Pod Insights True Crime All The Time Jacob Wetterling About this episode On October 22nd, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped by a masked man from St. Joseph, Minnesota. For 27 years, what happened to Jacob and who took him remained a mystery. The perpetrator had been on police radar since the early stages of the investigation.
Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the abduction and murder of Jacob Wetterling. In 2015, 52-year-old Danny Heinrich was arrested and charged with five counts of possessing or receiving child pornography. He was also named a person of interest in the disappearance of Jacob Wetterling. The authorities had to make a deal with Heinrich to get the full story, and he revealed shocking details of other crimes as well. Many people have questioned whether justice was really achieved and if Heinrich should have been identified much sooner.
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Transcript 0:39 Speaker 00 Hello everyone and welcome to episode 474 of the True Crime All the Time Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Give me, how are you?
0:50 Speaker 01 I'm good. How about you?
0:51 Speaker 00 I'm doing great, man. I'm having a good week. You know, we put out the, uh, the Thursday episode and also went up on YouTube and we're getting a lot of great feedback about the studio, the new episode. So it's more work, but hey, people are liking it.
1:10 Speaker 01 Well, as long as they're happy, I'm happy.
1:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, me too. Me too. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had Bruce Swicker.
1:17 Speaker 01 Hey, S. Wicker.
1:20 Speaker 00 Jack Glanville.
1:22 Speaker 01 What's happening, Jack?
1:24 Speaker 00 Sarah Woods.
1:25 Speaker 01 Hey there, Sarah.
1:25 Speaker 00 Tammy Forkum.
1:27 Speaker 01 Well, if you, I said it on Patreon, if you can't Forkum, spoon them.
1:31 Speaker 00 Katie Armstrong.
1:32 Speaker 01 What's going on, Katie?
1:33 Speaker 00 Hunter Hoffman.
1:34 Speaker 01 Hey, there's Hunter.
1:35 Speaker 00 Casey P.
1:36 Speaker 01 Well, thanks, Casey.
1:37 Speaker 00 J Law.
1:38 Speaker 01 Well, J Law.
1:39 Speaker 00 And last but not least, Tara Henry.
1:42 Speaker 01 Well, thank you, Henry.
1:43 Speaker 00 And then if we go back into the vault,
1:47 Speaker 00 this week we selected Vicky Armstrong.
1:49 Speaker 01 Well, thanks, Vicky. Are you related to Katie? I don't know. Same last name.
1:53 Speaker 00 Two Armstrongs. So we appreciate all the Patreon support that we get. We have an episode out right now on True Crime All The Time Unsolved where we're talking about Dottie Kayler. This is a fascinating case because her husband dropped her off at the train station, but there was no evidence that she ever boarded the train. And then she disappeared. And then things started to come out about the marriage. And obviously they looked at the husband because they're always going to.
2:21 Speaker 01 That's what always happens. Things start to unravel.
2:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, but he hit the radar pretty, uh, pretty hard. And just to let everybody know, Thursday's episode is about a guy named Frank Freshwaters, which is maybe hard to say.
2:36 Speaker 01 Say, easy for you to say.
2:37 Speaker 00 This is a guy who hit, uh, hit somebody while speeding, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but then escaped from an honor farm for 50 years.
2:48 Speaker 01 It's a long time.
2:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, he was on the run for 50 years. So make sure you check that out. All right, buddy. Are you ready to get into this episode of True Crime All The Time?
2:56 Speaker 01 I am ready.
2:57 Speaker 00 We got a big case. This is the 1989 kidnapping of 11 year old Jacob Wetterling. He was kidnapped by a masked man from St. Joseph, Minnesota on October 22nd. For 27 years, what happened to Jacob and who took him remained a mystery. The perpetrator was someone who had been on police radar since the early phases of the investigation. And we do see that, right?
3:26 Speaker 01 We do.
3:27 Speaker 00 First of all, uh, mystery that is solved decades later. And then, once you find out who it is, it can go one of two ways. Either that person wasn't on police radar at all. They kind of just surfaced out of the blue, or this person was looked at and thought of. They just couldn't put it together.
3:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, they couldn't bring it home.
3:52 Speaker 00 Jacob Aaron Wetterling was born on February 17th, 1989 in Long Prairie, Minnesota. He was the son of Jerry Lee Wetterling and Patricia Lynn King. Jacob was the second of four children. And, you know, he was the kind of boy Gibbs that was said to have been nice to everyone at his school. He loved fishing. He loved playing hockey. At the time of his death, he was in the sixth grade and was an A student.
4:21 Speaker 01 Well, he grew up in Minnesota, so hockey, I'm not surprised.
4:24 Speaker 00 No, me neither. You know, hockey is big in a lot of places now. When you and I were growing up here in Ohio, hockey was not a thing.
4:33 Speaker 01 It was not.
4:34 Speaker 00 I mean, it was a pro sport, but there was no high school hockey. Now it is. And even younger, like AAU teams and youth leagues and all that.
4:46 Speaker 01 Oh yeah, my little nephew, you know, he, he plays hockey every Saturday morning at seven o'clock. Why my brother agreed to that?
4:55 Speaker 00 That's very early for Saturday.
4:57 Speaker 01 Exactly, but you know, he's good at it, you know, for being, uh, I think he's like nine years old, 10 years old. I mean, that's a lot of, uh, skating going on.
5:09 Speaker 00 But you can make the same statement about like lacrosse, field hockey. We didn't, there was none of that at my school when I was growing up.
5:18 Speaker 01 No, no, we didn't have the lacrosse. I mean, the, the girls had field, field hockey, they did that. But even growing up at my age, soccer was just starting to come on more and more.
5:30 Speaker 00 What was the 50s?
5:31 Speaker 01 It was not the 50s, but, but you know, uh, now, I mean, soccer, I mean, it's probably the most popular sport worldwide, but.
