We, the
comrades of Unit 1012, will honor and remember Jacob Wetterling every
year on February 17 and October 22. We, the comrades of Unit 1012: The VFFDP,
will make him one of The 82
murdered children of Unit 1012, where we will not forget him.
|
Jacob
Wetterling
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Born
|
Jacob
Erwin Wetterling
February 17, 1978 |
|
Died
|
October
22, 1989 (aged 11)
Rural Paynesville, Stearns County, Minnesota |
|
Cause of death
|
|
|
Body discovered
|
September 1, 2016
Paynesville, Minnesota, U.S. |
|
Parents
|
|
Jacob Erwin
Wetterling (February 17, 1978 – October 22, 1989) was a boy
from St. Joseph, Minnesota,
who was kidnapped
from his hometown at the age of 11 on October 22, 1989. His disappearance
remained a mystery for nearly 27 years.
On September
1, 2016, the FBI
recovered human remains from a pasture near Paynesville, Minnesota, about 30 miles
(48 km) from the site of the abduction. On September 3, the family
announced the remains were those of Jacob, and local law enforcement stated
that confirmation of their identity had been obtained through dental
records. The location was revealed by Danny Heinrich, a longtime person of interest in the case. On September 6,
Heinrich confessed to kidnapping and murdering Wetterling.
INTERNET
SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Wetterling
Kidnapping
On Sunday, October 22, 1989, just after
9:00 p.m. (CDT), Jacob Wetterling (11), his younger brother Trevor (10),
and a friend, Aaron Larson (11), were biking home from a Tom
Thumb convenience store where they had gone to rent a
video, when Danny Heinrich, who was wearing a stocking cap mask and was armed
with an unloaded revolver, came out of a driveway and ordered the boys to throw
their bikes into a ditch and lie face down on the ground. He then asked each
boy his age. Jacob's brother was told to run toward a nearby wooded area and
not look back or else he would be shot. Heinrich then demanded to view the
faces of the two remaining boys. He picked Jacob, and told his friend to run
away and not look back otherwise he would shoot. This was the last time Jacob
was ever seen alive.
Investigation
Ten months prior to the Wetterling abduction
another boy had been kidnapped, placed into a car and sexually assaulted before
being released. The modus
operandi was similar to the Wetterling case: the man used a gun
and upon releasing the boy told him to run and not look back or else he would
be shot. That incident occurred ten miles from the location where Wetterling,
his brother, and friend were stopped.
In early 2009, the Milwaukee Police Department discovered child pornography
and an alleged video of Wetterling taken before the abduction in the home of
Vernon Seitz, 62, of the St. Francis, Wisconsin, area. Seitz had died in his house, but
officers asked for additional assistance after the pornography was discovered.
Along with the child pornography, articles involving missing children and maps
of the cities from which children had disappeared were found in Seitz's home.
Seitz claimed that he had been abducted, sexually assaulted, beaten, and forced
to kill a 14 year old boy in 1959, but family members and local police doubt
that this had occurred.
On June 30, 2010, investigators with search
warrants descended upon a farm near the abduction site. "Items of
interest" were found and hauled away in six truckloads of dirt from the
site to search for evidence. Forensic testing was unable to "establish,
distinguish or identify potential evidence".
Person of interest
In May 2014, investigators confirmed
that they were taking another look at a series of attempted and actual child
molestations that occurred in the Paynesville area in the two years leading up
to the Wetterling abduction and murder. Between the summer of 1986 and the
spring of 1987, five teenage boys were attacked. No one was ever arrested. The
authorities re-interviewed some of the victims and worked with the Internet
blogger who brought the information to light. After months of research and
interviews with some of the victims, investigators believed that these attacks
were not random and that the culprit could be connected to the abduction of
Wetterling, located just 40 minutes away from the other crime scenes.
Danny James Heinrich
In October 2015, a person of interest, Danny James Heinrich, was
publicly named in regard to Wetterling's disappearance. He had been questioned
by the FBI on December 16, 1989 and a DNA
sample was taken, but he was not charged with a crime. Heinrich's DNA was
matched to an abduction of twelve-year-old Jared Scheierl, in Cold Spring, in January 1989. The statute of limitations in effect in 1989 had
expired for the Cold Spring kidnapping, meaning Heinrich could not be arrested
and charged with that crime. A search warrant was granted, however, with child
pornography being found during the search of Heinrich's house, which
resulted in him being arrested on October 28.
Plea and discovery
Heinrich
reportedly decided to cooperate with authorities as part of a plea
bargain and, on September 1, 2016, led investigators to a burial site.
Clothing and human remains were unearthed from a pasture near Paynesville, about
30 miles away from the boy's home, and a short distance from where Heinrich was
living in 1989. On September 3, the remains were confirmed through dental
records to be Jacob's. Jacob's mother, Patty
Wetterling, told television station KARE, a local NBC
affiliate, that the remains found were indeed, those of Jacob's. She said:
"All I can confirm is that Jacob has been found and our hearts are broken.
I am not responding to any media yet as I have no words."
At a court
hearing before Judge Jack Tunheim of the United States District Court in
Minneapolis, as part of a plea agreement in which he pled guilty to one count
of the 25 federal child pornography charges brought against him, Heinrich
testified that he kidnapped and killed Jacob Wetterling. He described
kidnapping and handcuffing the boy, driving him to a gravel pit near
Paynesville, molesting him, shooting him, and burying his body. Heinrich said
he was able to avoid police that night by listening to a police scanner. He
said he came back to the site a year later and moved the body, after noticing
Wetterling's jacket had become exposed.
During the
court hearing, Heinrich also admitted to kidnapping and sexually assaulting
another young boy earlier that year.
According to
Judge Tunheim, the sentencing recommendation will be for 20 years, the maximum
for the offense to which Heinrich pleaded guilty. As part of the deal, Heinrich
will not be charged with Wetterling's murder.
Legacy
Four months
after Wetterling's abduction, his parents, Jerry and Patty
Wetterling, formed the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, an advocacy group for
children's safety. In 1994, the federal Jacob
Wetterling Act was passed and named for Jacob. It was the first law to
institute a state sex-offender
registry. The law has been amended several times, most famously by Megan's
Law in 1996 and the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in 2006.
In 2008, the
foundation started by Jacob's parents became the Jacob Wetterling Resource
Center. It carries on the work started by the Wetterling family—"to
educate the public about who takes children, how they do it and what each of us
can do to stop it".
The Bridge
of Hope, a crossing of the Mississippi near St. Cloud, is named in Jacob's
honor.
No comments:
Post a Comment