Police found the body of University of North Dakota senior Dru Sjodin in a ditch west of Crookston, Minn., around noon Saturday.
Sjodin, 22, was missing for more than five months. Her body was found in the same town where the Level III sex offender arrested for her abduction, Alfonso Rodriguez, lives.
According to CNN.com, the discovered remains have not yet officially been identified as Sjodin, but police informed her family because of the heavy evidence that would identify the body positively as hers. Investigators are still scouring the ditch for clues, Polk County Sheriff Mark LeTexier told CNN.com.
Sjodin disappeared last November while talking to her boyfriend, Chris Lang, on her cellular phone after leaving the Columbia Mall in Grand Forks, Minn., where she worked at Victoria”s Secret. Sjodin was walking to her parked car around 5 p.m. while talking to Lang when he said heard the line go dead in the middle of their conversation.
Lang said he accepted a 55-second call from Sjodin”s cellular phone roughly three hours later that day but could only hear static and the tones of random buttons being pushed in the receiver. Sjodin”s roommate later reported her missing at 9:30 p.m. when Sjodin missed her 9 p.m. shift at an area bar.
Police discovered around 11 p.m. the night she vanished Sjodin”s car oddly parked in the opposite end of the lot, farthest away from her workplace and not in the section of the lot where friends and family confirmed Sjodin to usually park.
Only the passenger”s side door on Sjodin”s car was unlocked, and her car contained her pocketbook and a new purse that she had purchased that day, but her keys were missing. Outside the vehicle”s only unlocked door, police found a sheath to a knife that they later matched to a knife found in Rodriguez”s car.
Rodriguez was charged with Sjodin”s abduction Dec. 1 but is presently pleading not-guilty against evidence including trace amounts of blood with DNA matching Sjodin”s found on the knife collected from Rodriguez”s car. Surveillance footage places Rodriguez in the mall where Sjodin worked prior to 5 p.m., the same time Sjodin finished her shift. Police also found one of Sjodin”s shoes in Rodriguez”s favorite fishing spot.
The fishing spot is underneath a highway bridge over the Red Lake River leading into Rodriguez”s hometown of Crookston.
Police also searched Rodriguez”s home receipts from Columbia Mall stamped with the date Sjodin disappeared, two strands of light-colored hair and samples of blood from his garage floor.
Rodriguez claimed he traveled to a local theatre and watched a movie that police discovered was not shown by any area theatres that day. He also claimed to stop at a local McDonald”s restaurant before driving to his home in Crookston, but footage from a security camera at the location he claimed to dine at does not show Rodriguez on the day Sjodin disappeared.
Prior to Sjodin”s abduction, Victoria”s Secret employees reported harassing phone calls in which the caller, a man with a foreign accent, asked for Sjodin by name.
Police suspended the search for Sjodin due to poor weather conditions in December 2003, but her friends and family continued searching on their own with the help of volunteers.
Rodriguez refused to assist police in locating Sjodin”s body because he cannot be offered a reduced sentence as a Level III sex offender.
Saturday was the first day police resumed Sjodin”s official search.