- Today, October 12th, I'm 5ft tall. My whole name is Jacob Erwin Wetterling. - It's a case that just captures the imagination of everyone because they can all imagine, 'That could have been my kid.' - There's a man with a gun, and he's got Jacob. - You're worried about him getting hit by a car, and he gets snatched by somebody? - Who would take a child? That's all I` Who would do this? TEARFULLY: Jacob's all alone. It's just not fair. It's just wrong. (BREATHES SHAKILY) - You're all riding your bike and your scooter from this way. - Yep. - And you get to this area. What happens? - All of the sudden, a man came out from this area over here. (CAMERAS SNAP) - And we saw some adult-sized footprints and smaller ones, like child-sized footprints. It looked like somebody was pulling this kid along. (DRAMATIC NEWS STING) www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2023 - Nau mai, haere mai ` welcome to 20/20. Jacob Wetterling was a bright, funny, adventurous 11-year-old when he was grabbed by a stranger while out on an evening bike ride with two mates. His abduction and the hunt to find him would consume his parents' lives, and also fundamentally changed small-town American life around how much freedom kids could enjoy. Our story starts in his small town of St Joseph, Minnesota. (SENTIMENTAL MUSIC) - You can see... (CHUCKLES) Four kids, it was pretty busy. - Yeah, it looks like it. - But they were fun. Look at those smiles. - Like stairsteps too, with their ages. - In 1989, Amy was 13 Jacob was 11, Trevor was 10 and Carmen was 8 years old. We bought this house in the woods. It just felt very peaceful here. We just played. It was fun. 'Trevor, you got to get down low, so it'll...' - OK, wait. We got to go down.... - This is Jacob. - He looks so much like you. - Yeah. - Wow. - He's a cutie. - What made him special to you? - He just had a really good spirit. - Sweet, innocent, very real. A light. Light up a room. - 'Jacob Wetterling was my best friend.' They were kind of that family that was willing to try anything. - We were happy. Everybody was busy. Well, you can see busy in this calendar. - And this is 1989. - 1989. This is January. I mean, every month. - This one is jammed. - Yeah, well, this was school ` back to school, so you've got everything going on. And then this is October. - Now this is the month that you'll never forget. October 1989. - October 22nd. Pretty much everything stops. It goes to nothing. It just stopped. - Mm. (OMINOUS MUSIC) - It was a Sunday. We didn't have school the next day for some reason. - That particular night we were invited to a dinner party. - You were going out to dinner with friends and the kids were going to stay here. - And we asked Jacob if he minded babysitting. Amy was staying at a friend's house. We were just gonna be gone a little bit and, um... He was in sixth grade. He said, 'Sure, no problem. Can Aaron come over?' - I remember being super excited because we actually get to hang out and we don't have school the next day. - We left, we got to our friend's house, called home to give them the number. This is pre-cell phone, you have to remember. - Of course. - They asked if they could ride their bikes to the store and rent a video. I initially said no; it was starting to get dark. - Being little boys, you kind of come up with 'not take no' for that first answer. - They've ridden to the store a million times, but not at night. - Where we lived, in a kind of a little cul-de-sac wooded area, to the town is a straight road, but cars can go fairly fast on that road. Jacob was wearing my reflective running vest. Aaron had a white sweatshirt on and Trevor was carrying a flashlight. - They had everything taken care of. - Said, 'OK, go and then come right home.' - But then they call the third time. These are responsible children, and they said 'Carmen doesn't wanna go with, is it OK if Rochelle comes over to babysit?' - So then I went over to the Wetterling house. - As a parent, we were in direct contact with them and everything felt fine. - Like you'd done everything right that you could possibly do. - Right, and it's a five minute, 10-minute max bike ride. It's not far. It's a mile. (BIKE SPOKES TICK) (UNEASY MUSIC) - AARON: We left probably close to around 8.30. I was actually on the scooter and then they were on their bikes. We weren't in a big hurry. We were just kind of cruising down the road. And then we went into Tom Thumb, the convenience store, and we got The Naked Gun, the new movie, and then we just headed back the same way we came down. The moon wasn't out and there's no stars, and you couldn't see anything unless it was in our little circle of light from our little flashlights. (UNEASY MUSIC GROWS) A man came out from the left-hand side. There's a little gravel driveway that leads back to a farm. And it's one of those, like, kind of ingrained where he comes out and he says, 'Stop and turn off your flashlights.' And, 'I have a gun.' And I think I let out a laugh almost because I thought, 'This must be a joke.' Then it became real pretty quick. - ROCHELLE: It seemed like they weren't gone very long at all, when all of the sudden, Trevor rushed into the house, followed pretty closely by Aaron, and they were frantic, kind of screaming, 'Rochelle! Rochelle! Someone took Jacob!' 