Wetterling, who was 11 years old at the time, was kidnapped by an armed masked man who approached him, his brother and a friend on a rural Stearns County road.
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“We’ve been here for them, with them, for all this time hoping and praying”, Darlene Bechtold said, “and thank God finally”.
The remains of Jacob Wetterling, an 11-year-old boy kidnapped from a rural Minnesota road almost 27 years ago, were identified Saturday, police confirmed.
DNA tests are now being conducted to confirm the remains are in fact Jacob’s.
Jacob’s abduction led to the 1994 Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, which requires sex offender registries and guidelines exist in every state, according to CNN. She has not called back and we’re told she’s not likely to comment until the forensic testing is complete.
Officials at the centre posted a statement on its website yesterday, saying they are in “deep grief”.
Authorities used that new information to help get a search warrant for Heinrich’s Annandale home. The Wetterlings had a choice to walk into bitterness and anger or to walk into a light of what could be, a light of hope.
Unfortunately, finding Jacob, returning him to his grieving family and finding out what happened to him and who did it will not return the innocence that was lost when he disappeared.
“Our hearts are broken”, Jacob’s mother, Patty Wetterling, texted to the Star Tribune on Saturday morning. “Jacob, you are loved”.
Heinrich, who has been jailed since his arrest, pleaded not guilty to the child pornography charges and is scheduled to go on trial on those counts in October.
Jacob’s case garnered worldwide attention and was recently featured on the CNN series “The Hunt with John Walsh”.
“I hope that the family does have some closure and they can move forward”.
“They had to stay in the house, and we went them whenever they went to the playgrounds or to their friends’, and made sure that’s where they were”, Stocker said of parenting after Jacob’s abduction. After asking each boy his age, the man told Trevor and Aaron to run into the woods without looking back or else he would shoot them.
Last year United States police chose to revisit the case, and were led to a man named Danny James Heinrich, who they referred to as a “person of interest” in Jacob’s kidnapping. Because the statute of limitations had expired, Henrich could not be charged in the assault on Scheierl, but he had continued to be a person of interest in the Wetterling case.
Heinrich denies involvement in Jacob’s disappearance and has not been charged in the case.
It’s being reported today that Heinrich was taken from prison on two occasions this week to show authorities where they could find Wetterling’s body. More than 700 people attend an anniversary vigil less than two miles from where Jacob was taken. That was the last that anyone saw of the 11-year-old. It shines on in a different way.
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She says she’ll always remember that day and a detective with the Clear Lake Police Department is hoping this news brings closure to Jacob’s loved ones.
