(#9) The Case Took 27 Years To Solve
Remains identified as Jacob Wetterling, Minnesota 11-year-old who was kidnapped in 1989 https://t.co/QEbjOqwMeH pic.twitter.com/56PFIH3Aup
— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) September 4, 2016Nearly 30 years after Jacob's abduction, the police were still chasing false leads and blaming the wrong people. Jared Scheierl heard about the Paynesville assaults in the 1980s. As an adult, he realized they were likely connected to Jacob's disappearance and his abduction. Determined to find answers, Scheierl approached the men in Paynesville who reported the assaults as children, so they could help each other figure out the mysterious man's identity.
After hearing each other's stories and piecing various descriptions together of the perpetrator, Scheierl and the men reached out to Jacob's case investigators to reveal what they knew. But it took a few years before investigators began listening and making connections.
Using Scheierl's clothes from the assault decades before, investigators performed a DNA test on hair the attacker left. Sure enough, it belonged to Danny Heinrich. With the DNA match, investigators obtained a warrant to search Heinrich's house.
In July 2015, investigators found explicit material involving children in Heinrich's house. Now, he was finally a suspect against whom they could build a solid case. One year later, Heinrich's lawyer arranged a plea deal in which, in exchange for Heinrich's confession to the kidnapping of Jacob and Jared, and the location of Jacob's remains, he would not be charged with the abduction or murder of Jacob.
In September 2016, Heinrich finally confessed to the crimes and led authorities to Jacob's remains. During his trial the next month, he issued an apology, before being sentenced to 20 years in jail on child pornography charges.
(#12) Many Law Enforcement Agencies Are Undertrained
Insufficient training wasn't just a problem with the Stearns County Sheriff's Office. Stearns County is one of many offices with low clearance rates in the United States, likely due to a lack of proper training. What's more, no national standards exist for how to investigate a crime, nor does the federal government intervene when local agencies fail.
There's not much research on how to improve the chances of solving a case, either.
(#14) There May Be Some Hope
Is there anything being done to try to fix all of this? Thankfully, yes. The Murder Accountability Project is trying to create an algorithm to raise clearance rates, particularly regarding potential serial crimes. According to the project:
The algorithm organizes more than 700,000 homicides into about 100,000 clusters by generating a unique Murder Group number based on the geography (either county or metropolitan area), victims' gender, and method of killing.
With these tools and others, future tragedies might be avoided.
(#7) The FBI Let Danny Heinrich Go
In December 1989, the top FBI agent on the case, Jeff Jamar, announced in a press conference his belief that a connection between Jacob's kidnapper and Jared's existed. When they took Danny Heinrich in for questioning, though, he repeatedly denied all accusations.
Authorities had to let him go because they lacked enough evidence to charge him.
(#13) No Federal Agency Exists To Hold Law Enforcement Accountable
While Stearns County's rates are undoubtedly low, they aren't the worst in the nation. Multiple law enforcement agencies in the United States clear less than 10 percent of their major crimes. And the federal government does not check their clearance rates, nor do they have an agency to which these local departments, sheriff's offices, and state crime bureaus are held accountable.
In fact, nobody even knows how many police departments exist in the United States. And there are no national benchmarks for crime clearance rates, either.
(#10) It Wasn't Just The Fault Of The Sheriff's Office
It wasn't just Stearns County Sheriff's Office that made mistakes. The FBI and a range of other law enforcement agencies dropped the ball, as well. But are authorities entirely to blame, or was the country unprepared for crimes like these on a fundamental level?
At the time, things like AMBER Alerts did not exist, and the country lacked the kind of federal laws necessary to deal with such rare crimes effectively. Finding sex offenders was a nearly impossible task.
Before Jacob disappeared, no national registry existed to help states monitor the location of sex offenders. The 1994 Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act created this, while AMBER Alerts came into play in 1996.
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About This Tool
The disappearance of Jacob Wetterling was one of the most famous crimes in the United States. On October 22, 1989, a young boy named Jacob Vettering was taken away by a masked man with a gun on a rural road near his home. The boy has never appeared since then. Until 2016, the criminal suspect Danny Heinrich was arrested. So far, the unsuspecting case that has plagued the US authorities for 27 years has been solved.
The criminal confessed his crimes of kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and killing Jacob Wetterling. In 1994, the U.S. Congress passed a bill named after the boy's name, requiring states to register criminals who sexually assaulted children and disclose their information to the public. The random tool introduced 14 details about this cruel crime.
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