Mike on Crime

by Mike McIntyre

  “Oh my God.” Sjodin’s last known words, screamed into a telephone while speaking with her boyfriend, Chris Lang, immediately hinted at something sinister. It was shortly after 5 p.m. on Saturday, November 22, 2003, when Sjodin was walking out of the popular Columbia Mall shopping centre in Grand Forks and heading to her car. The senior at UND had just finished her shift at Victoria’s Secret.

  Sjodin’s cellphone went dead. Police later found her car sitting empty in the snow-swept mall parking lot. An immediate appeal for help was launched. Posters were plastered around Grand Forks and surrounding communities. Police went public looking for tips. The case quickly captured international media attention due to a combination of the random nature of the abduction, Sjodin’s “girl-next-door” looks and her family’s willingness to speak out. There were tearful family appearances on all the major network shows.

  Rodriguez, who was living just across the border in nearby Crookston, Minnesota, was quickly identified as a suspect. He was arrested and charged with kidnapping. But there was still no sign of Sjodin. And Rodriguez wasn’t talking. An unprecedented investigation and search continued. Numerous federal, state and municipal police agencies and more than 200 officers became involved. Nearly 2,000 volunteers turned up, including family, friends, fellow students and complete strangers from all over, to help search daily over a frozen plain that spanned two states and dozens of kilometres. It all ended in sorrow on April 17, 2004. Sjodin’s body, wrapped in a blanket, was found in a ravine just outside Crookston. There would be no miracle happy ending.

  North Dakota abolished capital punishment decades ago, but Rodriguez was now facing potential death because he allegedly kidnapped Sjodin in North Dakota, then disposed of her in Minnesota, making the act a federal crime, not a state crime. North Dakota hadn’t executed someone since 1905. The case was expected to generate much regional debate about the merits of the death penalty. Even Sjodin’s loved ones appeared divided, with some suggesting nothing but death for Rodriguez would satisfy them while others questioned whether it was what Sjodin would have wanted.

  “This is a decision most of us wanted. If this case doesn’t warrant the death penalty, then they might as well just do away with it,” said Bob Heales, a Sjodin family friend and private investigator who led search efforts for months.

  U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s decision to seek the ultimate punishment for Rodriguez upon conviction came despite strong opposition to the death penalty in North Dakota. “My overall sense is that people are very accepting of the decision in this case,” said Heales, noting the extraordinary circumstances of Sjodin’s case.

  Sjodin’s mother said she supported the decision to seek the death penalty. “We look forward to the case moving ahead,” Linda Walker told the Grand Forks Herald. “We appreciate the continued support and prayers we have received from people who have brought Dru into their hearts.”

  Richard Ney, the expert death-penalty attorney who was helping defend Rodriguez, said he was disappointed but not surprised. “One thing that certainly disappointed us is that this decision was made despite the longstanding position of the people of North Dakota against capital punishment,” Ney said. Ney predicted the wide opposition to the death penalty in North Dakota would pose a practical problem for the defence and for the trial in general. “The jury in a death-penalty case can only be made up of people who say they are not morally opposed to the death penalty, or they will be excluded from the jury,” Ney said. “In a state where there is not widespread support for the death penalty, it may be more problematic to get a jury of one’s peers.”

  The life-and-death battle was about to begin.

  THURSDAY JULY 6, 2006

  There was an angel in the courtroom. Dru Sjodin’s family members said they felt her spirit when they walked in to face the man accused of kidnapping, torturing and murdering her.

  “She sits on my shoulder. She’s my strength,” Allan Sjodin told a throng of nearly two dozen reporters outside the Quentin N. Burdick federal courthouse in Fargo. “She’s always in our hearts. She will be forever,” added Sjodin’s mother, Linda Walker. The couple was expecting the death penalty trial against Alfonso Rodriguez to finally begin and walked into court with a mix of emotions. “We’re tense. And very anxious, of course,” said Walker.

