Karanlıkta Podcast Transkripti: Sezon 1, Bölüm 2

Karanlıkta: S1 E2 Çember

: If this is your first time listening to In the Dark, stop, go back, and start at the first episode. It’ll make a lot more sense. Last time on In the Dark.

: Çocuklarından bazıları film almak için Tom Thumb'a gitmişler. Ve dönüş yolunda biri onları durdurmuş.

Koşarken arkana baktın mı?

: Evet, aşağıya indiğimizde.

Ne gördün?

: Nothing. He wasn’t there anymore.

11 yaşındaki çocuk 1989 yılında kayboldu ve o zamandan beri bir gizem olarak kaldı.

: Sonunda biliyoruz. Wetterling ailesinin ve tüm Minnesota'nın 1989'daki o korkunç geceden beri bilmek istediği şeyi biliyoruz. Gerçeği biliyoruz.

: Şimdi geriye dönüp baktığınızda farklı yapacağınız şeyler var mı?

: You always think about that, but no. I think, the people that worked on that case did truly 110% every day that we’re there. And I don’t know. I don’t know that there’s anything we could have done differently.

We’re here today because of the perseverance of investigative team; the commitment to aggressively follow up on every single lead, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant; and the absolute belief that if we continue to press, we would eventually solve this case.

: Dinleyin. Sesi duyabiliyor musun? Kalpler atıyor, tüm dünyada.

: Five days after 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted, radio stations across Minnesota all played one of Jacob’s favorite songs, Listen by Red Grammer, along with a message for Jacob from his mom, Patty.

: I just want Jacob to know that this song is for him to hear. The heartbeat of humanity is beating for him. I know it will give him strength. If there’s an ounce of compassion in the man who’s holding him, he will let him go safely. Listen, Jacob. Can you hear our prayers? We love you.

Radyo istasyonu çalışanları ve yoldan geçenler el ele tutuşarak katıldılar. Hatta medyadan bazıları ağlıyordu. Duygular şu anda aramayla birlikte büyüyor.

I’m hoping that he would know that we’re out the snow looking for him, that we didn’t give up.

: The people in the town of St. Joseph seemed driven by the belief that by brute force of will, they could bring Jacob back. They made fliers with Jacob’s photo, and put them everywhere, on telephone poles, on shop windows, on doors and parked cars. Everywhere you went, you’d see people with white ribbons pinned to their shirts to symbolize hope for Jacob. Thousands of people even lined up in a human chain shivering in the cold and crying.

Zincir, Del-Win Balo Salonu'nun hemen yakınındaki ana otoyolda başladı.

: The chain stretched for three miles. 3500 schoolchildren were bussed in. Even two baseball players from the Minnesota Twins showed up, wearing blue warm-up jackets embroidered with Jacob’s initials.

Her yaştan ve her kesimden insan, 11 yaşındaki Jacob'ın sağ salim eve döneceği umudunu canlı tutmak için bir araya geldi.

: Jacob’s abduction fell neatly into two typical television news narratives, small town pulling together, and heroic investigators doing all they can.

Polis ve gönüllüler gökyüzünde ve yerde silah zoruyla kaçırılan küçük bir çocuğu çılgınca arıyor.

: Birkaç gün içinde düzinelerce kolluk kuvveti kasabaya gelmeye başladı.

Arama ekipleri 11 yaşındaki çocuğun izine rastlamak için St. Cloud'un hemen batısındaki bölgeyi tarıyor.

: Hafta sonunda, davada çalışan neredeyse yüz memur vardı. Her yerden geldiler. Şerif yardımcıları, FBI ajanları, eyalet müfettişleri ve Minnesota'nın dört bir yanından yerel memurlar vardı. Vali Ulusal Muhafızları bile çağırdı.

Beş helikopter 30 kilometrekarelik alanı tararken, aşağıdaki arama görevlileri bölgeyi yaya olarak tarıyor ancak bir iz bulamıyor.

: Arama ekipleri günde 18 saat çalışıyorlardı.

Search crews, helicopters, and bloodhounds could not find any clue as to Jacob Wetterling’s whereabouts today, but his family has not given up hope.

