Hold up. Before we go to the library and look at old phonebooks, is it possible the wetterling investigative team did this for us already back in the day? Im just saying because police did become familiar with these houses 18 months after the abduction.
IMO, looking into the old halfway houses in St. Joe is a waste of time - unless you enjoy repeating what LE has already looked at back in 1989.
LE looked at nearly 300 sex offenders in the area at the time of the abduction. (That is how they knew to tell Patty there were halfway houses located in the area and it would have been nice to have some sort of registry that showed that.)
According to this article from the Minneapolis Star....
Star Tribune: Newspaper of the Twin Cities
October 22, 1999
Section: NEWS
Page: 01B
Hope keeps search for Jacob going
Ten years and thousands of leads have come and gone, but the abduction of JacobWetterling still grips St. Joseph and the investigators who have poured their lives and hearts into the case.
Author: Richard Meryhew; Staff Writer
Dateline: St. Joseph, Minn.
(Archived at:
http://nl.newsbank.com/
"So who was it that intercepted the boys that night and how did he get there?
Much of the investigation so far has centered on the belief that Jacob was snatched by a pedophile.
In the months following the abduction, investigators identified nearly 300 convicted sex offenders in the four-county area surrounding St. Joseph.
One theory is that the abductor stalked Jacob and was in the neighborhood when the boys left for the Tom Thumb. Another, cited by Neil Neddermeyer, a retired Hennepin County detective who worked the case for five months, is that it was "a crime of opportunity probably led on by a fantasy in the back of [the abductor's] mind."
The man asked their ages, not their names, Neddermeyer said, "and therein lies my belief that Jacob was not being stalked. I believe he was looking for a boy of a specific age. I think he saw an opportunity to scare the hell out of the kids or play with them and got into the position to do it."