Full Transcript: In the Dark - S1 E4 The Circus

Full Transcript: In the Dark: S1 E4 The Circus

: Eerder in In the Dark.

: Danny Heinrich is niet langer een persoon van belang. Hij is de bekende moordenaar van 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.

: Onderzoekers zeggen dat de ontvoering die hier in Cold Spring plaatsvond nu pas naar voren komt door het overweldigende aantal aanwijzingen.

: Het overweldigende aantal aanwijzingen. Bij elk groot strafrechtelijk onderzoek moet de politie een keuze maken: De zaak lokaal houden of het groots aanpakken.

: 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.

: Als de dagen, Patty, weken worden, is het iets dat je nachtmerries bezorgt als je een reden probeert na te streven? Waarom je jongen? Waarom die nacht?

: 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.

: Terwijl dit alles gebeurde, staarde Patty naar de grond alsof ze al haar woede probeerde af te leiden van Geraldo en John Walsh en op een paar centimeter keldertapijt.

: Wat kunnen zij, de Wetterlingen, doen? Zijn ze nu in zekere zin machteloos tegenover de grillen, de grillen, de vreselijke grilligheid van deze gek?

: Dat zou mijn mening zijn.

: Zo ging het een tijdje door.

: 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.

: Het Geraldo-interview en alle andere tv-optredens waren pijnlijk voor de Wetterlings, maar ze leverden wel veel aanwijzingen op voor de politie.

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

: Nou, we hebben vannacht, ik bedoel in de laatste 24 uur, meer dan 300 telefoontjes en tips ontvangen. Verschillende beschrijvingen van voertuigen, verschillende beschrijvingen van mensen die niet in het gebied horen te zijn.

: Met elke dag en elk nieuwsbericht kwamen er meer aanwijzingen binnen. Eerste tientallen.

: Gisterenochtend al...

: Dan, honderden.

: ...hadden we meer dan 300 telefonische tips ontvangen.

: Dan, tegen het einde van de tweede week, duizenden.

: Toen 500 leads. Nu, meer dan duizend telefoontjes naar deze locatie.

: Er waren zoveel aanwijzingen dat de politie een 24-uurs callcenter moest opzetten om het bij te houden.

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

: Er waren aanwijzingen over vreemde mannen in andere staten.

: Was gevestigd in Texas.

: Leads over auto's die weken later in andere delen van Minnesota zijn gezien...

: Een kleine rode auto met...

: die verdacht langzaam of verdacht snel reden. Leads uit de hele V.S. En vrij snel, begonnen sommige van die leads zelf leads op te leveren.

: 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.

: Oké, Sheriff, waar komen die meldingen van de witte Chevrolet vandaan?

: 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.

: Ze hebben hem nog steeds. Toen ik een paar maanden geleden op bezoek kwam, lag de telefoon op een dressoir in een logeerkamer.

: This is the kid and grandkids’room.

: Patty en Jerry bleven het jarenlang gebruiken.

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

: Er zat nog een tape in.

: 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.

: Natuurlijk.

: They’re doing copies of-

: Er zijn honderden telefoongesprekken opgenomen op deze banden. Patty en Jerry vulden de gesprekken, en gaven de aanwijzingen door aan het commandocentrum. In zekere zin werden ze onderzoekers van hun eigen zaak, en het huis werd een soort tweede callcenter.

: Woensdag, 4:58 a.m.

: 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.

: Mensen belden met allerlei aanwijzingen zoals deze. Soms nam Patty de telefoon op en soms Jerry.

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

: In Maplewood, juist. Juist.

: Oké.

: En toen veronderstelde ik dat de jongen getraind was omdat hij die man begon te waarschuwen dat ik naar hen staarde. Dus, ik probeerde nonchalant te zijn, en ging naar boven en bestelde iets, zodat ik de manager kon bereiken en hem de politie kon laten bellen. En ik keek om, en ze waren weg.

: 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?

: Deze jongen zag er zwaarder en bleek uit. Ik kan me voorstellen dat hij binnen is geweest, en dat het maanden geleden is dat hij gevangen is genomen. Hij werd ontvoerd in wat?

: 22 oktober, dus het was ongeveer negen weken.

: 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.

: Hallo, goedenavond.