: This search was massive. It was unlike anything Minnesota had seen before. In fact, it was one of the largest searches for any single missing person in the history of the United States. People just assumed every square inch of the region have been scoured, and every person who might have seen something had been interviewed, but that wasn’t true.

: This is In the Dark, an investigative podcast from APM Reports. In this series, we’re looking at what went wrong in the case of Jacob Wetterling, an 11-year-old who was kidnapped in Central Minnesota in 1989, and whose remains were found just last week.

: Today, we’re going to take a closer look at what happened the night Jacob was kidnapped. We’re going to find out how the decisions of law enforcement in this critical first few hours would allow the man who took Jacob to get away unpunished for 27 years.

: Just today, a man named Danny Heinrich appeared in a Minneapolis courtroom. I was there, along with what seemed like every other reporter in Minnesota. There were so many people, I couldn’t even get into the main courtroom, so I went into one of the two overflow rooms to watch on a video feed. And pretty soon, those rooms filled up too.

: Danny Heinrich came into the courtroom wearing a light-colored shirt and dark pants. He’s a short guy, 5’5″, stocky, with white hair. He walked up to face the judge with an attorney on either side and stood with his back to us. We all leaned in to make sure we heard what happened next. The federal prosecutor asked the question, “On October 22nd 1989, did you kidnap, sexually assault, and murder Jacob Wetterling?” “Yes I did,” Heinrich said. A loud gasp went through the courtroom, so loud it was picked up on the video feed. Finally, there would be answers to the most notorious crime in Minnesota history.

: On bir yaşındaki Jacob Wetterling'in kaçırılmasından her zaman destansı bir gizem olarak bahsedilirdi; kolluk kuvvetlerinin kahramanca bir çabası vardı ve Jacob'ı kaçıran adam bir şekilde ellerinin arasından kayıp gitmişti. Yapabilecekleri başka bir şey yoktu. Jacob öylece ortadan kayboldu.

: And then, Danny Heinrich began to describe what actually happened. He seemed resigned to it, like he was forcing himself to get through it. He sighed a lot. Heinrich told the judge that on the night of October 22nd, 1989, for reasons he didn’t explain, he got in his car, a blue 1982 Ford EXP, and drove half an hour from his apartment in the small town of Paynesville to St. Joseph. Inside his car was a scanner he used to pick up police dispatch and a .38 revolver.

: Sometime after 8:00 p.m., Heinrich turned onto the dead-end road that led to the Wetterling’s house. He saw three kids biking up toward town. He parked his blue Ford in a long gravel driveway across from a cornfield. And then, he waited.

: When the boys biked back, Heinrich got out of his car, put on a mask, and walked onto the road. He ordered the boys into the ditch and grabbed Jacob. Heinrich took Jacob back to his car, handcuffed him, and put him in the front passenger seat. Heinrich said, “Jacob asked him a question, ‘What did I do wrong?'” Heinrich drove Jacob around for a while, long enough that he started to hear police activity on a scanner. He told Jacob to lean forward in the seat and duck down, so no one would see him. Once they made it out of the town of St. Joseph, Heinrich told Jacob he could sit back up.

: He kept driving around for a long time. Eventually, he took Jacob back to his own town, Paynesville, about 25 miles from where he’d kidnapped Jacob. He pulled off onto a side road near a gravel pit. Heinrich took the handcuffs off Jacob, and walked him over to a row of trees. He told Jacob to take off his clothes. Heinrich also undressed. He touched Jacob and had Jacob touch him. Then, he told Jacob to masturbate in front of him.

: The assault went on for about 20 minutes. And then, Jacob told Heinrich that he was cold, so Heinrich told him he could get dressed. Jacob asked Heinrich to take him home, and Heinrich said he couldn’t. Jacob started to cry. Heinrich told him to stop.

: I noticed that Heinrich’s seemed to have trouble telling this part of the story in the courtroom. It sounded like he had trouble breathing, like it was hard to get the words out. Heinrich said he saw a patrol car come down the road, and he panicked. He loaded his gun, and shot, and killed Jacob. Then, Heinrich got in his blue car, left Jacob’s body, and drove home.

