Season 1, Episode 1: The Crime

A quick note before we start the first episode of In the Dark. We were planning to put this out next week, but just today, there was a big development in the case that's at the center of this podcast, so we're getting started early.

Today October 12th I'm 5 feet tall. My whole name is Jacob Irvin Waterling. My favorite food is steak. Favorite colours? My favorite I don't really have a favorite song. My favorite game is clue. My favorite thing to do most is watch football. My favorite sport is football.

On October 12, 1989, a sixth grader named Jacob Wetterling made this recording as part of a school project. Ten days later, he was kidnapped while riding his bike on a country road in a small town in central Minnesota.

It's a case that defied logic then and now.

It is a crime that has both captivated and frustrated Minnesotans for the time.

On the outskirts of his hometown of Saint Joseph, a young boy's

The most feared type of abduction, one by a complete stranger, no ransom note, no contact.

What happened to Jacob Wetterly?

I've been hearing the name Jacob Wetterling ever since I moved to Minnesota twelve years ago. Jacob's kidnapping was a huge deal here. It changed the way people parented their children. It made kids afraid to go outside at night, and it even led to a federal law that requires all states to maintain registries of sex offenders. This one case, this kidnapping of one eleven year old boy, changed the lives of millions of Americans. The case went unsolved for almost twenty-seven years.

Finally, we know. We know what the Wetterling family and all of Minnesota have longed to know since that awful night in nineteen eighty nine. We know the truth.

I went to the press conference this afternoon. The back of the room was a forest of cameras, and up in front behind a podium, and wrapping all the way around to the sides of the room, there were more than twenty men and women in suits and uniforms. the US Attorney, the Stearns County Sheriff, agents from the FBI, and the State Crime Bureau. They took turns at the microphone and offered their condolences to Jacob's parents, who were sitting a few feet away.

Twenty seven years is a very long time for an investigation to remain open and active. We are here today to Because of the perseverance of the investigative team, the commitment to aggressively follow up on every single lead, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, and the absolute belief that if we continued to press, we would eventually solve this case.

We got the truth the Wetterling family can bring him home, and it's time for all of us to have the closure and the peace that we're hoping can come next. Thank you.

But when a case takes twenty seven years to solve, we should stop and ask some tough questions of law. especially in a case like Jacob's, a case that's had devastating consequences far beyond the small town where this 11-year-old boy disappeared. I'm Madeline Barron and I'm an investigative reporter at American Public Media, and I spent the past nine months looking into the Jacob Wetterling case. And from the beginning, there were things about this case that stood out to me.

This is In the Dark, a new podcast from APM Reports. And over the next eight episodes, this is what we're going to do: we're going to look at the Jacob Wetterling case in a way that it hasn't been looked at before. We're going to find out why it took us. Or Smith twenty seven years to find the man who When all along he was We're going to look at what law enforcement did.

But before we get into what went wrong in this case, we need to talk about what happened that night. So let's go back to where it all began, Saint Joseph, Minnesota.

Good morning.

It's not more than.

I went out to meet Jacob's parents, Patty and Jerry, earlier this year, months before they knew what had happened to their son. They're in their sixties now. They still live on the outskirts of Saint Joseph. It's a small town, mostly Catholic, mostly white, and mostly surrounded by farmland. Patty and Jerry still live in the same cozy brown house on the edge of town. On the front of the house there was a string of lights that spelled out the word hope.

There's so many people in and out of this house.

Patty is this tiny woman, barely five feet, blonde hair, blue eyes. Jerry is tall, with a short white beard, and he has the look of a college professor, or maybe a therapist.

Some coffee.

Jerry's a chiropractor. He works out of an old house downtown that's been converted into an office. Back when Jacob was kidnapped, Patty was a stay-at-home mom to their four children, Amy, Trevor, Carmen, and Jacob. I wonder if we you know if we can talk just a little bit about Jacob.

J Jacob was our second child and he was a very large baby. I understood labor.

Yeah.

after he was born. He he was he was big, he was a happy kid, he

Very passionate. What he would do he would do a hundred percent. and uh really be into it. That was really cool.

