Talking Points: Patty Wetterling talks new book, "Dear Jacob: A Mother's Journey of Hope"
MINNEAPOLIS — This week, Patty Wetterling's new book "Dear Jacob: A Mother's Journey of Hope" will be released. The book details her 27-year search for her missing son, Jacob.
The book, written with blogger Joy Baker, gives a dramatic account of the real-life events that the Wetterling family went through.
It also details how in the end, it was the persistence of Patty, blogger Joy Baker and survivor Jared Scheierl that lead to the case finally being solved.
Here is Esme Murphy with Talking Points.
For 27 years, from Jacob Wetterling's abduction in 1989 to the final confession by Jacob's murderer Danny Heinrich in 2016, it was the biggest news story in Minnesota and also the biggest mystery.
On the night of Oct. 22, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob was biking with his best friend, Aaron, and brother, Trevor, to a convenience store to rent a movie, when a man wearing a mask jumped out of the darkness and took Jacob. The abduction happened along a stretch of road just outside of St. Joseph, Minnesota.
The immediate searches were massive involving the National Guard and hundreds of volunteers, but for more than two decades, the case remain unsolved.
In 2010, more than 21 years after the kidnapping, a hospital administrator — Baker — began blogging about the case.
Through her research, a set of unsolved sexual assaults in Paynesville, Minnesota on teen boys in the late 1980s was uncovered. Eventually, Baker and abuse survivor, Jared Scheierl, in 2013 and 2014, were able to connect the unsolved Paynesville cases to Jared's unsolved molestation case and, ultimately, to Jacob's case.
It was only then after relentless pressure from Patty and Jerry Wetterling that the case was reopened. DNA was retested and that led to a man called Danny Heinrich. In 1989, Heinrich had briefly been considered a suspect and was even arrested for a short time, but was released after he lawyered up.
For the next 20 years, investigators would focus on other suspects, including a neighbor, who were all innocent in Jacob's case.
In 2015, Heinrich was arrested on child pornography charges, and in 2016, as part of a plea deal that the Wetterling family agreed to, Heinrich led law enforcement to where he had buried Jacob in Paynesville.
Under the plea deal, Heinrich pleaded guilty to child pornography and was not charged in the murder. It was a plea deal Patty and Jerry Wetterling agreed to because it finally led them to Jacob.
Patty Wetterling and co-author Joy Baker were guests on WCCO Sunday Morning at 10:30 a.m.
"This wasn't the first time that Jerry and I had been offered, 'Do you want, do you want justice or do you want Jacob,' basically, and I have said, all those years, I am searching for my son. I will let the rest of the world deal with the guy who did it," Patty Wetterling said.
Heinrich is scheduled to be released from federal prison in 2032 when he will be 69 years old. Prosecutors had said when he is released they will begin the process of civilly committing him under the state sex offender laws.
The new book details the ins and outs of the case, including how Patty, Joy and Jared put pieces together that finally lead authorities to Heinrich.
The book also details how Patty Wetterling, in the midst of her grief, became one of the nation's foremost missing children's advocates. She was an original board member of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The book is available on Tuesday.
You can watch WCCO Sunday mornings with Esme Murphy and Adam Del Rosso every Sunday at 6 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.
