Jacob Wetterling--October 22, 1989--Minnesota
Jacob Erwin Wetterling **Missing** First picture: Age 11 Second picture: Age progressed to Age 21 THE SEARCH FOR JACOB All Jacob Wetterling wanted to do was rent a video. At age 11 he was savvy enough to know that if mom said no, dad just might say yes. Jacob’s parents, Jerry and Patty, had left their house in St. Joseph, Minn. to attend a dinner party nearby. Jacob stayed behind to watch over his two younger siblings, Trevor, 10, and Carmen, 8. Jacob’s friend, Aaron Larsen, age 11, joined the group. It was a warm and overcast Sunday night in St. Joseph, population 2,200. Trevor Wetterling was the first to telephone about getting permission to go rent a video from the Tom Thumb convenience store. Trevor figured he had a chance of getting mom’s okay. The store was only a ten-minute bike ride away, and besides, it wasn’t even a school night because of a teachers’ conference the next day. Trevor’s pitch failed. Patty Wetterling was worried about drivers not being able to see the boys on the dark stretch of country road. Now it was Jacob’s turn. He called his dad. The boys had revised their plan. Trevor would carry a flashlight and Aaron Larson would wear a white sweatshirt. Jake, as his family and friends sometimes called him, would wear his father’s orange reflective jogging vest. And a 14-year-old neighbor would baby-sit for Carmen. The plan seemed sound to Jerry. More important perhaps was that Jerry knew October 22, 1989 had been a tough one for Jake. His son had skated poorly at hockey tryouts for his youth league in nearby St. Cloud. Renting the comedy “Naked Gun” might be just the thing to lift Jacob’s spirits. Jerry decided to allow Jacob and Trevor to ride to the Tom Thumb. It was the first time the two boys had permission to ride after sundown. At about 9:15 p.m. Jacob, Trevor and Aaron were making their way back from the store, videotape in hand. The older boys were on bikes; Trevor was on a push scooter. As they approached a particularly dark stretch of road, where a long gravel driveway led to a farm, the boys heard a low raspy voice call out. They were ordered to stop. Trevor was told to turn off his flashlight. A man wearing a stocking mask stepped out from the darkness. He had a gun. Next the boys were commanded off their bikes and scooter and ordered into a roadside ditch. The man looked into Trevor’s face and asked his age. Hearing the reply, the man told the younger Wetterling to run away and not look back. If he disobeyed, he would be shot, the man said. He did the same with Aaron. But as Aaron fled he saw the gunman grab Jacob by the arm of his red St. Cloud hockey jacket. Moments later, both boys looked back as they ran to Wetterling home. There was no sign of Jacob, the masked man, or any sound from a getaway vehicle. Charlie Grafft’s pager went off just as he was sitting down to watch the 10 o’clock news. A boy had been abducted. The crime scene was a mere four miles from the Stearns County Sheriff's house. When Grafft arrived, the sheriff was struck by the discarded bikes and the scooter laying in the ditch. “I looked everything over and said, ‘Oh boy, this is going to be a job,’” said Grafft. Grafft and his deputies searched with flashlights for three hours and only found a faint tire print. As news of the disappearance spread, St. Joseph, a town dotted with porch swings, stone churches and candy-stripped barber poles, swarmed with FBI agents and National Guard troops. Helicopters sliced the sky. Bloodhounds barked. In all, 36 square miles of farmland, woods and quarries were searched. All the activity yielded absolutely nothing. The Early Investigation The absence of the trail was clearly frustrating. A little more than a year after the crime, Grafft retired – in part because of his inability to solve it. Those who inherited the case from Grafft have felt the same frustration. A lead looks promising, and then it vanishes. Another tantalizing lead arrives and falls apart. Hope surges and then it is extinguished. Police have posted at least five different sketches of suspects. None of the renderings have worked. Early on, it did not look like it would be too hard to find the criminal. Days after Jacob’s disappearance, police began looking for a red Chevette. Ten people said that they saw the car at the Tom Thumb moments before the kidnapping. In a town where everyone pretty much knew the vehicle of choice of everyone else, the Chevette was unfamiliar. It turned out that the mystery car probably belonged to an art student. He called police told them that he had been in the area looking for things to sketch. His story was verified, and police moved on. Then a 19-year-old motorist came forward. The driver said that he had seen a man grab a boy and force him into a car at gunpoint. This car was spotted in southern Minn., a logical distance from St. Joseph. What happened next, according to the witness, added to the suspicion. The white car with the abducted boy ran a stop sign and sped off. It was a plausible story. Even the police were excited. They consulted with designers at General Motors to better determine the make and model of the white car. They even hypnotized the tipster to coax out more details. But doubts surfaced about the tipster's account and the lead fell apart. A few days later authorities thought they had another break. Witnesses claimed they saw an unusual man in his 50s in two St. Joseph convenience stores the day Jacob went missing, including at the Tom Thumb. The man, described as 6 feet tall with a large build and receding white hair, had silently glared at customers and did not buy anything. An alert was issued, as was a