Items Found in Search for UND Student (Dru Sjodin)

Associated Press ^ | Nov. 26, 2003 | DAVE KOLPACK

[maggief]

GRAND FORKS, N.D. - Volunteer searchers have turned up several "items of interest" in the disappearance of a University of North Dakota student, but nothing that has led investigators to Dru Sjodin.

Police on Tuesday sifted through discarded paper, clothes and other items gathered by hundreds of volunteers - some on their knees in the snow - in hopes of finding a cell phone or other links to Sjodin (pronounced shah-deen), who was last heard from over the weekend.

Police would not elaborate on the items that were found. Sgt. Michael Hedlund said they did not appear to be significant to the case.

The items were found in searches of ditches and fields southeast of Grand Forks, near Fisher, Minn., where a call had been traced to Sjodin's cell phone Saturday night. Grand Forks and Fisher are about 12 miles apart.

Grand Forks police said 1,300 people volunteered on Tuesday to join the search, a response so overwhelming they asked others to stay home.

Police believe Sjodin, 22, may have been abducted Saturday. They said Tuesday that they were working on the assumption she is still alive.

"We have nothing to indicate otherwise," Hedlund said.

The searchers were bused to the Fisher area, snow covered the ground and the the wind made the temperature feel like 10 below zero.

Hannah Schlag, a UND student from Velva, was in a group of 12 walking through one five-mile section covered with snow.

"My ankles are getting a little numb, going through the deep stuff," she said. "But I feel this is what I should be doing right now. Biology doesn't seem that important."

Sjodin's father, Allan, and Hedlund appeared on television Tuesday morning to show Dru Sjodin's picture and ask for help.

The search was to resume Wednesday, but only with law enforcement personnel, Hedlund said. Authorities also are awaiting results from the state crime lab, which is analyzing Sjodin's car.

Sjodin, a graphic arts major from Pequot Lakes, Minn., was last seen late Saturday afternoon, as she was leaving the Columbia Mall store in Grand Forks where she worked. Her mother, Linda Walker, said her daughter was talking to her boyfriend in Minneapolis on her cell phone about 5 p.m. Saturday when he heard her say, "Oh, my God," before the phone went dead.

The boyfriend, whom authorities would not identify, called Sjodin's roommate to ask about her after a second call about three hours later that lasted only about a minute, with no conversation. The roommate called police after Sjodin, who had a reputation for reliability, did not show up for her 9 p.m. shift as a waitress in a Grand Forks bar.

Lt. Dennis Eggebraaten said he did not know why Sjodin's boyfriend did not call police.

"I'm not going to guess what was going on in his mind at the time," Eggebraaten said.

Police said the second cell phone signal put it within about five miles of the tower near Fisher from about 8 p.m. Saturday until the signal faded out 24 hours later.

Police said Sjodin's car was found in a Columbia Mall parking lot with a package inside that she apparently had bought at the mall. They found no sign of a struggle.

[sissyjane]

I don't think it was the boyfriend, more likely the stalker that had been harassing her.

[Dead Dog]

did not show up for her 9 p.m. shift as a waitress in a Grand Forks bar.

Check the regulars, stalkers are drawn to waitresses, cocktailers in particular.

[null and void]

It might be illuminating to see which regular didn't show either...

[BabsC]

People on these threads can't handle loose ends.

The loose end here is if you're on the phone with someone you care about and they suddenly say Oh God! and you lose the connection what do you do?

Not only did he wait 3 hours he only called the roommate when a second connection was made with no input from the caller.

I just know how protective my husband is of me and if we lost a connection that way there would be hell raised right then and right there if he didn't immediately get back in touch with me to find out what was going on.

[jocon307]

"People on these threads can't handle loose ends."

Very cute, I like it!

[Catspaw]

I don't know if this should be a separate thread, but I found these articles today.  I hope everyone in the area is being EXTREMELY careful.

