MN MN - Susan Swedell, 19, Lake Elmo, 19 Jan 1988

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Youtuber.. Brooke makenna.. Actually covered this case check her out she’s great.
And she mentioned how they had a suspect who they questioned, he acted suspiciously when questioned And they gave him a polygraph and he failed.
 
minnie.snow.da said:
14-year-old Minnesota girl identified as ‘Walker County Jane Doe,’ victim in 1980 Texas cold-case homicide

I just wanted to post this and notice the similarities of the victim and also the proximity to which they both lived and were taken from.
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Sherri Ann Jarvis was from Stillwater and ran away, not taken persé). Lake Elmo is 10 minutes away. Susan was taken from there. There could be a connection, but only if Sherri stayed in the area after running away. Lake Elmo/Stillwater and Huntsville are 17 hours apart. We don't know Sherri's exact running away date, but it was early in the year 1980. She could have been in the Houston area for a longer time. There is an 8 years gap between Sherri running away (early in 1980, body found October 1980) and the abduction? of Susan (1988). If you ask me: no connection at first glance.
 
Bit of hope said:
Sherri Ann Jarvis was from Stillwater and ran away, not taken persé). Lake Elmo is 10 minutes away. Susan was taken from there. There could be a connection, but only if Sherri stayed in the area after running away. Lake Elmo/Stillwater and Huntsville are 17 hours apart. We don't know Sherri's exact running away date, but it was early in the year 1980. She could have been in the Houston area for a longer time. There is an 8 years gap between Sherri running away (early in 1980, body found October 1980) and the abduction? of Susan (1988). If you ask me: no connection at first glance.
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There is if you see they both were at truck stops/rest stops and 8 years for a pro is nothing, especially if it’s someone who was trucking or traveling the highways out of state. Since Susan was never found and this girl was found years later by coincidence. They look so so much alike.

<modsnip>

not all girls are forced into trafficking immediately, and not all girls that are abducted are necessarily prostitutes.
 
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Bit of hope said:
A good overview of the case, from April 8, 2021. The Bizarre Disappearance of Susan Swedell
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This is not the first time I’ve heard about this case, I am from MN. I am still going with the connection between these 2 because it sounds like Sue herself could have been persuaded into believing or trusting someone dubious. Chat lines can be frequented by all kinds of people and likely she was stalked by whoever did this because for her car to have been tampered with was very Ted Bundyesque in nature. She may have thought she knew the person and so may have Sherri but that doesn’t mean a predator didn’t intend that.

“Investigators also learned that Sue had been calling telephone chat lines and talking with various males; she had called so often the previous month that she had run up a $300 phone bill, but it was unknown if she ever met any of the people she chatted with in person.”

Even more so being a person who worked there in a public place. Both innocent and not innocent girls are picked up and trafficked. I’ve seen statements from truckers saying they purposely would take girls out of state before harming them because they knew it would be harder to track down.

Often also associated with this is drugs, not that marijuana could’ve been in her life already or not but it’s a way or disarming and relaxing people into a false sense of security. Someone willing to stalk her and take her would also be daring enough to know how to get into her house and how to do it undetected. This would be a classic collector.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...st-texas-decades-will-new-clues-lead-suspect/

example of the type of behavior happening rampant, Minnesota is just one place, girls come from all over but they are continuing to find more bodies and the reality is because the truckers and individuals who do these things actually share tips and are a community/ groups of like minded individuals who share girls, swap girls, and sell girls. It’s why no local leads ever pan out.
 
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minnie.snow.da said:
I am still going with the connection between these 2 because it sounds like Sue herself could have been persuaded into believing or trusting someone dubious. Chat lines can be frequented by all kinds of people and likely she was stalked by whoever did this
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That she could have trusted someone she was talking with on the phone; totally plausible, but that doesn't mean there is a connection between these two cases. I'm still not sure how you come from A to B. As I explained in my post it's possible, but very unlikely there is a connection between these cases.

minnie.snow.da said:
Both innocent and not innocent girls are picked up and trafficked. I’ve seen statements from truckers saying they purposely would take girls out of state before harming them because they knew it would be harder to track down.
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Please tell me what you mean with a 'not innocent girl'. Victims are always innocent, no matter their walk of life. About the truckers angle...yes, I agree. This things happen, but Susan was picked up by a guy in a car, not a truck(er). Or do you think this person took her to a trucker in a trafficking ring. I don't see that.

minnie.snow.da said:
Since Susan was never found and this girl was found years later by coincidence.
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Walker County Jane Doe, recently identified as Sherri Ann Jarvis, wasn't found "by accident". Her abused body was lying in the open, dumped, to be found by a passerby, just months after she went missing.
 