: He spent a couple of hours at his apartment. Then, he headed back out on foot carrying a shovel, and walked a little over a mile back to where Jacob’s body was. He started digging a hole, but the shovel was too small. So, he walked over to a construction company close by and stole a Bobcat. He started it up, and turned the lights on, and drove it back to the site.

: By then, it was sometime after midnight, at least three hours since Jacob had been kidnapped. Heinrich used the Bobcat to dig the grave, and he put Jacob in it, and filled it in. Heinrich returned the Bobcat, and then came back to the grave, and tried to cover it up a bit more with grass and brush. Then, he realized he’d forgotten to bury Jacob’s shoes. So, he walked for a few minutes down the road, and threw them into a ravine. And then, Heinrich walked home.

: It was one of the worst stories I’ve ever heard told in a courtroom. Even some veteran reporters were crying. Heinrich’s story was awful, but it wasn’t just his brutality that shocked me. This did not seem like a perfect crime, not by a long shot. It involved hours of driving, of walking down a main road carrying a shovel, stealing a Bobcat in the middle of the night with the lights on to dig a grave. All of this in the first few critical hours of what had always been described as a massive and thorough investigation.

: I wanted to know what law enforcement should have been doing in those critical first few hours. To find out, I needed to start with the basics, Policing 101. So, I reached out to a guy named Patrick Zirpoli to help me understand how an investigation like this is supposed to go. Zirpoli is one of the top consultants in the country on child abduction cases. He used to coordinate the Amber Alert program in Pennsylvania. Zirpoli told me there are two things you need to do right away when you arrive at a crime scene. They’re both pretty basic. First, secure the scene, then — and this is the one he stressed the most — talk to the neighbors.

: Bu yüzden her zaman deriz ki, yakından başlayın ve dışarıya doğru ilerleyin. Evlerinden başlayın, röportajlar yapın, kapıları çalın. Ve insanlara her zaman şunu söylüyoruz, tekrar tekrar görüşmek istiyorsunuz. İnsanlarla birden çok kez görüşmek istersiniz, sadece bir kez değil. Eğer bir dava bir günden fazla sürerse, ikinci ve üçüncü gün de devam ederse, herkesle yeniden görüşmek istersiniz.

: I called a couple of other experts to confirm that this immediate repeated interviewing of neighbors is standard procedure. I talked to a man named Vernon Geberth. He trains law enforcement officers all over the country. He’s one of the best known trainers in the US. He’s also worked in the New York Police Department as a lieutenant in a homicide unit in the Bronx.

: 1980'den bu yana 72.000'den fazla kişiye cinayet sanatı ve bilimini öğrettim. İncil olarak kabul edilen Practical Homicide Investigation kitabının yazarı, Sex-Related Homicide and Death Investigation kitabının yazarı, Autoerotic Death Investigation kitabının yazarı, Checklist and Field Guide Second and Third ... First and Second Edition kitabının yazarı, ve saire, bu da benim bir hayatım olmadığını kanıtlıyor.

: Geberth didn’t want to comment specifically on this case because he hasn’t seen the investigative file, but he told me it’s hard to overstate how important it is to talk to the neighbors.

: I can tell you that every major case that I was in charge of in the City of New York that resulted in a successful conclusion was based on a good neighborhood canvass, where people were asked to report anything. Even though they didn’t think it was important, it turned out to be important.

: Geberth says these people who don’t realize they’ve seen something important are called unknowing witnesses.

: Yeah, the unwilling witnesses is a term that we use when we do a canvass of the area where the event is taking place. And you never ask someone, “Did you see anything strange?” You ask them, “Did you see anything?” “Okay. I see a guy sticking a mic in my mouth right now.” Okay. That unknowing witness, that piece of information could be paramount to the investigation.

: And like, what would be an example of something that people just don’t pick up on as important?

: Birisi caddede yürüyor, arabasını park ediyor. Bu neden önemli olsun ki? Eğer daha sonra o araba cinayetin işlendiği saatte park edilmişse önemli olabilir.

: Doğru. Diğer insanlarla ne zaman konuşmaya başlıyorsun?

: Immediately. Immediately because 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. You have to reconstruct the time and the events going back, the dynamics of what was taking place in that area at the time.

