By Seamus McGraw
August 17, 2006
FARGO, N.D. (Crime Library) — It was just days after pretty young University of North Dakota co-ed Dru Sjodin had vanished, and though authorities did not yet know that the 22-year-old's body was already lying in a remote Minnesota dumping ground, they were already closing in on a suspect.
"The case is closing in on you," one agent for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension told Alfonzo Rodriguez Jr., according to taped interviews played Wednesday during the third day of Rodriguez' federal trial for Dru's abduction and murder. "I think you can take us to that girl."
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| Alfonzo Rodriguez, Jr. |
It would be months before authorities finally did find Dru's body. She had been sexually assaulted, stabbed and strangled, and then left to die, authorities have determined, not far from Rodriguez' home.
But according to a series of tape-recorded interviews, done within four days of Dru's knifepoint abduction from a North Dakota mall, authorities already were eyeing Rodriguez, then a 50-year-old convicted sex offender from Crookston, Minn.
In one of the tapes, Rodriguez tells the agents that they should "be suspicious" of him.
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