Fuld udskrift: In the Dark - S1 E4 The Circus

Fuld udskrift: In the Dark: S1 E4 The Circus

: Tidligere på In the Dark.

: Danny Heinrich er ikke længere en person af interesse. Han er den tilståede morder af Jacob Wetterling.

: Just like, “What? We lived here the whole time, and he’s just down the damn road all those years?” you know. And it’s like, “What?”

: They had all of that. None of it was new. None of it is new. Stearns County, the FBI, they’ve all had all of this. None of this was new.

: Nobody’s ever asked me a single question about this other than you guys. I’ve never been interviewed by police. I’ve never talked to by any law enforcement ever. Not one person.

: I had expectations that this was hot like, “My lead, this stuff in Paynesville, you can’t ignore this, guys.” I mean, I went in with that mentality.

: Within a few weeks of the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling, there were close to a hundred investigators working on the case. That’s one of the most unusual things about this , just how many people were assigned to it.

: So, it’s hard for me to understand why those investigators didn’t do some of the basic policing 101 stuff. They didn’t talk to all the neighbors who lived on the dead-end road where Jacob was kidnapped. They didn’t contact all the boys who were attacked by that strange man in Paynesville. And, perhaps, most importantly, they didn’t talk to everyone they could find who could have known something about the very similar kidnapping of the boy that same year in that same county in the town of Cold Spring.

: They certainly had enough people to do all that. So, what could explain it? I spent months trying to figure this out. And then, one day, the wife of the former police chief in the town where Jacob was kidnapped handed me a dusty VHS cassette tape. It was all the TV news coverage from the early months of the Wetterling case. She’d recorded it back then, and was planning to throw it out. On that video, I found a clue from a news report in December of 1989, two months after Jacob vanished.

: Efterforskerne siger, at kidnapningen, der fandt sted her i Cold Spring, først nu er kommet frem i lyset af det overvældende antal spor.

: Det overvældende antal leads. I enhver større efterforskning af kriminelle handlinger skal de retshåndhævende myndigheder træffe et valg: At holde sagen lokalt eller at gå i stor stil.

: This is In the Dark, an investigative podcast from APM Reports. I’m Madeleine Baran. Today, we’re going to look at how investigators in the Jacob Wetterling case decided to go back, and it cost them. It would end up leading them farther and farther away from the man who took Jacob.

: One of the first things law enforcement did in the Jacob Wetterling case is they turned to the public to ask for leads. They did it right away, even before they talked to most of the people closest to the crime, the people who could have seen something on the road, the people who had also been attacked by a strange man in a mask. Investigators started appearing on local news and on national news. So did Jacob’s parents, Jerry and Patty.

: I wanted everybody in the world looking for Jacob. It was like my son, you know, we’re talking getting him home. We did what we had to, what we felt we had to.

: The surest sign that the Jacob Wetterling case had become a big story came just three weeks after Jacob was abducted. When the case attracted the attention of the 1980’s clearinghouse for human tragedy, daytime talk show host, Geraldo Rivera.

: Every time it happens, it puts an entire community into a state of shock. It’s like a giant punch in the gut because all we can do, all the police can do really is to speculate as to the intentions of the kidnapper. And just the options are horrifying.

: Geraldo’s TV crew showed up in St. Joseph and set up a satellite feed from the Wetterling’s basement. The cameras showed Patty and Jerry sitting next to the Stearns County sheriff and the FBI supervisor assigned to the case. On the wall behind them, there were these big sheets of paper covered in handwritten messages of hope and concern.

: Som dagene, Patty, blev til uger, er det så noget, der giver dig mareridt, mens du forsøger at finde en grund til hvorfor? Hvorfor din dreng? Hvorfor den aften?

: I can’t answer those questions, and I choose not to think about all the horrible options you’ve made mention of at the beginning. I just won’t allow those into my mind at this point. I just want to believe that he’s fine. We’re going to get him home. I don’t have nightmares. No.

: The show also featured a young intense John Walsh as a kind of straight talking expert. John Walsh is the guy from the Hunt and America’s Most Wanted. His son was murdered by a stranger in 1981.

