On This Date In Twin Cities History - October 22, 1989

On this date in 1989, Jacob Wetterling, an eleven-year-old from St. Joseph, MN, is kidnapped while riding his bike home from a store along with his younger brother Tevor and a friend, Aaron Larsen. 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. It was the first law to institute a state sex-offender registry. For years, Jacob’s abduction remained a mystery.  Finally, on September 1, 2016, twenty-seven years after the kidnapping, Jacob’s remains were recovered in a pasture near Paynesville, MN, about thirty miles from where he was abducted. Daniel James Heinrich of Annandale confessed to abducting, sexually assaulting, and murdering the young boy.