  Unfortunately, the case got off to bumpy start when a computer glitch forced an unexpected adjournment. Lawyers were supposed to begin selecting jurors to hear the case against Rodriguez. But the trial was delayed when justice officials noticed the first 15 prospective jurors who were supposedly randomly selected from a pool of nearly 600 all hailed from the same small town of Valley City, ND. The company behind the computer program originally claimed it was a statistical “anomaly” and not a sign of a problem with the random selection process. They later conceded there might be a glitch. US District Judge Ralph Erickson said it wasn’t safe to proceed and decided to put off jury selection for a day so that a new list of 15 could be generated.

  “We have one mission here. And that’s for justice,” Allan Sjodin said after learning of the adjournment.

  FRIDAY JULY 7, 2006

  It was a clear message sent from several prospective jurors: Finding an unbiased panel to hear the case was going to be a monumental task. The challenge only grew larger after an entire day of intense examination by prosecutors and defence lawyers yielded just one person that lawyers could agree was suitable for jury duty. Many others were sent packing based on their candid responses to questions about Sjodin case.

  “The Bible states, ‘he who kills shall be killed.’ That’s God’s message,” said one woman, who also admitted her husband and parents have made their views about capital punishment crystal clear in the wake of her jury subpoena. “Everyone close to me is very much for it and that [the accused] should get the death penalty,” she said.

  An elderly grandmother of six was also sent home when she admitted her mind was already made up about Rodriguez’s guilt. “Given the evidence already provided through the media, I believe he committed the crime,” she said. She also proclaimed she’s in favour of executing people who commit “horrific” crimes.

  Another woman expressed doubt at her ability to be fair, noting she has a daughter the same age as Sjodin who was attending UND at the time. “It will be hard for me to be impartial, knowing it could have been her,” she said.

  A married, middle-aged stay-at-home mother of three told court she would only consider death—not the alternative of life in prison with no parole—if Rodriguez was found to have committed an intentional murder. “Why should the life of a criminal be spared?” she asked.

  MONDAY AUGUST 14, 2006

  The jury was finally set. The answers would finally start coming. How exactly did Dru Sjodin die? Was the University of North Dakota student killed immediately? Did she suffer? What prompted the shocking daytime kidnapping outside a busy Grand Forks mall? How well planned was the attack? Did she know it was coming? Why was she targeted? And what exactly do prosecutors mean when they say she was murdered in an “especially heinous, cruel and depraved manner?”

  Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Reisenauer held nothing back in his opening statement. Jurors were told how Sjodin was kidnapped from the busy Columbia Mall parking lot in Grand Forks and how her body was found five months later in a ravine near Crookston, MN, after snow melted. Sjodin was nude from the waist down, her hands bound behind her back, a rope around her neck and the remnants of a plastic bag still around her face. She had also suffered a slashed throat and possible stab wound to the chest. “He left her in a ditch to die,” said Reisenauer, who also alleged that Rodriguez sexually assaulted Sjodin before killing her.

  Rodriguez’s lawyers also made an opening statement and offered up an unusual defence—taking no issue with the allegation Rodriguez killed Sjodin but focusing almost entirely on where the murder took place. Defence lawyer Robert Hoy told jurors
Rodriguez shouldn’t face federal charges because Sjodin was likely already dead by the time she got to Minnesota. “This is simply the wrong charge in the wrong court. It’s entirely possible Dru Sjodin died... in a matter of minutes while still in the Columbia Mall parking lot. The transportation of a deceased person across state lines is not a federal kidnapping,” said Hoy. Hoy said prosecutors laid the federal charge “in their zeal to become involved in an already highly publicized case.” He said Rodriguez should instead be facing a state charge of murder, which would not make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

  An autopsy couldn’t provide a conclusive cause of Sjodin’s death but found asphyxiation, trauma and/or exposure to the winter elements could all be factors, Reisenauer said. Doctors were also unable to pinpoint a time of death.

