Transcripción completa: In the Dark - S1 E3 The One Who Got Away

En la oscuridad: S1 E3 El que se escapó

: Anteriormente en En la oscuridad.

: On the outskirts of his hometown of St. Joseph, a young boy’s mysterious disappearance.

: And he looked at me, and then he grabbed Jacob, and he told me to run as fast as I could in the woods or he’d shoot.

: Time is your biggest enemy in an investigation. People have short memories. They don’t remember everything correctly. You got to get out there, and talk to people, and find out what the hell is going on.

: ¿Alguna vez llamó la policía a tu puerta desde que vivías en el barrio? ¿Tuvo que hablar alguna vez con la policía al respecto o?

: No. No, nunca lo hicieron.

: Nunca lo hicieron, de acuerdo.

: Yeah, I remember just leaving out of there just so angry because they weren’t listening to anything that I had to say.

: Hoy estamos aquí gracias a la perseverancia del equipo de investigación.

: Tenemos la verdad. La familia Wetterling puede traerlo a casa.

: A principios de este año, fui a encontrarme con un tipo llamado Jared Scheierl.

: Me alegro de verte.

: I’m Madeleine.

: Hola.

: Encantado de conocerte.

: Jared tiene ahora 40 años. Vive en una casa en el centro de Minnesota, en un largo camino de tierra, con un gran y simpático perro negro.

: Oso, ven. Ven. Toma. Quédate.

: It’s peaceful here. 80 acres of land, old trees, the Crow River running through. I came here to talk to Jared because Jared or more specifically what happened to Jared was most likely the single best clue law enforcement had in the case of Jacob Wetterling.

: This is In the Dark, an investigative podcast from APM Reports. I’m Madeleine Baran. In this podcast, we’re looking at what went wrong in the investigation of the kidnapping of an 11-year-old boy named Jacob Wetterling in Central Minnesota in 1989. Today, we’re going to see just how close law enforcement got to solving this case, so close they even sat face-to-face with the man who killed Jacob. And then, they let him go.

: Jared Scheirel creció en un pequeño pueblo llamado Cold Spring, a sólo diez millas al suroeste de St.

: Cool Spring era una comunidad rural segura. Todo el mundo se conoce, asistía a la iglesia todos los domingos.

: Jared creció andando en bicicleta por el pueblo, jugando mucho al aire libre. La gente pensaba que Cold Spring era un lugar seguro. Y una noche de 1989, unos nueve meses antes del secuestro de Jacob Wetterling, Jared fue a patinar sobre hielo con un grupo de amigos. Tenía 12 años en ese momento.

: Y nosotros... Después de patinar sobre hielo, decidimos ir al Side Cafe para tomar un... Tomamos una malta de chocolate.

: Jared estaba con su mejor amigo, Cory Eskelson. Corey todavía vive en el condado de Stearns. Y a principios de este año, fui a reunirme con ellos en su casa para hablar de esa noche.

: After having the malt, some kids drove away in cars outfront. Jared and I, there’s a little alleyway out back. And we walked through the alleyway. And the one thing that I will always capture was Jared asking me to walk him home, and I said no.

: Eran probablemente las 9:00 - 9:30 cuando empecé a caminar a casa. Y mientras caminaba, un coche se acercó a mí.

: Era un coche azul. El conductor se detuvo y le preguntó a Jared por una dirección.

: So, I started giving this guy directions, and at same time, I was on the sidewalk, and I was walking towards the vehicle, the man had got out of the car. And when I was in range, he grabbed me at the shoulders, and he said “Get the fuck in the car. I have a gun, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

: El hombre le dijo a Jared que se tumbara en el asiento trasero y se tapara los ojos con el gorro de media. Empezó a conducir. Había un escáner tipo walkie talkie en el coche. A Jared le pareció oír que el despacho de las fuerzas del orden locales se cruzaba con él. En algún momento, el hombre lo apagó. Condujo durante 10 o 15 minutos. Jared trató de seguir la pista de por dónde iban contando los giros a la izquierda y a la derecha, y prestó atención a cuando el coche cruzaba las vías del tren. Y entonces, el hombre giró hacia un camino de grava y se detuvo. Estaba oscuro, pero Jared creyó distinguir a lo lejos las luces de un pueblo cercano.

: He assaulted me. However, we won’t go into those details. We’re focusing on necessary details.

: This phrase “necessary details” is one that Jared uses a lot when he gets to the part of his story about exactly what the man did to him.