'There's a man with a gun, and he's got Jacob!' - To have a man jump out and abduct an 11-year-old boy ` It was inconceivable. - Then you get a phone call that I suspect you'll never forget. - So he answered the phone and it was Rochelle's dad. - He asked for me and says, 'The boys went to the Tom Thumb, and a guy, uh, wearing a mask... 'took Jacob.' - A guy wearing a mask took your son. You're worried about him getting hit by a car and he gets snatched by somebody? What are you thinking? - I'm not thinking, I'm just... - He changed. Jerry came back to the table and grabbed my arm, and said, 'We gotta go.' Um, and I said, you know, 'What happened? 'Aren't those boys back yet?' And he said, 'Two of 'em are. 'Somebody took Jacob.' It's like... What? It was unimaginable. - POLICE RADIO: We believe that they have one of the boys. - EMERGENCY RESPONDER: OK, were they picked up in a vehicle? - Just a second. I'll ask the boys. Was there a vehicle there or was he walking? (CHILDREN SPEAK INDISTINCTLY) They couldn't` They didn't see a vehicle. - OK. Did they see the individual at all? - Yes, they did. Did you see the individual at all? (RADIO STATIC BUZZES) He had a mask on. - AARON: He had, like, a nylon stocking over his face wherein you couldn't see any of the eyes or any of his features. Maybe that's why the voice stands out to me more. It was a very... gruff, gravelly voice. - He ordered them to put their bikes down in the ditch and then to lay down, face down, each one of them. - So we were laying with our heads facing that way, on our stomachs. - Mm-hm. - And then he told us to look at him and asked us how old we were. And so at the time, Trevor was 10 and myself and Jacob were both 11. And then he started with Trevor at first, and he told him to run as fast as he could into the woods. And then he told me to get up and run as fast as I can, and 'don't look back, or else I would shoot.' - Trevor and Aaron ran off to the woods back here, and then they ran from the corner of the woods here, diagonally across the field where a gap in the trees is. That's where the Wetterling house in the neighbourhood is. - JOY: When Aaron finally caught up to Trevor and they were brave enough to look back, they just didn't see Jacob. He was gone. - Nobody was there then. It was a matter of how fast can we get to somebody to help us? Because we had no idea what's going on and` - Where's Jacob? - Where's Jacob? - The detectives were asking for all kinds of personal` They might have taken Trevor's hockey jacket because they both played for the same league. This is his hockey jacket. - And he was wearing this? - He was wearing this when he was kidnapped. (POIGNANT MUSIC) Then they asked for a, you know, picture of Jacob. - This the photo that you gave? - This was the yellow sweater photo. This was heartbreaking. You take it down... But it was so hard because I had, you know, three of the kids' school pictures on the wall, and then there's this blank frame. It was just... - (GROANS SOFTLY) - One of those heart-wrenching.... - Moments. - Moments. (POIGNANT MUSIC FADES) (CRICKETS CHIRP) - That first night was just a lot of chaos. - The sheriff was concerned that maybe he's tied to a tree or something, and he can't break free. We're gonna find him. - Law enforcement are searching and searching the abduction site. Then key pieces of evidence and a witness emerge. - And the witness has a slightly different story to the boys, which will prove vital. We'll be right back. (DRAMATIC NEWS STING) (DRAMATIC NEWS STING) - Welcome back to 20/20. 11-year-old Jacob's been snatched, taken by a man with a gun while out bike riding with his friends on a summer evening. In 1989 small-town America, this is an almost unthinkable crime and at first, local law enforcement expect it will be quickly resolved. He may even be lost in the nearby woods, but it soon becomes apparent there are no easy answers to young Jacob's disappearance. - Today, October 12th, I'm 5ft tall. My whole name is Jacob Erwin Wetterling. My favourite food is steak. My favourite colour is blue. Best friend is Aaron Larson. - His sixth grade teacher, she had videotaped all of the kids and had them tell a little bit about yourself. - What I wanna be when I grow up is a football player. (CHEERS) - And that video was taken 10 days before he was abducted. - I'm finished. (CRICKETS CHIRP) - I remember the night before, he was kind of crabby cos he felt like he was a bad skater, so he was a little bit sensitive. (EXHALES DEEPLY) VOICE BREAKS: He felt really bad. 'I'm sorry I was so crabby. You wanna play a game?' And I said, 'No, I... Thank you.' 