  Police found Sjodin’s cellphone just a few feet away from her body—a discovery that could prove critical for the theory of the prosecution. Sjodin had called her boyfriend, Chris Lang, as she walked out of Columbia Mall around 5 p.m. following her shift at the Victoria’s Secret. The line suddenly went dead. Police believe it was at that moment Rodriguez grabbed Sjodin and forced her into his car.

  Lang was concerned and called back at least eight times but got no answer. His hopes were briefly raised when he got a call from Sjodin’s number around 8 p.m. However, Lang could only hear static and muffled sounds. The connection was lost again, said Reisenauer. Police traced the call to a cellphone tower near Crookston, MN, and focused much of their search on the area but were initially unable to find anything. But prosecutors intended to argue that phone call proved she was still alive while in Minnesota.

  Police began looking at known sex offenders in the area and interviewed Rodriguez two days after Sjodin went missing. He was living at the time about 6.5 kilometres from where Sjodin’s body would eventually be found. He admitted he had been in Grand Forks on the day in question to do some shopping but claimed he was in a movie theatre at the time, said Reisenauer. When asked to name the movie, Rodriguez initially couldn’t but later told police it was Once Upon A Time starring Antonio Bandares. However, his apparent alibi began to unravel when police checked around and learned the movie wasn’t playing anywhere in Grand Forks at the time.

  Police got a warrant to search Rodriguez’s vehicle and home and made several key discoveries. A knife— matching an empty sheath found near Sjodin’s car in the Grand Forks parking lot—was in the trunk. Rodriguez claimed he was using it to cut sheet rock, but his employer claimed that wasn’t true. Police also found tiny droplets of blood in Rodriguez’s car, which they eventually matched with Sjodin’s DNA. Forensic experts were also able to find a strand of Rodriguez’s hair on Sjodin’s body and fibres from Sjodin’s shirt and jacket on his boots, gloves and in his car. They had the proverbial smoking gun.

  Canadian air force pilot Julian White would never forget the desperate search for his good friend, Dru Sjodin, or the void left in his life by her tragic death. White, who was currently living in Moose Jaw, Sask., was one of the first witnesses to testify. He was also one of the last people to speak with Sjodin and raced around Grand Forks the night she disappeared hoping to find a trace of her. “She was a bubbly, happy girl. Everybody loved her. She was an American sweetheart,” White told reporters outside court after finishing his day on the witness stand.

  White met Sjodin while both were attending the University of North Dakota. White—who returned to Canada after completing his aviation studies—was dating Sjodin’s roommate, Margaret Flategraff, at the time. He was in Toronto on the day Sjodin went missing but spoke with her briefly around noon. Sjodin mentioned she was on her way to work. White told jurors he flew to Winnipeg and then drove back to Grand Forks later that evening. He arrived at his girlfriend’s apartment to learn Sjodin hadn’t been heard from since her phone went dead in a conversation hours earlier with her boyfriend.

  “I went out to look for her and was driving the route between Dru’s apartment and the mall. I drove all around but I found nothing,” White told court. White said he even checked one of the parking lots at Columbia Mall but didn’t see her car. Police found it hours later in another nearby lot.

  Flategraff testified how she called 911 when Sjodin didn’t come home that night. Several other concerned friends gathered at her apartment to worry and wait. Danielle Mark, a sorority sister of Sjodin’s, told court how they’d gone out for dinner the previous night following a fun-filled “initiation” week. She tried to call Sjodin several times on the evening she went missing and couldn’t understand why there was no answer.

  WEDNESDAY AUGUST 16, 2006

  They were begging him to take them to a body—but Alfonso Rodriguez refused to admit guilt despite a crumbling alibi and mounting evidence against him.

  “You’re in a position where you could end this investigation...I think you can take us to that girl,” a clearly desperate Dan Ahlquist of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension told Rodriguez in one of three audiotaped interviews played for the jury. “There are lots of things that could make this not so bad. Showing you care for the outcome of the investigation would help. If this were to drag on, it would hurt your Mom. The family of the girl is hurting right now. They’d like to know where she is,” he said. “It would better your position to be the helper, instead of just giving silence.”