: I know what they’re going through. They’re going through the nightmare of not knowing. They’re going and hoping that, sometimes, in a rare incidence, a child has gotten back that’s been gone for a long time. But all of the people there sitting there today know the harsh reality that lots of kids that are taken are not taken by some caring person and taken to Disneyland. They’re taken by someone who is into sexually assaulting children. And if you’re lucky, you’ll find the body in a field.

: Mens alt dette skete, stirrede Patty bare på jorden, som om hun prøvede at omdirigere al sin vrede væk fra Geraldo og John Walsh og over på et par centimeter af kældertæppet.

: Hvad kan de, Wetterlingerne, gøre? Er de nu på en måde magtesløse over for denne vanvittige mands lune, lune og frygtelige lunefuldhed?

: Det ville være min mening.

: Sådan fortsatte det i et stykke tid.

: And here’s a song of hope. I want to thank everybody. John Walsh, you, especially. All the parents, thank you. Here’s a song for Jacob and for all these children. Let’s play it.

: The show ended with a song that it become a kind of anthem of the search for Jacob, a song called Jacob’s Hope, written by a musician in Minnesota.

: To all our parents, to their children who are out there, our prayers to you. We love you. Come home soon. We thank everybody for being here. Thank you, folks, at home for watching. We’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

: Here’s what they did, they used us. They used us. We had this sensational kidnapping, and they used us. I remember taking that mic off, and throwing it, and coming upstairs, and throwing things off the deck. I was going to write him this scathing, “How could you do this to us?” And my sister told me, “You get more bees with honey. You might need him down the road.” So, I wrote him a thank you note.

: Geraldo-interviewet og alle de andre tv-optrædener var smertefulde for Wetterlings, men de skabte spor for politiet, mange af dem.

: The sheriff of Stearn’s County, Charles Grafft. Sheriff, what’s the latest on the investigation?

: Vi har modtaget over 300 telefonopkald og tip i løbet af de sidste 24 timer, bare i løbet af natten, jeg mener, inden for de sidste 24 timer. Forskellige beskrivelser af køretøjer, forskellige beskrivelser af forskellige personer, som ikke burde være i området.

: For hver dag og hver nyhedshistorie kom der flere spor ind. De første dusin.

: Så tidligt som i går morges-

: Derefter hundredvis.

: ... vi havde modtaget mere end 300 telefoniske tip.

: I slutningen af den anden uge var der så tusindvis.

: Derefter 500 leads. Nu er der mere end tusind opkald til dette sted.

: Der var så mange spor, at de retshåndhævende myndigheder måtte oprette et døgnåbent callcenter bare for at følge med.

: Through the more than 14,000 tips and hundreds of suspects that have come since Jacob’s kidnapping.

: Der var spor om mærkelige mænd, der var blevet set i andre stater.

: Havde været placeret i Texas.

: Spor om biler, der blev fundet uger senere i andre dele af Minnesota-

: En lille rød bil med-

: ... kører mistænkeligt langsomt eller mistænkeligt hurtigt. Spor fra hele USA. Og ret hurtigt begyndte nogle af disse spor selv at give anledning til spor.

: I was talking with an FBI agent who worked on the case back then, Agent Al Garber. He’s now retired. And Garber told me how this would work. Investigators would get a tip, say, about a white van, and they publicized it. And all of a sudden, people all over the state were seeing white vans everywhere and calling them in. It happened with all the cars they asked about.

: If you are looking for a blue jeep, you’re going to see blue jeeps. Do an experiment. See on your way back to wherever you’re going how many blue jeeps you see. I bet you’re going to see a whole bunch of them. And I bet on the way up here, you didn’t see any.

: Okay, sherif, hvor kom disse rapporter om den hvide Chevrolet fra?

: Well, they came up from anonymous tips from all over the State of Minnesota. And we’ve been running so many white cars down, and red cars down, and tan station wagons, and vans. We’ve been just getting so tremendous amount of calls in here on this particular case here that it’s kind of mind boggling.

: People started calling leads into the Wetterling’s house too. So many people that the sheriff even gave Jerry and Patty a special phone with a built-in mini cassette recorder.

: Sure. It’s in the back. It was sitting on our desk here for years.

: De har den stadig. Da jeg besøgte dem for et par måneder siden, stod telefonen på en kommode i et ekstra soveværelse.

: This is the kid and grandkids’room.

: Patty og Jerry blev ved med at bruge den i årevis.