'I appreciate you wanting to play.' (STAMMERS) That's one of my worst, um... mom moments. I wish I could take it back. (SOFT MUSIC) - Police want to get a recorded statement from Jacob's 10-year-old brother, Trevor, who was with Jacob when he was taken. - OFFICER ON TAPE RECORDING: Some guy make you guys stop riding your bikes? - TREVOR: Oh, yeah. - Can you tell us what this person initially said when you guys were riding by him? - He said, 'Stop. I have a gun. Turn off the flashlight. 'Go in the ditch, face the other way.' Right when he told me to run, he grabbed Jacob. - Where the abduction occurred was at the end of a driveway where the rest of your family resided. - The night Jacob was taken, I was home alone. (DOG BARKS) Between 9 and 9.30, the dog is barking because the dog is noticing a car coming down the hill. It was like a blue, or maybe a darker blue, but smaller car. Turned around very quickly and it was gone. Shortly after that I went to bed. - About in this area we saw some tire tracks... ...and then we saw some adult-sized footprints and smaller ones, like child-sized footprints. They weren't going straight forward like this. They were to the side and almost like they were shuffling together. It didn't look like someone had just gone for a walk. It looked like somebody was pulling this kid along. And so that caused us to think that maybe these were Jacob's footprints and the abductor's footprints. - In the days following Jacob's abduction, there was massive searches. - ARCHIVE: Looking for any sign of Jacob or his kidnapper... - The ground search was divided into sectors. - ...beginning with an intensive check of the 36 sq mile St Joseph Township. - It was a big area. We've checked all the fields, the swamps, like I said, the abandoned buildings. - Sheriffs came up with horses. - ARCHIVE: You're all volunteers, right? How come you came up? - Just for the sake of helping` (HORSE BRAYS) Help to find the little fella. - Hundreds of law enforcement officers involved, a task force was formed with multiple agencies and multiple investigators. - And we've come up with nothing. We went and met Patty and Jerry almost immediately. What we promised them is that we would do everything, everything in our power to find Jacob. You have to be patient. And she said, 'I can't be patient. This is my child.' And we both understood. - PATTY: At the beginning, there's no way your brain can really... ...take all this in. It's crazy. - First, it was Jerry who was front and centre in the middle of all that media coverage. But after an appearance on A Current Affair, the family decides to change not its message, but its messenger. - Tonight, our David Lee Miller reports on that terrible crime that has brought terror to the country's heartland. - It is total shock, total disbelief. - People started turning in Jerry as a suspect, and it's like they didn't like the way he looked on TV ` he wasn't sad enough, he didn't cry, he wasn't angry. It was ridiculous. - I wasn't meeting their needs for what I should be as a searching dad. - REPORTER: Thank you, both. - He finally one day just said, 'They don't wanna hear from me. They need to hear from you.' So that was my call to step up. TEARFULLY: Jacob's all alone. It's just not fair. It's just wrong. - DEBORAH: The idea that Jacob was taken while innocently riding his bicycle seemed to shake the nation to its core, leading police to stop at nothing to find him. Little do the Wetterling know that just miles away, investigators may have a link to Jacob's disappearance. - Investigators became aware of a similar abduction that had occurred. - ARCHIVE: The FBI says it is the best lead they've had in nearly two months. For the first time, agents believe there is a connection between Jacob's abduction and another abduction earlier this year. - Cold Spring is about 10 miles from St Joseph, and in January of 1989, just nine months before Jacob's kidnapping, another boy, 12-year-old Jared Scheierl, is abducted. - Jared had gone to the skating rink with several other friends, and after he decided he was just gonna walk home. - A car had pulled up and a man asked if he knew where the Kramers lived, and Jared tried to help him with directions, and the man got out and grabbed Jared and put him in the backseat of his car. - This guy approached me from behind, said, 'I have a gun. I'm not afraid to use it.' - The abductor drove Jared to a remote site outside of Cold Spring, Minnesota, and assaulted him. - I was dropped off and told to run. 