Murder of Jacob Wetterling
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Sunday night is typically a quiet night, but not on this night. On October 22nd, 1989, three young boys convinced their parents to let them ride their bikes.

The kids ride in the dark to rent a movie. They shine flashing lights, wear bright colors, and stay together. Only four blocks to get home. Suddenly, a man emerges from the shadows. He pulls out a gun, points the gun, and orders the kids to lie face down on the ground. A parent's worst nightmare.

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 78, The Murder of Jacob Wetterling. ♪

Thank you.

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

If you're interested in supporting the show, getting early access to weekly episodes, bonus material, ad-free episodes, merchandise, and much more, consider visiting our Patreon page at patreon.com slash forensic tales.

Another great way you can help support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a positive rating with a review or telling friends and family who love true crime about us. Now, let's jump right into this week's case. On Sunday, October 22nd, 1989, a little after 9 p.m., three young boys wanted to rent a movie in St. Joseph, Minnesota.

11-year-old Aaron Larson, 10-year-old Trevor Wetterling, and his brother, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, decided to ride their bikes to the local convenience store. Even though it was late, the convenience store was only four blocks away. It's a quick 5-10 minute bike ride to the store and back.

The boys called their parents at a dinner party, asking if they could ride their bikes to rent the movie. No, came the parental response. It was too dark to be out riding bikes. What if a car didn't see them and they got hit? The boys hung up the phone and devised a plan. They were determined to watch movies that night. So they called their parents again, and this time they spoke to their dad.

They told their dad that they would bring flashlights and wear bright, reflective clothing to make sure cars could see them. They assured their dad they would be completely safe and stick together. They also reminded their parents that the convenience store was only four blocks away, and they would call them as soon as they got back home.

Their father agreed to the plan and thought it would be okay since the three of them were going to be together. So just before 9 p.m., Jacob, Trevor, and Aaron got on their bikes and headed to Tom Thumb convenience store. After renting the movie, the boys hopped back on their bikes and started to ride home. They spot a strange man dressed in dark clothes. They look around in a particularly dark stretch of road.

As Jacob, Trevor, and Aaron get closer, the mysterious man jumps out in front of the boys. He pulls out a gun and points it at them. Gun in hand, the man orders all three boys to get off their bikes and throw them down a nearby ditch. He tells the boys to lie face down on the ground. As the boys are lying on the ground, the man asks them how old they are.

One by one, the boys answer. Aaron, 10, Trevor, 10, and Jacob, 11. The man orders 10-year-old Trevor Wetterling to get up and run into the woods as far as he can. He tells Trevor to keep running and to not turn around. And if he turns around, he'll shoot and kill him.

He tells Jacob and Aaron to turn over so that he could see the boys' faces. He stares at them for a few minutes, then tells 10-year-old Aaron to run as far as possible into the woods and not look back. He also tells Aaron that he'll shoot and kill him if he even thinks about looking backwards. Trevor gets up and starts running into the woods, leaving his friend Jacob behind with the gunman.

Aaron and Trevor sprint home as fast as they can. They're only a couple blocks away from home, and as soon as they get there, they call the police. They tell 911 that a man approached them while riding bikes and that their friend Jacob is still with him. Within six minutes of the police receiving the 911 call, a police officer is dispatched to the location. But within six minutes, Jacob was gone.

There was no sign of Jacob or the gunman anywhere. They vanished. Jacob was born on February 17, 1978, in Long Prairie, Minnesota. He was born the second of four children to Jerry and Patty Wetterling.

Growing up, he loved all sports, football, hockey, even fishing with his dad. A typical kid who did well in school, but like many, hated homework. Jacob made friends quickly, connecting with everyone he met. He also loved animals. Jacob wanted to become a veterinarian when he grew up.

The police knew that if they had any chance of catching up with Jacob and this unknown man, they had to act quickly. Even though only six minutes passed, that meant the culprit had six minutes of a head start. Time is crucial, especially when it comes to child abduction cases. When children are abducted and later found dead, 75% are killed within three hours.

90% of them are dead within the first 24 hours. It's unusual for children to be abducted and then held captive for more than a day or two. Typically, when someone takes a child, like in Jacob's case, they do so with the intent to either sexually assault them and or murder them. So each precious minute that ticks by costs the search dearly.

The FBI is also notified about Jacob's abduction. Because of his age and the circumstances surrounding this abduction, local law enforcement needed backup. Everyone searches for him throughout the night. From the start, it was a massive search. Within just a couple hours, hundreds and hundreds of people joined in on the search. Dozens of media outlets arrived to cover the case.

