Shay
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Exactly! And there's only room for one vehicle at a time on the driveway. You could not confuse it with a road IMO.
MN - Jacob Wetterling, 11, St. Joseph, 22 Oct 1989 - #9
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BBM
Exactly! And there's only room for one vehicle at a time on the driveway. You could not confuse it with a road IMO.
Ifollowthis
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Do you think the Kevin guy is not telling the truth, I thought he said he thought it was a road and he did drive all the way in and turn around.
bessie
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Maybe it is something males would do.
I would never drive up someone's private driveway.
It is hard to believe as he lived in the area and people know the difference between a road and a driveway. The road kept going and he had to turn into that driveway which was a different surface.
He claimed he had been to parties in the woods there so it does not make any sense. None.
I am mystified why he would drive all the way up the driveway.
But I suppose it was dark and he was committed to the route and there was no easy way to turn around once he was on the driveway a while.
It could be he knew how long it would be to go up,the driveway. Makes no sense
bessie
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One more reminder, and I'll leave you alone for awhile. 
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Sasquatch321
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"No way to see them coming, only to know they're coming" Me
"To see them going and knowing they're coming back" Me
I made a trip near the site again today. I was disc golfing in St. Joseph and decided on my return that I was going to drive by the site again. Before I got to the crest of the hill where the farm is on the other side, I just sat at the stop sign and thought about it for awhile, then turned around and left. If I had kept going over the crest of the hill I would assume the driveway to the farm was just beyond it about 100 yards. It was all I needed to see today, that noone could have seen the boys coming, but only to know they're coming. To know they're coming is to see them going. So who saw them going to the store and knew their return?
"To see them going and knowing they're coming back" Me
I made a trip near the site again today. I was disc golfing in St. Joseph and decided on my return that I was going to drive by the site again. Before I got to the crest of the hill where the farm is on the other side, I just sat at the stop sign and thought about it for awhile, then turned around and left. If I had kept going over the crest of the hill I would assume the driveway to the farm was just beyond it about 100 yards. It was all I needed to see today, that noone could have seen the boys coming, but only to know they're coming. To know they're coming is to see them going. So who saw them going to the store and knew their return?
And there's the point. The driveway was not marked as private to my knowledge. Rural, unmarked dirt roads were plentiful in Stearns County circa 1989. It wasn't uncommon at all to pass through a farmers road to get from point A to point B and cut some time out of your trip. At times they were just driveways and at other times they were roads that passed all the way through to another location.
DR never fully stated as fact that he knew it was blood for sure. Here's what he in fact said per the mod's posted quote. Has LE ever declared that blood was recovered?
DR: They apparently saw some sort of remnants of...blood or something. I don't know all of the technical jargon for their testing and that type of thing, but uh, there was one item that was gotten from...like a...onto something... She got it from somewhere else. We don't know where it really came from...but it showed some sort of... some uh, blood residue or whatever. But since it was in the house, they felt that uh, they needed to go in the house. And that's how they got their warrant to go in the house.
Reporter: That was a cedar chest?
DR: Right, a chest that used to be in the house for clothing and that type of thing. So...
DR: They apparently saw some sort of remnants of...blood or something. I don't know all of the technical jargon for their testing and that type of thing, but uh, there was one item that was gotten from...like a...onto something... She got it from somewhere else. We don't know where it really came from...but it showed some sort of... some uh, blood residue or whatever. But since it was in the house, they felt that uh, they needed to go in the house. And that's how they got their warrant to go in the house.
Reporter: That was a cedar chest?
DR: Right, a chest that used to be in the house for clothing and that type of thing. So...
I got the impression from that comment that DR was trying to downplay that blood or blood residue had been found at all by saying "whatever". JMO.
ELOCsoul
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Perhaps it would be appropriate to allow the resident of the property to weigh in on whether or not it would be ordinary for someone to be traveling that driveway.
"I saw lights kind of close together, like a small car. It caught my attention because it's unusual for a car to be out here at that time."
Dan Rassier * October 24, 1989 St Cloud Times
ELOCsoul
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He used a lot of words to say something that was pretty simple. Additional, unnecessary words often signal deception.
Ifollowthis
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When we starting talking tracks and foot prints, my eyes start to glaze over because it is so far over my head. But lately there has been talk on here that Jacobs last foot print looks as he "lifted himself". Was it close enough to the edge of the drive way where it is sometimes part grass and part gravel, the type of terrain where tracks probably would not show, that it would have been possible for a motorcycle to be parked there and Jacob was told to get on the back of a motorcycle?
Possible, I guess. But aren't motorcycles usually kind of noisy? Wouldn't make for a very quiet getaway.
That is an idea, but why would Jacob stay on the motorcycle?