5:40 Speaker 00 I, I don't think probably you could take that out.
5:43 Speaker 01 It is, it is, yeah. But you know, here in the States, you know, it just wasn't around as much when I was growing up, but, uh, now it's, it's everywhere.
5:53 Speaker 00 On October 22nd, 1989, just after nine PM, Jacob, his 10 year old brother Trevor and their friend, 11 year old Aaron Larson were biking home from a convenience store in St. Joseph where they had gone to rent a video. And we're talking 1989 here, right? This is kind of probably the height of.
6:15 Speaker 00 Going to rent videos.
6:17 Speaker 01 It was the thing to do.
6:19 Speaker 00 It was, it was the only thing.
6:20 Speaker 01 That's true.
6:21 Speaker 00 If you wanted to watch a movie that wasn't on, you know, regular TV or HBO or whatever they had back then. Um, you know, you couldn't just go on a streaming service and get whatever you wanted.
6:34 Speaker 01 That is true.
6:35 Speaker 00 The boys were about halfway home when a man wearing a stocking cap mask and armed with a revolver came out of a driveway and ordered the boys to throw their bikes into a ditch and lie face down on the ground. Trevor recalled, per the Star Tribune, he had a mask. It looked like pantyhose on his head. He told us to get off our bikes or he'd shoot. We did what he said. We laid in a ditch and he asked our ages. According to Trevor, he looked at Aaron's face and he told me to run to the woods as fast as I could. He warned Trevor not to look back or else he'd shoot. Aaron said, he told me to run to or else he'd shoot.
7:17 Speaker 00 Just before they began running away, they saw the man grab Jacob by the arm. Several minutes later, they came back to look around, but Jacob and the man were gone. And this is such a scary situation, Gibbs, when you're talking about, you know, 11 year olds, 10 year olds to be confronted by a masked man with a gun. You know, they're not out doing anything wrong.
7:43 Speaker 01 No.
7:43 Speaker 00 They're just riding their bikes home from the video store.
7:46 Speaker 01 It would just be so scary.
7:48 Speaker 00 Yeah. I mean, absolutely terrifying at any age, but especially, you know, you think at 10 or 11 years old. And then for the two boys to come back and realize that Jacob is gone.
7:59 Speaker 01 But in one sense, you have to think, man, they didn't take me.
8:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's always a tricky situation though, because I think for most people, there's a real dichotomy there of, okay, I survived, I escaped, whatever the situation is, but then you hear about survivor's guilt.
8:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:22 Speaker 00 And you know, that's probably going to kick in at some point. Investigators identified an earlier case with a similar MO to Jacob's abduction. On January 13th, 1989, 12 year old Jared Sheerel was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and threatened by a man in Cold Spring, Minnesota, about 10 miles from where Jacob was abducted. The perpetrator used a gun and upon releasing Jared, told him to run and not look back or else he would be shot. So I could see why they would put, you know, these two cases possibly as being linked. The MO is very similar. Local police, the FBI and the National Guard,
9:06 Speaker 00 launched a massive search effort to find Jacob. Police received thousands of tips and by October 1990, about 2,000 people had been interviewed.
9:17 Speaker 01 That's a lot of people.
9:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, when you think about the amount of work that goes into these types of massive searches. Now you do have a lot of different agencies involved, but it's just a, it's just a massive amount of work. Although Jacob's case remained unsolved, investigators never stopped searching for answers. And I can only imagine what, you know, Jacob's family was going through. And we talk about it in a lot of cases, especially a lot of unsolved cases, because you know, people disappear and the family is left to, to deal with that. And obviously it can be an easy situation at all. On June 30th, 2010, authorities searched a farm in rural St. Joseph.
10:03 Speaker 00 Jacob was last seen at the end of the property's driveway. According to KSTP, investigators searched the farm at least twice before.
10:12 Speaker 01 So this is the last known location?
10:14 Speaker 00 Yeah, so it does make sense, right? That's going to be somewhere that they're going to concentrate. The last place that he's thought to have been seen. On July 1st, crews began digging and hauled away truckloads of dirt. But let's keep in mind, this is over 20 years, right? 20 years has gone by.
10:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:36 Speaker 00 When they're doing this, the owners of the property were Robert and Rita Rassier, who were in their 80s. They lived there with their son, 54 year old Daniel Rassier, who was home the night of the abduction. He told the St. Cloud Times that investigators had interviewed him numerous times and he submitted to a lie detector test, hypnosis and DNA sampling. He maintained he had nothing to do with Jacob's disappearance. But if you think about it, he would have been what in his early 30s when Jacob went missing. He lived at the residence. So yeah, you could see why he would at the very least be on police radar.
11:20 Speaker 01 Well, if that's the last place he was seen, I mean, you kind of got to look at the people that live around there.
11:25 Speaker 00 But then you have to think, right? If this guy had nothing to do with it, what would it be like to live for decades with people thinking that you possibly abducted this, you know, young boy?
11:40 Speaker 01 I think it'd be tough in a, in any city, but if it's a smaller city, you know, the rumor mill, it's going to keep running and running and that's not going to be good for you.
11:50 Speaker 00 No, it's definitely going to change your, your life, right? In a myriad of ways. Sheriff John Sanner told the Times that Daniel Rassier was a person of interest. So, I mean, that's published in the paper. Back on June 30th, Patty Wetterling told NPR News that she learned of the search that morning, adding, "I don't honestly think there's any break in this case. This is just what you do. You have a cold case. You go back to the beginning over and over. And I think there's some other people way back at the beginning that they're also going to be checking out." And I would say that is true, right? In a cold case, you, you kind of have to go back and
12:33 Speaker 00 look everything over, check a lot of things out that have already been checked out, but what else can you do?
12:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, you're. Trying to decide if something was missed.
12:44 Speaker 00 Patty said the Rassiers lived there at the time of the kidnapping and had been farmers for decades. She said they're wonderful people. It's got to be really painful for them as well.
