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

[I am not Sherlock H.]

I reallly like your username. Neither am I

In 1988 the clerk, who was in her mid 20s, described the car as a light colored Ford LTD or perhaps Thunderbird style body with sports wheels. It was described as in good shape but dirty which would be normal during the snowy season. It would also be covered in some amount of snow that night.

Years later the clerk changed the color to a dark colored possibly Chevrolet Impala if I'm not mistaken. This is probably a trick of memory because so many years had passed. Most people seem to go with the earliest version.




I think they only have a vague description of the vehicle from the clerk.



Yes. That's the car Sue was driving. If it's the the picture of Sue and her sister hanging out with the car, that's the exact one. I think somebody else posted a picture of the same model all shiny and new somewhere. So not sure which photo you saw, but it was a 1975 Cutlass Supreme.

Thank you @Reminder ….. for the quick input and clarification! And yes I was looking at the picture of the Cutlass in post # 79 up thread from @Richard on SS vehicle.

So the other is possibly a circa or late 1980s Ford LTD or Thunderbird IIUC as per a clerk, rather than a mechanic. (But later possibly given as a Chevrolet Impala.) That should still have given some leads one would hope. I wonder if investigators had any likely photos of typical vehicles or pursued any leads with that? Possible acquaintances, friends, or even others.

And sure wish that maybe there might have been some DNA possibly on items in her apartment IIUC? It seemed that some things were thought moved or even taken or removed?

Sure hope something can break loose in this case. SS and her family and friends deserve some justice IMO.

N.b. Thanks also for the thoughts on the moniker. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries were some of my favorites as a young child. Still to this day they are. And I always read the unannotated versions with no images. I have my own imagination of who he and Watson are and should be. Great to touch base! MOO

 

[Reminder]

Thank you @Reminder ….. for the quick input and clarification! And yes I was looking at the picture of the Cutlass in post # 79 up thread from @Richard on SS vehicle.

So the other is possibly a circa or late 1980s Ford LTD or Thunderbird IIUC as per a clerk, rather than a mechanic. (But later possibly given as a Chevrolet Impala.) That should still have given some leads one would hope. I wonder if investigators had any likely photos of typical vehicles or pursued any leads with that? Possible acquaintances, friends, or even others.

And sure wish that maybe there might have been some DNA possibly on items in her apartment IIUC? It seemed that some things were thought moved or even taken or removed?

Sure hope something can break loose in this case. SS and her family and friends deserve some justice IMO.

N.b. Thanks also for the thoughts on the moniker. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries were some of my favorites as a young child. Still to this day they are. And I always read the unannotated versions with no images. I have my own imagination of who he and Watson are and should be. Great to touch base! MOO

Oh! Sorry, I left out the approximate date on the car description. The clerk described cars that were either late 1970s or possibly early 1980s.

Susan's sister has talked about a guy Sue met a couple weeks before her disappearance at a teen dance club. She says this guy drove a car that at least had sports wheels, but this guy has been cleared by law enforcement. The problem is that cars like that were so popular among young working class males. A very common sight on the road back then.

No DNA has ever been extracted from any of the evidence - at least from what authorities have disclosed. The clothing that mysteriously turned up under Sue's bed a week after her disappearance was eventually submitted as evidence and tested recently using cutting edge technology, but her sister had actually washed and worn that clothing herself not long after Sue was gone. In the late 1980s little was known about DNA, and it just wasn't routine to collect such evidence. Missed opportunity because if they had bagged that shirt and pants, there's a good chance with forensic genetic genealogy they would trace DNA to whoever put that clothing under her bed. Same thing with the dishes found in the sink, the hidden key, anything else that might have been touched. Whoever was there that day left DNA everywhere in the Swedell home. They had fingerprinting, but I don't think they even dusted for prints when her mother reported the mysterious visitor to the Sheriff's Office.

