In The Dark - S1 Update: A Sentencing, A Demand, No Closure

Episode Date: December 2, 2016

The sentencing of Danny Heinrich on Nov. 21, 2016, brought to a close the 27-year investigation into the abduction and murder of Jacob Wetterling. But it didn't end the story.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hi, this is Madeline Barron. I'm here to give you an update, because since the last episode of In the Dark was released, a few things have happened that I thought you'd want to hear about. People have been writing to ask me how Jacob Wetterling's family is doing since Danny Heinrich confessed to killing Jacob, and I did get a chance to talk to Jacob's parents recently. Jacob's parents recently. I also had a chance to hear from their other children and from Jacob's best friend, the one who was with him that night in 1989 when Jacob was kidnapped while biking home from a store. We didn't interview them for the podcast. Jacob's siblings have mostly stayed out of the media, but recently in court, they finally got to talk directly to the man who killed their brother. So I'm going to tell you what they had to say and what Hein the man who killed their brother. So I'm going to tell you what they had to say and what Heinrich said at his sentencing. And I've also got an update on Dan Rassier,

the guy who lived right by the kidnapping site and was under suspicion for so many years. A lot of people have written to ask how he's doing now, whether he's gotten his stuff back, whether he's going to do anything about how he was treated. So I'm going to tell you about that too, and then I'll play you the interview with Patty and Jerry Wetterling. So first, the court hearing. Last week, Danny Heinrich, the man who killed Jacob, was back in court for sentencing.

In a lot of ways, it was a pretty routine hearing. The sentence had already been agreed to as part of a plea deal. But still, there was something remarkable about this moment. Because in this courtroom in downtown Minneapolis, about this moment, because in this courtroom in downtown Minneapolis, Jacob's family and friends got a chance to do something that they'd wanted to do for 27 years, to speak directly to the man who murdered their son, their brother, their best friend. For so long, Jacob's parents had tried to appeal to Jacob's abductor without knowing who he was. Jacob's mom, Patty, had written a letter to Jacob's kidnapper in 1998, nine years after Jacob was kidnapped.

The letter was addressed to the man who took Jacob, and it was published in newspapers across the state. In the letter, Patty wrote, You have held the answers for so long. You also hold the pain. Please talk to me. Patty had given interviews on TV and addressed the kidnapper directly, pleading with him to release Jacob or tell them what had happened. My request is to have the man who took Jacob call me. I have had nine years of questions, and I have a lot of questions that

only this person can answer. All these people finally got to see Heinrich's face and hear his voice back in September when he confessed to kidnapping and killing Jacob and kidnapping and sexually assaulting Jared Shirell when he was a boy. Jared was at the hearing when Heinrich confessed, and he told me later that he was frustrated that Heinrich got to tell his story and no one else got to respond. It was kind of a, you know, here's my account of what happened that night.

And that's the moment where I just kind of want to stand up and say, you don't have a right to tell your accounts. I'll tell you my accounts. But then, last week, at Heinrich's sentencing, Jared had a chance to tell his account, and Heinrich was the one who had to listen. was the one who had to listen. The courtroom was full. I counted nearly 100 people. Reporters, Jacob's friends and family, strangers.

One guy told me he was there because he was around Jacob's age, and he'd grown up hearing about Jacob's story and just felt like he should be there. I wasn't able to record the hearing because the court doesn't allow it. I found a seat in the last row, across the room from where Heinrich was sitting with his two lawyers. Heinrich looked overweight and out of shape. He was wearing kind of loose beige pants and a tan polo shirt with big black eyeglasses. His hair was white and shaved short. Everyone there knew what the sentence would be,

because it had already been agreed to as part of a plea deal. And just a quick reminder on that. The plea deal said that in exchange for Heinrich confessing to kidnapping Jacob and Jared and leading authorities to Jacob's remains, prosecutors wouldn't charge him with murder and would drop most of the other charges against him, the charges for having child pornography in his house. Heinrich would plead guilty to just one count of child pornography, and he'd serve 17 to 20 years in prison. So all of that had already been decided,

but Heinrich still needed to be formally sentenced. Normally what happens in these kinds of hearings is that the victims or their families get to give what are called victim impact statements. It's a chance for them to describe how they've been harmed so that the judge can have that information before deciding on a sentence. But in this case, there was another reason for making those statements. And that reason comes down to what will happen when Heinrich is done with his prison sentence, 17 to 20 years from now, when he's in his early 70s. At that point, a completely new set of people will be looking at the case. People from the Department of Corrections, maybe another judge,

or even a team of doctors doctors to see if Heinrich should be committed as a sex offender and sent to a secure treatment facility. The people reviewing Heinrich's case in the future will likely look at a transcript of what happened in this hearing to see how much he'd hurt people and whether he seemed at all remorseful. So their statements, the victims and Heinrich's, could matter a great deal years from now. Jared was the first to talk. He was dressed up, wearing a dark suit, and he had a determined look about him. Jared walked up to a podium, facing the judge. On his right was a table where the prosecutor sat, and on his left, just a few feet from where Jared was standing, was a table where the prosecutor sat. And on his left, just a few feet from where Jared was standing, was a table where Heinrich sat next to his lawyers.

If Heinrich felt anything at that moment, he didn't show it. He just looked at Jared with a kind of blank expression. Jared barely glanced at him. Jared told the judge that he'd been waiting for this moment for a long time. He talked about how, as he tried to solve his own case, he met a lot of people along the way who genuinely cared, and that he's grateful to all of them. And he said he's done listening to Heinrich talk.

If Heinrich said anything in court, Jared said, quote, I personally will be walking out at that time for the fact that he should know that the words that he had spoke to me on that evening haunted me for years, and I don't choose to hear anything he wishes to say at this time. Next up was Jacob's best friend, Aaron Larson. Aaron was one of the two boys who was with Jacob that night when they biked to the video store. He was one of the two boys who was with Jacob that night when they

biked to the video store. He was the last person, other than Heinrich, to see Jacob alive. Aaron told the judge that he considered October 22, 1989, to be the end of his childhood. Aaron said that for years, he lived with guilt about what happened that night. He said, I lived every day thinking I was the monster that night. I was the coward that left my friend. I was the coward that ran away. He said, I was the last person who cared about Jacob to see him, to be right next to him. And I just left him. I hated it. I hated how I left him. Aaron said it took him 20 years to understand that what happened that night

wasn't his fault. That, as he put it, we were just kids who had no control over an evil man with a gun. Then Jacob's siblings got up, one by one, to talk. Trevor, Jacob's brother, cried as he told the judge how he'd struggled with guilt for years because he was the one who pushed for the boys to bike to the store that night. Jacob's youngest sister, Carmen, talked about the chaos after her brother

was kidnapped. All the law enforcement officers, the reporters with news cameras shining big lights in their driveway. She talked about how she asked her two imaginary friends to go looking for Jacob. She talked about how every night for years, she slept on her family's couch with her brother Trevor, all the way until Trevor went to college. And then after that, she had friends sleep over almost every night, just so she wasn't alone. Jacob's older sister, Amy, said the worst part was living for 27 years, not knowing what had happened. She talked about how Heinrich must have seen the news coverage every year on the anniversary of the kidnapping, how he must have seen her parents pleading in the

news for the person who took Jacob to come forward. Heinrich just kept looking at each person as they talked, with the same blank expression on his face. He watched as Jacob's parents came up to speak, first Jerry, then Patty. Jerry started by thanking everyone who had gotten them to this point. He even thanked Danny Heinrich for confessing. Jerry talked about what it was like to live for 27 years without knowing what had happened to his son. He talked about the calls from psychics, the leads that went nowhere, the strain on his marriage, and the counseling that helped them stay together. He talked about all the things he missed that he didn't get to experience. Going fishing with Jacob, going to concerts and plays, Jacob's graduation, watching Jacob go off to college.

He said, I miss Jacob so very much. The last person to talk was Jacob's mom, Patty. She hugged her kids before walking up to the podium. She told the judge, words can't express the magnitude of pain that Danny Heinrich has inflicted on me and my family every day of our lives since. Heinrich, she said, hurt my heart, my soul, and every fiber of my being when he murdered

our son Jacob, a child that I carried for nine months and nurtured for 11 years, eight months, and five days. eight months, and five days. She talked about what she misses. Jacob's laughter, his hugs, his smell, his jokes. How he played with his brother and sisters. How, on a road trip one time, he pretended to use his sister Carmen's foot as a microphone.

