On Tuesday, they learned for sure who killed him.
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Danny Heinrich, 53, admitted he kidnapped, sexually assaulted and fatally shot the boy, authorities said on Tuesday.
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.
Heinrich confronted the boys, told Jacob’s brother and friend to run and forced Jacob into the auto. Heinrich admitted to kidnapping, sexually assaulting and shooting Jacob in the head and then later burying him in gravel pit near Paynesville.
Heinrich sexually abuses Jacob and shoots him twice, according to court testimony on September 6, 2016.
Heinrich will be sentenced to 20 years in prison (that’s the maximum allowed by law for a receipt of child porn conviction) at his November 21 sentencing hearing.
Heinrich led authorities to Jacob’s buried remains in a central Minnesota field last week.
The crying boy said he was cold and begged his attacker to let him go home, Heinrich recalled.
So, with the Wetterling family’s permission, they quickly offered Heinrich a deal. 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. The following morning, Heinrich was placed in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and he led investigators to the burial site he described in court Tuesday. We will be eager to talk to media as soon as we are able.Everyone wants to know what they can do to help us.
FILE – In this August 28, 2009, file photo, Patty and Jerry Wetterling show a photo of their son Jacob Wetterling. And the same statute of limitations problems meant she couldn’t charge Heinrich with kidnapping the 11-year-old St. Joseph boy nine months after Scheierl was assaulted.
Federal prosecutors say that after DNA tests linked Heinrich to the Scheierl case past year, investigators carried out a search that resulted in the discovery of “collections of child pornography within multiple three-ring binders”. As part of a plea deal, Heinrich was required to provide a “specific geographic location” to prosecutors to conduct a search for evidence for the abduction and murder of Wetterling, court documents filed in a Minneapolis federal court show.
He also admitted to abducting and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old in January 1989.
He pleaded guilty Tuesday to one of the 25 charges against him. Jacob then asked Heinrich if he could go home. He said he abducted and molested the boy, fatally shot him and buried his body near a gravel pit on October 22, 1989.
In the years after Jacob’s disappearance, his mother, Patty, became a nationally known advocate for missing children. “We need to heal”, she said. Shoe prints and tire tracks in a gravel driveway near where Jacob was taken were found were consistent with shoes belonging to Heinrich and a vehicle he owned.
“I told him I had to go to the bathroom”.
Heinrich, 53, was in federal court to plead guilty to child pornography charges unrelated to Jacob’s killing. “Looked back, he was still standing”, Heinrich added.
Coverage of Danny Heinrich’s confession to the murder of Jacob Wetterling played coast-to-coast, much of it pulled from local reporting.
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.
Without knowing for sure that Jacob was dead, she couldn’t charge Heinrich with killing Jacob.
1994: Congress passes the Jacob Wetterling Act, legislation for a sex offender registry. His smiling face appeared on countless posters and billboards over the years.
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Patty Wetterling used her son’s disappearance to lobby for better laws tracking sex offenders and marshaling resources to quickly find missing children.