It instantly became a media sensation. An 11-year-old boy from Minnesota was abducted while riding his bike by a lone masked gunman. Throughout the entire first day of searching, the police and FBI were inundated with tips. Dozens of people were calling into the police, thinking that they either saw Jacob or they saw the suspect. But unfortunately, in these early hours, none of the tips panned out.

On Monday, October 23rd, the day after Jacob's abduction, investigators find a tire and shoe tracks along the remote driveway that Jacob was last seen. The police brought in a canine to try and track Jake's absent in the area. The problem with the shoe and tire tracks was that the police had no idea whether these tracks even belonged to their suspect.

Jacob was last seen on a dirt driveway, so the tracks could really belong to anyone who had ever been on the driveway. But more than likely, at least some of the tracks belong to the suspect since this was a pretty remote area. It wasn't on a busy highway, so the chances of these tracks belonging to the suspect or at least a couple of the tracks is pretty likely here.

So these types of tracks are often called pattern evidence. Pattern evidence provides its own unique challenges, especially in a case like this. First of all, it's difficult for investigators to try and preserve these tracks by either taking a cast or a mold of them. Second, it's tough for investigators to interpret how or when the tracks were made.

And then finally, it's even harder to try and match them to a particular suspect. So unless the police know what kind of shoes or car Jake's abductor was wearing at the time, it's going to be really challenging for them to try and match the pattern evidence to a real suspect. So while investigators try to preserve the track marks on the driveway, the Stearns County Sheriff's Department conducts an aerial search of the area.

The Wetterling family decides that they want as much media and public attention on the case as possible. Media attention can be really helpful and it can be really harmful at the same time in these types of cases. Of course, you want as many people as possible out there looking for Jacob or looking for the suspect.

But this media attention can also cause the suspect to take drastic, often violent measures to avoid capture. But the Wetterlings decided that their best chance of getting Jacob back safe and sound would be for them to get the word out about the case as quickly as possible. By Tuesday, October 24th, Jacob had been missing for almost 48 hours.

The FBI created a profile of their suspect. Based on the circumstances and the facts they knew, the FBI believed that their suspect was likely a white male, a loner, someone who spent most of their time isolated from family and friends. He might have had some sort of physical deformity as well as a criminal background. This isn't the first time committing a crime, but

And it's probably not his first time abducting a child. But the FBI's profile didn't match any of the hundreds of tips that the police received. By the end of day three going into day four, hope started to fade. On Wednesday, October 25th, the sheriff's department commented that Jacob could be dead.

He'd already been missing for almost four days, and the chances of finding him alive at this point are improbable. The sheriff also commented that Jacob was probably abducted by a sexual offender who left the area. After the sheriff announces that they believe Jacob is likely dead, over 500 people show up to St. Joseph's Church to hold a vigil. Jacob's case caught the attention of the TV news magazine show, A Current Affair.

The report on the case generated thousands of additional tips coming in from all across the country. People from every state were calling the tip line with possible sightings of Jacob. Tipsters were calling in someone they thought might be the suspect. Many business executives in Minneapolis, as well as St. Paul, offer up a $100,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest.

But still, nothing. The state's governor activated the National Guard on the case on February, October 27th. He also deployed the State Patrol, as well as the Department of Natural Resources, to help search the 700-square-mile around for Jacob. Jacob's parents appear on CBS this morning, trying to get as much media attention on the case as possible.

And this media strategy seems to work. Within a week of Jacobs' disappearance, players from the Minnesota Twins, Minnesota Vikings, Los Angeles Rams football teams all join in to help find him. There are banners and flyers posted all over these stadiums with Jacobs' picture.

The Minnesota Timberwolves donated proceeds from over 5,000 tickets from the team's first home game to help the search. Finally, by November 6th, investigators released a sketch of a man seen in the Tom Thumb store on the same night of Jacob's disappearance. The man was described as a white male in his 50s. He weighed around 200 pounds with white or gray hair.

The man was called in as a tip to the police after several customers inside the store remember seeing this man oddly walking down and up the aisles and just kind of weirdly staring at people. He was simply put as just being a creepy guy. But the sketch didn't produce any really solid tips in the case. Eventually, the police exhausted their means of trying to find out who this guy was.

