“After 27 years, Danny Heinrich was ready to talk and we had to grab the moment”, Luger said.
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“Finally, we know”, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said during an emotional news conference following Heinrich’s confession. But it still took almost a year for Heinrich to sign on.
(AP Photo/Craig Lassig, File).
This photo released Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015 by the Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office, shows Daniel Heinrich.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – For almost 27 years, one man knew where Jacob Wetterling was.
A Minnesota man confessed Tuesday to abducting and killing 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling almost 27 years ago, recounting a crime that long haunted the state, and sharing chilling details that included a handcuffed Jacob asking him: “What did I do wrong?” “After nearly 27 years, Danny Heinrich was willing to talk, and we had to grab the moment”. Through it all the fear of multiple child pornography charges and a lifetime in federal prison was the hammer that kept a deal with Heinrich open. Judge Tunheim also said the defendant could be civilly committed as a sexual predator, if he lives beyond that sentence.
Some questioned whether the deal was enough punishment for the crime, which shattered childhood innocence for many rural Minnesotans, changing the way parents let their kids roam. He could get the statutory maximum of 20 years for the child pornography count and face possible additional time under civil laws. It also includes an examination of several men who were investigated, including Danny Heinrich, who had been named as a person of interest in the case.
Stearns County Attorney Janelle Kendall said too much time had passed to charge Heinrich with kidnapping or assault. Charging anyone for murder, meanwhile, would be impossible without a body.
“We love you Jacob”. “Jacob would not have been found and the details wouldn’t have been told without the events of today”.
“He’s not getting away with anything”.
Heinrich said that on the night of October 22, 1989, he saw Jacob, Jacob’s brother, and a friend bicycling down a rural road near Jacob’s home in St. Joseph. Heinrich told the courtroom how on that fateful night he was driving through St. Joseph around 8 p.m. when he noticed three boys on bikes with a flashlight on a dead end road.
For Jacob’s mother, Heinrich provided the truth she had sought for almost three decades, no matter how harsh.
He said he told the two friends to run, handcuffed Jacob and drove him to a gravel pit near Paynesville, where he assaulted him. When a prosecutor asked him “For what objective?”, Heinrich responded, “Souvenir, I guess”. “He started to cry”.
“I want to say, Jacob, I’m so sorry”.
Heinrich said at some point a patrol vehicle with siren and lights passing nearby caused him to panic. He said he pulled out his revolver, which had not been loaded, and put two rounds in the gun.
Heinrich said he went home after killing Wetterling, but returned a few hours later with a shovel. The gun didn’t fire. Heinrich described how Jacob was still crying after the first shot, so he fired again. Heinrich panicked upon hearing a police auto, loaded his revolver, shot the boy and buried him in a place finally uncovered last week, federal authorities said. About a year after killing Wetterling, Heinrich went back to the burial site and found the red jacket above the ground. The Wetterlings signed off on the deal, essentially trading immunity on murder charges to find out what happened to Jacob and bring him home.
“It is incredibly painful to know his last days, his last hours and his last minutes”, Patty Wetterling said after the hearing. “To us, Jacob was alive until we found him”.
Heinrich said he feared they would be spotted after hearing police on a scanner in his vehicle and made Wetterling duck, he said.
With Patty and Jacob’s father, Jerry Wetterling, in a packed courtroom, Heinrich described seeing Jacob, Jacob’s brother, and a friend bicycling down a rural road near Jacob’s central Minnesota home in St. Joseph the night of October 22, 1989. They turned a renewed spotlight on him as part of a fresh look into Jacob’s abduction around its 25th anniversary.
Using technology that wasn’t available in 1989, investigators found Heinrich’s DNA on Scheierl’s sweatshirt, and used that evidence to get a search warrant for Heinrich’s home, where they found a large collection of child pornography.
Heinrich, now 53, described the sexual assault and murder of Jacob and also a separate attack on another boy who survived, as part of a plea deal with federal and state authorities created to reveal what happened to Jacob and to recover his remains.
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In 1994, the federal Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act led to the creation of a national sex offender registry.