He wanted to be a of a veterinarian. He loved animals. He loved we got Marcus, uh our puppy when Jake broke his arm and he just knew it wouldn't hurt if he had a puppy. I was a pushover. So we got we got uh Marcus and he would lay on the floor and, you know, drink water out of the bowl to show this dog how to do it.

Ha ha ha.

He he was uh he loved animals. Yeah. He was a g a good spirit.

That was Jacob as his parents remembered him, the last time they saw him, october twenty second, nineteen eighty nine, when he was eleven. Should we s can we just start with that day?

I don't know, I'd just as soon forget that day.

Yeah.

I'm sure.

Yeah.

Um yeah, it was a it was a hockey weekend. Our kids were in um The boys were in hockey.

It was a Sunday, but the kids set off school the next day. By late October, this part of Minnesota is usually well on its way to winter, but this Sunday was warmer, in the seventies even, and there were lots of kids out, running around wearing shorts and tossing footballs. There was a polka festival in town.

We'd love for you to come to spring training for a shot at this year's club.

But Major League was rated R. So they called up a fourteen year old girl who lived next door, Rochelle Jerzak, and the boys asked Rochelle for such a sixth grader in the eighties favor.

They wanted me to call Tom Thumb to get them to rent a movie that was R. 'Cause they thought maybe my voice sounded older.

Did you call over to Tom?

I didn't know.

Here like I'm not

Yeah, I um I don't know, that kind of stuff makes me nervous. Like I'm gonna get busted. I mean thinking about it now, like what would the worker at Tom Thumb Do, but nonetheless that was my mode of thinking at the time.

So a big no to major league. So they figured we'll just run a different movie. So they called their parents.

Trevor called and asked if they could ride their bikes to the store and rent a video and Um I said no. Um they hadn't really done that before. It's a mile, just down the hill. But it you know, that's cornfield, it's dark, there's nothing in between. Um, they'd never done it at night and um Trevor said, Well, let me talk to Dad and it was funny, you know, I remember calling him y like, your son would like to talk to you and Jerry went to the phone

My whole concern was a car hitting him, you know. And so being seen at dark. That was my own concern.

Trevor told his dad that he would carry a flashlight, and Jacob would wear a reflective vest.

And you said it should be okay, said

And so the girl next door, Rochelle, came over to watch Jacob's youngest sister Carmen.

I I mean I remember them putting on this reflective vest and then at least one or maybe both. Of the other boys had flashlights. And then that was kind of it.

The boys head out. It's about 8 30 at night. Jacob and Trevor are on bikes. Aaron's on a scooter. The route the boys took that night was pretty simple. The Tom Thumb store was just a fifteen minute or so bike ride into town, mostly on one street. This long, dead end country road that leads from the cul-de-sac where the wetterlings live, right into town. There's not much in between. Just some cornfields, some woods, and then closer to town, a few blocks of houses.

They went past woods and fields. It got darker. There were no sidewalks and no street lights. Not even the moon was out. The only light came from a flashlight that Jacob's brother Trevor flashed in front of them. They kept going. They approached the long gravel driveway, the spot where there'd been that rustling sound earlier. They were almost home.

All of a sudden, a man appeared on the road. He was walking toward them. He was dressed all in black. His face was covered with something dark. It was hard to tell what.

And then he told us he had a gun and he told us to turn around and go over into this ditch and put our bikes in there and lay down.

Aaron talked to a T V reporter back then.

I thought it was some kid pulling a prank on us or something, but it wasn't and he he looked at Trevor and he told Trevor to turn off his flashlight.

The man asked Trevor his age. Ten, Trevor said.

He told Trevor to run as fast as he could into the woods or else he'd shoot.

Then the man turned to Aaron. The man paused. He asked him his age. Eleven, Aaron said. The man looked at Aaron, and the man grabbed him in the cross.

Then he looked at me and then he grabbed Jacob and he told me to run as fast as I could in the woods or he'd shoot.

Did Jacob say anything to the man?

Uh-uh. Just the just his age.

Eleven, Jacob said.

When you ran, did you look back?

Yeah, once we got way down there.

What did you see?

No fun. He wasn't there anymore.

It was about 920 on the night of october twenty second, nineteen eighty-nine.

