Trevor Wetterling, the brother of Jacob, hugs his mother Patty Wetterling as a team of prosecutors talk about the confession of Daniel Heinrich to the 1989 killing of Jacob Wetterling, in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016. Heinrich, the man who led authorities to the remains of Jacob Wetterling last week, admitted in U.S. District Court today that he abducted and killed the 11-year-old boy some 27 years ago. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

Jacob Wetterling's siblings, from left, Trevor, Amy and Carmen, listen as a team of prosecutors talk about the confession of Daniel Heinrich to the 1989 killing of Jacob Wetterling, in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016. Heinrich, the man who led authorities to the remains of Jacob Wetterling last week, admitted in U.S. District Court today that he abducted and killed the 11-year-old boy some 27 years ago. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

Patty and Jerry Wetterling listen as a team of prosecutors talk about the confession of Daniel Heinrich to the 1989 killing of their son, Jacob Wetterling, in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016. Heinrich, the man who led authorities to the remains of Jacob Wetterling last week, admitted in U.S. District Court today that he abducted and killed the 11-year-old boy some 27 years ago. At right is attorney Doug Kelley. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

Patty Wetterling speaks as her son Trevor leans his head on his father Jerry's shoulder, during a press conference where the team of prosecutors talked about the confession of Daniel Heinrich to the killing of Jacob Wetterling, in Minneapolis, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

A 1989 family photo of Jacob Wetterling, 11, who was abducted at gunpoint near his home in St. Joseph, Minn., on Oct. 22, 1989. (Courtesy of Wetterling family)



Danny Heinrich (Sherbourne County sheriff's office via AP)

Jerry Wetterling, top left, gathers with a group of friends and neighbors on October 23, 1989 at the site near St. Joseph, Minn. where his son, Jacob Wetterling, was abducted the night before. (Pioneer Press: Neal Lambert)

A bloodhound leads Minneapolis police officer Don Banham in the search for 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling near St. Joseph, Minn on Monday, Oct. 23, 1989. Wetterling was abducted the night before near his parent's home outside of St. Joseph. (Pioneer Press: Neal Lambert)

Patty Wetterling rests on her husband Jerry's shoulder on Oct. 26, 1989, just days after their 11-year-old son Jacob was abducted by a masked man with a gun near their St. Joseph, Minn., home. (Associated Press: Jim Mone)

Members of the Minnesota National Guard search a field near St. Joseph, Minn. on Oct. 28, 1989 as they join in the search for 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling. Gov. Rudy Perpich called out 100 guardsmen as the search for Jacob intensified. (Pioneer Press: Joe Rossi)



Jerry and Patty Wetterling, parents of missing 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, help launch balloons imprinted with the boy's name after a Sunday Mass in St. Joseph, Minn. on Oct. 29, 1989. With them are their son Trevor, left, and nephew Kevin. (Pioneer Press: Jean Pieri)

Jacob Wetterling is shown in a family photo during a horseback riding excursion, circa summer 1989, before he was abducted and kidnapped near his St. Joseph, Minn. home in Oct. 1989. Photo courtesy of the Wetterling family.

Patty Wetterling, of the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, sits in front of a picture of her missing son, Jacob, in this Sept. 2002 file photo. (St. Cloud Times: Jason Wachter)

"This is a crime scene. I drive by here every day, but I just can't deal with being here and looking at it. It's a nightmare," said Patty Wetterling, right, standing with her husband Jerry at the site, about a quarter mile from their St. Joseph, Minn. home, where their son Jacob was abducted and kidnapped 20 years ago in 1989, on Sunday, October 18, 2009. (Pioneer Press: Richard Marshall)

Jacob Wetterling was riding home on his mom's Raleigh 10-speed bike with his brother and a friend when he was kidnapped along the west side of this road, about a quarter mile from his St. Joseph, Minn. home, on October 22, 1989. The bicycle was photographed at the abduction site on Sunday, October 18, 2009. (Pioneer Press: Richard Marshall)



