Hound points searchers to Sjodin's disappearance site

CROOKSTON, Minn. -- Allan Sjodin is convinced his daughter, Dru was here, forced here by Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr., the man charged with kidnapping her.\nHere is down a quarter-mile driveway ending on a small bluff overlooking the Red Lake River west of Crookston and marked by a city-owned red steel building housing impounded vehicles and bicycles. A few battered vehicles are parked outside in the snow along the locked building.\nTwenty yards away is a smaller shed up on wooden beams, ready for moving, or already moved, next to a straggly line of a few trees.\nJust to the south is the American Crystal Sugar Co. factory, where Rodriguez worked in the 1970s.\nThis is a fairly remote site, about a quarter mile west of U.S. Highway 75, only a field to the east, wooded river to the west and north. City officials say there would be little reason for any city workers or anyone else to be out here on a weekend such as the one when University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin disappeared in November.\nThis is the site latched onto by a highly trained search dog Thursday and again Saturday.\nCalamity Jane, the 10-year-old bloodhound owned by Denny Adams of Conde, S.D., first picked up a scent Thursday, while walking on the river below the shed, near the Highway 75 bypass bridge.\nShe nearly dragged Adams up the hill, over rip-rap rocks on the river bank covered in snow, in a beeline for the red building, followed by Allan Sjodin.\nShe circled the building several times Thursday.\nBob Heales, the Denver private investigator leading the Sjodin family's search effort, said law enforcement was called. Two Polk County Sheriff's deputies and a Crookston police officer responded, and the building was unlocked and searched Thursday; nothing was found.\nFriday, the wind had changed from the south to northerly and was so strong neither human searchers nor Calamity Jane could work well.\nBut the high interest shown by Calamity Jane kept searchers focused on the same site early Saturday; winds again came from the south. But the cold temperatures -- about 10 below at 9 a.m. -- and heavy snow caused icing problems on the bloodhound's feet.\nAdams took her into Cabela's in East Grand Forks, where she was outfitted with a camouflage jacket and four blaze orange booties. By 1:30 p.m. she was back, working the same area for another two hours and more.\nAt least twice Saturday Calamity Jane again gave strong signals that Dru's scent is near the city-owned building, Adams said.\nHe has clothing from Dru he uses to key the bloodhound's extraordinary olfactory ability, Adams said.\nIf Rodriguez had taken Dru in his car to the site, there could be enough scent there still for Calamity Jane to detect, even if he later took her somewhere else, Adams said.\nOn her last pass Saturday, the dog padded around the west side of the building, making a rough circle and then returned to Adams' pickup truck.\nIt's as if she was saying, "I've done my job," Adams said.\nIt's not 100 percent certain, but it's a very clear indicator that the highly trained search dog located Dru Sjodin's scent at the building site, Adams said.\nThe dog did not, however, give an alert as if there now was a human body at the site.\nAfter seeing Calamity Jane work for several days over the past two months, Allan Sjodin said he believes he now knows one place where his daughter was taken by Rodriguez.\n"This is the only place that we have gotten any indication she was there," he said.\nThe building is about a quarter mile from the bridge where a shoe identified as Dru's was found two weeks after she disappeared.\nAuthorities say Rodriguez abducted Sjodin from a parking lot at Columbia Mall in Grand Forks about 5 p.m. Nov. 22, a Saturday.\nThe search began within hours.\nShe had been talking on her cell phone to her boyfriend, Chris Lang, at the moment she was abducted, investigators say. A second call from her phone to Lang's came about two hours later. Lang could hear only static and the sound of phone buttons being pushed. The phone's signal was logged on a tower west of Fisher, Minn., for 24 hours, until 8 p.m. Nov. 23, when authorities believe the phone's battery went dead. That indicated Sjodin's cell phone was within a few miles of the tower, probably south of it, investigators said. The cell phone has not yet been found.\nNov. 26, investigators first questioned Rodriguez and his mother, mostly because he was registered as a sex offender in Minnesota.\nRodriguez's mother told investigators he returned home from Grand Forks Nov. 22 about 8 p.m.; the Rodriguez home is in south Crookston, about two blocks from the Red Lake River.\nCiting evidence including blood in Rodriguez' car matching Sjodin's DNA, investigators arrested Rodriguez on Dec. 1.\nHe remains in the Grand Forks jail under a $5 million bond, awaiting a Mar. 5 preliminary hearing on the kidnapping charge in Grand Forks District Court. He has denied any involvement in Sjodin's disappearance, according to his court-appointed attorney, David Dusek.\nRodriguez, 50, was convicted in 1974 of kidnapping two Crookston women and forcing them to drive out to isolated areas near town, where he sexually assaulted them.\nIn 1980, shortly after he was released from a state hospital in connection with the 1974 convictions, he attacked a Crookston woman with a knife, attempting to force her into his car. She resisted, was stabbed and escaped. Her testimony helped convict him, and he spent 23 years in a state prison; he was released in May 2003 and returned to live with his mother in Crookston.\nNine searchers worked Saturday, joined by a few local people offering help. They walked the Red Lake River west of the Highway 75 bypass bridge and drilled holes in the thick ice to allow any scent linked to Sjodin to escape. The bloodhound worked up and down the river, directed by Adams to check each hole. She gave no strong indication of detecting anything on or under the ice, however.\nSearchers plan to work again Sunday for a time and then return in a week or two.