: Kolluk kuvvetleri vakaları çözmeye yönelik temel teknikleri ne kadar zamandır biliyor?

: Muhtemelen sonsuza kadar. Sherlock Holmes. Evet, tamam.

: So, knock on doors, talk to everyone, and do it right away. Basic stuff. And the agency that was responsible for doing this in the Jacob Wetterling case was the Stearnes County Sheriff’s Office. Here’s how the investigation worked. The Stearnes County Sheriff was in charge. It was sheriff’s deputies who were on the scene that night. They were the ones at the Wetterling’s house and the ones who organized all that searching that night.

: The sheriff did ask for help from the FBI and other agencies, and they arrived the next morning, but the sheriff stayed in charge of the investigation. So, I started calling some of the investigators from back then to ask them whether the sheriff and his deputies had done this policing 101 stuff, knocking on doors, asking people what they saw. And everyone was kind of dismissive when I asked them about this like, “Of course, we did that.” Here’s retired FBI agent Al Garber.

: I’m not sure, but I would assume yes. Detectives ask those questions.

: Ve Jeff Jamal, FBI'dan.

: Bence, mahalleye çok hızlı ve çok geniş bir şekilde bakılırsa.

: Ve eski Stearnes İlçesi Dedektifi Steve Mund.

: I’m sure I did. I’m just going through the logical steps for doing investigation.

: But no one I talked to actually remembered going around and knocking on doors that night. That seemed a little odd. So, I asked another reporter I worked with, Curtis Gilbert, to call everyone he could find who’d lived on the dead-end road that Jacob, Trevor, and Aaron would have biked along the night of October 22nd 1989, and ask them a simple question, “When did law enforcement first talk to you?”

: Curtis.

: Kayıt mı yapıyoruz?

Evet.

: Oh tamam.

: So, you’re here to give me the latest?

: Size dökümünü verebilirim. Aslında yaptım... Hatta burada küçük bir grafik bile hazırladım.

: Curtis yerel bir arşivden bazı eski şehir rehberlerini bulmayı başardı ve 22 Ekim 1989'da çocukların bisikletle geçtiği çıkmaz sokakta kimlerin yaşadığını bulmak için bunları kullandı. Neredeyse yüz kişi vardı. Bazıları ölmüştü ama Curtis bulabildiği kadarını bulmaya çalıştı. 26 kişiye ulaşabildi.

: Hesap çizelgemi açayım. Buna polis tarafından ilk sorgulandıkları zaman diyorum.

: Peki, emniyet güçleri o gece mahalledeki herkesle konuştu mu?

: That night, no way. Did you want to … I brought a little tape because I thought there’s a few interesting things.

: Yeah, that’d be great.

: Curtis played me some audio from the people he talked to. And keep in mind, it’s been 27 years, so some people’s memories aren’t great.

No, we didn’t hear anything, you know. Isn’t that weird? But they didn’t really … They didn’t come to the door that night, but they-

İki ya da üç hafta sonra FBI geldi. Kapıyı çaldılar.

Ama birkaç hafta geçti ve görüştüler.

: Mahallede yaşadığınızdan beri hiç polis kapınızı çaldı mı? Bu konuda hiç polislerle konuşmak zorunda kaldınız mı?

Hayır.

: Hayır mı?

Hiç yapmadılar.

: Hiç yapmadılar mı? Tamam.

: Tamam. 26'sında o gece kendileriyle konuşulduğundan emin olan iki kişi var. İki kişi o gece kendileriyle konuşulduğundan emin.

: Remember, we’re not talking about everyone on the dead-end road, just the 26 people Curtis was able to reach.

: Dört kişi ertesi gün ya da belki o gece kendileriyle konuşulduğunu düşündü.

: So, two people for sure that night. And then, another four people who think they were talked to the next day, but say it’s possible it was really the first night. So, giving law enforcement the benefit of the doubt that six people on the dead-end road who were talked to by law enforcement that night out of the people Curtis talked to. As for the rest of the people, some of them said they weren’t interviewed at all. Some said they were talked to the next day. Others say they were eventually interviewed a few days or even a few weeks later, but not by local law enforcement. They remember being interviewed by the FBI because it kind of creeped them out.