'Don't look back,' or he would shoot. - The statement matched language used at the Wetterling abduction. - He grabbed Jacob, and then he told me to run as fast as I could into the woods, or else he'd shoot. - Jared and his parents reported this right away, and they met with police and gave a very detailed police report. - We believe the vehicle was a blue vehicle, a blue interior. He described some sort of a police scanner or a handheld scanner in the front seat of the vehicle. - Jared described his abductor as wearing a baseball cap, camouflage clothing, a man with a gruff voice. - ARCHIVE: Today, the FBI released this composite ` a sketch of the Cold Spring abductor. It was drawn after investigators noticed the similarities between the abduction and Jacob's. The abductor was a white man in his 40s or 50s. He had a deep, raspy voice and he told the boy he had a gun. - The characteristic that I remember of, like, our event is the voice. - When Jared Scheierl was abducted and sexually assaulted, that was very, very rare. You fast-forward to when Jacob Wetterling was abducted ` a stranger abduction in Minnesota on a gravel road. Probability that they were both related? Absolutely. - They thought, 'OK, this could be our guy.' - So can the cops make a link between the two similar incidents? We'll explore this right after the break. (DRAMATIC NEWS STING) (DRAMATIC NEWS STING) - You're watching 20/20. 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling's been taken and the time is ticking by. But for his parents, there was no evidence Jacob is not alive. And that's the one thing Patty and Jerry are clinging onto as they live with the constant, agonising question, 'Where are you, Jacob?' And the resolution of other child kidnapping cases, some after decades, gives the Wetterling some hope. Meanwhile, law enforcement are trying to make a link with another sexual assault on a young boy. - MAN: It's an unsolved mystery. - DEBORAH: Weeks go by, months go by. - Involving this young, All-American boy... - WOMAN: No news, no leads. - ...no one knew why. - Year after year after year after year. - And nobody really knew exactly how. - PATTY: Where are you, Jacob? (APPLAUSE) - REPORTER: Tonight in Missouri, Shawn Hornbeck is back home. - REPORTER: A California kidnapping case has come to an astonishing end. - REPORTER: Three missing women found alive together a decade later. - Two decades go by. No sign of your son, yet you still hold on to hope. - I did. This is what kept me going. - These were clippings of stories of other children who made it back. - Kids who made it back. - Over the years, we've watched Patty turned into an activist. - I was working with the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and doing law enforcement trainings all over the country. People need to be educated about the dangers of those who violate children. - Because of Jacob's case and Patty, the sex offender registration law was passed. - BILL CLINTON: Today, America warns, if you dare to prey on our children, the law will follow you wherever you go. - She got very involved in trying to keep this from happening to other families. It wasn't just about Jacob; it was about all children. - In 2013, it was nearly 25 years since you had lost Jacob. You meet a blogger? - Yes. - I was speaking at an event and this woman came and introduced herself and said she'd been blogging about Jacob. - Patty is mildly freaking out about this person, and I just go to the blog and I'm reading and say, 'Wow... this is good stuff.' - We called her, I think, the next day, and we had at least a two-hour conversation of 'who are you and where do you hope to go?' (TENSE MUSIC) - Then, a turning point in Joy's research ` she stumbles across a 1987 newspaper article from the nearby town of Paynesville. - JOY: I found this story about these five cases of young teenage boys who had been followed, assaulted, also very similar language. Like when they had been caught, he'd say, 'Don't turn around 'or I'll blow your head off.' - My friend and I were riding our bikes around this corner, and the guy came flying out from behind the spruce trees. - In the dark? - In total darkness, clotheslined my friend off the bike. And he stopped on the bike and I stopped and my friend yelled, 'You already got me!' And the guy took off running and I took off on my bike to call the police. My friend, he said, 'I got his hat.' In their scuffle, he grabbed his hat. - Law enforcement investigate, but they never arrest anybody for the attacks on Chris or his friends. - I really, really felt that Paynesville was the answer. - Law enforcement had actually talked to some of those Paynesville boys after Jacob's abduction. - In January of 1990, the Paynesville police chief had contacted the task force and indicated that Danny Heinrich might be considered a suspect in the Wetterling case. Heinrich was in his mid-20s at the time. He was a life-long resident of Paynesville. - Danny Heinrich was one of the names who'd come up early. No prior arrests for sexual assault, no prior anything against children, couldn't hold a job for long. He had a troubled childhood. - The physical description was nearly identical in all of the Paynesville incidents. It was very similar to the Cold Spring abduction, as well as Jacob Wetterling's abduction. Gravelly, raspy, static-filled voice was a specific description of the offender. - And investigators did take a close look at Heinrich after Jared Scheierl's kidnapping. - They put him in a line-up. It was just a picture line-up, so Jared picked two people that somewhat