Book Review | Dear Jacob: A Mother's Journey of Hope

It feels weird to rate a book like this, knowing the depths of both love and despair that has gone into the Wetterling family's journey since Jacob was stolen from them on October 22nd, 1989, so I am not going to.

This won't really be a review either, because how do you review something so traumatic that happened to someone else, that traumatized an entire state as a result?

In loving and excrutiating detail, Patty Wetterling shares the entire story of her family's nightmare, from the horrifying beginning to the heart-shattering end.

That fall day in 1989 was like any other. Patty and Jerry were going to a gathering while the kids stayed home. The boys were restless and wanted to go rent a video from a nearby gas station, so they called to ask permission. On the way back, a man came out of the darkness, took eleven year old Jacob at gun point, and managed to get away with his crime for 27 years - despite having initially been a person of interest.

Finally, finally, on September 2nd, 2016, Jacob's remains were recovered and he was brought home.

Patty shares so much, detailing those first frenzied days and weeks of the search, at one point even being told Jacob was most likely dead but they would find him. She recounts how the family struggled in their new reality and each dealt with it in different ways.

As the months turned to years, Patty spent that time working tirelessly to lobby for a national sex offender registry and in 1994 Congress passed the Jaob Wetterling Act to establish it. Patty had become an advocate for missing children, working with organizations to train others, and to bring together information in an organized way that could be accessible across the country. In the years when no new information was coming in, Patty was determined to help other families find their loved ones, and worked to help protect, search for, and save missing and exploited children.

In 2013 two others became instrumental in getting answers for the Wetterlings. A local blogger named Joy Baker had been in contact with a young man named Jared Scheierl, who came forward with his story of being kidnapped from a nearby town and sexually assaulted in the same year Jacob disappeared. In turn they would find several cases of young boys who had been kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and then released by a monster whose name I won't even type. Yet there was no police follow-up in any of the cases, and he was free to go on hurting children.

At first authorities and even Patty thought it could not have been the same man - he always let his victims go. But as they continued looking into the evidence and patterns, it became clear who the culprit was. And on that September day, he lead investigators to the field where he'd buried Jacob almost three decades earlier.

My entire childhood changed the night Jacob went missing. I was five at the time but even at that age, I understood something was now fundamentally different - forever. We could no longer just run across the neighbor's lawn to our friends' homes two or three houses away. Parents had eyes on us at all times, never more than a few feet away, always looking for danger. It was like the entire state of Minnesota had decided in an instant that children were never to be alone ever again.

And truly, it is why I hold Eleanor so close, even as she pushes back against boundaries at twelve. The thought of letting her go outside by herself to ride her bike or hover board or scooter makes me sick. I can not take my eyes off of her because I learned at a very young age what can happen if you do, and that core memory has pushed its way down so deeply into my bones, my very being. Even at the water park the other day, I could not let myself relax and enjoy my book while she played with new friends. Every ten seconds I was looking around, almost frantic until each time I would find her, blissfully unaware of my panic as she splashed and swam.

It's why I always have to make sure she enters the school doors before I drive away. Why I've taught her to yell, "MOM!" or "FIRE!" if she is in danger, because just yelling for help is not enough. Why I've endlessly drilled into her head, if something happens, DO NOT get taken to a second location, fight like hell with everything you have. Fight dirty, nothing is off limits - gouge the eyes, go for the kneecaps from the side, kicks to the groin repeatedly, over and over, do not stop fighting. From a young age, if anyone touched her inappropriately, to scream as loud as she could, "Stop touching me! Get away from me!" And I still feel like it is not enough to keep her safe.

I can not fathom the pain of losing a child at all, let alone in such a cruel way, and to just NOT KNOW for so long. Up until the end, until the man finally confessed, Patty held onto hope that Jacob was alive - even when logic dictated otherwise. Jaycee Dugard had come home, so had Elizabeth Smart, and the three young women who had been kidnapped in Cleveland and held captive for years, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight.

This was a gut-wrenching read and I sobbed through the last few chapters, when the end was finally in sight and we would know once and for all what happened to Jacob. In reality I knew most of it already from news reports, but hearing it from Patty herself was heartbreaking all over again. To explain the information her family received, finally knowing everything that had happened to him, how he'd asked to go home, how he was cold and scared and crying, was overwhelming. Patty did not have to share these most personal moments, but she chose to and I think part of the reason why is because so many felt like Jacob was ours, too. He was our brother or our friend, and even though it was this hugely awful thing, we would bear it together.

Highly, highly recommended.