If your passenger is not a good passenger, it is not good for you as the driver either.
I think there would be tire prints from a motorcycle as well.
CrimeSolver
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Sure, see below. But don't upbraid me if a few of the facts (times, distances, etc.) are not absolutely precise. This was only meant to give the Dateline producer an overview of the casemarlins said:
Yes, Eileen, I think a lot of the points you made are how they vet cases. They must get a flood of story requests/proposals, so I'm sure he wants a quick outline to avoid slogging through a lot of ancillary detail. If anything, mine is a bit long, though I tried to keep it as short as possible.
If you guys would like this man's email address, let me know. He might appreciate more heartfelt appeals from others; on the other hand, he might not.
I do think it helps that this is the year of the 25th anniversary, and that quite a few of the pertinent personages are likely to cooperate with the story, starting with amazing, resilient Mom, Patty.
Here's the synopsis I typed up (spoilerized for length):
Sometime after 8 p.m. on October 22nd, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, his 10-year-old brother Trevor, and Jacob's best friend, Aaron Larsen, set out from the Wetterlings' rural house at 29422 Kiwi Ct. in St. Joseph, Minnesota, a small town of about 2,500 inhabitants. The Wetterling parents, Jerry and Patty, were away for the evening at a social function in a nearby town, and, after much cajoling over the phone from their boys, they agreed to allow the three to go to the Tom Thumb convenience store (no longer exists today), about 1.5 miles away near the intersection of 17th Ave. and Lancer Rd., to get some candy and a video to watch. The boys made their way through the pitch darkness on bikes, aided only by a flashlight. Aaron would later say that as they passed a cornfield about halfway to the store, he heard an odd rustling sound that frightened him and caused him to pedal faster.
The boys bought their candy and video, and proceeded southbound on 16th Ave. SE., in the direction of home. About 1000 ft. south of Dale St. E., as they passed a long farm driveway belonging to the Rassier family, a masked man with what looked like a gun appeared out of the darkness and ordered the boys off their bikes. He told them to toss their bikes into the ditch, then made them lie down on the ground. He asked them their ages. He then told Trevor, the youngest, to get up and run westbound into the trees and not look back or he would shoot him. He commanded Aaron Larsen to do the same. Scared out of their minds, the boys did as ordered, leaving Jacob behind with the masked man, but after they had run a couple of hundred feet, Trevor and Aaron turned around. The man and Jacob Wetterling had vanished. Trevor and Aaron raced home and, with the assistance of their next-door neighbour, Merle Jerzak, called 911. Authorities quickly converged on the scene, along with a helicopter and search dogs, but Jacob Wetterling was never seen again.
What authorities were able to establish based on footprints was that the abductor forced Jacob about 150 ft. down the long Rassier driveway on the east side of 16th Ave. SE. They established that there was a final footprint of Jacob's dug into the ground, as if he had been resisting being pushed into a vehicle or something along those lines. Search dogs traced Jacob's scent a little farther down the driveway, where it ended.
Between 1989 and 2004, authorities focused on the idea of a vehicle being involved, in part because of tire tracks they hadn't been able to identify. But after a public appeal in 2004, a man named Kevin (last name not publicised) came forward and said the tire tracks on the Rassier driveway belonged to his car. He had been listening to a police scanner that night in 1989 when word of the abduction was broadcast, and raced to the scene with his girlfriend. He beat police to the abduction scene (in these early moments, they were presumably tied up at the Wetterling house interviewing the boys) and drove his car into the driveway. Police interviewed Kevin and his girlfriend in 2004 and cleared them both. Moreover, after this development, police discounted the earlier theory of a car having been involved in the kidnapping, and now apparently cling to the theory that the abductor was on foot and had no vehicle at all. Their focus turned to the only publicly named person of interest to-date, Dan Rassier, a single man who lived with his parents at the farm adjacent to the abduction site. His parents were away in Europe at the time of the crime. Rassier, in his early-'30s then, was a well-liked music teacher in the area. Later on the night of the abduction, Rassier had noticed people - police with tracking dogs - on his parents' property and enquired as to what they were doing there. They told him there had been an abduction nearby. Asked years later in an interview why he hadn't gone out to help search, Rassier made a remark that struck many as odd: He said (paraphrased), "I needed to sleep. I wasn't going to waste my time."
In 2010, police secured a search warrant for the Rassier farm and performed a thorough search, but it appears nothing case-breaking was found, for there have been no major developments since. There are several other suspects whom devoted students of the case have considered. After Jacob's abduction, it came to light that a 12-year-old boy had been abducted and sexually assaulted in January, 1989, 10 months before Jacob's abduction, and the circumstances were so similar (except that the boy in the earlier case was released) that it is still apparently believed the same man is responsible for both crimes. In the 2000s, that other boy, named Jared and now a young man, courageously came forward and told his story. ( http://www.joybaker.com/2013/08/11/jareds-story/ ). DNA was found in Jared's case, but it is believed to no longer exist, or is too degraded to test.
