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

[summergirl1]

According to the Facebook page her family runs, there's now a new investigator on her case, and it's regarded as an active case, not a cold case.

 

[Reminder]

Listened to the 10 episodes of the podcast...wow just wow....Great job. Still so many questions not answered... Will they ever. I feel so much sympathy for her sister and mother. They are the sweetest people imo.

This old podcast was recommended in mainstream media articles about Susan Swedell's case. The podcaster had the cooperation of law enforcement working on the case. She interviewed detectives, family, and friends. For anybody interested in this case, it's sort of a must.

The podcast is still available through the Internet Archive.

<modsnip: Reddit>

 

[spartanx]

I have the impression that she ran away from home... she could have pretended to be in the church and her naivety to make believe that it was really like that since maybe she wanted to go with the man in the sketch... the man seemed to be waiting for her to she got into her car... it could be that she herself removed the water cap from the radiator to pretend to have to stop at that gas station and meet that guy... I think the guy is much older than her, he spoke nice to her and She fell with her naivety....
Be that as it may, it could be that she still lives with that man or if she doesn't...
rest in peace

 

[Reminder]

I trust that officials at Washington County Sheriff's Office and at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (our state bureau of investigations) are doing their very best with this case. I trust that Sheriff Starry has taken care to compile a vast and insightful casefile and that they have a lot better working theory than they have been able to share publicly. They've been interviewing people close to Sue for nearly 36 years and pursuing all the usual investigative avenues with renewed intensity in the past 26 years. We know from newspaper articles and statements of family that lots of professional talent has been brought to bear on this case.

There used to be a video on YouTube of a press conference held by Sheriff Starry and other officials in 2017 or 2018. The county no longer publishes the video on their YouTube channel which is too bad because it showed the determination of these agencies to resolve the Susan Swedell case.

In the past few years it has possibly become the most highly publicized missing person case in Minnesota.

Please keep Sue's family in mind. January 19, 2023 is right around the corner. Her sister has stated that the holidays can be a challenging time.

 

[Reminder]

...
Please keep Sue's family in mind. January 19, 2023 is right around the corner. Her sister has stated that the holidays can be a challenging time.

Correction: I meant January 19, 2024 which will be 36 years unless something changes between now and then. Along with her family, keep her friends and community in mind too. These stories affect everyone which I guess is why any of us are here at Websleuths.

 

[Reminder]

....
There used to be a video on YouTube of a press conference held by Sheriff Starry and other officials in 2017 or 2018. The county no longer publishes the video on their YouTube channel which is too bad because it showed the determination of these agencies to resolve the Susan Swedell case...

The press conference was held on January 19, 2018, the 30th anniversary of Susan Swedell's disappearance. I still couldn't find the video of the press conference, but I did find this Pioneer Press article about the event here:

Sheriff asks for public’s help in 1988 disappearance of young Lake Elmo woman

Clutching the last card that her sister ever gave her, Christine Swedell implored the public Friday to help solve the case of Susan Swedell’s disappearance. “On Jan. 19, 1988, my sister vanished an…

www.twincities.com

The full article is worth a read, but here are some quotes by law enforcement officials I was remembering. The press conference video had a lot more of this:

“We look at everything,” Starry said. “Someone out there knows the whereabouts of Sue. We are hopeful and encouraged that someone will do the right thing and share information so we can bring Susan home.”

“Somebody can provide us the answers to know where Susan went that night,” said BCA Superintendent Drew Evans. “We are very committed to finding those answers. This team will not give up until we determine where Susan went and, hopefully, can bring her home to her family.”

Evans said advances in technology over the past 30 years, particularly in DNA testing, could help.

“We’re looking at all the forensic evidence that we have,” he said. “We don’t only look at it five years after, 10 years after, but we’re constantly evaluating advances in DNA technology. There are a number of different tools — in terms of connecting dots — that the team would not have had back then.”

