完整的文字记录。在黑暗中--S1 E3《逃亡者》（The One Who Got Away

黑暗中：S1 E3《逃出生天的人

: 前情提要：在黑暗中。

: 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.

: 自从你住在附近，警察有没有来敲过你的门？你有没有跟警察说过这件事，或者？

: 不，不，他们从未这样做过。

: 他们从未这样做，好吧。

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

: 我们今天在这里是因为调查小组的坚持不懈。

: 我们得到了真相。韦特林家族可以带他回家了。

: 今年早些时候，我出去和一个叫Jared Scheierl的人见面。

: 很高兴见到你。

: I’m Madeleine.

: 你好。

: 很高兴见到你。

: 贾里德现在40岁了。他住在明尼苏达州中部的一栋房子里，在一条长长的泥土车道上，有一只友好的大黑狗。

: 熊，来。来吧。在这里。留下来。

: 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.

: 贾里德-谢里尔在一个叫冷泉的小镇上长大，就在圣约瑟夫西南十英里处，韦特林夫妇住在那里。

: 凉泉是一个安全的农村社区。每个人都认识所有人，每个星期天都去教堂。

: 贾里德在镇上骑自行车长大，经常在外面玩。人们认为冷泉是一个安全的地方。1989年的一个晚上，大约在雅各布-韦特林被绑架的九个月前，贾里德和一群朋友去滑冰。当时他才12岁。

: 我们......滑完冰后，我们决定走到边上的咖啡馆去吃......我们喝了一杯巧克力麦芽。

: 贾里德与他最好的朋友科里-埃斯凯尔森在一起。科里仍然住在斯特恩斯县。而今年早些时候，我出去和他们在他家见面，谈论那晚的事情。

: 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.

: 当我开始步行回家时，大概是9:00-9:30。就在我走路的时候，一辆车向我走来。

: 那是一辆蓝色的车。司机停下来，向贾里德问路。

: 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.”

: 那人让贾里德在后座上躺下，并把丝袜帽拉到他的眼睛上。他开始开车。车上有一台对讲机式扫描仪。贾里德认为他听到了当地执法部门的调度声。在某些时候，这个人把它关掉了。他开了10或15分钟。贾里德试图通过计算左转和右转来跟踪他们的去向，注意汽车何时越过火车轨道。然后，那人转到一条碎石路上，停了下来。天很黑，但贾里德认为他能看清远处附近一个城镇的灯光。

: 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.

: 他歇斯底里地走进门来。这很疯狂。

: 他在说什么？他在...

: I wouldn’t want to comment on that.

: 父母报了警，贾里德和他爸爸一起离开，去了警察局。

: 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.

: 科里是贾里德被殴打前最后一个见到他的人。那晚他也是在黑暗中出来的。因此，我们的制片人萨马拉想知道一些事情。

: 所以，我知道你说在贾里德被绑架后，联邦调查局的人过来拿走了你的帽子。他们是否曾经以任何方式询问过你？

: 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?

: 他们追踪到主干道上的一个地方，23号公路，在冷泉和一个叫Paynesville的小镇之间。

: 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.

: 因此，当贾里德向副警长描述一个穿迷彩服的矮胖男子，驾驶一辆深蓝色的小车，车内有一台扫描仪时，听起来很像丹尼-海因里希。他们把海因里希和其他五个人的照片排列在一起。贾里德最后挑出了两个人，他认为这两个人有点像绑架他的人。其中一个就是海因里希。

: 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.

: 我和其中一个小时候向警察报告袭击者的人谈过。他的名字叫Kris Bertelsen。他当时是12或13岁。

: 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.

: 他戴着一顶帽子，全身漆黑，战斗，你知道，那种看起来很疲劳的衣服，像真正的深色衣服，就像这是一个任务一样。

: 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.

: 佩恩斯维尔的袭击事件从未得到解决。

: 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.

: 有一些细节我马上就认出来了，表明这是同一个人的举止。一些词或一些短语是相似的。对声音的描述是相似的。有许多细节与我的案件相当一致。

: 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.

: 第一夜之后，随着调查的深入，调查人员开始仔细研究早先绑架贾里德的情况。他们一遍又一遍地与贾里德交谈。他们会去他的学校，把他从教室里拉出来。

: 班上的孩子们都注意到我进出教室。尽管我们在保护我的身份，但在冷泉市内，我是那个男孩的消息已经传开了。

: 贾里德说，调查人员告诉他，他是他们找到雅各布的最好机会，因为带走雅各布的人和带走他的人是同一个人。因此，他们不断催促贾里德记住更多。

: 如果你非要把他和别人相比，他看起来像谁？他又像谁呢？他与谁相似？

: 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.

: 由于得到的压力太大，这位老师把他的家人从冷泉市连根拔起，搬出了这个地区。而这并不是这个人。贾里德只是描述他看起来像这个人，他们窃听那个人，直到他离开。

: 贾里德说，所有这一切都变得如此不堪重负，如此令人紧张。

: 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.

: 海因里希同意向当局提供他的头发样本。他同意交出他的鞋子。他同意让警察从他的车上取下轮胎。执法部门将鞋子和轮胎与绑架地点附近发现的指纹和足迹进行比较。他们得到了结果。用法医的语言来说，鞋印很相似，轮胎痕迹也很一致。换句话说，这不是一个扣篮，但很有希望。

: 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.