Here is a map of the area encompassing the Wetterling abduction, with markers showing relevant sites: http://www.joybaker.com/wp-content/2013/02/GoogleEarthMapSmall.jpg
The boys bought their candy and video, and proceeded southbound on 16th Ave. SE., in the direction of home. About 1000 ft. south of Dale St. E., as they passed a long farm driveway belonging to the Rassier family, a masked man with what looked like a gun appeared out of the darkness and ordered the boys off their bikes. He told them to toss their bikes into the ditch, then made them lie down on the ground. He asked them their ages. He then told Trevor, the youngest, to get up and run westbound into the trees and not look back or he would shoot him. He commanded Aaron Larsen to do the same. Scared out of their minds, the boys did as ordered, leaving Jacob behind with the masked man, but after they had run a couple of hundred feet, Trevor and Aaron turned around. The man and Jacob Wetterling had vanished. Trevor and Aaron raced home and, with the assistance of their next-door neighbour, Merle Jerzak, called 911. Authorities quickly converged on the scene, along with a helicopter and search dogs, but Jacob Wetterling was never seen again.
What authorities were able to establish based on footprints was that the abductor forced Jacob about 150 ft. down the long Rassier driveway on the east side of 16th Ave. SE. They established that there was a final footprint of Jacob's dug into the ground, as if he had been resisting being pushed into a vehicle or something along those lines. Search dogs traced Jacob's scent a little farther down the driveway, where it ended.
Between 1989 and 2004, authorities focused on the idea of a vehicle being involved, in part because of tire tracks they hadn't been able to identify. But after a public appeal in 2004, a man named Kevin (last name not publicised) came forward and said the tire tracks on the Rassier driveway belonged to his car. He had been listening to a police scanner that night in 1989 when word of the abduction was broadcast, and raced to the scene with his girlfriend. He beat police to the abduction scene (in these early moments, they were presumably tied up at the Wetterling house interviewing the boys) and drove his car into the driveway. Police interviewed Kevin and his girlfriend in 2004 and cleared them both. Moreover, after this development, police discounted the earlier theory of a car having been involved in the kidnapping, and now apparently cling to the theory that the abductor was on foot and had no vehicle at all. Their focus turned to the only publicly named person of interest to-date, Dan Rassier, a single man who lived with his parents at the farm adjacent to the abduction site. His parents were away in Europe at the time of the crime. Rassier, in his early-'30s then, was a well-liked music teacher in the area. Later on the night of the abduction, Rassier had noticed people - police with tracking dogs - on his parents' property and enquired as to what they were doing there. They told him there had been an abduction nearby. Asked years later in an interview why he hadn't gone out to help search, Rassier made a remark that struck many as odd: He said (paraphrased), "I needed to sleep. I wasn't going to waste my time."
In 2010, police secured a search warrant for the Rassier farm and performed a thorough search, but it appears nothing case-breaking was found, for there have been no major developments since. There are several other suspects whom devoted students of the case have considered. After Jacob's abduction, it came to light that a 12-year-old boy had been abducted and sexually assaulted in January, 1989, 10 months before Jacob's abduction, and the circumstances were so similar (except that the boy in the earlier case was released) that it is still apparently believed the same man is responsible for both crimes. In the 2000s, that other boy, named Jared and now a young man, courageously came forward and told his story. ( http://www.joybaker.com/2013/08/11/jareds-story/ ). DNA was found in Jared's case, but it is believed to no longer exist, or is too degraded to test.
Here is a map of the area encompassing the Wetterling abduction, with markers showing relevant sites: http://www.joybaker.com/wp-content/2013/02/GoogleEarthMapSmall.jpg
Ifollowthis
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We do not know if he was a good passenger or not...gunpoint....or maybe the guy took off his mask, it was someone from the neighborhood and jacob was not as scared as he had been. we just do not know.
eileenhawkeye
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Yep, they probably don't have the time or interest to look up every case emailed to them. When it comes to old cases, a lot of them do not bring up many results, and finding a sufficient summary can be difficult. I am a bit surprised that he was not already familiar with Jacob's case since he works for a TV show that focuses on true crime. Or maybe he had heard of it, but wanted the summary anyway.
bessie
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He hedged a little on the answer, but he did say the "something" was used to obtain a search warrant for the house. That suggests the material was tested beforehand and proven to be blood, providing the investigators with probable cause. I don't see a judge signing off on a warrant over a little "whatever". JMO
Trino
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The reality is there are VERY few judges that will not sign a warrant.
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