Patty said her heart hurts not only for Jacob and for her own family, but also for all the other victims of Heinrich, who will never see justice for the crimes committed against them, and for everyone who tried to solve the case, and for all the parents who followed the case and worried about their children. parents who followed the case and worried about their children. Patty also said she had a few words for Heinrich, but she didn't turn to look at him when she said them. She stayed facing the judge. You didn't need to kill him, she said.

He did nothing wrong. He just wanted to go home. Throughout all this, Heinrich never seemed to react. As best I could tell, his facial expression never changed. And as I sat there watching him, I thought about what kind of role we expect the criminal to play in a moment like this. What kind of emotions we want him to show. Like remorse or sadness. Something that would help put an ending on the story.

But when you get right down to it, Heinrich is a child rapist and murderer who only confessed when he realized that it could help him get a lesser sentence on some child porn charges. So if we were looking to Heinrich for some kind of meaning in all this, we probably weren't going to find it. When the family was done speaking, Heinrich's lawyer, Bernardo Alagada, said a few words. It was kind of a preface to what we were about to hear from Heinrich himself, a way to lower our expectations of hearing him say anything profound.

Alagada said his client does feel remorse, but he, quote, worries about not having all the right words words and that he'd try his best. Then Heinrich walked up to the podium and stood next to his lawyer. And as he said his first few words, I am truly sorry for my evil acts, Jared got up and walked out of the courtroom. His face was bright red. Heinrich didn't cry or shout or break down.

He didn't display any obvious signs of distress or sadness or remorse. He paused here and there and sighed a bit. He spoke just ten sentences, barely three minutes total. Heinrich apologized to the Wetterlings. He apologized to Jared, too. And when he did, he made a passing reference to, quote, other victims. He said, quote, to Jared Shirel, the innocence I have taken away of not just him, but from other victims, the emotional, the psychological trauma that have caused him and his family and others, I'm sorry. Heinrich didn't say who these other victims were or what he had

done to them. He didn't say whether he was talking about the other kids in Painesville who were assaulted in the 1980s or whether he was talking about something more recent. He just didn't say. And under the terms of the plea deal, he doesn't have to. Heinrich went on to say, Many are probably wondering how I kept this secret so long. Well, to spare myself and the humiliation I would have brought to my family for my actions. Then Heinrich paused and said,

There is no more, Your honor. There is no more. Then Heinrich turned to his lawyer and said in a barely audible voice, I can't do it. Then he walked back to his chair and sat down. The judge, John Thunheim, gave Heinrich the sentence everyone had already agreed to, 20 years in prison with a chance of being out in 17. Judge Thunheim closed the hearing by saying to Heinrich, I wish you good luck as you serve your punishment for one of the most truly horrible crimes that I One person who was deeply affected by the Wetterling case, but who wasn't at the hearing, and who didn't get a chance to speak,

was Dan Rassier. The man who lived down the gravel driveway, close to the abduction site. The man the sheriff called a person of interest in the Wetterling case. The big news about Dan is that after 27 years, Dan has finally hired a lawyer. Hi, this is David Remnick.

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and narrative films at newyorker.com slash video. The day after the sentencing hearing for Heinrich, Dan Rossier and his attorney held a news conference at a Marriott hotel in a suburb of Minneapolis. We're going to get started, folks. Everybody ready to go? Dan Rossier's lawyer is a guy named Mike Padden. is a guy named Mike Padden. He says Dan plans to sue the Stearns County Sheriff's Office, the sheriff, John Sanner, the State Crime Bureau, and a state investigator,

claiming they violated Dan's civil rights. The number one thing that my client wants, the number one thing is to send a message to law enforcement that you can't do stuff like this. And Dan wants to make sure that this will not happen to any other Minnesota citizen from this point forward. That's the number one thing he wants. Dan kept shifting in his seat while his lawyer spoke. This was Dan's first news conference, and he looked a little uncomfortable. Dan is someone who usually avoids the media. Dan was joined at the news conference by someone else