sketch. No results. Another suspect surfaced two months later. He was the “prime suspect”, police said. The M.O. certainly fit. Earlier in the year, a 12-year-old boy had been pulled into a car and molested. The boy had just finished ice skating with friends and was walking home alone. When the man dumped the boy out of the car, he was told to run. If he didn’t, he would be shot. Not only did the methodology fit, but so did the geography. This crime happened about 10 miles from where Jacob had disappeared. The inevitable sketch was issued. Like all the others, it led nowhere. Saddest of all are the lengths to which the Wetterlings have gone to find their missing son. In 1990 they dispatched a private investigator to Amsterdam. There was a report that a man and a boy resembling Jacob had been spotted at the airport. The investigator came back empty-handed. Link

Theories So who caught up with the boys on the dark road that night and grabbed Jacob? And why him, and him alone? From the start the FBI and child abduction experts believed the circumstances were highly unusual. The vast majority of child abductions are done by family members. They usually stem from some sort of custody dispute. Since stranger abductions are so rare, the first people scrutinized are those closest to the child. Patty and Jerry Wetterling were quickly eliminated as suspects. Jerry, who is white, was the president of the local chapter of the NAACP. Investigators wondered if the kidnapping was a hate crime. There were even early rumors that Jerry, a chiropractor, was himself involved. Authorities believe this rumor was fueled by people's unfamiliarity with Jerry’s religion. He is a Ba’hai. (Central to this religion is the belief that all people are of one race. They must unite to defeat prejudice and bring about world peace.) Then there was the problem of child witnesses and the gun. “What was unique about it was that we never had a kidnapping where there were witnesses and someone at gunpoint took the child in front of other children,” said Paul McCabe, a Minnesota FBI agent. What Trevor Wetterling and Aaron Larsen described – a mask, a gun and a selection process – spawned a variety of theories. The use of a mask suggested to some that the kidnapper might have been known in the community and was trying to shield his identity. Perhaps the boys even knew him. But the boys were in close physical proximity to the kidnapper, and heard his voice several times. They never identified the criminal as someone in particular. Investigators also could not recall an instance of a stranger child kidnapping in which a gun was involved. When pedophiles take children, it is for sex. They do not want to harm them physically. The gun suggests that violence was perhaps the kidnapper’s motive. Another theory is that the abductor stalked Jacob. The secluded crime scene suggests that the abductor did not just stumble upon the scene. And the reports of a suspicious man at the Tom Thumb store appear to back that up. Later, Jerry Wetterling recalled a moment from earlier on the day of the abduction that could also lend support to the stalker theory. That afternoon, Jerry and his two sons were skating at a hockey tryout. There were about 20 spectators. Suddenly, Jacob slipped out of sight. “It was very strange but very real,” Jerry remembered. “I had this sense of danger for Jacob. I can almost point to the spot on the ice where it happened to this day.” After relocating his son, Jerry’s feeling subsided. He thought nothing of it until a few days after the abduction. “It prompted me to wonder if possibly the abductor had been in the ice arena at that time, in a sense looking at Jacob or stalking him,” Jerry said. Also baffling was the kidnapper’s selection process. Abductors are generally not so picky. Presumably, the kidnapper knew a bit about what he was getting if he had stalked the boys. “In the Wetterling case the first conclusion was that it was a sexual abduction,” said Prof. Paula Fass, who discusses the case in her book, Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America. “The conclusion has been that when that type of selection takes place there is a preference being expressed for a certain age.” But Fass added that the age selection is not necessarily for a sexual purpose. Jim Rothstein, a retired New York Police Department detective currently researching the disappearance, goes so far as to suggest that Jacob was captured by a pedophile ring. These rings, Rothstein asserts, procure and trade boys. But case investigators say they have no evidence to support his theory. Recent Investigation Operating under the sex offender theory, and with few fresh leads, police spend most of their time reviewing the records of local child sex investigations. We still have leads mostly when someone gets arrested for another crime,” said Patty Wetterling, who still speaks with investigators weekly. “We’ve been lucky to have law enforcement involvement for at least 13 years.” While the kidnapping’s notoriety keeps the tips flowing, most of them aren't useful. “A lot of them are people who always had suspicions that a family member might have been a pedophile and they think we should look at that person for the Wetterling case,” said sheriff’s Det. Pam Jenson, who’s been assigned to the matter for the past two years. “The other calls are people who think they see a 12-year-old boy who looks like Jacob,” Jenson adds. “A lot of them don’t understand that Jacob would be a man now.” Remarkably, some of the most veteran investigators remain optimistic. “It’s been quite a while but there is always the possibility that someone will have a dose of conscience and may