Washington County Attorney Pete Orput said he is grateful that law officers “continue to seek justice for people, regardless of time, regardless of difficulty or how perplexing it might look.”

“We are not letting go of any of these cases that we have,” Orput said. “We are going to seek justice our entire careers, and then it will go to the next generation. We’re not ever going to let go of this until we can hold someone accountable.”

 

[Reminder]

......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....

I completely disagree with everything I was suggesting and implying in the qoted post above. It's almost all totally irrelevant.

I now believe that Sue did have car trouble as she pulled into that gas station that night. There's a detail which I think law enforcement must have taken into consideration a very long time ago and I think it pretty much spells this out even if nobody examined that car for almost another week. We don't need a perfect timeline to piece some of this together.

Is anybody else haunted by the fact that Sue went into the gas station and asked permission to leave her car there? She asked permission. And we know this happened because the next morning the woman who was working the night before told Washington County Sheriff's deputies and Sue's mother that this is what happened.

She asked permission. I think it's highly significant and limits possibilities for what was going on that night. She didn't run away. And she wasn't going off on a secret date. If she was doing something she wasn't supposed to or trying to keep secret, would she have gone somewhere where she had to ask permission to execute whatever plan she had? I don't think so. I don't think anybody would.

There was also a crucial time constraint because Sue knew that her mother and sister were expecting her home at any minute. What if the gas station attendant had said, "No. You can't leave your car parked here." Then what? Now she and this guy she has a secret plan with have to drive down the road until they find somebody who will give them permission before they can do whatever they want to do??? It doesn't make sense.

If she just needed to ditch her car temporarily, there were countless places she could have done that after leaving Kmart without having to ask permission - businesses, residential streets, anywhere. There were also a total of at least THREE gas stations along her route home, and one of them was much closer to her home than the one she ended up at. So if a gas station was important, why that one? No. This was serendipitous that she ended up there or we might not have any eyewitness testimony at all. Her car could have, maybe should have, just failed on the roadside somewhere on Stillwater Blvd.

I'm willing to talk this out, but I don't see a way around this. The fact that she asked permission is a major clue that Sue was not in control of the situation and not lying about there being car trouble at that time.

I totally take back everything I said about this in August 2022. I wasn't thinking clearly. Wow.

 

[Reminder]

36 years ago today Susan Swedell left her shift at a Kmart store about 9PM. Her mother and sister expected her home before 930PM.

Here is the Swedell Strong Facebook page created by Susan Swedell's sister. Last year they asked everyone to light a candle at 9PM to help light the way home for Sue.

Log into Facebook

Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

www.facebook.com

Usually one of the major newspapers in the Twin Cities runs a story about Susan Swedell's disappearance on or about the anniversary of her disappearance. So far no newspaper article has appeared for this 36th year.

 

[Richard]

Susan Swedell, 19, a month before she went missing on 19 January 1988

LINK:

It’s been decades since Hang Lee and Susan Swedell disappeared. What happened to the teens?

A search for answers weighs heavily on investigators and families.

www.twincities.com

 

[Reminder]

............LINK:

It’s been decades since Hang Lee and Susan Swedell disappeared. What happened to the teens?

A search for answers weighs heavily on investigators and families.

www.twincities.com

The above article was published one year ago.

I think the attempt to link Mark Wallace/Hang Lee to Susan Swedell is grasping at straws. Wallace isn't the first known offender law enforcement has profiled for a connection to Sue's case. There have been others. There was Larry Hall, the infamous serial killer. And at least one other guy who was at the prison at Lino Lakes, MN using 976 chatlines while incarcerated. There are probably many more we don't know about and there will probably be many more.

I understand the need to take every investigative stragety. I would expect due diligence from law enforcement.

But I've wondered about this article which seem to be an attempt to energize both the Lee and Swedell stories by telling them together. I fear that whoever does know what happened to Sue felt relieved to have the focus on somebody other than himself as he read that article with so much focus on Mark Wallace. Reporting like this could also give the community the false impression that Wallace is probably the guy and that could have a cooling effect on community interest.

