As you may know, I'm forever disturbed by the fact that Jacob Wetterling, a Minnesota boy who was just 11 when he was abducted in the small town of St. Joseph, has never been found.
Well now a new, age-advanced photo of what Jacob might look like at age 29, has been released. As if at 29 he'd still be alive, and yet somehow unable to remember his first 11 years. I know there have been kids whose abductors have convinced them their parents died or didn't want them, but I just don't think this would ever be the case here.
I even asked John Walsh of "America's Most Wanted" about the Wetterling case at the TV Critics' meeting last summer. Walsh said, bluntly, that everyone, including Jacob's family, know that he probably died the day he was taken, that pedophiles rarely make deathbed confessions, and that the only real hope is to find his body someday. Just bones, it'd be now. How tragic.
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The age-progressed picture is just heartbreaking, and that Walsh comment is like a punch in the gut. I think everyone who lived in Minnesota at the time the kidnapping happened is scarred forever -- I remember it like it was yesterday. Taking my little brother and sister out for Halloween trick-or-treating ten days later remains one of the most surreal experiences of my life, what with all the parents hovering close by their kids, and this sort of shared fear and universal paranoia over the whole night like a cloud.
This case haunts me, too. I always think of his brother and his friend, being sent to run while Jacob was taken...and his father, telling them yes, they could go ride their bikes, after their mother said no...ugh.
There was also the case of the boy (gosh, his name escapes me, Johnny something) whose mother claims to have beeb visited by him as an adult, saying he was kidnapped by a pedophilia ring, they'd kill him if he tried to leave, but that he was alive. She received pictures on her doorstep this past year of her son, bound and gagged, wearing the clothes he was abducted in. So, there's always this possibility, but Jesus, I don't think I would ever hope for that.
I was 9 years old when Jacob was kidnapped. I remember hearing about it on the news and it was the first time in my life that I understood that bad things can happen to kids. I will never forget that first Halloween either, and how protective our parents all became. My sister and I still talk about Jacob as if he was a friend, although we never knew him. We will always pray for Jacob's safe return, because we have hope. I wish there was an answer for his family. But all I can do is continue to pray.
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