Here's how I think about that first night. I think about the spot on the side of the road where Jacob was taken, and I draw a circle around it, around Jacob and the abductor. At that moment, the moment Jacob was kidnapped, the circle was still small. Jacob was right there. But then I picture that circle, that circle of where Jacob and the man could be, slowly expanding, as the man and Jacob get farther and farther away, as the seconds and minutes tick by.

Rochelle was watching TV at the Wetterling House with Jacob's younger sister, when Jacob's brother Trevor and his friend Aaron ran in screaming.

Someone took Jacob, someone took Jacob. There was a man with a gun and he took Jacob and I was Like what? You know, cause it it was so out of the realm of anything I could have ever imagined that it took me a minute Yeah.

Rochelle called her dad Merle. He came over and called Jacob's parents, Jerry and Patty Wetterling, right away.

Jerry took it and it was Rochelle's dad, Merle. Um telling us that we're not going to be able to

He asked for me. He didn't he didn't want to tell you. He asked for me, said um Come straight home, uh Aaron and Trevor came back, but Jacob didn't come back and come straight home and he would call nine one one.

Nine one emergencies. This is Merlin Jerzak calling from St. Joel. I'm right now next door t at my neighbors, the Jerry Wetterling family.

It was nine thirty two PM, about fifteen minutes or so since Jacob had been abducted.

Some of their boys went down to Tom Sum to pick up a movie and on their way back someone stopped them. We believe that they have one of the boys because the one of the boys did not With them.

And they don't know where the other friend is at.

don't know where their brother and friend is at. I think that maybe my best bet is to let Trevor get on the phone and he can describe to you What you saw and this type of thing.

Okay, I'm ready.

Okay, I'll put Trevor on. Okay. And he can you can he can answer your question. We've got him pretty well calmed down here.

Trevor? This you're talking to the sheriff's office. But why don't you give me anything you recon you can recall about this mail party that approached you guys? Okay.

Here's what Trevor told nine one one. A man had stepped out of the darkness.

What?

The boys didn't recognize him, and they didn't see or hear a car anywhere. The man's face was covered with something dark, maybe black nylons. He sounded like he had a cold. In the dark, that was all the boys could make out.

Meanwhile, Jacob's parents, Patty and Jerry Wetterling, were on their way back home.

We were driving home. Absolutely confused. What's going on? It seemed like we were going so slow in my mind he was driving like ten miles an hour and I'm like speed. Hurry up and he'd said I didn he he didn't want to get stopped by the police and I said well we'd have a police escort just Yeah.

How far away were you?

We were near clear water, so it was a good twenty, twenty five minutes.

Mm-hmm.

Were you talking to each other or

A little. We didn't talk a lot, said In my memory it was just like, What do you say? What i what's going on? Yeah. was so confused. And then I said something really mean. It's like, Well who told'em they could go to the store? And Jerry said, I did, so if you want to be mad at somebody, be mad at me.

Stearns County Sheriff's Deputy Bruce Bechtold was in his squad car just a few miles away when the dispatcher called him.

It was over the squad radio, there was a call on the radio. what they call an abduction of a child. Well You don't think that happens here. So my initial thought was somebody panicked, it's really not an abduction. Somebody kid ran away, somebody's playing a game.

Deputy Bechtold was the first to arrive at the Wetterling House. He got there at nine thirty eight PM. It had only been twenty minutes or so since Jacob had been abducted. The man who took him couldn't be very far away. Deputy Bechtled wanted Trevor and Aaron to show him the spot where Jacob was kidnapped. Rochelle, the babysitter, says the boys were still terrified. They didn't want to go back out into the dark.

And I just remember them saying, Okay, lock all the doors and don't don't open the doors. So that's what we did and we we sat in the corner huddled like this. Because in that corner there's no windows, so no one could see us. But we were just Terrified. I mean, we were terrified. And then I remember a few minutes later hearing a knock at the door and I'm like, I'm not answering that door. I was thinking it was the man that took Jacob and that he was gonna come take us.

Stearns County Sheriff Charlie Graft had just turned on the ten o'clock news at his home that night when he saw a deputy's car race down the street.

I called in the office to find out what was going on and uh They said that a boy had been abducted, kidnapped, uh, by a man with a gun out uh near Saint Joel.

Sheriff Graf died in two thousand three. This is from a TV interview he did shortly after the abduction.