: Yeah, this was the phone the sheriff’s department gave us.

: Der var stadig et bånd indeni.

: It sounds like it’s getting to the end too, but okay. So, we’ll listen.

: You know, you can see all the work that I’ve done in 20 years of history.

: Ja, selvfølgelig.

: They’re doing copies of-

: Der er hundredvis af telefonsamtaler optaget på disse bånd. Patty og Jerry udfyldte opkaldene og sendte derefter sporene videre til kommandocentralen. På en måde blev de efterforskere på deres egen sag, og huset blev en slags sekundær callcenter.

: Onsdag, 4:58 om morgenen

: Yeah. I work for a carnival. We just did a show in Omaha, Nebraska. And I’ve seen a picture of this kid called Jacob Wetterling. I have a feeling that’s working for a small show called Rainbow Amusements.

: Folk ringede med alle mulige slags spor som dette. Nogle gange tog Patty telefonen, og nogle gange gjorde Jerry det.

: December 28th, and this was the McDonald’s in Maple?

: I Maplewood, ja. Ja.

: Okay.

: Og så formodede jeg, at drengen var trænet, for han begyndte at gøre manden opmærksom på, at jeg stirrede på dem. Så jeg forsøgte at være nonchalant og gå op og bestille noget, så jeg kunne få fat i bestyreren og få ham til at ringe til politiet. Jeg kiggede tilbage, og så var de væk.

: Okay. And you had the best that you could tell going by the photos, this boy did have a lot of similarities to Jacob. Is that what you’re saying?

: Denne dreng så tungere og bleg ud. Jeg kunne forestille mig, at han havde været indendørs, og at det var flere måneder siden, han blev fanget. Han blev bortført i hvad?

: Den 22. oktober, så det var omkring ni uger.

: Yeah. And so, I presume that he would have been indoors and eating. I don’t know what, but it certainly seemed reasonable to me.

: So, that was one type of call people calling in to report possible sightings of Jacob. But then, there are these other calls. And these calls, well, I’ll just play some of them.

: Goddag, godaften.

: Hej. Er det Wetterlings?

: Ja, det er det.

: Hvordan har det været der?

: Well, it’s 12:30 at night. Can you help me?

: Okay. I’m very sorry.

: Så folk ringede til Patty for at fortælle hende om drømme, de havde haft, eller om de havde set Jacob et sted.

: Well, it’s all right. Just tell me what you know.

: Okay. Han var på en gård. Det var en bondegård.

: Yeah, we’ve received a lot of farmhouses.

: Åh, okay.

: And they’ll often say something like, “I can’t sleep. I had to call. You know, I couldn’t carry this anymore.” So, then, they’ll call, and it’s sort of like dumping it. They’ll dump it off on us, so that, then, they can sleep.

: Hej.

: Hej.

: Hej. Hvem er det?

: This is the Gillespie’s in Missouri. I want to ask you a question real quick.

: Okay.

: Er der nogen i din familie, selv på siden, der har benene af?

: Ikke at jeg ved det.

: I see. One of the man that got your son don’t have no legs. I am sick of seeing what this man has done to this boy, the legless man. This boy was raped on the side of a school bus. It’s right there where you live.

: You can’t tell me that information without telling me where Jacob is. That doesn’t help me to know.

: Yes, yes, yes. I know I hurt you. I don’t want to do that.

: Godt. Nå, men tak.

: But your boy’s all right.

: Godt.

: Din dreng har det godt. Han er i live.

: Wetterlingerne fandt sig i alt dette. Og jeg vil gerne have, at du virkelig tænker over det: Hvad nu hvis en i din familie forsvandt, og der var en telefon i dit køkken, som konstant ringede? Og hver gang du tog den, havde personen i den anden ende en ny forfærdelig historie om, hvad der var sket, og du var nødt til at lytte opmærksomt og skrive det hele ned, hvis det kunne hjælpe med at løse sagen. Det blev så meget, at Patty og Jerry nogle gange bad deres venner om at tage telefonen.

: Søndag, kl. 19.24

: I just want to tell you that Jacob’s all right.

: Er du lykkelig igen?

: Ja.

: Nogle gange fik de endda opkald fra folk, der påstod at have Jacob.

: Kan vi tale med ham?

