Talking Points: What happened to Jacob Wetterling; the 27-year search for answers
MINNEAPOLIS — This Sunday will mark exactly 34 years since 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted as he road his bike a half mile from his St. Joseph home.
For 27 years, Patty Wetterling searched for her missing son.
This week her new book: "Dear Jacob, A Mother's Journey of Hope" was published. It's a blow-by-blow account of the investigation and how in the end it was Patty, blogger Joy Baker and survivor Jared Scheierl who put together the pieces that lead to the case being finally solved.
On Talking Points, Esme Murphy sat down with Patty Wetterling and Baker to talk about the book.
In 2010, Baker, a hospital marketing executive at the time, starting 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.
"No offense Sheriff, you've had Stearns County's had this for 25 years. I want the team back, you know, the BCA, the FBI, you know, multi- jurisdictional Task Force" said Wetterling.
It was that push that lead to the 2015 arrest of Danny Heinrich on child pornography charges. The book details the agonizing choice the Wetterlings were offered: allow Heinrich to confess to Jacob's murder but only receive a 20-year sentence for child pornography or keep pursuing the investigation. The Wetterlings chose the 20-year plea deal in return for Heinrichs confession that finally after 27 years led law enforcement to were he buried Jacob.
"All those years I kept saying I'm searching for my son, I'll let the rest of the world deal with the guy who did it. I needed answers," said Wetterling.
RELATED: Patty Wetterling talks new book, "Dear Jacob: A Mother's Journey of Hope"
The answers were horrifying. Heinrich confessed to Jacob's kidnapping, molestation and murder as well as the kidnapping and molestation of Scheierl. Patty and Jerry Wetterling had searched for 27 years only to find out their son had been murdered within hours of his kidnapping.
The book also details how 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 now.
Talking Points airs every Wednesday and Thursday at 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., live on CBS News Minnesota.
NOTE: Below is a preview of Talking Points presented on "The 4."
