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Some of their boys went down to Tom's Town to pick up a movie, and on their way back, someone stopped them. One of the boys did not come back. Still missing tonight, Jacob Wetterling, age 11. This was one more day of agony for St. Joseph, Minnesota. Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped in 1989 on a dead-end country road in a small town in Minnesota. Listen, and I'll tell you a story.
The search for Jacob was one of the largest searches for any missing person in the history of the United States. In an extraordinary sweep for clues, more than 100 National Guardsmen scoured the countryside. This has been the largest manhunt in the history of Minnesota, and it is not going to stop. This wasn't just any child abduction case.
The kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling changed life for hundreds of thousands of people across the country. It even led to a federal law that requires all states to maintain registries of sex offenders. This is letting parents know that the fox is in the hen house. Are we mad and bitter? No. But we're sick of seeing these people get all the rights, and our children, and the parents not getting any rights. 27 years later, Jacob Wetterling still hasn't been found.
I'm Madeline Barron, host of In the Dark, a new podcast from APM Reports. For the past nine months, I've been reporting on the abduction of Jacob Wetterling. And what I've found has changed the way I look at the case and how I look at the investigators who tried to solve it.
Do I wish some things would have been done differently? Sure. Can I talk about that in this particular case? No. In this podcast, we're going to find out what went wrong in the investigation of the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling. All this evidence that people have and nothing's being done, 50,000 leads, and what got checked out. They were saying, you took him. How'd you do it? Would you just please admit that you did it? And we can make this a lot easier for you.
How many of these types of psychopathic pedophiles can exist in this 15 to 20 mile radius? I mean, was it more than one? Was there something bigger going on? I could take either one of you girls and they'd never find you. There's a whole lot of space out there. And I dig a hole. And I bury you out in the woods in a grove. What are the odds of somebody digging you up? How honest am I supposed to be?
How forthright am I supposed to be? You could be forthright. Well, the reality is people can turn stuff in now, but it's not going to be seriously looked at. That's my opinion. But there has to be an element in there to have accountability. And when accountability is not there, disastrous things happen. We've said for all these years, somebody knows something. It just seems as though it should be solved.
I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like...
I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah.
You know, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.
Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.