One autumn evening in October 1989, a masked man abducted an 11-year-old boy at gunpoint as he rode his bike near his rural Minnesota home.
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Heinrich reportedly led investigators to Wetterling’s remains last week, just outside of Paynesville, Minn.
Asked whether he had abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered Jacob, Heinrich, 53, said: “Yes I did”. U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said he and other officials were anxious that Heinrich would back out of the deal before that court hearing.
The case of Jacob Wetterling came to a close after his killer’s admission of the crime nearly three decades from the time the 11-year-old had gone missing.
According to the Star Tribune, Heinrich said he was driving on a dead-end road outside St. Joseph on the evening of October 22, 1989 when he saw three young boys on their bikes.
In court, the judge recommended Heinrich serve the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Stearns County Attorney Janelle Kendall knew that the statute of limitations would prevent her from charging Heinrich with the January 1989 abduction and sexual assault of Cold Spring newspaper boy Jared Scheierl, even with a DNA match.
Heinrich said he told the two friends to run, handcuffed Jacob and drove him to a gravel pit near Paynesville, where he assaulted him. He led authorities to Wetterling’s remains last week.
FILE – In this August 28, 2009, file photo, Patty and Jerry Wetterling show a photo of their son Jacob Wetterling.
The book gives a detailed presentation of the efforts to find Wetterling and the man who took him.
Danny Heinrich pleaded guilty to one count of receipt of child pornography Tuesday, admitting he knowingly had roughly 150 images of child pornography in his Annandale home in July 2015 when investigators executed a search warrant in hopes of finding information about the disappearance of Jacob Wetterling.
Patty Wetterling told news media after Tuesday’s plea hearing that it was “incredibly painful to know (Jacob’s) last days, his last minutes”, according to the Star Tribune.
“I’m so proud of the lives that they’ve built and the happiness they’ve found, and the children and grandchildren we so enjoy”, she said. “Looked back, he was still standing”, Heinrich said, according to the newspaper. At right is Daniel Heinrich, who confessed to the killing 27 years later. “Danny Heinrich is no longer a person of interest he is the confessed murderer of Jacob Wetterling”.
He added, “Even though the ending is not what we had hoped and prayed for, Jacob is finally home”.
Jacob’s abduction shattered childhood innocence for many in rural Minnesota, changing the way parents watched over their kids.
Heinrich made the statements as part of a plea deal related to child pornography charges, on which he was indicted last December. The kidnapping marked the beginning of an excruciating, decades-long search for answers for the boy’s family, who never saw him alive again. A 1994 federal law named for Jacob requires states to establish sex offender registries. “We tried to get him to talk”.
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.
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Heinrich had a scanner in his vehicle and heard police responding to the kidnapping. Heinrich was arrested on federal charges stemming from a long-term child exploitation investigation. The Pioneer Press typically doesn’t identify victims of sexual assault, but Scheierl has spoken publicly for years about his case. In the end, it was the only way to verify for certain that Jacob was dead, that Heinrich was responsible, and that he got a lengthy prison sentence.
