At a press conference, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said “We know what the Wetterling family and all of Minnesota have longed to know since that terrible night in 1989”.
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Prosecutors say Heinrich’s confession was part of a carefully orchestrated plea deal, involving officials from the county, state and federal level. “And Jacob is finally home”. They first questioned him shortly after Jacob’s abduction, but he maintained his innocence and they never had enough evidence to charge him. Prosecutors could not bring charges against Heinrich in that assault, however, because the statute of limitations had expired.
So, with the Wetterling family’s permission, they quickly offered Heinrich a deal. Authorities said in the past they believed the cases were connected.
That detailed admission was recounted in court Tuesday.
“I 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 with a flashlight, Heinrich said.
He said he later threw the child’s shoes into a body of water because he had forgotten to bury them, Moini reports. Some 20 minutes after he first saw them, he got out of his vehicle, put on a mask and confronted them with a revolver, he said. He says he took Jacob, handcuffed him and assaulted him in a grove of trees. Heinrich said Jacob asked, “What did I do wrong?”
McDonough reported Heinrich said he told Jacob he couldn’t take him home and that Jacob started to cry.
Heinrich then dragged him near a gravel pit and stripped him before sexually assaulting him.
“What I really wanted to say today is about Jacob: he’s taught us all how to live, how to love, how to be fair, how to be kind”, she said. He then proceeded to touch Jacob inappropriately, he claims there was no penetration or oral sex. Jacob asked whether he was taking him home.
“Yes I did”, he said.
Scheierl has said he’d like to talk to Heinrich; in court Tuesday, he said that he now finds objective in helping others, according to MPR’s Williams. I loaded it with two rounds. He held the gun to the boy’s head and pulled the trigger. He said he shot Jacob twice, killing him.
Heinrich said he acted alone in Jacob’s abduction. After that, Wetterling asked if he was to be taken home but Heinrich answered that he can not take him home so the boy started to cry. He fired two more shots and that was when Wetterling fell to the ground. Heinrich said he found a Bobcat and knew where the company kept the key, so he returned to the site and dug a hole using the Bobcat, which is where he buried Jacob.
The jacket was consistent with the one Jacob was wearing when he was abducted.
Heinrich then claimed he had buried the boy nearby, and returned to the location a year later to move the body when he realized the grave had become partly uncovered.
Roger Torborg, whose farm equipment business on Minnesota Highway 23 is near the site, said he wasn’t aware that authorities were there last week searching for Wetterling’s remains until he saw it on the news.
Heinrich, who has been in custody since his arrest last year, also confessed to sexually assaulting another 12-year-old boy. The 53-year-old will not be prosecuted for the youngster’s muder. “From everything we knew Heinrich was a volatile and unpredictable man who could want to talk one minute and clam up the next”. He said he got in the back seat with Scheierl.
“[We were] literally seeking leverage that a substantial federal prison sentence could provide to further the Wetterling investigation”, Kendall said. He told Scheierl to run and not look back or he would kill him.
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In a re-investigation of the 1989 case, state authorities searched Heinrich’s home a year ago and found evidence of child pornography. He pleaded guilty to a federal child pornography charge that could keep him locked up for at least 20 years, with civil commitment possible after that.
