“Somebody took Jacob”
On October 22, 1989, 11 YO Jacob Wetterling bikes home and disappears with a gunman into the night. 9 months earlier, 12 YO Jared Scheierl gets ice cream and vanishes shortly after, but a few hours later, he makes it back home: 27 years later, he would be the key to finally solving Jacob’s disappearance, taking down one of the most terrifying men the state of Minnesota has ever seen.
On October 22, 1989, 11 YO Jacob Wetterling bikes home and disappears with a gunman into the night. 9 months earlier, 12 YO Jared Scheierl gets ice cream and vanishes shortly after, but a few hours later, he makes it back home: 27 years later, he would be the key to finally solving Jacob’s disappearance, taking down one of the most terrifying men the state of Minnesota has ever seen.
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00:00 Today, October 12th, I am 5 feet tall.
00:03 My favorite food is steak.
00:05 My favorite color is blue.
00:07 My best friend is Erin Larson.
00:09 And my newest friend is Kaylee.
00:11 This is the last known footage of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling,
00:15 recorded just 10 days before he disappeared on October 22nd, 1989.
00:20 What follows is one of the largest searches for a missing person in U.S. history.
00:25 Wetterling was abducted at gunpoint last night while riding his bike with two other boys.
00:30 He grabbed Jacob and then he told me to run as fast as I could into the woods or else he'd shoot.
00:35 New evidence tonight leads the FBI to believe that Jacob Wetterling's kidnapper may have struck before.
00:41 Only 10 miles from where Jacob was abducted,
00:43 Jared Shirel was also kidnapped and assaulted just 6 days before his 13th birthday in 1989.
00:51 Decades later, he will be the key to solving not only his own case,
00:55 but also a series of attacks on other young boys in Minnesota, including Jacob Wetterling.
01:00 This crime was so horrific in nature and it's gone on for 25 years.
01:06 How many psychopathic pedophiles can exist in a 20-mile radius?
01:10 I want answers. I want to know what happened.
01:13 I'm going to give it 110%. If the answer's out there, then I'm going to find it.
01:18 St. Joseph, Minnesota.
01:21 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling lives with his three siblings, Amy, Trevor, and Carmen,
01:26 and his mom and dad, Patty and Jerry.
01:29 It's October 22nd, 1989.
01:31 It was a chilly but not too chilly October morning.
01:34 We got up, Jacob and I went fishing and then came back for noon kickoff for the Vikings game.
01:39 It was kind of a family tradition, watching Vikings football.
01:42 That evening, Jacob's parents go to a dinner party at a friend's house about 25 minutes away.
01:47 They were going to be back later that night, and they planned for the kids to stay at home while they were gone.
01:52 We were in the middle of dinner. Trevor calls, asks Patty if he and Jacob and Aaron
01:57 could ride their bikes down to the local convenience store and rent a movie.
02:02 There's nothing between us and the store. It's farm field mostly and a few houses.
02:06 But it was starting to get dark and I said, "No, you know, find something to do. We've got plenty to do."
02:11 But the kids keep asking.
02:14 They convince Patty and Jerry to let them go to the store with their friend Aaron,
02:18 if they take flashlights and head straight back home afterwards.
02:22 St. Joseph is usually a very peaceful place, and the Wetterlings figure the kids will be fine,
02:27 as long as they watch out for traffic.
02:29 It must have been about 45 minutes.
02:31 The phone rang and they called for me to come and take this call.
02:34 And it was our next door neighbor who called and said,
02:37 "You have to leave that party right now and come home."
02:40 He came back to the table and said, "We gotta go."
02:42 And I said, "You know what? Aren't those kids back yet?"
02:45 And he said, "Somebody took Jacob."
02:48 Patty and Jerry are horrified.
02:51 They rush home to find Trevor and Aaron in a state of shock.
02:55 Trevor was just agitated.
02:58 And I remember Aaron, Aaron was like hiding in the corner, biting his nails.
03:02 He just wanted to disappear.
03:04 They had witnessed something awful.
03:06 Why don't you give me anything you can remember about this male patty that approached you guys, okay?
03:12 He was like a man.
03:13 Was he?
03:14 Yeah, like a...
03:15 Was this for like, nylon things?
03:17 Or the mask?
03:18 You know what color it was?
03:20 Black.
03:21 The kids tearfully explain what happened.
03:24 After picking up a movie from the store,
03:26 Jacob, Trevor, and Aaron started to ride their bikes home.
