A Minnesota man has confessed to the abduction and killing of an 11-year-old boy in 1989.
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FBI Special Agent Richard Thornton said previous year that Heinrich was a person-of-interest given the similarities between Jacob’s abduction, a number of unsolved sexual assaults in central Minnesota dating to the 1980s and the nature of the charges against him.
Danny Heinrich confronts 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, his brother and a friend while they’re out renting a movie on October 22, 1989, in St. Joseph, Minn.
He confronted the boys, and told two of them – Jacob’s younger brother, Trevor, and best friend, Aaron Larson – to run, and took Jacob into his vehicle, handcuffing him in the front passenger seat.
The defendant described how he then handcuffed Jacob and put him in the passenger seat of his vehicle.
KSTP-TV’s story has this, “Heinrich said he wasn’t under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time and that his actions “were voluntary” and ‘of his own free will.’ Heinrich said he then went home to Paynesville but returned to the site a few hours later with a shovel”.
“He’s taught us all how to live, how to love, how to be fair, how to be kind”, Wetterling said. I loaded it with two rounds.
He also admitted to abducting and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old in January 1989.
Heinrich is to be sentenced November 21.
Heinrich put Jacob’s jacket, bones and skull into a garbage bag to move them to a new location.
The victim told Heinrich that he was cold and wanted to go home.
“It’s incredibly painful to know his last days, last hours, last minutes”, said Patty Wetterling, Jacob’s mother.
After her son vanished, Patty Wetterling became an advocate for missing children. It also includes an examination of several men who were investigated, including Danny Heinrich, who had been named as a person of interest in the case.
At right is Daniel Heinrich, who confessed to the killing 27 years later.
Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped at gunpoint in 1989 while riding his bicycle near his home in central Minnesota.
Heinrich, who appeared to have trouble breathing while describing what happened, said in court Tuesday that the farm was not the first place he tried to bury or hide the body. “And Jacob is finally home”, Andrew Luger, U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, said in a statement.
Prosecutors said the statute of limitations had already passed to prosecute anyone for Jacob’s kidnapping and assault. “Shot him twice after that”, Heinrich admitted, firing into the back of Jacob’s head after asking the boy to turn around so he could go to the bathroom.
Last October, Danny James Heinrich was named a person of interest in the Wetterling case and authorities announced separate federal charges for child pornography, according to Reuters. As a result, the 53-year-old is now facing a mountain of child pornography charges, but nothing officially related the Wettering case.
“Twenty-seven years is a very long time for an investigation to remain open and active”, said the FBI’s Richard Thornton.
Accordingly, the family of Wetterling was asked about the plea agreement and they have approved of it.
He was physically linked to that case a year ago when DNA found on a sweatshirt Scheierl was wearing during the attack was matched to Heinrich’s DNA profile, according to WCCO, Minneapolis’ CBS affiliate. Despite extensive publicity, repeated aerial and ground surveys and an initial reward of more than $100,000 after the kidnapping, state, local and federal authorities were frustrated by the lack of evidence.
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Officials investigating the harrowing Wetterling case have long suspected that Danny Heinrich, now 53, was involved with Wetterling’s disappearance, but they’ve never been able to harness the evidence to charge him, according to CBS News.
