morphed into an alliance. 

In addition to reaching out to Patty, Joy also contacted Jared in 2013 about the 1987 article she had found in the archives of the Paynesville Press. This was when Jared first learned that the man had told these young boys, ‘Don’t look back or I’ll blow your head off.’ In the summer of 2013, Jared agreed to team up with Joy on one condition, that his name not be associated with pursuing this connection, “This man threatened my life directly. I have children & they’re number one – their safety is number one.” 

Jared, the Wetterlings & Joy all believed that the same man could be involved in the Paynesville assaults, Jared’s abduction & Jacob’s kidnapping which prompted Joy to reach out to Stearns County Sheriff’s investigators. They asked her to send them the article & were skeptical of the connection. Starting in 2004, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension & the Stearns County Sheriff believed that Jacob’s kidnapper was on foot rather than in a car. This theory came in 2004 after the man came forward to indicate he had been the one to turn around on the Rassier driveway.

Despite the doubts voiced, Jared & Joy remained persistent & spent hundreds of hours tracking down leads & locating the Paynesville victims. They contacted the Stearns County authorities as much as three times a day to as little as three times a week. Joy, Jared & Patty remained diligent, participating in interviews to voice their confidence that these cases were all connected by one man. It all paid off when Jared & Joy were featured on John Walsh’s CNN show “The Hunt” which led to a request to open an FBI cold-case review in November 2014.

In 2014, the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team conducted a cold case review of the Jacob Wetterling investigation & began to look more closely at a life-long Paynesville resident named Danny Heinrich. Heinrich was a member of the Minnesota National Guard who would have been in his mid-20s at the time of Jared’s attack & Jacob’s abduction. 

This was a name that Patty Wetterling had heard soon after Jacob was abducted as he was one of five to seven people that couldn’t be cleared & his name would continue to come up. Heinrich had no prior arrests for sexual assault, but he did have issues holding down a job & came from a troubled childhood. His physical description fit the man involved in the Paynesville incidents, including Jared’s & Jacob’s cases, especially his low, gravely voice. 

Two months after Jacob was abducted, Heinrich was questioned by the FBI on December 16, 1989. He claimed that he couldn’t remember where he was on the nights that Jared or Jacob had been abducted, but that he may have been washing his clothes or visiting a friend on October 22 when Jacob was abducted. He had been arrested twice; once for burglary & once while driving while intoxicated. He denied wearing camouflage clothing or Army boots while off duty & denied any knowledge of the abductions of Jared & Jacob. 

Jared described the car his abductor drove as a dark blue, four-door car with a luggage rack on the trunk, blue cloth interior & the car had a “new” smell. At the time, Heinrich was driving a 1987 4-door dark blue Mercury Topaz but there was no luggage rack on the trunk. The car had been repossessed in March 1989 though the current owners brought the car to police so they could inspect it. Jared was allowed to sit in the car & felt confident it had been the one used in his abduction; on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most similar, he said it was an 8 or a 9. Samples were taken from the car that matched the fibers found on Jared’s snow suit.

On January 17, 1989, four days after Jared was attacked, he was shown a photo line-up of six males with similar builds & characteristics & selected a picture of Heinrich & one other man.

Heinrich was in the Willmar National Guard or Army Reserves & frequently wore military fatigues. He also fit the physical description; he was about 26-years-old at the time he attacked Jared, was 5’5”, 160#, with brown hair & brown eyes. Keep in mind, Jared described his attacker as being in his 30s, about 5’6”-5’7”, 170# with brown hair & brown eyes.

On January 12, 1990, one year after Jared’s attack, Heinrich was re-interviewed by law enforcement. He indicated that the tennis shoes he was wearing at the time were the only pair that he owned & voluntarily provided them to law enforcement as well as hair samples. Two days later, he allowed law enforcement to remove the rear tires from his 1982 blue Ford EXP which he had been driving for several months before Jacob was abducted. In April 1990 it was determined that the shoes & tire prints visually matched those found at Jacob’s abduction site, but because they lacked specific characteristics, investigators could not say that they were an exact match which would warrant an arrest.

