Murder of Jacob Wetterling

In January 2017, Heinrich was transferred to Federal Medical Center, Devens, a federal prison in Massachusetts, to serve his 20-year sentence.

On September 1, 2016, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) recovered human bones from a pasture near Paynesville, about 30 miles (48 km) from the site of the abduction. On September 3, Wetterling's family announced that the bones were those of Jacob, and local law enforcement stated that the identity of the bones had been confirmed by dental records. The location was revealed by Danny Heinrich, a long-time person of interest in the abduction of another boy, 12-year-old Jared Scheierl, in the nearby town of Cold Spring. On September 6, 2016, Heinrich confessed to kidnapping and murdering Wetterling, as well as abducting and sexually assaulting Scheierl.

Heinrich decided to cooperate with authorities as part of a plea bargain and, on September 1, 2016, led investigators to a burial site. Jacob's clothing and human remains were unearthed from a pasture near Paynesville, about 30 mi (48 km) away from the Wetterling home and the abduction site, and a short distance from where Heinrich was living in 1989. On September 3, the remains were confirmed through dental records to be Jacob's. His mother, Patty Wetterling, told television station KARE11, a local NBC affiliate, that the remains found were indeed Jacob's. She said: "All I can confirm is that Jacob has been found and our hearts are broken. I am not responding to any media yet as I have no words."

In May 2014, investigators confirmed that they were taking another look at a series of attempted and actual child molestations that had occurred in the Paynesville area in the two years preceding the Wetterling abduction. Between the summer of 1986 and the spring of 1987, five teenage boys were attacked, but no one was ever arrested. The authorities interviewed some of the victims again and worked with the Internet blogger who had brought the information to light. After months of research and interviews with some of the victims, investigators believed that these attacks were not random and that the culprit could be connected to the abduction of Wetterling, which occurred just 40 minutes from the other crime scenes.

In 2008, the foundation started by Jacob's parents became the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center. It carries on the work started by the Wetterling family "to educate the public about who takes children, how they do it and what each of us can do to stop it".

Four months after Wetterling's abduction, his parents, Jerry and Patty Wetterling, formed the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, an advocacy group for children's safety. In 1994, the federal Jacob Wetterling Act was passed and named for Jacob. It was the first law to institute a state sex-offender registry. The law has been amended several times, most famously by Megan's Law in 1996 and the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in 2006.

On Sunday, October 22, 1989, just after 9:00 p.m. (CDT), Jacob Wetterling (11), his younger brother Trevor (10) and a friend, Aaron Larson (11), were biking home from a Tom Thumb convenience store in St. Joseph, Minnesota, where they had gone to rent a video. Danny Heinrich, wearing a stocking cap mask and armed with an unloaded revolver, came out of a driveway and ordered the boys to throw their bikes into a ditch and lie face down on the ground. He then asked each boy his age. Jacob's brother was told to run toward a nearby wooded area and not look back or else he would be shot. Heinrich then demanded to view the faces of the two remaining boys. He picked Jacob and told Aaron to run away, threatening him as he had Jacob's brother. This was the last time Jacob was seen alive by anyone other than his captor.

On January 13, 1989, roughly nine months before the Wetterling abduction, 12-year-old Jared Scheierl was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and physically threatened by an unknown adult man. The victim's statement given on that night showed the modus operandi was similar to that of the Wetterling case: the perpetrator, who was later identified as Heinrich, used a gun and, upon releasing the boy, told him to run and not look back or else he would be shot. That incident occurred 10 mi (16 km) from where he would later stop the Wetterling brothers and their friend.

In October 2015, Danny James Heinrich was publicly named as a person of interest in Jacob Wetterling's disappearance. He had been questioned by the FBI on December 16, 1989, and a DNA sample was taken, but he was not charged with a crime and was released. In 2015, Heinrich's DNA was matched to the DNA taken in the case of Jared Scheierl, who was abducted in nearby Cold Spring in January 1989 at the age of twelve. The statute of limitations had expired for the Cold Spring kidnapping, meaning Heinrich could not be arrested and charged with that crime. However, a search warrant was granted, and child pornography was found in Heinrich's house, leading to his arrest on October 28, 2015.

Jacob Erwin Wetterling (February 17, 1978 – October 22, 1989) was an American boy from St. Joseph, Minnesota, who was kidnapped from his hometown and murdered on October 22, 1989, at the age of 11. His abduction remained a mystery for nearly twenty-seven years.