ST. JOSEPH, Minn. - Dan Rassier, once called a "person of interest" in the abduction of Jacob Wetterling, has hired a lawyer whose first matter of business will be to get Rassier back the property that investigators took when they searched his family's farm in 2010.
Michael Padden represents Rassier, who still lives on the property where backhoes and dump trucks were used to excavate soil that was sifted for clues to Wetterling's disappearance. Investigators also took paperwork and some furniture that they haven't returned in the more than six years since the search.
"Frankly, this should have already been done," Padden said. "Why there is a delay is difficult to comprehend."
Padden said he made a request in person last week at the sheriff's office for Rassier's property and hasn't heard back. Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner said Wednesday that his office likely will have Rassier's property back to him this week.
"We're working as fast as we can on that request," he said.
Padden equated Rassier's predicament to that of Ryan Larson, who was arrested during the investigation of the murder of Cold Spring-Richmond Police Officer Tommy Decker but later released without being charged.
Investigators eventually named Eric Joseph Thomes, 31, as a man who would have been arrested if he hadn't killed himself when investigators showed up to confront him about inconsistencies in his previous statements about the night Decker was killed.
About a month after Thomes was named as a suspect, Larson filed a conciliation court case requesting the return of property that sheriff's investigators had taken during a search of his residence. A Stearns County judge reviewed evidence in his chambers before issuing a decision that Larson couldn't get his property back.
Larson still hasn't gotten his property back. Sanner has said that the Decker case investigation remains open and that he won't apologize for what happened with Larson. Although Sanner has said that Rassier obviously no longer is a suspect in the Wetterling case, he also won't apologize for how investigators scrutinized Rassier.
Padden wants to know if Sanner believes that Larson is somehow involved in a conspiracy with Thomes. He also wants to know what it was that the judge saw that led him to deny Larson's request for his property back.
Whatever Sanner showed the judge "could be relevant to Mr. Rassier's potential claims," Padden said.
He didn't elaborate on what those potential claims might be.
The Times has made repeated requests to Rassier to speak with him since Danny Heinrich pleaded guilty to abducting and killing Wetterling. Rassier has declined all of those requests.