: It was two agents. Everyone said they were talked to by two agents. Multiple people described those interviews this way, “There’s two. There’s two agents there. One of them asked you the questions, and the other one just watches you, watches your facial expressions.” That’s multiple people-

: İlginç.

: ... tam olarak bu terimlerle tanımladı.

: So, did law enforcement talk to everyone in the neighborhood that night? No. Did they go back to all the people they did interview, and talk to them over and over, like the experts say you should? No. And this failure to canvass the neighborhood thoroughly that night was a big deal. It meant that law enforcement didn’t get all the information right away when it was most important in those critical first few hours. Those hours matter because, most of the time, if a child is going to be killed by an abductor, it happens in the first five hours. You can’t go back the next day, and just redo the investigation. Most of the time, it’s too late.

: When I had pictured the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling, I focused on the isolation that it didn’t matter if anyone talked to the neighbors because no one in the neighborhood saw anything anyway. The boys were alone on that bike ride home. The street was deserted. It was just the three boys, Jacob, Aaron, and Trevor, and the abductor waiting for them in the dark. But that’s not at all what was going on that night. It turns out that the whole way people have been picturing this crime is just wrong.

: Birçok insan bunu gördü.

: Bekle. Ne?

: Evet, birçok insan onların geldiğini gördü. Yani-

: Ciddi misin sen?

: Evet. İnsanlar ve çocuklar dışarıdaydı. Onların gelip gittiğini gören birçok aileyle konuştum.

: Kaçırılma olayını ilk duyduğunuzda nerede olduğunuzu hatırlıyor musunuz?

: Aslında, çocukların yanımdan geçtiğini duydum.

: Curtis, Jim Kline adında bir adamla konuştu. 1989 yılında, kasabaya biraz daha yakın, çıkmaz bir yolda yaşıyordu. Ve 22 Ekim akşamı garajında bir araba üzerinde çalışıyormuş.

: Evet, sadece yürüyorlardı... Bakkaldan ya da her neyse oradan dönüyorlardı ve garajımın önünden geçiyorlardı. Onlar geçerken ben de dışarıda yürüyordum ve kim olduğunu anladım ama hepsi bu kadar.

: Çılgınca. Muhtemelen onları o gece 9:00 gibi falan görmüşsündür, değil mi?

: Evet, evde bana yardım ediyor.

: You’re probably like one of the last people to see him.

: Evet, muhtemelen.

: Vay canına.

: Jim Klein says he wasn’t talked to by law enforcement until a week or two later, and he, actually, wasn’t the last person to see the boys that night.

: Dışarıdaydık ve orada sadece o ve ben vardık. Belki diğer çocuklar içeri girmiştir.

: Yeah, because that’s how the lady got in.

: Ve onlarla kısa bir süre konuştuk.

: I talked to a brother and sister named Adam and Erica Sundquist who lived very close to the abduction site, about a two-minute walk down the road. They were 12 and 9 at the time. And that night, they were out playing what everyone on the block just called “night games.”

: Tenekeyi tekmeledim. Mezarlığa gidecek. Sadece bulduğumuz garip oyunlar.

: Evet.

: En çok Kick the Can'i hatırlıyorum.

: Ne yaptığımızı hatırlıyor musun?

: We’re throwing corn in there, where they kick of-

: Ne yaptın?

: We had corn. We had corn from the field. We’re shelling it, and throwing it in the air.

: Adam ve Erica bahçede mısır atarken Jacob, Trevor ve Aaron'ı Tom Thumb'dan dönerken görürler. Çocukların oldukça yavaş gittiğini söylediler. Hatta şaka olsun diye onlara mısır bile atmışlar.

: Evimizin önünden bisikletle geçtikten bir dakika sonra tepede durduruldular. Bir dakika içindeydi çünkü o mesafeyi bisikletle gitmek sadece bir dakika sürüyor, değil mi?

: Evet, bir ya da iki dakika, ki bu biraz ürkütücüydü.

: Çocuklar evlerinin önünden geçtikten birkaç dakika sonra Erica ve Adam bordo renkli, arkası kalkık bir arabanın çocuklarla aynı yönde güneye doğru ilerlediğini gördüklerini hatırlıyorlar.