: Ja. Vent lige et øjeblik. Jacob.

: I’m all right. I’m all right.

: Okay. Hvor er du nu, Jacob?

: I don’t know.

: Ingen af disse opkald viste sig at være Jacob.

: The phone, you know, it’s a gift and a nightmare. You know, you’d sit waiting for that call. And then, there’s this, and there’s that, and there’s another. But you never know. You can’t not answer the phone. And that’s a killer.

: Og så var der synskerne.

: Mit navn er Ferris. Har du noget imod at diskutere dette eller ej?

: Kan du hjælpe mig med at finde ham?

: Well, I’m a psychic.

: Det viser sig, at synske personer elsker den slags sager.

: Everybody keeps asking me, “Did you ever think of contacting a psychic?” It’s like, “You don’t have to. They come out of the woodwork. They do.”

: Og disse synske personer i de første måneder skabte problemer for Wetterlings. Da Jacob forsvandt første gang, var Wetterlings et team bestående af Patty og Jerry. Men efterhånden som efterforskningen trak ud, begyndte Patty og Jerry at gå lidt hver til sit, da de hver især forsøgte at forstå, hvad der var sket.

: Jeg ville bare tale med politiet og efterforske sagen. Bare giv mig fakta. Jeg kan håndtere fakta. Jerry havde i mellemtiden alle disse åndelige forbindelser og synske personer. Og han var...

: Det var indtil omkring en måned efter, at jeg var begyndt at gøre det.

: Ja. Så-

: After he wasn’t home, it’s like, “Whatever, you know. If straight law enforcement isn’t solving it, you know, maybe there’s another method out there.” So then, I went down that road for a couple of years of craziness.

: Det vanvittige?

: Yes, it’s crazy. He called it abductor hunting. And they’d tell him to go out on a county road, and say something, and turn around three times, he’d do it. I mean, it was like you do anything, you know. But, meanwhile, I was alone because he was out abductor hunting with these crazy people. He had midnight Margie who became … I called her Midnight Margie or maybe you did.

: Midnight Margie?

: She’d call, and they’d talk all night long. And she was just-

: You’re exaggerating. We didn’t talk all night long. There was always people around here, there was there was craziness, the investigation. Then, about 11:00 at night, you know, things would kind of get a little quiet. And I would talk with her about psychic stuff, pretty much, leads, but it wasn’t all night long, but anyway.

: Because they all wanted some of Jacob’s clothing. They wanted a toy. They wanted some something. And I watched, and Jerry would would package up his stuff and send it off. It was a desperation. And, you know, how can you not do everything, but it was so painful.

: You can hear that desperation on a lot of these tapes, like this one that’s a recording of a phone call between Jacob’s dad, Jerry and a psychic named Sylvia Browne.

: Jeg mener, hvad skete der?

: Your son wasn’t about to have this. Your son wasn’t about to be victimized by this. And then, unfortunately, he started fighting back, and I think out of desperation or out of fear. The thing about it is it didn’t last very long because they’re trying to quiet him down, they hit him in the head.

: I’d be afraid too. There’s so much fear.

: Åh, jeg tror, at han gjorde det af frygt.

: Sylvia Browne var en ret stor sag dengang. Hun var en fast gæst i Montel Williams Show og havde for vane at blande sig i højtprofilerede sager. Hun skrev bøger med titler som Contacting your Spirit Guide og All Pets Go to Heaven.

: I’ve watched some old videos of Sylvia Browne from back then, and she was quite a sight, dyed blonde hair, cheeks with so much blush that it bordered on clownish, an inch-long fingernails with bright red polish, curved like talons, and her eyebrows, they were dark and penciled in, and she’d raised them almost conspiratorially. Like you and I, we’re the only ones smart enough to believe all this.

: But I’m convinced there was another man there. I don’t think there was just one male. I think there was two.

: Okay. Og hvor er de fyre fra?

: Illinois.

: Begge dele?

: Both. See, I think it was a Chicago license plate. I don’t know what the thing, but it seems to be Illinois. But I mean, it was from Chicago.

: Okay. Interessant, interessant, interessant.

: All this information, all of these leads from people claiming to be psychics, from people with weird dreams, from people claiming to be Jacob, it all went into the pile with everything else at the command center. And the surprising thing is law enforcement checked out a number of these leads from psychics. Retired FBI agent Al Garber told me, sometimes, it wasn’t because they necessarily believed the person was really psychic, but more because you never know.