  The pleas fell on deaf ears as Rodriguez refused to budge from his position that he wasn’t involved in crime. “I didn’t do nothing. What do you want me to admit to something I didn’t do? I’ve never met that girl. I’ve never talked to her. I’ve never seen her until I saw her in the paper,” Rodriguez said during one of his three Nov. 26, 2003 interviews.

  Ahlquist described how investigators honed in on Rodriguez after compiling a list of seven known sex offenders living in the immediate vicinity through a national sex offender database. Rodriguez—who had just been released from prison in May 2003 after serving a 23-year sentence for kidnapping and rape—was the first to be interviewed because he had the worst history of all those on the list, said Ahlquist. The interviews began with Rodriguez admitting he was in Grand Forks on the day Sjodin went missing but claiming it was a non-eventful trip. “It was pretty quiet, not too much of anything,” he said. He claimed he did some early afternoon shopping before going to a movie around 4:30 p.m. and being in the theatre until 7 p.m. Sjodin was grabbed at 5 p.m. It hadn’t taken him long to strike.

  TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2006

  It took less than four hours for jurors to reach their verdict. Alfonso Rodriquez was guilty. But this was just the first legal hurdle. Now prosecutors would begin telling—and graphically showing— jurors why they believed Rodriguez should be sentenced to die. Close-up photos of a bound and battered Dru Sjodin, references to God and accounts of Rodriguez’s criminal past would all be presented as part of the prosecution’s sentencing bid. Jurors would then have to begin deliberating whether Sjodin’s killing meets the eligibility requirements for Rodriguez to be sentenced to death under federal law.

  If they ruled it didn’t—as Rodriguez’s lawyers urged—the case would immediately end with Rodriguez being sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. If they ruled it did—as prosecutors strongly urged—jurors would continue sitting for a final phase of the case that would involve additional evidence and argument on the sole point of whether Rodriguez lived or died.

  Defence lawyer Richard Ney told jurors they had already given Rodriguez a “death sentence” and said there was no need to inflict further punishment. “Alfonso Rodriguez will die in prison. You’ve already decided that. The thing to decide now is whether that will happen when God decides or when man decides,” Ney said during his opening statement. Prosecutor Drew Wrigley immediately objected to the statement. Erickson told Ney “we’ve had enough” and ordered him to move on. Ney admitted Sjodin’s death was “terrible” but said it didn’t meet the legal definition of being “especia
lly heinous, cruel or depraved.”

  Rodriguez had three prior sex-related convictions. Two of his three former victims were called to the witness stand to describe how their lives had suffered as a result of the attacks. The evidence could be used by jurors to weigh Rodriguez’s fate.

  One woman, who was 18 at the time she was raped in 1974, said she was still battling depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide. She described having a breakdown only days earlier which involved barricading herself in a bedroom, pushing furniture up against the door and arming herself with a flute. She also admitted to being admitted to mental health facility last winter. “I was having suicidal thoughts. I was grieving. My brother had died. And Dru Sjodin had died,” she said, fighting back tears. She also described several failed relationships, including two divorces.

  The other victim, who was also sexually assaulted by Rodriguez in 1974, described dropping out of college following the attack and many years spent as a transient living in her car and doing odd jobs across the United States. “It seemed like nothing made any sense anymore, in terms of having any hope, faith for the future. All of that seemed broken,” she said. “I was looking for a fresh start. But I found out it was something you couldn’t really run from,” she said. The woman had since turned her life around, got married and found full-time work but said she always remembered what Rodriguez did to her. “It just eats at you. You think about it every second,” she said.

  The most explicit evidence came when jurors were shown several close-up photos on large television monitors of Sjodin’s decomposed body as it was found. There were also images of her bound wrists. Sjodin’s friends and family, including both parents, were visibly upset and darted their eyes to avoid seeing the pictures, which prosecutors showed to enhance their argument that Rodriguez deserved to die.