Danny Heinrich was pleading guilty to child pornography charges when he began to confess to the kidnap, sexual assault and murder of Jacob Wetterling nearly 27 years ago.
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Danny Heinrich
On October 22, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling bicycled with his brother Trevor, 10, and friend Aaron 11, to their Minnesota home from a convenience store where they had rented a video. Their ride home was interrupted by a masked man who stepped out of a driveway with a gun and ordered the children to throw their bikes into a ditch and lie face down on the ground. After asking the boys their ages he told Jacob’s brother and friend to run into the woods and not look back or he would shoot them. No arrest was ever been made and Jacob has never been found. Investigators later learned that, unbeknownst to local law enforcement, sex offenders were being sent to live in halfway houses nearby.
In February of 1999, four months after Jacob’s disappearance, the Jacob Wetterling Foundation was established by Jacob’s parents, Patty and Jerry Wetterling. Patty was appointed to a Minnesota governor’s task force to make recommendations on sex offender registration. After successfully establishing sex offender registration in Minnesota, Patty and Jerry Wetterling went on to lobby for federal legislation to require all 50 states to register resident sex offenders.
The Wetterlings were not alone in their effort to lobby for a uniform federal law to mandate sex offender registration and some form of public notification. A hearing to discuss the revolving door of justice was called on March 1, 1994 by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice. The hearing was called to discuss the revolving door of justice in the U.S. and new approaches to recidivism. There were five panels called together – one included victims and their families. Testimony was given by Marc Klaas; Peggy, Gene and Jennifer Schmidt; Susan Sweetser, a Vermont State Senator and rape survivor; and Dick and Diane Adams, whose son, a store clerk, was killed during an armed robbery. Testimony at that hearing urged the passage of federal legislation to register and notify communities of the presence of sex offenders.
Marc Klaas is the father of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, who was kidnapped by a career criminal at knifepoint from her bedroom slumber party and was later found murdered. Marc founded Klaas Kids Foundation, a nonprofit children’s advocacy organization that has been instrumental in working for nationwide and international laws to stop crimes against children. The foundation provides parental awareness and child-safety information and encourages partnerships between neighborhoods, law enforcement, organizations and the private sector to create safe and crime-free communities.
Gene, Peggy and Jennifer Schmidt from Kansas are the father, mother and sister, respectively, of 19-year-old college student Stephanie Schmidt, who was brutally raped and murdered by a coworker whom she was not aware was a known convicted sex offender. The Schmidt family founded SOS (Speak Out For Stephanie) The Stephanie Schmidt Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to changing laws and promoting public safety and awareness about sex offenders . The Schmidt family is best known for their efforts in successfully advocating for nationwide laws that confine sexual predators indefinitely. These laws are referred to as Sexual Predator Commitment Laws or Sexual Predator Civil Confinement Laws. Nine months after Stephanie’s death, the Stephanie Schmidt Sexual Predator Act – empowering a state civil commitment procedure – became a retroactive law for all Kansas sex offenders. Although originating in Washington State, the Kansas statute reached the U.S. Supreme Court where it was ruled constitutional in 1997.
Patty Wetterling and these advocates worked tirelessly toward the passage of the Jacob Wetterling Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act and it was included in the Federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The Wetterling Act was signed into law on September 13, 1994 and required all 50 states to establish effective registration programs for convicted child molesters and other sexually violent offenders. The Wetterling Act also required the states to establish more stringent registration standards for a subclass of offenders considered the most dangerous, designated under law as “sexually violent predators.” States that failed to comply with the minimum standards risked a 10% reduction of formula grant funding under the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program . This is federal funding allocated to states for improving functioning of the criminal justice system with an emphasis on violent crime and serious offenders. There was, and continues to be, no federal registration requirement for juvenile sex offenders, even if they were treated as adults in the criminal justice system.
Although there was no federal requirement, as of 2001, 28 states in the nation register juveniles adjudicated or convicted of a sex offense – including Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. Only California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina and Vermont prohibit the release of this information to the public and the remaining states authorize notification in some or all cases. The Wetterling Act also gave states the discretion to decide whether to release sex offender registration information to the public but did not make it a requirement. The following is an excerpt pertaining to the release of sex offender information from The Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act:
(d) Release Of Information
The designated state law enforcement agency and any local law enforcement agency authorized by the state agency may release relevant information that is necessary to protect the public concerning a specific person required to register under this section… The carefully crafted joining of the two words may and release gave states the discretion to decide whether to release relevant information to protect the public. Conversely, it also gave permission for law enforcement not to release information to the public even if the sex offender was determined to pose a high risk to public safety. Law enforcement agencies and state agency staff across the nation have reported reluctance to release information and notify communities of resident sex offenders for fear of community unrest, liability and concern over potential constitutional challenges that were thought to have to be worked out in our courts. The Wetterling Act is best known for establishing uniform federal minimal standards for registration of convicted sex offenders in all 50 states. As discretionary in nature as it was, for the first time in the history of the United States, it gave all states the discretion to release relevant information to the public about convicted sex offenders who posed a risk to public safety. An additional catalyst to the passage of The Jacob Wetterling Act was the July 29, 1994 brutal rape and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka.