ST. JOSEPH, Minn. — Early today law enforcement officials again converged on a family farm near where young Jacob Wetterling disappeared more than 20 years ago.

By 10:20 a.m., a large Stearns County dump truck had made two trips on and off the property. It appeared to have been loaded with light brown dirt.

The day’s activity started around 7 a.m., when roughly a dozen vehicles from the Stearns County sheriff’s office and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension drove onto the property where Daniel A. Rassier and his parents live. Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner, a K-9 unit and a BCA mobile crime lab vehicle were on the scene. The dump truck and a backhoe showed up about 8:30 a.m.

Rassier and his parents drove off the property about 7:30 a.m.

This was the third time since Wetterling’s abduction in 1989 that investigators converged on the family farm near the site of the boy’s disappearance.

Neighbors reported seeing several unmarked law enforcement vehicles Wednesday morning on the property. Aerial photos showed as many as 17 vehicles, all-terrain vehicles and trailers. Earth-moving equipment was also reported.

Rassier, 54, who lives with his parents at the farm, has previously submitted DNA and undergone hypnosis as well as a lie-detector test in connection to the Wetterling investigation, Rassier’s brother said.

Stearns County sheriff’s Chief Deputy Bruce Bechtold said he could not comment on the case.

“All I can tell you is we’re conducting an investigation in the St. Joseph area, and the details of that investigation are restricted by a court order,” Bechtold said.

The order, he said, was issued by a Stearns County judge Tuesday or Wednesday. No arrests have been made in the case.

Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner told the St. Cloud Times today that he’s “optimistic” investigators will finish their activity at the property by day’s end.

The FBI was taking part in the investigation, said FBI spokesman E.K. Wilson.

Jacob’s mother, Patty Wetterling, who was attending a workshop on preventing sexual violence Wednesday at the University of Minnesota, said she had been notified in the morning about the search.

“When these things happen, it just upsets my stomach,” she said, referring to the media attention and the search itself.

The property is owned by Robert and Rita Rassier. Rita Rassier hung up the phone when called by the Pioneer Press on Wednesday afternoon. She is 81; Robert Rassier is 85.

Daniel Rassier is the couple’s son and lives with his parents, said Anna Reischl, the St. Joseph Township clerk. Daniel Rassier is a band teacher and the township treasurer; his parents are retired farmers, she said.

The man who identified himself as a brother of Daniel Rassier but wouldn’t give his own name said his parents were “pretty upset” by the latest search.

“They’ve been there their whole life,” he said. “It really bothers me because it really hurts them.”

He said police also had been to his parents’ property in 1989 and 2005. The second time, they dug and “tore the place up,” doing “a very thorough investigation,” the man said.

He noted that officials also have searched other properties in the area.

When his mother called Wednesday, the man said, and told him investigators were at the farm again, he thought she was joking.

“It’s the third time; it just won’t end,” he said. “It’s getting to the point of harassment.”

He said he thought his brother had given a DNA sample around 2005.

Asked why police were at his parents’ property now, the man said his family didn’t know.

“I have no idea what sparked (Wednesday’s search),” he said. “Their whole theory was there wasn’t a car there, and they think somebody did it on foot, and they keep coming back to that same thing.”

Rassier’s brother continued: “I just hope it clears his name. He’s been through the ringer.”

In a 2008 profile of Daniel Rassier published after he had run a marathon, the St. Joseph Newsleader newspaper said he had lived in St. Joseph for all but two years in college. The article described him as “arguably one of the best trumpet players in central Minnesota.”

Daniel Rassier is an elementary school band teacher and has worked for the Rocori school district since 1978, Superintendent Scott Staska said today.

Staska said he’s been in the district for eight years and, during that time, “we’ve had no complaints” about Rassier.

The students call Daniel Rassier “Mr. Be-Bop,” Staska said.

“You don’t get nicknames like that without being well liked by the kids,” he said.

Staska said he hasn’t been “contacted by anyone in regard to any of the things happening now” with the search and said there is no change to the teacher’s employment status.

Daniel Rassier is also an adjunct music professor at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University, holding the position since 1997, a spokeswoman said.

Former St. Joseph Police Chief William Lorentz had only positive things to say about Robert Rassier on Wednesday. He said he had known Rassier for decades.

“He was very much a hard-working farmer at the time and very much a strong Christian,” Lorentz said. “He goes to church, I think, daily.”

Of the search on the Rassiers’ property, Reischl said: “It’s just kind of unbelievable because that’s one of the nicest families. They’re very caring people.”