"I do want answers," said Patty Wetterling, who speaks to the press from her yard in St. Joseph, Minn., on July 1, 2010. "I needed to be back here --it's the source of it all," she said. "I don't know if we'll find out right away..." (Pioneer Press: Jean Pieri)

Patty and Jerry Wetterling take part in a news conference Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014 at the Stearns County Law Enforcement Center in St. Cloud, Minn. to announce the installation of six new billboards that will be placed near where their son Jacob was abducted in 1989. (St. Cloud Times: Dave Schwarz)

Deborah Myer, left, and her twin sister Dianne Toulouse deliver a cross to the Wetterling home near St. Joseph, Minn. on Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016. Patty Wetterling announced Saturday that the remains of her son, Jacob, who has been missing almost 27 years, were found the by the FBI. Deborah feels a connection with Jacob because she learned she was pregnant with her child when Jacob was abducted. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

Flowers stand along the road Monday, Sept. 5. 2016, overlooking the site where the remains of Jacob Wetterling were found near Paynesville, Minn. Wetterling, 11, was abducted near his home in St. Joseph, Minn. in Oct. 1989. (Forum News Service: Carolyn Lange)

The light is still on for Jacob Wetterling, who was abducted in 1989 at the age of eleven, even after his mother Patty Wetterling announced on Saturday, September 3, 2016, that the FBI had recovered his remains in a farm field in central Minnesota. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)



A 1989 sketch of the suspect in the Jacob Wetterling abduction, left. At right is Daniel Heinrich, who confessed to the killing 27 years later.

In chilling and heartbreaking testimony, the man who kidnapped and killed Jacob Wetterling described in court on Tuesday the 11-year-old boy’s last hours some 27 years ago.

Danny Heinrich, who said he was armed and wore a mask, said Jacob had one question for him after he abducted him, handcuffed him behind his back and forced him into a car on a rural road near the boy’s home in St. Joseph, Minn., on the evening of Oct. 22, 1989:

“What did I do wrong?”

With Jacob’s parents, Patty and Jerry Wetterling, watching from the front row of the U.S. District Courthouse in Minneapolis, Heinrich, 53, of Annandale, Minn., calmly described the long-unsolved crime in horrific detail.

He said he forced Jacob to undress and then sexually assaulted the boy. He said Jacob cried after the assault. Heinrich said he panicked after a police car drove by and that he shot Jacob twice in the head. He said he left Jacob’s body at the scene, came back an hour later and buried it.

Heinrich’s confession came as part of a plea agreement made by prosecutors and agreed to by the Wetterlings. Heinrich, who had been charged with 25 counts of child pornography, pleaded guilty to one count of receiving child pornography. He faces a federal prison sentence of 20 years and a possible civil commitment after that.

In return for leading authorities last week to Jacob’s body in rural Paynesville, Minn., and admitting to abducting, sexually assaulting and killing Jacob, Heinrich will not be charged with Jacob’s murder.

“Finally we know. We know what the Wetterling family and all of Minnesota have longed to know since that awful night in 1989,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger. “We know the truth. Danny Heinrich … is the confessed murderer of Jacob Wetterling.”

Patty Wetterling, holding back tears during the news conference, said listening to Heinrich’s confession was heartbreaking.

“I want to say to Jacob, ‘I am so sorry,’ she said. “It’s incredibly painful to know his last days, last hours, last minutes. Our hearts are hurting. For us, Jacob was alive until we found him.”

NIGHT’S CHILLING DETAILS

On the night of Oct. 22, 1989, Heinrich said he was driving on a dead-end road in St. Joseph when he noticed three boys with a flashlight. He said he pulled into a driveway and then waited for the boys — Jacob; his brother, Trevor; and Jacob’s best friend, Aaron Larson — to bike and scooter back by.