It's under 50 miles from Grand Forks ND to Fertile MN:

FERTILE, MINN.: Woman is injured in abduction attempt
Too early to say if related to Sjodin case, officials say
By Paulette Tobin
Herald Staff Writer

A young woman was abducted from a parking lot in Fertile, Minn., on Friday but managed to escape by leaping from a moving vehicle, authorities said.

She was taken to a nearby hospital for medical attention, but authorities would not comment on her age and the nature or extent of her injuries.

Authorities didn't know late Friday if the incident was related to the Nov. 22 abduction and disappearance of Dru Sjodin from Columbia Mall in Grand Forks, Polk County Sheriff Mark LeTexier said.

"We have no correlation ... (between the cases) because we are in the early stages," LeTexier said.

Lt. Dennis Eggebraaten, a lead detective in the Grand Forks Police Department involved in the Sjodin case, said Friday night his department will take a look at the Fertile situation.

Law enforcement learned of the Fertile abduction attempt from a 911 call that came from a Fertile residence at 7:36 p.m. Friday, LeTexier said.

The young woman had just closed the Hartz grocery store and was walking to her car when the abduction attempt occurred. Authorities said the abductor, believed to be an adult male, came up behind the woman and that she did not see him. LeTexier said he couldn't speak to whether a weapon was used, and no description of the vehicle was given.

With the investigation just begun Friday night, LeTexier said he didn't know how long the woman had been in the vehicle after she was taken, or how far the vehicle had traveled.

"The victim, at one point during the ride, opened the door and leaped from the vehicle," he said. "She got up and ran to a residence in Fertile, and someone called 911. And within minutes, the Polk County Sheriff's office arrived."

In addition to sheriff's officials, local police, the Minnesota State Patrol, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Department of Natural Resources and other agencies were in Fertile on Friday night investigating.

In light of the abduction attempt, LeTexier asked citizens to be vigilant.

"Just think about personal safety when the sun goes down, especially if you are female," he said. "Use the buddy system. Let people know where you are and where you're going. Just be safety conscious, is all we're asking."

 

Abduction attempt roils Fertile, Minn.

Chuck Haga, Star Tribune
Published November 29, 2003	DRU29

GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- The teletype alert flashed through his office in Hallock, Minn., last weekend -- a young woman was missing and feared abducted in Grand Forks -- and Kittson County Sheriff Kenny Hultgren felt it in the pit of his stomach.

"Everything came flashing back about Julie," he said Friday. "With Dru, it's a cold, cruel reminder that this is something that'll be with us all our lives."

In Hallock and in Brainerd, Hibbing, Moose Lake and Cannon Falls, small Minnesota towns where communal heartbreak has a young face and a first name -- Julie, Erika, Katie, LeeAnna, Jessica -- the apparent abduction of 22-year-old Dru Sjodin a week ago today was a sharp stick poked into still healing wounds.

And tragedy nearly struck again Friday night in a case that is eerily similar to the Sjodin case.

In Fertile, Minn., about 50 miles southeast of Grand Forks, authorities said a girl leaving her job at a grocery store was forced into a car but managed almost immediately to escape.

Officers from the Minnesota State Patrol, area police departments and other agencies, many of whom had been working on Sjodin case, established a command center in Fertile.

Polk County Sheriff Mark LeTexier said the girl, whose name and age were not released, "was able to escape the vehicle and run to a Fertile residence" after the abduction attempt at about 7:30 p.m. Friday.

She was receiving medical attention "at a nearby medical facility," he said, but he wasn't sure of the extent of her injuries. She apparently was not able to give police a description of the man or the car, which sped away.

"She just ran," LeTexier said. "She didn't look back."

He said it's too early in the investigation to speak to any correlation between the Fertile case and the Sjodin case.

He said the attempted abduction, coming so soon after Sjodin's disappearance, is another blow to the region's sense of security.

"By morning, it's going to be reeling around here," he said. "But we have a lot of people converging on Fertile right now, and they know what they're doing. They'll be working 100 miles an hour on this."

A week ago today, Sjodin, a University of North Dakota senior from Pequot Lakes, Minn., was talking on her cell phone with her boyfriend in the Twin Cities when the call ended with a startled cry. She has not been seen since.

