After startled cry, UND senior vanishes (Dru Sjodin)

Star Tribune ^ | November 25, 2003 | Chuck Haga and Richard Meryhew

[maggief]

GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- Dru Sjodin finished her shift at the Victoria's Secret store at 4 p.m. Saturday, then did a little shopping at another store in the Columbia Mall in Grand Forks.

As she walked to her car, the 22-year-old University of North Dakota senior from Pequot Lakes, Minn., used her cell phone to call her boyfriend in the Twin Cities. They talked for about 10 minutes, he later told authorities, until the call ended with a startled cry from Dru:

"Oh, my God! No!"

Nobody has heard from her since.

A few hours later, there was a second brief and voiceless call to her boyfriend, and the signal from her cell phone was tracked to a rural area near Fisher, Minn., 13 miles southeast of Grand Forks.

Throughout the city Monday, people took up her disbelieving cry: "Oh, my God, No!"

(snip)

[Ispy4u]

Hey!! (|:-o

Sometimes I get the feeling you're watching me.

[irgbar-man]

Follow up: The print edition of the Pioneer Press says that the boyfriend will be questioned at the MN Bureau of Criminal Apprehension today. I looked for that snippet on their website, and it's not included.

[Justa]

Yeah, if the boyfriend had called the cops that = Caller ID and a recording of the call which would be subject to a voice stress analysis test. He could have set his cell phone in the Twin Cities to auto answer and called using her cell phone to establish an alibi. Then he uses a land line to call the roommate to express concern to back up his alibi. But he'd have to know beforehand whether she had Caller ID or not which he probably would have if he'd called there a lot.

Two things are not in the 'boyfriend's' favor:

-She's in college 300 miles away.

-The "other friend" who "wanted more out of the relationship" -i.e. a new boyfriend. She may have been trying to dump him.

So there are Method and Motive for him committing the crime. I suspect the police will offer him a polygraph.

[Eaker]

I never sleeps!!

;<)

I am curious as to your hunch's accuracy.......

[Catspaw]

The print edition of the Pioneer Press says that the boyfriend will be questioned at the MN Bureau of Criminal Apprehension today.

Probably gave him a lie detector test.

[Askel5]

I'm not interested in "preventive" measures to combat real crime.

I'm interested only in dispelling the notion that pornography is a morally neutral thing worth of the special protections the Supreme Court regularly accords it now that it's been Personally Interpreted to be "Free Speech" somehow.

[gcruse]

Yes, we know. Condemning someone else's guilty pleasure is the first step to making it illegal. It's hard enough to live my own life. I am impressed by people who live theirs and try to live everyone else's too.

[Ispy4u]

Perfect circumstances make me wonder.

Some on this thread think I'm just making an accusation with no basis in reality.

But I wouldn't dare do that, would I?

[cherry]

"And what is a "porn addict" anyway?"

my own opinion is that a porn addict is some guy who takes away time from his wife and family to view porn, who's relationships with that wife and family are suffering because of it, and who increasingly spends spare time doing nothing else but porn; he also is a guy who is losing out at his work, with his friends, etc.....his "real" sex life is abysmal....

[null and void]

Damm. Just damm...

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I pray they find her unharmed. I really do. But I do not think this will have a happy ending.

[Askel5]

Have you ever once seen me argue that porn should be illegal?


Clue: You never will.


THAT SAID, neither do I think the State has the right to force the private obsessions and 'guilty pleasures' of assorted losers by according porn the status of "Free Speech" and consistently ruling in its favor ... right down to protecting childsex porn so long as "real" children were not used in the production of a real ejaculation.

[Eaker]

Some on this thread think I'm just making an accusation with no basis in reality.

The timing of the call is what struck me as being too convienent.

The call lasted ten minutes. There are 144 ten minute segments in a day and he was talking to her in just the right segment???

Makes ya go hmmmmmmmm........

[gcruse]

THAT SAID, neither do I think the State has the right to force the private obsessions and 'guilty pleasures' of assorted losers by according porn the status of "Free Speech" and consistently ruling in its favor

Heh.  Clockwork Orange to the contrary, respecting the right of adults to indulge in adult pleasures is not forcing these same  pleasures into propped-open eyes of
the unwilling any more than a speaker at the public square is forcing views into
the passerby in the act of speaking them.  Porn is, indeed, free speech.  All else
follows.