I'm posting all of this off the top of my head, so keep that in mind. Most of what I know comes from the Swedell Strong Facebook page and the Still Missing Podcast which is still out there somewhere if you Google around. It's in the Internet Archive. The rest comes from newspaper articles over the past few years.

I liked the first season of "Sherlock" starring Benedict Cumberbatch. I should probably read the originals. I only got as far as Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" which I think inspired Sir Doyle. Nice chatting. Take care.

 

[Reminder]

Thank you @Reminder ….. for the quick input and clarification! And yes I was looking at the picture of the Cutlass in post # 79 up thread from @Richard on SS vehicle......

Here's the pic of a 1975 Cutlass you referenced from Richard's post above:

Here's the actual car that Sue was driving that night with Sue and her sister posing:

And here's a photo of the gas station taken about 1999 by Sue's sister. By the time this photo was taken the gas station had been in disuse for maybe a few years and was badly overgrown. I lived in the area so I remember driving by and thinking the place should be bulldozed. It was an eye sore for a long time.

Based on descriptions of the scene the morning after Sue disappeared, this photo was probably taken from approximately the place where Sue's car would have been found abandoned that morning of January 20, 1988. As you look at the photo you are facing east. Directly on the other side of those pine trees behind the building is the Washington County Fairgrounds.

On the far side of the pump canopy off the left edge of this photo there was an entrance/exit going off to the northeast on Stillwater Blvd (then also Hwy 5). That would have been the way Sue and the car following her entered onto the lot after her K-Mart shift. There was another entrance/exit to the lot off the left edge of the photo but on the near side of the pump canopy, and this would have been the way that the guy drove off the lot with Sue in his car westbound on Stillwater Blvd (then also Hwy 5). There was yet a third exit/entrance to the lot off the right edge of the photo which went southbound on Manning Ave (then County Road 15).

 

[cenazoic]

The thing about the Ford Thunderbird vs LTD bugs me a bit.

If the car was a mid-late 70s model, teh LTD and the Thunderbird looked quite different;

7th gen Thunderbird (1977-79):

2nd gen LTD (1968-78):

Starting in 1980, they took on a similar look.

Thunderbird (1982):

And 1982 LTD (which is also its last year of production ):

Possibly complicating things is the Mercury XR-7 (1982):

I’d be curious how well-versed in car makes and models the gas station attendant was.

 

[Reminder]

A few more Ford and Mercury models from 1977-79 which are all pretty close in appearance to the casual observer. It couldn't have been easy for the gas station clerk to be sure of what she saw, but I think all the images posted so far are in the ballpark. The description of the car was "late-70s" and "light colored, in good shape but dirty" and having "sports wheels."

1977 Ford Thunderbird:

Here's the rear of the same model, different wheels:

1978 Ford LTD II Sport:

1979 LTD II:

1977 Mercury Cougar:

1977 Mercury Cougar design variations:

 

[Reminder]

One more...

1979 Mercury Cougar XR7:

 

[Reminder]

We're about 1 month away from the 37th anniversary of Sue's disappearance.

There's a recurring theme in this case. I'll call it "things not where they should be."

It goes a little bit like this:

1. Sue isn't home on Tuesday, Jan 19, 1988 about 930PM as expected

2. A little later that night, the family car is found parked at a gas station about 1.3 miles away from its usual parking spot at their home.

3. Sue's purse and glasses are found on the front seat of her car the following morning, Wed, Jan 20, 1988.

4. A few days later, on Sunday or Monday, Jan 24 or 25, it is discovered that the coolant that should have been in the engine block isn't there. The petcock (a drain valve) on the car's radiator isn't in it's normal position. It's been unscrewed which caused the coolant to leak out.

5. On Tuesday, Jan 26, one week to the day of Sue's disappearance, Sue's sister comes home from school to discover that the key they hid on the porch is not in it's usual place. She eventually finds it in an odd location on the porch and is finally able to enter her home.

6. When she enters the house, there is a strange burning odor in the air which is usually not there. Nobody in her household smokes or uses drugs.