03:29 But then, Aaron heard a sound coming from the side of the road.
03:32 You know, it was kind of tall grass.
03:34 A kind of a shiver went through me, and I didn't know if it was, you know, just the wind or an animal.
03:38 But just something didn't feel right, and I just remember,
03:41 the first thing I saw was kind of the flash of the gun.
03:44 A masked man threatened the kids with a gun,
03:48 forcing them to get off their bikes and go into a ditch.
03:51 At first, they thought it was just a high school kid playing a prank,
03:54 but they quickly realized how terrifying the man actually was.
03:58 He said he would shoot them if they didn't lay down in the grass and turn off their flashlights.
04:03 So they followed his orders.
04:04 The silhouette probably sent chills down my spine to hear his voice again.
04:08 And he asked Trevor to look at him and tell him how old he was,
04:11 saying with me, and then saying with Jacob,
04:13 and then, you know, he told Trevor to run as fast as he could in the woods or else he would shoot.
04:17 And then Trevor was gone maybe 10 seconds.
04:20 You know, he basically did the same thing with me and told me to run.
04:22 Trevor and Aaron ran as fast as they could,
04:25 knowing the man could decide to shoot them at any moment.
04:28 They turned around, hoping to see Jacob following them.
04:31 But both Jacob and the attacker disappeared.
04:33 Trevor and Aaron frantically went back to the house to get help.
04:37 They escaped to safety, but they had no idea where Jacob went
04:40 or what the man planned to do with him.
04:42 I was the last person, you know, with him.
04:44 You have that guilt of, he should be here and I shouldn't be here.
04:48 Hearing Trevor and Aaron's story, the Wetterlings are devastated
04:51 and desperate for answers about where their son is and who took him.
04:55 Trevor and Aaron give as many details as they can about their attacker.
04:59 The search for Jacob becomes one of the largest searches for a missing person in U.S. history.
05:04 As days pass, no one can find him.
05:07 But the Wetterlings' best hope could come from another victim,
05:10 a young boy named Jared Shirel.
05:13 There were details that I recognized right away.
05:15 The description of the voice was similar.
05:18 There was a number of details that were pretty consistent to my case.
05:23 January 13th, 1989, nine months before Jacob's disappearance,
05:28 12-year-old Jared Shirel lived a happy life with his family
05:31 in the small town of Cold Spring, Minnesota, just 10 miles from the Wetterlings.
05:35 That night, he went ice skating with his friends.
05:38 Afterwards, they got malts from a cafe.
05:40 What started as a typical night quickly took a turn for the worse.
05:44 When it was time for the boys to head home, Jared walked up to his friend, Cory.
05:48 There's a little alleyway out back, and we walked through the alleyway.
05:51 And the one thing that I will always capture
05:54 was Jared asked me to walk him home.
05:56 And I said no.
05:58 Jared said goodbye and started to walk home alone.
06:01 But when he didn't get back on time, his family started to panic.
06:05 Where the hell would he be?
06:06 It doesn't take an hour to get from the restaurant to the house.
06:10 No one knew where Jared was, but nearly two hours after he said goodbye to his friends,
06:14 his parents saw him running up to the house, distraught.
06:17 Right away, he said he was attacked, and the man who did it was still out there.
06:22 His parents called the police, and Jared had to relive his traumatic experience
06:26 for any hope of catching the man who did this to him.
06:29 It was probably 9, 9.30, when I started walking home.
06:33 A car approached me.
06:34 I just started giving this guy directions.
06:37 The man had got out of the car.
06:39 He grabbed me.
06:40 He said, "Get the f*** in the car. I have a gun, and I'm not afraid to use it."
06:45 Jared followed the man's orders, doing everything he could to survive.
06:48 He studied the car as much as possible,
06:51 hoping he would be able to escape and use the details later to help catch the attacker.
06:55 He noticed there was a police scanner inside the car.
06:58 The man made Jared pull his hat over his eyes and lay down in the back seat.
07:02 But still, he paid attention to every turn they took.
07:05 After driving for about 15 minutes, the man turned onto a gravel road and stopped the car.
07:11 Jared was gripped by fear as the man approached him.
07:14 Then, the 12-year-old was sexually assaulted in the car.
07:17 When it all ended, Jared was terrified, wondering what the attacker was planning to do to him next.
07:22 But to his surprise, the man drove him right back to Cold Spring.
