MN - Jacob Wetterling, 11, 22 Oct 1989 ***MEDIA THREAD***NO DISCUSSION***

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A new link to Jacob? String of similar assaults in late '80s near Paynesville draws fresh scrutiny
By Jenna Ross and Pam Louwagie Star Tribune
October 31, 2015 — 11:16pm

[...]
In May 1987, the Paynesville Press alerted residents to the assaults, including the death threats. A sergeant said that police needed “all the help we can get” in apprehending a man who they believed was targeting boys downtown and following them home or lying in wait and accosting them after dark. The attacks were scattered, taking place by a river, a hockey rink, a store, a middle school playground and an alley, the article said.

“The kids are scared,” Sgt. Bill Drager told the newspaper.

The article’s author, Darlene Thyen, now 73, said Saturday that even after covering the story, she never considered a connection between the assaults and Jacob’s abduction, which took place about a half-hour away.

[...]
On the night Jacob disappeared, a masked man with a gun appeared on a rural road leading to the Wetterling house. He told the boys to lie face down in a nearby ditch and asked each his age. He then ordered Trevor and Aaron to run to the woods and not look back. By the time the two boys looked back, Jacob and the masked man were gone.

The Paynesville assailant also was often masked. One boy described the mask as looking like it was made of indoor-outdoor candy-striped carpeting. Another time the man had “blackened everything — so that you couldn’t make out anything on his face,” the Paynesville newspaper reported.
 
Jacob Wetterling's Parents Encourage More People to Come Forward
Updated: 11/03/2015 1:03 PM - Created: 11/02/2015 12:00 PM
KSTP
By: Jennie Lissarrague

[...]

“Thank you so much for being part of our journey for 26 years,” Jerry Wetterling said at the news conference. “We are so very, very grateful for all of the work that has gotten us to where we are today."

"No one plays a more important role than you, everyday citizens," Jerry Wetterling said. "Reporting that little piece of information, when added to all of the other pieces of information, will help solve the puzzle.”

“I really believe someone in this community knows,” Patty Wetterling added. “We are really, really proud of Jared (Scheierl) and all of the victims who came forward in Paynesville. There may be other victims. There may be other stories to share.”

[...]

“Child sexual abuse and abduction is something we can’t tolerate,” Patty Wetterling said. “We have to focus on preventing these things from happening so that no other family would have to go through this. We can’t tolerate the victimization of children. We have to teach our children how to not grow up and harm others.”

[...]

“The one question that we have said for 26 years is, ‘Where’s Jacob? Where is Jacob?’ And that’s what we’re always going to ask,” Patty Wetterling said. “That’s what we’ve been trying to find for all of these years.”
 
DNA Advancements Lead Investigators to Developments in Wetterling Abduction
"In 1990, Daniel Heinrich gave federal investigators samples of his body hair. The hairs were placed under glass slides, labeled and delivered to a lab where they sat for 26 years.
In May, an investigator with the Wright County Sheriff’s Office turned the slides into the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for testing. The final report concluded the body hairs submitted by Heinrich matched hair samples found on a 12-year old boy who was assaulted in Cold Spring in 1989."
More at link...
http://kstp.com/article/stories/s3951355.shtml

What We Know About 'Person of Interest' in Jacob Wetterling Disappearance
http://kstp.com/article/stories/s3948870.shtml
 
Witness In Wetterling Abduction Speaks On Heinrich’s Arrest
November 4, 2015 6:00 PM By Liz Collin

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Jacob Wetterling’s best friend Aaron Larson says his gut tells him the new person of interest in the case could very well be the masked man who told him to run the night Jacob was kidnapped.

“It gives you chills,” he said. “I will say it’s a feeling I hadn’t had from looking at any pictures of other people.”

Aaron Larson lives in southwest Minnesota now with two children of his own. He says investigators have never talked to him about Danny Heinrich.
Jacob Wetterling's Best Friend Says There's No Reason to Give Up Hope
Posted: Nov 04, 2015 5:30 PM CST - Updated: Nov 05, 2015 8:56 AM CST
By Ashley Hanley, Reporter

[...]

Jacob Wetterling and Aaron Larson were two peas in a pod.

