Jacob Wetterling Case - New Info Part 3
anne vasquez
http://www.kmsp.com/news/local/stor...tent_id=1621598
Man Questioned in Wetterling Case
Fox 9 Exclusive: It's been nearly 15 years since Jacob Wetterling
vanished near his St. Joseph home. And he's the man who says he has
recently become a "suspect" in the Wetterling Investigation. Stearns
County authorities don't use the word. That's because of gaps early in
the investigation. They haven't been able to link him to the crime or
rule the man out.
Trish Van Pilsum: "Did you have anything to do with Jacob's
disappearance?"
The Man: "I didn't have anything to do with it."
FOX 9 won't identify this man because he hasn't been arrested or
charged. He lives near the abduction site. He was home alone on
October 22, 1989. There is no one to confirm his whereabouts. Police
questioned him the day after the abduction. More as a witness than
a possible suspect.
The Man: "They needed to check me out. They said they had
to check me out."
They searched his car at work but not until later in the day.
The Man "That morning when I left, I had a car full of..."
Trish Van Pilsum: "Boxes. Big boxes."
The Man: "..and they never looked in my car. I mean it was that bad."
They searched his property, too. But not until five days later.
The Man: "They didn't come in the house that night. It could have been
over with."
Investigators, new to the case, agree important things were over
looked in the early days of the search. That there were just too many
people and too many agencies involved.
More than 14 years passed. Why the renewed interest in this man now?
The FOX 9 Investigators have learned that investigators now doubt one
of the main theories of Jacob Wetterling's disappearance. That theory:
While Jacob, his brother and a friend walked their bikes and scooter
home from a convenience store, somebody got out of a car, grabbed
Jacob. and fled in his car.
Stearns County investigators are steering away from the car.. leaving
their suspect on foot. and local. That fits with the other boys said..
This is a copy of a statement Jacob's best friend Aaron gave police.
Statement: "Was there any vehicles or anything around at this point
that you observed? uh uh. Not that we could see."
How did the car come into play. Remember the witness turned possible
suspect? It was his account that placed a car at the scene that night.
He said it turned around a sped away about the time jacob disappeared.
The FOX 9 Investigators also have learned there was a car nearby that
night. We found the driver. He is not a suspect.
Kevin "It's sad. It chokes me up. but can I do. what could I have
done."
He's a man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Kevin: I never came forward. I figured I didn't have to.
Kevin was 21 at the time. He heard something on the scanner. Saw a
police car speed by his house. Curious, he tried to follow the squad.
He was there so fast there was no police crime scene tape around the
bikes and scooter yet. He drove away and told a police officer what
he'd seen.
Kevin : "He said, yeh we know all about that. I know about the bikes.
and that was it. It was like I was bothering. him. We backed out and
left and that was it."
Trish Van Pilsum: "He didn't take your name or phone number."
Kevin "He didn't take my name.
Trish Van Pilsum: "He didn't ask, did you see a man lurking around.?
Kevin: "Didn't ask me a thing."
Nor, it appears, did the officer pass along his conversation with
Kevin to investigators. It strikes the new investigators now working
on the case 14 years later as strange. It also strikes them as a huge
problem. In fact, investigators didn't know about Kevin at all until
this October. This came about because he met a federal marshal at a
party who urged Kevin to talk to the lead investigator of the
Wetterling investigation.
Kevin: He was really shocked. Cause after I told him who I talked to,
what I seen, he couldn't believe he didn't know about me. In reality,
I could have been the kidnapper and they never would have found me."
In fact of the thousands and thousands of pages of leads, none places
Kevin at the scene around the time of the kidnapping. A source close
to the case said they wasted 14 years looking for him.
Trish Van Pilsum: "Kevin do you think, boy if my information didn't
get passed along, what else was missed?"
Kevin: "Yes. Who else knows something about the case they might not
think was crucial."
Kevin even heard the police were trying to track down the car using
tire tracks.
Kevin: I was scared. i got really scared.
Kevin expected police to come to him. they never did.
Trish Van Pilsum: "So if they couldn't find you, what were the odds
that they could find the kidnapper."
Kevin: "Exactly. I think about that all the time. It's sad. A young
kid like that you know 14 years."
Why didn't he go to the police? He figured he'd gotten to the scene
after everything was over. He doubted he had anything to add. And he
didn't want to get caught up in the widening net of the Wetterling
search.
Kevin: "I knew they were looking for someone and I didn't want to be
put in the position of being a suspect."
Now investigators believe the car is accounted for. The investigation
narrows to a small area surrounding the abduction scene. And,
specifically on one man. One of Jacob Wetterling's neighbors.
The Man: I'm not worried. I'm thinking they're going to figure out I
couldn't.. I wouldn't have been able to do something like that."
