Heinrich, who is expected to appear in federal court Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016, in a child pornography case, was named past year by authorities as a person of interest in the 1989 abduction of Jacob Wetterling near his home in St. Joseph, Minn.
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“The Wetterlings are deeply grieving and are pulling our family together”.
Last year, authorities named Heinrich as a person of interest in the abduction of Jacob Wetterling, who was snatched from a rural Minnesota road on October 22, 1989.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
“I want to say, Jacob, I’m so sorry”.
Heinrich’s attorney did not respond to an emailed request for comment Saturday.
Jacob was 11 when he was abducted near his central Minnesota home in 1989.
The mother of Jacob Wetterling says it is “incredibly painful” to learn of her son’s last hours and minutes of life.
He wanted to be there, he said, because he too had experienced murder in his family and has deep compassion for the Wetterling family and what they’ve experienced. Jacob was riding his bicycle with his brother and a friend near his home in St. Joseph when a masked gunman abducted him.
Heinrich, jailed on child pornography charges, was named by investigators as a person of interest in the Wetterling abduction.
It was the hope that Jacob was alive and might someday return home that sustained the family and close friends for all those years – and why now “it’s so maddening that that isn’t the ending we got”, said Alison Feigh, program manager for the Resource Center and one of Jacob’s middle school classmates. Took Jacob to a field next to a row of trees by a gravel pit.
While official sentencing doesn’t take place until November 21, the plea deal calls for Heinrich to serve 20 years in prison, the same length he would serve for the child porn charge alone.
As part of his plea deal, Heinrich reportledly admitted that he kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed Jacob Wetterling. Investigators had long suspected the two cases were connected.
‘What did I do wrong?’ Jacob asked Heinrich after he forced the boy into his vehicle.
As part of the fresh look into Jacob’s abduction around its 25th anniversary, investigators took another look at the sexual assault of a 12-year-old boy from Cold Spring nine months before Jacob’s disappearance. The center was founded by Patty and Jerry Wetterling after Jacob’s abduction.
Last week they learned the truth, when Jacob’s remains were found and authorities named Daniel Heinrich as a person of interest.
The Wetterling family has yet to address the media since news of Heinrich’s cooperation with police, and the confirmation that it was Jacob Wetterling’s body found on a farm in Paynesville. His smiling face was burned into Minnesota’s psyche, appearing on countless posters and billboards over the years.
Last October that DNA evidence found at Heinrich’s property conclusively linked Heinrich to the January 1989 abduction and assault on Jared Scheierl.
The FBI has said previously that Heinrich matched the general description of a man who assaulted several boys in Paynesville from 1986 to 1988.
Heinrich also admitted in court Tuesday to abducting and sexually assaulting Scheierl.
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Today’s hearing was initially scheduled to be a status conference in that case.