talk before their death,” said Patrol Lt. Dave Nohner, who worked the Wetterling case for 11 years. “There was a huge amount of emotion that ran with this case and whoever did this has to be carrying huge amounts of baggage.” Could It Be Him? Patty and Jerry Wetterling have spent more years looking for their son than they spent raising him. Patty still looks for Jacob every time she sees a group of young men. He would be 24 now. Brown hair, blue eyes, about six feet tall. Could it be him? “I used to teach high school math and I know statistics and I know the statistics are not good but I also know that some of these kids are still alive,” said Patty. “The phone rings, and I wonder. I get a letter with no return address, and I wonder. Until I know for sure, there is still a chance.” The family has endured daily drives past the spot where Jacob was snatched and years of prank calls like the answering machine message with a young man's voice whispering, "This is Jacob Wetterling and I want you to know I'm still alive." But the Wetterlings refuse to change their phone number or move from the four-bedroom home that Jacob biked away from 13 years ago. "What if he came home?" Patty asks. Link

***The Jacob Wetterling Foundation*** " The Jacob Wetterling Foundation works to create a safer world for kids by developing educational programs and collaborting with local communities to prevent the sexual exploitation and victimization of children." JWF’s mission is to protect children from sexual exploitation and abduction through its two programs: prevention education and victims’ assistance. Jacob Wetterling Foundation (JWF) is a private, non-profit 501(c)(3) agency established fifteen years ago on January 24, 1990. Following the 1989 abduction of their 11-year old son Jacob, Patty and Jerry Wetterling cofounded the organization to provide assistance to the community regarding all missing children cases in Minnesota. Currently, JWF is staffed by five full-time employees, one part-time case manager, and one executive-on-loan through a private donation. JWF is governed by an independent board of directors and an executive director. Patty Wetterling no longer serves in an active role for the Foundation. JWF develops and implements innovative, community-based prevention education initiatives. In addition to these important projects, JWF provides victims and their families with support and assistance and partners with other agencies to impact the drafting and passage of legislation on behalf of the safety and protection of children in Minnesota and nationally. Please go to http://www.jwf.org/ to find out more.

JACOB WETTERLING DOB: Feb 17, 1978 Missing: Oct 22, 1989 Age Now: 27 Sex: Male Race: White Hair: Brown Eyes: Blue Height: 5'0" (152 cm) Weight: 75 lbs (34 kg) Missing From: ST. JOSEPH MN United States Age Progressed Jacob's photo is shown age-progressed to 21 years. He was last seen at approximately 9:00 p.m. He was with his brother and another friend when they were threatened at gunpoint by an unknown individual. Jacob has a mole on his left cheek, a mole on his neck and a scar on his knee. ANYONE HAVING INFORMATION SHOULD CONTACT National Center for Missing & Exploited Children 1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stearns Co. Sheriff's Office (Minnesota) - Missing Persons Unit - 1-320-259-3700 Or Your Local FBI http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PubCaseSearchServlet?act=viewPoster&caseNum=731065&orgPrefix=NCMC&searchLang=en_US

Above Images: Sketches of Wetterling's abductor Sketches of Wetterling's abductor are posted above this case summary. The boys described the man as being approximately 40 to 50 years old and 5'8 with a husky build. He had broad shoulders and spoke in a low, raspy voice. A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) psychological profile of the abductor describes him as a Caucasian man, 25 to 35 years old in 1989, who holds a low-skilled job and probably a poor self-esteem stemming from physical deformities such as scars or acne. Authorities received two possible tips about Wetterling's case during the early stages of the investigation. Witness reported seeing an unidentified man in his fifties sat glaring at customers inside the Tom Thumb convenience store. He was in his fifties, about six feet tall with a large build and receding white hair. Two months after Wetterling disappeared, an unidentified man molested a twelve-year-old boy in Cold Spring, Minnesota, approximately ten miles from the location of Wetterling's disappearance. The boy had just finished ice skating and was walking home alone when he was pulled into a car and molested. Afterwards he was pushed out. The man instructed the boy to run from the area or risk being shot. The latter suspect's description matched Wetterling's abductor, as did the manner of the crime, but sketches of the two men failed to produce any leads in Wetterling's case. Around the time Wetterling was abducted, a witness reported seeing a car nearby. That car has always been the focus of the investigation. In February 2004, the car was identified and its owner questioned and cleared of any involvement in Wetterling's kidnapping. Investigators now believe his abductor was on foot rather than in a vehicle. Rumors floated that Wetterling's father, a chiropractor, was involved in his son's case. Investigators believe that the speculation was created after his father's religion was publicly disclosed. He is Ba'hai, a religion that believes all people are created as one race. Authorities eliminated both of Wetterling's parents as possible suspects early in the investigation. They did consider the possibility that