The way I read this article, the reporters were grasping for something new to report on. I don't see any clear connection and what the detective said about it was pretty weak.

 

[Reminder]

The Susan Swedell case will be getting some national attention on Dateline NBC. Investigators at Washington County (Minnesota) Sheriff's Office posted this on their Facebook page on Friday, January 19, 2024.

https://www.facebook.com/WCSOMN/posts/776182517887230

 

[Reminder]

See also the Minnesota Bureau of Criminnal Apprehension's Facebook posting also on Friday, January 19, 2024:

https://www.facebook.com/MNBCA/posts/771389711691870

 

[BethAnn777]

I’m listening to The Unfound podcast and the host is interviewing Sue’s sister Christine. I’ve listened before, but what stood out to me this time around is that the guy from Bumpers called their house and came over “once or twice”. This is discussed at the 38 minute mark in case anyone wants to listen. I may have forgotten this detail. Can’t the phone company check the phone records for that time period? It might be too late now, but couldn’t they have checked back then?

His dad owned Bumpers, the dance club Sue had been going to. We might not know who this guy is, but certainly the cops do. Either they don’t have enough evidence to charge him with anything or he is just a red herring.

The day before she disappeared, Sue told her mom she wanted her to meet a guy named Dale. Christine said they had no idea who Dale was. I find it a bit surprising, or maybe just disappointing, that her mom didn’t ask for more details. I’m just thinking about my own two kids that are bit older now than the age Sue was then. I would have asked a few follow up questions if either of my kids told me there was a guy they wanted me to meet. Who is he? How do you know him? Does he go to your college? So you work with him? Something. I wonder if Sue did give more details and her mom just doesn’t remember? Could she go under hypnosis to see if she can recall more details?

What I’m not clear about, did Sue ever actually meet Dale in person? If so, why would he need to tamper with her car in order to abduct her? Now, if they had never met face to face and he didn’t look like he said he did, age, etc., that would be a problem. If his intent was to find someone to adjust all along, that’s a lot of premeditation and planning and I bet this wouldn’t be a one-time thing.

Sue’s manager said she changed into a skirt “during the day”. I was always under the impression that she changed right before she left work. If that is not the case, even though Christine says it’s not unusual for Sue to change, it could have been something as innocent as needing to change her pants due to spilling something on herself or female issues. In the podcast, Christine said Sue probably was wearing the skirt outfit before she came into Kmart, as she has been working at her other job before Kmart. Sue changing back into her other clothes verses wearing her Kmart outfit wouldn’t have been unusual.

 

[BethAnn777]

More from my last post. Christine thinks that the sketch looks like the guy from Bumpers. She immediately thought it looked like him. His car description closely fits the car the witness saw Sue get into. Cops say he has an alibi for the night Sue disappeared. He has passed polygraph exams. Christine says in her gut that she thinks he did it.

 

[PommyMommy]

JAN 27, 2024

Lake Elmo, Minnesota, authorities dedicated to solving 1988 disappearance of Sue Swedell: ‘It’s been too long’

The 19-year-old was worried about the blizzard conditions and was having car troubles when she stopped at a gas station about a mile from her home. She reportedly got into a car with a man and was never seen again.

www.nbcnews.com

[...]

Dateline spoke with three officials from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. Criminal intelligence analyst Blake Trantham has been working on Sue’s case for six or seven years, Detective Nick Sullivan worked it for five years, and Detective Cooper Valesano was recently assigned to the case to bring a fresh set of eyes.

[...]

Trantham told Dateline how their department first learned Sue Swedell had vanished. ... “Eventually that night, deputies went around looking in ditches and they -- they found her car parked at a, um, a gas station in -- in Lake Elmo. And it was empty. It was locked.”