: That’s how I can separate from that. I’m just going to focus on necessary details.

: Here’s what law enforcement records say happened. The man sexually assaulted Jared inside the car. He kept Jared’s jeans and underwear, but gave him his snowsuit back. Then, the man drove Jared back to Cold Spring and dropped him off two miles from Jared’s house. He told Jared to run and not look back or he’d shoot. He said something else to Jared, something that would stick with Jared for a long time.

: He had said, “It’s okay to talk about this, but if they come close to finding out who I am , I’ll find you and kill you.”

: Jared’s family was wondering where he was.

: Where the hell would he be? It doesn’t take an hour to get from the restaurant to the house.

: This is Jared’s twin brother, Jed.

: Entró por la puerta histérico. Fue una locura.

: ¿Qué estaba diciendo? ¿Qué estaba...?

: I wouldn’t want to comment on that.

: Los padres llamaron a la policía y Jared se fue con su padre a la comisaría.

: And my dad gave my older brother a shotgun, and he said, “If anybody comes to that patio door or through that front door, you pull the trigger.” And that’s … I mean, he have that responsibility to his son. And I mean, that’s how it changes the family. You know, at first, in life, there’s no violence, and you think life is happy-go-lucky, and it’s peaceful, and life is great. And then, things happen. Life changes. All of a sudden, you realize, “You know what, there’s evil in the world.”

: Jared didn’t go to school the next day, and his best friend, Cory, didn’t know why.

: I had no idea. FBI agents came to my classroom. I had no clue who they were or what they were doing. I didn’t know they were FBI. They asked for me. And I walked into the hallway, and they asked for my hat. And I said, “Sure. You need my hat? Okay.” I thought they were maybe going to make some hats or something. Well, it ended up that the hat that I had was a Cold Spring hockey hat. And Jared said it looked or resembled the hat that the abductor had on.

: Cory fue la última persona que vio a Jared antes de que lo agredieran. También estaba fuera en la oscuridad esa noche. Entonces, nuestra productora, Samara, se preguntó algo.

: Sé que dijiste que el FBI vino y se llevó tu sombrero después de que Jared fuera secuestrado. ¿Alguna vez te interrogaron de alguna manera?

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

: Investigators from the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office did try to find the man who had assaulted Jared. Law enforcement records show that Jared described the man as short, maybe 5’6″, 5’7″, about 170 pounds. He wore black army boots, and camouflage fatigues, and a military style watch. His voice was deep and raspy. He drove a dark blue car. Officers had Jared try to retrace the route the man drove that night.

: That’s had the picture, but in order to do that, I had to lay in the backseat of the squad car with my eyes covered and just go off my memory. Where are we going now? Where are we going now?

: Lo localizaron en un punto de la carretera principal, la 23, en algún lugar entre Cold Spring y una pequeña ciudad llamada Paynesville.

: Three days after Jared was assaulted, a deputy from the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office came up with the name of a possible suspect, a man from Paynesville named Danny Heinrich. At the time, Heinrich was 25. He was short, about 5’5″, and stocky, and drove a blue car. He dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and worked a bunch of low-paying jobs. He was a member of the National Guard. He lived with his mom. And he’s had several run-ins with the law, often minor and kind of bumbling crimes.

: One time, Heinrich broke into a consignment store looking for money to pay off some gambling debts. And when an officer got there, he found Heinrich hiding behind some boxes. Heinrich was arrested, and he ended up confessing to another burglary in town that same night. Heinrich told the officer, “I don’t know what got into me. I don’t know why I do these things.” Heinrich had a few DWIs too. At one stop, a cop noticed Heinrich had a police scanner in his car that he was using to monitor Stearns County Sheriff’s Office radio transmissions. The officer confiscated it.

: Por eso, cuando Jared describió a los agentes a un hombre bajo y fornido, con uniforme de camuflaje, que conducía un pequeño coche azul oscuro con un escáner en su interior, les sonó mucho a Danny Heinrich. Hicieron una rueda de reconocimiento con fotos de Heinrich y otros cinco tipos. Jared acabó eligiendo a dos personas que, en su opinión, se parecían a su secuestrador. Uno de ellos era Heinrich.

: So, the next day, two detectives from the sheriff’s office found Heinrich’s car parked outside a plastics company where he worked. Jared had described the car as having a luggage rack and a blue interior, but when the officers went over to look, they noticed that Heinrich’s car did not have a luggage rack and the inside was a grayish color. They didn’t charge Heinrich. They didn’t charge anyone. The case remained unsolved.