07:26 About two miles from the Shirels' house, he gave Jared his snowsuit back,
07:30 but he kept some of his other clothes, and he threatened the young boy before letting him go.
07:34 He had said, "It's okay to talk about this, but if they come close to finding out who I am,
07:39 I'll find you and kill you."
07:42 The attacker told Jared to run.
07:44 If he turned around, the man would shoot.
07:47 Jared sprinted back home, desperate to get away.
07:50 After going through an unimaginable attack at such a young age,
07:53 it's up to Jared to explain what happened.
07:55 He tells the police every detail he can remember about the car,
07:59 and the man who assaulted him, hoping to help them catch this monster.
08:03 Jared says he was wearing camouflage, and he tells them about the police scanner inside the car.
08:08 He even directs them along the route they drove.
08:10 "It's sad to picture it, but in order to do that,
08:13 I had to lay in the backseat of the squad car with my eyes covered and just go off my memory."
08:19 Three days after Jared's abduction, police identify a possible suspect,
08:23 Danny Heinrich, a former member of the National Guard.
08:27 He's already had other run-ins with the law, like burglaries.
08:30 He also has a few DWIs, and during one stop,
08:33 an officer noticed he had a police scanner in his car, just like what Jared had described.
08:38 In a photo lineup, Jared identifies two men he thought looked similar to his attacker.
08:43 One of them was Heinrich, but he can't narrow it down to one suspect,
08:47 and police can't charge anyone.
08:49 Jared has to go home knowing the man who assaulted him, and threatened to kill him, is still out there.
08:54 "I think I slept on my parents' bedroom floor for the first year.
08:58 You know, the level of fear that you go through, the emotions, anxieties that you learn to overcome."
09:05 Jared thinks he's the man's only victim, but later that year,
09:08 he hears about Jacob Wetterling's abduction in the nearby town of St. Joseph,
09:13 and immediately notices the similarities to his own kidnapping.
09:16 Jared wonders if it might be the same culprit,
09:19 and he wants to do everything he can to stop him and help find Jacob.
09:22 December 13th, 1989.
09:25 Almost two months after Jacob Wetterling's disappearance,
09:28 Jared Shirel works with FBI agents to make a sketch of the man who attacked him.
09:32 They see similarities between the sketch and Danny Heinrich,
09:35 and three days later, the FBI brings Heinrich in for questioning.
09:39 They ask where he was on the nights of both Jared and Jacob's kidnappings.
09:43 He doesn't have an alibi for either, and he agrees to give them his shoes,
09:46 a hair sample, and the tires from his car.
09:49 The shoe prints and tire tracks left at Jacob's kidnapping site are similar,
09:53 which helps officers to get a search warrant.
09:55 Once inside Heinrich's house, they find radio scanners, black boots, camo pants,
10:00 and even photos of young boys.
10:03 However, police let him keep the photos, and they leave.
10:06 February 9th, 1990.
10:08 Nearly a year after Jared was attacked, the FBI matches fibers from his snowsuit
10:13 with the fiber sample from the car Danny Heinrich was driving.
10:17 He's arrested on probable cause for Jared's kidnapping and sexual assault.
10:21 FBI profilers help set up the interrogation.
10:24 They even stuff papers in folders and write Heinrich's name on them,
10:27 trying to intimidate him and make it seem like they have a lot of evidence.
10:31 But in reality, they need him to confess.
10:34 They hold him overnight in jail, but he denies everything.
10:37 The county attorney decides they don't have enough evidence to charge him with anything,
10:41 and they have to let him go.
10:43 Suspicion grows, and while they can't prove anything yet,
10:46 Jacob's family refuses to give up their fight to find him.
10:49 We are constantly looking at this case.
10:51 We're not going to put it in a drawer.
10:53 We're not going to forget about it.
10:54 We are going to stay committed to getting this resolved.
10:57 We owe that to the Wetterling family and the community to get an answer to them.
11:01 When your case gets cold, the only person that can keep it in the public eye
11:06 is a loved one, and they have tried to do that,
11:09 and Patty has never stopped trying to keep Jacob's face out there.
11:14 I never want to have to look Jacob in the eye and say,
11:17 "You know, I wanted to keep going, but I got tired," or "It was so long."
11:22 We never quit, ever.
11:24 Meanwhile, the pressure builds on Jared.
11:27 He wants to do everything he can to help connect his case to Jacob's, and to bring answers.