resembled the guy that had taken him, but that was as good as he could do. - One of those was Heinrich, and words 'somewhat resembled' in the precision of legal language isn't that 'he picked him out'. - With no other evidence, Heinrich is never charged. But after Jacob Wetterling is abducted, Heinrich's name surfaces once again. - Heinrich's response and the troubling things found in a search of his home ` when we come back. (DRAMATIC NEWS STING) (DRAMATIC NEWS STING) - Welcome back. So, several years after Jacob was taken, police have a strong suspect ` a man called Danny Heinrich, who's been linked to another similar incident involving a young boy in a nearby town. They didn't have enough evidence to charge him in that matter, but as we pick up our story, investigators are recounting what happened when they asked Heinrich about whether he had anything to do with Jacob's abduction. - We started talking to him and before long he said, 'I want a lawyer.' And, of course, once they say that, according to the rules, we cannot ask any further questions. - They did not have enough physical evidence to charge him, therefore they had to release him. - Through the years of investigating, Danny Heinrich always was one of our suspects. After different leads, we would then decide that we would go approach and see if we could talk to him and we would knock on the door. The first time, he shut the door on me. A couple of years later, we came back, same story ` knocked on the door. He says, 'I got an attorney. I'm not talking to you.' End of the story. Did we think that was suspicious? Sure. But could we do anything about it? No. - Every day I'm getting all these tips and leads from Paynesville residents, and I'm sending them all to Stearns County. But at some point, I just felt like a bother. - Joy may have discovered some additional information, but the fact that young boys were being either chased, stalked, or groped in Paynesville was not new to us. We just couldn't share the law enforcement file, what we had with her. - But since Jared was a victim, investigators would share information with him. - Jared meets with Captain Jensen and he calls me and he is on fire. And he just said, 'Joy, there's a hat that may have DNA on it.' - The Paynesville incidents have something else in common. At the centre of many of those crimes is that apartment where Danny Heinrich was living. Were you losing faith in law enforcement at this point? - I was frustrated. I wanted the team back. Fresh look ` you've gotta go back to the beginning. - And this is the Wetterling room. (DOOR HANDLE CLICKS) This is a lot of evidence. - It's a lot of evidence. - And you said not even all of what you have. - This is a small portion of the evidence that was collected through the years. - It's been close to 25 years since Jacob's kidnapping. And now an FBI team that's highly trained in child abductions is about to conduct a review of the entire Wetterling case. - In doing the cold case review, Danny Heinrich was a very good suspect early in the investigation. - When they started reviewing the case, they looked at Jared's case, too. - This would be clothing related to the abduction of the Cold Spring boy. - When Jared Scheierl was assaulted, DNA was not regularly used in criminal cases. - Over the course of time in the investigation, we had continued to repeatedly submit the items from the Cold Spring boy's abduction for DNA analysis, and it was only finally in 2012 that we were able to come up with an unknown male DNA that was left on the clothing. (SOLEMN MUSIC) - Dennis Kern located a hair that had been saved on a slide at the FBI lab... that was identified as Danny Heinrich's. - We got a big break in the case. The hair has provided a DNA match to the previously unknown DNA that was collected from the Cold Spring boy's abduction, and that match was Danny Heinrich. - And so they were able to conclusively show that Danny Heinrich was the person who kidnapped and assaulted Jared Scheierl. - Once we had a DNA match for the Cold Spring investigation, we sought a search warrant. - DEBORAH: In that search warrant, law enforcement allege Heinrich's involvement in eight Paynesville incidents. The baseball cap is tested for DNA, and though 80% of the population was excluded, Danny Heinrich's DNA was not. - In that search warrant, we were looking for human remains or any trophies that might have been kept. - OFFICER ON RECORDING: Today's date is 7/28, 2015. The time's 8.36am. Presently, with Pam Jensen, Stearns County Sheriff. I'm Ken McDonald, Minnesota BCA. - While other investigators were executing the search warrant, Captain Jensen and myself sat outside at the patio table with Danny Heinrich. - Heinrich has no idea that he's being recorded. - JENSEN: You know, when we do a lot of these search warrants, we like to see what we have on internets. - HEINRICH: They're gonna find some things in that house that look pretty damn damning to me. - You know, if you're worried about, like, pornography, a