So I immediately got in my squad, drove out there and uh I started questioning the boys as to what happened, uh tried to get something going.

And they sat down here at the table and and they kept asking the boys You know, first what happened and then they asked some questions like, Are you sure you guys weren't, you know, playing with a gun, Jacob got hurt and you're afraid to tell or Are you sure um Jacob didn't just run away and you're you know trying to buy him some time'til he gets where he's going or something and they're like, No you know. They were really, really clear.

By about ten forty five PM, about an hour and a half after Jacob was kidnapped, investigators had fanned out with flashlights to search the area near the abduction site. The sheriff, Charlie Graft, called in volunteer firefighters to help with the search.

Charlie said they were gonna comb the woods and he said, um, you know, it's not a bad thing. Maybe he's tied to a tree or something. We're hoping that we're gonna find him and then that's why we're searching. You know, he wasn't trying to reassure and I wanted to there was a part of me that wanted to go out and search and then he told me that we needed to stay here. What if Jacob calls or comes home? You know, you need to be home.

The sheriff called the state patrol and asked for them to come right away with a helicopter.

I got up in the helicopter with them and we searched the area with us. the uh spotlight they had underneath the helicopter and we were right down on top of the power lines almost there. And we searched for about an hour and a half up there in the air and plus what we had on the ground.

The helicopter search found nothing, but investigators searching on the ground did find something in the gravel driveway across the street from the abduction site, some tire tracks and some shoe prints. They didn't know what to make of them. The boys hadn't seen a car, and it's not like it's unusual to find tire tracks in a driveway. So investigators weren't sure whether the tire tracks even had anything to do with the abduction.

I mean it's not like you're in the inner city with, you know, apartment buildings and something where you could take someone and be gone in five blocks and then have five thousand places to hide. How could you get away from there with someone? And not have a card, you know, connected to it.

Right, because otherwise he should just be right there, right?

Well, yeah. I mean either yeah. You're either gonna have to be in a house that's right there or something like that or but how would that occur I'm not sure. So

The long gravel driveway, across from the spot where Jacob was abducted, curves around and leads down to a white farmhouse with a clothesline out front, a chicken coop, and a grain silo. Inside the farmhouse that night was a thirty four year old man named Dan Rassier. He was home alone. And around nine PM, Dan was upstairs in his bedroom, organizing his record collection, when his dog barked. Dan peered outside and saw a car coming down the driveway.

I could hear the car coming down the hill. And it it turns around.

It was small and dark, and the headlights were close together. Dan didn't get a good look at the driver. The car turned all the way around in front of the house, and then headed back out toward the road.

And then I I go uh go to bed. I'm sleeping. because I remember waking to the dog, the dog keeps barking,

It was around ten forty five at night when Dan woke up.

And I look out one of the windows and I see you know all these Flashlights around the wood pile.

Dan thought maybe some guys were trying to steal his firewood.

And I stepped out the door. And at that point I remember my heart rate going up and realizing I can't go up there. There I I can take care of maybe a couple of'em, but not like ten of'em.

Yeah.

immediately called nine one one. They said a child was taken and uh I got all okay. So I went right up.

Dan went outside. He saw the helicopter overhead, and as he walked up his driveway, he ran into Bruce Spechtold, the sheriff's deputy. Dan and the deputy say they talked briefly, and that was pretty much it. and no one paid any more attention to Dan that night. So no one came and knocked on your door that night?

No.

And nobody came and searched her house that night? No. And nobody searched any of as far as you know, the buildings, the farm buildings are right around your house.

No. I remember saying, I'm gonna I'll look down here. And that was a mistake.

Why was it a mistake?

Because it's like If only I would have just said, you guys gotta come down here now and look everywhere. Go through my room, go go anywhere you like. That's what I should have done.

All the things that law enforcement didn't do that night at the Rassier Farm would come to matter a great deal years later, and would change Dan's life in a way that could never be undone. But we'll get to that later. Patty waited up for Jacob all night, and she remembers sitting there wanting the whole world to be looking for her son.

And I remember asking, because we had turned the radio on and there was a report that this child was lost in the woods, and I called WJON and said he wasn't lost, he was kidnapped. and they said, Well, we can only report what the police are telling us and so I remember asking Charlie Graft, the sheriff, um i would it hurt to get the right story out in the media

Well wait a second. It was nothing was done until Charlie said it was okay and that was like five AM and that's when WJ O N was first called and I don't know what you're talking about as far as a lost boy. I don't know.

