Missing / Located Persons > Northern Plains: MN, ND, and SD

Assumed Deceased: Susan Swedell--MN--01/19/1988

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Denise:
http://wkbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=7734267

20th anniversary of Lake Elmo teen's disappearance


 
Associated Press - January 17, 2008 7:44 AM ET

LAKE ELMO, Minn. (AP) - This week marks 20 years since a 19-year-old Lake Elmo woman disappeared.

The family of Susan Swedell is asking everyone to light a candle to remember her and all missing people.

Swedell was last seen on January 19th, 1988. She was headed home from work when her car overheated and she left it at a gas station about a mile from her house. The clerk saw her get into another car with a man.

She's not been seen since.

Police told Swedell's mother in the fall of 2006 that activity had been detected on her daughter's Social Security number.

Denise:


http://www.startribune.com/local/east/13842956.html
PHOTO

Light a candle, requests family of woman missing since 1988

Last update: January 17, 2008 - 12:05 AM

Twenty years ago this week, 19-year-old Susan Swedell of Lake Elmo walked out of a gas station, got into a car with a man and disappeared.

Her family is asking that everyone light a candle on Swedell's behalf and remember not only her, but other missing people as well.

Swedell was last seen on Jan. 19, 1988, at a gas station about a mile from her home.

Employed by Kmart in Oak Park Heights, Swedell frequently received calls at work from a man she called "Dale." On the night she disappeared, she called her mother from work and said she was heading home to watch a movie.

Before leaving work, Swedell put on a short skirt; the day had blizzard-like conditions.

Soon after, she asked a gas station attendant whether she could leave her car at the station because it wasn't working properly. She then got into another car with a man.

In the fall of 2006, police told Susan's mother, Kathy, that activity on her Social Security number had been detected.

Anyone with information about Swedell is asked to contact Missing Children Minnesota (612-334-9449) or the Washington County Sheriff's Office (651-430-7850).

Spotlight on Crime, a fund supported by business and law-enforcement interests, is offering a $25,000 reward in the case.

Denise:
http://www.lakeelmoleader.com/articles/index.cfm?id=6516&section=news

20 years after abduction, deputy seeking DNA database

Barbara Boelk Lake Elmo Leader
Published Wednesday, January 16, 2008
 
“She has to be out there somewhere. This family deserves some closure,” Jesse Kurtz says, almost under his breath, an aside to the conversation as if the thought is the verbal form of what is always floating in the back of his mind.

Kurtz, a former Washington County Sheriff’s Office investigator, has worked for the past 20 years on one particular case that he just can’t let go.

Susan Swedell, a 19-year-old woman from Lake Elmo, disappeared on a snowstormy night in January, never to be seen or heard from again. 

20 years without a trace

Jan. 19, 1988, was a stormy evening. Susan Swedell, 19, was working a regular shift at the K-mart formerly in Oak Park Heights. She was supposed to get off work at 9 p.m.

She called her younger sister, Christine, and her mother around 4 p.m. and told them she was just going to come straight home. The sisters made plans to make popcorn and watch a movie – staying inside to avoid what was working up to near blizzard conditions outside.

Susan’s mother, Kathy, called the store and told her daughter to be sure to take a major route home so if anything were to happen – if her car were to skid off the road in the bad weather – she could easily get help.

The store manager would later tell investigators that just before leaving the store at the end of her shift, Susan changed her clothes out of the red pantsuit she had worn for her shift and into a mini skirt, Kurtz said.

On her way home, Susan pulled her car into the gas station at the corner of Manning Avenue and Highway 5. She asked the attendant if she could leave her car because she was having problems with it.

The attendant told her that it would be fine, Kurtz said, but to move the car over to the edge of the parking area so it would be out of the way for other customers and plows.

Susan moved the car and then went over to the gas pumps, the clerk told investigators, and began talking to a man there.

After a few minutes of chatting, Susan got into the man’s car and the pair drove away.