Larson says, “He was my best friend. We were always together and just doing whatever kids and little boys enjoy doing.”
Until a masked gunman took that all away.

Larson says, “I was the last person who saw Jacob. We looked alike, we were the same age. You always think, why did he take Jacob and not me?

The boys were riding their bikes to get a movie just down the road from Jacob’s house.

Larson says, “In the small town of St. Joe, nobody locked their doors at that time. It was a safe place. You should be safe as a child to ride bikes and go get a movie. But we never stop looking for Jacob.”

And over the last 26 years Jacob’s always been with him.
Wetterling Friend: ‘It’s Tough to Be Patient’ for Answers
Updated: 11/04/2015 10:19 PM - Created: 11/04/2015 9:45 PM KSTP.com
By: Eric Chaloux

[...]

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS reporter Eric Chaloux asked Larson, “Take me back to the moment when you heard about a person of interest in Jacob's case."

Larson said, “I think it was kind of shock at first, my heart was racing."

Chaloux asked, “That night did you ever see a face of the person who took Jacob?”

Larson responded, “No, he had a mask on, so all we could see was the physical description and the voice."

It was a man’s voice—that told him and Jacob's brother to run and not look back—as Jacob lay in a ditch.

"Each day some aspect of the whole thing goes through my mind," Larson said.
Jacob Wetterling's best friend says he needs to hear Heinrich's voice
By: Paul Blume
Posted:Nov 05 2015 04:57PM CST - Updated:Nov 06 2015 02:30PM CST

(KMSP) - Aaron Larson, who was there when his best friend Jacob Wetterling was abducted on October 22, 1989, absolutely believes his memories from that terrifying night could help give today’s investigators a missing piece to the puzzle of Wetterling’s disappearance

[...]

Larson has not spoken to case investigators in years. He says no one with law enforcement reached out before last week's bombshell announcement about Heinrich

[...]

“Yeah, I would like to hear his voice. It's tough. 26 years now. When you get into the legal aspect of voice recognition, you are talking a whole different ballgame, but also there is a gut feeling,” Larson says.

Aaron admits he was stunned to read about Heinrich’s shoe prints and tire tracks that appeared to be spot on matches to evidence gathered at the scene of the abduction.
 
Patty Wetterling opens up about Heinrich
Karla Hult, KARE
11 12:57 p.m. EST November 6, 2015

[...]

One day after a "person of interest" in Jacob Wetterling's abduction appeared in court on unrelated charges, Patty Wetterling sat down for an exclusive interview with KARE 11 at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children just outside Washington, D.C..

"I needed to come out here and do what I could. And renew. It's a place of renewal for me," she said about the center she and husband Jerry first contacted one day after Jacob's abduction on Oct. 22, 1989.

Today, Patty is the chair of the organization's board of directors.

"It's an honor. I'm very humbled. But it's an opportunity to give back for me," she said

video of the interview at the link
Wetterlings seek answers, believe Jacob can be found
By Robb Jeffries on Nov 4, 2015 at 1:31 p.m.

[...]

“We still don’t know who took Jacob,” Patty Wetterling said. “We have as many questions or more as all of you. We will let law enforcement and the courts and the process to continue.

“The one question we have said for 26 years is ‘Where’s Jacob?’ And that’s all we’re going to ask.”

Patty Wetterling: 'I still always, always have hope'
Sara Pelissero, KARE
6:42 p.m. EST November 3, 2015

[...]

Fighting through emotion, Patty spoke strongly about the role of everyone to protect children -- to make sure what has happened to them never happens to another family.

"Child sexual abuse and abduction is something we cannot tolerate," she said. "I refuse to be silent."

"I know there's more good people in the world than bad and when good people pull together, amazing things happen," she said. "And that's what we need to focus on. I've been focusing on the world that Jacob knew and believed in before all of this time. I want us to remember that and I want us to still know that hope is real. Hope is what Jacob knew. It is a verb. You don't sit back and hope that good things happen. It is all of you showing up."

"I will still always, always hope," she said.

[...]

"We will hope and pray that one day we will have that answer to the question we've asked forever: 'Where is Jacob?' Somebody knows and we're begging for those answers."

cont. with video at the link
 
1st Person Of Interest In Wetterling Abduction Wants His Name Cleared
November 5, 2015 9:24 PM By Esme Murphy

[...]
But there was another person of interest named publicly in 2010. Dan Rassier is a school band teacher, and Wetterling was abducted at the end of his quarter-mile-long driveway.