12:55 Speaker 01 I'm sure it was.
12:56 Speaker 00 And that's what we talked about, right? Daniel is being called a person of interest. Tough on him, also tough on his parents. In September, the Stearns County Sheriff's Office reported that lab testing on materials gathered at the farm did not produce evidence. In May 2014, investigators confirmed they were taking a look at a series of attempted and actual child molestation that occurred in the Painesville area before Jacob's abduction. Five teen boys were attacked between the summer of 1986 and the spring of 1987, but no one was ever arrested.
13:38 Speaker 01 I mean, five teenage boys.
13:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, I think if you're someone in that community, I could see the fear level rising. Amateur investigator Joy Baker brought the information to light. She found the five cases, conducted some research and interviewed some of the victims. She believed the perpetrator could be connected to Jacob's case since the Painesville attacks occurred just 40 minutes away. She also believed that the attacks were not random. The suspect knew who the boys were and assaulted them at night near their homes. He usually wore a dark puffy jacket and face masks. And for me, this is, you know, one of the interesting parts of this case, you know, you have a,
14:23 Speaker 00 you have all kinds of agencies looking into the abduction right off the bat. But as we know, the case went cold.
14:32 Speaker 01 Right.
14:32 Speaker 00 Then you have cold case investigators, right, who are combing back through the file, interviewing people, and then comes along an amateur investigator.
14:44 Speaker 01 I mean, for the family, I'm sure they're happy that anyone is still investigating this.
14:51 Speaker 00 Yeah, I would agree with that.
14:54 Speaker 00 On October 28th, 2015, 52-year-old Danny Heinrich was arrested and charged with five counts of possessing or receiving child pornography. And then it was just the next day that Heinrich was named a person of interest in Jacob Wetterling's disappearance. This guy Danny Heinrich is a former National Guard member who also had a criminal record. He got his first DWI in 1982 when he was 19. In 1984, he was convicted of breaking and entering into two businesses. He claimed he was looking for cash after he lost money gambling.
15:34 Speaker 01 Yoda, I lost some money gambling. I gotta go get me some cash. I'll just break into this place and
15:40 Speaker 00 Take it.
15:40 Speaker 01 Take it.
15:42 Speaker 00 To replenish my stash. In 1986, he received another DWI. He attempted to run from the arresting officer and punched and kicked the officer to try to get away.
15:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, that never works out well.
15:55 Speaker 00 No, it doesn't. But it, you know, said that all of these charges were misdemeanors. And I was kind of shocked by that because for as many body cam videos as I watch, which is a lot, right on YouTube, I've talked about it on Patreon a lot. Nowadays, punching and kicking an officer, I mean, that's a felony. That's battery on a law enforcement officer. So, you know, maybe in 86 it wasn't. I was just kind of shocked to hear that that was a misdemeanor. Heinrich was in the National Guard from 1982 to 1991 and was honorably discharged. So obviously, all of these convictions happened kind of while he was in the National Guard.
16:40 Speaker 00 So apparently that didn't have any effect on him serving.
16:43 Speaker 01 But I would have thought that it would have.
16:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, me too. I was surprised by that. He worked various factory jobs and filed for bankruptcy twice, most recently in 2011. Heinrich was actually interviewed by the FBI on December 16th, 1989. He claimed that he couldn't recall where he was on the day Jacob disappeared. So getting back to what we said very early on, right? Here we have a guy who becomes a suspect in the disappearance of Jacob Wetterling. And then it turns out that he was on the radar of authorities, in this case, most definitely the FBI, very early on.
17:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:28 Speaker 00 He's interviewed, he says, well, I don't know where I was that day, but then it's like, okay, what happened after that? Was there no follow-up or it just wasn't reported on? It's not, no, I'm not sure. He was interviewed at least twice in 1990 and provided a DNA sample. So it's great that he provided a DNA sample, but it was 1990 and we know the limitations that they had with DNA back then. In January of 90, Heinrich gave the FBI permission to take an impression of the tires of his 1982 Ford Explorer.
18:04 Speaker 01 I mean, he's very forthcoming.
18:06 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, I don't know if that's because, you know, he volunteered all of this, did, you know, he, was he compelled to, to give some of this up? That part I don't know. If it was voluntary, maybe he was just so confident that, you know, the, the technology wouldn't catch him. I'm, I'm really not sure.
18:27 Speaker 01 Well, I believe if, you know, he probably was thinking that if I'm cooperative, maybe there, move on.
18:35 Speaker 00 Yeah, maybe. The, the thing that was so strange to me was that, so they take these tire impressions and it was said that tire marks in a gravel driveway next to Jacob's abduction scene had very similar marks. Okay. It's not good.
18:55 Speaker 01 It's not good.
18:56 Speaker 00 Now, similar is not very conclusive sounding, but his right shoe also corresponded in size and design to a shoe impression from the Jacob Wetterling case.
19:11 Speaker 01 Well, that makes it a little bit more, uh, difficult to say, well, it wasn't me. If they have my, uh, similar tire tread, now they have my similar shoe size and shoe design at the house.
19:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, obviously, I think the more things that start to connect someone, right? The more police would be looking at them. But FBI agent Shane Ball cautioned in the document that an exact match would have to be based on unique characteristics of the shoe, such as a scuff, wear mark, or divot, and no such unique markings were present.
19:49 Speaker 01 So basically, you can say, he might have been here, but we can't say for sure.
19:55 Speaker 00 For sure, yeah. Authorities searched the house in Painesville, where he lived with his father. They found six photos of children, including one depicting a boy in a towel, exiting a shower, and another of a boy in his underwear. But incredibly, Gibbs, no charges were brought at that time.
20:14 Speaker 01 But it seems concerning.
20:16 Speaker 00 It does, and I don't know if back then that didn't rise to the level of child pornography. I mean, it's certainly more than concerning. And we're assuming, right? This is not a family member.
