While officials and friends searched without success for Dru Sjodin, her mother went looking for help from the mother of the man charged with kidnapping the missing college student.
“I asked her to reach out to her son and please ask him to lead us to Dru,” Linda Walker told the Grand Forks Herald for its Thursday editions. “I asked mother-to-mother.”
Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 50, of Crookston, Minn., is being held on $5 million bond. Rodriguez has said through his attorney that he had nothing to do with the Nov. 22 disappearance of Sjodin, who is enrolled at the University of North Dakota.
Walker said Dolores Rodriguez did not respond to her request when they spoke Saturday. But she said Dolores Rodriguez and her daughter, Illeana Noyes, were compassionate, expressing concern about Sjodin’s safety and the family’s well-being.
45-minute meeting
Dolores Rodriguez and Noyes visited Alfonso Rodriguez for 45 minutes Tuesday, but the topic of their conversation wasn’t known.
Authorities say a small amount of blood found in Rodriguez’s car tested against DNA from Sjodin’s toothbrush, and a knife found in Rodriguez’s trunk matched a sheath found near her car, which was found at the mall where she disappeared.
Minnesota expects to send 150 soldiers to cover roughly 500 square miles of Polk County in northwestern Minnesota after Sheriff Mark LeTexier asked Gov. Tim Pawlenty for help.
Rodriguez has a history of attempted kidnapping of women and used a weapon in at least one assault. Rodriguez was released from a Minnesota prison in May after serving 23 years for an attempted abduction in 1979.