: What I believe about psychics is really not important. I thought maybe there were times when a person might claim to be a psychic because they didn’t want us to know the source of their information. So, when psychic information came in, we looked into it carefully. There were some cases where it was just either too general or we had ruled out what the psychic would say in anyway. But we did some things. We did a search in Iowa, immense search based on psychic information, and came up with nothing.

: The search on a 25-mile stretch of road near Mason City, Iowa was prompted by a vision from a New York psychic. The search took place in October of 1989, about a month after Jacob was kidnapped. It lasted two full days, and it involved the FBI, the Iowa State Patrol, local cops, and deputies from several sheriffs’ offices.

: And I want you to keep this in mind, while investigators were chasing down the psychic lead in Iowa, they still hadn’t talked to everyone who lived on the dead-end road where Jacob was abducted. They still hadn’t talked to one of their most likely suspects, Danny Heinrich. They still hadn’t searched the area around where Heinrich lived.

: And yet law enforcement kept on pursuing these out-there leads, these leads that seemed to have almost no chance of panning out. And when the leads didn’t pan out, it’s not like investigators said, “Hold on. Maybe we don’t want any more of these crazy leads.” In fact they went further. They did something that was pretty much guaranteed to bring in lots of bad leads. It involves someone law enforcement called the man with the piercing stare.

: I de tidlige dage af efterforskningen af bortførelsen af Jacob Wetterling begyndte de retshåndhævende myndigheder at sende skitser af fremmede mænd, der var blevet set i området. En af de personer, som efterforskerne var mest interesserede i at skitsere, var en mystisk person, der var kendt som manden med det gennemtrængende blik.

: The man with a piercing stare was a guy a few people had seen at the Tom Thumb, the store where Jacob and two other kids had biked that night to rent a movie. Here’s how FBI agent, Byron Gigler, described the man in a TV interview back then.

: Hans normale opførsel ville være at stirre på kunderne med gennemtrængende øjne, som ikke ville tale til ham. Han fulgte dem ofte rundt i butikken og stillede sig simpelthen foran butikken og fulgte dem rundt i butikken med sine øjne.

: Jeg talte med et par, som påstod at have set manden med et gennemtrængende blik. Kevin og Marlene Gwost var med i et band, der hed The Nite Owls. Det var et polkaband.

: Oompah, tysk.

: Oompah, polkaer.

: Minnesota-stil.

: To trin.

: On the day Jacob was abducted, there was an all-day polka festival in town at a ballroom close to the Tom Thumb store. The Nite Owls played an early set. That afternoon, after the Nite Owl’s set was done, the Gwost packed up and headed off to play another show. On their way out of town, they stopped at the Tom Thumb. They think it was around 4:30.

: We’re going to get something to eat, so we hit the road, and play another job that night.

: We had sandwich there, heated it in the microwave. And that’s when we noticed.

: De så en mand i slutningen af 20'erne eller begyndelsen af 30'erne stå ved køleboksene og holde øje med hoveddøren.

: Med det samme tog jeg mig af ham. Du ved, man kunne se, at han var optaget af noget andet. Som om han tænkte på noget andet på samme tid.

: Hvordan så han ud?

: Well, he had a baseball cap on. Kind of, I want to say a wider face. When you just looked at him, you just had a funny feeling, like people just don’t stand there staring, you know, looking over aisles the way he did.

: The Gwost didn’t know what to make of this guy. They headed to their next show. And later that night, they drove home.

: You know, on the way back, we’re coming up 71, and we had the radio on, and they mentioned about this kid disappearing, and saying Jo.

: We just kind of looked at each other, and like, “That had to be him,” you know.

: I remember saying, “Yeah, we got a call in the morning.”

: Ja.

: Jeg talte med en anden fyr. Han hedder Steve Gretsch, og han var også til polkafesten den dag. Steve arbejdede for en radiostation ved navn KASM, som arrangerede den. Og han fortalte mig, at han også så en mærkelig person.

: There was one guy in there that didn’t fit. He had a beard, you know, real dark beard here. And he had all black. Nobody dresses like that to go to a polka fest. You get your Sunday best on to go dancing.