11:32 Police often pull him out of class at school,
11:34 and even though they try to keep his identity private,
11:37 rumors spread quickly in the small town that he's the boy who was assaulted.
11:41 He constantly has to answer questions,
11:43 and investigators keep pushing him to tell them for sure who did it,
11:47 even though he doesn't know.
11:48 One particular interview, my parents weren't allowed in the room.
11:52 I was drilled with all the necessary details,
11:56 and then questioned in regards to how certain I was on those details.
12:01 It led into, "You know who this person is?"
12:04 And, you know, as much as I wanted to provide the answer, I didn't know the answer.
12:09 I finally broke down in tears, and my parents had seen me and said, "We're done."
12:15 Jared's family decides to leave Cold Spring,
12:18 hoping to help him move on and feel like a regular kid again.
12:21 They want to protect him from all the pressure,
12:23 and also from the attacker, who still lurks free.
12:26 They move just about 20 miles away to their new home in Painesville, Minnesota,
12:31 hoping for life to become more peaceful.
12:33 But Jared and his family have no idea about the horrors that are already going on there,
12:38 and they won't find out for over two decades.
12:41 For years, Jared Shirell's case and Jacob Wetterling's kidnapping remain unsolved.
12:46 It seems like there's no hope for finding Jacob or catching the man who took him.
12:50 But over 20 years after the kidnappings,
12:53 one blogger will make a discovery that changes everything.
12:56 I was looking for something new to write about,
12:59 and a story came on the news about the Jacob Wetterling case,
13:02 and I thought, "What happened here?"
13:04 You know, "How does a kid just disappear from here?"
13:07 And she's got the benefit of not being law enforcement,
13:10 so people will talk to her differently, and she keeps uncovering things.
13:15 I spent a lot of time at the library and online and going through old newspaper articles,
13:21 and I figured out early on that I really wanted to talk to this guy named Jared.
13:28 Around 2013, Joy Baker reaches out to Jared.
13:32 She found a newspaper article about a series of unsolved kidnappings
13:36 and assaults of young boys in Painesville, Minnesota,
13:39 the town where Jared and his family moved to after his assault in Cold Spring,
13:43 only about 20 miles away.
13:45 Starting in 1986, three years before Jared and Jacob's attacks,
13:49 there were multiple reports of a man terrorizing young children in Painesville.
13:54 He would follow kids riding their bikes or simply walking around town.
13:57 He would then grab them, ask their age, and assault them before letting them go.
14:02 Police were never able to stop the man or figure out who he was,
14:06 but Joy Baker thinks those assaults could be connected to Jared and Jacob's kidnappings.
14:11 When Joy talks to Jared, he's shocked.
14:13 It's the first time he has ever heard about these other cases in Painesville.
14:17 25 years later, and I had learned this from Joy.
14:21 You can't imagine my eyes when I had seen that and just thinking, "I live here."
14:28 To Joy and Jared, they sound strikingly similar to his kidnapping,
14:32 and even the FBI agents hadn't connected the cases together.
14:35 They asked me to send them the article. They weren't aware.
14:39 If we could have found them and piled up cases of abuse by him then,
14:44 to me, it's just something, again, where we failed, it still bothers me.
14:49 For decades, Jared thought he was the only survivor,
14:52 but as soon as he learns there are others, he decides to conduct his own investigation.
14:57 He could be the connection police need to find Jacob
15:00 and to bring justice for all the young boys and families impacted by the attacker.
15:05 That initially was the reason that drove me to the amount of investigating or researching that I have done
15:11 is the fact that I am a parent now.
15:13 I couldn't fathom having to go through that or experience their sense of loss.
15:19 Over the next couple years, Jared and Joy continue to investigate.
15:23 They do countless hours of research, and Jared finds and reaches out to other survivors.
15:28 Within the first week, I talked to one of the victims and just got details of his attack,
15:35 and they knew who I was. They were comfortable talking, and it led to a domino effect.
15:40 Finally, after all of Jared and Joy's work, investigators look again at the Painesville cases, along with Jared's.
15:47 Authorities still have a hair sample from an early suspect who lived in Painesville at the time, Danny Heinrich.
15:54 With advancements in technology, investigators are able to use DNA from Jared's clothes he wore on the night of his attack
16:00 and compare it with the DNA from Heinrich's hair sample.
16:03 It's a match. Police now have concrete evidence that Heinrich is the one who attacked Jared,
16:09 but sadly, Jared finds that he won't be able to put him in jail for it.
