So who caught up with the boys on the dark road that night and grabbed Jacob? And why him, and him alone?

From the start the FBI and child abduction experts believed the circumstances were highly unusual.

The vast majority of child abductions are done by family members. They usually stem from some sort of custody dispute. Since stranger abductions are so rare, the first people scrutinized are those closest to the child.

Jacob in his fifth-grade school photo. The image adorned flyers sent coast to coast.

Patty and Jerry Wetterling were quickly eliminated as suspects.

Jerry, who is white, was the president of the local chapter of the NAACP. Investigators wondered if the kidnapping was a hate crime.

There were even early rumors that Jerry, a chiropractor, was himself involved. Authorities believe this rumor was fueled by people's unfamiliarity with Jerry’s religion. He is a Ba’hai. (Central to this religion is the belief that all people are of one race. They must unite to defeat prejudice and bring about world peace.)

Then there was the problem of child witnesses and the gun.

“What was unique about it was that we never had a kidnapping where there were witnesses and someone at gunpoint took the child in front of other children,” said Paul McCabe, a Minnesota FBI agent.

What Trevor Wetterling and Aaron Larsen described
– a mask, a gun and a selection process – spawned a variety of theories.

Jacob holding new-born brother Trevor. Jacob often slept with his arm around his younger brother.

The use of a mask suggested to some that the kidnapper might have been known in the community and was trying to shield his identity. Perhaps the boys even knew him.

But the boys were in close physical proximity to the kidnapper, and heard his voice several times. They never identified the criminal as someone in particular.

Investigators also could not recall an instance of a stranger child kidnapping in which a gun was involved. When pedophiles take children, it is for sex. They do not want to harm them physically. The gun suggests that violence was perhaps the kidnapper’s motive.

Another theory is that the abductor stalked Jacob. The secluded crime scene suggests that the abductor did not just stumble upon the scene. And the reports of a suspicious man at the Tom Thumb store appear to back that up.

Later, Jerry Wetterling recalled a moment from earlier on the day of the abduction that could also lend support to the stalker theory.

That afternoon, Jerry and his two sons were skating at a hockey tryout. There were about 20 spectators. Suddenly, Jacob slipped out of sight.

“It was very strange but very real,” Jerry remembered. “I had this sense of danger for Jacob. I can almost point to the spot on the ice where it happened to this day.”

After relocating his son, Jerry’s feeling subsided. He thought nothing of it until a few days after the abduction.

“It prompted me to wonder if possibly the abductor had been in the ice arena at that time, in a sense looking at Jacob or stalking him,” Jerry said.

Also baffling was the kidnapper’s selection process. Abductors are generally not so picky. Presumably, the kidnapper knew a bit about what he was getting if he had stalked the boys.