StinkSprings
Former Member
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2015
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Grafft was the right guy for this job. The current sheriff has taken this case in the wrong direction.
Charlie Grafft's pager went off just as he was sitting down to watch the 10 o'clock news. A boy had been abducted. The crime scene was a mere four miles from the Stearns County Sheriff's house. When Grafft arrived, the sheriff was struck by the discarded bikes and the scooter laying in the ditch.
"I looked everything over and said, 'Oh boy, this is going to be a job,'" said Grafft.
Grafft and his deputies searched with flashlights for three hours and only found a faint tire print.
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/11/19/ctv.wetterling/
By 10 P.M. police were already combing the site, and Stearns County Sheriff Charlie Grafft had called in a state police helicopter to join the town's volunteer fire department in the search. By midnight the FBI was on the case. Meanwhile, Patty was calling her neighbors, and Jerry was contacting his fellow members of the pacifist Baha'i faith, who started a telephone prayer tree. After hearing the news, Iverson arrived at the Wetterling house at 1:30 A.M. and just after dawn started phoning the local radio and TV stations. "We wanted people to know right away in the morning," Patty says, "so they could be looking for Jacob on their way to work." By 11 A.M., reporters were arriving on the scene en masse, and the abduction was blossoming into a full-scale media event.
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20115979,00.html
Just some notes on the current timeline we're using. According to news accounts Grafft was up in the air in a helicopter by 10:30 - possibly 10:45. He arrived on scene at the abduction after being paged, and he was paged just as 10 pm news was about to start. So allowing him 10 minutes to get to abduction scene, (he only lived 4 miles away, and there wouldn’t be much traffic that late on Sunday night) he would have looked at bikes at abduction scene for maybe 5 minutes? So 10:10 - 10:15. Then he drove to Wetterlings house, talked to excited boys, that would take a little while. Wetterlings drive was 20 minutes according to ELOC, not as long as shown in the timeline. I’d agree with that having driven it. Merle called Patty and Jerry after hanging up with 911 at 9:40. So they would have been arriving around 10:05-10:10. Wetterlings went straight to the house with the escort and did not stop at scene. Grafft would have probably arrived at house around the same time. I’m sure he spent some time discussing with them also. DR’s call to 911 is not until 11:23 when he saw lights by his woodpile. In above link it says Grafft and deputies searched for 3 hours with flashlights. If Kevin was at the crime scene before LE, or Grafft, then he must have been there before 10 pm. (ALL JMO, feel free to add or make changes.)