ShareThisEven now, 20 years later Aaron Larson plays it back daily, wondering what he might have done, said or seen to make things turn out differently.
What if he and the Wetterling boys -- Jacob and Trevor -- had just stayed at the Wetterling house that night instead of biking to the store for candy and a movie? What if the moon had been full and there'd been enough light for the boys to spot the man lurking in the weeds?
Or what if the masked gunman with the gravelly voice who stepped from the dark had somehow lost his nerve -- or taken Aaron instead of Jacob?
"It's difficult to think about all the things that might have been," Larson said softly. "It's something I think about every single day."
The abduction of 11-year-old Jacob on a warm October night 20 years ago shocked Minnesotans like few crimes before and shattered the innocence of the prairie town of St. Joseph.
For Larson, the abduction of his best friend, who was never seen again, changed him in ways that he is only beginning to understand.
For years he was intimidated by the dark. For years, Oct. 22 seemed like "a real bad birthday." For years he was known as "the kid who was with Jacob Wetterling," a stigma so overwhelming that after his freshman year in college, he fled briefly to a Southern school and then headed back to Minnesota.
Time has added perspective, but it can't erase the terror of that night or the heartache that followed. Now 31, with a son of his own, a loving fiancee and a good job, Larson remains burdened by survivor's guilt, keeping to himself most of his feelings about that night, sharing them with only those closest to him.
"I think it's shaped his attitude toward everything, from how he values everything to how he makes choices," said his mother, Fran Larson. "It was such an extreme event, it shaped him pretty much down to the core."
Outgoing Jacob and quieter Aaron became best friends in second grade.
The boys lived four miles apart, so sleepovers were common. So it was on Sunday night, Oct. 22, 1989. With Monday a school holiday, Jacob invited Aaron over for the night.
Larson remembers it was dark by the time he arrived. Not long after, Patty and Jerry Wetterling left the house to visit friends about a half-hour away.
Jacob's older sister, Amy, was also at a sleepover, leaving Jacob in charge of his brother, Trevor, 10, and their sister, Carmen, 8.
Not long after they left, Trevor called his parents to say that the boys were bored. They wanted to ride their bikes to a nearby Tom Thumb store to rent a video. A neighbor had agreed to baby-sit Carmen while they were gone, the Wetterling boys told their father. They'd bring flashlights and wear reflective vests so they'd be safe going to the store.
Minutes later, with Larson pushing a scooter and the brothers on bicycles, they headed up the dirt road, into the night.
About halfway through their mile-long trip, Aaron heard a rustle in the tall grass by the road.
"A little shiver went through me," he said. "I didn't know if it was a person or an animal, but I kind of sped up. I don't know if Trevor or Jacob even heard it. ... It was just a strange noise that shouldn't be there."
Not wanting the others to know he was scared, he said nothing.
They rented "Naked Gun," bought candy and headed home.
Halfway back, near the same spot where Larson heard the rustle, a man wearing a mask stepped from the dark.
"The first thing I remember was the flash of the gun, and a guy saying, 'Stop, I have a gun,'" Larson recalled. "I caught my breath. I thought it was a high school kid pulling a joke on us. ... Then it hits you: this is happening, it's no joke."
The man ordered them to lie face down in the roadside ditch.
Larson remembers his heart "going 1,000 beats a minute," but having no clue what was happening. "You didn't hear about people being kidnapped or abducted. It didn't cross my mind."
The man asked Trevor to look at him, then asked his age. He did the same with Aaron, then Jacob.
"Then he told Trevor to run as fast as he can to the woods. Trevor was not gone that long, maybe 10 seconds, and he said the same to me or he'd shoot," Larson said. "I ran as fast as I could to catch up to Trevor."
After running 100 yards, Larson looked back -- and saw nothing but darkness.
Frantic, the boys ran to the Wetterling house. The baby sitter called her father, who called 911. Within minutes, the cul-de-sac lit up with squad cars.
The fallout from that night was overwhelming for an 11-year-old.
Larson was so jittery in the weeks afterward that he slept on the floor of his parents' bedroom. Middle school turned to high school, and people still pointed at him on the street or when he played football and basketball.
After graduating from St. John's University in 2000, Larson moved to the Twin Cities briefly before settling in southwestern Minnesota. Both inspired and haunted by the memory of Jacob, he enlisted in the Army Reserves in 2003.
"It was a challenge thing, a drive to do something greater," he said. "In the back of my mind I always thought that I had this great gift that I'm still here. It comes down to that."
In March 2008 -- six month before he was to marry Jackie Tentinger -- Larson got word he would be sent to Iraq, where he worked as a technical engineer until last April.
One year away from your family isn't so bad when you think of all the years Jacob has been gone," said Larson, who lives in Slayton, Minn., with Jackie and their 2-year-old son Anikan.
Over the years, investigators have followed up on more than 40,000 leads from Minnesota to Europe. They've talked with psychics, checked sightings of Jacob look-alikes and cleared more than 4,000 suspects.
No sign of Jacob, nor hint of his fate, has been found.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit Minneapolis Star Tribune
