This undated photo provided by the Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office shows Danny Heinrich, of Minnesota.
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They turned a renewed spotlight a year ago on a man who was questioned soon after Jacob’s disappearance but was never charged. The case would never go to trial.
Jacob’s mother, Patty Wetterling, became a nationally recognized advocate for the cause of missing and exploited children.
Heart’s admission came in federal court in Minneapolis as he pleaded guilty to a child pornography charge.
Heinrich will be formally sentenced on November 21.
A bouquet of flowers is placed at the end of Jerry and Patty Wetterling’s driveway as news has come out that the search for Jacob Wetterling may be over, Saturday afternoon, September 3, 2016, in St. Joseph, Minn. She thanked all the law enforcement officials who helped solve the almost 27-year-old mystery of her son’s abduction.
Daniel Heinrich says he did kill Jacob Wetterling.
Jacob was 11 when he was abducted near his central Minnesota home in 1989.
Jacob Wetterling was missing for 27 years before authorities found his remains and a man confessed to the kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing the boy.
FILE – In this October 14, 2014 file photo, Patty, right, and Jerry Wetterling take part in a news conference at the Stearns County Law Enforcement Center in St. Cloud, Minn., to announce the installation of six new billboards that will be placed near where their son Jacob was abducted in 1989.
Patty Wetterling and her husband Jerry spent the years turning uncertainty into action.
Twenty-six years would pass before Heinrich’s name publicly surfaces in relation to the investigation of Jacob’s disappearance.
She sounded content with the deal even though it ensured Heinrich would not be prosecuted for Jacob’s death – his confession being the only solid evidence of the crime. In a Minneapolis courtroom, Heinrich also said he kidnapped and sexually assaulted another boy.
The statute of limitations had expired for charging him in the assault on Scheierl, but a grand jury indicted him on 25 child pornography counts.
As part of the plea deal, Heinrich will likely serve 20 years in prison. On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to child pornography charges in federal court in Minneapolis and detailed how he put on a mask and approached three children with a revolver on October 22, 1989.
Jacob Wetterling was 11 years old when he was taken at gunpoint by a masked man on Oct, 22, 1989, along a rural road in his hometown of St. Joseph. Heinrich said Jacob asked, after he was grabbed and forced into the man’s auto that night, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Heinrich said he went home for a couple of hours, then went back to the gravel pit and buried Jacob about 100 yards away. Afterward, Jacob asked whether he was taking him home.
A Minnesota man admitted in federal court Tuesday to kidnapping and killing Jacob Wetterling, an 11-year-old boy who went missing nearly 27 years ago.
A law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Saturday that a person of interest in Jacob’s abduction took authorities to a field in central Minnesota the week before.
Authorities searched Heinrich’s home in July 2015, finding child pornography in three-ring binders and on a computer hard drive.
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Describing it as a fragile agreement that could have disappeared in the momentary whims of a killer, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger detailed the days that led to a plea deal with Danny Heinrich.
