Dru Sjodin finished her shift at the Victoria鈥檚 Secret store in a Grand Forks, ND, mall, made a quick stop at Macy鈥檚 to shop for a new purse and then headed outside to her car. It was a brisk late November day, just as the daylight sun was beginning to fade, and Sjodin had no idea she was being watched.
Between the time she left the mall and arrived at her car, convicted sex offender Alfonso Rodriquez had put his plan into motion. Her disappearance made national headlines and sparked a massive, multi-state search, made more difficult by the onset of the unforgiving Upper Midwest winter. The following Spring, as snow melted, Sjodin鈥檚 body was discovered in a ravine, miles from that mall parking lot.
Sjodin had been kidnapped, raped and brutally murdered at just 21 years old; some say a victim of a broken system that allowed a high-risk sex offender to roam so freely. In the wake of the tragedy, her family worked tirelessly to push for stricter civil commitment and federal sex offender registration laws.
Read more about Dru Sjodin's tragic case below.