: Jared didn’t know it at the time, but he wasn’t the only one who’d been attacked by a strange man in Stearns County. In the years leading up to his abduction, from 1986 to 1988, in the town just down the road, the town of Paynesville, the town where Danny Heinrich lived, boys were being grabbed off the street by a strange man in the dark.

: My friend and I were riding our bikes back from downtown to our houses, and we didn’t live that far apart.

: Hablé con uno de los chicos que denunció al atacante a la policía cuando era niño. Su nombre es Kris Bertelsen. Tenía 12 o 13 años en ese momento.

: And as we rode our bikes towards our houses, we were around a corner by people’s house where they had a real thick, dark row of, I think, they were spruce trees. And we came around the corner, and out of nowhere from behind those trees, the attacker came running out and basically clotheslined my friend off of his bike.

: Kris couldn’t get a good look at the man.

: Llevaba un sombrero, y era todo oscuro, de combate, ya sabes, una especie de ropa con aspecto de fatiga, como ropa oscura de verdad, como si fuera una misión.

: I’ve read some of the police reports from these attacks. A lot of them were destroyed years ago. But from the ones that remain and the interviews I’ve done, it’s clear that these attacks were all pretty similar. A short and stocky man would jump out of the dark, and try to grab a boy, and grope him. Sometimes, the man wore a mask. Some of the boys were riding their bikes. Others are just walking.

: One of the boys was a paperboy out on his route. Most of the attacks happened at night. One boy said the man’s voice was low and static-filled. Another said it was a deep whisper. Several of the boys said the man asked them their ages or what grade they’re in. Sometimes, the man would issue a warning, “Don’t move or I’ll shoot.”

: We were all afraid like, “Who’s next?” I mean, it was pretty systematic. It was a group of us who hung around together and hung around downtown. To be marked, like that is terrifying. So, we almost had sort of a feeling like we got to take care of each other. You know, we got to watch out for each other. We were very concerned.

: The police in Paynesville tried their best to solve these assaults. There were front page articles about them in the local paper. One sergeant told the paper, “After this guy grabs the boys, he tells him ‘Don’t turn around or I’ll blow your head off.'” People were so concerned that the cops even considered imposing a curfew. Instead, they decided to just keep warning parents and kids, “If a strange man approaches you, scream and run away as fast as you can.”

: You know, I never forget one of the other victims telling me, “The molester got me.” And he described what happened. And, you know, it was just, you know, heart wrenching. I mean, I’ll never forget that. But, you know, we all had knives. Once this happened more than one time, I would suspect that just about every kid had a knife. I mean, that’s how we lived for that year and a half, two years. I mean, it was terrifying.

: Los ataques en Paynesville nunca se resolvieron.

: Jared Scheierl’s family never saw the articles in the Paynesville paper. They never knew about the other boys. Jared thought he was the only one. He started having dreams of being chased by a big, black dog, and he’d wake up panicked and sweating.

: I think I slept on my parents’ bedroom floor for the first year. You know, the level of fear that you go through with the emotions or the anxieties that you learned to overcome.

: Nine months passed, and then, in October of 1989, Jared heard that another boy had been kidnapped by a strange man. That boy’s name was Jacob Wetterling, and lived just ten miles away. Jacob was also kidnapped on the side of a road while heading home after dark. He was with a brother and a friend when it happened. The man told the other boys to run away, and don’t look back, or he’d shoot.

: Hubo detalles que reconocí enseguida que indicaban que era el mismo comportamiento. Algunas de las palabras o algunas de las frases eran similares. La descripción de la voz era similar. Hay una serie de detalles que eran bastante consistentes con mi caso.

: The Jacob kidnapping seemed like almost a repeat of the Jared kidnapping. And the night Jacob was kidnapped, the name Danny Heinrich was already in the files of the Stearns County sheriff’s office. And not just in the files, one of the deputies on the scene that night, a detective named Doug Pearce had investigated Jared’s case just nine months earlier.

: Detective Pearce had talked to Jared, shown Jared the lineup with Heinrich, and even gone to look at Heinrich’s car. When Jacob Wetterling was abducted, Detective Pearce was one of the officers who took the statements from the two other kids who are with Jacob that night, the statements that describe the abductor and how it happened. We tried to talk to Doug Pearce, but we weren’t able to reach him.

