'In the Dark': What did the Wetterling investigation miss in those first few hours?
The In the Dark podcast from APM Reports looks at the abduction of Jacob Wetterling and the nearly-30-year investigation into what happened the night of Oct. 22, 1989. The first episode is available for download.
In the second episode, the podcast goes back to those first hours and days after Jacob Wetterling's abduction. Almost 100 officers — sheriff's deputies, FBI agents, state investigators, local police — were working the case. Thousands of people turned out to show their support. It was one of the largest searches for a single missing person in United States history.
But what did they miss?
The first hours after a child abduction can be the most critical. It's a time when no detail — no car sighting, no sound in the woods, no freshly-turned dirt — is too small to note. Everyone in the area should be interviewed, said Patrick Zirpoli, who used to oversee the Amber Alert program in Pennsylvania. And then interviewed again.
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Zirpoli told In the Dark:
"So we always say start close and work your way out. You know, start from their home, start doing interviews, knocking on doors. And we always tell people, you want to interview over and over and over. You want to interview people multiple times, not just one time. If a case drags on for more than a day and goes into the second and third day, you want to re-interview everyone again."
Did that happen in the Wetterling case?
Around a hundred people lived along the dead-end street where Jacob was abducted, and In the Dark reporters tracked down as many of them as they could find, to ask about that night 27 years ago. They were surprised at what people remembered — and what they felt police had missed.
For the second episode of In the Dark, including interviews with neighbors who lived on that dead-end street in St. Joseph, use the audio player above.