who also plans to sue the Stearns County Sheriff's Office, Ryan Larson, the man who was wrongly accused of killing a police officer in Stearns County in 2012, the man who was hauled out of his apartment at gunpoint and held in jail and told to confess before being released without ever being charged. Ryan had told me a few days earlier that he wasn't sure if he'd be able to make it to the news conference. I got there early and found Ryan in a hallway in the hotel, just pacing. He told me that he doesn't like being in public, it's part of his PTSD, and he was having a hard time getting used to being there. Ryan said he plans to sue law enforcement for how they treated

him. After the news conference, he told reporters law enforcement had basically ruined his life, and that so far at least, nothing has changed. So I asked them, you know, just please make it right. To this day, they've never ever owned up to anything that they've done. this day they've never ever owned up to anything that they've done. So that's why we are at this point where we are at today. Hopefully people learn from it. After the news conference was over, I caught up with Dan Rassier and asked him how he's been doing since we last talked a few weeks earlier. I would say it's been really difficult. I mean, I still wake up almost every night thinking about stuff. Dan told me he doesn't understand why the officers who botched the Wetterling case still have their jobs. It's still just so incredibly frustrating

to realizing that these people are still working, some of them, and they're doing this to probably other people. It's got to stop. We need new leadership that's not going to let innocent people just get thrown in the mud and their lives ruined. Dan told me that he did recently get some of his stuff back from the Stearns County Sheriff's Office. It was stuff that had been taken in the search of his family's property in 2010. An umbrella stand, an old chest, and some papers, mostly Dan's notes on the investigation. Dan had really wanted those notes back because because that had been how he'd kept track of what law enforcement was doing to him. Dan remembered that mixed into the notes that law enforcement took in 2010

were some business cards of the officers who had talked to him. And Dan was looking forward to getting those back, because that way, for his lawsuit, he would be able to name more specific people, other than just the main investigators. But Dan said those business cards were missing. He hasn't gotten them back. I tried to find out what happened to them. I called the Stearns County Sheriff and left him a message. I also emailed him, but he didn't respond. I did hear from the chief deputy county attorney, a man named Matthew Quinn.

I did hear from the chief deputy county attorney, a man named Matthew Quinn. He sent me an email yesterday saying they weren't going to talk because of the pending lawsuit, and he refused to give me a copy of the document that lists all the items taken in the search of the Rassier property in 2010. Normally, when an investigation is over, the file is public. But the prosecutor told me that in this case, the file is still not open to the public, and he wouldn't explain why. I'm still trying to figure it out. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of people have asked me how Jacob's parents, Jerry and Patty, have been doing now that the case has been solved. So I thought you might want to hear the last interview I did with them. This interview is from October.

I haven't asked them to talk to us since then. since then. So this interview is from just a few weeks after Danny Heinrich had appeared in court for the first time and given his detailed confession of all the awful things he did to Jacob. I interviewed the Wetterlings with our producer, Samara Fremark. We all met at an Episcopal church, this massive cathedral in Minneapolis. We sat down in a big room lined with bookshelves. It was the first time the Wetterlings had talked to the media since the case was solved. And it wasn't just me interviewing them that day. Patty Wetterling explained that they decided to do all their interviews

with all the reporters in town in one day, one right after the other. Thanks for doing this. It's been a crazy busy day, but we sort of felt that we needed to break the silence somehow. Seems like it would be crazy to do this. I'll say it was crazy, but the whole thing's crazy, so it's kind of what it is. We're so sorry thank you so i just want to say that yeah um it was crazy i mean we spent a lot of time with you guys and um so you know a little bit of the day-to-day bit of what our lives were like and and we were living that for almost 27 years. And then to have this, it's like hitting a wall. Yeah, I was going to ask you, because the word that gets used

a lot in the last couple of weeks is closure. And I wonder if that's a word that you're using. No, not at all. I don't like that word. How come? Because it doesn't close. I mean, the investigation is done, so it may be closure for you guys or the investigators. Jacob's been gone for 27 years. Nothing changes from that. He's still gone. That hasn't changed at all. We have answers now, and that's helpful. We can move forward from that standpoint, and we don't have to take phone calls at 2 o'clock in the morning on somebody that might be. But, no, it's ongoing.