: Hoi. Zijn dit de Wetterlings?

: Ja.

: Hoe was het daar?

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

: Okay. I’m very sorry.

: Dus, mensen belden Patty om haar te vertellen over dromen die ze hadden of Jacob ergens hadden gezien.

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

: Oké. Hij was in een boerderij. Het was een boerderij.

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

: Oh oké.

: 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.

: Hallo.

: Hallo.

: Hallo. Wie is dit?

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

: Oké.

: Is er iemand in je familie, zelfs aan de zijkant, met de benen eraf?

: Niet dat ik weet.

: 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.

: Goed. Nou, bedankt.

: But your boy’s all right.

: Goed.

: Je jongen is in orde. Hij leeft.

: De Wetterlings hebben dit allemaal geaccepteerd. En ik wil dat je hier echt over nadenkt, wat als er iemand van je familie vermist werd, en er een telefoon in je keuken stond die constant overging. En elke keer als je hem opnam, had de persoon aan de andere kant een nieuw verschrikkelijk verhaal over wat er gebeurd was, en je moest goed luisteren, en alles opschrijven met de kans dat het zou helpen de zaak op te lossen. Het werd zo erg dat Patty en Jerry soms hun vrienden vroegen de telefoon op te nemen.

: Zondag, 19.24 uur.

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

: Ben je weer gelukkig?

: Ja.

: Soms kregen ze zelfs telefoontjes van mensen die beweerden Jacob te hebben.

: Kunnen we hem spreken?

: Ja. Wacht even. Jacob.

: I’m all right. I’m all right.

: Oké. Waar ben je nu, Jacob?

: I don’t know.

: Geen van deze oproepen bleek Jacob te zijn.

: 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.

: En dan waren er nog de helderzienden.

: Mijn naam is Ferris. Vind je het erg om dit te bespreken of niet?

: Kun je me helpen hem te vinden?

: Well, I’m a psychic.

: Helderzienden, zo blijkt, houden van dit soort zaken.

: 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.”

: En deze helderzienden in die eerste maanden, zorgden voor problemen voor de Wetterlings. Toen Jacob voor het eerst vermist werd, waren de Wetterlings een hecht team, Patty en Jerry. Maar naarmate het onderzoek vorderde, begonnen Patty en Jerry hun eigen weg te gaan en probeerden zij te begrijpen wat er gebeurd was.

: Ik wilde alleen maar praten met de politie en het onderzoek. Geef me gewoon de feiten. Ik kan met feiten omgaan. Jerry, ondertussen, had al die spirituele connecties en helderzienden. En hij was...

: Dat was tot ongeveer een maand nadat ik daarmee was begonnen.

: Juist. Dus...

: 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.

: De gekte?

: 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.

: Middernacht 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.

: Ik bedoel, wat is er gebeurd?

: 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.

: Oh, ik denk dat hij dat deed uit angst.

: Sylvia Browne was toen een grote ster. Ze was een regelmatige gast in The Montel Williams Show, en had de gewoonte om zichzelf in te schakelen in belangrijke zaken. Ze schreef boeken met titels als Contact maken met je Spirit Guide en 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.

: Oké. En waar komen deze jongens vandaan?

: Illinois.

: Beide?

: 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.

: Oké. 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.

: In de eerste dagen van het onderzoek naar de ontvoering van Jacob Wetterling, begon de politie schetsen te verspreiden, schetsen van vreemde mannen die in de omgeving waren gezien. Een van de mensen die de onderzoekers het liefst schetsten was een mysterieus figuur, bekend als de man met de doordringende 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.

: Zijn normale houding is dat hij klanten met doordringende ogen aanstaart die niet met hem praten. Hij volgde hen vaak door de winkel, en nam gewoon plaats voor de winkel en volgde hen door de winkel met zijn ogen.

: Ik sprak een koppel dat beweerde de man met de doordringende blik te hebben gezien. Kevin en Marlene Gwost zaten in een band genaamd The Nite Owls. Het was een polka band.

: Oompah, Duits.

: Oompah, polka's.

: Minnesota stijl.

: Twee stappen.

: 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.

: Ze zagen een man bij de koelers staan, eind 20, begin 30, die naar de voordeur keek.

