"(Excerpt from an article about the Wetterling abduction written by Steve Irsay of Court TV News) ... ---------------------- ... ''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. ... ... 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. ... ''In the Wetterling case the first conclusion was that it was a sexual abduction,'' said Prof. Paula Fass, who discusses the case in her book, Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America. ''The conclusion has been that when that type of selection takes place there is a preference being expressed for a certain age.'' But Fass added that the age selection is not necessarily for a sexual purpose. ... Jim Rothstein, a retired New York Police Department detective currently researching the disappearance, goes so far as to suggest that Jacob was captured by a pedophile ring. These rings, Rothstein asserts, procure and trade boys. ... "
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