It doesn't soften wounds for our kids, people in the community. None of that changes. I hate that word. community, none of that changes. Yeah, I hate that word. So actually, most searching families hate that word because, you know, 27 years ago I was a stay-at-home mom, so closure would mean almost like I could go back to being that, and you can't. You can't ever go back. It's, yeah, it's, I like, we have some answers. That's kind of what we've been going with. We don't use that word closure for us. When we talked, it had been just over a month since Heinrich had given his detailed confession in court.

So I asked Patty and Jerry what it was like to be in the courtroom that day. We had heard what he was going to say the day before. So we had, you know, less than 24 hours to process it. So we knew what he had told them during the interview stage. But the manner in which he stated it with absolutely—it's like saying there's some books on the shelf. It was absolutely no emotion or anything in it. It was just very, just a bunch of words. And I don't know.

It was a part of me was still in shock. And I couldn't understand why he didn't let Jacob go. He let other victims go. And it was heartbreaking. And it really has been the hardest part for me was just knowing Jacob's last few minutes on earth. And, you know, what did I do wrong? And I want to go home. are you going to take me home and it just it just wakes me up at night still I I think more hearing that that flat voice was uh surprising everything hadn't really sunk in at that point it was all going so fast and it's like you know I pinched myself is this really happening so did you think Heinrich was telling the truth about what happened that night you know I wrestled with that and if you was lying and there

was more it would be worse and so we asked that of the attorneys who were there, and they said they really believe that that is what happened. It was quick and made no sense. They've described him as being pretty narcissistic, so what's in it for me? And there's no benefit for him to make something up or change the truth. And they believe he consistently was telling what happened. Yeah, I agree. What may appear to be a little bit of some inconsistencies, I think can just be attributed to 27 years of not remembering everything. He claimed to have asked their names,

and the boys never mentioned that at the beginning. But that's just one example. If it didn't matter, right, if it wasn't of interest or concern to him, he wouldn't remember it, and it didn't matter age, name, that kind of detail. Did you want to know all of that information? I did. I just wanted to know the truth. I just really wanted to know all that happened, why, which there wasn't a good reason to that.

Me too. I didn't want to know, but I needed to know. What happened that night? What, you know, was there conversation? You know, what, did Jacob say something that upset this guy? Or what, you know, did, what was going on? What happened that night, because he had let all of his previous victims go.

And something was very different that night, and I needed to know what happened. It was heartbreaking and not anything we would have expected. And it's so senseless. It is absolutely senseless. You know, it is absolutely senseless. But yeah, we both needed to know. I think a lot of people needed to know, especially because there was this plea bargain thing. There was a lot of speculation on should we have signed on or, you know, done anything. But it was our only way of getting answers. There was a small window of getting him to talk, and we took it, knowing that we believe in our hearts that this man will never see the

light of day. Patty told me that prosecutors met with her and Jerry before they agreed to the plea deal to make sure that it was okay with them. Patty told me a prosecutor explained they wanted Heinrich to lead them to Jacob's remains, but that they also considered another possibility. What if Heinrich led them to a spot, but Jacob's remains weren't there? Patty said prosecutors told her that if that happened, they might still be open to making a deal with Heinrich, as long as he confessed to the crime and the story he told was convincing. I really struggled with that. If there's no evidence, there's nothing this man could say that would convince me. It might convince you if you're wanting it to be him,

but it had to convince me, and I really struggled with that aspect of it. Patty had good reason to be skeptical. After all, she's had years of disappointment, of leads that went nowhere. There have even been people who didn't do it who confessed to the crime. In the end, Patty didn't have to decide whether to take Heinrich's word for it, because Heinrich did lead authorities to Jacob's remains. At the end of the day, anybody who challenges that plea agreement wasn't in the room and doesn't know all the facts

and what we were faced with. And I have no doubt, not an ounce of question over that being the right thing to do. And I'm convinced that if he hadn't led them to Jacob, that the deal would have been off the table. That they wouldn't have gone down the road of, like, tell me a story and we'll believe it? Yeah, because it would have never convinced. It wouldn't convince me.

I'm hard to convince after all this time. Yeah, and then that was their out. They could walk away at any time at that point. How much have you guys been sleeping? I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean like. No, I don't sleep well. First month, I slept four hours a night.