Rassier became the prime suspect in 2004 when authorities finally identified a set of tire tracks at the abduction scene. The driver of that car was ruled out. That is when authorities confronted him.

[...]

“Probable cause makes all these people think that, ‘What is there on this guy?'” Rassier said.

He says it was especially difficult for his father, Robert, who died Saturday — three days after Heinrich was arrested.

Rassier says a family friend reached out to the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office to see if authorities could clear Rassier before his father passed. The friend was told authorities are not ready to do that.

“He always said he didn’t want to die until this was solved,” Rassier said.

more at the link
 
Jacob Wetterling 'person of interest' ordered held without bail
By Mary Divine
Posted: 11/04/2015 12:01:00 AM CST

[...]

The evidence, U.S. Magistrate Judge Tony Leung said, "creates a chilling context and a gravity of danger to the community" as he ordered Heinrich, 52, of Annandale, held without bail and ruled that prosecutors could proceed with their case against him.

Leung also cited Heinrich's "long history of attraction and fixation on" young boys as a reason he will remain jailed.
Heinrich, who was named last week as a "person of interest" in the 1989 abduction of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, remained silent throughout the proceedings.

Dressed in a government-issued mustard-yellow shirt, orange pants and orange slip-on shoes, Heinrich sat on the right side of the courtroom. Beside him were his lawyers, assistant federal public defender Reynaldo Aligada Jr. and Katherian Roe, the chief federal public defender in Minnesota.
 
From the May 1987 victims...

Paynesville Victim Speaks Out: ‘It’s Time For Some Answers’
November 12, 2015 6:31 PM By Esme Murphy

[...]

In a handwritten part of a police report, Mitch described what happened next.

“All of a sudden someone grabbed me by the throat and pulled me off my bike. I screamed as he grabbed me by the testicles. I told him that this was the second time he got me.”

Court documents and another police report show that Mitch had been attacked by the same man three months earlier.

“He yelled he already had gotten him and the guy let him go and he ran away, and my friend stayed and I ran for help,” Craig said. “When he ran away, he was very fast. … He appeared very strong when he got my friend off the bike. He manhandled him.”

The attacker never spoke.
 
Former FBI boss reflects on Heinrich, Wetterling case
Dana Thiede, KARE 4:17 p.m. EST November 12, 2015

[...]

Garber was the man who was responsible for leading the investigation into Jacob's kidnapping 26 years ago, and the case has been a presence in his life in the decades since.

[...]

"I don't ever remember a news conference like this about the case, so I assume, like everybody else does, that there had to be really good reasons for all of those officials to get in front of a camera and publicly say what they said," Garber reasoned.

"I also listen carefully for evidence, and what I saw was evidence against Heinrich that he is a terrible person and ought not to be on the street where he can hurt or abuse or exploit children... but I was carefully listening for evidence that he kidnapped Jacob and that I haven't heard."

[...]

"People don't know that what they know... one piece of conversation they might have heard could be what we really, really need and if you don't report it, shame on you," Garber said.

"You need to call law enforcement. So they get many, many calls, they want the calls, they'll determine which of them is significant and what can be followed up on, and this is a good time, a time to really come forward."
 
Here's a comparison of the younger DJH (on the left) with the drawing of the younger man who had attempted an abduction of a boy named Andrew (on the right) earlier in Summer of 1989 in St. Joe.

http://www.deadzoom.com/member/samiping/DJHcomparison.jpg

DJHcomparison.jpg


(Story of Andrew's abduction attempt): http://www.thenewsleaders.net/2015/01/22/a-historical-perspective-from-25-years-ago-jan-19-1990/
 
From the article linked in Shergal'spost


Van still haunts St. Joseph residents
January 22, 2015 - by Stuart Goldschen
news@thenewsleaders.com

[...]

They’re looking specifically for the van in question, described as a tan 1970s model Ford with rust on the bottom, a white bumper and a cracked, blue bug deflector in front. The utility-type vehicle has six-ply bias blackwall truck tires, two rear windows and possibly side windows.