The gas station was about a mile from Sue’s home. Her purse and glasses were left behind in the car.

[...]

The gas station attendant also told authorities that she had seen a car pull up behind Sue. Sue spoke with the man for a couple of minutes before she asked the attendant if she could leave her car at the station. “There was somebody that rolled up behind [Sue],” Blake Trantham said. “They spoke for maybe 15 minutes standing next to one another.”

[...]

“[Sue] got into the car of this man that she was talking to, and she was seen -- last seen going in the direction of our house,” Christine told Dateline.

[...]

“At the bottom of the radiator there was a drain plug, it was called a petcock. And the mechanic determined that petcock, that drain plug of the radiator, had been loosened, and so coolant had leaked causing the car to overheat,” Trantham said. “So there’s speculation that maybe is what Susan was experiencing that night on the way home.”

Trantham told Dateline that the mechanic “believed that someone would have had to have tampered with it,” but authorities had no proof of that.

[...]

A co-worker told investigators that “a male had been calling for her, like, a couple of weeks or so leading up to her disappearance,” Trantham told Dateline. Authorities were never able to identify that person.

[...]

Christine runs the “Swedell Strong” Facebook page, where she shares updates and information in Sue’s case.

[...]

 

[Reminder]

This just posted to the Dateline NBC Cold Case Spotlight website:

Lake Elmo, Minnesota, authorities dedicated to solving 1988 disappearance of Sue Swedell: ‘It’s been too long’

The 19-year-old was worried about the blizzard conditions and was having car troubles when she stopped at a gas station about a mile from her home. She reportedly got into a car with a man and was never seen again.

www.nbcnews.com

The article offers some clarity on a few points.

Referring to the facial composite everyone seems to see a match with somebody in:

"About a decade after Sue vanished, police decided to bring the attendant back in to create a composite sketch of the man she saw Sue leaving with. “I don’t think it’s as reliable as people just automatically assume,” Trantham said."

And more detail on the earliest description of the car Sue was seen riding away in:

"About a week later [still in January 1988], they brought the attendant into the sheriff’s office and had her look through a picture book of cars. “She pointed at a 1979 Ford LTD,” Trantham said. “She also described it as a -- as possibly being, like, a late ‘70s Thunderbird.”"



Investigators in this case left questions about foul play vs runaway open ended as they typically do.

Worth a read.

 

[BethAnn777]

JAN 27, 2024

Lake Elmo, Minnesota, authorities dedicated to solving 1988 disappearance of Sue Swedell: ‘It’s been too long’

The 19-year-old was worried about the blizzard conditions and was having car troubles when she stopped at a gas station about a mile from her home. She reportedly got into a car with a man and was never seen again.

www.nbcnews.com

[...]

Dateline spoke with three officials from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. Criminal intelligence analyst Blake Trantham has been working on Sue’s case for six or seven years, Detective Nick Sullivan worked it for five years, and Detective Cooper Valesano was recently assigned to the case to bring a fresh set of eyes.

[...]

Trantham told Dateline how their department first learned Sue Swedell had vanished. ... “Eventually that night, deputies went around looking in ditches and they -- they found her car parked at a, um, a gas station in -- in Lake Elmo. And it was empty. It was locked.”

The gas station was about a mile from Sue’s home. Her purse and glasses were left behind in the car.

[...]

The gas station attendant also told authorities that she had seen a car pull up behind Sue. Sue spoke with the man for a couple of minutes before she asked the attendant if she could leave her car at the station. “There was somebody that rolled up behind [Sue],” Blake Trantham said. “They spoke for maybe 15 minutes standing next to one another.”

[...]

“[Sue] got into the car of this man that she was talking to, and she was seen -- last seen going in the direction of our house,” Christine told Dateline.

[...]

