Although the search didn’t directly connect Heinrich to Jacob, officials believed the discovery of child porn – and bringing federal charges against Heinrich – was the only way to lead them to the truth about what happened to Jacob, Luger and Stearns County Attorney Janelle Kendall explained at a news conference Tuesday.
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Heinrich described Jacob’s final night in heartbreaking detail, with Jacob’s parents, Patty and Jerry Wetterling, in the front row of the courtroom wearing pins with Jacob’s face on them. While driving on a dead-end street, he came across three boys on their bikes, and forced two of them-Jacob’s brother and a friend-to run away.
After kidnapping the boy, Heinrich said, he handcuffed him and put him in the front seat of his vehicle.
When asked whether he abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered Jacob Wetterling, Heinrich said: “Yes I did”.
“It’s good to have answers, but it’s bittersweet”, Ebben said after the boy’s buried remains were found and identified.
A sentencing hearing for Heinrich was scheduled for November; the agreed-upon plea deal calls for him to serve a maximum prison term of 20 years. Heinrich, 53, confessed to Jacob’s murder as part of a plea deal with prosecutors in a child pornography case. For federal crimes, like child pornography, there is no possibility of parole. Heinrich put Jacob’s jacket, bones and skull into a garbage bag to move them to a new location.
From the moment Danny Heinrich was arrested and charged with possessing child pornography past year, investigators were focused on getting him to admit his involvement in the abduction of Jacob Wetterling.
Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped at gunpoint in 1989 while riding his bicycle near his home in central Minnesota. Once he was done, a shocked Jacob reportedly told him the following.
Heinrich led authorities to the second site while he was handcuffed last week.
A Minnesota man who led authorities to the remains of an 11-year-old boy who was abducted in 1989 is expected to appear in federal court in a child pornography case.
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.
For almost 27 years, Patty and Jerry Wetterling held out hope that they’d one day find their abducted son. Since his death, Wetterling’s mother, Patty Wetterling, has become a nationally recognized advocate for missing and exploited children.
Heinrich said he went home after killing Wetterling, but returned a few hours later with a shovel.
Heinrich pleaded guilty to one count of child pornography and asked that the remaining 24 counts be dismissed as part of the plea deal. Danny said he had a scanner in his vehicle and for the same reason, he was able to hear the police responding to the abduction of Jacob. “To us, Jacob was alive until they found him”.
The return of Wetterling’s remains to his grieving family is the end of one part of their traumatic journey, but it’s by no means a total balm on their aching hearts to know for certain that he is dead, and that he had been for virtually the entire time that they have been looking for him.
Heinrich was named a person of interest in the Wetterling case last October because his DNA taken back in 1990 matched DNA found on evidence obtained in the abduction of a boy in Cold Spring in 1989. Heinrich was arrested on federal charges stemming from a long-term child exploitation investigation.
Jacob looked at Heinrich and asked, “What did I do wrong?”
After years of wondering, we now know the details surrounding 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling’s abduction.
The statute of limitations had expired for charges linked to the sexual assault of Scheierl. As a result of the plea deal reached September 1, Heinrich’s sentence could be up to 240 months, or 20 years, in prison.
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Patty Wetterling also thanked Jared Scheierl, a Minnesota man whose own sexual assault as a 12-year-old was long suspected to be connected to Jacob’s disappearance.