Publicist Gift | The Girls are Gone

I received a free physical copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This shit is bananas. Grade A bananas. I'm from Minnesota - Rosemount to be exact, which is in the same school district as Eagan, Apple Valley, and Lakeville, so it was kind of weird as I read this and knew these places so well. I've also spent more than my fair share of time in Farmington and Hastings. Thank God I don't know anyone involved in this - especially the crazy mom who seems to have developed a severe personality disorder over night and also has a weird cadre of minions who harass anyone who calls her out on her crazy.

And really, it's not just the disappearance of the girls that is crazy, but the whole show, the entire thing from start to finish - including the weird performance art that the mom's lawyer put on by also being a complete lunatic. At least, I would hope it was some kind of performance art because as an attorney she sucked. Fun fact about this nutjob: she ran for a seat on the Minnesota Supreme Court and lost, thank goodness. Not long after that she was sentenced to electronic monitoring and probation for a DWI. I don't know what happened since then, but she is as bananas as her client, so I guess it all makes sense in the end.

The Girls are Gone tells the story of the Rucki family. David Rucki and Sandra Grazzini-Rucki had five children together and one day what seems to be out of the blue, Sandra wants to divorce. David agrees to it and is ultimately tricked into signing papers that actually left with the entirety of their combined debt, and literally nothing else. It speaks to how completely nuts this all is - why would he have trusted his soon-to-be-ex-wife and signed the documents if there was any history of any kind of crazy-ass nonsense on her part? If the family as a whole, or at least David and Sandra, had been dealing with her having some kind of personality disorder or mental illness, I highly doubt he would have just up and signed his name without reading. He trusted her. I am intrigued by this aspect specifically, because you can't just hide a mental illness in a 20-year marriage, so what happened to suddenly cause Sandra to do a complete about-face? Unfortunately, given the fact that she is psychotic, we will probably never get the truth - on any of this, actually. That is always the big question for me - why the fuck put your kids through that? And not just Samantha and Gianni, but the three left behind? Brainwashing all your kids into thinking their dad has molested them, that he is a horrible person, all of it. WHY? WHY? WHY? Just to hurt him? Again then, WHY? You fucked up your kids for life, though with good therapy they will likely be able to adjust. But seriously, WHY?

In the midst of all the chaos seven years ago, Samantha and Gianna Rucki vanished without a trace on night, just gone. We see their father working constantly with law enforcement, trying to do all he can to bring the girls home while also caring for the three remaining siblings. Their mother, on the other hand, just makes a big spectacle of her elfish ass by jetting off on random vacations and gambling in Vegas constantly, all despite being "broke". Sandra claims she wants what is best for her kids and that she is looking out for them. Yet when she had custody, the house became a hovel of filth and there's clearly not a whole lot of care going on. That custody is lost due to her literally self-sabotaging her own case, almost willfully ignorant of the fact that she can't just do whatever she wants and expect things to go her way. When she does inevitably lose custody, that is when she and one of her weirdo friends kidnap the girls and then promptly deposit them with total strangers for two and a half years. All the while David is still fighting the court system and the false charges leveled at him by his ex-wife. In the initial divorce decree Sandra said nothing about any abuse toward her or the kids. It was only after the initial decree was dismissed because of Cray-Cray's LYING to get David to sign papers in the first place that she starts shouting about him abusing her and molesting the kids. She claims there are photographs with many reports filed with the Lakeville Police Department. Want to know something really interesting though? LPD has ZERO reports and big surprise, Sandra is lying again. I can not imagine the emotional toll this took on David Rucki, who we actually do not hear from a whole lot throughout the book. While he is not a perfect parent, that does not exist, he comes across as the only parent in the situation who ACTUALLY cares about the well-being of the children.

Eventually the girls are found and returned home, but their experience is going to take years of therapy to undo. I looked up some information on this whole situation to kind of see where everything is at now. I highly recommend checking out the website that contains tons of addition information about the case, Missing in Minnesota. It is, you guessed it, BANANAS that this crazy-ass is still lying.

The book itself is written by those who know the case well and were involved. Michael Brodkorb is a journalist who covered the story, who has since been targeted by Sandra and her supporters with charges of harassment and other nonsense. You probably won't be surprised to know that her minions continue to harass and spout off about the case, when they don't actually know all that much about it. These supporters claim they want to overhaul the family court system because it is unfair, yet they willingly only believe whatever Sandra has told them about her case and haven't actually looked at reports and court transcripts. Luckily, the co-author is Allison Mann, who worked for David's attorney. Transcripts are included almost ad naseum, but I appreciate the technical details so those did not bother me as much as they appeared to bother other readers.

This is a must-read for true crime fans because just when you think the case can't get any more confusing or fucked up, a whole new level of insanity is unlocked.