20:32 Speaker 01 Right.
20:33 Speaker 00 This is not a photo of like his child. If this is a complete stranger, okay, that's very concerning to me. In February 1990, Heinrich was arrested for the abduction of Jared Sheeran in Cold Spring, but was released without being charged. There just wasn't enough evidence for a conviction at the time, but Heinrich remained a suspect in both cases. So I feel like this guy is just skirting, right? Jail time. He's on the fringe. He's very close to the cases, but they just can't put enough together to really, you know, get a conviction.
21:16 Speaker 01 Well, up to this point, he's been really lucky.
21:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, I would think that's another way to look at it. In the summer of 2015, authorities decided to take a new look at Jacob's case, and they analyzed Heinrich's body hair samples from 1990. The DNA evidence linked Heinrich to the abduction and assault of Jared Sheeran in January 1989. His DNA was found on Jared's sweatshirt. Okay, so we've talked about some things that didn't make him look good, but, you know, wouldn't be enough for a jury, right? To get around reasonable doubt, this DNA is getting, you know, to the heart of it.
22:03 Speaker 01 Well, that puts him with Jared.
22:05 Speaker 00 Which I would think would be a very big deal because the assumption is he would have no reason, right, to have been around this kid. Eight days later, on July 28th, 2015, authorities executed a search warrant on Heinrich's home in Annandale. Authorities found 19 binders containing child pornography and even more on his hard drive. Some of the children in the images were known to law enforcement as victims.
22:37 Speaker 01 Wow, this is so, so gut wrenching when you think about that someone would be willing to keep a collection like this.
22:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's always hard to talk about, but you have to, to get a sense of who this individual was. Heinrich also had VHS videotapes that he shot from a hidden location that showed boys riding bikes at playgrounds.
23:04 Speaker 01 So creepy.
23:05 Speaker 00 It's creepy, but I don't even think that's illegal. You're allowed to take video of people in a public place. Now, we know it's creepy.
23:17 Speaker 01 For sure.
23:17 Speaker 00 There's no way around that, but I don't even know if that's illegal.
23:21 Speaker 01 But was he doing this for some enjoyment later or was he?
23:25 Speaker 00 Well, absolutely he was because he also had a bunch of child pornography.
23:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:30 Speaker 00 If that's all he had, I don't know if they could have used just that, right, against him, but that coupled with the child pornography, it's not too hard to figure out what he was doing.
23:42 Speaker 01 Do you wonder if he was using those videos for his selection process?
23:47 Speaker 00 I, I would say there's a really strong case to be made for that. Although there was no evidence officially connecting Heinrich to Jacob Wetterling, he did have news reports about Jacob and other missing children per KSTP. Now, you know, you could argue, a defense attorney could argue he's a true crime buff or he's interested in helping to find missing children, right? Everything in a vacuum can be explained, but when you've got child pornography, it's pretty hard to make those arguments.
24:24 Speaker 01 Almost impossible.
24:25 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, you could still make them, but who's going to buy it? Heinrich moved from Painesville to Annandale after Jacob was abducted and lived in his dad's basement. His father died in 2002. Neighbor said Heinrich was a quiet man who was meticulous about his yard. When authorities searched his house, Heinrich told neighbors things were going to get crazy. He told neighbor Megan Champlin that authorities found child pornography. But she didn't have to worry because none of it involved her children. He also said authorities were trying to connect him to the Wetterling case.
25:05 Speaker 01 Oh, don't worry. I got this thing with kids and pornography, but not with your kids. You're, it's okay. Don't worry about me being your neighbor. That does not add up to me.
25:19 Speaker 00 No, to me neither, and I don't think anybody listening, but does it go to his mindset? That you could even tell somebody that, you know, they caught me with a bunch of child pornography, but you don't have to worry about it because it doesn't involve your kids. Who would not worry about it?
25:38 Speaker 01 Exactly. I would be like, either he's gone or we're leaving.
25:43 Speaker 00 And then also this admission that they're trying to connect him to the Jacob Wetterling case. Why would you just come out and say that? In the months that followed the search, Heinrich continued going to work at a factory. Megan wondered what became of the rape. Understandably, Gibbs, she was unsettled, right? By the news of Heinrich's October arrest because their neighborhood was full of children. And what parent wouldn't be out of their mind with worry after finding this out?
26:15 Speaker 01 Of course.
26:17 Speaker 00 After Heinrich was named a person of interest in Jacob's case, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported on court documents that referenced an assault cluster in Painesville involving eight victims within a mile of his home.
26:32 Speaker 01 He's going to naturally look guilty on those.
26:34 Speaker 00 The perpetrator was described as a heavy or pudgy white male in his 30s, between 5'6" and 5'9". Heinrich was described as a white male. His physical description in the late 80s was 5'5", 160 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes.
26:54 Speaker 01 So not, not a tall guy.
26:56 Speaker 00 No, and normally you wouldn't think 160 pounds would be described as heavy or pudgy, but at 5'5", maybe it would be.
27:06 Speaker 01 It could be.
27:07 Speaker 00 Unfortunately, although Heinrich's DNA was linked to Gerald Sherrill, the statute of limitations had expired in that case. And I know that's something you and I have talked about a number of times. It's so wild for me to think that, you know, the statute of limitations could expire on something as heinous as that.
27:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, it just doesn't ring right with me.
27:31 Speaker 00 In November, Jared spoke to CBS, expressing his hope that the identification of the attacker would help investigators determine what happened to Jacob. For years, he saw similarities between their cases. And we mentioned the MO, right? It was very similar down to, you know, being told to run or, you know, you'd be shot. The difference in the two cases was that, you know, Jared got away or was let go.
28:01 Speaker 01 Right, right.
28:02 Speaker 00 Jared described how he was forced into a car and assaulted in the backseat. The man threatened to kill him and then let him out of the car. He always wondered why he was let go and Jacob wasn't. And there's that survivor's guilt.
