Readers and writers: After 34 years, Patty Wetterling tells the story in her own words

Mary Ann Grossmann, Pioneer Press
·7 min read
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As I worked to help my kids feel less scared, I was finding my own way to rebuild our world. It felt like everything that had ever been meaningful to me — every gift, every cherished moment — had been tossed up into the air and was swirling around me like money in a wind machine. Day by day, I pictured myself reaching out and grasping for one thing at a time, clinging to it, then desperately reaching for another one as the storm raged all around me. — from “Dear Jacob”

It’s been 34 years since Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped by a masked man as he and his brother, Trevor, and a friend biked near their home in St. Joseph, Minn. The 11-year-old boy’s abduction from a small, peaceful community shocked Minnesota and the nation. And at the center of that story is determined Patty Wetterling, Jacob’s mother, and his dad, Jerry.

We know what the media told us, but now Patty Wetterling tells her intimate story in her own words in “Dear Jacob: A Mother’s Journey of Hope,” written with investigative blogger Joy Baker (Minnesota Historical Society Press, $29.95). Wetterling and Baker will launch the book at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 18, at Friends of the Hennepin County Library’s free Talk of the Stacks, Minneapolis Central Library, 300 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.

The Wetterlings’ journey is sometimes hard to read, because we know that Jacob was molested and shot to death shortly after he was abducted by a local man, Danny Heinrich. But his family would not know that for almost 28 years.

Although Wettterling made herself available to the media from the beginning, she rarely talked about what was going on within her close-knit family, which included daughters Amy and Carmen. In her book, she reveals the reasons she opted for hope instead of despair as the years went by and Jacob remained missing, and how she channeled her grief and anger into establishing and working with organizations that helped and drew attention to the nation’s often-ignored problem of missing children.

In those first days after the abduction, she writes, the St. Joseph community rallied and hundreds searched for Jacob, joined by the local sheriff’s office, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the FBI. One night, there were 24 people sleeping in their house. Among the small, touching things Wetterling recalls is that the man who pumped out the family’s septic tank did the job without being asked because he knew the house was so crowded.

Besides the stress of their son being missing, Patty and Jerry were interrogated about everyone in their extended families. Jerry submitted to three interviews about his Baha’i faith, which the couple found strange.

As time passed with no word about Jacob, Patty dug into everything she could find about child abductions and became a national advocate and educator on the prevention of child abduction and exploitation. She served on the board of directors and is former chair of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In 1991 the Sex Offender Registration Act she had lobbied for went into effect in Minnesota. Locally, she and Jerry founded the Joseph Wetterling Foundation and Team HOPE.

Between travel and making sure her other children were OK, Patty admits she and her husband lost touch emotionally. “I knew I’d married a good man, but I missed our closeness. Every day was still a struggle. Since our son’s disappearance, Jerry and I had been interrogated, polygraphed, pitted against each other, and made targets of lies and scandal. We were even extorted.”

Still Patty persevered, telling herself and others there was hope for finding Jacob alive. Douglas Wood of Sartell, author, musician and wilderness guide, even wrote a song, “Jacob’s Hope,” inspired by her optimism.

The Wetterlings’ life went on as Jacob’s siblings went to college, married and had children. Patty ran twice unsuccessfully for Congress and continued her work with missing and exploited children’s organizations. Her supportive mother died. Publicity about Jacob’s case waxed and waned, including big headlines when a neighbor’s farm was dug up in a search for remains and nothing was found.

The most poignant parts of Patty’s book are letters she wrote through the years to her son. In 1991 the St. Joseph Newsleader published this one:

“Dear Jacob,

The pain goes deeper every day I miss you. My prayer is that you’re not suffering. I want so badly to hold you.

Remember how we used to rock in that big old rocking chair — even when you were big? We’ve all changed so much, and yet through each phase we carry you with us in our thoughts, in our hearts and in our plans.

Please feel our love and live on the memories of all we shared and the dreams of what life can be. We’ll hold you in our hearts until the glorious day when we hold you in our arms.

We’ll never stop looking for you.

love,

Mom”

Patty used traditional media to spread Jacob’s story, and she had never heard of blogging until 2015 when Joy Baker came into the Wetterlings’ lives. Baker, a University of Minnesota journalism graduate, had a special interest in Jacob’s case and wrote about him on her blog joy.the.curious. She tracked down Jared Scheierl, a plumber who was abducted as a child from Cold Spring, a town near St. Joseph, the same year as Jacob. Although Patty was at first skeptical, she soon joined forces with Joy and Jared, who was eager to have his story told. It was their investigations that finally broke the case open. In 2016 Heinrich, revealed he buried Jacob’s body in a pasture near Paynesville.

The last chapters of Patty’s book are particularly difficult to read as she recalls her feelings about learning Jacob was dead. She was filled with guilt because as a mother she was not able to keep him safe. She questioned God. And she and Jerry had to summon the courage to listen to Heinrich detail the last moments of their son’s life.

“Hope had been my lifeblood for so long and without it, there was nothing,” she writes. “I was lost, empty, depleted. And this time, I didn’t know if I would ever find my way back.”

It was a number that brought them out of this dark time — Jacob’s soccer jersey number 11. His teammates wanted to wear his number on their faces when they played their game the night of the day Heinrich confessed in open court. The idea spread and “the #11forJacob movement went viral…” Patty writes. The young people and the Wetterlings picked 11 traits they felt captured Jacob’s spirit: being fair, kind, understanding, honest, thankful, a good sport, a good friend, joyful, generous, gentle with others and positive.

Across the state kids honored Jacob’s memory by adding #11 stickers to helmets and jerseys. A football team from Marshall walked hand-in-hand onto the field as they carried their team’s #11 jerseys between them. Hundreds of students and faculty in Belle Plaine gathered in their school gym to form the number 11 for an overhead photo. The Minnesota Gophers, Timberwolves, Lynx and Wild did special tributes. The Ordway Center for the Arts in St. Paul displayed a lighted “11” on their building and the Guthrie in Minneapolis displayed the message “11 for Jacob” on their vertical marquee.

Remember the man who pumped the septic tank at no charge? He came back to do it again but this time he gave Patty a bill with a “special discount.”

It was for $11.11.

In the end, “Jacob’s Hope” gives hope to all of us. As Patty Wetterling shows, terrible things happen but the human spirit survives. And so does Jacob, in the winning smile of his fifth-grade picture we all know so well and is on the cover of his mother’s book.

Other Wetterling and Baker appearances are at 10 a.m. Oct. 28, Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, 511 Groveland Ave., Mpls. 7 p.m. Nov. 9, Mount Calvary Lutheran Church, Excelsior, presented by Excelsior Bay Bookstore, 6 p.m. Nov. 15, Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.

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