Heinrich’s father’s home was searched on January 24, 1990, one year after Jared’s attack & three months after Jacob’s abduction, as he was living in that location at the time that Jacob was abducted. They found a carrying case for a portable scanner, a pair of black lace-up boots, two brown hats & a camouflage shirt & pants in addition to other items. During Jared’s abduction, he noted a walkie-talkie radio device on the seat which could have been a police scanner & the man wore a brown baseball hat, camouflage fatigues & black lace-up boots.

They found six photos of children in a locked trunk; one depicted a child wrapped in a towel, coming out of a shower & the other was of a boy in his underwear. He said he met the boys while he was at the Willmar Regional Treatment Center.

The next day, January 25, 1990, Heinrich participated in a physical line-up with six men & this time Jared was unable to identify any of the men as the one who kidnapped & assaulted him but did indicate that Heinrich & one other person was similar to his kidnapper in build. He felt Heinrich would be a 4 on a scale of 1-10 in similarity. 

On February 9, 1990 Heinrich was arrested on probable cause for the kidnapping & sexual assault of Jared & emphatically maintained that he was not guilty. He was later released without being charged. In the meantime, investigators kept a close eye on Heinrich & installed a GPS tracking device to his car, hoping he would drive to the spot where Jacob’s remains could be found. This wasn’t the case & he basically only drove from work to home, venturing out very little. Police found it odd that someone capable of so many attacks could seemingly be a law-abiding citizen for the next 26 years.

When the FBI team, who were highly trained in child abductions, conducted their cold case review of Jacob’s investigation in 2014, they immediately focused on the evidence taken from Danny Heinrich. Specifically the tire & shoe prints left behind at the scene of Jacob’s abduction. It was great evidence, but just not solid enough to secure a conviction for proof beyond a reasonable doubt. 

During the review, investigators focused on Jared’s assault & the similarities between his case & Jacob’s. At the time of Jared’s attack, DNA wasn’t regularly used in criminal cases, but as DNA testing became more advanced, there was finally a break in the case. It wasn’t until 2012 that investigators determined that unknown male DNA was found on the clothing Jared wore during his attack. They used this DNA & compared it to a hair sample that was saved on a slide at the FBI lab which ended up being a match to Heinrich. Now investigators could prove what they always suspected, that Heinrich had been responsible for Jared’s abduction & assault. In the end, Heinrich was never charged with Jared’s abduction & assault as the statute of limitations had run out by the time the DNA link was discovered.

In general, the U.S. federal law has a statute of limitations of five years, unless there is specific legal language for offenses that stretch beyond that time. For example, there is no statute of limitations for capital murder. The purpose of statutes of limitations is to protect would-be defendants from unfair legal action which can arise from the fact that after a significant passage of time, relevant evidence may be lost, damaged or not retrievable & memories of witnesses may not be as clear. Some U.S. states have eliminated the statute of limitations for serious felony sex crimes while others are set to 10-20 years or more. Murder often has no statute of limitations regardless of where the crime was committed. 

With this DNA match, a search warrant was obtained for Heinrich’s home & detached garage where he was living at the time in Annandale, Minnesota. The warrant alleged that he may have been involved in eight incidents that occurred between 1986-1988 involving boys ranging in age between 12-16-years-old who were assaulted in various locations within the city of Paynesville. During these years, Heinrich was living in Paynesville & these assaults took place within several blocks of his home. In the case where the attacker left his baseball hat behind, DNA was tested & 80% of the population was excluded & Heinrich’s DNA was not. 

As the search of his home was underway on July 28, 2015, two weeks after his DNA was a match for what was found on Jared’s clothing, two agents spoke with Heinrich at his patio table while he was being secretly video recorded. They found that his house was neat & tidy; he had two cats & at first glance nothing was amiss. Henrich admitted that they would find pornography in his house but ensured investigators that they wouldn’t find human remains or anything pertaining to Jacob Wetterling. When he was asked about the Paynesville attacks, he said he never touched anyone, “period, that’s the God’s truth.” 

Investigators quickly found binders that contained child pornography & child erotica. They found bins of child sized clothing, wigs & handcuffs as well 922 VHS tapes, many including child actors. Some of the tapes contained hours of recordings of Heinrich at a playground or viewing boys as they rode by on their bikes. There was no direct evidence linking Henrich to Jacob or Jared, but he did have tapes of news reports about Jacob’s abduction.

