Danny Heinrich, a 53-year-old resident of Annandale, Minn., admitted in court that he kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, reports AP.
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“From everything we knew, Heinrich was a volatile and unpredictable man who could want to talk one minute and clam up the next”, Luger said. Afterward, Jacob asked whether Heinrich was taking him home.
For Jacob’s mother, Heinrich provided the truth she had sought for almost three decades, no matter how harsh.
Investigators thought it likely that the same man had abducted both Jacob and Jared, based on the crimes’ similarities, and saw Heinrich as “a likely suspect”, Al Garber, the FBI investigator who supervised the Wetterling case, said last October, at the time of Heinrich’s arrest. They turned a renewed spotlight on him as part of a fresh look into Jacob’s abduction around its 25th anniversary. As a result of the plea deal reached September 1, Heinrich’s sentence could be up to 240 months, or 20 years, in prison.
At a press conference, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said “We know what the Wetterling family and all of Minnesota have longed to know since that terrible night in 1989”.
The Pioneer Press reports on June 2 that a new court document details why investigators consider Heinrich a “person of interest” in Jacob’s abduction. “Today, he is facing justice”.
As a result, the 53-year-old is now facing a mountain of child pornography charges, but nothing officially related the Wettering case.
Heinrich had been charged with 25 counts of possessing and receiving child pornography; he pleaded not guilty to those charges in February and was set to go to trial in October.
The intersection at 16th Avenue Southeast where Jacob Wetterling was last seen by his friends on October 22, 1989.
“I told him I had to go to the bathroom”, Heinrich said.
Prosecutors said the Wetterling family was consulted on and approved the plea agreement, which required Heinrich to give a detailed confession and tell them where to find Jacob.
The case garnered worldwide attention and was recently featured on the CNN series “The Hunt with John Walsh”.
Saint James, with roughly 6,500 residents, is in Stearns County, about 15 miles west of the city of Saint Cloud, which is about 65 miles northwest of Minneapolis on the Mississippi River.
Patty Wetterling, the mother of an 11-year-old boy whose remains were discovered 27 years after he disappeared, said on September 6 that she and her family “need time to heal”. That boy had been released. Additional DNA testing will be conducted.
Heinrich was in court Tuesday to face child pornography charges, in a separate case from Wetterling’s abduction.
A sentencing hearing for Heinrich was scheduled for November; the agreed-upon plea deal calls for him to serve a maximum prison term of 20 years. “The Wetterling family can bring [Jacob] home”.
February 2016: Heinrich pleads not guilty to the charges. Patty Wetterling becomes a national advocate for missing children.
The investigation took years, and led to countless dead ends.
Heinrich recounted that a patrol vehicle with siren and lights nearby caused him to panic.
“Over the months there were times when it appeared that we might get to this point, but those glimmers disappeared”, Luger said. That is what gets us up in the morning; that is the hope.
Heinrich left, but returned later to bury Jacob’s body.
Within two days, after re-interviewing Heinrich at length, they located bones, teeth and a T-shirt with the name “Wetterling” stenciled on it. Kendall said. “We did not have proof of murder, so we literally had to find Jacob in order to move forward at all”. “We will all ask, many times, Why? There’s no good answer”.
“He’s not getting away with anything”.
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Prosecutors say Heinrich’s confession was part of a carefully orchestrated plea deal, involving officials from the county, state and federal level.
