MINNEAPOLIS-A former FBI agent who investigated 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling's disappearance said Tuesday that the Stearns County sheriff's recent analysis of the case was distorted and "a revisionist account of the investigation."
Steve Gilkerson, who is retired from the FBI, said Don Gudmundson - who was not sheriff or working in Stearns County when Wetterling was kidnapped in 1989 - misled the public about what FBI agents "were doing and what they were able to do."
"(Gudmundson's) hindsight conclusion regarding the interview of Danny Heinrich (who confessed decades later to killing Jacob) and the evidentiary value of the tire and shoe imprints and Heinrich's polygraph create a false picture for the public that Danny Heinrich should have been thrown in jail immediately after his confession in this interview," Gilkerson said a Tuesday, Oct. 2, news conference in Minneapolis. "... There are many factual inaccuracies and baseless conclusions that Gudmundson irresponsibly unleashes in his press conference."
Gudmundson held a press conference on Sept. 20, the day the Stearns County sheriff's office released about 42,000 pages of files from local and state investigators. At that time, Gudmundson said the investigation "went off the rails" early on.
Heinrich, whom Gilkerson interviewed in 1990, confessed in 2016 to attacking 12-year-old Jared Scheierl in Cold Spring in 1986 and also sexually assaulting and shooting and killing Jacob. He led authorities to Jacob's buried remains as part of a plea agreement on child pornography charges.
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In a statement on Tuesday, Gudmundson noted that nobody from the FBI or the U.S. attorney's office made any statements at Gilkerson's news conference "defending the initial Wetterling investigation. ... It was a retired FBI agent defending the indefensible."
"There were multiple missteps in the Wetterling investigation that almost appeared to be acts of willful blindness," Gudmundson said in his statement.
Gudmundson continued: "Heinrich registered deceptive in the polygraph examination, fits the composite and descriptions, has tires and shoes that correspond to prints at the scene, had the vehicle used in the Cold Spring abduction that the victim rates an 8 or 9 out of 10, a fiber from that victim's clothing is consistent with a fiber from the carpet of that car, has photos of children in his possession not confiscated by the FBI or the sheriff's investigators, has the gray portable police scanner, says similar things to victims, has a distinctive voice, has clothing which is similar to clothing worn by the perpetrator in all the assaults, has the handgun and asks another perpetrator how to get rid of a body. ... Yet, no one goes back to look at Heinrich for more than 20 years."
In 1990, when Gilkerson interviewed Heinrich, he said they believed he was responsible for the Cold Spring kidnapping and possibly for Jacob's disappearance.
"Lengthy, lengthy investigation had been conducted at this point, including multiple interviews with Heinrich," a search warrant had been executed at his father's house and lab analysis had been conducted, Gilkerson said Tuesday. "The interrogation I planned to do was the final step we could take. It was a Hail Mary effort, a last effort to get Heinrich to confess. It was a culmination of everything that had taken place in the investigation up to that point."
It was considered so important, Gilkerson said, that three agents from the FBI's behavioral science unit came from Quantico, Va., and assisted in preparing for the interview.
The Stearns County attorney gave permission for Heinrich to be arrested for the Cold Spring abduction, Gilkerson said. And, when Heinrich asked whether he was under arrest, Gilkerson told him he was in the Cold Spring case and he advised him of his legal rights.
"He stated he was being framed and he would not talk to me," Gilkerson said. "I told him at that point that we had evidence showing that he had committed a crime against Jacob and I wanted to talk to him about this. He stated he wanted a lawyer. Well, this ended the interview. Once they ask for a lawyer, (we) can't interview him any further. So, I was unable to conduct any further investigation."
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Heinrich was taken to jail, but was released the next day because the Stearns County attorney's office advised them they did not have enough sufficient evidence to hold him, Gilkerson said.