28:17 Speaker 01 Exactly. That's going to haunt you for a long time.
28:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, and I actually saw an interview with Jared and he was very, you know, open and frank in discussing what happened to him, which can't be easy to do.
28:32 Speaker 00 After Heinrich was arrested, the media reported that he and his brother were sexually abused, his children, by a guy named Dwayne Hart, who was a convicted sex offender and was dating their mother.
28:46 Speaker 01 Not even safe in their own home. But we've heard this before, right? Where the perpetrator had this terrible thing happen in his past that kind of made him, them, who they are.
29:00 Speaker 00 Well, there are some people who are abused to go on to abuse. Obviously, not everybody does, but I think it's probably safe to say that this was something that happened in his childhood that did negatively affect him. And as you said, make him who he was, or at least influence what he would later go on to do. It's pretty hard not to make that connection.
29:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:28 Speaker 00 Heinrich's parents divorced when he was 15. Around that time, his mother started dating Dwayne Hart. Hart was arrested in 1990 for molesting dozens of men and young boys. Author Robert Dudley, who wrote a book about Jacob Wetterling's kidnapping, turned in his notes from Hart to the FBI. Hart admitted in those notes that Heinrich's older brother was one of his victims. Family friend Steve Herding told CBS it was well known that Danny Heinrich was also molested. Dudley noted in his book that Hart was attempting to help investigators find Jacob's kidnapper and brought up Heinrich's name as a likely suspect
30:13 Speaker 00 as early as 1990. Heinrich apparently asked Hart how to dispose of a body.
30:20 Speaker 01 I just find it weird that Heinrich is comfortable talking to Hart about how to dispose a body. I mean, this is the guy that, according to him, abused him.
30:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, it does seem very strange. A June 2016 court filing described why Heinrich was considered a person of interest in the Wetterling case. The filing detailed similarities between the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling and Gerald Sherrill and a string of sexually motivated assaults of young boys in the Painesville, Minnesota area in the mid to late 1980s. According to the memorandum, it has long been believed that the cold spring and Wetterling abductions were likely to have been committed by the same person. The abductions were committed in the same geographic area, involved similarly aged
31:14 Speaker 00 boys, were committed by a lone male suspect, and occurred within months of each other. And for me, Gibbs, I don't think you have to be Benoit Blanc to figure this one out.
31:25 Speaker 01 No, I do not think you need to be.
31:27 Speaker 00 Now, you wouldn't know for sure, but to think that they're related, I mean, that's, it's almost just common sense, right? Heinrich decided to cooperate as part of a plea bargain. On September 1st, 2016, he led investigators to a burial area in a pasture near Painesville, about 30 miles from where he lived and a short distance from his residence in 1989. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension recovered human remains and Jacob's clothing. On September 3rd, Jacob's family announced the remains were his. Authorities confirmed the identification through dental records.
32:11 Speaker 00 His mother Patty told KARE at the time, "All I can confirm is that Jacob has been found and our hearts are broken. I'm not responding to any media yet as I have no words."
32:24 Speaker 01 The emotions behind that, you know, we finally know what happened. We finally have our child back. But worst case scenario, he's dead.
32:34 Speaker 00 Yeah, obviously, it's not the outcome that they wanted, but they do have information as to what happened to him. And, you know, as we've heard many times, right, the not knowing, people say that that can be the worst thing for some of these family members. On September 6, 2016, Heinrich agreed to plead guilty to one count of the 25 federal child pornography charges brought against him. He also agreed to testify to the details of the Wetterling abduction. In exchange for his plea and testimony, prosecutors agreed not to charge him with Jacob's murder.
33:16 Speaker 01 Oh, that's interesting.
33:17 Speaker 00 It is. My only thought is that they had to give up a lot, right, to get his cooperation, which maybe in consultation with the family is, is what they wanted, right? They wanted to know what happened. And there was a couple of ways it could probably go. They could not take anything off the table, and he would just decide, hey, I'm not going to tell you anything. Or they could take quite a bit off the table, and he would agree to tell them exactly what happened. And it sounds like that's the deal they made, because they're taking quite a bit off.
33:57 Speaker 01 They really are.
33:59 Speaker 00 He's not going to be convicted of murder. He's only going to be convicted of one of the 25 counts of, you know, child pornography. I think that right there just tells you how much they wanted his cooperation.
34:17 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, the family now knows what happened, and they have the body, the remains.
34:23 Speaker 00 And you just wonder how much input they had. In some of those, you know, charges being dropped. At a hearing in the US District Court, Heinrich testified that he handcuffed Jacob, put him in his car and drove away. Jacob asked, what did I do wrong? And if that's not enough to just break your heart. I mean, we already know what ultimately happens to Jacob Wetterling.
34:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:51 Speaker 00 His life is ended, but to think about him in this car, being taken away and asking, what did I do?
35:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, what did I do wrong? But I'm here with you.
35:04 Speaker 00 Heinrich said he drove Jacob to a gravel pit near Painesville, where he sexually abused him and shot him twice. He panicked when Jacob cried after the assault. He said he avoided the police by listening to a police scanner.
35:20 Speaker 01 You know, with technology, it's great that you can have a police scanner and listen in. And sometimes it's fascinating. I had a buddy that had a police scanner. You could hear all that kind of stuff. But then you have the other side of it, right? You kind of know where the police are.
35:37 Speaker 00 Well, I think that's the same with anything. Technology is great, but someone is always going to use it in some type of nefarious way. Heinrich said that he left Jacob's body and went home and then returned to hide the body. He used a bobcat to dig a hole. He returned to the site a year later and moved the body after he noticed that Jacob's jacket was exposed. So that's telling me that this guy was going back there. I don't know, you know, on what interval, but he was going back to the site.