: It’s going up the hill towards where they went, pass us. So, I don’t know. I mean, there is no road to turn off of. If you’re going to get down the hill, there’s two cul de sacs. And then, you had to come back through.

: Evet, o taraftan çıkış yoktu. Oradan çıkmak için evimizin yanından geri dönmek zorundaydınız.

: Doğru.

: Then, we went in the house. We’ve never seen anyone drive back through.

: Erica and Adam say they don’t remember any law enforcement officers knocking on their door that night. They don’t remember ever talking to investigators, but they assume they must have, at some point. I do know their story matches what they were saying back then because they found a 15-second interview they did with a local TV news reporter back in 1989, just a day or so after Jacob was abducted.

: Bu tarafa gidiyorlardı. Sonra çok hızlı giden arabanın buradan geçtiğini görüyoruz, o da aynı yöne gidiyordu.

: I wasn’t sure how seriously investigators would take this kind of information from a couple of kids. Is this the sort of thing that you’d elevate or just shrug off because, you know, 10-year-olds. But Patrick Zirpoli, the child abduction expert, told me that not only should you take these kinds of stories seriously, you should actually seek them out because kids notice things adults don’t.

: I’ve always said you want to look for that person who, not the parents think is odd, but other children in the neighborhood may say that this person is odd. “You know, he has been at the school bus before, the school bus stop before. He has talked to us in the park.” Those are those individuals that you want to start looking for immediately because, you know, if they’re in that area, you know, you want to identify them, identify their whereabouts as soon as you can.

: Kaçırılma bölgesine en yakın yaşayan komşulardan bazıları o zamanlar soruşturmada bir terslik olduğundan şüpheleniyordu. Böyle düşünmelerinin bazı sebepleri dikkat çekiciydi. Ve açıkçası, bazı durumlarda, biraz garip. Size Klaphakes adında bir aileden bahsedeyim. Çıkmaz sokakta yaşıyorlardı. Müfettişlerle ilk kez nasıl karşılaştıklarına dair hikayeleri biraz tuhaf ve karanlık bir şekilde başlıyor. Curtis bana ailenin babası Jerry Klaphake ile yaptığı konuşmanın bir kısmını dinletti.

: Klaphake'ler kaçırıldıkları gün Twin Cities'deki akrabalarını ziyarete gitmişlerdi. Geri dönmüşler. Arabaları şehrin yarım saat kadar dışında bozulmuş. Tamir ettirmek zorunda kalmışlar. Eve gitmişler. Yatmaya gitmişler. Ertesi gün bir sürü polis arabası ve medya mahalleye doluştu ve köpeklerine araba çarptı. Jerry Klaphake'in yanında komşusu vardı ve köpeği arka bahçelerine gömdüklerini anlattı.

: And my neighbor, my next-door neighbor, was with me. I had just tilled up my garden, and I thought that’s probably a good place to bury the dog. And so, I remember, at night, we’re out there, and digging this hole, putting my dog in it, and then covering it up. Yeah, I told my neighbor. I said. “You’re my witness. This is my dog down here,” because I was convinced that, you know, it’s a fresh grave. Basically, you know, dirt dug up. And they just had a ton of people doing a search in the woods behind our house. They were within probably 15 feet off my garden. And I was all surprised that they didn’t catch that. And if they miss that, you know, what else did they miss. You know, that’s what I thought at that time.

: Jerry Klaphake, Curtis'e asıl konuşması gereken kişinin oğlu Adam olduğunu söyledi.

: Could you just introduce yourself or say your name, so I can make sure you’re being recorded okay?

: Evet. Benim adım Adam Klaphake.

: Peki sen kaç yaşındasın, Adam?

: Şu anda 41 yaşındayım.

: Back in 1989, Adam was 14. He was friends with Jacob Wetterling. He would go over to the Wetterlings’ house for sleepovers. And people in the neighborhood would even talk about how the boys looked alike. Adam said, first of all, there were other weird things that had happened on that dead-end road, including this one thing that happened about five or six years before Jacob was kidnapped.

: O zamanlar muhtemelen 9 ya da 8, 9 ya da 10 yaşlarındaydım.

