A serial rapist serving a 45-year prison term for a string of sexual assaults in southeast Minneapolis between 2015 and 2020 has been sentenced for the 2013 abduction and physical assault of a 16-year-old girl at Bunker Hills Regional Park in Andover.

DNA from the girl’s water bottle found at the scene of the park attack matched Jory Daniel Wiebrand’s DNA, which was in the system because of his 2020 sexual assault charges, according to the criminal complaint filed in Anoka County District Court in October 2022.

Jory Daniel Wiebrand (Courtesy of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office)

Wiebrand pleaded guilty last fall to kidnapping and first-degree aggravated robbery, and an attempted first-degree sexual conduct charge was dismissed as part of an agreement with Anoka County prosecutors. Wiebrand, 38, was sentenced Friday to a nearly 16-year prison term that will be served at the same time with his current incarceration.

Wiebrand, of Ham Lake, was arrested in April 2020 in connection with a pair of home invasions involving young women in Minneapolis’ Marcy-Holmes neighborhood, near the University of Minnesota, that occurred the previous June and August. Once his DNA was on file, police were able to link him with several unsolved crimes that went back to June 2013.

The Hennepin County attorney’s office filed 13 cases against Wiebrand in 2020. He faced 29 charges, including six counts of first-degree criminal sexual assault, two counts of attempted first-degree criminal sexual assault, five counts of criminal predatory conduct and four counts each of first-degree burglary and false imprisonment.

According to court documents, Wiebrand attacked one woman as she cleaned snow off her car. He assaulted another in her yard after she returned from shopping. He attacked a third as she entered her home and a fourth as she was on her way to a bus stop. The fifth he attacked in her home just as she got out of the shower. In several cases, he subdued the women with pepper spray if they fought back.

In January 2021, Wiebrand pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct. In March of that year, he was given a negotiated sentence that totaled 550 months in prison, followed by conditional release for the rest of his life. Wiebrand had no prior convictions beyond minor traffic offenses.

Park attack

Back on June 11, 2013, at about 5:15 p.m., Anoka County sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of an abduction that had just occurred near the Bunker Hills’ overlook.

The teen said she was walking home on a trail when an unknown male ran up behind her, grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into a wooded area with tall grass. She said he told her that if she screamed, he would kill her. He put her into a headlock and choked her until she passed out. She estimated that she was passed out for approximately 1 minute, then woke up and saw him running away from her. He took her cell phone.

The girl, who had eye injuries consistent with being choked, gave detectives a description of the attacker. Detectives were unable to develop any solid leads on the identity of her attacker until seven years later, when Wiebrand’s DNA profile from the Minneapolis cases was a match for a DNA profile taken from the girl’s water bottle.

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