Jacob Wetterling Aftermath: FUBARS AND HURT FEELINGS FROM THE FBI

About that Jacob Wetterling investigation…

You know, I hate to be one of those people who keep saying, “I told you so,” I really do. But go back to the op-ed I posted in The Richfield Patch on September 11, 2016. Take another look at what I wrote over two years ago.

When everyone else back then was tearing up with “God bless you, Jacob” or praising the “dedicated” law enforcement officials who “cracked the case,” I offered an entirely different take on what happened. I wrote an opinion piece called “What If The Person of Interest in The Jacob Wetterling Case Had Been a Black Guy?” The subheading went even further: “The Jacob Wetterling case: Minnesota's most botched-up criminal investigation EVER remains a mystery in many ways.”

The “mystery” to which I referred dealt with the shocking ineptitude of local, state, and national law enforcement agencies. As in, Why didn’t you guys just do your jobs?

Why did you repeatedly ignore or dismiss first-hand accounts from other victims of similar assaults perpetrated by Danny Heinrich — the small town wacko who killed Jacob Wetterling?

More importantly, why did you keep invalidating all the accumulating evidence that so obviously incriminated him?

Danny Heinrich wasn’t hiding in plain sight. He wasn’t hiding at all. He was right in front of you guys for years, and you blatantly ignored him as the prime suspect in Jacob’s murder.

Gee, when I put it that way, it’s not really THAT mysterious after all.

In fact, on Thursday, September 20th, Stearns County Sheriff Don Gudmundson (who became the new sheriff last year, after the Wetterling case had been solved) essentially agreed with what I’d figured out two years earlier. That is, the investigation went south in a hurry because the investigators screwed up. They screwed up big time. And if anyone should know about proper police procedure, it’s Gudmundson.

Here’s a guy who’s experienced law enforcement from every angle. Homicide detective in Chicago and Detroit; police chief in Lakeville, MN. and interim police chief in Faribault, MN.; sheriff in Fillmore, Dakota and Stearns counties — Gudmundson has served and protected the public all his life. So when he held a news conference and announced the Wetterling investigation “went off the rails very quickly,” everyone listened. They might have been amazed and angered and horrified, but they paid attention to what the new sheriff was saying.

Sheriff Gudmundson blamed local, state, and federal agencies for not cooperating with one another, but delivered pointed criticism towards the FBI’s efforts and lack thereof. His presentation at the Stearns County Law Enforcement Center included a thoughtful verbal analysis with slides and the release of about 42,000 pages of files from state and local investigators. He actually admitted, “All of us failed.”

More surprising than Gudmundson’s admission, however, was the behavior of Al Garber, lead FBI agent on the Wetterling case. After the sheriff finished his presentation, Garber went to the podium and declared he wasn’t willing to take the blame for the investigation’s failure. When he began defending himself further, though, Gudmundson told him to “take it outside.” So he did.

And once again, Minnesotans were left wondering why this FBI agent hadn’t been weeded out at Quantico years earlier. Garber actually told reporters outside how shocked and sad and hurt he was feeling about Sheriff Gudmundson’s comments. Then he showed how little he understood about criminal investigation. Although he did acknowledge that Heinrich’s shoe prints and tire tracks did match the ones at the scene of the crime, he also said, “Do you know what that means in a court of law? That means nothing.”

So evidence means nothing? Oh, really? Let’s see…Assaults of young boys in Cold Spring and Paynesville (in the area near St. Joseph where Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped) were all eerily similar. The police sketch of Jacob’s abductor bore a striking resemblance to Danny Heinrich. Fibers from another victim’s snowmobile suit were similar to fibers found in Heinrich’s Mercury Topaz. More importantly, several witnesses came forward to tell authorities that Heinrich was THE SAME GUY who had abducted and assaulted them. Maybe a few of these pieces of evidence wouldn’t have held up in court, but all of this “circumstantial evidence” certainly could have built a strong case against Heinrich. Attorneys have won convictions with far less evidence.

Both The Minneapolis Star Tribune and The St. Paul Pioneer Press put Gudmundson’s press conference on the front page, along with more information about the Wetterling investigation. It’s worth a read. So is my op-ed. If you don’t have time to return to that posting, some key points and arguments are reprinted here, in italics:

“Amid all the unanswered questions and lingering speculations about the Jacob Wetterling Case, there's something else we all should be wondering about. Oh, it's almost too embarrassingly politically incorrect to even ask. But still, it should be considered. What would have happened if any suspect in this case had been a black — and not a white — guy?…
Here's the harsh reality: if ANY of the suspects in this investigation had been Black or Hispanic or Asian or of Middle Eastern descent, we wouldn't have had to wait THAT long for a confession. We wouldn't have had to wait almost 27 years to find out what happened to Jacob Wetterling. No way. This case would have been solved in record time — certainly in less than a year's time, anyway.

