Why FindJodi Stays Quiet About Leads We Pursue and Private Investigations We’re Not a Part Of

Over the years, we’ve received many tips at FindJodi from the public about Jodi’s unsolved case. Some come to nothing. Others we pass along to law enforcement. When that happens, we don’t post about it, we don’t share it on social media, and we typically can’t even confirm it happened.

That’s by design, not by accident.

An active investigation depends on information staying controlled, sources being protected. If a tip is shared publicly before it’s been verified, it can tip off the wrong person, contaminate a witness’s memory of events, or make it tougher for investigators to tell a credible lead from a rumor that’s already been circulating online. It can also do real harm to an innocent person. With the scope of the internet, a name associated with an unverified claim can follow someone for years, long after that allegation is disproven or never substantiated at all. Just look at what happened to a music teacher named Dan Rassier, falsely accused in the Jacob Wetterling kidnapping and murder in Minnesota. Rassier was completely innocent, yet he and his family lived under a cloud of suspicion for years before the real killer confessed. As journalists, we take that risk seriously, and we’re not willing to gamble with someone’s reputation or safety for the sake of a headline.

Law enforcement can’t always explain publicly why they are not commenting on something, and neither can we, but that silence is often protecting the integrity of the investigative work being done, not just hiding a lack of progress.

This is also why we typically decline news media requests to weigh in on other private investigations that make the news, including ones we are not a part of and have no direct involvement in.  And occasionally some of the stories in the news are about leads FindJodi, founded in 2003, followed that we were not able to substantiate or found not to be true.

In our background as journalists, we didn’t routinely comment publicly on other reporters’ investigative work unless we had independently verified the information on our own. That same standard carries over to FindJodi’s policy today.

Unless we have direct knowledge of the sources and the facts involved, we don’t think it is journalistically sound to offer an opinion. That standard matters even more when a story is built around anonymous sources or an unnamed suspect, since there is no way for us, or anyone outside that reporting, to independently evaluate what information has actually been confirmed. We’d rather say nothing than speculate about claims we can’t verify ourselves.

It’s also why we’ve often been quoted simply saying “no comment” when a reporter reaches out to FindJodi to ask us to react to a private development in Jodi’s case. That short answer reflects care, not indifference or a brush off. It’s a deliberate choice to stay within what we can actually stand behind.

We understand this kind of response can look like nothing is happening. Still, there’s not a single day when someone on our FindJodi team isn’t digging, talking to sources, or following up on a tip, work you’ll never likely hear about unless it leads somewhere. It’s easy to mistake public activity for real progress, and just as easy to mistake quiet, methodical work for inaction. In our experience, the two aren’t the same.

Some of the most important developments in cold cases happen well out of public view before anyone outside the investigation ever hears about them. That was certainly the case in the Wetterling investigation in 2015 when much progress was made quietly behind the scenes in the eventual development of Danny Heinrich as the prime suspect who finally led law enforcement to Jacob, 27 years after he was murdered.

Our role at FindJodi has never been to be the loudest voice in the search for Jodi. It’s to make sure real information reaches the people who can actually act on it, and to protect the integrity of that information, and people connected to it, along the way.

We know waiting for answers is hard. Thirty one years is a long time to wait. But we’d rather be quietly useful than loudly visible, and we believe that is what actually serves Jodi and her family the best.

As someone who spent decades as a crime reporter, I’ve made this point in interviews before. It’s my nature to always want to know everything, and there were plenty of times a “no comment” frustrated me too. But I also want justice and answers for victims ,i and that only happens when an investigation is done well, not when it’s done too fast or in public.