: Here’s why I think that information that night was so important. It’s not just that Jacob’s abduction seemed similar to another crime, it’s that this kind of crime, the kidnapping of a child by a stranger, is among the rarest of all crimes. And here in this one county in Central Minnesota, it happened twice in one year. But according to what we know from the documents that have been released and the best recollections of law enforcement who I talked to, no one went to look for Danny Heinrich in those first few critical hours after Jacob was kidnapped.

: Después de esa primera noche, a medida que la investigación se intensificaba, los investigadores empezaron a examinar detenidamente el anterior secuestro de Jared. Hablaron con Jared una y otra vez. Iban a su escuela y lo sacaban de clase.

: Los niños de la clase se fijaban en mí al entrar y salir de clase. Y aunque protegíamos mi identidad, dentro de Cold Spring se corría la voz de que yo era ese chico.

: Jared dijo que los investigadores le dijeron que era su mejor opción para encontrar a Jacob porque el hombre que se llevó a Jacob era el mismo que se lo llevó a él. Así que siguieron presionando a Jared para que recordara más.

: ¿A quién se parece si tuvieras que compararlo con otra persona? ¿Y a quién se parece? ¿A quién se parece?

: One time, Jared told investigators that the man who assaulted him kind of looked like his sixth grade teacher. He didn’t think it was his sixth grade teacher. He was just trying to come up with a description. Jared was just 13. And Jared’s best friend, Cory, said the whole thing got pretty confusing.

: El profesor desarraigó a su familia de Cold Spring y se mudó de la zona debido a toda la presión que recibió. Y no era este tipo. Jared sólo lo describió como que se parecía a este tipo, y lo molestaron hasta el punto de que se fue.

: Jared dijo que todo esto se volvió muy abrumador y estresante.

: To the point where I broke down. You know, there was one particular interview, it was a hard one. They brought me into a room, and my parents weren’t allowed in the room. And I was drilled with all the necessary details, and then questioned in regards to how certain I was on those details. And it led into, “You know who this person is?” And, you know, as much as I wanted to provide the answer, I didn’t know the answer. And after time and time again me not knowing the name, I finally broke down in tears, and came out of that room, and my parents had seen me and said, “We’re done.”

: After that interview, Jared’s family ended up moving out of town. They wanted to get away from all the stress and questioning about Jared’s assault. So, they moved to a place they thought was more peaceful, calmer, a town called Paynesville, the town where Danny Heinrich lived.

: So, Jared couldn’t remember every last detail about the man, but what he could remember turned out to matter a great deal because those details were very similar to how Jacob Wetterling’s brother and friend described the man who took Jacob. Law enforcement became so certain the cases were linked that they decided to announce it to the public.

: New evidence tonight leaves the FBI to believe that Jacob Wetterling’s kidnapper may have struck before.

: Agents say there are many similarities between Jacob’s abduction and the kidnapping and sexual assault of a Cold Spring boy in January.

: In December of 1989, authorities held a news conference. The top FBI agent on the case, Jeff Jamar, said without any hesitation that the abduction of Jacob Wetterling and the abduction of a Cold Spring boy — Jamar didn’t use Jared’s name — were connected. It was the same man.

: We knew from the very beginning. The question was how precise are the facts. How well or how good was the witness? How much do we know about what happened that night? It’s taking this long to get that down.

: And this is where the case against Danny Heinrich for the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling starts to build. About a month and a half after Jacob was taken, two days after the news conference, investigators go to talk to Heinrich. They asked him, “Where were you on the night of October 22nd 1989, the night Jacob was kidnapped?” “I can’t remember,” Heinrich says. So, no alibi.

: Heinrich acepta dar a las autoridades una muestra de su pelo. Accede a entregar sus zapatos. Accede a que los agentes retiren los neumáticos de su coche. Las fuerzas del orden comparan los zapatos y los neumáticos con las huellas y los rastros encontrados cerca del lugar del secuestro. Obtienen los resultados. Y para usar el lenguaje de los científicos forenses, la huella del zapato era similar y las huellas de los neumáticos eran consistentes. En otras palabras, no es una pista clara, pero es prometedora.

: Investigators even go back to Jared, and have him sit in Heinrich’s old car. Jared says, “It looks like the right one.” He tells them he wouldn’t change a thing. One of the lead FBI agents on the case back then, Al Garber, told me authorities were watching Heinrich 24/7 for weeks.

: Sacamos todo lo que tenemos y lo ponemos patas arriba.