7. She also discovers dishes in the sink which were not there when she left in the morning. Somebody had apparently eaten something or made it look like somebody had eaten and left dishes in the sink.

8. Later that evening, Sue's sister discovers the clothing that Sue had worn to work on the night of her disappearance has suddenly turned up under Sue's bed. It wasn't there before. She says that Sue would never handle her own clothing this way. She was a neat and organized person and didn't shove her clothing under her bed.

How do you interpret all of these examples of things out of place or not where they should be?

The consistency of the theme suggests that it's the same consciousness at work in each example. It also suggests a high degree of manipulation. Sue was manipulated. Her family was manipulated. And Washington County Sheriff's Office has been manipulated. Maybe we're being manipulated too, in the manipulator's own mind.

There is a tampering with property and a staging of evidence. The same consciousness that could have entered her home and returned her clothing to under her bed also would be capable of returning to the gas station to plant her glasses and purse on the front seat that night. The sabotage of the car might have not just been to manipulate Sue's behavior, but also to manipulate perceptions as to who Sue might have encountered and what happened. If her car broke down (sabotaged or not), maybe it was a stranger.

Whoever it was seems to have known a few things about Sue: what she drove, where she worked, where she lived, where the key was hidden. This suggests it was somebody she was at least acquainted with, but possibly somebody who had previously been invited to her home or watched her and/or her sister enter.

In his efforts to manipulate perceptions about what happened that night, he also left the most important and promising clues as to what really happened and who he was. This is not exactly a genius they're looking for, but he was a manipulator. He was sneaky and had a very high tolerance to risk taking. You might even say that he was less concerned with getting caught, but more concerned with painting a confusing narrative.

You would think that a rational cold calculating individual would have left as few clues as possible and got the hell out of the area, but he lingered and lurked for at least a week and continued to be involved in whatever had happened.

It was either an ego game for him - trying to outwit, or he was so desperately trying to put everyone off his trail that he was out of his mind. He could have been caught red-handed (literally) with Sue's red pants and red shirt entering into her home that day.

He was lucky he wasn't seen. He was also lucky he wasn't seen while he sabotaged her car's cooling system.

He wasn't so lucky when Sue managed to limp her car to that gas station so she didn't have to leave it in the middle of nowhere on the side of a dark highway.

He was seen at that gas station and so was his car, which shouldn't have been part of his plan, but he's a risk taker and he's also probably over-committed to whatever his plan was. He's also adaptable. When he realizes later that he has been seen, it's easier to take the risks of going back to the car to plant her glasses and purse, and he feels compelled by some further cognitive dissonance to return to her home with her clothing and apparently try to play it off as if she might have been there. Exactly what he was thinking or doing isn't clear, because his own thinking wasn't clear.

If I had to wager, I would bet that a guy who was that invested still pays attention to this story when it's in the news. The Internet has made it easy for him to keep up on all the chatter remotely. It probably reads like entertainment to him. He plays films of that night in his mind's eye. He can see her sitting next him in the front seat of his car as he drove away with her. And I'm afraid we might be feeding him with all of our own doubts and theories and guessing. If this is a game for him, then he's fooling even more people in his own mind than he ever dreamed of.

Of course, the one he has fooled the most in such a game would be himself. This cost Sue her life and it's cost her family and friends endlessly. It's also cost her community.

It's either some kind of ongoing game, or he has somehow successfully made himself oblivious, but that would seem uncharacteristic based on all the clues he left behind.

Call it nickel and dime psychology. Call me an armchair profiler. Call me an idiot. Maybe I am. But I don't think you need a PhD in criminology to establish a starting point on this character. The several oddities in this case do not spring from multiple sources. They are unified in a single consistent consciousness. I think that much is clear.

The problem for investigators is that they need his cooperation. Will he get sick of watching his films and decide to speak? Is he the only one who knew what happened? Looks like he could be. But could he have done all these things without somebody in his life saying, "What the hell is the matter with you lately?!" Maybe that's the person they need to find. I'm sure they've tried.