“After about 20 minutes or so, they came back,” Heinrich said. “I stepped out of my car, put on a mask and reached for my revolver. I told them to get in the ditch with their bicycles. I asked their names and their ages.”

When Heinrich brandished his .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver at the boys, “they tried to offer me a (videotape they had just rented at a Tom Thumb convenience store),” he said. “I knocked that down. They tried to shine a flashlight in my face. I told them not to.”

Heinrich then said he told Trevor and Aaron to “run away and not look back” or he would shoot. He then handcuffed Jacob’s hands behind his back and forced the boy into the front seat of his car. Heinrich said he monitored his police scanner as they drove away from the scene.

“I told him to duck down and lean forward in the seat,” he said. “When we got out of town, I told him he could get up.”

Heinrich said he drove west out of St. Joseph toward Albany, Minn., and then south toward Roscoe, Minn. He said he then drove to a spot near a gravel pit in Paynesville, 23 miles southwest of St. Joseph in central Minnesota, where he forced Jacob to get out of the car and took off his handcuffs. He then forced him to undress and sexually assaulted him.

“About 20 minutes later, he said, ‘I’m cold,’ ” Heinrich said. “I said, ‘OK, you can get dressed.’”

When Jacob said he wanted to go home, Heinrich told him that he couldn’t take him all the way home because he “lived another town away.”

“He started crying,” Heinrich said. “I said, ‘Don’t cry.’ ”

Heinrich said he panicked when he saw a police car drive by and loaded his revolver with two rounds of ammunition. “I told him I had to go to the bathroom and to turn around,” Heinrich said.

Heinrich aimed the gun at Jacob’s head and pulled the trigger. The gun failed to go off, so Heinrich said he fired again.

“I looked back, and he was still standing,” he said. “I raised the gun and shot him again, and that’s when he fell to the ground.”

Heinrich said he checked to make sure Jacob was dead and then went to his apartment in downtown Paynesville. He said he returned a couple of hours later to bury Jacob’s body after dragging it to a spot “about 100 yards north of where (he) had shot him.”

“What was the purpose?” asked federal prosecutor Steve Schleicher.

“To bury him and hide the body,” Heinrich replied.

But a shovel that Heinrich had brought with him wasn’t big enough to do the job, he said, so he went to a nearby construction company and took a skid-steer loader that he used to dig a hole and bury Jacob’s body. He said he then concealed the area with grass and brush.

Jacob was wearing a reflective vest, red jacket and blue sweatpants, Heinrich said, but the boy’s tennis shoes came off as he was moving the body. Heinrich said he threw the tennis shoes into a ravine about 100 yards down the road as he walked back to his apartment.

Heinrich said he returned to the crime scene a year later and could see Jacob’s red jacket above the ground and that the grave was partially uncovered. He said he picked up the jacket and Jacob’s bones and skull and placed them in a garbage bag and “took them across the highway.”

“I never dug up anything,” he said. “It was already uncovered.”

Heinrich said he used “an Army entrenching tool,” or a collapsible spade, to dig a hole about 2 feet deep in a pasture and “put the bones in the hole and the jacket on top and covered it up.”

On Aug. 31, when Heinrich led law enforcement officials to the gravesite, investigators found a red “St. Cloud Hockey” jacket that matched the one Jacob was wearing when he was abducted. When agents saw the jacket, they “stopped in their tracks,” Luger said.

But it wasn’t until they returned to the site Friday and found the boy’s skeletal remains, along with a T-shirt that said “Wetterling,” that prosecutors were confident they had what they needed.

“Finally, we knew,” Luger said. “Finally the Wetterling family could lay their son to rest.”

AN EARLIER KIDNAPPING

In court on Tuesday, Heinrich also confessed to kidnapping and sexually assaulting 12-year-old Jared Scheierl in Cold Spring, Minn., nine months before he abducted and killed Jacob. Heinrich told of “driving around Cold Spring, looking for a child.” Heinrich said he noticed a boy walking down a dark street about 9 or 10 p.m. on Jan. 13, 1989, and asked him if he knew “where the Kramers lived.”