: Authorities get a search warrant for Heinrich’s father’s house. Heinrich had moved there shortly after Jacob was kidnapped. Inside the house, they find black boots, camouflage pants, two radio scanners, and several locked trunks. Inside one of the trunks is a photograph of a boy in his underwear and another photo of a boy coming out of a shower with a towel wrapped around him.

: I can’t tell you anything more about what those photos looked like because law enforcement doesn’t have them. During the search, Heinrich objected to the officers seizing the photos. According to documents filed last year, he told them the photos “just didn’t look right.” So, law enforcement let him keep the photos. and Heinrich later burned them.

: The investigation continued. Heinrich appeared in the lineup. Officers brought in Jared. And although Jared wasn’t able to pick out anyone, for sure, he did say two of the men kind of look similar to the man who assaulted him. One of those men was Heinrich.

: Then, the FBI connected a fiber found on Jared snowsuit to a fiber sample taken from the seat of Heinrich’s old car. On February 9th 1990, about three and a half months after Jacob was kidnapped, law enforcement decided it was time to bring in Heinrich to see if they could force a confession out of him for the abductions of both Jared Scheierl and Jacob Wetterling. They sent in an FBI agent named Steve Gilkerson.

: Pensamos que él era la clave del caso en ese momento.

: ¿Que lo hizo?

: Sí.

: Así pues, Gilkerson y los demás agentes se pusieron a trabajar para preparar el interrogatorio.

: Three people from the FBI Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico came out to help us prepare for the interview. I mean, that’s how important it was.

: Gilkerson wouldn’t say much about what the FBI profilers recommended.

: I don’t want to go into too much detail because, you know, criminals might be listening to whatever you do here, but you want to prepare the room setting in a certain way.

: El agente del FBI Al Garber también estuvo involucrado en la preparación de las cosas.

: Los perfiladores nos dijeron dónde poner ciertos muebles, y dónde sentarlo, y dónde ver a los investigadores.

: They used a small interview room. They put an American flag inside, and a floor lamp, and some chairs. They got a file and stuffed it full of papers, and wrote Danny Heinrich’s name on it, and placed it conspicuously on a desk.

: We didn’t understand what they were doing but we thought we would try it. Why not?

: The goal was to intimidate Heinrich to make it seem like they already had a ton of evidence against him, that they already knew he did it, so he should just confess already. So, they brought in Danny Heinrich. Al Garber’s first impression of him wasn’t much.

: Average everyday Joe. I don’t know. Nothing stood out for me about him.

: ¿Parecía más inteligente?

: No, no particularmente. Tampoco particularmente ignorante. Ya sabes, sólo una persona promedio, pensé.

: Gilkerson, el otro agente del FBI, recuerda que la entrevista duró casi dos horas.

: We accused him, told him we had evidence that he did it. We tried a number of different ways to get him to talk to us about it. He didn’t get angry, or defiant, or anything like that. He just steadfastly denied. Just kept denying it, and denying it.

: He said, “I didn’t do it.” And that was the end of it.

: Heinrich was held overnight in jail. But the next day, the county attorney decided they didn’t have enough evidence to charge Heinrich with anything. So, they let him go. And Al Garber told me there wasn’t much more they could do with Heinrich after that.

: It goes like this, you investigate as much as you can. You do everything you can think of. You either get the evidence, you find that the person conclusively didn’t do it, or you just have no more to do. So, you have to leave that suspect. You can’t stay with the suspect with nothing to do, nothing more to do forever. Sometimes, you just can’t get it.

: I kept coming back to this moment, the moment they let Heinrich go. And I wondered, what else could they have done? So, I asked lot of the investigators who worked on the case back then about this. They all told me the same thing. They needed something that could hold over Heinrich, another charge, something they could work with to make a deal. And the way everyone talked to me about it, there just wasn’t anything. All they had were two cases: Jacob and Jared. No one mentioned the Paynesville cases. That seemed strange. So, I asked Steve Gilkerson about it. He’s the FBI agent who interrogated Heinrich.

: ¿Has oído hablar de los asaltos a los chicos en Paynesville en aquel entonces?

: No, no.

: Si lo hubieras sabido, ¿qué crees que hubiera sido diferente?

: Bueno, ciertamente habría entrevistado a esos chicos, para intentar conseguir más pruebas y todo eso.

: Me pregunto si se perdió de alguna manera, ya sabes, con todas las pistas que llegan y toda la actividad.

: I don’t know. I know we reached a point after the investigation there, we had really nothing. At that point, we let Heinrich go.

