Appeals Court Upholds Dismissal Of Dan Rassier's Lawsuit Against Jacob Wetterling Investigators
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- An appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit against Stearns County and investigators in the Jacob Wetterling case filed by a man who authorities publicly named as a person of interest in the boy's disappearance.
Dan Rassier's lawsuit, which accused investigators of botching the Wetterling investigation and damaging Rassier's reputation, was filed in 2017 and dismissed by a judge in March 2020.
Rassier's appeal was denied Friday. He was seeking $2 million in damages from the defendants.
Danny Heinrich confessed in September 2017 to Wetterling's 1989 abduction, sexual assault and murder, ending a mystery that spanned nearly three decades. The Stearns County Sheriff's Office publicly named Rassier as a person of interest in the case in 2010 and served a search warrant, digging up his farm.
Rassier's lawsuit called the investigators' pursuit of him as a suspect "the strangest, most embarrassing moment in the annals of Minnesota case criminal investigation for the highest profile Minnesota case."
