Jacob Wetterling and the Case That Went Unsolved for 27 Years.

It was Octobert 22nd, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was riding his bike to the local video store in St. Joseph, Minnesota. After leaving the store, he was abducted and never seen alive again.

Jacob's best friend and younger brother were there as well, but they fled when the masked kidnapper ordered them to at gunpoint. The local police teamed up with the FBI, they believed that Jacob's disappearance was connected to recent cases in the region that involved child sexual assaults and were unsolved.

The FBI were certain that these events weren't at random. They had a list of suspects, one was a local man named Danny Heinrich, who they interviewed months after Wetterling's disappearance. They took DNA samples, but testing methods were not standardized yet. It wasn't until 2015 that the truth came to light.

New investigations matched Heinrich's DNA to the sexual assault of a different boy that was only miles away from Wetterling's last known location. The statute of limitations for that crime had long expired, but police were granted a search warrant for Heinrich's home and found answers to Wetterling's disappearance.

Jacob Wetterling Goes Missing

Jacob Erwin Wetterling was born on February 17th, 1978 in Long Prairie, Minnesota. He was raised by Jerry and Patty Wetterling, and he had a little brother named Trevor, the two of them had free rein to roam the outdoors and ride their bikes, like most kids during their generation.

On October 22nd, 1989, Patty Wetterling wished for her children to stay home, she and her husband were at a dinner party when Jacob called her at 9 PM to ask if he and his brother could ride to the video store. Since it was dark out and the two boys would have to leave their little sister, Carmen, home alone, she told them no.

That was when the kids called Jacob's father, Jerry, to try once more. They told him that they would wear reflective vests and use flashlights for their mile long trek to the store and they would have their 14-year-old neighbor babysit Carmen while they were gone. Jerry ended up agreeing and the Wetterling brothers and their friend Aaron set off.

They rented the movie The Naked Gun on VHS and then got back on their bicycles and started home. They didn't make it far before a masked man emerged from a driveway and ordered the boys to leave their bikes in the nearby ditch and lie face down on the asphalt. He then asked their ages.

Wetterling's ten-year-old brother was told to run into the woods and not look back or he would be shot. Then the man told Jacob and Aaron to face him so he could inspect their faces, he then told 11-year-old Aaron to leave as well. Trevor and Aaron ran home and notified the neighbors, but it was the last time anyone saw Wetterling alive.

The Investigation

The neighbors notified Wetterling's parents and the police. Officers responded within six minutes and started to search for the boy both from the ground and by helicopter. They didn't find a single sign of life, despite how optimistic Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner was.

"Everybody thought that within a few hours we would get it taken care of," He said.

Patty Wetterling interviewed with Minnesota's Pioneer Press two months later, and the FBI and National Guard had joing the search. Residents also founded the Friends of Jacob Wetterling Center and received 1,000 applications to help put out flyers to raise awareness.

Donations made to the center went towards an increasingly lucarative reward, police were receiving thousands of tips as well. The FBI questioned Heinrich on December 16th, 1989, but they released the man without any charges after they took DNA samples. Decades past and there were no arrests made, that was until Joy Baker got involved.

Baker was 22-year-old when Wetterling disappeared and she wrote her first blog post about the case in 2010. She was personally invested in the case after she saw Wetterling's parents on television, so she started her own investigation into the matter. It wasn't long before she was centered in on the case of Jared Scheierl.

Scheierl was 12-years-old when he was kidnapped and molested by a masked man on January 13th, 1989. The suspect threatened the boy with a gun and told him to run off without looking back or he'd be shot. This occurred within 10 miles of where Wetterling was abducted, Baker believed these cases were linked.

Jacob's Law and Legacy

Baker was interviewed with Sheierl on CNN's The Hunt in 2014. After renewing their efforts, authorities discovered that the DNA from Scheierl's crime scene was a match to Heinrich's. But, unfortunately, the statute of limitations for the case had run out.

Police were unable to obtain a search warrant for Heinrich's home in July 2015, but, they arrested him in October 2015 for child pornography that was found in his home. He was facing 25 federal charges, he accepted a plea agreement and confessed to Wetterling's murder. He then proved his involvement by leading investigators to the burial site on August 31st, 1026.

Wetterling's remains were removed from a pasture that was 30 miles from his home and it was confirmed through dental records. Heinrich testified to the crime, he confessed to handcuffing the child, driving him to a Paynesville gravel pit, and then molesting him before he shot and buried him there.

He was seneteced to 20 years for child pornography charges. His plea bargain prevented him from being convicted for the murder for Wetterling. However, the boy's legacy became far grander than his tagic murder, his parents formed the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, an advocacy group for children's safety.

The federal Jacob Wetterling Act was based in 1994. This was the first law in American history to mandate that each state maintain a sex offender registry. And for his parents' foundation, it was aimed to educate the public about who takes children, how they do it, and what you can do to stop it.