: The top FBI agent on the case back then, Special Agent in Charge Jeff Jamar, said he couldn’t recall any of this Paynesville stuff, but that it would have been really helpful.

: I said it more than several times during our press conferences that we had, if you’re a victim, or you’re a police department, or anything else, if you have a case that’s similar to this, tell us about them.

: Así que le hablé a Jeff Jamar de los casos de Paynesville, y me dijo que ese tipo de información era exactamente lo que estaban buscando.

: That’s one of those incidents where we could have something to hold over his head. Maybe more investigations where he lived and more victims if we could have found them and piled up cases of abuse by him then. To me, it’s just something, again, where we failed. It still bothers me.

: But law enforcement had heard about the Paynesville assaults. We know this for sure because in the limited batch of documents that are available to the public in the Wetterling case, there’s a mention of the police chief of Paynesville telling the investigators about the assaults in early January of 1990. The police chief even told them the name of the man he believed should be considered a suspect in those assaults, Danny Heinrich. Kris, one of the kids from Paynesville, made the connection between the cases in his own mind right away.

: I’ll never forget that. I was locking on St. Germain and St. Cloud, and a girl ran up to me, and handed me a piece of paper, like a flyer, with his picture on it. And she said, “This little boy was abducted in St. Jo, was taken in St. Jo.” And I remember, I had like a flashback, you know. When she said that to me, I thought, immediately, it was a trigger for me. And I remember thinking, you know, “Is this the same guy?” I mean, I was thinking, “Could it be? Is this possible, you know, that … How does this happen?”

: ¿Y alguien de las fuerzas del orden en el caso Wetterling se puso en contacto con usted?

: No.

: Kris told me he and his dad went to law enforcement themselves and gave a statement to the Wetterling investigators about the Paynesville assaults. He can’t remember the names of the investigators. He was just a teenager at the time.

: 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 because I thought, “Look, this is very similar. Jacob was on a bike. We were on bikes.” I mean, just lots of things.

: Kris said the investigators didn’t seem all that interested. They didn’t ask him to do a lineup or to look at any photos. In fact, they never called him again.

: Creo que todos hemos renunciado a que echen un vistazo.

: By February of 1990, law enforcement had struck out with Danny Heinrich. There were lots of reasons to think he did it, but no solid evidence. But there was something else they could have done. At the same time, all over Stearns county, there was a massive search underway for Jacob. It was one of the largest searches for any missing person in the history of the United States. Stearns County sheriff’s office was in charge, but this search involved hundreds of officers from many agencies and thousands of volunteers. Steve Gilkerson, the FBI agent from back then, told me the search went far beyond just the town where Jacob was kidnapped.

: We did all. Well, statues. We had searches, ground searches all over the place out there. And the sheriff’s office, they had mounted patrols out there. They had the National Guard out there searching.

: Gilkerson me dijo que incluso buscaron en los alrededores del pueblo de Cold Spring donde vivía Jared Scheierl.

: Where he was kidnapped because we thought at that time, you know, there’s a possibility that, you know, maybe Jacob was in that area there.

: Pero Gilkerson me dijo que no buscaron a Jacob en el diminuto pueblo de Paynesville, un pueblo de apenas 2300 habitantes, de apenas dos millas cuadradas, el pueblo donde todos esos chicos habían sido atacados, el pueblo donde vivía Heinrich.

: We didn’t search any of that area at that time.

: About a year after Jacob went missing, late one night around midnight, Danny Heinrich went for a walk to a spot just a third of a mile or so outside of downtown Paynesville, the site where he had buried Jacob Wetterling’s body.

: We don’t know what led Heinrich to go back there or what he was planning to do. All we know is what Heinrich’s said last week in his confession. He brought a flashlight, and a garbage bag, and a collapsible shovel. He shined the flashlight over the grave, and he saw something, Jacob’s red jacket. As he moved closer, he saw something else, bones just lying there on the ground as though the site had been uncovered.

: So, Heinrich gathered the bones, and the jacket, and everything else he could find, and put them into the garbage bag. Then, he walked across the street, and used the collapsible shovel to dig a hole about 2 feet deep. And Heinrich put the bones in the hole and then the jacket. And then, he covered up the hole and left. The remains wouldn’t be found for 26 years.

