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Wetterling investigation: New insights from key documents

The documents detailing the night Danny Heinrich was taken in for FBI questioning were not released last week as part of the Wetterling files. Instead, KARE 11 obtained them from a different but related case.

MINNEAPOLIS – New documents obtained by KARE 11 shed light on what the current Stearns County sheriff suggested last week was the most important day in the Wetterling investigation.

The documents detailing the night Danny Heinrich was taken in for FBI questioning were not released last week as part of the Wetterling files. Instead, KARE 11 obtained them from a different but related case – the abduction and assault of 12-year-old Jared Scheierl in Cold Spring in January 1989.

During a press conference on Thursday, Stearns County Sheriff Don Gudmundson criticized the interrogation of Danny Heinrich on Feb. 9, 1990 as the “most fatal flaw” of the investigation. Among his criticisms, he mentioned that Heinrich had been picked up at a bar and had been drinking.

“My detectives tell me he’s been drinking. In fact, one of my retired detectives characterize him as being drunk,” Gudmundson said during the press conference.

That observation was quickly countered by former FBI lead investigator, Al Garber.

“I don’t understand what he’s talking about, arresting him in a bar when he was drunk. That’s not what happened,” Garber told reporters on Thursday.

According to documents related to the Cold Spring case, Heinrich was picked up at the Bottoms Up Bar in Roscoe around 9:30 p.m. on Feb. 9, 1990. But neither of the two written reports about that night mentioned Heinrich had been drinking.

Last week, Gudmundson also accused FBI investigators of withholding information from local and state authorities. The sheriff himself referred to a report from Feb. 9, 1990, in which an FBI agent wrote that he’d been directed to not pass along information about a believed match between a fiber taken from Heinrich’s car and Scheierl’s snowsuit.

“This writer was not to inform anyone in the sheriff’s department about the match,” Gudmundson said.

But KARE 11 discovered the new documents reveal that information was shared later that day in a face-to-face meeting that included representatives from the FBI and Stearns County. On Thursday, Garber also maintained that information-sharing was consistent with the FBI’s approach to the investigation.

“We didn’t say, ‘Oh, this looks good, whisper, whisper, whisper. Don’t tell the BCA,’” Garber said.

In a follow-up conversation with Gudmundson on Monday, the current Stearns County sheriff says he’s “not surprised” investigators didn’t detail their suspicions that Heinrich had been drinking. Gudmundson noted that would have fed future arguments made by Heinrich’s defense attorney. But Gudmundson said the observation was based on “good information” from a retired detective.

As for reports stating the FBI did mention the fiber match to local authorities on Feb. 9, 1990, Gudmundson said “it speaks for itself” that the FBI would have initially considered withholding the information. He noted that FBI investigators may have felt “compelled” to share that information, only when making the case to bring Heinrich in for questioning that same day.

All of these developments follow the long-anticipated release of the Wetterling file last week. Jacob Wetterling disappeared from near his rural St. Joseph, Minn. home on Oct. 22, 1989. Authorities found Wetterling’s remains in September 2016, after Heinrich confessed to kidnapping, assaulting and murdering Wetterling the night he was taken. Heinrich is currently serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison outside Boston on unrelated child pornography charges.

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