Jerry Wetterling, Jacob’s father, said: “I really don’t want to get into any particular suspects or people, because I really don’t know what’s going on over there. I just know there’s lots of activity.

“When I drove to work this morning, there were five or six squad cars on that driveway, and I was extremely surprised.”

Wetterling said previous leads have led nowhere.

“There’s been leads that have been pursued aggressively for months at a time,” he said. “There’s been over 30,000 leads in this case. … I just know when there have been leads in the past, law enforcement will do whatever they think is necessary to pursue that particular lead. We’ve just been so grateful for all the interest and support, in people helping out and trying to find out what actually happened to Jacob.

“We’ve kind of learned for survival that we can’t get too high or low over any particular leads,” he said. “Otherwise, we’d be emotional wrecks.”

Wetterling said he often shares a neighborly wave with Robert Rassier on his way to work in the morning as the elder man picks up the mail at the end of his driveway, but he was less familiar with Daniel Rassier.

“That’s their driveway, where Jacob’s last steps were seen,” Wetterling said. “That’s the last evidence of Jacob being in the area, was right there. I’m guessing that’s why the activity is going on there.”

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had “some people on the ground” in St. Joseph, “working in support of the sheriff and the FBI,” said Bob Lowery, executive director of the center’s missing children division.

He said the center has had representatives “in and out of St. Joseph regularly over the last many years.”

“We’re always encouraged by any new leads, but we don’t want to provide false hopes,” Lowery said.

Lorentz, who was St. Joseph’s police chief when Jacob was abducted, said he had no knowledge of the latest investigation. He retired from the police department years ago, with the Wetterling abduction still hanging over his head.

“I hope they find something,” Lorentz said. “(I was) always looking forward to having a good lead on something, but nothing develops. I just wish them luck.”

Lorentz said that over the years, credible leads in the Wetterling abduction have been rare. “Not as often as I’d like them,” he said.

A group of local children, riding dirt bikes and exchanging wild theories, noted Wednesday how it had been drilled into them since birth never to ride alone.

“Never go out by yourself. When I’m down here, I come with a friend,” said Braden Koopmeiners, 14, parked across a field of soybeans from the road where a masked gunman took Jacob in October 1989.

Neighbors came from miles around, milling in pairs or driving slowly past the farm. Many said they didn’t know what to think, but they just had to see.

“This is nuts. I can’t believe this right now,” said Nick Berg, 28, who went to the same school as Jacob.

Lawrence Nichols, an Eagan-based defense attorney who was a childhood neighbor of Patty Wetterling, said the burden of proof necessary to excavate private property was no greater than what is needed for a typical police search of a home or office.

“You just need a search warrant. … Haven’t you ever seen ‘Cops’? They can go in with a sledgehammer,” Nichols said.

“They need probable cause to get a warrant, and probable cause is basically, ‘It’s likely that fruits, evidence or instrumentality of the crime might be found here,’ ” he said. “It’s the judge’s call.”

The last development in the case came in January 2009, when news broke about a Milwaukee man with a possible link to Jacob’s case. Vernon Seitz, who had confessed to killing two children in the 1950s and died in December 2008, was found to have news clippings and photos of young Jacob, along with child pornography and books on cannibalism, in his home.

But Milwaukee police said they found no connection between Seitz and Jacob’s abduction or any other child abduction. Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner said in January 2009 that his office worked with Milwaukee police and agreed there was no reason to believe Seitz was involved in Jacob’s kidnapping.

The fate of Jacob Wetterling, who would now be 32, remains unknown. His is the most notorious missing-child case in Minnesota.

Jacob was with his brother and a friend when he was abducted just a half-mile from his home in St. Joseph, in central Minnesota. A gunman stepped out of the woods and disappeared with Jacob.

The missing boy’s name has become synonymous with missing and vulnerable children, leading to the formation of the Jacob Wetterling Foundation by his parents in 1990.

The foundation, which later became the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, merged with the National Child Protection Training Center in February. Its staff members lead community sex offender notification forums, among other efforts aimed at raising awareness of child sexual exploitation and abduction.

The Wetterlings organized a children’s concert last year at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph to mark the 20th anniversary of their son’s abduction.

Patty Wetterling last year wrote and published a book, “Jacob’s Hope,” which she said was aimed at helping her grandchildren understand what happened to their uncle.

Interviewed by the Pioneer Press in October, she said she remains as dumbfounded as anyone as to how such a crime could take place in small-town America.

“We don’t know what happened,” she said. “It’s just a whole bunch of ‘we don’t knows.’ There’s no such word as ‘closure.’ Answers. We need answers.”

This story contains information from the Associated Press.