MN - Jacob Wetterling, 11, St. Joseph, 22 Oct 1989 - #4

[Lotus]

I've always thought that the Cold Springs abductor was most likely Jacob's abductor since there were so many similarities between the two cases. Dan Rassier looks nothing like the Cold Springs abductor.
I recently posted these links on Joy's blog. Compare the pictures of pedophile Michael Weber with the sketch of the Cold Springs abductor:
http://www.andersonadvocates.com/Files/599/Partial-timeline-of-Michael-Weberpdf
http://saintautumn.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/jacob-wetterling-abductor-sketch.jpg
http://www.behindthepinecurtain.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/weber_fox.jpg
I wonder if Michael Weber has a low, raspy voice and what kind of car he was driving in 1989?

The resemblance is uncanny...

 

[Camille Grace]

If Michael Weber has not been questioned by LE with regard to the Cold Springs case or the Jacob Wetterling case, he SHOULD be, in my opinion.

 

[shergal]

Weber's nose and ears don't seem to quite match, his nose is smaller and tilted up, and his ears are smaller. The eyes look similar though.

We've had some other comparisons on here from time to time with that suspect photo. Here are two of them...

This is Phil Meemken who was a Stearns County Sheriff's deputy and is now a registered sex offender. He's 45 in this photo, but would have been 22 back in 1989.
http://minnesota.quaprod.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/07/phil-meemkin

And this is one one of the WS members posted of DR:

 

[KeepHopeAlive]

I believe DR was only in his early 30's at the time of the abduction. If a comparison is going to be made between DR and the man in the sketch, shouldn't an earlier picture of DR be used?

 

[shergal]

I believe DR was only in his early 30's at the time of the abduction. If a comparison is going to be made between DR and the man in the sketch, shouldn't an earlier picture of DR be used?

I'm not sure what age DR is in that photo. It was posted a while ago here in these forums. The photo of Meemken is 20 years older, It just gives you a rough idea of eye shape, eyebrows, mouth shape, etc. The suspect photo is generic enough that lots of people look like it, IMO.

 

[human]

that is the problem. So many possible suspects. LE knows who has alibis.

All we know is that massively expensive searches have been conducted at the Rassier farm using sealed warrants.

 

[ELOCsoul]

If you haven't caught up with Joy The Curious' blog about Jacob's case, please do so. We're getting new information straight from the witnesses - information not released by LE. Yes the information leads to more questions - but DR and Kevin seem to be willing to answer those questions at this time.

http://www.joybaker.com/blog/

Many of us have been led to some conclusion / opinion or another, largely due to incomplete, or maybe even intentionally misleading reporting by the news media for all these years.

While I am not among those who contend there is / was some sort of conspiracy on the part of LE - I certainly agree there were plenty of missteps made by LE, especially early on in the investigation. It's frustrating after 23 1/2 years that we don't know more details - LE's methods are not working - at this point there appears to be nothing to lose by going public with the information that they have. Just my opinion.

 

[human]

If you haven't caught up with Joy The Curious' blog about Jacob's case, please do so. We're getting new information straight from the witnesses - information not released by LE. Yes the information leads to more questions - but DR and Kevin seem to be willing to answer those questions at this time.

http://www.joybaker.com/blog/

Many of us have been led to some conclusion / opinion or another, largely due to incomplete, or maybe even intentionally misleading reporting by the news media for all these years.

While I am not among those who contend there is / was some sort of conspiracy on the part of LE - I certainly agree there were plenty of missteps made by LE, especially early on in the investigation. It's frustrating after 23 1/2 years that we don't know more details - LE's methods are not working - at this point there appears to be nothing to lose by going public with the information that they have. Just my opinion.

Wow. This blog is so full of inaccuracies that I could not read past a few paragraphs.

The white van was NOT ever mentioned as part of that evening. Rather, some children later reported that a man in a white van had asked them directions or something like that. It was AFTER the abduction.i do not recall if it was a couple weeks later or longer than that.

These kinds of reports come in after an abduction. Just read of WS and you will see how many people report attempted abductions after an abduction.

 

[Camille Grace]

I wish that whoever is responsible for Jacob's disappearance would come forward, like this guy did, to clear his conscience:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303568/Frederick-Hart-murder-Steven-Goff-self-proclaimed-genius-criminal-driven-guilt-admit-1990-slaying.htm

 

[human]

I wish that whoever is responsible for Jacob's disappearance would come forward, like this guy did, to clear his conscience:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303568/Frederick-Hart-murder-Steven-Goff-self-proclaimed-genius-criminal-driven-guilt-admit-1990-slaying.htm

It appears that he did not kill anyone else.

He does look disturbed and his rantings are those of someone very disturbed.

I am surprised he confessed, so there could be a miracle in Jacob's case as well. Let us hope.