lot of people got pornography in their house. You're a single guy` - Yes, I do have pornography. I'm not gonna lie to you there, I do. - Tell us what you found when you got in. - The house itself was very neat. (EERIE MUSIC) - There is no human or anything remains on this property, I guarantee you, 100% ` as far as I know. Before I bought the place, who knows what's in the root cellar or underneath the crawl sp` That I wouldn't know anything about, you know. - McDONALD: Right. - Nothing pertaining to... Jacob 'Letterling'. There's nothing here. Or ever has been. - Of course, we're trying to get a little information without making him upset with us. I asked him about Paynesville. - I have never touched anybody, period. That's the God's truth. I'll admit I got some damning (BLEEP) in that house, but I never touched anybody. - Very quickly, within the search, investigators were finding binders that contained child erotica, child pornography. We found numerous bins of child-sized clothing. We found wigs and handcuffs. We recovered 922 VHS tapes. A lot of the VHS tapes were of children's programming, where you had children actors on the shows. - When we went through the tapes, investigators found hours of him at playgrounds, hours of him watching boys go by on their bikes. Very inappropriate. - DEBORAH: The search yields no evidence directly linking Heinrich to Jared, Jacob or any of the Paynesville incidents. But there was something else found that troubled investigators. - He had tapes of news clippings from the Wetterling investigation. - The Wetterling investigation. So he was obviously concerned about the Wetterling case. - Correct. - So we worked with the US Attorney's office to formulate a nexus to get federal charges for child pornography. Federal charges would carry more weight with more potential prison time, which might help elicit some confession in the Wetterling case. - About three months after they searched Heinrich's home, investigators contact the Wetterlings to share their findings. - You could just feel... an electric energy in the room. - We had made a PowerPoint which talked about the Paynesville incidents, the DNA match with Jared's case. - And then we also went over some of the tire and shoe impressions with overlays. - They had Danny's shoes, and then they had the imprint on the driveway and they just` it was like a slow-moving movie where they put one on top of the other. And visually, it was a match ` visually. And they did the same thing with the tire. - And they matched. - And they matched exactly. It was chilling. That whole presentation was absolutely chilling. - But you don't know at this stage where Jacob is, you don't know if he's dead or alive. - Correct. - They warned us to not reveal to anybody what was going on because they wanted him arrested. - Good afternoon. Last night, FBI special agents working with the BCA, the Stearns County Sheriff's Office and local police arrested Daniel James Heinrich. - 26 years, roughly, after the abduction, Danny Heinrich is arrested on child pornography charges. - We consider him to be a person of interest in the Wetterling abduction. - It was really the first major development in the case, really, since the day it happened. - They couldn't charge him in Jared's abduction because statute of limitations had run out, but they were hopeful that they could get him to talk. - You can see they still have the porch light on all the time. - Missing kids come home after long periods of time, and I will still always, always hope until we have our answers. - REPORTER: Thank you. - DEBORAH: Nearly a year after Heinrich's arrest, he's ready to make a deal. - Danny Heinrich would plead guilty to one count of child pornography in federal court, and receive a 20-year sentence if he was able to show us remains or provide a credible confession. - Her agreeing to this would give us the keys to unlock the door. - 'Do you want justice or do you want answers?' It's like, I want Jacob. - Patty has made her choice, but still the wait continues to see if Heinrich actually has the answers. (DRAMATIC NEWS STING) (DRAMATIC NEWS STING) - Kia ora ano. Nearly three decades on, the painful question of 'where is Jacob?' may finally be answered for his family. Danny Heinrich, the suspect in the 11-year-old's abduction in 1989, has led law enforcement to a quiet stretch of farmland in Paynesville. And now the search is underway. - We walk through that narrow strip of woods with him, and eventually planted a few flags to show where the remains could have been. - When investigation began at the scene, they found a piece of red material that was sticking out above ground. Ended up being Jacob's hockey jacket. - Everybody just took a deep breath and it... just took the wind out of everybody. It's like, (SIGHS). - We get this call saying that they had found Jacob's jacket. Your blood runs cold. It's like... everything inside is screaming, 'No!' - And we're driving up, and it's a peaceful farm. We see the Sheriff