Random Disappearance of Jacob Wetterling Exposed A National Crime Crisis (14 items)

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  (#1) Jacob Was Taken On His Way Home With Friends

  On October 22, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob, his best friend, Aaron, and his brother, Trevor, biked to a video rental store about 15 minutes from home. Heading back around 9 pm, the boys rode through a dark part of the area. They were nearly home when they passed a long, gravel driveway and heard rustling sounds. The next thing the boys knew, a masked man held them at gunpoint.

  After asking for their ages, the man let Trevor and Aaron go, but kept Jacob. He drove him a short distance from the area, where he assaulted and fatally shot the boy.  
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  (#2) Police Called Off The Search After Six Hours

  Aaron and Trevor quickly alerted their parents and the Stearns County Sheriffs Office. They were in disbelief; these kinds of crimes rarely happened in the area. After making sure it wasn't a prank, the police began their search.

  Although they later said otherwise, many neighbors revealed Stearns County police officers did not question them that night. Instead, they called off the search at 3 am - six hours after Jacob disappeared.
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  (#3) The Police Made Mistakes From The Beginning

  The decision to call the search off mere hours after Jacob's disappearance, without having interviewed all of the neighbors, likely cost the boy his life. Data shows 88.5% of child abduction victims are killed within the first 24 hours of being kidnapped. What the police do in those early hours is critical, and most experts say the most important initial step is canvassing the neighborhood.

  According to Vernon Geberth, a law enforcement trainer, author, and former NYPD lieutenant:

  I can tell you that every major case that I was in charge of in the city of New York that resulted in a successful conclusion was based on a good neighborhood canvass, where people were asked to report anything, even though they didn't think it was important. It turned out to be important.
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  (#4) Another Boy Was Nearly Abducted Before Jacob

  One of the many residents that police failed to question that night was Jacob's friend Adam Klaphake. A few years before Jacob's kidnapping, an unknown person grabbed Adam and threw him to the ground. Then, a couple of months before Jacob was taken, someone followed Adam in a car matching the description of the abductor's vehicle. Adam himself saw the connection, but when he approached the Stearns County Sheriff's Office in 2004, they didn't investigate further.

  "I remember leaving out of there just so angry because they weren't listening to anything I had to say," Adam said.
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  (#5) After Calling Off The Search, The Police Enlisted The Country's Help

  After calling off the search the first night, police reached out to the public and the media almost immediately, instead of keeping the case local. News of Jacob's disappearance quickly captured the attention of the country, much to the chagrin of state crime bureau agent Dennis Sigafoos. He told the lead investigators it was the wrong approach and stressed how it took officers and resources away from other parts of the investigation.

  "We're focusing on things hundreds of miles away at times," Sigafoos says. "Nobody [was] even looking at the neighborhood, from what I saw."

  When law enforcement asked people to call in leads, they were inundated with thousands from all over the country. By August 2016, they'd received over 50,000 tips. Not one of them led anywhere, and many were just lies.

  "It appeared to me that because of the volume of the news and the leads coming in, that the case was lost right there," Sigafoos recalls.
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  (#6) Jacob's Kidnapper Had Done It Before

  Law enforcement started suspecting Danny Heinrich a little over a month after Jacob disappeared. Nine months before Jacob's abduction, a boy named Jared Scheierl was taken in a similar manner - but returned home safely. It was the second abduction to happen in a year in an area where such crimes were incredibly rare.

  When asked to identify the perpetrator from a photo lineup, Jared picked out Heinrich. But because Jared's description of Heinrich's car didn't match perfectly, prosecutors released him. After Jacob's kidnapping, however, Jared was interrogated again.

  Both abductions occurred at night, on the side of a road, at gunpoint, and by a man who matched the physical description of Jared's kidnapper.

  "There were details that I recognized right away that indicated it was the same demeanor," Jared recalls. "Some of the phrases were similar, description of the voice was similar."
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  (#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.
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  (#8) Officials Failed To Thoroughly Investigate Danny Heinrich's Past Crimes

  Danny Heinrich had a lengthy criminal history. In the mid-1980s, boys reported a strange man grabbing them off their bikes and sexually assaulting them at night in downtown Paynesville, MN, only a few blocks away from where Heinrich lived. The boys spoke of a stocky man with a raspy voice - the same physical description Jared Scheierl gave about his kidnapper. The man even asked the same questions as he did Trevor, Aaron, and Jacob before taking the latter. 

  When Kris Bertelsen, one of the people attacked as a boy, heard about Jacob, he recognized the similarities immediately:

   I remember thinking, 'Was this the same guy? Could it be? Is it possible? How does this happen?'
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  (#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, 2016

   

  Nearly 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.
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  (#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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  (#11) The Stearns County Sheriff's Office Was Not Trained For Crimes Like This

  Stearns County's clearance rate in 1989 was incredibly low, and that played a part in the failure to solve Jacob's case. The question became whether that number reflected police neglect, or something greater. Many argue small police departments at the time weren't properly trained to deal with rare crimes like child abduction. The fact police officers didn't question all the neighbors, for instance, reflects that lack of training. 

  "Crimes were being committed that were unsolvable for the education and the background of the individuals holding the position of sheriff," State Representative Al Patton said. 

   
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  (#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. 
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  (#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.
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  (#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.

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