Bit of hope said:
That she could have trusted someone she was talking with on the phone; totally plausible, but that doesn't mean there is a connection between these two cases. I'm still not sure how you come from A to B. As I explained in my post it's possible, but very unlikely there is a connection between these cases.

Please tell me what you mean with a 'not innocent girl'. Victims are always innocent, no matter their walk of life. About the truckers angle...yes, I agree. This things happen, but Susan was picked up by a guy in a car, not a truck(er). Or do you think this person took her to a trucker in a trafficking ring. I don't see that.

Walker County Jane Doe, recently identified as Sherri Ann Jarvis, wasn't found "by accident". Her abused body was lying in the open, dumped, to be found by a passerby, just months after she went missing.
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1) they’re both from the same area and their victim profile is very similar. Both height, weight, and appearance were all similar. That cannot be discounted and cannot be ruled out.

2) SS and SAJ both were doing things without their parents knowledge ( truancy and chat line and possibly drugs ) and both are within minutes of I-94 that links to almost any other major highway in this area. Look at a map. Wanting to “run away” or hang out can always start as your idea and become something else entirely very quickly. So not innocent in the fact that yes they consented to going or spending time with someone does not mean they weren’t abducted after the fact. Some trafficked girls start willingly without ever knowing that’s what’s happening.
3) She was found by accident “years” later in the fact of her IDENTITY, not her body.
“remained unidentified for 41 years before investigators announced her identification via forensic genealogy in November 2021.”
I am fully aware how and where she was dumped. She is perfectly adjacent to 1-45, not very far up the road from the Texas Killing Fields. Not every trucker always is in their truck and not everyone habitually driving the highway is a trucker but could be also a traveling salesman, or have many other covers as to why they are where they are when they are. SAJ said she was “meeting a friend” who was in prison. SS could have been meeting someone she hadn’t before or been stalked and approached by someone who knew where she would be. Sounds to me like she was open to and searching for something similar to SS off her chat lines, connection to someone.

<modsnip>

And for as well as the 8 year period, Robert Ben Rhoades said he had been active for 15 + years and that’s just someone we know about, again, when these types of individuals get comfortable, they do speak with each other and share tips, not always as a “ring” Per se but as friends/buddies. Other convicted killers have admitted to being traveling salesman and that it allowed them to be in places they wouldn’t normally and have them reason to leave the area without suspicions or any reasons why. Others have also said they do have groups of friends or other individuals that they told about their crimes.

I 100% believe there is a connection here.
 
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photo of wcso official flier.jpg

<modsnip>

SUSAN ANNE "SUE" SWEDELL...

...and the man she was last seen with.

The photo attached to this post is an official flier published by Washington County Sheriff's Office in concert with the Washington County Attorney's Office (Minnesota) in 2018. It is brief, but offers one of the more lucid and assumption-free accounts of the circumstances of Susan Swedell's disappearance.

I'll transcribe it here in case the image isn't visible to some visitors:

"Susan Swedell, 19 at the time of her disappearance, left work after her shift at the K-Mart in Oak Park Heights. It was a snowy night and she stopped at a gas station at Manning Ave & County Road 14 (formerly Hwy 5) near her home in Lake Elmo. She asked the station attendant if she could leave her car there because she was having car trouble. Susan then got into a car with an unknown man. A witness described him as unshaven, tall with shoulder length curly hair and wearing a leather jacket. Susan, who was wearing a mini skirt and black down jacket has not been heard from since. Tips call 651-430-7850"

The gas station

A couple of notes about the location Sue was last seen.

It was a small self-service rural gas station located in Lake Elmo, Minnesota at the 3-way intersection of Manning Ave (north-south) and Stillwater Blvd (east-west). Northbound Manning Ave ends at this T intersection. Stillwater Blvd in 1988 was Minnesota Hwy 5. Due to rerouting and naming of roads and highways it is currently County Rd 14. This intersection is just west of the Washington County Fairgrounds and just north of Lake Elmo Airport. It is about 1 mile due east of downtown Lake Elmo.