Because of the findings of child pornography, Heinrich was arrested in October of 2015 on federal charges. At this point, authorities also announced that he was a person of interest in Jacob’s abduction.

Close to three decades had passed since Jacob’s abduction & in those years, Patty held out hope that somehow her son could still be alive, focusing on cases where children did return after decades of being missing. Investigators spoke with Patty & Jerry about how to move forward & asked them if they wanted justice or answers. Patty only wanted Jacob. Danny Heinrich was offered a deal; if he pleaded guilty to one count of child pornography in federal court, he would receive a 20 year sentence if he was able to provide a credible confession to Jacob’s case. 

Nearly one year after his arrest, on August 31, 2016, 53-year-old Heinrich led investigators to where Jacob’s remains were recovered & investigators immediately saw red material from Jacob’s hockey jacket that was sticking out above ground. Patty & Jerry got the devastating call about the jacket & they described it as a moment that made their blood run cold. It was now confirmed that their beloved son would never be coming home. In this moment where the hope of Jacob’s return was gone, Patty also felt a sense of peace. After nearly 27 torturous years, not knowing where her son was, if he was alive or dead, if he was scared or in pain, she now knew that Jacob was at peace. After they left the area where Jacob’s remains were found, Patty & Jerry had to make the devastating call to inform their three children.

On September 6, 2016, Heinrich gave his official confession to abducting, assaulting, killing & later burying Jacob. He said that as he drove around on the night of October 22, 1989, he was driving on a dead-end road when he noticed the three boys riding their bikes with a flashlight & made the decision to pull into the Rassier driveway & wait for them. He faced the direction of the road that they would be coming back on & twenty or so minutes later, he saw them. 

Heinrich put his mask on, grabbed his revolver, walked to the road & approached the three innocent boys. As Trevor & Aaron described, he forced them to lay face-down in the ditch & asked them their names & ages & he took out his .38 revolver. The boys offered to give them the VHS they had just rented & Heinrich knocked it out of their hands. They shined the flashlight in his face & he told them not to do that. At that point, he told Trevor & Aaron to run away & not look back.

Heinrich handcuffed Jacob with his hands behind his back & put him in the front passenger seat of his car. Jacob asked him, “What did I do wrong?” As Heinrich drove out of town he had his police scanner on & he heard a lot of activity over the radio & decided to drive toward his hometown of Paynesville 28 miles away. As they drove, he instructed Jacob to lean forward & duck down in his seat & when they were out of St. Joseph, he allowed him to sit up.

Before he got to Paynesville, Heinrich turned on a road where there was a field next to a grove of trees. He pulled off near a gravel pit & stopped as close to the grove of trees as he could get. He took Jacob out of the car & forced him to undress & sexually assaulted him. After 20-30 minutes, Jacob said he was cold & Heinrich allowed him to get dressed. Jacob asked if he was going to take him home & when he told him he couldn’t take him all the way home, Jacob began to cry. 

On the way back to the car, Heinrich noticed a patrol car with its lights on & began to panic & pulled out his unloaded revolver. He loaded it with two rounds & instructed Jacob to turn around, telling him that he had to use the bathroom. Jacob turned around, Heinrich raised his revolver to the 11-year-old boy’s head & turned his head. The gun clicked once because it didn’t line up & he pulled the trigger a second time & it went off. When Heinrich looked toward Jacob, he was still standing so he raised the revolver & shot again & this time, Jacob fell to the ground. He confirmed that Jacob was dead, got in his car & went home. As far as investigators know, Heinrich hadn’t killed before or after Jacob & when asked why he murdered Jacob, he indicated that the sight of the patrol made him panic & shoot Jacob.

A couple of hours later, Heinrich returned to the area with the intention of burying Jacob’s body & dragged his remains 100 yards off to the north. He realized that the shovel he brought was not large enough & remembered that there was a construction company nearby. He headed in that direction with the hopes of securing a larger shovel when he noticed a Bobcat skid steer. He said he was familiar with operating one & knew where the company kept the key. When he located the key, he drove it to where Jacob’s body lay & dug a grave where he buried his fully clothed body minus his shoes which had fallen off. He said it was after midnight & it was a very remote area. He brought the Bobcat back, returned to the grave & concealed it with grass & brush & walked back toward his Paynesville apartment. Here, he discarded Jacob’s shoes in a ravine 100 yards down the road.