: 我们拿出了所有的东西，把它们颠倒过来。

: 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.

: 我们觉得他是当时案件的关键。

: 是他干的吗？

: 是的。

: 于是，吉尔克森和其他警官开始为审讯做准备。

: 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.

: 联邦调查局特工阿尔-加伯也参与了事情的安排。

: 剖析员告诉我们在哪里放某些家具，在哪里给他安排座位，以及在哪里见调查员。

: 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.

: 他看起来更聪明吗？

: 不，不是特别。也不是特别无知。你知道，只是一个普通人 ，我想。

: 另一名联邦调查局特工吉尔克森（Gilkerson）记得，这次采访持续了近两个小时。

: 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.

: 你有没有听说过当年佩恩斯维尔的男孩被攻击的事情？

: 不，不。

: 如果你知道这一点，你认为会有什么不同？

: 嗯，当然会采访那些孩子，试图拿出更多的证据和所有。

: 我想知道它是否以某种方式丢失了，你知道，随着所有的线索进入和所有的活动。

: 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.

: 因此，我把佩恩斯维尔案件的情况告诉了杰夫-贾马尔，他说这种信息正是他们正在寻找的。

: 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?”

: 韦特林案的执法部门有没有人与你联系过？

: 没有。

: 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.

: 我想我们都有点放弃了让他们看一眼。

: 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.

: 吉尔克森告诉我，他们甚至搜索了贾里德-谢尔勒居住的冷泉镇周围地区。

: 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.

: 但吉尔克森告诉我，他们没有在佩恩斯维尔这个小镇子里寻找雅各布，这个镇子只有2300人，只有大约两平方英里，是所有这些男孩被袭击的地方，也是海因里希居住的地方。

: 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.”

: 然后，有一天，大约三年前，贾里德收到了一个名叫乔伊-贝克的博主的Facebook消息。她看到了一些关于佩恩斯维尔的攻击事件的旧报纸文章。她想知道贾里德是否知道这些事。

: 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.

: 在第一周内，我与其中一名受害者交谈。我接近了其中一个人，只是了解了他被攻击的细节。

: 你如何开始这种对话？

: 你从你自己的故事开始。

: 好的。

: 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.”

: 贾里德一直在和镇上的人交谈。一个人就会引出另一个人。

: 而且他们知道我是谁。他们很乐意交谈。这导致了多米诺骨牌效应。

: 贾里德发现的其中一个人是克里斯。

: 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.”

: 贾里德、克里斯和所有这些人开始交换他们所记得的关于袭击他们的人的故事，其中很多故事听起来与发生在贾里德和雅各布身上的事情非常相似，好像真的是同一个人。对贾里德来说，与其他这么多男人分享同样的经历在某种程度上是一种安慰。长期以来，他认为自己是唯一一个逃出来的人。贾里德和所有这些人形成了一种兄弟关系。他们的任务是找出在他们身上发生了什么。通过这样做，试图找出雅各布-韦特林身上发生了什么。

: 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.

: 当局告诉贾里德有关DNA匹配的情况。四分之一世纪后，贾里德终于从执法部门得到了答案，但有一个问题。

: “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.

: 对于一个联邦检察官来说，这是一个非常不寻常的交易。它几乎从未发生过。在明尼苏达州，这使一些人感到愤怒。因此，我打电话给美国检察官安迪-鲁格，问他为什么做这样的交易。

: 在他告诉我们之前，我们有信念但没有证据。因此，在所有这些可怕的情况下，我的工作是做两件事，没有真正伟大的选择。把他关在监狱里很长一段时间，并得到这个家庭和明尼苏达州近27年来一直在寻找的答案。

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

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

: 海因里希接受了这笔交易。而在8月31日星期三，丹尼-海因里希带领警察来到佩恩斯维尔市中心外的地点。雅各布一直都在那里。

: 下一次是《黑暗中》。

: 调查人员说，由于线索太多，发生在冷泉市这里的绑架案现在才浮出水面。

: 联邦调查局说，它花了这么长时间将这两起案件联系起来，是因为它要处理的信息量太大。

: 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.

: 他们，韦特林夫妇，能做什么呢？从某种意义上说，他们现在对这个疯子的心血来潮、异想天开、可怕的反复无常无能为力吗？这将是我的看法。

: 星期天，晚上7点24分

: 我只想告诉你，雅各布是好的。

: 你又高兴了吗？

: 是的。

: 我想说这真的很不寻常。这让我觉得是一个非常糟糕的想法。

: 黑暗中》由萨马拉-弗莱马克制作。副制片人是Natalie Jablonski。本集的重要补充报道由Jennifer Vogel负责。黑暗中》由凯瑟琳-温特编辑，并由汉斯-布托帮助编辑。APM报告的主编是Chris Worthington。网络编辑是Dave Peters和Andy Kruse。摄像师是Jeff Thompson。额外报道由Curtis Gilbert、Will Craft、Tom Scheck和Emily Haavik提供。我们的主题音乐是由加里-迈斯特创作的。本集由Johnny Vince Evans混音。

: 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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