“Just being a father of three daughters, I approached it from the front of, ‘OK, if this was my daughter that went missing, how would I want the police department to be handling the situation?’” he recently told the Grand Forks Herald.

Hedlund wasn’t alone. Throughout the hectic hours and days following Sjodin’s abduction, law enforcement took the case personally, he said.

“What can we do to try to help this family find their daughter?” Hedlund said. “I think that happens in virtually every major investigation across the country but, for us, that was a unique circumstance.”

At the time, Hedlund was the public information officer at the Grand Forks Police Department. After Sjodin’s disappearance, he agreed to as many interview requests as possible.

“You never know,” he said. “That one media appearance might be seen or heard by someone that might have information. Maybe (you’ll reach) the one person that happened to see something in the parking lot that day.”

Twenty years ago, on Nov. 22, 2003, Sjodin was confronted outside of Grand Forks’ Columbia Mall by Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., a sex offender who’d been released from prison earlier that year. Sjodin had just finished shopping after working a shift at Victoria’s Secret and was talking on a cellphone with her boyfriend, Chris Lang, as she left the mall.

“Oh my God,” was the last thing Lang ever heard her say. The call abruptly ended.

Sjodin’s body was found nearly five months later in a ravine near Crookston, Minnesota, 20 miles east of Grand Forks.

In the two decades since the kidnapping and murder of Sjodin, the case has been the focus of television shows, podcasts and other media. Her killer’s name repeatedly resurfaced during appeals that ultimately spared him from the death sentence that was handed down four years after the murder. In 2006, then-President George W. Bush signed “Dru’s Law,” which created the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry.

Before all of that, though, the community came together in hopes of finding the missing woman.

The first hours

Following the abruptly ended call, Lang answered another call from Sjodin on the evening of Nov. 22. The line immediately went dead. Police were able to trace Sjodin’s cellphone to the area of a rest stop, Fisher’s Landing, on U.S. Highway 2 about 6 miles east of Grand Forks.

Sjodin’s roommate reported her missing that night after Sjodin failed to show up for her shift at the El Roco, a Grand Forks nightclub. Within a day, law enforcement asked the public to join the search. The response was remarkable, according to Deputy Chief Bill Macki of the Grand Forks Police Department, an investigator on the case.

“The community banded together,” Macki said. “Despite the differences community members might have, when tragedy strikes — whether it be a flood or, in this case, a kidnapping — the community always comes together.”

Sjodin’s friends immediately began spreading flyers with information about her disappearance. An email was sent to every UND student, faculty and staff member. Hundreds attended a vigil at UND days after Sjodin’s disappearance.

Busloads of volunteers were transported from Grand Forks to Fisher, Minnesota — the closest community to the last known location of her cellphone — to search for Sjodin. Friends even traveled from her hometown of Pequot Lakes, Minnesota, to join the searches. National Guard members helped, too.

“We had hundreds of volunteers, in North Dakota as well as in Minnesota, because we were searching a lot of different areas,” Macki said.

The community wanted to help, he recalled, and residents sent in thousands of tips with hopes that something would stick.

‘A different world’

Seemingly overnight, the story of Sjodin’s disappearance was picked up by news agencies across the country, Hedlund said.

“It probably is a factor that Dru looked like the girl next door,” he said. “She was a pretty, blonde, blue-eyed girl. A college student at UND. There one second and gone the next, with limited traces as to what had happened.”

It seemed impossible — or perhaps people wanted to believe it was impossible — for a woman to be abducted from the local mall parking lot, a traditionally well-lit, busy area. It was a place people considered safe, Hedlund said.

There were many people coming and going during business hours at the mall, which was a significant retail destination in Grand Forks at the time, he said.

“We don’t know whether she was able to scream, or whether she was able to do anything,” Hedlund said. “It happened quickly enough; it’s possible that nobody did see it.”

No eyewitness reports ever came in.

Sjodin’s case received widespread attention. One day, there were four or five reporters in the GFPD lobby. The following day, there were dozens.

“In just a matter of a couple days, it exploded,” Hedlund said. “All kinds of TV trucks parked outside, with their towers going up in the air. Tons of them all over the place. It was very, very chaotic, and a very different world from what any of us at the GFPD were certainly used to.”

At one point, there were so many requests for interviews that he couldn’t manage them all himself. For a time, fielding media inquiries was a full-time job for Hedlund and Lt. Michael Kirby.

“Some of those days I’d be coming to the station at 5 in the morning to tape something for one of the morning shows, and I might be there until 10 that night taping something for a live newscast that evening,” Hedlund said. “There were lots of very long days.”

All hands on deck

Reporters, and law enforcement, traveled from around the U.S. following Sjodin’s disappearance.

“The response from other agencies that came into Grand Forks to assist was amazing,” Hedlund said. “They had volunteers from across the country that were willing to come.”