Investigators questioned him as recently as two weeks ago, February
7th. They took a sample of his DNA. Five days later they questions his
family and searched him computer files at home.
The Man: "I just have to hope they make sense out of it and not wreck
my life."
Remember he is the witness who placed a car at the scene. Later that
night he heard a commotion. It was the search and it was in his yard.
He went back to bed.
Trish Van Pilsum: "Why would you go to bed when a kid had just
disappeared."
The Man: "I wanted to get some sleep . I wasn't going to waste my
time."
The man FOX 9 talked with may never be connected with the Jacob
Wetterling kidnapping case.
tinydancer
"anne vasquez" <annein...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:0p8850l7fcoqk4p0d...@4ax.com...
>
> http://www.kmsp.com/news/local/stor...tent_id=1621598
>
> Man Questioned in Wetterling Case
>
> Fox 9 Exclusive: It's been nearly 15 years since Jacob Wetterling
> vanished near his St. Joseph home. And he's the man who says he has
> recently become a "suspect" in the Wetterling Investigation. Stearns
> County authorities don't use the word. That's because of gaps early in
> the investigation. They haven't been able to link him to the crime or
> rule the man out.
>
Thanks for posting Anne, this case has always fascinated me. I can't
remember exactly where this man appeared from to begin with? Can you? I
just remember there being 'a man' suddenly. Did he come off the road, out
of the woods? If it was this local guy, he could've seen the boys heading
into town and laid in wait for them to return. I wonder if this local has
any type of record? And how old he is now?
td
Patty
"tinydancer" <tinyd...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:VL15c.34459$p77....@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
:
: "anne vasquez" <annein...@comcast.net> wrote in message
Here's from People Magazine 11/20/89:
But it did happen, on Oct. 22. It was after 9 P.M. when Jacob, his
brother, Trevor, 10, and a friend, Aaron Larson, 11, were coming home
from a Tom Thumb convenience store, where they'd rented the video of
The Naked Gun. Patty Wetterling, 40, and her husband, Jerry, 41, were
at a party when the boys called to ask if they could make the
one-mile trip to the store, and Patty wasn't going to let them do
it. ''But then they called back,'' Patty remembers, ''and Jerry said
they could if they wore reflective clothing, carried a flashlight and
all stayed together. We thought we were protecting them from
everything.''
The Wetterlings never imagined that a man in a mask would be
waiting for the boys in the dark of their dead-end street and order
them off their bikes at gunpoint. Visiting the scene for the first
time since the abduction, Patty breaks down as Jerry describes what
happened. ''He told them to lie face down in the gutter,'' says
Jerry. ''Then he asked them their ages. He told Trevor to run into
the field or he'd shoot. Then he had Aaron turn over, and he looked
at his face and told him to run. He grabbed hold of Jacob.'' The two
boys ran the remaining half mile to the Wetterlings' house, where
Rochelle Jerzak, a neighbor who was baby-sitting Jacob's sister
Carmen, 8 (Jacob's older sister Amy, 13, was visiting a friend),
called home. Rochelle's father, Merle, dialed 911 and then called the
Wetterlings -- thereby setting in motion the extraordinary effort to
get Jacob back.
By 10 P.M. police were already combing the site, and Stearns
County Sheriff Charlie Grafft had called in a state police helicopter
to join the town's volunteer fire department in the search. By
midnight the FBI was on the case.
tinydancer
"Patty" <aie...@iuyc.com> wrote in message
news:ce503aad9df6af4e...@news.teranews.com...
Thanks Patty, it doesn't really state 'where' the man appeared from. That's
probably why I couldn't remember it either. I wonder what bloodhounds might
have found that first night? What trail they might've picked up, if it was
a local, on foot?
td
>
>
Patty
: Thanks Patty, it doesn't really state 'where' the man appeared from. That's
: probably why I couldn't remember it either. I wonder what bloodhounds might
: have found that first night? What trail they might've picked up, if it was
: a local, on foot?
From the Feb 27 2004 St. Cloud Times:
Jacob was taken about 9:15 p.m. Oct. 22, 1989, from 91st Avenue, southeast of St. Joseph.
He was riding his bike home with his brother and a friend. They'd just been to a Tom Thumb
store where they'd rented a movie, "The Naked Gun."
A masked gunman came out of a ditch or a side road, telling Trevor Wetterling in a rough
voice to turn off his flashlight. The boys were told to throw their bikes into a ditch and
lie down on the ground.
From the St Cloud Times Feb 29 2004:
-- Oct. 23, 1989 -- The search resumes about 8 a.m. with Department of Natural Resources
officers using all-terrain vehicles to look for Jacob in woods and fields within a
two-mile radius of the abduction site. Helicopters fly over a 25-square-mile area. A
Minneapolis bloodhound leads officers to tire tracks, prompting officers to believe that
the kidnapper had a car nearby.