Maybe. I still have, I sleep, I'm in bed enough hours, but it's really fitful sleep. I wake up, I get up, I go back to bed, I wake up, and it's just still not, I'm not real good at it yet. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard to shift your whole being from one world into another. And it was hard, not just for us and for our pain, but watching our children and the pain that they had to go through, going back to when they were 8 years old, 10 years old, 13. And so it kind of brings you back to that age emotionally when it happened.

And yet they're now all parents. And it was really difficult to watch them in pain and then watch our grandchildren try and process something that we as adults can't even make sense of. That's all been really, really hard. Do you think that now that we know who did it, are there lessons for law enforcement in all this? Oh, absolutely. There's a lot. There's a lot of lessons to be learned. We need to know how these cases eventually get to resolution. Patty said law enforcement told her that the FBI plans to review the entire case to do an analysis of it.

I tried to confirm that with the FBI, but the spokesperson told me it's too soon to say what they'll be doing next. A lot of people have asked me whether Patty and Jerry have listened to the podcast and whether they know about the mistakes law enforcement made. Patty says they haven't listened yet, but they plan to. I did tell the Wetterlings this past summer what I had found out. But what Patty really wants to know at this point is something even deeper than whether things went wrong in the investigation of Jacob's kidnapping.

She wants to know whether somebody could have done something much earlier to prevent Heinrich from ever committing any crimes in the first place, long before he took Jacob. I believe there's another side of it. It's like doing a whole social profile of Danny Heinrich. You know, when did law enforcement ever first become aware of this man? Was it when he was shoplifting? He shoplifted from a thrift shop. Now, that's kind

of a clue that this might be. I don't know how old he was, but if he was a youth in need of clothing, did social services ever get involved? Were the juvenile authorities ever involved? Were there ever points of intervention where the behavior could have been stopped? You're so still in this mode of advocate for, like you're doing this with Heinrich. Well, I'm all about prevention. And if we can see some behaviors or red flags, we know some of them. And cruelty to animals is one. Fire is another. Setting fires. You know, what can we learn about these people so that we can intervene earlier so that this person doesn't grow up to cause this much harm? And maybe this is a protection for me, you know, as long as I can shift into my intellectual mode of case analysis and law enforcement, which I've done all these years with law enforcement trainings and stuff, then I can get away from some of the emotional stuff that's so hard and still makes no sense to me.

So it might be me shifting into a ground that's a little safer. But I do believe that. I do not believe that people are born child murderers. He wasn't born that. He grew into that. How can we stop that from happening? I just don't want anybody to go through what we did. Patty said there's still a lot they don't know about Heinrich and what he did. She still doesn't know why Heinrich took her son or why he was even on the road that night in the first place. There's a lot more questions, and we're not done. Maybe he'll want to continue to talk.

Maybe he'll talk about some of his other stuff. The plea bargain was really well-defined. There were things that they couldn't ask, and it doesn't mean that he might not tell somebody down the road. It was he agreed to talk about Jared and Jacob. That's it. Couldn't ask about other victims. Couldn't ask about some of the other questions that we still have. Patty plans to

continue speaking out as an advocate for child safety. And she says she still believes there are more good people in this world than bad. I'm still struggling with a lot of this, but I'm strengthened by so many good people doing amazingly good things to help out. So that's what carries us and will continue to help us grow out of this very dark place into, you know, fighting for the world that Jacob knew. I still believe that that's worthy. So that's the update. And one last thing. A lot of people have been asking what our team is planning to do next.

The short answer is that we're not sure yet. But we'll be sending out a note once we figure it out. If you'd like us to keep you posted, you can sign up for our email list at inthedarkpodcast.org. And if you want to read the full transcript of Heinrich's sentencing hearing, we've posted that on our website too. This update was produced by Natalie Jablonski and edited by Catherine Winter. It was mixed by Johnny Vince Evans. And thanks to reporter Matt Sepik for helping us out with audio from the news conference. Please to share the news that I'm Not a Robot, a live-action short film from the New Yorker's Screening Room series, has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. This thought-provoking film grapples with questions that we can all relate to about identity and technology,

and what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world. I encourage you to watch I'm Not a Robot, along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films, at newyorker.com slash video.