Eight agents from the FBI's Minneapolis office arrived in Grand Forks on Friday to help. They joined seven other agents and officers from two dozen local, state and federal agencies in a joint task force.

"This is a long-haul investigation," Grand Forks police Capt. Mike Kirby said.

Sjodin's father, Allan, said at a news conference Friday that the family has "100 percent faith that she's alive and out there," and he vowed to continue looking for her. "I will not be leaving Grand Forks until my daughter has been returned to me."

Family members wore buttons with Dru's picture and the words, "Come home, Dru Sjodin."

"It's not right without you here," said Janelle Sjodin, one of Dru's cousins. "I keep looking around for your face. We're going to get you. We're not giving up. We're not giving up ever."

Family members plan to pass out buttons today at the Columbia Mall, her last known location.

Allan Sjodin said he last spoke with his daughter about 12 days ago as she was driving from Park Rapids, Minn., to Grand Forks.

There had been "some questions" about a person making unwanted advances, he said, but she didn't appear to be fearful. "Not that I could tell," he said.

As time goes on

Hultgren was a deputy sheriff in July 1998 when Julie Holmquist, 16, disappeared while roller-blading on a country road near Hallock.

Her body was found in an abandoned gravel pit about three weeks later. In January, more than four years later, police were closing in on the man they believe killed her when he committed suicide.

"The longer the investigation goes on, as we found out, the harder it is to hold onto hope," Hultgren said. "In our case, the end result wasn't good. But you have to hold onto hope, and I know that's what they're doing with Dru."

Dave Bjerga, special agent in charge of northern Minnesota for the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and a veteran of the earlier abductions, spent Thanksgiving Day counseling Grand Forks police and other officers that "there will be ups and downs."

He passed along tips that investigators had gleaned from working the Holmquist case and others: Katie Poirier, 19, abducted from a Moose Lake convenience store and killed in 1999; Erika Dalquist, 21, not seen since she left a downtown Brainerd bar on Oct. 30, 2002; LeeAnna Warner, 5, who vanished in June after walking to a friend's house in Chisholm, and Jessica Swanson, 3, who disappeared from her home in Cannon Falls in 1995.

Investigators didn't find Jessica's body until 1999, after her mother's boyfriend confessed to the killing. Donald Blom was sentenced to life in 2000 for kidnapping and killing Poirier.

"We try to learn from each one so we don't commit the same mistakes," Bjerga said. "We're getting better each time, getting up to speed as quickly as possible."

More than 40 officers worked on the Sjodin case on Thanksgiving Day.

"They're finding that things in our own personal lives are secondary right now," Bjerga said. "When you're not at the command center, your mind still can't get away. Every time the cell phone rings, you think that might be the call. You're so focused, it becomes your life."

'What do we do now?'

In Goodhue County, authorities marked time on a wall calendar the first few days after Jessica's disappearance, then tore it down. "It just added to the frustration," Sheriff Dean Albers said earlier this year, commiserating with investigators in northern Minnesota searching for LeeAnna, who is still missing.

In Brainerd, Erika Dalquist's parents have gone with police and sheriff's deputies to watch farm ponds being drained, volunteers combing through woods and brush, and divers searching deep mine pits.

A suspect led police to one mine pit and, according to charging papers, indicated that they might find her body there. They didn't, and the charges eventually were dropped. The investigation is now in its second year.

Hultgren knows Allan Sjodin, who lived in nearby Karlstad, Minn., before moving to the Twin Cities.

"I'm sure he's overwhelmed right now," he said. "I haven't talked with him, but we're all hoping and praying for the Sjodin family."

Hultgren said that officers try to think about cases that ended well. Earlier this year, an Amber Alert went out for a 13-year-old girl reported missing after going for a run along rural roads in Marshall County, but she was found safe the next day.

