JACOB WETTERLING - 11 yo (1989) - St Joseph (NW of Minneapolis) MN

Investigators combed over a St. Joseph, Minnesota,
property today near where 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted in 1989.
Neighbors reported seeing several unmarked law enforcement vehicles
there earlier today, and reports indicate that as many as 17 vehicles, all-terrain
vehicles and trailers are on the grounds.
Officals from the Stearns County Sheriff's Office told
local media that no details about the operation could be released
because of a court order.

FBI spokesman E.K. Wilson said that they are
assisting in search warrant operations in the area.
Investigators seemed to be focusing on what appeared to be furniture and
barrels taken from a building on the property.Jacob was abducted on Oct. 22, 1989,
as he, his brother Trevor and a
friend were returning home on their bicycles from picking up a video. It
was the first time Jacob had been out alone at night on his bike.
On the return home, according to the other boys, a masked gunman stopped
all three -- and then drove off with Jacob.
All that remained of him on the gravel road was a spot where Jacob's
footprints seemed to show resistance. And then nothing.
Over the past two decades, Jacob's mother, Patty Wetterling, has
sustained herself with hope.
"We hope for Jacob, for all of our grandkids, for every child who's home
safe today and every child who's missing," she said in an
interview with "Nightline" last October on the 20th anniversary of the
boy's disappearance.
Wetterling and her husband, Jerry, their three other children, and three
grandchildren gathered at their rural St. Joseph home in the lead-up to
the anniversary to honor Jacob.
Over the years, his mother has found her voice, and her mission: to find
Jacob and help protect other children.
"A lot of people ask, 'How do you do it?' How could I not?" she said.
"Every parent knows, you would do anything for your children, and our
anything [has] got to be a little more than we ever would have dreamed,
but you continue. We'll do anything that we can to find him."

Jacob Wetterling's Family Holds on to Hope 20 Years Later

Wetterling has started a foundation in Jacob's name. And 15 years ago
she helped pass a bill that requires states to implement sex offender
registries. She works closely with the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children, which attempts to track the approximately 100
children a year who according to Justice Department estimates are
abducted by strangers.
Ernie Allen, head of the center, says that the chance of finding missing
kids diminishes with time, but that hope must not. Children do come back, he said.
In one of the most remarkable cases of its kind, Jaycee Dugard
was reunited with her family after 18 years of captivity.

'I Think About Him Every Day'

"When Jaycee was found, it was just this exclamation point to our
statement," Wetterling said. "There are missing kids out there, it's our
job to find them and she did it. She survived some really horrible
things and she did it."
Jaycee was on the cover of People magazine, her smile amazingly similar
to her smile as a child.
"She is beautiful and she looks so deep-down happy and that's a great
starting point," Wetterling said. "And no matter what happened in
between, nobody could take away those first 11 years and she drew energy
from that, that unconditional love."
As for Wetterling's son Jacob, there are fewer leads each year. But the
Wetterlings hang on. Since Jacob vanished they have not changed their
phone number, or moved, in case he tries to contact them.
What gives her the ability to keep going and keep hoping?
"How can I not?" she said. "As a searching parent, you just never give up on your child, ever."

Authorities have completed their
search at a farm outside St. Joseph in central Minnesota, just yards
from where kidnap victim Jacob Wetterling disappeared 21 years ago.
Investigators with the Stearns
County Sheriff's Office and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension left the
farm of Rita and Robert Rassier shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday, after
two days of searching on the farm.
A deputy said the investigation had finished there for now.
Investigators have searched the farm
at least twice before, but this time, they brought in a backhoe and
hauled away six dump truck loads of dirt, which they took to a county
highway maintenance yard.
The property abuts the road where
Jacob Wetterling was abducted at gunpoint in 1989, returning from a trip
to the store with his brother and a friend one night. He hasn't been seen since.
The Stearns County website lists the
property's owners as Robert and Rita Rassier. Another family member,
Daniel Rassier, is listed at the same address and serves as the St.
Joseph treasurer, according to the county's website.
Police say they're under a judge's
order not to talk about the case, but did say that they were executing a
search warrant on the property.