Susan was never heard from again.

The investigation

Kurtz was a patrol deputy at the time and remembered when he received information on the case. He didn’t get the initial report, but quickly latched on to the case when it was reported that the Swedell family lived in Lake Elmo, Kurtz’s patrol area.

Kathy Swedell called police to report that her daughter had called to say she was coming home, but that she had not showed up and she wanted to check on vehicle accidents due to the storm outside.

The deputy on duty that night found Swedell’s car in the parking lot of a gas station at the intersection of Manning Avenue and Highway 5, only about one mile from Swedell’s downtown Lake Elmo apartment she shared with her mother and sister.

“I remember looking at that car,” Kurtz said, “the car she was supposed to be in, and seeing it covered in snow.”

Kurtz said his senses were tweaked when he saw the location of the gas station to Susan’s house in Lake Elmo.

“It was odd, too, because of how close she was to home,” Kurtz said. “If she could get that car started and move it across the parking lot, why couldn’t she just keep driving it and get herself closer to the house at least.”

Swedell’s drivers license was found in the car.

When she walked out, she walked up to a man who was pumping gas. She talked to him for a few minutes and then got into his car. “That’s the last anyone saw her,” Kurtz said.

“We told Kathy we found the car and she went to pick it up. She drove it to a repair place in Stillwater and it was smoking by the time she got it there. The mechanic told the mother that the petcock on the radiator had been loosened somehow and the car had no water in it, so it overheated,” Kurtz said.

If someone did that on purpose, he could have followed her and waited for her to pull over and offer her a ride, Kurtz said. But then there’s the question of why she was dressed the way she was.

“It’s not completely out of character for her,” Christine said. “She liked to change clothes and she did it a lot. But what is out of character was her putting on something inappropriate for the weather.”

A few days after Susan’s disappearance, her mother Kathy stopped Kurtz by flagging him down while on patrol in Lake Elmo. “She told me she had thought Susan had been back to the house,” he said.

Kathy reported that Christine had come home from school and smelled an odor of cigarette smoke in the family’s apartment. She said there were dirty dishes in the sink. As she began calling out and looking around the house, Christine located the red pantsuit Susan wore to work at K-mart on the day she disappeared balled up under the bed.

“That added credence to the idea that we had already, that she just left on her own,” Kurtz said.

Christine and Kathy Swedell, and even Kurtz, don’t believe Susan left of her own volition.

“At 19 everybody seems to think that you’re an adult and you’re treated differently,” Christine said. “There’s not a category between 18 and 21 for missing people. I would portray her as a very young 19-year-old. She was very green to the world. She was very trusting of people.”

Susan attended the University of Wisconsin-River Falls for a semester, but found that she was not yet prepared to attend college away from home, Christine said.

“She wasn’t quite ready and decided to work instead for a while,” she added. “She was doing real well holding two jobs and trying to figure things out.”

Susan was active at Christ Lutheran Church, her sister said. She found refuge and encouragement there, Christine said.

The girls had had a tumultuous early life having been put into their father’s home for a period of almost 10 years after her parents divorced.

“It wasn’t the best situation,” Kurtz said. So, when the girls were reunited with their mother, they were teenagers and there was an adjustment period, as anyone could expect.

“There was definitely tension at home,” Kurtz said. “I don’t think it was anything other than ‘normal teenage’ stuff, though.”

Kurtz said that although the three women had occasional arguments, the police were never called to their house prior to Susan’s disappearance. He also said that after interviewing Kathy and Christine Swedell, Kurtz came to realize the closeness of the sisters.

“We were really close. The intensity of our closeness – we had been separated for so many years,” she continued. When the girls returned to their mother’s home “it was like a dream,” Christine said. “There were issues, sure. But I wouldn’t say they were anything other than normal teen-age stuff.

“It’s like we were soul sisters.”

