Search for missing student winds down as weather worsens

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, December 13, 2003

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — National Guard troops searching for a missing North Dakota college student returned to the same snowy fields and roadways Saturday that volunteers had earlier searched, hoping to find some clue to her whereabouts that might have been overlooked.

At the same time, investigators were trying to retrace the steps of a convicted rapist charged with kidnapping 22-year-old Dru Sjodin.

Grand Forks County Sheriff Dan Hill has said Sjodin is probably dead, but there has been no sign of a body. Thousands of volunteers and hundreds of National Guardsmen have searched two states for her, and the guardsmen were to continue searching through today before winding down the effort.

"We have covered so much ground, and with the weather getting worse, I’m not sure if any more searches would be effective," Sheriff’s Maj. Mike Fonder said.

Sjodin, a University of North Dakota student from Pequot Lakes, Minn., was last heard from Nov. 22 as she spoke to her boyfriend by cell phone as she was leaving the Grand Forks mall where she worked.

Prosecutors charged Alfonso Rodriguez, 50, a convicted rapist released from prison earlier this year, with kidnapping her. Rodriguez claims he is innocent.

In January, four months before Rodriguez’s release from prison, a Minnesota Department of Corrections psychologist warned in a risk assessment that the severity of Rodriguez’s assaults on women appeared to be increasing and that Rodriguez’s "victim pool" of women apparently chosen at random "suggests a need for broader notification of the public" than permitted by state guidelines.

Based on that review, among a group of documents related to the case that were released this week, Rodriguez was designated a Level 3 offender, a category reserved for those who show the highest likelihood to commit more sex crimes. But authorities decided against holding Rodriguez indefinitely for treatment.

A search warrant unsealed earlier this week in Crookston, Minn., where Rodriguez lived with his mother, showed about a three-hour gap between the time Sjodin disappeared and the time Rodriguez appeared at his home.

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