Bad facts make bad law, and on October 22, 1989, some particularly dreadful facts were brewing.
Eleven year-old Jacob Wetterling lived in St. Joseph, Minnesota. He, his brother, and a friend were riding home from a convenience store on bikes, when a masked man came out of a driveway and ordered the boys to throw their bikes into a ditch and lie down on the ground. The man had a gun, so the boys complied. He asked each boy his age. Jacob’s brother and friend were told to run toward a nearby wooded area, but Jacob was taken away. A massive search effort was undertaken to locate Jacob, but neither he nor his abductor have been found. In 1994, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, 42 U.S.C. Section 14071, more simply known as the Jacob Wetterling Act, was passed in his honor.
Five years later, another horrendous crime would alter the landscape from sex offender registration to include community notification. Eight year-old Megan Kanka lived across the street from a man named Jesse Timmendequas, a convicted sex offender recently released from the New Jersey treatment-oriented correctional facility for sex offenders. On July 29, 1994, Timmendequas tricked Megan to come inside his house by saying he had a puppy that was too young to come outside. He proceeded to rape her, and tried to kill her by slamming her head into a dresser and suffocating her with a plastic bag. He finally strangled her to death with a belt. He moved her body to his car, where he raped her again before placing her in a toybox and dumping her in a park. A jury later convicted Timmendequas of Kanka's rape and murder and sentenced him to death. Megan Kanka's death resulted in the New Jersey Legislature passing Megan's Law, which requires notification when a convicted sex offender moves into a neighborhood. In 1996, the Jacob Wetterling Act was amended by Megan's Law. |