So they decide to turn their attention elsewhere. A couple days later, investigators released two more sketches to the public. One man was heard talking about Jacob's abduction in the Tom Thumb store about two weeks after it happened. The other sketch was of a man believed to have been responsible for kidnapping another young boy in New Brighton, a suburb of Minneapolis.

What stands out about these two sketches is that they both look eerily similar to the earlier sketch of the man seen acting weirdly in the store on the night of Jacob's disappearance. But again, just like the first sketch, hundreds of tips came into the police, but nothing significant came out of it.

The FBI and police learned that nine months before Jacob's disappearance, a 12-year-old boy was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a male suspect in nearby Cold Spring. When the police find out about Jared Sherrill, they think his case just might be related to Jacob's. The suspect's behavior and MO in Jared's case was very similar to Jacob's case.

In both cases, the man used a gun to threaten their victim. When Jared was released, the man told him to run as far as possible and never look back. The suspect in Jacob's case said the exact same thing to Jacob's brother and friend. Jared's abduction also happened less than 10 miles away from where Jacob was last seen.

So after the FBI and local police learn about Jared, they create yet another sketch. This time, the sketch is based on Jared's description of what the man looked like who assaulted him. And this time around, the sketch finally generates its first solid tip in the case. On December 16th, the FBI brought in a guy named Danny Heinrich.

Danny Heinrich lived about 30 miles away from St. Joseph in the city of Painesville. When the FBI brought him in for an interview, he denied everything. He denied having any knowledge or involvement in either Jared or Jacob's cases. So without any solid evidence tying him to either abduction, the FBI had no choice but to let him go.

And about one month later, Danny Heinrich was questioned by the FBI again in January 1990. At this point, Jacob had been missing for three months. During this interview, Danny maintains his innocence in the case and provides investigators with his tennis shoes as well as a sample of some body hair.

He even allows investigators to take the rear tires from his blue 1982 Ford hatchback. While investigators study the tires, they bring Jared Sherrill to sit inside another one of Danny Heinrich's cars. The FBI got access to a 1987 Mercury Topaz that Danny Heinrich owned until March of 1989.

The police want to determine if Jared could remember if this was the car he sat in after he was abducted. When Jared sits in the car, he tells investigators that on a scale of 1 to 10, the Mercury Topaz felt like a solid 8 or 9 that this was the car he was abducted in. Investigators decided that they had enough evidence to get a search warrant to search Danny Heinrich's home.

So on January 24th, 1990, a search warrant was executed on Heinrich's father's home where he lived since November of 1989. In the search, investigators were looking for any sign of Jacob, his clothing, the gun that may have been used in the abduction, or anything else related to the case.

Inside the home, investigators find two police scanners, a carrying case, list of scanner frequencies, a pair of boots, and various clothing items. They also find a trunk containing dozens of photographs of young children. One photo was taken of a young child only dressed in underwear and wrapped in a towel.

The FBI analyzed the rear tires taken from Heinrich's Ford. Investigators found that the tires were consistent, but they were not an exact match. This suggests that the tires could either be from similar manufacturers or the same tires themselves.

And this finding suggests and questions whether it was indeed Heinrich's car. And if it wasn't his car, then maybe he's telling the truth. Maybe he's innocent. Investigators also conducted a forensic search on Heinrich's first vehicle, the Mercury Topaz, the car he sold just a few months before Jacob's disappearance.

Inside the mercury topaz, investigators compared fibers from the car seats to fibers found on Jared's clothing. The FBI concluded that a thread found on Jared's clothing had similar microscopic and optical properties as fibers taken from the mercury topaz.

So they were suggesting that Jacob was, in fact, inside of Danny Heinrich's car. And ultimately, he was the guy who kidnapped and assaulted him almost one year earlier. The police arrested Danny Heinrich on February 9th, 1990, in connection to the Jared Sherald abduction. But he's not arrested on any charges related to Jacob Wetterling's case.

The police also suspect that he's probably responsible for Jacob's abduction, but they don't have the same forensic evidence for Jared's case. Once in police custody, Heinrich continues to deny that he had anything to do with either of the boys' abductions.

Unfortunately, he's ultimately released within a day of his arrest, and he's released without being charged, even in Jared's abduction. So besides analyzing Heinrich's tires, the FBI also looked at the shoe prints found at the location of where Jacob was last seen. So investigators compared the shoe prints to Heinrich's shoes seized during the search of his father's home.