 

[KeepHopeAlive]

...so there could be a miracle in Jacob's case as well. Let us hope.

Absolutely. Miracles have happened before - Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart, Shawn Hornbeck, Ben Ownby...

 

[odyssey1492]

If you haven't caught up with Joy The Curious' blog about Jacob's case, please do so. We're getting new information straight from the witnesses - information not released by LE. Yes the information leads to more questions - but DR and Kevin seem to be willing to answer those questions at this time.

http://www.joybaker.com/blog/

Many of us have been led to some conclusion / opinion or another, largely due to incomplete, or maybe even intentionally misleading reporting by the news media for all these years.

While I am not among those who contend there is / was some sort of conspiracy on the part of LE - I certainly agree there were plenty of missteps made by LE, especially early on in the investigation. It's frustrating after 23 1/2 years that we don't know more details - LE's methods are not working - at this point there appears to be nothing to lose by going public with the information that they have. Just my opinion.

I agree with ELOCsoul, check out Joy Baker's blog. You can also go back to some writings she did in 2010 for some other good info and pictures: http://www.joybaker.com/blog/page/5/

I know everyone is frustrated by this case and looks at possible mistakes made, and we question why didn't so and so do this or that (such as DR's response to the search on his property). But I think it is important to remember we are looking at the night of the abduction and the following days through the lens of hindsight. Nobody then could imagine 23 1/2 years later we would have so many questions. I also want to point out that I do not find it odd that DR did not go out and search (beyond checking the outbuildings if his latest telling is to be believed). LE does NOT want civilians walking on a possible crime scene at the moment. And many people would not want to put themselves into that scene, thinking it best to stay inside and let LE do their work.

IMHO, the most telling fact is that the perp took one of three. He left two boys to flee. And he surely knew they would run home and police would be on the way sooner than later. This, to me, suggests a perp who intended to quickly exit the area, not on foot. Just because Kevin has come forward doesn't mean a second car could not have been there that night and gone between the time the boys fled out of sight and Kevin arrived. In the heat of the moment, the adrenaline and fear, I have no doubt the Trevor and Aaron could have been completely unaware of a car any distance up DR's driveway and unaware of the vehicle's exit. Victims of crime -- and make no mistake, Aaron and Trevor too are victims -- are notoriously unreliable witnesses. Not because they lie or can't be trusted, but because as victims they do not see and remember many details. Children, in the dark, threatened with a gun, made to lie in a ditch, and told to flee, we can only read the words, we cannot possibly imagine the horror and how it may have affected what they accurately remember or didn't notice.

Let's keep the hope alive that this crime will be solved and the Wetterlings receive some small sliver of peace.

 

[odyssey1492]

Why Patty Wetterling is so amazing:

"We have no proof to show he's not coming home, and so you hope," Wetterling said. "To me, hope is a verb. You don't see us back with our feet up, 'You know, I hope he comes home.' You know, you get out and you do things to make it happen."

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Eli...20-years/story?id=8874577&page=3#.UWjHZhwp-rk

Yes, Patty, hope.

 

[human]

I agree that the boys would have not seen a car after they were made to go in the ditch, etc.

But please explain how a car got ahead of the boys. They saw no cars on the way there.

How would an abductor know where these random children were going? There were a few houses at the beginning of that road by the store, then nothing.

Also, I am confused. On the map posted of the farm, DR's room does not face the street direction.

Did he not say at some point he could see or hear cars on the road?

I am also wondering why he would call LE to report a car in his driveway.

He is a grown man.

What would he say? Did he give a description or a license plate? What would be the point if he could not identify anything for LE?

He is a teacher who should care about students. A missing child would make me ill. One that was missing from my neighborhood.

 

[odyssey1492]

I agree that the boys would have not seen a car after they were made to go in the ditch, etc.

But please explain how a car got ahead of the boys. They saw no cars on the way there.

How would an abductor know where these random children were going? There were a few houses at the beginning of that road by the store, then nothing.

Also, I am confused. On the map posted of the farm, DR's room does not face the street direction.

Did he not say at some point he could see or hear cars on the road?

I am also wondering why he would call LE to report a car in his driveway.

He is a grown man.

What would he say? Did he give a description or a license plate? What would be the point if he could not identify anything for LE?

He is a teacher who should care about students. A missing child would make me ill. One that was missing from my neighborhood.

The perp could have seen the boys come from that direction at a distance and gambled that they were going to go that far back down the road. Put simply, he took a chance they would pass back by there, and he got lucky.

According to Kevin, he thought DR's driveway was a dirt road, and he drove all the way up and turned around in view of the house. So that is how DR could have see Kevin's car. With that in mind, the perp could have been similarly unaware and mistakenly drove up the driveway and turned around when he saw it was actually a farm driveway. Whether or not it is likely, it is possible.

DR did not call the police when he saw a car turn around. According to him, he called 9-1-1 when he saw several flashlights moving around the wood pile. That was LE searching the property.

