“Janelle recognized that the best way to get the truth about Jacob was to seek federal charges and we would not be here if she had not made that phone call”, Luger said.
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Danny Heinrich, 53, confessed as he pleaded guilty to child pornography charges in Minnesota on Tuesday.
Heinrich will be sentenced to 20 years in prison (that’s the maximum allowed by law for a receipt of child porn conviction) at his November 21 sentencing hearing.
December 16, 1989: Danny Heinrich, who was living with his father in Paynesville, 23 miles southwest of St. Joseph, was interviewed by two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in connection with Jacob’s abduction.
Heinrich said he acted alone in Jacob’s abduction. “The Wetterling family will bring him home”, Luger said.
Sheriff John Sanner said his office received overwhelming tips in the 1989 disappearance and they linked it to a similar unsolved abduction and assault of a 12-year-old boy, J.S., earlier in the year.
“We’re struggling with words at this time”.
“Heinrich was open for the moment to tell us what happened …”
“Yes I did”, he said, with Jacob’s parents, Patty and Jerry Wetterling, in the courtroom.
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.
Heinrich forced Jacob into the passenger seat of his vehicle and handcuffed him, the newspaper reported.
“That is what will bring me comfort today”, she said.
The FBI has said Heinrich matches the general description of a man who assaulted several boys in nearby Paynesville from 1986 to 1988. 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. He shot the boy twice.
He used a Bobcat to dig a grave and bury him. He returned to the site a year later to discover Jacob’s jacket partially exposed. He added that he then gathered as much as he could, placed it in a bag, then transported it across the highway to a field. In exchange, the state dropped multiple counts of child pornography possession that carried a a potential life sentence in the federal system, and state authorities agreed not to prosecute him for murder, Luger said. They first questioned him shortly after Jacob’s abduction, but he maintained his innocence and they never had enough evidence to charge him. Investigators found bones, teeth and a T-shirt that said “Wetterling”. “I told Jacob to turn around”.
Heinrich was known to police already at the time of Jacob’s death – but for another case.
Investigators reviewing the Wetterling disappearance in the past year took another look at Heinrich and retested DNA from clothing a juvenile male was wearing in January 1989 when he was sexually assaulted by a man about 10 miles from Wetterling’s hometown, Thornton said. Evidence, however, was flimsy. He could not be charged for assaulting Scheierl because the statute of limitations in place at the time of the crime had expired. It took two more days before they actually found Jacob’s remains. She says her son’s legacy will live on.
“I want to say to Jacob, I’m so sorry”.
“It’s incredibly painful to know his last days, last hours, last minutes”, Patty Wetterling said after the guilty plea, according to the AP. Kendall said. “We did not have proof of murder, so we literally had to find Jacob in order to move forward at all”.
“Our hearts are hurting”.
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Sanner went on to say local, state and federal investigators built the crucial foundation of the case that led to the developments almost 27 years later. “For the family and everybody to have to sit and listen to him, what he did to Jacob …” We need to heal and we will speak with [media].