Heinrich's right shoe, quote, corresponded with the shoe at the crime scene, but there were insufficient details in the comparison. Basically, the examiner could not determine if it was, in fact, Heinrich's shoe that left behind the mark. So, just like the tire marks, the shoe print also came back inconclusive.

Twelve months pass in the search for Jacob without any sign of him, and the case is on the brink of turning cold. In the weeks and months following his disappearance, several initiatives and programs were created to help law enforcement as well as the public respond better to child abductions. Just a couple months before the first anniversary of his disappearance, the Jacob Wetterling Foundation was created.

The foundation created a national database assistance program to better help the families of missing children. The goal of the program is to help educate as well as assist families in preventing the exploitation of young children. Before Jacob's case, we hadn't seen a case where an 11-year-old boy is abducted and basically never seen again.

Therefore, we didn't have any resources and we didn't have any education available to these families after their children went missing. In May of 1991, U.S. Senator Dave Durenberger proposed a national registry for people who have committed crimes against children. This registry would include sexual offenses as well as physical assaults and child abductions.

The registry's mission would provide a database for when a child goes missing. Law enforcement would have a list of individuals in the area with a criminal history involving children. After the registry's initial proposal, it took a little over three years for it to pass.

And in September of 1994, Congress passed the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act and Child Safety Act. The bill requires that any person convicted of a crime against a child or is convicted of a sexually violent felony register with the police for 10 years following their release from prison.

This law allows the police to alert the community if such an offender is living in their area. And this becomes one of the first pieces of legislation in our country to require certain offenders to register themselves.

They were making the criminal information of these individuals available to anyone and everyone who wanted to know it. So if you wanted to know if a violent child offender was living in your apartment complex or was living on your street, you could easily access this information online. You could also access what type of crime they committed and what type of sentence they were serving.

So the passing of the Wetterling Act was revolutionary. But this act was only the beginning because shortly after the Wetterling Act came the Amber Alert. In 1996, the Amber Alert system or the Child Abduction Emergency Alert was created.

The program got its name after Amber Renee Hangerman was abducted while riding her bike with her brother in Arlington, Texas, in January of 1996. A neighbor who witnessed the abduction called 911, but by the time the police responded to the scene, Amber was nowhere to be found.

Amber's body was eventually found four days later in a creek behind her apartment complex. This spot was only about five miles away from her abduction. Yet, it took law enforcement four long days to find her. The Amber Alert was created to involve the public in finding abducted children.

The idea is that once a child is reported kidnapped or missing, an Amber Alert is issued across many media outlets as possible. Radio, TV, internet radio, cable TV, text messages, anything to get the news out about the missing child as quickly as possible.

The Amber Alert is similar to what the Wetterling family did from the beginning in their case. After Jacob was reported missing, they went on any and every news media outlet they could get their hands on in hopes of getting the word out. They wanted people looking for their kid as soon as possible. So the Wetterlings essentially started their own Amber Alert.

So since creating the Amber Alert system, in about 7 out of 10 cases, children are successfully reunited with their parents after being reported missing. After the Amber Alert, there were two more programs created to help find missing children. The U.S. Department of Justice created the National Child Abduction Response Team.

This program started a multi-agency law enforcement team trained to respond to cases involving missing or endangered children. Then finally came the Walsh Act. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act created the National Sex Offender Registry. This program also required that states disclose to the public about serious offenders living in their neighborhoods.

Jacob's case completely revolutionized how law enforcement, as well as the public, deal with child abduction cases. By 1997, Jacob had been missing for eight years. By this point, if he were still alive, he would be 18 years old. To bring awareness back to the case, investigators created a computer-enhanced photo of what he could look like at 18.

The image was sent to over 70 million U.S. homes across the country in hopes that someone would recognize him, in hopes that after all of these years, he might still be alive. Sadly, the image didn't generate any lead. In 2004, a new person of interest emerged. His name was Dan Racier. Dan Racier became a key witness in the case.

Racier was a neighbor of the Wetterlings back in 1989 when Jacob went missing. On the night of Jacob's abduction, he was at home when he told the police that he heard one of his dogs bark and that he saw two cars pull into his driveway and then turn around and leave.

He said that later that night is when he found out about a missing boy in the neighborhood and that this missing boy just so happened to have been abducted from his own driveway, from Racier's driveway. He was the only person that the police knew of that heard or saw anything that night.