: Heinrich stayed in Paynesville for a long time, and he didn’t stop being interested in boys there. I found a sheriff’s report from 1991, a Paynesville cop had spotted a tan Buick driving around town following paperboys on their morning routes. And the cop had asked a Stearns County sheriff’s deputy to check it out. The deputy followed the car and realized the driver was Heinrich. But the deputy decided no further action could be taken by the sheriff’s office. He wrote a report, and that was it.

: Jared Scheierl grew up. He starred in his high school wrestling team. He played football. And after high school, he moved to Alaska. He got a job drilling for a gold prospecting company. He came back home to Paynesville, got married, raised kids, got divorced, and ended up buying his childhood home there from his father before he died. But for all that time, Jared stayed pretty quiet about what had happened to him as a kid. He remembered the man’s words, “If they ever come close to finding me, I’ll kill you.”

: Y entonces, un día, hace unos tres años, Jared recibió un mensaje en Facebook de una bloguera llamada Joy Baker. Ella se encontró con algunos viejos artículos de periódico sobre los asaltos en Paynesville. Ella quería saber si Jared sabía de ellos.

: You can imagine my eyes when when I’d seen that and just thinking I live here.

: Jared had never heard of the assaults before. And at that moment, Jared realized something.Mmaybe the man who attacked all these kids in Paynesville was the same man who attacked him, and even the same man who kidnapped Jacob Wetterling. He thought, “Maybe I could find all these guys who were assaulted, and ask them what they remember, and try to piece it altogether to figure out who this man is.”

: I told myself, I said, “I’m going to give it 110 percent. This is it. You know, as much as I’ve done, this is it. And if the answer’s out there, and it pertains to any of this, then I’m going to find it.”

: Jared thought about how to get started. And then, he remembered something an older boy had told him when he first moved to town after he’d been assaulted. The boy had said, “Look out for Chester the Molester.” At the time, Jared thought it was a joke. But 20 some years later, reading these stories, Jared wondered about that comment.

: So, he got back in touch with the boy — Now, a man — and asked him what he’d meant. The man told him he wasn’t joking. There had been this creepy guy who’d jumped out of the bushes in his parents yard and attacked a kid. Jared asked the man for any names of kids who’d been attacked.

: En la primera semana, hablé con una de las víctimas. Me acerqué a uno de ellos y me dieron detalles de su ataque.

: ¿Cómo se inicia esa conversación?

: Empieza con tu propia historia.

: De acuerdo.

: You know, I approached him and said, “Hey, I just want to ask you a few questions. I’m going to tell you something about me, and if you are comfortable enough, maybe you share something with me.”

: Jared siguió hablando con los hombres de la ciudad. Una persona le llevaba a otra.

: Y sabían quién era yo. Se sentían cómodos hablando. Y eso provocó un efecto dominó.

: Uno de los chicos que Jared encontró fue Kris.

: And so he called. I don’t even know how he got my number. He asked my name. You know, he said, “Is this Kris? You know, are you the one that was involved in Paynesville?” And it just feels like a ghost. I mean, “What? Yes, I was.”

: Jared, Kris y todos estos hombres empezaron a intercambiar historias sobre lo que recordaban del hombre que les asaltó, y muchas de estas historias sonaban bastante similares a lo que les ocurrió a Jared y Jacob, como si realmente fuera el mismo tipo. Para Jared, fue reconfortante en cierto modo compartir la misma experiencia con tantos otros hombres. Durante mucho tiempo, pensó que era el único que había escapado. Jared y todos estos hombres formaron una especie de hermandad. Tenían la misión de descubrir lo que les había sucedido. Y al hacerlo, para tratar de averiguar lo que había sucedido a Jacob Wetterling.

: Jared gave us a voice. And, you know, we’ve gone through this once. And as you can imagine, it’s an up and down. You know, you hope they’re going to catch this guy and things like that, And then, they don’t catch him, they don’t catch him, they don’t catch him. Years go by after Jacob, you know, it’s like it’s part of us, right.

: Jared and several other men got back in touch with the investigators on the Wetterling case. They wanted law enforcement to see what they saw, that these cases in this one county in just a few year period almost certainly were done by the same guy. Jared said he hoped to find answers for Jacob’s parents.

: And I was. I felt like I was Jacob’s strongest hope.

: Finally, two years ago, investigators went back and looked at those Paynesville cases. They looked at Jared’s case too. And it’s hard to know for sure because most of the Wetterling case file is still sealed, but the best they can tell is that this effort by Jared and by all of these men from Paynesville is what led authorities to go back to the man who was in front of them all along, Danny Heinrich.

: Kris, the guy from Paynesville, told me the way he sees it, it shouldn’t have taken so long.

