Patty Wetterling Talks About Her Book and Her Journey

DULUTH, Minn. –It was October 22, 1989, when the world was turned upside down for Patty Wetterling when her son Jacob was kidnapped at gunpoint.

It wasn’t until 27 years later that the answer to what had happened to Jacob was learned when Danny Heinrich confessed in open court to abusing, murdering and burying Jacob.

On Tuesday evening Patty Wetterling spoke at Fitger’s about her experience and the book she wrote with Joy Baker, Dear Jacob A Mother’s Journey of Hope.

When Patty learned of what had happened to her 11-year-old son, she experienced the same emotions that she’d had when he first went missing.

“I had been a hope-filled searching parent for nearly 27 years and I was lost, I was done. I  felt defeated, I felt my life had been futile,” Wetterling said.

Of course, Patty had accomplished a great many things during the time. The Jacob Wetterling Act was passed creating a national sex offender registry and she was very involved with other missing children causes.

One of the breaks in the case came about because of Baker who had been writing a blog that dealt a great deal with Jacob. She did some of her own investigations, which helped solve the case.

Baker had rested from writing about the case, but, “I picked it back up again when that person of interest got a hold of me and said, ‘I’ve seen that you’ve been writing about me on your blog. Do you want to hear my side of the story?’ ”

The FBI and police arrested Heinrich for having volumes of child porn at his home. He made a plea deal that he would admit to killing Jacob and show where the body was buried in exchange for only facing one charge dealing with the child porn.

Patty summed up one of the reasons she had for writing the book with Baker and telling so many intimate details of the long journey she had faced.

“The hope. The hope really is real and I wanted that to be part of the book, never give up, never give up on your kids because they’re worth fighting for.”