: I ugerne efter talte Steve Gretsch og Marlene Gwost begge med en tegner fra politiet om den mærkelige mand, de havde set. De beskrev begge en lignende proces. De husker, at de satte sig ned med denne bog med billeder af ører, øjenbryn.

: So, you’re like going through, “Here, all of those eyes.”

: Øjne, næse, ja, hage, pande.

: They have like different noses and stuff like that, and they just flip through it. And they go, “Yup, that’s more like it.” Then, they put it together in the face, and then you tweak it a little, and then you get your sketch.

: I wanted to know more about this whole process of making sketches. So, I called up a woman named Karen Newirth. She’s an expert in sketches and eyewitness ID. And she works for an organization called the Innocence Project. The group tries to exonerate people who’ve been wrongly convicted of crimes.

: Karen told me this whole process of making sketches is far from scientific. She says, “We had this idea that it’s really easy to describe a face. We see them everyday. They’re the first thing we notice about a person.” But Karen says, “Describing a face is way harder than we think.”

: We tend to process faces holistically, right. Like we see a face as a whole, as opposed to, “Okay, those are, you know, two almond-shaped eyes. And that is a nose that is wider than mine and shorter than my mother’s,” you know, or however. We don’t … We’re not processing separate features. It’s very difficult to capture either in words or through the composite making the actual nuances of human features and the human face.

: There are studies about this, about just how hard it is. And those studies found that most of the time, sketches aren’t going to look much like the people we see. I tried this myself with another reporter on our team, and we were so bad at it. We even made a video about just how bad at it we were. You can see it on our website.

: Wow.

: Åh wow.

: I don’t know what I was picturing, but it wasn’t that.

: De ligner to forskellige fyre.

: I Jacob Wetterling-sagen brugte de retshåndhævende myndigheder en masse skitser, herunder en baseret på en beskrivelse af Jared Scheierl, drengen i Cold Spring, der blev bortført tidligere samme år. Denne skitse ligner på en måde Danny Heinrich, men den lignede også en masse andre mennesker.

: Denne afhængighed af skitser i en straffesag er ret standard, på trods af hvad Karen siger om, hvor upålidelige de er. Men efterforskerne i Wetterling-sagen gik et skridt videre. Politiet tog skitser af manden med det gennemtrængende blik og andre skitser af mistænkelige personer, der var blevet set i forskellige byer, og de kombinerede dem til en helt ny skitse.

: Let me just say, these people from these sketches don’t look at all alike. One of the men in the sketches looks to be in his 70s. He’s balding with heavy bags under his eyes and a sloping nose. Another man looks like he is maybe 50, different eyes, different nose, different everything.

: And so, when law enforcement combined all these people into a new sketch, it didn’t look like any of the earlier guys. It looked like a different person entirely. A white guy, maybe in his 60s, kind of mean looking, and it doesn’t look at all like Danny Heinrich. I couldn’t find anyone who remembers making the decision to create this combined sketch. So, I sent these sketches to Karen, the expert at the Innocence Project, to see what she thought.

: I would say this is really unusual. I’ve not heard of what … I’m not sure even how to respond. I think this is … It doesn’t sound like there was even necessarily reason to believe that the witnesses were describing the same individual. This strikes me as as a very bad idea.

: What law enforcement did next is they took this new combined sketch, and they sent it out to the media, along with the sketch Jared helped make. These two sketches, the combined sketch and Jared’s sketch, did not look like the same person. Not at all. Law enforcement put both sketches on a flyer, and they sent it everywhere. There are thousands of copies.

: Flyers were taped to doors, to restaurant windows, and even onto pizza boxes. The flyer said, “We must find these men, so Jacob can be found.” Investigators would point to the flyer and say, “Look closely at these faces and call us right away if you see these men,” and people did. They’d call into the command center saying, “That guy I’m flyer, I think that’s my neighbor,” or my mailman, or a guy I met on vacation four states over. And the leads poured in.

: By 2016, there were at least 70,000 leads in the Wetterling case. That’s more than 20 times the number of people who lived in St. Joseph back when Jacob was abducted. I went to talk to the lead investigator on the Wetterling case, Chief Deputy Bruce Bechtold in August, about a month before the case was solved. He told me they were still getting leads.

: There are people that think Martian’s took him.