Investigators in St. Joseph are reporting that they have completed
sifting through the six truckloads of dirt that was taken from a farm
near the spot where Jacob Wetterling was abducted nearly 21 years ago. A
tractor mounted backhoe was used to dig in an area southeast of the
Rassier farm. Items of interest were found and will move on to the
forensic labs, according to the Stearns county Sheriff's.
On June 30th, a search warrant was issued on the farm. Police were on
the property for ten hours with search dogs. This is the third
time this farm has been searched since Jacob's abduction.
Jacob was with his brother, Trevor, and a friend Aaron. The boys were on
bicycles, at the end of the farm's driveway, returning home from a Tom
Thumb store, when they were approached by a masked gunman. The man
ordered each boy to throw his bike into a ditch and lie down on the
ground, he then asked the boys ages. He told Jacob's brother and friend to
run toward a nearby wooded area, and that if they looked back they
would be shot. When the boys did look back, Jacob was gone.
The farm is owned by Robert and Rita Rassier. Their son, Dan Rassier,
54, lives with them and is a person of interest in the case.
The Wetterling case has had some of the following developments since 1989-
It was revealed that another boy had been kidnapped, placed into a car
and sexually assaulted ten months prior to Jacob's abduction, ten miles
away. The perpetrator also used a gun, and when he released the boy he
told him to run and not look back, otherwise he'd be shot.
In 2009, Milwaukee police found child pornography and an alleged video
of Jacob that was taken before the abduction. They also found articles
about the missing children and maps of where they had lived. These were
all seized from the home of Vernon Seitz, who was62 years old when died in his home in St. Francis, Wisconsin.
Jacob's parents, Jerry and Patty, formed the Jacob Wetterling Foundation http://www.livestrong.com/business-jacob-wetterling-foundation_651-714-4673/four
months after his abduction. This advocacy group was successful in
passing the Jacob Wetterling crimes against children and sexually
violent offender registration act, in 1994. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/what/02ajwactcontents.html
It was the first law to institute a state sex-offender registry. It has
since been amended several times, including Megan's law in 1996. http://www.meganslaw.ca.gov/
If Jacob is still alive, he would be 32 years old.

How We Began and the Need for Transition...

On October 22, 1989, 11-year old Jacob Wetterling was abducted from a group of three boys by a masked gunman. To date, he has never been found and his case remains open. In the flash of precious moments, an unthinkable act occurred that has left an indelible scar on the hearts and minds of Jacob’s family, friends and the community.

Many of those same people, including Jacob’s parents, decided to turn their anger, sadness and fear into a groundswell of action to protect other children. In 1990, Jacob Wetterling Foundation was formed by Jerry & Patty Wetterling along with many committed members in the community. Their mission was to educate the public about WHO takes children, HOW they do it and WHAT each of us can do to stop it. They turned their pain into action to help innocent children.

Today, people often remark, “I know where I was when Jacob was taken. I remember what I was doing or wearing. I remember how it made me feel. I’ve never stopped wondering what happened to that little boy.” ”That defining moment in time continues to impact people throughout Minnesota, Jacob’s home state, and in nearly every corner of the world.

Since 1989, many things have changed within our families, community and the world at large. First, came the fax machine, then the Internet, cell phones, two-parent working families and eventually camera phones and iPods. It’s no longer a “Father Knows Best or Donna Reed Show” society where there’s always a happy ending. Over time, our society has become highly sexualized in what we watch on television, play in video games, see in the media or witness during all types of daily entertainment or interactions.

The public began to ask for laws that would help supervise and rehabilitate convicted sex offenders, so JWF responded by advocating to pass Jacob’s Law in Minnesota and throughout the United States. The public needed a missing child emergency response system, so JWF responded, helping to launch the A.M.B.E.R. Plan in Minnesota and at a national level, used in the most severe cases of missing children.

Yet some of the difficult changes in the world also brought “new possibilities” that could help reduce the number of children and teens who are abducted or go missing. With the onset of the Internet, mass communications became almost instantaneous when a child went missing….the Internet also brought greater access to child pornography which made it a double-edged sword.

Sometimes children or teens go missing at the hands of non-family members, sometimes at the hand of family members and sometimes they run away from abusive homes to land on the streets where they become prey for those who seek to exploit them. Sometimes they are “thrown away” by those who no longer care about them. Even worse, kids are sometimes “trafficked” for profit or personal gain into things like prostitution, pornography or for the sadistic pleasure of gangs or others who wish to exploit their innocence.

The dramatic changes in our families, communities and the world require new “Tips, Tools & Resources” to combat these unthinkable acts on innocent children. So to honor Jacob’s legacy and to respond to the public’s outcry, Jacob Wetterling Foundation became Jacob Wetterling Resource Center in September 2008 and launched a new web site to arm the public with the tools they need to help build safer communities for our children and teens.

The Jacob Wetterling Resource Center merged with the National Child Protection Training Center in February 2010. The move is an effort to combine the groups' resources and strengthen their common efforts to ensure every child grows up in a healthy, safe world free from abuse, exploitation and abduction.

http://www.jwrc.org/WhoWeAre/History/tabid/128/Default.aspx