Surprising thing is, that even with some high profile serial killers, real monsters, when they are faced with confrontation, they often express regret. They know they are different. They know they were out of control. They do sometimes carry a burden of remorse. They're tired. And they open up. They sometimes ultimately get just one thing right in their lives and they help resolve cold cases.

Maybe Sue's guy will too.

 

[Reminder]

(Oops. This post was made in error while editting my last post. Sorry. Please delete.)

 

[BethAnn777]

@Reminder Thanks for your post. What do you make of him getting gas while he was at the gas station? Who sets out to abduct someone without making sure they have plenty of gas first? Maybe he didn’t need to go far and therefore didn’t really need the gas? Maybe he purchased gas to blend in, to have a reason to have followed her into the station?

#wishlist: what’s truth, lies, misremembering, red herrings, or coincidences? The bits and pieces and circumstances are plentiful. Some matter, others might not matter at all, but who knows what’s what?

 

[BethAnn777]

Thinking more about the gas station stop. Sue was one mile ish from home. Perhaps the intention was to stop at the gas station all along and her car malfunctioning was a total coincidence/red herring. We’ve heard that Sue wanted her mom to meet Dale. Perhaps Dale met Sue in the parking lot at work, either planned that evening by one of the phone calls she received or made that evening at work, or Dale surprised her. He tells her he needs to stop for gas, they stop for gas, and her car issues made it all the easier for him to abduct her? I also wonder if there could be any innocent explanation for her disappearance. Maybe she gets in his car, he says I need to stop at my house before we go to your house, and they drive into a pond or somehow they both disappear but no one reported him missing because he is transient or doesn’t have family. This is such a mystery!

 

[Reminder]

@Reminder Thanks for your post. What do you make of him getting gas while he was at the gas station? Who sets out to abduct someone without making sure they have plenty of gas first? Maybe he didn’t need to go far and therefore didn’t really need the gas? Maybe he purchased gas to blend in, to have a reason to have followed her into the station?

#wishlist: what’s truth, lies, misremembering, red herrings, or coincidences? The bits and pieces and circumstances are plentiful. Some matter, others might not matter at all, but who knows what’s what?

Hi BethAnn777. I've had the same question about the gas pumping part. Usually I think the same way you do about it. It could have just been his way of looking natural. It also would have bought him some time. It's crazy though, because it also enhances his visibility. So if he's Sue's abductor and this was all a plan, he's not very organized or disciplined.

 

[Reminder]

Thinking more about the gas station stop. Sue was one mile ish from home. Perhaps the intention was to stop at the gas station all along and her car malfunctioning was a total coincidence/red herring.

I've wondered about these things too, but the thing is that there were other gas stations along the way home. There was one just down the hill from Kmart on the frontage road. I think it was a SuperAmerica station. And there was another one that was only about a couple blocks or so from her house on the corner of Stillwater Blvd and Lake Elmo Ave called Lake Elmo Oil. These places should have been open that night.

I don't think the car trouble was coincidental because somebody had to unscrew that drain valve on the radiator. I don't think it was a red herring. I think she really did have car trouble because she went inside to ask permission to leave her car there. If she had wanted to ditch her car and run off with this guy for a few minutes, she could have left her car somewhere that didn't require asking permission. What if the answer had been no, you need to get your car off this lot because we're closing and the plows are coming? Then she has to go somewhere else to ask permission to go spend time with this guy? I think if they were trying to sneak in a date, she would have parked her car on a residential street or anywhere where she didn't have to ask permission.

We’ve heard that Sue wanted her mom to meet Dale. Perhaps Dale met Sue in the parking lot at work, either planned that evening by one of the phone calls she received or made that evening at work, or Dale surprised her. He tells her he needs to stop for gas, they stop for gas, and her car issues made it all the easier for him to abduct her?