The driver was described as a white male in his late 20s with glasses and dark brown hair in bangs, dark eyes, slim build and fair complexion.

[...]

The attempted abduction took place in early July in an isolated rural St. Joseph residential area. The FBI said the man driving the van approached the 10-year-old boy, asked him his age and told him to get in the vehicle. The boy fled and the man drove away.

The incident was not publicized at the time and investigative measures were routine until Jacob was abducted Oct. 22 and a connection was suspected. More than 1,500 calls about the case swamped the Stearns County Law Enforcement Center when the sketch of the van was released.

[...]

An 11-year-old boy of one of the families said he saw what he thought was the same van while fishing on a lake dock near his home about two weeks after the attempted abduction he said the van stopped in front of the dock and the driver leaned out of his window to take a picture of him.

“I turned around and looked at him and he backed up, turned and got the heck out of there,” the boy said. He said the man had black hair and was holding eye glasses while he snapped the picture.
 
WCCO Spoke With Wetterling Abduction ‘Person Of Interest’ In 1996
November 9, 2015 10:41 PM By Esme Murphy

[...]

A review of our archives has turned up a 1996 undercover interview that WCCO-TV did with Danny Heinrich. That interview was conducted with a hidden camera in Heinrich’s red car.

At one point, Heinrich describes how authorities at one point actually arrested him and accused him of abducting Jacob. In the interview, Heinrich described that confrontation this way.

“We know it’s you. It’s you, it’s you. No it isn’t. No it isn’t. No it isn’t,” the dialogue goes.

[...]

WCCO-TV reported in 1996 that Heinrich had failed a lie detector test and transcripts of the interview quote him as saying he does not want to take another one.

[...]

During the interview and in transcripts, Heinrich says in 1989 and 1990 he was under surveillance for months.

“It was pure hell,” Heinrich said.

[...]
If you have any information about Heinrich, you’re asked to call the FBI at (763) 569-8000 or the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office at (320) 259-3700.

cont. with video at the link
 
Is Wetterling Person Of Interest Connected To A 1989 Arson?
November 12, 2015 10:45 PM By Jennifer Mayerle

[...]

The front page of the Paynesville Press on Nov. 14, 1989 shows a Ceremony of Hope for Jacob Wetterling. Students singing “Somewhere Out There,” hoping for the safe return of the 11-year-old.

In the bottom right hand corner of that same paper is news about a suspected arson at a Paynesville home. What Wetterling investigators didn’t realize until months later, after the fire wreckage was taken away, is that the two cases could be connected.

Documents recently released about the arrest of Danny Heinrich on child *advertiser censored* charges show he was familiar with the home that burned. The documents also show the burned home had been burglarized five years earlier. And FBI agents found pictures thought to be relatives of the family who lived there when they searched the home where Heinrich lived in 1990.

cont. with video at the link
 
Paynesville victims recount painful attacks in the years before Wetterling disappeared
By Pam Louwagie and Jenna Ross , Star Tribune
November 14, 2015 - 9:28 PM

PAYNESVILLE, Minn
He was a 13-year-old biking home from the pizza place downtown, his only worry whether he’d make his 9 p.m. curfew.
Troy Cole was just a block away from his front door that night in November 1986, when he was yanked off his bike.

A man, his hand reeking of cigarette smoke, covered Cole’s mouth as he pulled him into some pine trees. Shut up or I’ll kill you, the man said, his voice rumbling from behind Cole’s head as he unzipped Cole’s jeans. He said he had a knife.

“I thought I was going to die,” Cole said recently, recounting how the man used the knife to saw off a chunk of his sandy blond hair, a sick souvenir.

The terror of that night has haunted Cole, now 42, for decades. Even worse, Cole said, is feeling that law enforcement didn’t take it seriously — not his case nor those of at least six other boys who were approached or accosted in this central Minnesota town.

“I felt like they abandoned us, like ‘who cares, you know, they’re a bunch of kids, they’ll get over it,’ ” Cole said. “But to tell you the truth, we haven’t.”

much more with video at the link
 
Couple Believe They Saw Wetterling Suspect On Night Of Disappearance
November 17, 2015 10:09 PM By Esme Murphy

[...]

