The Wetterling Case and the Monsters -- Part Two, The Serial Killer Down the Block

Tina's house

The house is painted red now, but it was white in the 1970s. It was a non-descript home, probably built in the 1920s or 1930s, on Pine Street, in Appleton, Wisconsin, just east of Prospect Avenue, one of the main arterials on the southwest side of the city. I grew up in a house about three blocks away, on Outagamie Street, near Alicia Park. It was on my paper route and I delivered newspapers there. I also walked by the house dozens of times during my childhood.

There was a girl who lived in the house. She was a classmate of mine at Jefferson Elementary School. Her name was Tina and what I remember about her is that she was tough -- not exactly a tomboy, but a girl who had not an ounce of sugar and spice in her. She hung around with some of the more sketchy kids in the class, but she was a mutual friend of one of my best friends growing up. I'd talk to Tina from time to time, mostly when I had to, but I didn't know her well. It's been about 40 years since I spoke to her last. I don't really know where she lives now, or if she's even alive at all.

Tina had a brother who was about five years older than she was. His name is James Duquette. And he is a serial killer.

I didn't know Anne Preimesberger, but I knew other people who did. She was 18 in 1980, a student at East High School, and she worked at a restaurant on the south edge of town. Although I can't find a picture of her, she was attractive and the people I knew said she was a nice girl. After a shift at the restaurant, she disappeared one day and didn't come home. As it turned out, she had the misfortune of encountering James Duquette, who raped her and murdered her, then dumped her body near an overpass. James Duquette raped and murdered a 14-year old girl, Tara Kassens, in 1987, and he is suspected in the deaths of at least two others, although there isn't enough physical evidence available to tie him to the crimes. He is currently serving four life terms in Massachusetts for crimes he committed there.

It took eleven years to bring James Duquette to justice. It took twenty-seven to bring Danny Heinrich to justice. You don't always know where the monsters are. And that is the source of our fear.

The Wetterling Case and the Monsters -- Part One, Biggie Rat

How do you approach the horror of it? The chances that a child, any child, will meet a monster are vanishingly small, but yet on that day, nearly 27 years ago, Jacob Wetterling met a monster. And now we know what happened.

What bothers me more about the Wetterling case aren't the details themselves, as horrific as they are. What bothers me more is how one man, Danny Heinrich, did so much to fundamentally alter the childhoods of millions of Americans. I wrote about this briefly yesterday, but it deserves amplification. I was born fifteen years before Jacob Wetterling. I grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin, a town that's about the same size as St. Cloud. The Wetterlings lived outside of St. Cloud, in a somewhat rural area. The landscape Jacob Wetterling knew wasn't much different than what we saw growing up in Wisconsin. When I was young, I didn't have to worry about my safety, as long as I was careful and didn't take stupid chances.

We did worry about monsters, though. It would have been about 1970 or so when the kid rumor mill went nuts in Appleton about an evil guy named Biggie Rat.

Biggie Rat, wearing his cape, with an assortment of the local citizenry

He hung out mostly on the east side of town and apparently spent a lot of time in the cemeteries. He wore a cape and carried a sword. He supposedly was a big fan of satanic rituals and the stories we would hear and share on the St. Therese playgrounds made him into a figure of great fear. I was in the second grade at the time and we heard the wildest things about him. He'd killed people. He would take you to the cemetery and do horrible things to you. He had supernatural powers. We also heard he had a nemesis named Biggie Cat, who was coming to get Biggie Rat.

I was genuinely terrified of this guy. Looking back, the whole thing was ridiculous. Biggie Rat was just a guy who was looking for attention. In the end, he was harmless. But there was a real monster in Appleton at that time, although we didn't know it yet. And we'll come back to that.