By Steve Irsay
Court TV
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.
|
| Jacob, left,
with his older sister Amy, now 26. |
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.
|
|
Jacob in his
hockey gear. He was
a star goalie and
also played soccer,
baseball and
football. |
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.
|
|
The Wetterling
family (L to R)
Trevor, Jerry, Jacob
(seated), Patty
(holding Carmen) and
Amy. Shortly after
Jacob's abduction,
Jerry and Patty
started the missing
kids foundation
bearing his name. |
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.
|
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.
|
|
Jacob
in
his
fifth-grade
school
photo.
The
image
adorned
flyers
sent
coast
to
coast. |
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.
|
|
Jacob
holding
new-born
brother
Trevor.
Jacob
often
slept
with
his
arm
around
his
younger
brother. |
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.
 |
| Jacob, left, and Trevor, who is now a 22-year-old student at Colorado State University. |
“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?
 |
| One of the last pictures of Jacob, on a day trip two months before he was kidnapped, wearing the same blue mesh shirt he wore the night he vanished. |
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.
Deputy
Pamela
L.
Crutchfield
webmaster
This
page
last
updated
June
19,
2008 |
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