: Adam ve diğer bazı çocuklar bahçede kickball oynuyorlardı. Hava kararmak üzereydi.

: And somebody kicked the ball over the hedge, and it had gone over the road, gone in the ditch. So, I jumped. I remember jumping to the hedge, running across the road to go grab the ball. I grabbed the ball. And as I’m grabbing it, somebody picked me up. I couldn’t see the face after that. You know, I had my back to him. He had me like in a bear hug, or a bear hold, or whatever. And the person had glasses. I remember that, and kind of a dark, raspy voice. And then, as he’s holding me up, he holds me pretty tight. My sister had opened the door and yelled for us that I needed to come in. And the guy says to me, ‘You’re lucky your sister called you,” and he threw me down. And I never saw him.

: Adam told Curtis he remembers telling his dad, but they didn’t call the police. A few years pass, and then another strange thing happens to Adam on that same dead-end road in 1989, just a month or two before Jacob was kidnapped.

: Kaçırılmadan birkaç ay önce, o ve arkadaşı Brandon, Tom Thumb'dan yürüyerek dönmektedirler.

: O zamanlar 14 yaşındaydım. Brandon 12 yaşındaydı. Neredeyse her gece Tom Thumb'a giderdik. O yaz bunu çok sık yapardık. Ve karanlıktı. Gece 10:00'u geçiyordu.

: Ve bir araba tarafından kovalandılar-.

: Vay canına.

: ... aynı yolda.

: Sadece bir ya da iki ay sonra bir adamın Jacob'ı yakalayıp arabasına bindireceği çıkmaz yol.

: Ve böylece, hendeğe atladılar.

: Tam arkamızdaydı... Çok yakındı, tam arkamızdaydı. Biz de hendeğe girdik. Ve o sırada, tam orada gibiydi.

: Aman Tanrım.

: And very freaked out, and they ran to Brandon’s house, which is like three doors down from the Klaphakes.

: The boys ran in to Brandon’s parents garage.

: Biz de olabildiğince hızlı bir şekilde garajına girdik. Araba garaj yoluna girdi ve geri geri gitti. Sonra arabayı park etti ve frene bastı. Ve bize baktı.

: Adam'ın birkaç dakika olarak tanımladığı bir süre boyunca bu araba ve arabadaki adamla göz göze geldiklerini söylüyorlar.

: Ne?

: Ve sonra, içeri koştular.

: Arabadaki kişinin kim olduğunu gördüler mi?

: Evet.

: Onu tanıdılar mı?

: Hayır.

: Peki bu kişinin ne yaptığını düşünüyorlardı?

: Ürkütücü olmak.

: Tamam, ama geri dönmek için-

: Ama her neyse-

: ... ona. Peki, ne tür bir arabaydı?

: Mavi bir arabaydı.

: Mavi bir araba.

: Evet.

: Herhangi bir mavi araba değil.

: My friend’s mother had a Pontiac 6000. And we compared it to that. I think, they said it was a blue car that looks similar to a Pontiac 6000.

: A blue Pontiac 6000. Here’s what stopped me short about that, the car that Danny Heinrich was driving the night he kidnapped Jacob was a blue Ford EXP, but that car, that blue Ford looks a whole lot like a Pontiac 6000. Both are kind of boxy, low to the ground, would be easy to mistake one car for the other.

: Adam and his dad say no one came and knocked on their door the night Jacob was kidnapped. No one came by that night to ask if they’d seen anything. No one asked Adam that night if he’d ever seen anyone creepy in the neighborhood.

: I remember waking up the next morning because we didn’t even know what had happened that night. And the dogs were barking in my bedroom window, and, you know, the police going through our yard and everything like that. That’s how I woke up.

: Adam hala emniyet güçlerinden kimsenin kendisine gelip bir şey görüp görmediğini sormadığını söyledi. Bu yüzden birkaç gün sonra babasından onları komuta merkezine götürmesini istedi. Adam, hem kendisinin hem de arkadaşı Brandon'ın müfettişlere arabayı tarif ettiklerini söyledi. Adam aynı hikayeyi birkaç gün sonra FBI'a da anlattığını söyledi.