and Captain Pam Jensen, and they just come up and give us a hug (VOICE BREAKS) and burst into tears. - When he found it, it was very surreal. We realised that, you know, there was no more Jacob hope. - It was incredibly sad, but at the same moment, there was something... peaceful, Jacob was at peace. - Jerry, for you? (SOMBRE MUSIC) - Words couldn't do anything at that point. Finally, finally we found him. - Jerry and I, you know, he drove to some little neighbourhood on a side street and pulled over and said, TEARFULLY: 'We have to call them. We gotta call the kids.' And that... was the worst call in my life. - Among Jacob's remains, investigators also find his number 11 soccer jersey. - REPORTER: A Minnesota man confessing in chilling detail about abducting and killing 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling in 1989. - After obtaining Heinrich's confession, law enforcement then share the painful details with the Wetterlings. - CHRIS BOECKERS: Heinrich said that he was in the St Joseph area that Sunday night, and he saw the three boys going towards a convenience store, and he drove to the dirt driveway and he waited for them. He said that he walked Jacob back to his car and he handcuffed Jacob and that Jacob asked, 'What did I do wrong?' - He did nothing wrong. - You know, we're all sobbing and it's like, 'Stop, Sheriff. 'Can you not hear us? You know, stop.' - He drove Jacob to the edge of Paynesville and got him out of the car and assaulted him. - TEARFULLY: Jacob said he was cold and... That just... That really stuck with me. - TEARFULLY: He didn't have any clothes on, and as a parent, it's just heartbreaking. - And that's when he took out a gun that he had in his pocket, and he fired once and Jacob didn't fall down and he pulled the trigger again. - Why did he have to kill him? Why? Two shots, it was just... (SNIFFLES) Too much. It was too much. - He had not killed anybody, as far as you know. Why did he kill Jacob? - During the interview, he said that he had seen some red lights of a police vehicle going past, and he said that that contributed to his panic and may have influenced his decision to shoot Jacob. - He went home for some period of time, came back and took Jacob and took his remains and buried them. - Approximately a year later, he went back to the scene and he noticed a little part of the red jacket was sticking up. At that point, he determined that he needed to move Jacob. Basically walked kitty-corner across the state highway into a farm field, and that's where Jacob remained until he told us about the location. - OFFICER: Finally, we know Danny Heinrich is the confessed murderer of Jacob Wetterling, and for that, he will spend the next 20 years in prison. - I wanna say, Jacob, I'm so sorry. It's incredibly painful to know his last days, last hours, last minutes. I also want to say one huge shout out to Jared and Joy. Jared had the courage to stand up and say, 'This happened to me.' - DEBORAH: As part of the plea deal, Heinrich also admitted in court to Jared's abduction and assault. - In the case of the Paynesville victims, we believe them. I hope they realise they were a very significant part of the wall of evidence that we had against Danny Heinrich to get us to the result that we eventually got. - Heinrich was never charged in those eight Paynesville incidents. Turns out the statute of limitations had run out and there was a lack of evidence. Heinrich denies any involvement to the police. - My whole name is Jacob Erwin Wetterling... - Happy Father's Day! - ...Happy Father's Day, from all of us! - Jacob spurred Patty into being a bulldog for keeping kids safe. - JOY BAKER: You know, it took 27 years, but... she made a difference in those 27 years and we are all better for it. (APPLAUSE) (JACOB LAUGHS, TALKS INDISTINCTLY) - I think Jacob's legacy is showing that... all kids are really awesome, and they need every bit of opportunity to flourish, to express themselves and to fully do that in a safe way. - PATTY: How was work? - JACOB: Well, I'm tired after a long day at work, but... - And I didn't want our own kids to live fearful, afraid of the world, afraid to go out and to play and to have fun, so we fought for the world that Jacob knew. I refused to let the man who took Jacob take away anything more. TEARFULLY: You can't have my marriage, you can't have my kids. You can't have the world of innocence and believing in dreams and going after... your full potential. That's really what I have fought for, and I still will. It's the kids. (POIGNANT MUSIC FADES) - Such a devastating story. And Patty has written a book called Dear Jacob: A Mother's Journey Of Hope. As for Danny Heinrich, as a federal prisoner, he must serve at least 85% of his sentence. So 17 years ` there's no early parole in the federal system. And that's our show for tonight. Thank you so much for joining us this Monday. Until next week, kia ora, nga mihi. Captions by Kitty Wasasala. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air.