Major Searches For Dru Sjodin End

As searchers from the National Guard headed home, people in the city where Dru Sjodin went to college tried one more thing.

At sorority houses and apartments near the University of North Dakota, at homes near the Columbia Mall where she was allegedly kidnapped three weeks ago, and in neighborhoods throughout the city, people turned on their porch lights Saturday night. They threw open window curtains. Some set out candles.

"Light the night for Dru," they called it. "Help her find her way home."

But the 22-year-old Pequot Lakes, Minn. woman remained missing Sunday after three days of intensive searching.

What authorities called their final large-scale searches failed to turn up any sign of what happened to Sjodin after she disappeared Nov. 22 from a parking lot at the mall, where she worked.

About 150 soldiers from the Minnesota National Guard's 1st Battalion, 194th Armor based in Brainerd, Minn., wrapped up their search Sunday morning in Crookston, Minn.

"We just went to a few places, got out and checked some culverts, some ditches — nothing," said David May of the Minnesota National Guard. "Very frustrating not to find something."

Troops with the North Dakota National Guard's 88th Air Defense Artillery were released Saturday, as were scores of law enforcement officers.

The Sheriff's Department said there would be no more large-scale searches until evidence or information from the suspect himself provides new direction.

"Unless some new information surfaces that identifies an area we haven't covered, we're done at least for this winter," said Maj. Mike Fonder of the Grand Forks County Sheriff's Office.

"Obviously, we were wishing we could have found her. But there's no other place for us to look for her," Fonder said.

"The only person who knows right now, we believe, is Mr. Rodriguez."

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 50, a convicted sex offender from Crookston, is charged with kidnapping Sjodin. He remains in jail in Grand Forks in lieu of $5 million bail, awaiting a Feb. 4 court appearance. He has denied involvement.

Despite the end of large-scale searches for now, authorities aren't giving up on finding Sjodin.

"This is ongoing," said Polk County, Minn., Sheriff Mark LeTexier. "Whether it's at this level or the patrol level, this is ongoing."

The weekend search effort included search of the Red River under a bridge near Thompson, N.D., south of Grand Forks, on a route Rodriguez often used between Grand Forks and Crookston, police said.

Soldiers drilled a close pattern of holes through the ice and used underwater cameras to look for evidence. Elsewhere, on both sides of the river that forms the border between North Dakota and Minnesota, soldiers on foot and in Humvees searched ditches, culverts, fields, abandoned shacks and woods.

Fonder said he asked Allan Sjodin, Dru's father, to speak to searchers as they gathered in Grand Forks late last week.

"He told me later he was overwhelmed by what he saw — all those people looking for his daughter," Fonder said.

"He's a man who publicly has put on a good display of bravery and hope. I'm sure that by himself he's having some pretty difficult times, but the family is holding out hope and that's their job.

"The probability of her being alive is decreasing day by day, you have to say. But everybody is looking for a miracle," Fonder said.