: 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.

: And once authorities made the decision to go back to focusing on Heinrich, things moved pretty quickly. Authorities still had a hair sample from Heinrich from all those years ago. They sent it off to a lab, and it came back as a DNA match to Jared’s clothing. They used that match to get a search warrant for Heinrich’s house to try to find evidence of Jacob Wetterling, but they didn’t find any. What they did find was some child pornography. So, they charged Heinrich with that, and threw him in jail.

: Las autoridades informaron a Jared de la coincidencia del ADN. Después de un cuarto de siglo, Jared tuvo por fin una respuesta de las fuerzas del orden, pero había una trampa.

: “It’s Danny Heinrich, but because of statutes of limitations, we can’t prosecute him in your case.” That made me angry. You know, that made me feel like I have worked hard to get to here to find this answer. And I get the answer, but I don’t get prosecution. And it’s not fair. It’s not justice.

: Jared’s brother, Jed, took the news hard.

: 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?” Throughout all the years of wondering, and not knowing, and then, all of a sudden, here’s your answer, but there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

: Law enforcement officials haven’t said anything publicly about why it took so long to connect the dots to Heinrich. And Kris, the guy from Paynesville, says that’s one of the things that bothers him the most.

: I just feel like it’s … Yeah, I feel like they haven’t said there was anything wrong. It’s an unexamined life.

: Last month, the U.S. attorney decided to make Heinrich a deal, “Show us where the body of Jacob is, and you won’t be charged with killing him. And we’ll drop all but one of the charges of child pornography against you. You won’t spend the rest of your life in prison.” Under the deal, Heinrich will serve 17 to 20 years. He’ll be in his early 70s when he gets out.

: Fue un acuerdo muy inusual para un fiscal federal. Casi nunca ocurre. Y en Minnesota, hizo que algunas personas se enfadaran. Así que, llamé al Fiscal de los Estados Unidos, Andy Luger, para preguntarle por qué hizo un trato así.

: Teníamos la creencia pero no la evidencia antes de que nos lo dijera. Así que mi trabajo, bajo todas estas horribles circunstancias, sin grandes opciones, era hacer dos cosas: Ponerlo tras las rejas por un largo tiempo y obtener las respuestas que esta familia y el estado de Minnesota han estado buscando por casi 27 años.

: So, it’s the best deal that could have been made?

: In my view, it’s the best deal that was available.

: Heinrich aceptó el trato. Y el miércoles 31 de agosto, Danny Heinrich llevó a los oficiales al lugar en las afueras del centro de Paynesville. Jacob había estado allí todo el tiempo.

: La próxima vez en En la oscuridad.

: Los investigadores dicen que el secuestro ocurrido aquí, en Cold Spring, está saliendo a la luz ahora debido al abrumador número de pistas.

: El FBI dice que ha tardado tanto en relacionar los dos casos debido a la abrumadora cantidad de información que tiene que procesar.

: We’ve been running so many white cars down, and red cars down, and tan station wagons, and vans. And we’ve been just getting a tremendous amount of calls in here.

: ¿Qué pueden hacer ellos, los Wetterlings? ¿Son, en cierto modo, impotentes ahora ante el capricho, el antojo, la horrible caprichosa de este loco? Esa sería mi opinión.

: Domingo, 7:24 p.m.

: Sólo quiero decirte que Jacob está bien.

: ¿Eres feliz de nuevo?

: Sí.

: Yo diría que esto es realmente inusual. Me parece una muy mala idea.

: En la oscuridad está producida por Samara Freemark. La productora asociada es Natalie Jablonski. La información adicional para este episodio es de Jennifer Vogel. En la oscuridad está editado por Catherine Winter, con la ayuda de Hans Buetow. El editor jefe de APM Reports es Chris Worthington. Los editores de la web son Dave Peters y Andy Kruse. El videógrafo es Jeff Thompson. Reportajes adicionales de Curtis Gilbert, Will Craft, Tom Scheck y Emily Haavik. Nuestro tema musical está compuesto por Gary Meister. Este episodio fue mezclado por Johnny Vince Evans.

: There’s a lot more that we couldn’t fit into this episode, so please visit our website, InTheDarkPodcast.org. You can read stories about the DNA evidence in this case, and why it wasn’t tested right away, and find out more about how unusual the plea deal with Heinrich was. And you can watch a video of Jared Scheierl talking about his search for answers, as well as find out about places to get help if you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted.

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