Heinrich said he threw Scheierl in the back seat and sexually assaulted him. He said he then let him go, telling “him to run and not look back or I’d kill him.” He said he kept Scheierl’s underwear and pants as a “souvenir.”

He said he did not have a gun the night he assaulted Scheierl, but acquired one during the summer of 1989, just a few months before Jacob’s death.

Retested DNA evidence last year linked Heinrich to Scheierl’s kidnapping and sexual assault. Authorities said they had long suspected a link between the two cases, leading them to circle back to Heinrich.

The Scheierl abduction was part of the so-called “Paynesville Assault Cluster” — eight attacks on seven boys from 1986 to 1988 in the community about 85 miles northwest of the Twin Cities.

In each case, the victims were about the same age and gave similar descriptions of their assailant. Each said their attacker wore a mask and threatened them with violence.

During Monday’s news conference with law enforcement officials, Scheierl, who lives in Paynesville, said he wanted to work with the assault victims and Paynesville community. During his remarks, he often looked at and addressed the Wetterlings, who were seated several feet from the podium.

“I was thrown into this investigation, not by choice, but because I was a victim,” Scheierl said. “A victim of an assault that, in so many ways, defined who I am today.”

“If you would have asked me 25 years ago what my purpose in life was, I wouldn’t have had an answer,” Scheierl said. “If you would’ve asked me 18 years ago what my purpose in life was, I would have told you ‘my daughter.’ Today, I’m in a moment of transcending or finding a new purpose in helping others gain closure — in what they need to move on, to move forward and to keep it positive.”

GETTING A CONFESSION

Stearns County Attorney Janelle Kendall said the only hard evidence authorities had tying Heinrich to Jacob’s disappearance back in 1989 was a “similar” tire track and shoe print, neither of which were scientific matches.

Luger said Heinrich agreed to take authorities to Jacob’s gravesite after his attorneys, chief federal public defender for Minnesota Katherian Roe and assistant federal public defender Reynaldo Aligada, struck a deal with prosecutors.

It was a two-part agreement: The first was to tell authorities the location of Jacob’s remains and provide a detailed confession of what he’d done to the boy. The second was to plead guilty to one child-pornography charge and admit that he’d also abducted and assaulted Scheierl. The statute of limitations has expired in that case, meaning Heinrich can’t be charged in it.

Without Jacob’s body, prosecutors knew they couldn’t pursue murder charges against Heinrich, Luger said. Given his history of “volatile” and “unpredictable” behavior, Luger said, the prosecution felt they had to act.

“We knew he could change his mind at any moment,” Luger said.

Prosecutors reached out to the Wetterling family to see if they were comfortable with the terms of the tentative deal. With their support, it moved forward, Luger said.

“There is great sadness and heartbreak in our state today,” Luger said. “There is an outpouring of grief for Jacob and what he went through and for the Wetterling family … but I hope that this is also a time for neighbors and complete strangers to come together and begin the healing process.”

Heinrich is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 21 by U.S. District Judge John Tunheim. As part of his plea, Heinrich has acknowledged that he could be civilly committed as a sex offender, perhaps indefinitely, after he serves his criminal sentence.

Heinrich’s “unthinkable admissions” in court should make everyone angry, Luger said.

“We will all ask many times ‘Why?’ — and there is no good answer,” he said. “The crimes of Danny Heinrich should increase our collective resolve to protect our youth and bring predators to justice.”

Patty Wetterling said she hopes that will be part of Jacob’s legacy.

“What I really wanted to say today was about Jacob: He has taught us all how to live, how to love, how to be fair, how to be kind,” Wetterling said. “He speaks to the world that he knew, that we all believe in, and it is a world that is worth fighting for. His legacy will go on.”

Sarah Horner and Tad Vezner contributed to this report.