"I spoke with my two daughters on Thursday," Hultgren said. "The older one was a classmate of Julie's, and they were good friends. Again, they have a lot of questions: 'What do we do now? We thought this was a safe area. What do we do now?' "

Chuck Haga is at crhaga@startribune.com .

[maggief]

Dru's website:

http://finddru.com/

[Catspaw]

I think it's got to be terrifying to live in that area--especially with a second kidnapping under similar circumstances. Thank God this victim got away--and she'll have information about her kidnapper--and, if they find the cases are linked, possibly Dru's kidnapper.

I hope employers are making sure that their employees are being escorted to their cars and that everyone in the area is taking precautions when in a parking lot.

[Catspaw]

MSNBC just showed Dru's website and gave its web addy.

[maggief]

EXCERPT

http://www.grandforksgov.com

City of Grand Forks News Release - 11/29/2003


...Law enforcement officials in Polk County, Minnesota continue to investigate an incident in Fertile, Minnesota from the evening of November 28, 2003 where a young woman was reportedly assaulted. Law enforcement officials have determined that this case is not related to the Dru Sjodin case and are handling it as a completely separate investigation. For further information on this case contact the Polk County Sheriff’s Department at 218-281-0431.

Law enforcement officials are requesting the assistance of 200 volunteers for a search that will take place on Sunday November 30, 2003. Volunteers should report to the Ralph Engelstad Arena between 7:30 AM and 8:15 AM on November 30, 2003 for registration and they will be taken by bus to the search location at approximately 8:30 AM. All volunteers must have a photo ID. Volunteers should be in good physical condition and should dress for cold, windy weather. Searchers can expect to be out for approximately 6 hours.

(snip)

[Dante3]

Thanks for posting it.

[toast]

especially with a second kidnapping under similar circumstances

It was Dru's boyfriend. Just trying to draw the attention away from him. /sarcasm

[Devil_Anse]

They say the two incidents are not connected. I hope they are just saying that; I hope they are connected, b/c then the live (escaped) victim would give them some leads on Dru Sjodin's case. OTOH, if the same person as kidnapped Dru kidnapped the other girl, that doesn't bode well for Dru--where would he have left her while he went out to do another kidnapping? I don't know what to think. I only wish this girl could be found alive.

[maggief]

Here's another one ... what's going on!!!

http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4240510.html

Three men attempt to abduct girl in Hermantown
Associated Press

Published November 30, 2003 HERM01



Hermantown, Minn., police are looking for three men they say tried to pull a 17-year-old girl into a car and assault her.

Police say the teenager's car stalled a little before 5 p.m Friday. She began to walk to a house to use the phone.

As she was walking on Hwy. 194, a maroon four-door car stopped in front of her, backed up, and a man in a rear seat opened the door and pulled her in. He and another male in the back seat attempted to assault the girl.

Then a man in a white truck pulled up behind the car, and the driver of the truck got out and told the men to let the girl go. The men in the maroon car let the 17-year-old go and sped off.

Hermantown police are looking for three men in the maroon car, all described as in their 20's or 30's. They would also like to talk to the man in the truck, which police described as white with some rust on it.

Hermantown is in northeast Minnesota, in the area of Hibbing and Duluth.

[Devil_Anse]

Strange! This one had more than one criminal doing it. We know the one in Fertile, if it happened as that girl said, had only one perp. Wonder how many perps there were in Dru Sjordin's case?

Also, I wonder how far Hermantown is from the other two places, which I heard are close together.

I've got lots of relatives in Minnesota, and I've never heard of Hermantown or Fertile.

[Sandylapper]

Thanks for the pings and articles maggiefluffs! Was just wondering how the search went today? Did anything turn up? Gosh, I wish they could find Dru alive, but it's hard to be optimistic.

[Devil_Anse]

So sad, isn't it?

[Sandylapper]

I just pinged you to a new thread!

[EllaMinnow]

Heads up.

(Looks like I was right in my belief in the boyfriend's innocence.)

[cyncooper]

Heads up.

Is there news? I don't see it.

(Looks like I was right in my belief in the boyfriend's innocence.)

Good.