Wetterling's abduction was a hate crime against his father, however. Many officials believe that the abductor may have followed the boys from the store, kidnapping Wetterling afterwards. Wetterling's father believes his son was stalked, possibly for several days, before he was abducted. In September 2004, authorities investigated whether a Warroad, Minnesota man was actually Wetterling. His co-workers reported to police that he resembled Wetterling's age-progression picture. The man said he was not Wetterling, but refused to confirm this by allowing a DNA test. Eventually investigators got his fingerprints from Arizona, where he had been arrested for a traffic offense. Fingerprints proved that the Warroad man was not Wetterling. Wetterling's family still lives in the same home they lived in back in 1989, and they have the same phone number. They have received several phone messages from people claiming to be Wetterling, but the calls always turned out to be hoaxes. His case remains unsolved. Wetterling played hockey, soccer, baseball and football at the time of his disappearance, and he liked to watch those sports on television as well. He also enjoyed playing Nintendo video games and building things, such as model kits. His favorite foods are steak, peanut butter and pizza. Wetterling commonly wears sweatshirts, sweatpants and Nike high-top sneakers. His family members have founded The Jacob Wetterling Foundation, an organization devoted to missing children. Investigating Agency If you have any information concerning this case, please contact: Stearns County Sheriff's Department 320-259-3700 http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/w/wetterling_jacob.html

Wetterling wins DFL endorsement in the Sixth District Patty Wetterling has won the D-F-L endorsement in the Sixth District, setting up what promises to be a rip-roaring battle for Congress with the G-O-P's conservative candidate, Michele Bachmann. Wetterling is making a second run in the Republican-leaning district. She became a national advocate for missing and exploited children after her eleven-year-old son vanished in 1989. It took her a whole afternoon to beat former state transportation commissioner, Elwyn Tinklenberg, for the party's backing. On the seventh ballot, she was just two votes shy of the 82 delegates needed for endorsement. Tinklenberg then conceded, and the delegates unanimously backed Wetterling. Wetterling backers say she offers a clear alternative to Bachmann, whose signature issue is a campaign against gay marriage. The incumbent, Representative Mark Kennedy, is now the presumptive G-O-P nominee for U-S Senate. http://www.kare11.com/news/ts_article.aspx?storyid=124847

Jan 6, 2009 6:25 pm US/Central Possible Wetterling Lead Brings Family Frustration (WCCO) Police in Milwaukee, Wis. are investigating a death-bed confession of a man who told a doctor he killed two children. A search warrant shows the man had pictures and information about Jacob Wetterling in his home. Records show a long list of disturbing materials found in the home of 62-year-old Vernon Seitz, including, "numerous letters, maps, stories regarding Joseph Wetterling" along with a black and white photo. Jacob was 11 years old when he was abducted from his hometown of St. Joseph, Minn. on Oct. 22, 1989. He, his brother Trevor and a friend of theirs were biking back home from a convenience store when a masked gunman took Jacob. A huge search was undertaken to find Jacob, but he hasn't been seen since. Seitz was a patient of psychologist Dr. Victoria Fetter who spoke with Milwaukee Police and also talked with WCCO about Seitz. According to Fetter, Seitz came to her 11 years ago wanting her to help him with a murder confession. Fetter said that Seitz claimed to have been forced to "pull the trigger" on two boys in 1958 when he was just 12 years old. Seitz apparently wanted her to put him in touch with any family members of these two children so that he could confess and clear his conscious. According to Fetter, police in Racine, Wis. investigated the confession but could find nothing that fit such a particular crime. She said police couldn't find any names or family members or even a homicide coming close to what he was claiming. Fetter said she continued to see Seitz over the past 11 years. She said he never mentioned the name of Jacob Wetterling to her nor did he ever claim to have any involvement with Jacob's disappearance. Fetter also said that Seitz considered himself a "psychic" who could help with missing children cases. After hearing about Seitz, Jacob's mother, Patty Wetterling, told WCCO-TV's Caroline Lowe that she thinks this is just another of several creepy people who had a strange obsession with her son's case. Patty said she contacted the Stearns County Sheriff, the county where Jacob went missing, after she heard of this information from a member of the news media. The sheriff said he had not heard anything about this alleged link and underscored her belief that this is just another creepy guy. Patty also said she was a bit frustrated about the "breakdown in communications" in which the Milwaukee law enforcement apparently didn't at least advise Stearns County about the so-called lead. She said the hardest part was telling her children again about another "development" in the case that doesn't get them answers to what happened to Jacob who was abducted 20 years ago in October. Patty is now a Child Rights Advocate. Patty, and her husband Jerry, created the non-profit Jacob Wetterling Foundation to carry out the mission to educate families and communities on ways to keep children safe. http://wcco.com/local/possible.wetterling.lead.2.901486.html