I'm with you on this Dale guy. I have to believe the official investigation has worked very hard to try to identify this Dale character. Newspaper articles say that Sue was receiving lots of calls at her job at Kmart from somebody named Dale. At lunch the day before she disappeared, she told her mom about a guy named Dale who Sue said was a stripper. Her mom was concerned about the stripper part and Sue tried to reassure her that he was nice guy and she could meet him. A friend who had talked to Sue on the day of her disappearance said that her understanding was that Sue had plans to meet with somebody named Dale after her shift at Kmart. There are other conflicting reports of Sue's plans that night but it was a changeable situation with the weather and her plans with her on-off younger boyfriend from Minneapolis had cancelled at some point.

By the way, "Dale the Stripper" sounds like Chippendale dancers (Chippen-Dale? Right.) which were popular ladies night entertainment in the 1980s. It sounds like a crock. Sue was talking to guys on 976 chatlines and apparently met some of them. The early investigator, Jesse Kurtz, said some things in the Still Missing Podcast interview that might suggest this Dale guy could be one of these 976 chatline guys. People on chatlines used "handles" the same way they do on CB radio - an anonymous nickname until you got to know them better. I don't think this is for certain, but he could have been a chatline rat who stayed anonymous to Sue. She met another guy there who turned out to have been married and pretending to be single. Not much different than Internet dating today.

I also wonder if there could be any innocent explanation for her disappearance. Maybe she gets in his car, he says I need to stop at my house before we go to your house, and they drive into a pond or somehow they both disappear but no one reported him missing because he is transient or doesn’t have family. This is such a mystery!

I've wondered about that too. But I usually think it's conspicuous that there was only one missing person report filed that can be connected to that night. There are no missing person reports for males anywhere near that place or time. Whoever he was, he had access to a car. If it was somebody else's car and they went through the ice somewhere the owner would have reported the car missing and the driver too. More than likely it was his car and he was employed, had connections with family and community so that he would have been reported missing by somebody.

 

[Reminder]

In 1975 a woman in Miami, Florida reported that she was assaulted by a man who had apparently drained her car's radiator in a shopping mall parking lot while she shopped. Her car overheated and broke down about 2 miles away from the shopping mall. A van immediately pulled up behind her. A guy in his mid-20s got out and pretended to be helping her before he grabbed her. She fought him off and ran to a nearby house as he drove away.

At the time there had been a rash of murders of young women in Broward and Dade Counties (Florida). The bodies were found along canals that run through those counties. At least two of the victims' cars were found with slashed tires in shopping mall parking lots. These murders have been called the Flat Tire Murders and the killer the "Canal Killer."

I don't think there's any connection to the Susan Swedell case, but this report is interesting. It at least suggests that it's not exactly an original idea for an offender to sabotage a car's cooling system, and then follow the driver until her car overheats and she pulls off the road.

Clipping of the original article is attached here, but you'll need to download it or whatever to zoom in and read it:

Here's the link to the article in The Miami News, Tuesday, November 4, 1975, Section B, "A possible brush with the 'Canal Killer'?" by Terry Johnson King:

Nov 04, 1975, page 13 - The Miami News at Newspapers.com - Newspapers.com

View the digital scanned newspaper from The Miami News dated Nov 04, 1975, page 13.

www.newspapers.com

 

[Reminder]

Light a candle at 9:00PM Central Time tonight

37 years ago today Susan Swedell was last seen getting into a car with a young male driver at a rural crossroads gas station in Lake Elmo, Minnesota about 1.3 miles from her home. She had reported car trouble to the gas station clerk and asked to leave her car there.

She had ended her shift at Kmart in Oak Park Heights about 9:00PM. Her mother and sister expected her to arrive home within the half hour. A snowstorm would have slowed her routine trip of about 4.5 miles. The young male driver she was seen with at the gas station had followed directly behind her as she pulled into the lot. A clerk working alone that night reported that Sue came in and said she had car trouble and asked to leave her car parked there. She moved her car to the edge of the lot, and then got into the young male's car and rode away with him in the direction of downtown Lake Elmo where she lived. She has not been seen or heard from since. Her car was later discovered to have the drain plug on the radiator unscrewed, thus all the engine's cooling fluid had drained out. The presumed "car trouble" Sue had that night was an overheated engine.