“At the bottom of the radiator there was a drain plug, it was called a petcock. And the mechanic determined that petcock, that drain plug of the radiator, had been loosened, and so coolant had leaked causing the car to overheat,” Trantham said. “So there’s speculation that maybe is what Susan was experiencing that night on the way home.”

Trantham told Dateline that the mechanic “believed that someone would have had to have tampered with it,” but authorities had no proof of that.

[...]

A co-worker told investigators that “a male had been calling for her, like, a couple of weeks or so leading up to her disappearance,” Trantham told Dateline. Authorities were never able to identify that person.

[...]

Christine runs the “Swedell Strong” Facebook page, where she shares updates and information in Sue’s case.

[...]

Lake Elmo, Minnesota, authorities dedicated to solving 1988 disappearance of Sue Swedell: ‘It’s been too long’

The 19-year-old was worried about the blizzard conditions and was having car troubles when she stopped at a gas station about a mile from her home. She reportedly got into a car with a man and was never seen again.

www.nbcnews.com

I just read that article as well. A few things that stood out to me that I hadn’t heard before:

1. Sue was seen talking to the guy at the gas station for 15 minutes before she got in car and drove away. That’s a really long time to stand and talk to someone especially in the cold and snow. I wonder if that is really accurate? If so, seems she would know who this person was and it wasn’t a stranger.

“There was somebody that rolled up behind [Sue],” Blake Trantham said. “They spoke for maybe 15 minutes standing next to one another.”

2. The phone calls she was at work were received at Body and Soul, not Kmart.

“They learned that there had been some strange phone call activity at Sue’s job at the Body and Soul boutique. A co-worker told
investigators that “a male had been calling for her, like, a couple of weeks or so leading up to her disappearance,” Trantham told Dateline. Authorities were never able to identify that person.”

3. The red pants Sue was wearing the day she disappeared were DNA tested, repeatedly, no DNA found.

“The red pants were collected by police. Detective Sullivan told Dateline they did DNA testing on them. “We’ve ran it multiple times,” he said. “I think we had them rerun it in 2018, when I took this case. They -- just to see, you know? Obviously, technology changes, so to see if they could find anything. And there was -- there was nothing received”.

4. The sketch of the guy was made ten years after Sue’s disappearance.
I personally put very little stock in that sketch then, IMO. I always assumed the sketch was made right after Sue disappeared.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

Cold Case Spotlight: Sue Swedell

19-year-old Susan “Sue” Swedell vanished during a blizzard in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, on her way home from work on January 19, 1988. There is little evidence in her case. 36 years later, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office is continuing to investigate the disappearance.

www.nbcnews.com

The gas station was about a mile from Sue’s home. Her purse and glasses were left behind in the car

Lake Elmo, Minnesota, authorities dedicated to solving 1988 disappearance of Sue Swedell: ‘It’s been too long’

The 19-year-old was worried about the blizzard conditions and was having car troubles when she stopped at a gas station about a mile from her home. She reportedly got into a car with a man and was never seen again.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[summergirl1]

Or possibly, she spent so long talking to the man because she wasn't sure about trusting a stranger she'd just met, and wanted to be sure he had good intentions, just double checking, or maybe honestly wasn't sure about going with him and wanted to make sure that he was going to take her to her house that night? Maybe he kept insisting he could help? Her other option would have been to call her family from the gas station if they would have let her use their phone or use a payphone if there was one there and she had change for it..

 

[BethAnn777]

Or possibly, she spent so long talking to the man because she wasn't sure about trusting a stranger she'd just met, and wanted to be sure he had good intentions, just double checking, or maybe honestly wasn't sure about going with him and wanted to make sure that he was going to take her to her house that night? Maybe he kept insisting he could help? Her other option would have been to call her family from the gas station if they would have let her use their phone or use a payphone if there was one there and she had change for it..

True.
Her family only had one car to share and that’s the one Sue was driving. That further lends likelihood to needing to get a ride home. She couldn’t have called her mom for a ride as she would have had no way to get her.