The one nagging detail in the back of Kurtz’s mind, however, was the lack of communication. “There was nothing. She didn’t call home. She didn’t come by. Nothing.”

Following up

As with every other jurisdiction in the country, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office has to balance the need for attention to older cases and those that continue to flow in new every day.

Det. Greg Reiter joined the investigation division about five years ago. He has been a deputy for 10 years. About two years ago, he was assigned the Susan Swedell missing person case.

Cold cases in real life aren’t the stuff portrayed on television.

“It’s not like this case is kept stored in some basement somewhere,” Reiter said. “I keep the box of evidence and reports at my desk. That doesn’t ever go into some back room. It stays active on my desk.”

“With the moniker cold case, everyone thinks it’s just on the back burner. It’s still active. It’s still out there,” said Commander Patrick Olson. “There’s no defining line, no period of time, that kicks it into a cold case status. The investigation continues and it remains unsolved.”

Reiter said the department does not get many new leads in the Swedell case, but every one that is phoned in is taken seriously and pursued fully.

“There’s a big difference in unsolved and unsolvable,” Reiter said. “These cases are solvable. It’s different for everyone. They want justice. They want resolution. Someone somewhere knows something.”

Reiter said investigators would take information from anyone who thinks they may know something about Swedell or what happened to her.

“To them it might seem insignificant, but to us … you never know. In a lot of cases, it’s the little bits of information that can be helpful in breaking the case wide open. That’s why we want to know those leads.”

Kurtz’s desire to see the case solved is understandable by his colleagues.

“These cases grow on you,” Olson said. “During their time, every cop runs into that. There’s family, a case, that intrigues you that it takes on a life of its own. You’ll drive around thinking about it. You’ll wake up at night thinking about it. It’s always on your mind.”

While one local person early on in the initial investigation piqued investigators’ interests, the lead went nowhere. Over the years, investigators also looked into other suspects, including Donald Blom who was convicted of killing Katie Poirier in 1999 in Moose Lake.

“That turned out to be a dead end because he was in prison at the time Sue disappeared,” Kurtz said.

About 18 months ago, a call from the United States Army from California shined a possible new light on the Swedell disappearance. A military background investigator told the detectives in the sheriff’s office that a woman named Susan Swedell was trying to enlist in the service.

The woman had told recruiters that she was from Lake Elmo and had simply left home after getting fed up with life there, but that she was looking to join the service to find direction in her life.

The county immediately dispatched a detective to California to interview the woman. It turned out to be a case of identity theft rather than a case of missing person found.

“I wish that woman could face us,” Christine said. “I’d tell her ‘You not only stole someone’s identity, but you also victimized a missing person again.’”

Christine said she and her mother went through a wide range of emotions during the investigation into the California woman’s claim to be Susan. Kathy was wondering what would happen in their home if it was, indeed, Susan and what she would say to her, how they would behave. But, on the other hand, she was guarded and didn’t want to get her hopes up too much.

“It’s constant,” Christine said. “You think about it every day. You wake up and you wonder and you go on with your day and the same thing happens again the next day.”

Kurtz has a dream of starting a national database of DNA from relatives of missing people. That DNA then could be cross-checked with DNA of discovered bodies across the country, hopefully giving closure to families and friends.

But, start-up money for the project and the time to get law enforcement jurisdictions and even Congress on board is almost daunting.

“I’ll still follow it and keep telling everyone I can about it because it’s important and it would work,” Kurtz said. “Maybe if we had something like that the Swedell family would have closure. Maybe we would know by now.”

‘I still don’t get it’

“I know you can be really close to somebody and not really know what was going on, but this isn’t right. She’s so sentimental. Even if she did decide to leave, she wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple days and she would have been calling or coming home. I think in my gut, in my heart, it always goes back to her being too sentimental to be gone this long and have no communication.

“To this day I still don’t get it.”

As for the idea that her sister may be dead, Christine said she understands that is a possibility, but she refuses to give up hope that her sister is alive somewhere.

