Reporting by Holly Marie Moore, Special to the St. Cloud Times
The documentary “Echoes in the Night: The Search for Jacob Wetterling” had its world premiere this spring at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Fest; now it is headed to theaters in central Minnesota, closer to where Jacob lived.
Newberry took 10 years to film the documentary that follows the 1989 abduction of Jacob Wetterling of St. Joseph. Newberry started shooting the film in 2015.
On August 8 there will be a screening and benefit event at the Paramount Center for the Arts in St. Cloud. This will be the first time the film will be shown to Stearns County audiences.
This August, the film will also be shown in St. Joseph, Cold Spring and St. Michael, plus a run at the Woodbury 10 Theatre. It will also show at the Main Cinema in Minneapolis.
The film’s director, Chris Newberry, will be doing Q & As at some of the screenings, as will Patty and Jerry Wetterling; Jared Scheierl, the victim of Jacob’s kidnapper who provided crucial evidence in the case; and Joy Baker, co-author of Patty Wetterling’s book “Dear Jacob: A Mother’s Journey of Hope.”
Newberry, Patty and Jerry Wetterling, Scheierl and Baker will be at a Q & A at the St. Cloud screening, which will include a reception, opportunities to connect with local resources, and fundraising opportunities for the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center and Central Minnesota’s Child Response Initiative.
“The legacy of the Wetterling family and their love for their son have kept us motivated during the ten years needed to tell the story in Echoes in the Night,” said director Chris Newberry in a release. “We’re so proud to finally be able to share the deepest account of what happened not only to a family but to a community. It was incredibly lucky that we started filming just as the perpetrator responsible for Jacob’s abduction was apprehended, and it’s an incredible privilege to have the Wetterling family involved in the screenings as we share how their work made the world a safer place for the next generation of children.”
Excerpts from “Echoes in the Night” were presented on ABC’s flagship investigative series “20/20,” which devoted a two-hour episode to the Jacob Wetterling story on Friday, July 17. The broadcast revisited the case with new insights and featured an interview with Newberry. It is now available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.
Screenings of the documentary include:
- Aug. 8 at the Paramount Center for the Arts, St. Cloud, MN Opening night benefit evening. Q&A with Patty & Jerry Wetterling, Jared Scheierl, Joy Baker, and Chris Newberry. Tickets.
- Aug. 20–27 at theSt. Michael Cinema 15, St. Michael Multiple showings each day. Tickets.
- Aug 20: 6:30 p.m. screening includes a Q&A with Chris Newberry.
- Aug. 21–27 at The Quarry Cinema, Cold Spring. Multiple showings each day. Tickets.
- Aug. 22: 6 p.m. screening includes Q&A with Jared Scheierl, Joy Baker, and Chris Newberry.
- Aug. 24: 5 p.m. screening includes Q&A with Patty & Jerry Wetterling and Chris Newberry.
- Aug. 25 at the Woodbury 10 Theatre, Woodbury 6:30 p.m. screening includes Q&A with Chris Newberry. Tickets.
- Aug. 28 – Sept. 3 atThe Main Cinema, Minneapolis
Why did the director make a documentary about Jacob Wetterling?
The Minnesota filmmaker said his motivations for following 11-year-old Jacob’s story go further back than the time it took him to make it.
“It really dates back very far to my teenage years. I was 15 in 1989 when Jacob was abducted, living in the Twin Cities, and so it was, we were inundated with news about it, especially there in the early years,” he said in an earlier interview.
“I was kind of at that right age, [at a] similar point in life to Jacob, and so it really impacted me.”
Newberry eventually became a filmmaker and later a father himself.
“Around 2014/2015, I saw that they were doing a new billboard campaign with Jacob’s photo, sort of renewing the public information campaign about Jacob still being missing,” he said.
“It just sort of made me think, well maybe this could be my next project.”
Newberry reached out to the Wetterling family and got to know them.
“[I] tried to get on the same page as to what this might look like and they agreed to do it,” he said. “I thought it was going to be a retrospective piece that was a lot of interviews, looking back and speculating on where is Jacob?”
But as it happened, Newberry and his team started filming when perpetrator Danny Heinrich was arrested.
“Immediately it turned into the kind of film where there was breaking news, and we kind of had to be on alert to get to places,” Newberry said.
“The Wetterlings are used to having a media scrum around over the years, but the way the film was envisioned, I had never imagined I’d be part of a media scrum, and we became that.”
Newberry said there were stretches of time where there were frustratingly no answers.
“Even after Danny Heinrich was arrested, our production was underway, there was a 10-month period where we didn’t, no one knew for sure, (know) whether or not he was the perpetrator of Jacob’s crime,” he said.
“I really felt for the family during that time, I mean it’s hard not to feel for the family in everything they’ve gone through, but to sort of see that up close during our production, during that 10-month period, it was, that was an incredibly stressful thing to go through for them.”
In September 2016 the U.S. Department of Justice released a news release stating Heinrich, 53, “pleaded guilty today to federal child pornography charges. As part of his allocution, Heinrich admitted in court that on October 22,1989, he abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling.”
It read in part, “Investigators recovered Wetterling’s remains on Sept. 2; nearly 27 years after his disappearance from St. Joseph Township, Minnesota.”
Newberry felt for the family through this challenging time.
“The Wetterlings in their press conference after the confession basically said to everyone, ‘Hey, give us some space to grieve,’” Newberry said. “Our production did that along with everyone else.”
Newberry has been making final edits on the film in the last few months.
“All that work has been kind of a hyperfocus of mine. … Now that we’re actually a few days away from the premiere, I can actually start to think about it,” he said.
“I’m so happy that the Wetterlings and the other folks have been supportive all along the way,” he said, “but especially now that it’s time for people to see it, they’ve been really great about helping us promote the screening.”
This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times.
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