A missing child is upsetting to most people. But I suspect most people would not want to search dark, isolated property looking for an armed man willing to take a child. That is a job for LE, who are armed themselves and are trained to handle such situations.

 

[human]

I helped search for Jacob. There is no way a perp would have seen the children coming down the road from a distance away.

DR's driveway did not look like a dirt road. No one would mistake a driveway for a dirt road. And not only that, who would go down a dirt road in the dark leading to where? A gully? An impossible place to turn around?

I am too lazy to look for the reference, but DR called LE about a car turning around in his driveway.

DR's attitude was that he was too tired to help. He had work the next day.

Uh huh. Tons of people searched for hours the next days and he was too tired. A young man who runs marathons

 

[odyssey1492]

I helped search for Jacob. There is no way a perp would have seen the children coming down the road from a distance away.

DR's driveway did not look like a dirt road. No one would mistake a driveway for a dirt road. And not only that, who would go down a dirt road in the dark leading to where? A gully? An impossible place to turn around?

I am too lazy to look for the reference, but DR called LE about a car turning around in his driveway.

DR's attitude was that he was too tired to help. He had work the next day.

Uh huh. Tons of people searched for hours the next days and he was too tired. A young man who runs marathons

According to DR, he called 9-1-1 when seeing flashlights moving around his wood pile.
http://www.joybaker.com/2013/02/23/dans-story-2/

According to Kevin, he drove all the way up DR's driveway because he didn't realize it was a driveway.
http://www.joybaker.com/2013/04/01/a-few-answers-many-more-questions/

We can choose to believe them or not, but those are their accounts.

I realize lots of people turned up to search during the ensuing days. But that is substantially different from going outside to search for an armed man within a short time after the abduction. Reasonable people can disagree on this point, but I do believe it is reasonable to think someone would be apprehensive about going outside in that situation, deciding it was a job better suited for the police than a civilian. As to whether or not DR volunteered to search at all in the days following the abduction, I do not know, and admit I would view that differently than on the night of the abduction.

I realize many people reject the notion that the perp happened to see the boys coming from the general direction of the road leading to DR's property and eventually the Wetterling home, but it is not impossible that is what happened. If so, the perp could have just taken a chance of finding a dark spot and hoping the boys would go that far down that road. If they did, he would be ready. If they didn't, he would move on. Yes, that is an extraordinary circumstance. But these things do happen. Wrong place at the wrong time, which is exactly what Michael Devlin said about why he was able to abduct Shawn Hornbeck from a rural country road where Devlin otherwise had no reason to be.

I'm open to other possibilities, but I think the known evidence in this crime points to an unknown perp.

 

[ELOCsoul]

I agree that the boys would have not seen a car after they were made to go in the ditch, etc.

But please explain how a car got ahead of the boys. They saw no cars on the way there.

This has been reasonably and logically explained dozens of times in this forum. The perp was either already in DR's driveway, or was between there and the Tom Thumb and saw the kids going to the store, knowing that they had to go back the same way. He simply went in the opposite direction of the boys journey to the Tom Thumb store, and waited. Even if the perp had no idea how far down the road the boys had come from, he knew all he had to do was go to the next driveway and wait - knowing the boys would have to go at least that far.

 

[ELOCsoul]

Posted by Human:
Also, I am confused. On the map posted of the farm, DR's room does not face the street direction.

Did he not say at some point he could see or hear cars on the road?

I am also wondering why he would call LE to report a car in his driveway.

He is a grown man.

What would he say? Did he give a description or a license plate? What would be the point if he could not identify anything for LE?

He is a teacher who should care about students. A missing child would make me ill. One that was missing from my neighborhood.

[/QUOTE]

This has also been clarified several times before - I do not understand why you refuse to accept the notion that initial media reports were put together hastily and incomplete?? DR has said he called after seeing several people with flashlights on his property. During the call and / or during interviews afterwards, he said he saw a small car turn around in his driveway. That doesn't mean that's the reason he called - it's an observation he made and info that he passed along to authorities and reporters. It was written the St Cloud times on October 24, 1989!!

Let's face it, the media is a selling machine - they sometimes let a good story get in the way of the facts!!

 

[ELOCsoul]

I helped search for Jacob. There is no way a perp would have seen the children coming down the road from a distance away.

DR's driveway did not look like a dirt road. No one would mistake a driveway for a dirt road. And not only that, who would go down a dirt road in the dark leading to where? A gully? An impossible place to turn around?

Why not? It was pitch black - no moon, no streetlights, no nothing. Kids with flashlights would stick out like a sore thumb??

Are you saying Kevin is conspiring with DR and made up the story about turning around in DR's driveway? Why would he do that? He has nothing to gain by making that up! DR says he didn't even see Kevin in his driveway - he saw other cars.