Approximately one year later Heinrich returned to the site after midnight with a flashlight & noticed that the grave was partially uncovered & Jacob’s red jacket was visible above ground. He had an Army entrenching tool with him as well as a garbage bag & he proceeded to gather as many remains as he could, not needing to dig at all since much of Jacob’s body was visible. He placed Jacob’s remains as well as his jacket into the bag & relocated it to its final resting spot at a rural farm in Paynesville across the highway. He used his tool to dig a hole about two feet deep, placed Jacob’s remains in the hole which he covered with his red jacket & buried it. Among Jacob’s remains, investigators also found Jacob’s #11 soccer jersey.

Once Heinrich was finished confessing to Jacob’s abduction, assault & murder, he went on to confess to the kidnapping & sexual assault of Jared Scheirel in January 1989. He admitted that he was in the area of Cold Spring with the intention of finding a child to abduct. He indicated that he had kept Jared’s pants & underwear as a souvenir. When he threatened to shoot Jared, he didn’t actually have a gun.

As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to charge Heinrich with Jacob’s murder nor the eight incidents from Paynesville as the statute of limitations had run out & there was a lack of evidence. Heinrich has never admitted to his involvement in those cases to police. He was sentenced to 20 years for possession of child pornography.

As the years went by after Jacob’s abduction, his family held out hope that he would one day return home. Patty, Jacob’s mom, was convinced that her son would one day reappear & the nightmare they were living could be put behind them. Patty had dreams about Jacob coming home, how they would heal & all the things they would do. In order to cope with Jacob’s disappearance, Patty wrote her son letters as a way of connecting with him. If he came home, she wanted to be sure that he knew that they were doing everything in their power to find him. In one letter she wrote, “Dear, Jacob, my heart hurts as days pass by without you. I wrestle over the details again & again. Who could have done this? Where are you Jacob? I love you Jacob & I promise I will never stop searching for you. Love, Mom”

The now 75-year-old mother of three grown children made the decision to turn her grief into action & became a passionate advocate for missing children as she traveled the nation to speak with parents & investigators about child abduction & exploitation. All of Patty’s efforts paid off & in 1994, Congress passed the Jacob Wetterling Act that created a national sex offender registry. 

When Jacob’s investigation came to a halt, Patty feared that the case might never be solved. She never imagined that it would take herself, a grieving mother, Joy, a blogger & Jared, a 37-year-old plumber, to help solve this case. Patty feels that Joy’s support & investigative work helped bring attention to the investigation as police followed the leads that she unearthed. Patty admits that she was initially skeptical & soon realized that Joy was asking questions that no one else had. 

Finally learning what happened to her son all those years earlier was devastating to Patty & her family. She recalls the time as dark & horrible, but admits to being forever grateful to Joy & her efforts to put her son’s killer behind bars. She went from asking, “Who the hell is Joy Baker?” to being one of her closest friends.

In 2023, Patty released a memoir which she wrote with Joy, Dear Jacob: A Mother’s Journey of Hope. In it, she tells the story of what happened to Jacob & how, as she searched for her son, she found her purpose. After Jacob was kidnapped, Patty made it her mission to try to prevent her kids from living in fear, afraid of the world. She refused to allow the man who took Jacob away to also take her marriage from her or the world from her other children. She wanted them to continue to believe in their dreams & go after their full potential. She is determined to keep fighting for children.

References:

1. Investopedia: Statute of Limitations: Definition, types & examples
2. Danny Heinrich Application & Affidavit for Search Warrant 2015
3. Jamestown Sun: It took DNA to crack the Jacob Wetterling case
4. United States District Court District of Minnesota Change of Plea
5. ABC News: Parents, investigators recall long quest for answers after Jacob Wetterling’s 1989 abduction
6. People: How a true crime blogger & Jacob Wetterling’s mom teamed up to solve the boys 27-year-old abduction cold case
7. ABC News: Jacob Wetterling’s mom speaks out on son’s case, advocacy work ahead of new book
8. ABC News 20/20: S46, E3 Snatched
9. Have You Seen Us? Jacob Wetterling
10. CBS News: ‘It Got Frustrating’: Blogger, survivor pushed investigators to re-examine Wetterling case