Strange events followed which are discussed in the thread above in detail by many who have followed this story.

Her mother and sister are still waiting for answers. So are her extended family, friends, acquaintances and community.

Tonight her mother and sister invite everyone to light Sue's way home with a candle at 9:00PM Central Time. The Jacob Wetterling Resource Center has extended the invitation here:

https://www.facebook.com/jacobwetterlingresourcecenter/posts/pfbid0CxSCUvAtjfDbwsBucT4JQuVRrCxPMPLwD9GTvkH4TKWpxXMMKA5CZNXaaeHWCU4xl

See also the Swedell Strong Facebook page which is managed by Sue's sister Christine:

Swedell Strong

Swedell Strong. 1,642 likes · 16 talking about this. This page is dedicated to my sister, Susan Swedell, and the hope that together we can bring her home!

www.facebook.com

 

[mlhenn]

Investigators asking inmates for help in 1988 Susan Swedell missing person case

Swedell was last seen getting into a car with a man at a Lake Elmo gas station during a blizzard on Jan. 19, 1988.

www.kare11.com

Jan 21
Washington County investigators are sending information on a case to inmates as a way to cast the net and try to get more tips about what happened to Susan Swedell.

….


Over the last 37 years, many have assumed Susan asked for a ride from a stranger who then kidnapped her. After all, her mother and sister were expecting to watch movies with her at home that night.

But Valesano and Trantham say it's possible she arranged to meet that man.

Another new mysterious detail: investigators believe it's possible someone tampered with Susan's car.

 

[Richard]

Although it is possible that someone may have drained the coolant from her car's radiator, a short drive of less than 4.5 miles would probably not be enough (especially with outside temperature low enough for snow) to cause the engine to overheat.

Loss of engine coolant would cause the heater to fail, and only put out cold air.

 

[Reminder]

Although it is possible that someone may have drained the coolant from her car's radiator, a short drive of less than 4.5 miles would probably not be enough (especially with outside temperature low enough for snow) to cause the engine to overheat.

I've talked to a few mechanics and auto buffs about this question. I've done some supporting research too. Universally these sources agree that atmospheric temperature wouldn't help to cool the engine. The way an engine cooling system works is the fluid moves heat away from the engine to the radiator where it is discharged. With no fluid in the system to move the heat out, the engine has no way to cool. The heat stays trapped in the engine block. It was about 30F that night during that storm. It wasn't that cold anyway. My sources have told me it might only take a few minutes before the car starts over heating without any fluid in the cooling system.

It also wouldn't be a matter of the distance of the trip so much as the amount of time the engine was running. Nobody knows how long she sat with the engine running at her place of work before she started driving. She would have had to clear the snow off her windshield before she drove. The usual habit is to start the car and clear the snow while the engine warms. There's a reasonable possibility that she knew the guy she was last seen with and that he might have met her in the parking lot at Kmart or some other location along the Hwy 36 strip before they headed in the direction of her home.

The next day her mother started the car and drove it home which was only about 1.2 miles from the gas station. There was no sign of overheating then. But a few days later when it was much colder (-5F according to newspapers), she tried to drive it on a grocery trip to the Cub Foods in Stillwater which was about a 3 mile trip and the car overheated on that trip.

If Susan didn't really have car trouble that night, you also have to wonder why she would have asked permission to leave her car at that gas station. If the thought is that she was trying to buy some time alone with this guy she was with, or do anything secret well, that doesn't make sense because what if the answer would have been no? Now she has to drive down the road and try to find somebody else to give her permission to do whatever she's going to do? Meanwhile the clock is ticking because she knows her mother and sister expect her home at any minute. It doesn't make any sense. If she needed to ditch her car for a few minutes or even a few hours for any reason there were countless locations where she could have left her car without asking permission and without being seen. To me this is the most outstanding clue that she in fact did have car trouble that night.

