Asked whether he abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered Jacob, Heinrich said: “Yes, I did”.
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Jacob was 11 when he was abducted near his central Minnesota home in 1989.
Heinrich confronted the boys, told Jacob’s brother and friend to run and forced Jacob into the auto.
In his vehicle, he had a scanner and heard police responding to the abduction.
Heinrich then took Jacob on a route that ended in Paynesville, and a row of trees by a gravel pit. “For the family and everybody to have to sit and listen to him, what he did to Jacob …” I told Jacob to turn around.
At first, Heinrich used a Bobcat to bury Jacobs body, he said.
Heinrich said he was panicking and loaded his revolver with two bullets.
The victim told Heinrich that he was cold and wanted to go home. He then pulled the trigger, but the gun didn’t go off.
Then he grabbed Jacob and told the other boys to run and not look back. Afterward, he shot the boy and later buried him about 100 yards away.
But as part of a plea deal for giving up information in Jacob’s disappearance – a high-profile case that led to laws requiring states to establish sex offender registries – Heinrich will face no charges in the boy’s death, officials said Tuesday.
Sources say Heinrich led investigators to Jacob’s remains last week.
But the deal didn’t come easily, and prosecutors were anxious up until Heinrich signed the plea deal in court Tuesday afternoon that he would change his mind, Luger said.
A year later, when he drove by the site, he noticed Jacob’s red jacket sticking out of the grave, WCCO reported. Heinrich said Jacob asked. Heinrich also confesses to sexually assaulting Jared Scheierl.
Just a month before Danny Heinrich’s federal trial on child pornography charges was scheduled to start, prosecutors got word that Heinrich might be willing to talk about the Wettering case in return for a plea bargain. An image the defendant downloaded on March 1, 2014 is the basis for the only charge in the child pornography indictment he is pleading guilty to. In exchange for his plea and confession, the other counts were dismissed.
Authorities searched Heinrich’s home in July 2015 and found child pornography in three-ring binders and on a computer hard drive. U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said the plea agreement was the only way to get Heinrich to show authorities where they could find the boy’s remains.
Photograph of the bushland where Jacob was abducted in October 1989. His fate remained one of Minnesota’s most haunting mysteries until last week.
As they began to drive again, Heinrich panicked when he saw a police auto down the road, he recounted.
“Finally, we know”, Luger said.
Heinrich had a scanner in his auto and heard police responding to the kidnapping. Authorities later publicly confirm that the remains are those of Jacob Wetterling.
Heinrich led authorities to Jacob’s remains last week, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing case. Heinrich was charged previous year with 25 counts of possessing and receiving child pornography.
Jacob was taken less than a mile from his home in St. Joseph, which is about 20 miles from Paynesville.
“Danny Heinrich is no longer a person of interest”, U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Andrew Luger said, according to CBS News.
In 1989 and 1990, authorities looked closely at Heinrich, who submitted his shoes and tires for comparison to tracks and prints left near the abduction scene.
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The Star Tribune reported that Heinrich told the packed courtroom Tuesday that he was driving on a “dead-end road” in St. Joseph when he spotted the boys on their bikes with a flashlight. All of the attacks took place within blocks of his apartment.