16:13 They said, "The good news is we have your guy. The bad news is statutes of limitations exist in your case, and we cannot prosecute him."
16:22 That made me feel like I've worked hard to find this answer, and I get the answer, but I don't get prosecution. It's not fair.
16:32 Even though Jared can't get Heinrich convicted for his case, he still wants to help the other families who need answers.
16:38 Because of the work Joy and Jared did, police are able to investigate further into Jacob's disappearance.
16:44 They get a search warrant for Heinrich's house.
16:46 They don't find evidence about Jacob or the Painesville attacks, but they do find binders of child pornography.
16:52 July 28, 2015. Heinrich is arrested on child pornography charges, but while investigators believe he took Jacob,
17:00 they still don't have definitive proof.
17:02 They may never know where Jacob is or what happened to him if Heinrich doesn't confess.
17:07 In a desperate attempt for answers, they come up with a shocking deal for him.
17:11 If he shows them where Jacob is, then he won't be charged in his case.
17:15 They will also drop all but one of the child pornography charges.
17:19 U.S. Attorney Andrew Lugar thinks it's the only way to get the truth, and the Wetterlings agree to offering the deal to Heinrich.
17:26 We had belief, but not evidence.
17:28 So my job, under all of these awful circumstances, put him behind bars for a long time and get the answers that this family
17:37 and the state of Minnesota have been looking for for almost 27 years.
17:41 Was it a hard decision?
17:43 No, not really. For nearly 27 years, we've been looking for Jacob. We wanted to know, where's Jacob?
17:51 Heinrich agrees to the deal.
17:53 After only 10 minutes in court, the prosecutor asks if he kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered Jacob Wetterling.
18:00 He calmly responds, "Yes, I did."
18:03 He goes on to explain what happened when he took Jacob.
18:06 After he assaulted him, Heinrich thought he saw a police car patrolling nearby.
18:11 He panicked and shot Jacob.
18:13 He also confesses to Jared's abduction and sexual assault,
18:16 and leads the officers to a spot just outside of downtown Painesville, where he buried Jacob's body.
18:22 It was actually absolutely stunning to try and process how do you shift your head from hoping and searching to now knowing he wasn't alive.
18:34 Because of the plea deal he made, Danny Heinrich is not charged with Jacob's murder.
18:39 But in 2016, he's sentenced to 20 years in prison for child pornography.
18:44 He will be in his 70s when he gets out.
18:46 Jacob's death is now a painful reality.
18:49 But finally, the families have the truth about what happened nearly 30 years ago.
18:54 And Patty Wetterling says they almost feel a sense of calm knowing that Jacob isn't hurting.
19:00 I want to say Jacob, I'm so sorry.
19:03 It's incredibly painful to know his last days, last hours, last minutes.
19:10 That gunshot snuffed his breath out.
19:14 But his spirit is so strong, you can just see how it affects people.
19:18 He has taught us all how to live, how to love, how to be fair, how to be kind.
19:24 He speaks to the world that he knew, that we all believe in, and it is a world that's worth fighting for.
19:29 His legacy will go on.
19:31 We love you, Jacob.
19:34 Jacob's parents created the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, now the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center,
19:39 a program that helps families of missing children.
19:42 They also worked to pass the Jacob Wetterling Act, which required states to establish sex offender registries.
19:48 Patty Wetterling served as the chair of the board for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
19:53 and today she's a well-known advocate, never stopping her work to protect children and help other families.
19:59 We're fighting for our children.
20:01 They have hopes and dreams, and it's our job to find them.
20:04 We can never give up, ever.
20:06 Without Jared Shirel telling his story and his work with Joy Baker to get justice,
20:11 the Wetterlings may never have known what happened to Jacob.
20:14 Today, the Wetterlings are still close with Jared and Joy,
20:17 who helped bring answers for many families that have been fighting for decades.
20:22 I'm grateful for the level of support and encouragement that I've received along the way.
20:29 This is another step towards closure.
20:32 I give Jared all the credit in the world.
20:34 He's come forward and said, "I think it's the same guy. I want to do everything I can to help Jacob."
20:40 I hope some other people realize how brave Jared really is.
20:44 I also want to say one huge shout-out to Jared and Joy.
20:49 Jared had the courage to stand up and say, "This happened to me, and there are others."
20:55 We really did just adopt this man.
20:57 He was so incredibly, powerfully part of our resolution.
21:03 [END]