: Ik pakte hem meteen. Weet je, je kon zien dat hij met iets anders bezig was. Alsof hij tegelijkertijd aan iets anders dacht.

: Hoe zag hij eruit?

: 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.

: Ik sprak met een andere man. Zijn naam is Steve Gretsch, en hij was ook op het polkafeest die dag. Steve werkte voor een radiostation genaamd KASM die het organiseerde. En hij vertelde me dat hij ook een vreemd iemand had gezien.

: 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.

: In de weken daarna spraken Steve Gretsch en Marlene Gwost beiden met een wetshandhaver over de vreemde man die ze zagen. Ze beschreven beiden een soortgelijk proces. Ze herinnerden zich dat ze gingen zitten met een boek met afbeeldingen van oren, wenkbrauwen.

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

: Ogen, neus, ja, kin. Voorhoofd.

: 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.

: Whoa.

: Oh wow.

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

: Ze zien eruit als twee verschillende mannen.

: In de zaak Jacob Wetterling gebruikte de politie veel schetsen, waaronder één gebaseerd op een beschrijving van Jared Scheierl, de jongen in Cold Spring die eerder dat jaar werd ontvoerd. Die schets lijkt een beetje op Danny Heinrich, maar ook op veel andere mensen.

: Dit vertrouwen op schetsen in een strafzaak is vrij standaard, ondanks wat Karen zegt over hoe onbetrouwbaar ze zijn. Maar onderzoekers in de Wetterling zaak gingen een stap verder. De politie nam schetsen van de man met de doordringende blik en andere schetsen van verdachte mensen in verschillende steden, en combineerde die tot een geheel nieuwe schets.

: 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.

: Zeggen ze dit?

: 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.

: Misschien ging het te snel te groot in plaats van dichtbij te blijven. Als je zoveel tijd besteedt aan aanwijzingen die nergens toe leiden, kan het je afleiden van de aanwijzing die je ergens heen kan brengen.

: 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?

: Ik zou zeggen dat je bij de meeste zeker moet zijn.

: 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.

: Er was zoveel lawaai. 70.000 aanwijzingen, helderzienden, witte busjes, de man met de doordringende blik, mensen die beweerden Jacob te zijn. En bijna 27 jaar lang zeiden de onderzoekers dat ze elk spoor opnieuw bekeken. Ze breidden het onderzoek steeds verder uit en vroegen zelfs jaren later het publiek in de hele Verenigde Staten om hulp bij het oplossen van deze zaak.

: Op de een of andere manier, in al dat lawaai, zag de politie niet wat er recht voor hun neus stond, de man die twee steden verder woonde, de man die al in hun dossiers stond, de man die bijna 27 jaar later de misdaad had bekend, Danny Heinrich.

: En na jaren van zinloze aanwijzingen, deed een nieuwe sheriff in 2004 iets anders. Hij richtte zijn aandacht op één van de weinige mensen die getuige was van de nacht dat Jacob werd ontvoerd. En in plaats van te geloven wat die getuige te zeggen had, maakte hij van hem een verdachte.

: Volgende keer in 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 is geproduceerd door Samara Freemark. De geassocieerde producent is Natalie Jablonski. In the Dark is geredigeerd door Catherine Winter, met hulp van Hans Buetow. De hoofdredacteur van APM Reports is Chris Worthington. Webredacteuren of Dave Peters en Andy Kruse. De videograaf is Jeff Thompson. Aanvullende verslaggeving voor deze aflevering door Jennifer Vogel en Will Craft. Onze themamuziek is gecomponeerd door Gary Meister. Deze aflevering is gemixt door Cameron Wiley en Johnny Vince Adams.

: Ga naar InTheDarkPodcast.org voor een nadere kijk op het gebruik van politieschetsen, inclusief een video over ons experiment; en om verhalen te lezen over het opsporingsgebruik van hypnose en leugendetectoren, die de Wetterling-rechercheurs ook gebruikten; en om enkele van de telefoontjes te horen die de Wetterlings in hun huis kregen nadat Jacob was ontvoerd.

: In the Dark wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door onze luisteraars. U kunt meer onafhankelijke journalistiek zoals deze steunen op InTheDarkPodcast.org/donate.

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