“You would rather know one way or the other, rather than all this craziness,” she said. “The emotional struggle is almost too much sometimes. The anniversaries are hard. The holidays are hard, especially Christmas. She loved Christmas.”

So why not file paperwork that is available to declare her sister deceased? Christine said it still wouldn’t offer any kind of closure for her family.

“I refuse to give up hope,” she said. “You know life has to go on, but it doesn’t. A lot of it is just stuck because there’s no movement on the case.”

Declaring Susan dead wouldn’t resolve any questions for the family. “It would finalize it on paper, but it never is final for the family,” Christine said.

The family moved from Lake Elmo about 18 months after Susan’s disappearance. “It just felt cold,” Christine said of the home the family rented downtown. “It didn’t feel like a home, a family.

“My mother and I had moved everything we needed daily downstairs and we lived on the first floor because we couldn’t even bear to walk by her bedroom and see it empty.”

Every year, once or twice a year, Christine said she and her mother drive quietly into Lake Elmo and stop in front of the house they used to live in. “I get out and I stand out there because I have to just stand where she stood. I have to be where she was and remember. And then we have to get out of there as fast as we can,” she said. “I still consider Lake Elmo home because that’s where Sue was. My heart is in Lake Elmo.”

Anyone with information on the disappearance of Susan Swedell should call Detective Greg Reiter at the Washington County Sheriff’s Office at 651-439-9381.

Denise:
http://www.twincities.com/ci_7989400?source=most_viewed&nclick_check=1

Family of missing Lake Elmo girl still looking for answers 20 years later
Pioneer Press

Article Last Updated: 01/16/2008 06:19:18 PM CST

Susan called her family from work one night 14 years ago to say she was on her way home, and she hasn't been heard from since. Twenty years ago this week 19-year-old Susan Swedell left work at a Kmart in Oak Park Heights, bound for an evening of popcorn and movies with her mother and sister at home in Lake Elmo.

Later, a gas station clerk let her leave her overheated car at the station, a mile from home. That clerk, peering through a snow-splattered store window, witnessed her get into another car with a man.

Since that day, Jan. 19, 1988, Swedell has not been seen or heard from.

"Families of missing children deserve closure," said Carol Watson, executive director of Missing Children Minnesota, in a statement. "Even if the news is bad it's still better to know than to go on year after year wondering."

In the fall of 2006, police told Susan Swedell's mother Kathy Swedell that there had been activity linked to her daughter's social security number.

On this 20th anniversary of Swedell's disappearance, Kathy Swedell and Missing Children Minnesota are asking for people to light candles in memory of not just Susan Swedell but all of the long term missing.

Anyone with information on about Susan Swedell or other missing people are asked to contact Missing Children Minnesota at (612) 334-9449 or (888) RUN-YELL.

Denise:
http://www.spotlightoncrime.org/case_swedell_susan.cfm

Up to $25,000 Reward
Up to $25,000 is being offered for information leading to the discovery of Susan Swedell's whereabouts.
Susan Swedell, 19 at the time of her disappearance, was last seen on January 19, 1988 at a gas station about a mile from her home in Lake Elmo. Employed by K-Mart in Oak Park Heights, Swedell had frequently received phone calls at work from a man she referred to as "Dale." On the night of her disappearance, a snowy evening, she called her mom from K-Mart to let her know she planned on coming home to watch a movie. Before she left work Susan changed into a short skirt, which seemed odd because of the blizzard-like conditions. A short time later she asked a gas station attendant if she could leave her car at the station because she was having car trouble. She then got into another car with a man that was waiting for her. Witnesses describe him as unshaven, tall with shoulder length curly hair, well built and wearing a leather jacket. She has not been heard from or seen since.

Please bring closure to the family and friends of Susan Swedell.

Anyone with information about Susan Swedell's disappearance should contact:

Washington County Sherrif's Office at (651)430-7850

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