[Askel5]

=== Clockwork Orange to the contrary, respecting the right of adults to indulge in adult pleasures is not forcing these same pleasures into propped-open eyes of
the unwilling any more than a speaker at the public square is forcing views into
the passerby in the act of speaking them


Again, you yourself beg the question: are images the same thing as speech?

I find it curious in the extreme that a society which accepts absolutely the notion of the body as a machine receptive to stimuli ... Naked Apes whose involuntary responses to porn (did you know women like it as much as men?) can be measured ... is going to equate pornographic images with the Spoken Word.

For starters, people must actually Listen (a lost art) and Understand (rotsa ruck) in order to be influenced in the least by an utterance of an Idea.

And it's Ideas, was it not, that were the substance of Free Speech? What is exactly is the Idea conveyed by images geared solely to excite a person into not thinking so much.

Isn't "Free Speech" precisely and by definition the stuff of the Public Square? Diogenes and Girls Gone Wild aside, how many of us really think to convey ideas or persuade others to a cause by masturbating to pictures in the public square?

The whole thing's absurd.



=== respecting the right of adults to indulge in adult pleasures is not forcing these same pleasures into propped-open eyes of the unwilling

Do you have kids? Because if you had kids you'd realize they're like sponges who take in everything and question what they don't understand.

I sat down to watch the Super Bowl with my grandfather this year -- made treats, had trays at the ready for supper -- and was humiliated.

All the time I was growing up, Super Bowl Sunday was a family affair. I can only hope my sister's kis -- very bright, observant children -- were off playing during the commercials. Why should I need to explain what a threesome is to a nine-year old if he wants to know why everyone was laughing at the Bud commercial?

It's become so pedestrian, I don't think it even registers with most anymore.

Porn as "Free Speech" is a giant sucking sound ... black holes of nerve endings to monitor where the thinking brain used to be.

[Ispy4u]

One things for sure, if we're suspicious you know there's a buttload of MN and ND cops giving him a long hard look.

[gcruse]

Again, you yourself beg the question: are images the same thing as speech?

Yes.
And don't drag kids into this. The subject is adults.

[Palladin]

[B]As she walked to her car, the 22-year-old University of North Dakota senior from Pequot Lakes, Minn., used her cell phone to call her boyfriend in the Twin Cities. They talked for about 10 minutes, he later told authorities, until the call ended with a startled cry from Dru.[/B]

Apparently she called him. Cellphone records will bear this out.

I often see people walking to their cars calling their SO's either to make plans for later, or just to say "hi!" I find nothing at all suspicious in the young man's telling of events.

After all, he was some 300 miles away, and I am sure there are eyewitnesses to his whereabouts, or the police would not suspect a stranger abduction.

[Askel5]

Again, you yourself beg the question: are images the same thing as speech? Yes.

I'm fascinated. Tell how this can be.

And don't drag kids into this. The subject is adults.

Oh please ... children can be the subject of "Free Speech" too (as long as they're faked). Supreme Court said so. Why can't kids be a part of the discussion?

They listen to radio, watch TV, read billboards, go through their parents' stuff. Given the push in Britain and elsewhere to lower the age of consent, I think minors -- especially including those 13 year old boys of whom you spoke -- initially certainly should be part of any porn discussion.

My own introduction to skin magazines came in first grade. I was what, 7, 8? The 4th (or was it 5th) grader next door would share her brothers' Playboys and we'd play at modeling.

Granted, we're talking '69-'70 Playboys. Pretty tame (and almost classy) stuff on which to imprint. But kids are in, baby. Nowadays, there's no need for sussing out Dad or your brother's secret stash. Girls can get far more explicit notions of sex and being sexy than I did just by watching MTV or going to the movies.

In fact ... if I may be so bold as to get the ball rolling on your compare/contrast of Images and Word where "Free Speech" is concerned ... I'd say one difference between images and speech is that even children can "get the message" from an image well before they are first-grade literate.

Stories of Anais Nin would have been totally lost on me until at least 7th grade, if then. But images of the same story might have had their effect on sight.

[PurVirgo]

ditto that. When I got robbed at work (at gunpoint), the first words out of my mouth were Oh My God!!

Now, if he had snuck up on me inside the store, instead of outside, I don't think I would have had time to say anything.