Thanks for the welcome. It's nothing that hasn't been shared on this board before. User Wisdom's post #953 quotes the Star Tribune from Oct 24, 1989. There is this quote. "Trevor said several cars passed the trio on their way to the store but no vehicles passed them as they rode their bicycles back toward home."
I think this is important for a couple reasons. This puts at least two vehicles in the neighborhood just 20 minutes before the abduction. With the Wetterling vehicle gone, just how many possible residents could have been back there on 91 that could have had traffic?
Another interesting comment in that same article was, "Just before they began running, “We saw him grab him (Jacob) by the arm,”. That's telling for the following reason. There was clearly enough light for the boys to see the perp, wearing all black, to grab Jacob and lead him away. I've read multiple times where users have referenced that it was just too dark to see anything. For them to visually see this is telling in that there was sufficient light that evening. How far were the boys away when they saw this, I don't know. I've never seen it reported.
Finally, the same article notes a neighbor heard tires "squealing" around 9pm. I will preface that I don't know who's being referenced. With that though, either this is a 3rd vehicle back there or one of the "several" cars that passed the boys on the way to the store. And why would a vehicle be accelerating hard enough to squeal at 9pm? To me that sounds like a rear wheel drive car, something of similar nature that DR described earlier in the day. Could that have been his motivation for noting about a car driving crazily that day? We all wish we knew.
Welcome to the thread StinkSprings! In the future, if you want to reference an earlier post, you can just click on the number of the post (in this case #953) and a menu comes up, then you use "copy link" and bring it back and paste it in your current post. That way everyone can follow the link without having to search for it. Hope that helps.
As far as the boys being able to see Jacob and the abductor in the dark... The article Wisdom quoted says: "Just
before they began running, “We saw him grab him (Jacob) by the arm,” Trevor said." So they were not seeing this at a distance, but BEFORE they began running. So, when they were still right next to Jacob and the abductor. It has been reported many times it was very dark that night.
I have always been under the impression that the cars that passed the boys when they were biking TO the store were also heading North to the store, not South towards Wetterlings. The article does not say which direction the cars were traveling.
Here is the article Wisdom quoted:
Minneapolis Star Tribune
October 24, 1989
St. Joseph boy, 11, kidnapped at gunpoint
Pat Doyle, Staff Writer
[Stearns County Sheriff Charlie] Grafft said an account of the abduction provided by Jacob’s brother, Trevor, 10, is credible and authorities assume the boy has been kidnapped. Trevor said that he, Jacob, and Aaron Larson, 11, were returning on bicycles from a convenience store a mile from home where they had rented a videotaped movie. The area is about 5 miles west of St. Cloud.
They were about halfway home when a man wearing dark clothing, black boots and carrying a pistol walked out of a long gravel driveway leading to a farm.
“He had a mask; it looked like pantyhose, on his head,” Trevor said. “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.”
After the boys told their ages, “He looked at Aaron’s face and he told me to run to the woods as fast as I could,” Trevor said.
Said Aaron, “He told me to run, too, or else he’d shoot.”
Just before they began running, “We saw him grab him (Jacob) by the arm,” Trevor said. Several minutes later, he said, they looked around, but Jacob and the masked man were gone.
Trevor said several cars passed the trio on their way to the store but no vehicles passed them as they rode their bicycles back toward home. He said they heard rustling in the weeds along the road at one point but thought nothing unusual. Trevor and Aaron said they didn’t hear or see a vehicle, but a person who lives nearby told police he heard tires squealing at about 9 p.m.
“I have a very sick feeling there was a car and he was taken away,” Jerry Wetterling said.