Every morning, briefings were held in a classroom area at the Grand Forks police station. For the first couple of weeks after Sjodin disappeared, the room was packed, Macki said.

“I couldn’t even guess how many investigators were down there,” he said. “You’d walk in, and it was like, ‘wow.’”

Among them were police officers, sheriff’s deputies, FBI agents and Border Patrol agents. They set aside rank and agency affiliation and focused on the task at hand: finding Sjodin.

“It was an honor to be a part of that,” Macki said. “I have no doubt that teamwork ultimately helped us solve this investigation, because there were no issues of jurisdiction, or worries about how important an investigator was. Everyone just did their role.”

Considering most of the team had never worked together, Macki was amazed by the efficiency of the investigation. Less than two weeks after she disappeared, Sjodin’s kidnapper was arrested.

The evidence

Macki recalls that UND Police Department Lt. Don Rasmussen found one of the most important pieces of evidence in the case: an empty multitool sheath located near Sjodin’s car. A few days after Sjodin went missing, while law enforcement interviewed area sex offenders, Det. Mike Iwan was tracking where the sheath — which bore the label “Tool Shop” — might have been purchased.

Special Agent Dan Ahlquist, from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, had just wrapped up an interview with Rodriguez, who consented to a search of his vehicle. Inside, Ahlquist found a knife, but it was clean. There was no reason to seize it.

Until there was.

Iwan returned to the station with a new multitool sheath that matched the empty one found near Sjodin’s car. He placed it on the desk between Ahlquist and Macki. Inside the sheath was a knife.

“That’s the knife,” Ahlquist said.

With this new information, police were able to get a search warrant and, ultimately, found biological evidence on Rodriguez’s knife and inside his vehicle.

“Had Mike Iwan not promptly done his assignment and found out where that knife was; had Dan Ahlquist not gotten a consent search, looked at the knife, inspected the knife; had we not all been together at that moment, it would have maybe taken us a little longer,” Macki said.

Rodriguez was arrested on Dec. 1. The arrest, however, was just part of the process. Sjodin still was missing.

Searches slowed, largely due to winter weather conditions. Her body was found 147 days after she disappeared, on April 17, 2004.

Rodriguez guilty

In 2006, Rodriguez was found guilty of Sjodin’s kidnapping and murder. Although North Dakota does not have the death penalty, it was a federal crime due to Rodriguez transporting Sjodin across state lines. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was overturned in 2021 when U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson ruled that Rodriguez’s constitutional rights were violated during the trial, among other issues.

In March, U.S. prosecutors declared they will no longer seek the death penalty for Rodriguez. U.S. Attorney Mac Schneider, based in Fargo, told Forum News Service that he was straightforwardly directed to withdraw the sentence by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Rodriguez’s ability to avoid death for the crime has been especially frustrating for North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley, who was a prosecutor in the case against Rodriguez.

“The Biden Administration’s withdrawal of the death penalty notice against Alfonso Rodriguez means that this death row inmate will no longer face the sentence handed down by a federal jury in 2006,” Wrigley said in a statement issued in March. “Rodriguez will remain in prison for life, but the gates of death row will be opened, returning him to general prison population where he will be allowed to construct a social existence and life for himself within the confines he found so comfortable across the decades he was previously imprisoned.”

“This result is a grave affront to justice and to the hearts and souls of all who loved and cared for Dru Sjodin,” Wrigley said. “They have our prayers for God’s peace as do all who held out the hope there would be justice for that brave woman.”

Rodriguez was moved to a high-security prison in Sumterville, Florida, earlier this year.

The years since

After her daughter’s death, Linda Walker set out to fight for change and raise awareness about violence against women. Walker and Lang gave talks about the subject, one of which Hedlund attended.

“I walked into that auditorium that night and Dru’s mom saw me, and she literally ran up to me and gave me one of the biggest hugs I’ve ever had in my life, and just kept thanking me over and over for what I’d done for their family,” he said. “I was just doing my job.”

Even when things don’t turn out right, the resulting effort can still have a positive effect on families, Hedlund said.

Among Sjodin’s legacies is the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry, a government-run site that “provides information on the whereabouts of registered sex offenders, regardless of state territory or tribal boundaries.”

The site includes a picture of a smiling Sjodin, along with a biography. It also notes that Rodriguez was a level three sex offender who’d been released from prison, following a 23-year sentence, just six months before Sjodin’s disappearance.

Walker remains thankful for the community support her family received and continues to receive.

“The outpouring of love and support — oh my gosh — through the years, and still from people all over,” Walker recently told a Forum News Service reporter.

An annual golf tournament fundraiser in Pequot Lakes is still held in Dru’s memory, and an annual run/walk was held for years as well to create awareness of violence against women and children.