-- Oct. 28, 1989 -- About 240 Guard members, volunteers and law enforcement officers scour
several square miles around the abduction site while three helicopters conduct an air
search. A white sweat sock is found about 100 yards from the site, but a Minneapolis
bloodhound can't track its scent farther than a nearby road.
Patty
KMSP FOX 9
3/1/2004
They're the words that launched the search for Jacob Wetterling and some of them come from
his 10-year-old brother Trevor. A year after the abduction, he talked about how a man
asked them their ages and told them to run into the woods or else he would shoot them. The
FOX 9 Investigators have obtained the seven-page 911 transcript of that first call made on
October 22, 1989. The call comes from a neighbor.
Merlin Jerzak says, "I'm right now next door, my neighbors, at my neighbors, the Jerry
Wetterling family. Some of the boys went down to Tom Thumb to pick up a movie and on their
way back someone stopped them and ah, we believe that they have one of the boys because
the, one of the boys did not come back with them."
Dispatcher: "Okay, were you, were they picked up in a vehicle?"
Jerzak: "Just a second I'll ask the boys was there a vehicle, ah, this person appeared ah,
on the road when they were bicycling back home."
Dispatcher: "Okay, did they see the individual at all?"
Jerzak (talking to the boys): "Did they see the individual at all? He had a mask on."
The dispatcher then gets a rough second-hand description of the suspect. A description of
the red hockey jacket Jacob was wearing with Police Department inscribed on the back. The
call is confusing. The dispatcher is simultaneously dispatching squad cars, trying to
figure out where the abduction occurred on the rural stretch of road and asking questions.
Dispatcher: "Give me some information on this guy with the mask, I want color, anything
those kids can remember?"
That's when Jacob's brother, Trevor, has calmed down enough to get on the phone.
Dispatcher: "I want you to give me anything you, you can recall about this male party that
approached you guys, okay?"
Trevor: "Well he was, he was like sorta, he was like a man, sort of big. He had like a, it
looked sort of like nylon things as a mask."
The dispatcher asks about the location of Jacob's bike. Trevor doesn't know what happened
to it.
Trevor: "'Cuz we have to just like run, run off into the woods."
Dispatcher: Did the guy have a deep voice? Anything like that you can remember?"
Trevor: "Yes, did he have like a deep voice or whatever? Seemed like he had a cold sort
of."
Dispatcher: "Trevor, did you see the gun the individual had?"
Trevor: "Um, we couldn't really see it, but we just, we sort of saw it."
Dispatcher: "Okay, did he threaten you?"
Trevor: "Mm, what?"
Before Trevor can answer, the officers have arrived at the Wetterling home. The dispatcher
ends the call telling them they'll be sending more officers and dogs to begin the search.
Unknown to anyone at the time, the heartbreaking search for Jacob Wetterling is just the
beginning.
In hindsight, the most important detail from this transcript may be what's not described.
The boys never saw a car that night. The man who covered his face may have been someone
the boys would recognize, a big man with a congested voice, someone on foot, someone
local.
Patty
: :
: : Thanks Patty, it doesn't really state 'where' the man appeared from. That's
From the Court-TV website:
http://www.courttv.com/news/hiddentraces/wetterling/wetterling_page1.html
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.
Patty
:
: "Patty" <aie...@iuyc.com> wrote in message
: news:6327eb6355547db1...@news.teranews.com...
: : :
: : : Thanks Patty, it doesn't really state 'where' the man appeared from. That's
: : : probably why I couldn't remember it either. I wonder what bloodhounds might
: : : have found that first night? What trail they might've picked up, if it was
: : : a local, on foot?
: : :
What I want to know is if they knew what kind of car the tire prints belonged to
and if this new informant had that type of vehicle. The bloodhounds search
ended where the tire print was, there could have been another car there
that night.
tinydancer
Thanks for all the info Patty. I'm beginning to remember or become familar
with more of the details once again. That's been 15 years ago now. I
wonder too about the tire tracks, and what kind of car the suspect/person of
interest had.
td
>
>
Patty
:
: > What I want to know is if they knew what kind of car the tire prints
: belonged to
: > and if this new informant had that type of vehicle. The bloodhounds
: search
: > ended where the tire print was, there could have been another car there
: > that night.
:
:
: Thanks for all the info Patty. I'm beginning to remember or become familar
: with more of the details once again. That's been 15 years ago now. I
: wonder too about the tire tracks, and what kind of car the suspect/person of
: interest had.
:
: td
But they are implying the person of interest/suspect lived nearby and didn't use a car
so his tire tracks wouldn't be important. So how close was his house to
the abduction, close enough that he did hear either the "getaway car" or the
rubbernecker's car. The boys said that when they were riding back a car never
passed them and they never heard a car leave the area. But the Wetterling's house
was either a 1/4 to 1/2 mile from the abduction, and in their panic as they ran may
have blocked everything out.
