A Minnesota man’s confession to abducting and killing 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling almost 27 years ago has put to rest a mystery that had haunted the state and led to changes in national sex offender laws.
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Danny Heinrich made the admission Tuesday as he pleaded guilty to child pornography charges in federal court in Minneapolis. On Friday August 26 a tentative agreement was drafted with Heinrich and his attorneys that would require the defendant to lead authorities to Jacob’s body, and publicly confess to the series of events that led to Jacob’s kidnapping, sexual assault and murder.
After her son vanished, Patty Wetterling became an advocate for missing children.
Trevor Wetterling, the brother of Jacob, hugs his mother Patty Wetterling as a team of prosecutors talk about the confession of Daniel Heinrich to the 1989 killing of Jacob Wetterling, in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016.
He then drove Jacob to a gravel pit where he undressed the boy and molested him. Jacob was 11 when he was kidnapped from a rural road on October 22, 1989, near his home in St. Joseph, about 80 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
“I said I can’t take you all the way home”, Heinrich said. “He started to cry”.
“I want to say to Jacob, I’m so sorry”.
“I raised the revolver again and shot him again”. He then loaded his revolver, telling Wetterling to turn around before he shot him in the head, he said.
Heinrich said he went home after killing Wetterling, but returned a few hours later with a shovel. The gun didn’t fire.
Investigators didn’t find the additional evidence they needed, so they went back to Heinrich, interviewing him at length Thursday, wanting more information and testing his credibility.
Heinrich described during a court hearing what happened the night of October 22, 1989, the last night Jacob was seen alive. He then put the bones, skull and clothing in a bag and buried it in a 2-foot hole he dug in a field across the highway.
In 2015, the state crime lab linked DNA from J.S.’ case to Heinrich.
After lying for years that he had nothing to do with the awful crime, Heinrich finally led authorities to the remains of the boy last week.
September 3, 2016: Authorities confirm that Jacob’s remains have been found and positively identified.
“It’s incredibly painful to know his last days, last hours, last minutes”, Patty Wetterling said.
He added, “Even though the ending is not what we had hoped and prayed for, Jacob is finally home”.
Moments after Danny Heinrich abducted Jacob Wetterling on a rural road in Minnesota, the man handcuffed the 11-year-old boy and forced him into a vehicle. The second is that he plead guilty to one of the federal child pornography charges and admit to kidnapping and assaulting Scheierl. They first questioned him shortly after Jacob’s abduction, but he maintained his innocence and they never had enough evidence to charge him. They turned a renewed spotlight on him as part of a fresh look into Jacobs abduction around its 25th anniversary.
The Star Tribune reported that Heinrich also detailed his molestation of another boy, 12-year-old Jared Scheierl, in Cold Spring, Minnesota, nine months before he abducted and murdered Jacob. But, Sanner said, “the hope of resolving the case and bringing Jacob home never once faltered”. Heinrich was arrested on federal charges stemming from a long-term child exploitation investigation.
Scheierl, who’s now 40 and has three children, told CBS Minnesota that the authorities told him the statute of limitations had run out on his case.
The missing Jacob Wetterling’s smiling face on thousands of posters became a symbol of both innocence and unsolved “cold” cases, raising national awareness about sexual predators.
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“We pledged to the Wetterling family that we would do everything in our power to find out what happened October 22, 1989”, Luger said. On Saturday investigators confirmed that his remains have finally been found.On Monday his mother posted a statement to the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center Facebook page.It reads “The Wetterlings are deeply grieving and are pulling our family together”.