: Siger de dette?

: There’s all kinds of odd things that come into us, so. I got a report last year that Jacob was riding on an elephant in a parade in Philadelphia last year.

: Deputy Bechtold came the closest of any investigator I spoke with to saying maybe all of these leads and all this publicity weren’t so great after all.

: Måske blev den for stor for hurtigt i stedet for at holde sig tæt på. Hvis du bruger så meget tid på spor, der ikke fører nogen steder hen, kan det være, at det tager dig fra det spor, der kan føre dig et sted hen.

: But in the end, even Deputy Bechtold wouldn’t go so far as to say that trying to get so many leads from all over the country was a mistake. He just couldn’t let go of the idea that one of these leads, even one of these bizarre leads, could solve the case.

: Was there a sense that like those leads have to be checked out, like there’s no matter like kind of how maybe out there that you just have to check just to be sure?

: Jeg vil sige, at med de fleste skal man være sikker.

: Every law enforcement officer I talked to who worked on the case said something similar to this that they had no control over the number of leads and no choice but to check them out. To a person, they said, “There’s no such thing as too many leads. Information is always good.”

: When I talked about all this with Patty and Jerry Wetterling in July before Jacob’s remains were found, they told me that questioning the investigation, what could have or should have been done, doesn’t get them anywhere. It doesn’t help find their son. And they said it’s not as though investigators didn’t work hard. They were working nonstop on this case. But Patty and Jerry did wonder whether all of those leads made the case harder to solve.

: I just think, almost, there probably was too much publicity and too much interest because there were too many leads for everything to be, you know, totally looked through. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I don’t know.

: What happened was his story was out and became national quickly. Investigatively, it’s like two-thirds of the time, it’s somebody who’s in the region. You know, somebody who’s from the area. So, I think, that they were forced to look at a lot of things that probably … They triage. They had to sort, but that’s a lot. That’s a lot of leads. So, do we have the the one guy in there? Probably. But it’s like Jerry was saying, it’s almost like too many to, you know, to have him stand out because it was just so much.

: Der var så meget støj. 70.000 ledetråde, synske personer, hvide varevogne, manden med det gennemtrængende blik, folk, der påstod at være Jakob. Og i næsten 27 år siger efterforskerne, at de har gennemgået hvert eneste af disse spor. De blev ved med at udvide efterforskningen mere og mere, og selv flere år senere bad de offentligheden i hele USA om hjælp til at løse denne sag.

: På en eller anden måde, i al den larm, undlod de retshåndhævende myndigheder at se, hvad der var lige foran dem, manden, der boede to byer længere væk, manden, der allerede var registreret i deres sagsmapper, manden, der havde tilstået forbrydelsen næsten 27 år senere, Danny Heinrich.

: Og efter at have jagtet meningsløse spor i årevis gjorde en ny sherif i 2004 noget anderledes. Han rettede sin opmærksomhed mod en af de få personer, der var vidne til noget den aften, Jacob blev bortført. Og i stedet for at tro på det, som vidnet sagde, gjorde han ham til en mistænkt.

: Næste gang i "In the Dark".

: They were saying, “You took him. How did you do it? Would you just please admit that you did it, and we can make this a lot easier for you?

: In the Dark er produceret af Samara Freemark. Den associerede producent er Natalie Jablonski. In the Dark er redigeret af Catherine Winter med hjælp fra Hans Buetow. Chefredaktør for APM Reports er Chris Worthington. Webredaktører eller Dave Peters og Andy Kruse. Videografen er Jeff Thompson. Yderligere reportager til denne episode er Jennifer Vogel og Will Craft. Vores temamusik er komponeret af Gary Meister. Denne episode blev mixet af Cameron Wiley og Johnny Vince Adams.

: Gå til InTheDarkPodcast.org for at se nærmere på brugen af politiskitser, herunder en video om vores eksperiment, og for at læse historier om den efterforskningsmæssige brug af hypnose og løgnedetektortest, som Wetterlings efterforskere også brugte, og for at høre nogle af de opkald, som Wetterlings modtog i deres hus, efter at Jacob blev kidnappet.

: In the Dark er til dels muliggjort takket være vores lyttere. Du kan støtte mere uafhængig journalistik som denne på InTheDarkPodcast.org/donate.

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