Although he couldn't remember what type of car or cars he saw, and he didn't see anyone behind the wheel of these cars, he was the only person who witnessed a car on his driveway that night. Racier was one of the hundreds of people who helped the police search for Jacob that night. Over the years, investigators suspected that their key witness might actually be their key suspect.

In 2004, a theory emerged that Dan Racier might be the person responsible for Jacob's abduction. The abduction did happen on his driveway, after all. When investigators bring Racier in for questioning, he denies everything. He denies having any involvement in the case other than the fact that it happened on his property. But investigators don't believe him.

Since Racier was officially declared as a person of interest in the case, they're able to also secure a search warrant to search his property. They search the property in hopes of finding anything related to Jacob or the investigation. But the search turns up empty-handed. They didn't find anything.

Dan Racier would eventually be cleared as a suspect or a person of interest in the case. And he would later on file a civil lawsuit against the police department, claiming that they violated his rights and that they falsely accused him in the case. Ultimately, the court ruled against Racier.

In July 2012, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension reported that they recovered a DNA profile from the wrist of a sweatshirt worn by Jared Sherrill on the night of his disappearance. When they tested the DNA, it came back with two profiles. When they compared the profile to Jared's DNA, he couldn't be ruled out as one of the contributors.

But the other male DNA profile did not match Jared's. It came from someone else, his abductor. But who was that? In 2014, another DNA profile emerged that matched the same sample recovered on Jared's sweatshirt two years earlier.

Investigators discovered that DNA taken from a baseball hat after an attack on a child in Painesville back in May of 1987 matched the DNA profile from the sweatshirt. Investigators sent both samples back to the crime lab to see if they could compare them to any known DNA sample in national databases. In 2015, they get a hit.

The male DNA profile from the wrist of the sweatshirt Jared wore in January 1989 matched the DNA in the hair sample taken from Danny Heinrich in 1990. They also matched Danny Heinrich's DNA to the mixed DNA sample on the Painesville baseball hat.

Now the police had forensic evidence that tied Danny Heinrich to at least two separate child abduction cases. The police search his home now for a second time, and this time around, they find what they need.

Inside of the one-bedroom home, investigators recover a binder containing child pornography, duct tape, handcuffs, as well as four bins filled to the top with small boys' clothing. Danny Heinrich is finally arrested and charged with the kidnapping and molestation of Jared.

After Heinrich is in jail awaiting trial for his involvement in the Jared Sherrill case, investigators gather the evidence they need to link him to Jacob Wetterling's case. But before they could collect any substantial evidence, Heinrich agrees to cooperate. As a part of a plea deal with prosecutors, Heinrich admits to kidnapping and killing Jacob all those years earlier.

In exchange for taking kidnapping and murder charges off the table and only charging Heinrich with pornography charges in the case, Heinrich agreed to lead investigators to the site where he buried Jacob's body. He led investigators to a farm just outside of Painesville, not too far from where Danny Heinrich lived and about 30 miles away from St. Joseph's.

On September 3rd, 2016, investigators confirmed that the remains found at the site belonged to Jacob. Dental records from Jacob's mom were then compared to identify them as Jacob's. Jacob was found. Danny Heinrich offered a full confession about how he kidnapped and murdered Jacob in court on September 6th, 2016.

He testified that after he kidnapped Jacob, he handcuffed him and drove him to a gravel pit in Painesville. This is where he molested him, killed him, and buried his body. Heinrich testified that he avoided the police that night because he listened to his police scanners.

He also said that he came back to the burial site about a year later and moved the body because he noticed that Jacob's jacket was sticking out of the ground. At the same court hearing, Danny Heinrich also admitted to the kidnapping and molestation of Jared.

In exchange for his confession and plea deal with the prosecution, Heinrich was not charged with Jacob's murder. Instead, he was sentenced to the maximum prison term of 20 years for the child pornography charges. State authorities can also seek a civil commitment to label him as a sexual predator, preventing him from ever being released from prison.

At the sentencing, the judge read, quote,

Under his sentence, it's possible that Heinrich could be released from prison after serving 17 years of his 20-year sentence, although it's unlikely that a predator like him will ever be accepted or allowed back into society.

In 2017, Danny Heinrich was transferred to a federal prison in Massachusetts and began serving out his 20-year sentence. The abduction and subsequent killing of Jacob Wetterling remained a mystery for 27 years. His killer evaded police capture for all those years.

It wasn't until DNA from another child abduction case was recovered that investigators could finally discover what happened to Jacob and who was responsible for his murder. You can run, but you can't hide from the truth. ♪

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