What is the episode about?
In the Dark opens its first season with a review of the Jacob Wetterling case, which for 27 years stood as one of the most traumatic unsolved mysteries in American history. On October 22, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted by a masked man with a gun while he was biking home from a convenience store in St. Joseph, Minnesota, with his brother and a friend. Host Madeleine Baran establishes in this episode the foundation for a narrative that not only focuses on the crime itself but on the systemic failure of local police work. The episode documents how the initial hours and days after the abduction were marked by chaos and lack of coordination, setting the course for the next three decades without answers.
The case behind the episode
The case of Jacob Wetterling transformed American culture and directly led to the establishment of the first national sex offender registries. Despite the enormous attention and thousands of leads, the case remained cold until 2016. Danny Heinrich , whom the police had actually had in their sights as early as 1989, finally confessed to the abduction and murder as part of a plea deal related to child pornography. He led investigators to Jacob's earthly remains in a field near Paynesville. The episode highlights the painful fact that the perpetrator lived close to the crime scene all those years while the police pursued dead ends and innocent suspects. Madeleine Baran interviews key witnesses and family members to understand how an entire state could live in fear while the solution lay right under the authorities' noses.
About the podcast
In the Dark is produced by APM Reports and has won several awards, including a Peabody Award, for its in-depth journalism. Unlike many other true crime podcasts that revel in macabre details, the series uses