36:16 Speaker 01 We've heard other killers do similar things, right? They like to go back to the site, brings them some weird sense of joy.
36:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, some emotion or some, sometimes it's sexually motivated, which it could have been in this case as well. As sick as it is to think about that. During the hearing, Heinrich also admitted to kidnapping and sexually assaulting Jared Sheerel. Patty Wetterling thanked everyone who worked on the case and said, as quoted by NPR News, "Jacob, I'm so sorry. It's incredibly painful to know his last days, his last hours, his last minutes." And that would be for a parent. To know what happened to your child right before and while their life was ending.
37:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:10 Speaker 00 But, you know, that versus the never knowing what happened to them, I can see both sides of it. There's no easy road, right, to travel.
37:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's all rough, all the way around.
37:24 Speaker 00 She added that Jacob taught us how to live, how to love, how to be kind. He speaks to the world that he knew, that we believe in. U.S. Attorney Andrew Lugar held a press conference after the hearing. When asked why Heinrich killed Jacob, Lugar said authorities believed he panicked after seeing a police car nearby. He also said that, given Heinrich's volatile and unpredictable nature, there was limited time to reach an agreement that would allow them to find Jacob's body. Heinrich was open for the moment to tell us what happened. Danny Heinrich was ready to talk, and we had to grab the moment.
38:05 Speaker 01 They're right about that.
38:06 Speaker 00 Well, so it goes back to kind of what we were talking about, right? They gave up a lot. They took a lot off the table, but they felt like they had to, or they would miss their chance and would never be able to get the information. So, I mean, it's a calculated decision.
38:25 Speaker 01 But I think it was the right decision.
38:27 Speaker 00 To ensure that the family knows what happened and to get all the details, because it's not like he's... He's gonna go scot free.
38:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:35 Speaker 00 But it, there is, you know, a real sadness for me in the fact that he's not convicted of Jacob's murder. Even if he spends the rest of his life in prison, there's, there's a bit of injustice, I guess.
38:53 Speaker 01 Oh, I agree, but at least he's in prison.
38:56 Speaker 00 So for me, and you hear this on a lot of television shows, you know, they, they really did have to make a deal with the devil, right? And that happens quite often. On November 21st, 2016, Danny Heinrich was sentenced to the maximum term of 20 years for receipt of child pornography. State authorities said that they would seek his civil commitment as a sexual predator at the end of his federal prison term. Now, 20 years being the maximum, right? That's, that's a long time for having child pornography. And I'm okay with that. You send them away for as, as long as you can.
39:39 Speaker 01 Right.
39:40 Speaker 00 You have to believe that the maximum was reached because so much was taken off the table. Because in the grand scheme of things, 20 years is not near enough for all of the things this guy did.
39:54 Speaker 01 No, no, I agree with you. I think at the end of the day, they should run that 20 years all the way out.
40:00 Speaker 00 Yeah, I, I agree with you and, and I would think there's a good chance he will be. Let's say he would be granted a, a parole hearing.
40:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:12 Speaker 00 Hard not to think they would take all of this into account, right? The fact that he murdered this 11 year old boy. Now, he wasn't convicted of it, but everybody knows about it. How could they not take that into account?
40:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, I would think they would say, hey, you got a pretty good deal on the front end, so on the back end, you're falling it all the way out.
40:34 Speaker 00 Yeah, there, there's no extra deals, right?
40:38 Speaker 00 Heinrich said, per NPR News, "I'm truly sorry for my evil acts that I have done against victims and their family, and the shame I brought on myself and my family, the suffering and pain they have spoke about today, I will always remember. Mr. And Mrs. Wetterling, the heinous acts, the selfishness are unforgivable for what I have taken away from you." And I just always wonder, you know, how much of that is real? And how much of that is the perpetrator just kind of knowing what, you know, the court wants to hear, the family wants to hear?
41:19 Speaker 01 I think there's a little bit of play there.
41:21 Speaker 00 Yes, I probably more often than not, maybe a little bit of both. Sometimes I think it's just sorrow for being caught, right? Being incarcerated, more so than it really is feeling bad for, you know, number one, what they did, or number two, what the family's going through. Patty Wetterling told the court that Heinrich hurt my heart and soul and every fiber of my being when he murdered my child, the son I carried for nine months and raised for 11 years. Jacob was a boy with many gifts that were never realized because of this murder.
42:00 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, his life was cut short.
42:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, we don't know, you know, what he would have gone on to become, what he would have done. And I can't help but feel for his family and, you know, his mother. What she's saying, it's, it's very moving. I mean, there's, there's no way around it. Judge John Tonheim said, "We won't pretend that this crime and sentence is about child pornography. It's also about changing the lives of so many children and parents who prayed for Jacob's return and also feared you coming out of the dark." Every child knows the story of Jacob Wetterling. You stole the innocence of children in small towns in the cities of Minnesota and beyond.
42:47 Speaker 01 Justice was right in his statement, you know? This was life-changing. You know, he changed the lives of these kids, the kids' parents, and the neighborhoods around.
43:00 Speaker 00 And even, you know, I would expand it further because... The story of Jacob Wetterling became very well known. You know, probably for many, it was a cautionary tale about being safe. Right? So many cases that you can think about, but this was a big one. This was highly publicized and, and stuff like that.
43:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, it kind of makes me think of the, you know, when I was growing up, when the kids up in Michigan were being abducted and murdered.
43:33 Speaker 00 Oh, the Oakland County Child Killer?
43:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:36 Speaker 00 Yeah, that was a, that was a scary one for sure. While it is possible Heinrich could go free 17 years from the start of his sentence, Judge Tunheim told him, I think that it's unlikely that you will, because this crime is so heinous, so brutal and awful, that it's unlikely society will ever let you go free.
44:00 Speaker 01 Good. Hope society doesn't let him go free.
44:03 Speaker 00 But I don't know how they would keep him past the 20 years. Or is he just saying ever, meaning during that 20 year period?
44:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, it must be during that 20 year period. Cause how else could they keep him in there?
44:16 Speaker 00 Now, they did say that they were going to seek a civil commitment as a, a sexual predator at the end of his federal prison term. So I don't know exactly what all that involves. What I do know is that if there's anything that any law enforcement agency could probably do to extend his time or to never let him out, I'm sure they're looking into that. They're, if they could figure out a way, they'll do it.
44:49 Speaker 01 And I hope they do.
44:49 Speaker 00 Because he deserves it. Let's, let's face it. This man does not deserve to get out in 2036. Who in the world would want this man living in their neighborhood, walking their streets? Nobody does.
45:05 Speaker 01 No, not one person.
45:07 Speaker 00 Jacob's parents, Jerry and Patty, formed the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, an advocacy group for children's safety. In 1994, the Federal Jacob Wetterling Act was passed, which was the first law to institute a state sex offender registry. The act was later amended by Megan's Law in 1996 and the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
45:37 Speaker 01 All other well-known cases?
45:39 Speaker 00 Yes, and you know, obviously, a very good thing, right? A sex offender registry. For me personally, I think it's very important that these individuals who have committed these types of crimes against children, especially, have to register. They should be known. You should be able to look up and see if someone like this is living in your neighborhood, near you, so that you can take the necessary precautions, whether that's telling your kids, "Hey, you can't play on this street," or deciding
46:21 Speaker 00 to move because you've got five people who have been convicted of crimes against children who live in your subdivision.
46:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, it's the way it should be. You should know as much as you can about where these individuals are. And I don't know, have you ever looked at one of those sites?
46:40 Speaker 00 I have. It's scary how many dots show up, like, in the city you live in.
46:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:45 Speaker 00 Because I don't live in a very big city. So that's a scary thing. My thought is, when you commit crimes like that, you give up some of your rights to privacy. In 2008, the foundation became the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, which educates the public about child abductors. In September 2018, Jared Sherrill was awarded $17 million in damages in his civil lawsuit against Heinrich. The judge noted in his order that Heinrich got away with kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder. This judgment is the only punishment Mr. Heinrich will ever receive for assaulting Mr. Sherrill.
47:30 Speaker 01 Only punishment.
47:32 Speaker 00 Yeah, he wasn't charged and convicted of anything having to do with that abduction and sexual assault. Now, seventeen million dollars is a great award, right, in a civil lawsuit. But what are the chances that, you know, he's gonna get much of anything from this guy?
47:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, he's in prison, right? So maybe. Maybe you can take away all his canteen funds.
47:59 Speaker 00 Maybe, who knows? But at the very least, it has to be satisfying to get something on record.
48:07 Speaker 01 Right, right.
48:09 Speaker 00 That there's a punishment for this man who did such a terrible thing to you.
48:14 Speaker 01 And now this man that did these terrible things is locked up, has no financial resources. So you have done about as much damage as you can to him.
48:25 Speaker 00 And to your point, if you can take away even one packet of ramen from this dude.
48:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:31 Speaker 00 I mean, that's a victory. The judge also noted that Jared's efforts to pursue justice led to the case being reopened. In an October 2017 court hearing, Jared described how on January 13th, 1989, he was walking home alone from a cafe when Heinrich pulled up alongside him and asked for directions. Heinrich got out, grabbed him and forced him into the backseat. He warned Jared that he had a gun and he wasn't afraid to use it. He drove Jared to a remote area, assaulted him, and then let him go. He warned that if police got close to finding him, he'd kill Jared first.
49:13 Speaker 00 And that, for me, goes back to, you know, kind of the theory that the reason why he killed Jacob Wetterling was because he saw police and got scared.
49:25 Speaker 01 And thought he needed to go ahead and tie up loose ends.
49:29 Speaker 00 Jared suffered from nightmares and fear that the perpetrator was still out there. He also felt that law enforcement didn't believe him. In an interview on December 11th, 1989, investigators accused him of knowing the perpetrator and said another boy was missing. And that's pretty rough. I mean, this was a kid who had been abducted, assaulted, and now police are accusing him of not telling the truth. They're basically saying, you know who this was, but you're not telling us. The lengthy investigation and his inability to receive justice took a toll on Jared. He was often distracted, which made working difficult.
50:11 Speaker 00 His ex-wife testified that his pain and compulsion to solve the case led to their divorce. She said Jared struggles to trust people and is overly protective of their children. And I, I would think it would be hard for somebody who experienced that to not have some of those thoughts.
50:32 Speaker 01 Have all that trauma.
50:34 Speaker 00 Makes it difficult, right? To trust people. How could you not be overly protective of your children when this happened to you?
50:44 Speaker 01 I can see how that could be tough on relationships.
50:47 Speaker 00 The investigation into the attacks in the 1980s was heavily criticized with many people raising concerns about why law enforcement never linked the attacks to the Wetterling abduction. The judge noted in his order that the attacks were so well-known in Painesville that the attacker was named Chester the Molester. And we've already said, right? That Danny Heinrich fit the description.
51:13 Speaker 01 Right.
51:15 Speaker 00 You had the shoe imprint. You had the tire marks. You can see why there would be criticism.
51:22 Speaker 01 Sure.
51:23 Speaker 00 That month, Stearns County Sheriff John Goodmanson delivered an assessment of the errors among law enforcement that allowed Jacob's killer to remain free for decades. Even when the evidence pointed to Heinrich, Heinrich was arrested in February 1990. But FBI profilers concluded after an interrogation, he was not involved in the abduction.
51:47 Speaker 01 Wow, they got that one wrong.
51:49 Speaker 00 It's a big error. Goodmanson called the interrogation the most fatal flaw of the investigation. And I could understand that, right? If you have these trained FBI profilers who are telling local law enforcement, "Hey, this is not your guy." Okay, are they going to look at him a little differently after that? And I would say the answer is yeah.
52:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, because you're going to put a lot of weight behind what the FBI tells you.
52:18 Speaker 00 Goodmanson also suggested the roles of seasoned investigators from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were minimized when the FBI took control. He said the investigation went off the rails. He noted that it wasn't just on the wrong path, it was on the wrong freeway. His review of the case file convinced him Heinrich should have been the prime suspect from the start. He bore a strong resemblance to the man who attacked boys in Painesville and Jared Sherrill. Heinrich registered as deceptive during a polygraph. When asked questions about both the cold spring and Wetterling abductions, he evaded early police surveillance by shutting off his car lights while being followed,
53:03 Speaker 00 which, according to Goodmanson, should have set off alarm bells. Well, I think if you're following somebody and they turn off their car lights.
53:12 Speaker 01 It really should set off some alarms.
53:13 Speaker 00 It should. Dwayne Hart, a known child predator from Stearns County, later told investigators that in October 1989, the month Jacob was abducted, Heinrich asked him how to get rid of a body and showed him a gun. But according to Goodmanson, much of the early legwork was squandered when Stearns County lost control of the FBI, which created an investigative vacuum, where witchcraft, voodoo, hypnosis, and other unconventional tactics were taken seriously. The result was that Heinrich stayed out of investigators' view.
53:51 Speaker 00 And I can imagine that some of this goes back to the 1980s satanic panic stereotype situation. You know, did they think, all right, this is not a lone guy. This is some kind of satanic cult.
54:09 Speaker 01 Probably wasn't too hard to box it in that way.
54:11 Speaker 00 Former FBI agent Al Garber called Goodmanson's analysis unfair and said that when they had to release Heinrich in 1990, due to a lack of evidence, he remained convinced he was the suspect. So you, you got some different views here.
54:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, two sides of the story.
54:29 Speaker 00 You have someone from local agency saying, you know, the FBI kind of screwed us up. And then you have the FBI saying, no, we didn't. This guy never left our radar. We just didn't have the evidence. So could it be a little bit of both? Maybe.
54:46 Speaker 01 Probably is.
54:48 Speaker 00 As we wrap this one up, Gibbs, after 27 years, the murder of Jacob Wetterling was finally solved with the help of advancements in forensic technology. I think what's unfortunate about this case, and there are a lot of things that are unfortunate, but one specifically is that Heinrich was not officially charged and convicted of Jacob's murder. Although authorities are certain he was the perpetrator, based on his crimes and pattern of behavior. It's very possible that Heinrich committed numerous acts of child sexual abuse in the
55:27 Speaker 00 1980s and 90s that investigators have not even identified. And you know me, I always believe that things like that are possible, right? You have these people who you know it's proven. They did some really horrible things, whether it's being a murderer, whether it's being a, a child predator, a rapist, whatever it is, it's hard for me to think that a guy like Heinrich didn't have a much wider swath of crimes.
56:05 Speaker 00 And damage.
56:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, when you're that bad of an individual, you would have to think that there had to be more than that.
56:11 Speaker 00 But it's not always easy just to connect it all together.
56:14 Speaker 01 No.
56:15 Speaker 00 I mean, it took 27 years to, you know, connecting to Jake. But no doubt, I mean, he was just a really bad guy. You go back to the volume of child pornography that we talked about. Now, ultimately, that's all he was ever convicted of was, was the child pornography. But he admitted to murdering Jacob after abducting him and sexually assaulting him. And then there was the abduction and sexual assault of Jared. So, you know, in my book, like I said earlier, this is a guy who may have only gotten 20 years,
56:58 Speaker 00 but I know for a fact there's somebody, some agency that right now is trying to figure out, okay, when this guy comes up to be let out, what can we do? What can we tack on? What can we charge him with then to maybe ensure that he never gets out? Cause this is a guy that I don't think should ever walk the street again.
57:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't either. He needs to stay exactly where he's at.
57:25 Speaker 00 But that's it for our episode on Jacob Wetterling. We got a voicemail. You want to check that out?
57:30 Speaker 01 Let's hear it.
57:31 Speaker 02 Hi, Mike and Gibby. This is Alicia calling from San Antonio, Texas. Uh, first time caller, long time listener. I was calling, uh, in reference to a tape I would like for you guys to cover. It's about the Bayou Strangler, uh, Ronald Dominique. And, uh, he killed about 23 young men, um, across the Southeast Louisiana region. And I remember this tape particularly because two of the young victims, um, I actually knew, uh, hair braiding was popular back when Bone Thugs-N-Hermany was popular back in the late 90s. And my mom used to break one of these guys' hair. Um, he would come over to our house. And I remember when he went missing, and then another young man, um, we actually
58:16 Speaker 02 used to play with in the neighborhood. We were the same age. And I remember at school that day, they offered counseling, um, when they found his body. Um, but anyway, it's a pretty, uh, gruesome thing, but I would love to hear you guys cover it. I love the way you cover, uh, the cases, the detail you put into it. Um, of course, how respectful and how funny you guys are. I'm laughing all the time. Uh, but anyway, thank you. Keep your head on the swivel. I appreciate everything you do. And keep your own time ticking.
58:46 Speaker 00 All right, Alicia, thank you so much for the voicemail. So it's interesting. We have actually had him on our list from the very beginning. And I don't know if you remember, Gibbs, but in the first year we were doing the podcast, we kind of had a run of Louisiana cases.
59:04 Speaker 01 We really did.
59:05 Speaker 00 And we actually said something to the effect of, oh, we need to back out of Louisiana for a little bit. And I think that's where he got left off and we've just never come back to him. But he is a really nasty prolific serial killer. So we do need to put him up the list again.
59:25 Speaker 01 Work our way back to him.
59:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, absolutely. But that's it for another episode of True Crime All the Time. So for Mike.
59:32 Speaker 01 And Gabby.
59:33 Speaker 00 Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.
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