The gas station was in the southeast corner of the intersection. The gas station was about 1.3 miles due east of Sue's home in downtown Lake Elmo.

The old gas station building Sue was last seen at was razed in about the year 2000. It was replaced by a new gas station on the same lot. Today it is a Holiday Stationstore. I've heard that the Holiday station still displays a poster informing people of this missing person case which started there.

Cars and car trouble

This flier is especially helpful because it does not jump to the conclusion that Sue actually had car trouble that night and does not specify what car trouble she may have had: contrast with info from the Charley Project profile and several newspaper reports which assume that because there was car trouble a few days later that there must have been that night also.

The fact is that Sue only reported that she had "car trouble" to the gas station attendant as her reason for wanting to leave her car parked in the gas station lot. The gas station attendant, a woman in her mid-20s, was the sole eyewitness at the gas station. She did not witness an overheating car and did not hear the term "overheating" from Sue. Nobody ever confirmed that there was any mechanical problem with that car that night.

The car was Sue's mother's - a maroon 1975 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Her mother drove it home the next morning without detecting any mechanical problems. It wasn't until 5 or 6 days later when her mother drove it again when the car overheated. A mechanic told her that somebody had unscrewed the petcock on the car's radiator causing all the fluid to drain out of the cooling system, thus causing the overheating.

There is not sufficient information in published sources to confirm when this apparent sabotage occurred. It either happened prior to her arrival at the gas station on the day Sue was last seen, or it happened sometime after she was last seen at the gas station.

The gas station attendant who described the man Sue rode away with also described his car the next morning as a light-colored but dirty late-1970s-possibly-early-1980s Ford Thunderbird or LTD style body with mag wheels (or sports wheels).

The Washington County Sheriff's Office anonymous tipline is 651-430-7850
 
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Trying to look at this from another angle…
Sue changes into a skirt before leaving work. There is a blizzard going on. It’s cold and snowy. She is aware of the conditions and nervous about driving in that weather. There is no reason to change into a skirt; quite the contrary. Her sister said this was not out of the ordinary. I get that, but in this circumstance, it makes no sense. The only logical reason to change is if she was trying to look good for someone at KMart or she was meeting someone in the parking lot.

Could be she had a crush on someone she worked with or was dating someone she worked with. Maybe someone she had to keep secret, like a married man. If that is the case, she could have changed clothes just to give off the impression of going out after work. Trying to make him jealous. Could the calls she received at work been made just to make her coworker jealous? Or maybe the coworker was going to leave when she did and they were going to park somewhere close for private time together? Or maybe that’s what he wanted her to think they were going to do? Could she have been pregnant with his child and he got rid of her? Or she threatened to tell his wife about them? Maybe the wife even worked at Kmart too. I know this is wild speculation, but just a thought.

I think it’s more likely than not that she knew this mystery man. Maybe very loosely, like a customer or brother of a friend, etc.
 
I heard this asked in a podcast and I hadn’t thought about this before, we know Sue changed clothes before leaving Kmart. Was there a dressing room there or did she change in a bathroom? Could she have left the red pantsuit at Kmart, either intentionally or accidentally? If she left the clothing there, someone from Kmart could have been the one to take the outfit to her house.

Oh wait, I don’t remember hearing that her red pantsuit was found in her abandoned car. So either she did leave the clothes at Kmart or she took them with her into the guy’s car. She didn’t take her her purse and glasses into the guy’s car so not sure why she would take the clothes.

This possibility further makes me think she could have been secretly dating someone from Kmart. Someone who would have known about the hidden key at her house.

The big question is, did the description of the guy given by the gas station employee match, closely or loosely, any Kmart employee?
 
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There is some resemblence between him and the sketch of the man last seen with Susan, and it would be interesting to compare a photo of him closest to the time period she went missing with the sketch of the man last seen with Susan. Maybe that's been done. He's certainly a possibility as to the man she was last seen with. But if they can't even legally prove that he murdered the other girl he was actually documented to have been seen with when she went missing then it's perhaps unlikely he'll ever be proven to be involved in Susan's disapearence. I think she believed she was being given a ride home by the man she was last seen with, and obviously that's not what happened.
 
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