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Stearns Co. Attorney On 'Making A Deal With The Devil'

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Stearns County attorney Janelle Kendall was faced with a difficult decision: Keep the child pornography charges against Danny Heinrich at the state level or bring the feds in, all the while knowing that the end game was to find Jacob Wetterling.

Kendall told WCCO's Dave Lee Heinrich is a volatile man.

"You know you are making a deal with the devil here," she said. "There is evil in this world, and the idea that we had this guy cornered so that we were at the point where we had him think about talking, absolutely it was a volatile situation."

Kendall says Heinrich was calculated and measured, sharing the details of what happened that October night in 1989.

"It actually flowed out of him quite quickly. I was frankly surprised at the amount of detail he provided in front of the family," she said.

She also says even with his statement, they were still not sure he was leading them in the right direction.

"You know he had taken us to a place to dig, and it didn't have the results we expected," she said.

The case has been hard on her personally as well, though she told Dave Lee her family just got a golden retriever puppy, which helps.

Heinrich is expected to be sentenced in November.

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