I heard it on the radio.

Mm, I don't know what you what were you doing, listen to the radio at three in the morning?

It's been twenty-seven years since Jacob was abducted, so it's not surprising that Patty and Jerry don't agree on every last detail of what happened. But it's not as simple as that. When something awful happens to your family, you assume you'll never forget it, and that no one else in your family will either, that the story will remain the same. So when you realize that your stories have changed, that you no longer agree on the most basic parts of what happened, that can be pretty unsettling.

A lot of stuff gets confused.

Yeah.

Well where were you at three? I mean this is crazy. Where do where were you at three in the morning? I don't remember. I was in shock.

I tried to sleep for an hour. I was trying to escape.

I didn't sleep for days. I remember hearing it on the radio and I remember calling WJON. So You can tell me that that didn't happen and I'll believe you, but that's my memory of it.

C'est là.

You can see this is stressful to do. Yeah. We're fighting. I know, but it's just to go back there it's very painful.

The search that night was a failure. No Jacob, no abductor, no clothing left behind, no car. And at three A.M., less than six hours since Jacob had been kidnapped, investigators made a big decision. They called off the search. One of the detectives at the scene, Steve Mund, told me there was no point in continuing to search in the dark.

It's just that, you know, working under flashlights and stuff you might miss certain trace evidence, so it's important that and we we did it in daylight hours.

As the hours ticked by, in the late, late evening and early morning, The circle that started out so small on that road where Jacob was taken expanded many times over. Eventually, the circle would expand to include most of central Minnesota, then all of Minnesota, then the Midwest, Canada, the entire United States, the world. Are there things you would have done differently now looking back on it?

You think it's done differently. I I know I uh you always think about that, but no, I think the people that worked on that case gave truly a hundred and ten percent every day they were there. And uh I don't know. I don't know that there's anything we could have done differently.

What Detective Munn just said, that he doesn't know that there's anything they could have done differently. I heard this so many times while reporting on this case, and every time I was startled by it. Because here's a case that had gone on for 27 years without being solved. The Jacob Wetterling case is, by any reasonable means,

But what went wrong is hard to figure out. Because for twenty-seven years, the investigative file on the Jacob Wetterling case, that stack of documents that tell you what a crime scene looks like, what witnesses say

And generally everything that law enforcement is All that has been closed to the public.

This is pretty standard for unsolved cases. It's meant to protect the investigation and to protect the witnesses and the suspects. But it also protects law enforcement. It means we aren't allowed to know what law enforcement is doing in some of the most serious criminal investigations in this country. We're just supposed to trust them.

Coming up over the next few weeks on In the Dark.

Sturge County Sheriff's Office has quite a reputation for

Mm.

Horrendous investigations, false accusations, leaving families in the dark. I mean what's going on down there? Why is everything such a secret?

This is what happens when you talk. And he said it twice to me that way. This is what happens when you talk.

All this evidence that people have and nothing's being done. 50,000 leads.

Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok

And what got checked out?

But there has to be an element in there to have accountability. And when accountability is not there

Yeah.

Disastrous things happen.

I'm not going to dwell on things that that could have been done, should have been done differently. That's not helpful. Do I wish some things would have been done differently? Sure. Can I talk about that in this particular case? No.

By enacting this law, we're sending a clear message across the country. Those who prey on our children will be caught, prosecuted, and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

These types of psychopathic pedophiles can exist in this fifteen to twenty mile radius.

Yeah.

Just like what? We lived here the whole time and he's just down the damn road all those years, you know, and it's like

I gotta believe that authorities Yeah. Why why? Why would you allow him to be free the last twenty five?

In the Dark is produced by Samara Freemark. The associate producer is Natalie Jablonsky. It's edited by Catherine Winter, with help from Hans Buto. The editor in chief of APM Reports is Chris Worthington. Web editors are Dave Peters and Andy Cruz. The videographer is Jeff Thompson. Additional reporting by Curtis Gilbert, Jennifer Vogel, Will Kraft, Tom Scheck, and Emily Havick. Our theme music is composed by Gary Meister.

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