By the way, there were two other gas stations along her trip home. One of them was about a mile closer to her home and the other one was about a tenth of a mile from Kmart.

Loss of engine coolant would cause the heater to fail, and only put out cold air.

It would definitely do this, and with the wet snow and humidity being what it was, her windshield could have fogged over on the inside. It's possible she had a visibility issue to contend with as well as a failing engine.

 

[Reminder]

Investigators asking inmates for help in 1988 Susan Swedell missing person case

Swedell was last seen getting into a car with a man at a Lake Elmo gas station during a blizzard on Jan. 19, 1988.

www.kare11.com

Jan 21
Washington County investigators are sending information on a case to inmates as a way to cast the net and try to get more tips about what happened to Susan Swedell.

….


Over the last 37 years, many have assumed Susan asked for a ride from a stranger who then kidnapped her. After all, her mother and sister were expecting to watch movies with her at home that night.

But Valesano and Trantham say it's possible she arranged to meet that man.

Another new mysterious detail: investigators believe it's possible someone tampered with Susan's car.

Thanks for posting the KARE-11 article. I just searched Google News and yeah, it looks like this one got some press the last few days after all. I thought it was going to go missed this anniversary.

Here's some more recent press on this story:

https://news.google.com/search?q=susan%20swedell&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

I saw on the Washington County Sheriff's Facebook page that they are going to use inmates' tablets to get information about the Swedell case in front of them. I hope it works.

 

[Reminder]

Minnesota CBS affiliate WCCO broadcast a segment about this on Jan 21, 2025, here on YouTube:

 

[Reminder]

This recent segment on Minnesota NBC affiliate KARE-11 is a much better production than the WCCO segment above:

It's always interesting to me that everytime investigators or family members speak about this, either new details come out or the story shifts ever so slightly.

In this latest version from investigators they say Susan pulled up to the gas pumps. This is the first time I've heard that. I think it was just an off-hand choice of words.

The earliest reports from the gas station clerk who was the sole eye witness say that Susan drove onto the lot and stopped next to the store building. She didn't drive up to the pumps.

The guy who followed her, drove his own car up the pumps and apparently pumped gas. There are two versions of the order of events:

1. Sue drove into the lot and parked by the store building. He followed her onto the lot and pulled up along side the driver side of her car. She then immediately got out of her car and opened his passenger side door and got into his car. Then he drove his car with Sue in it over to the pumps. He started pumping gas.

2. Sue drove into the lot and parked by the store building. He followed her onto the lot but pulled his car up to the pumps right away. Sue went in and asked for permission to leave her car parked there because she had some kind of car trouble. The clerk said yes, but you'll have to move your car to another part of the lot because the plows need to come through here later. Sue moved her car and then went over and stood outside this guy's car while he pumped gas.

It's a little complicated because the clerk talked with investigators on at least two occasions. First in January 1988 and then again apparently in October of 1998, almost 11 years later, and from this you get at least two variations of events and it's difficult to know which exact details came from which interview. In the later interview she didn't remember Sue coming in to ask permission to leave her car there, but the day after Sue disappeared that's exactly what she remembered. So you go with the earliest version as more reliable.

In one version of events the clerk did remember the guy coming in with Sue to pay for his gas. That's significant.

Some people might not remember this, but in 1988 there probably wasn't a pay at the pump credit card reader at those pumps. We didn't see card readers universally until much more recently. So the guy probably pumped his gas before he paid.

At some point it became customary to only require prepayment after dark at most gas stations, especially in the inner city, but I think that custom started later in the 1990s. And then eventually you had to prepay no matter what time of day it was, but I remember that coming much later, like maybe in the late 1990s or early 2000s when credit card readers