: FBI evimize geldikten sonra yetkililer benimle bir daha hiç konuşmadı ve ben de bu olayı unuttum.

: He’s never asked to look at any pictures or?

: You know, I kind of thought that maybe they would press me a little more and maybe, you know, ask me some more questions about it. Who knows. Maybe even try to hypnotize me or something like that. But, you know, I said I’d do anything to help, and they don’t want to have anything to do with it.

: Years past, but Adam couldn’t get the story out of his mind. Maybe the guy in the car was the same guy who’d kidnapped Jacob. It, certainly, seems similar, same road, a couple of kids, Adam even looked like Jacob.

: Okay. So, in 2004, Adam Klaphake takes the day off of work to go talk to the sheriff again. He wants to tell the story again. You know, he doesn’t remember it nearly as well. You know, it’s what?

: 15 yıl sonra.

: 15 years later. And he offers to take them on a drive through the neighborhood. “I’ll show you where this happened, and where we were chased from, and the route we would always take to go to the Tom Thumb.” And he said that the police did not seem or the sheriff detective, who is the same detective who had interviewed him 15 years earlier, he didn’t seem interested.

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

: Adam said, for a long time, he figured the reason that investigators didn’t seem interested was because maybe his details back then weren’t great. Maybe his account was totally different from his friend, Brandon’s. Maybe the whole thing was so vague that it was just useless. But about a year ago, Adam got curious, and asked a sheriff’s deputy if he could look at his old statement, that statement he gave to law enforcement as a kid.

: When I got the transcripts, my jaw dropped because I don’t remember being able to identify the guy. That blew me away. Again, I thought my friend and I had disagreed upon the color of car, and that’s why it was never brought up again. But that wasn’t the case. We did agree on the color of the car, and we did agree on the description of the man, shorter hair, kind of a stocky build. There were probably a few other details that I don’t remember, but we both said that we could identify him in a lineup.

: And, you know, of course, like, then, you wonder, you know, “Okay, lineups aren’t great,” but you do wonder if they had put a bunch of photos in front of these two kids in separate rooms in October of 1989, what they would have said.

: Yeah, we’ll never know.

: In the whole time, you know, you got two guys, a quarter of a mile from the abduction site that could possibly have identified him and no one ever asked. You know, like it totally slipped through the cracks. And now, it’s too late. Now, it’s too late, you know.

: And here’s the thing, Adam wasn’t the first person to tell law enforcement about a creepy man in a blue car. Nine months before Jacob was kidnapped, there was another kid in the same county who was walking on a road one night when a man pulled up in a blue car and grabbed him.

: Bir dahaki sefere Karanlıkta.

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

Bu 15 ila 20 mil yarıçaplı alanda bu tür psikopat pedofillerden kaç tane olabilir? Yani, birden fazla mıydı? Daha büyük bir şeyler mi dönüyordu?

If they ever come close to finding me, I’ll find you and kill you. Yeah.

There was a fear of God that was put into all of us, and that worry, and that fear, and that stress, or that … It just kind of festered and grew like a sliver. If you get a sliver in your finger, if you don’t remove the sliver, it festers, and it grows, and then just infects the wound.

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

: In the Dark'ın yapımcılığını Samara Freemark üstleniyor. Yardımcı yapımcı Natalie Jablonski'dir. Bu bölüm, muhabir Curtis Gilbert'in önemli yardımlarıyla hazırlanmıştır. In the Dark, Hans Buetow'un yardımıyla Catherine Winter tarafından düzenlenmiştir. APM Reports'un baş editörü Chris Worthington'dır. Web editörleri Dave Peters ve Andy Kruse'dir. Videograf Jeff Thompson tarafından çekilmiştir. Jennifer Vogel, Will Craft, Emily Haavik ve Tom Scheck tarafından ek raporlama yapılmıştır. Tema müziğimiz Gary Meister tarafından bestelenmiştir.

: Go to InTheDarkPodcast.org to read more about Danny Heinrich, and to watch a video of Patty Wetterling talking about the search for Jacob, and to listen to audio from Curtis’s interviews with the neighbors. And keep checking in, we’ll be posting more information each week.

Sonix ile sesi otomatik olarak metne dönüştürün