The Gwosts left the ballroom around 5:30 p.m. and stopped at the Tom Thumb gas station, which was about two blocks away. They were rushing to get to another gig. Kevin pumped gas, Marlene went in for sandwiches.
She noticed a suspicious man inside immediately, and so did her husband.

“I said to my husband, ‘I just have a real funny feeling about that guy why was he standing there not shopping just looking,'” Marlene said. “He wasn’t looking at anything in the aisles at all. All he was doing was looking over the top of the aisles that were there. And I just had a gut feeling that there was something going on.”

Marlene worked at the time in the investigations unit of Stearns County Child Protection Services. The Gwosts reported the man to the sheriff’s office the day after the abduction, and Marlene was asked by investigators to help put together one of the early sketches of the suspect.

vOO44e1.jpg

(credit: CBS)

[...]
Both Gwosts say while the sketch they helped create and other sketches of suspicious individuals from that night show a bald man. The man they saw was wearing a baseball cap similar to the one in a later sketch.

cont. at the link
 
Danny Heinrich's brother comes to his defense
Caroline Lowe 12:39 a.m. EST November 18, 2015

[...]

David Heinrich sat down for an interview with KARE 11 reporter Caroline Lowe in Paynesville, Minnesota.

David Heinrich: "I cannot believe there is any connection."

Caroline Lowe: "Your brother Is not the person who took Jacob?"

David Heinrich: "No! I could never believe that. Never!"

He said his brother is too timid and too afraid to attack anyone.

David Heinrich: "He can't kill. He's scared. If you raised a fist at him, he'd run. He's not that way. He could not hurt somebody. He's scared of his shadow, he could not kill."

cont. at the link
 
Wetterlings react to Heinrich arrest
David Unze, dunze@stcloudtimes.com
10:35 a.m. CST December 10, 2015

[...]

And although Heinrich hasn’t been charged with anything related to Jacob’s disappearance, being named a person of interest has generated conversations and news reports about what investigators knew about Heinrich and when, and what they are learning now.

"It’s scary. It’s a new place," Patty Wetterlng said Wednesday. "If it’s Heinrich, it’s bad. ... But we need to know ‘Where’s Jacob?' "

Heinrich, 52, is in federal custody after being charged with five counts of possessing and receiving child *advertiser censored*. A search warrant filed after his arrest shows that investigators searched Heinrich’s Annandale house this summer for evidence related to Jacob’s disappearance.

[...]

"We’d known of Danny Heinrich and Duane Hart," Patty said. "It seems to me they were always said in the same sentence."

She doesn’t like to speak at length about possible suspects in her son’s abduction and admits she’d rather know where Jacob is than who abducted him.
 
Behind the person of interest in the Jacob Wetterling investigation
By Pam Louwagie and Jenna Ross Star Tribune
January 1, 2016 — 11:26pm |

Long before he was named in the Jacob Wetterling abduction, Danny James Heinrich, now 52, led a troubled early life of burglary, drinking and financial difficulties, records and interviews show.
=========================================
The break-ins puzzled the owner of the Twice’s Nice consignment shop in Paynesville, Minn. First, eight pairs of men’s pants were stolen. Then six. Then seven. The burglar left a mess of broken glass and strewn clothes for pants worth just a few dollars each.

When, on the fourth break-in, police arrested Danny James Heinrich, store owner Cecelia Eliason couldn’t help but feel sorry for him: “I am most concerned for Danny’s future,” she wrote in a 1984 letter urging the court to ensure that Heinrich got job training. “I think that Danny will need a friend to help him become an honest, self-supporting and upstanding citizen.”

Long before he was named in October as a “person of interest” in the Jacob Wetterling abduction, Heinrich, now 52, led a troubled early life of burglary, drinking and financial difficulties, records and interviews show. Decades ago, investigators considered him a suspect in not only 11-year-old Jacob’s 1989 abduction but also a series of masked attacks in Paynesville, where Heinrich grew up with few friends and several encounters with police.

Authorities first searched his house for evidence of Jacob a quarter century ago, but only recently raised his name publicly after matching Heinrich’s DNA to what they long believed might be a connected crime — a Cold Spring boy’s 1989 kidnapping and assault.

(much more at the link)
 
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