You know what I mean. So does everyone else in the law enforcement hierarchy. When it comes to Black or other minority suspects, expediency rules. Arrest them, incarcerate them, then come up for some reason to keep them in jail — that's how it works for non-whites most of the time these days.
You don't believe me? Pick up a newspaper once in a while and read it. Turn on your TV and check out the video du jour of the latest Cop vs Black Driver incident. It's all there, sometimes even streaming live, for all to see. It's. happening. every. day.
Every day you hear about cops stopping Black drivers because they "resemble" suspects involved in robberies and shootings. Or so the cops say. Then when the surprised and confused and upset black "suspects" protest — or merely ask questions — they get arrested. There's always a reason, always a charge, that will ensure a lock-up. Even if the "suspects" are cooperative, they still get hauled down to police headquarters and detained longer than what's legally necessary. If nothing else, there's some trumped-up charge that the "suspect" is a jaywalking terrorist or gang member who didn't completely stop at the stop sign.
And then, there's this white guy Danny Heinrich: child killer who just confessed only a few days ago to the rape and murder of Jacob Wetterling back on October 22, 1989.
He's the same guy who couldn't get arrested or seriously considered as a prime suspect for this murder decades earlier. Why? Because authorities keep saying "they never had enough evidence to prove he actually killed Jacob Wetterling." Really?
Here's where our story turns from crime thriller into Law&Order absurdity. Authorities DID have enough evidence for a conviction. Over the decades, mounting circumstantial evidence against Danny Heinrich did ensure a lifetime behind bars for him. But the crimefighting braintrust in the land of the St. Cloud Syndrome decided to go on a witch hunt. They decided to waste valuable time and resources to harass the Wetterling's next-door neighbor — a highly functional yet mildly autistic loner we might as well call the Boo Radley of St. Joseph. His real name, though, was Dan Rassier.
Yes, this unmarried music teacher who lived with his parents and helped them out was an odd duck indeed. Like Danny Heinrich he was a white guy, but he was also, well…different. The only thing worse than being Black in predominantly white small-town Minnesota is being the weird white guy. And Rassier was weird simply because he was different. He was a sensitive new male who shared his feelings and wept openly about the Wetterling's tragedy. He also was a dedicated marathon runner who taught music to young girls — and boys. He was just different. And it didn't help matters much that nobody got his lame, quirky sense of humor, either. When you don't fit in and don't think and act like everybody else in rural Minnesota, you ARE a minority group of one.
Because Rassier's home and driveway were areas located closest to little Jacob's abduction site, he immediately became a suspect. Investigators not only had him under surveillance, they repeatedly interrogated him and people he knew. Of course, you could always rationalize those actions by saying law enforcement officials were merely doing their job. Even going through Rassier's house, personal effects, computer, and yard might be understandable. So would getting his DNA. But when they hypnotized Rassier and got Patty Wetterling to wear a wire during conversations he had with her, you know they really were out to get him, lack of evidence be damned.
( Take heart, O Weird One. Now you can write a book about this injustice, and Clint Eastwood can direct a movie about it.)
So we know what the law enforcement community in this case did to Rassier. They went after the different white guy they didn't like. For decades, they probed him, despite the fact that he had no history of criminal behavior or no record of current criminal conduct.
Meanwhile, in February, 1990, Heinrich got arrested for assaulting yet another young "juvenile male," one ID'ed only as JNS. But Heinrich said he was innocent. So authorities released him — no charges, no further investigation, no problem.
Wow. All he had to do was say, "I didn't do it," and the cops let him go home? Gee, I wonder what would happen if the brothers in Chicago tried this approach…Never mind. They already have, and the cops keep shooting them, anyway.
Maybe the problem here isn't that there are too many unanswered questions in this case. Maybe the real problem is that the answers given by the law enforcement community are too incomplete, too disturbing, and too puzzling.
Consider poor Jared Scheierl's experience at the hands of Danny Heinrich on January 13, 1989, in Cold Spring, Minnesota. When Heinrich confessed last Tuesday (on September 6th) to killing Jacob, he also admitted to kidnapping Jared. According to Heinrich, he asked Jared for directions, then forced him into the back seat of his car. After sexually assaulting him, he ordered Jared to get dressed. But that was impossible because Heinrich kept his pants and underwear as souvenirs.
Stop right there. RED FLAG ALERT, RED FLAG ALERT. How exactly does a 12 year-old boy without any pants whatsoever run away from his kidnapper's car in January, in Minnesota, without anyone noticing? Even if no adults were home when he got there, someone must have noticed his loss of clothing later on. Someone also had to have seen the inevitable chafing, redness, or frostbite that Jared developed, even if we might have had a mild winter that year.
Furthermore, how did it happen that no one at the local police department or county sheriff's office believed Jared's story? Why wasn't Jared's case prosecuted when the descriptive details he gave to authorities resulted in a police sketch that looked exactly like Heinrich? Why did Jared's case — along with Jacob's — become cold for so long?…”
But for me, here’s the real zinger to the story, the paragraph that explains a lot and holds special meaning in 2018:
“What's happening now is that the participants in this investigation are trying to recreate a CYA reality that's kinda truthful and kinda makes them look good. It might not be accurate, but it won't get them into any trouble, either. As long as the media goes along with them and uses their self-serving PR to report this story, nobody in law enforcement will lose his or her job…”
And yet, if reporters working in the local media had pressed these investigators too much for information or challenged them too often about the news they were releasing, these reporters would have lost THEIR jobs. Why? Because piqued members of the law enforcement community would have retaliated by deliberately withholding news. They would have shut out the media altogether. Then reporters would have had nothing to report. That’s what always happens when you go toe to toe with any cops, detectives, sheriffs, or FBI agents. They always put private citizens in their place. In other words, if you’re not one of their co-workers, you’re just another civilian.
That’s also why it’s so hard to hold law enforcement accountable if they’re doing a lousy job.
Even if divulging certain information to the media would NOT have compromised the investigation, the investigators on this case still wanted to control every single aspect of the investigation. So they never would have revealed their shortcomings or problems outside the Blue Wall, anyway.
Okay, I can understand that being an anal-retentive control freak might be a job hazard — maybe even a job prerequisite — when it comes to working as a criminal investigator. I get it. What I don’t get, though, is how so many amateur sleuths and writers interested in the Wetterling case (like me) were able to figure out — with very little info or actual clues at our disposal — that Jacob’s killer remained at large for so long because so many law enforcement officials had screwed up.
Unfortunately, there were so many of us nonprofessional Poirots on this case that we could have filled the new Vikings Stadium to capacity.