Free Republic

CROOKSTON, Minn. - The body of college student Dru Sjodin has been found, five months after she disappeared from the parking lot of a North Dakota shopping mall, authorities said Saturday. Sheriff Mark LeTexier sobbed as he told volunteers, "Dru is home." He later confirmed that authorities had found Sjodin's body. Scores of volunteers had joined the search on Saturday for the 22-year-old University of North Dakota student, who was last seen Nov. 22 the mall where she worked at a Victoria's Secret. While a handful of Sjodin's relatives continued searching through the winter, official searches had been halted in...

<p>According to Fox news Dru Sjodin has been found. Conflicting reports though. One ap report says she is home, another says she has been found.</p>

Suspect in missing girl's case a native Laredoan By The Associated Press Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., the man suspected in the disappearance of Dru Sjodin, has been accused of sex crimes before and was a native Laredoan. He wasn't always convicted though. In 1979, he sat in front of a jury facing charges that he followed a woman from a department store to her car and forced her at knifepoint to drive to a remote gravel road. The victim told police Rodriguez raped her twice before ordering her to drive him back. The jury heard testimony and returned a not-guilty verdict,...

A knife in a pool of liquid household cleaner was found in the spare tire well of Alfonso Rodriguez Jr.'s maroon 2002 Mercury Sable sedan, according to a source close to the investigation. Investigators could tell that the interior of the car and the trunk obviously had been recently and extensively cleaned, the source told the Herald. But bloodstains found in the car have been matched with Sjodin's DNA, the source said. Other news reports also cite sources for the DNA match of blood samples in the car to Sjodin. Grand Forks State's Attorney Peter Welte has said that he...

Report: Video Puts Suspect At Mall Where Sjodin Worked Police Sergeant: Tape Shows Rodriguez In Lot When College Student Disappeared POSTED: 7:04 a.m. EST December 5, 2003 UPDATED: 7:16 a.m. EST December 5, 2003 Authorities in North Dakota have tapes placing kidnapping suspect Alfonso Rodriguez in the mall parking lot from which authorities believe University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin was abducted last month, a Minneapolis newspaper reported. According to a report on the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper's Web site, Grand Forks police Sgt. Mike Hedlund said the tapes show the 50-year-old kidnapping suspect in a Grand Forks mall...

Bloodstains matching Dru Sjodin's blood type were found in the car that police say was used by Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. to abduct her, the St. Paul Pioneer Press is reporting today. The Pioneer Press reported that "sources close to the investigation," said the blood was found in the maroon 2002 Mercury Sable Rodriguez bought at a Grand Forks dealership in June. Sources in Grand Forks, including Police Chief John Packett and State's Attorney Peter Welte, would not comment on the report when told of it Thursday night. The reported blood stains are the first major piece of physical evidence revealed...

<p>GRAND FORKS, N.D. (AP) -- The arrest of a convicted rapist in the disappearance of a college student produced no immediate breakthrough yesterday in the search for the young woman, but the police chief vowed: "Dru, we will find you."</p>

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...

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...

Shirley Iverson was home on break from her freshman year in college when a man approached her as she sat in her parked car and asked for a ride. Iverson, just 18 and raised in the small town of Crookston, Minn., said sure.Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. got in and Iverson drove away. What happened next on that October 1974 day in Crookston was Rodriguez's first of several known attacks on women, according to court documents that lay out his history of abuse, sexual assaults and rapes committed between stays in prison. < -snip- > Iverson, who now lives in Oregon and...

<p>GRAND FORKS, N.D. — The arrest of a convicted rapist in the disappearance of a college student produced no immediate breakthrough in the search for the young woman Tuesday, but the police chief vowed: "Dru, we will find you."</p> <p>Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. (search), 50, was arrested Monday night in nearby Crookston, Minn., and charged with kidnapping University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin (search), 22. Sjodin has been missing since Nov. 22, when she left her job at the Victoria's Secret at a mall in Grand Forks (search).</p>