Here's a 2000 article from the Reader's Digest. Says their house was half a kilometre.
As expected, the familiar stretch of road, which was near the small central Minnesota town
of St Joseph, was deserted. Along the dark stretch, the youngsters never saw a vehicle or
a person.
But, hidden in the darkness, a stranger was watching them.
As the little trio meandered towards home, they approached a particularly dark spot where
a long dirt driveway comes in from the left to meet the road. Suddenly the torch Held by
Trevor Wetterling picked up a figure moving from the driveway into the road in front of
them. Uncertain, the boys slowed.
"Stop" ordered a burly man with a harsh, raspy voice who stood before them. "turn off that
torch. I have a gun."
The boys saw that his face was covered by stocking mask. They also saw the pistol in his
hand.
Then the man ordered the boys to dump their bikes and scooter and to lie facedown in the
ditch along the road. He first leaned down, looked closely at Trevor's face and demanded
his age. "Ten," Trevor said.
The man then asked Aaron the same question. "I'm 11," Aaron said. Brandishing the gun, the
man turned to jacob and ordered him to give his age. Jacob said that he was 11.
Then the gun man demanded that Trevor get up, screaming at him to run into the woods. As
Trevor ran in the direction of an open field with a wooded area beyond it, the man waved
his pistol at Aaron and yelled, "run to the woods as fast as you can, or I'll shoot!"
As Aaron ran, he saw the gun man grab Jacob by his jacket. A fev moments later, when both
boys looked back as they fled across the field, they saw not a sign of the gun man or of
Jacob.
They ran for home, half a kilometre away.
The boys were hysterical when they burst in,"Rochelle says. "'A man with a gun took
Jacob!' they kept screaming."
Trevor collapsed into Rochelle's arms, weeping uncontrollably. Aaron went straight for a
spot on the floor between two kitchen counters and wedged himself into the tight opening
to hide, crying and chewing desperately on his hands.
"I called my dad next door," Rochelle says. "He was there in less than a minute." He
instantly called Patty and Jerry Wetterling, and they rushed home.
The police reached the Wetterling house seven minutes after receiving Rochelle's father's
call. The officers asked Trevor and Aaron to show them exactly where the abduction
occurred and what happened.
Soon a growing number- of police and firefighters were out looking for Jacob. A helicopter
with a searchlight darted above the trees, probing the woods and fields. By the next day,
hundreds more had joined the search.
In the first hours a tracking dog followered Jacob's scent from the point of abduction on
the road into the dark driveway and to a spot where the scent vanished. There, police
found tire tracks, suggesting that the kidnapper may have got away in a vehicle with Jacob
his captive.
tinydancer
What I'm thinking is, just because he might've lived nearby, doesn't
preclude the use of a car to get the kid home with him. I thought the area
was pretty well saturated with LE and helicopters fairly quickly. So maybe
he had his car stashed nearby, stuck Jacob into it, and buzzed home say in
under five minutes? So while the cops were combing the woods and checking
out cars that were driving on roads in the area, this guy was already home
with Jacob before the kids even made it to Jacobs house to call the cops. I
remember the photo's a little bit, of the deserted area where the bikes were
found. Seems like it was a long stretch of road that ended in the cul de
sac where the houses were. I'd say the guy had his car behind where the
boys were headed and wouldn't have passed them driving away.
td
Patty
:
: What I'm thinking is, just because he might've lived nearby, doesn't
: preclude the use of a car to get the kid home with him. I thought the area
: was pretty well saturated with LE and helicopters fairly quickly. So maybe
: he had his car stashed nearby, stuck Jacob into it, and buzzed home say in
: under five minutes? So while the cops were combing the woods and checking
: out cars that were driving on roads in the area, this guy was already home
: with Jacob before the kids even made it to Jacobs house to call the cops. I
: remember the photo's a little bit, of the deserted area where the bikes were
: found. Seems like it was a long stretch of road that ended in the cul de
: sac where the houses were. I'd say the guy had his car behind where the
: boys were headed and wouldn't have passed them driving away.
:
: td
http://www.kmsp.com/news/local/story.asp?content_id=1622108
Jacob Wetterling Case
2/27/2004
An investigator who worked the Jacob Wetterling case 14 and a half years ago is not giving
up on the theory the 11-year-old was taken by someone in a car.
FOX 9 news first reported new investigators are looking at local suspects from the
neighborhood. That happened after the innocent driver of a car spotted in the area that
night finally came forward.
A now-retired detective told FOX 9 on Friday there may have been another car at the scene
and Jacob's footprints appear to have led to the tire tracks of a parked car.