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

[mlhenn]

Washington County asks for any leads on birthday of woman missing since 1988

Over 37 years after 19-year-old Susan Swedell disappeared, the Washington County Sheriff's Office says the case is still open and active.

kstp.com

Swedell would be 57 years old on Thursday, according to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office; instead, she remains the subject of a mystery still unsolved decades after she went missing.

 

[mlhenn]

MISSING - Susan Anne Swedell | Solve the Case

On the evening of 1/19/88, 19-year-old Susan Swedell had left work and stopped at a gas station close to her house during a blizzard. Susan was experiencing car troubles and was allowed to leave her car at the station. She was next seen getting into a car with an unknown subject after they had...

www.solvethecase.org

 

[Sweetluv]

Alot off odd things about this case. If Susan was leaving work and heading home to watch a movie, why change into a skirt..esp during a snowstorm? Getting into this other vehicle, why leave your purse and eyeglasses behind if you intended to leave the vehicle behind?
The Mother thinks Susan returned home days later because dishes were in the sink and it smelled like cigarettes...did LE test for fingerprints?

 

[Reminder]

Hi Sweetluv. There are truly many odd pieces to this story.

Alot off odd things about this case. If Susan was leaving work and heading home to watch a movie, why change into a skirt..esp during a snowstorm?

One theory I think early investigators considered was that she was planning to meet somebody, but her sister has posted about this in social media and commented in the Still Missing Podcast. She says that Sue had a habit of changing into different outfits sometimes several times a day. Her sister never read much into that information. The skirt and sweater she changed into were seasonally appropriate according to her sister and it was the outfit she had worn earlier in the day to her first job at a boutique called Body & Sole. The clothes she changed out of were a pair of red pants and a red long sleeve button up shirt.

If she was going home to watch a movie with her mom and sister while the snowstorm passed, was she changing into a more comfortable outfit to lounge around in? Why not just wait and do that at home?

Getting into this other vehicle, why leave your purse and eyeglasses behind if you intended to leave the vehicle behind?

I suggested a few posts back that maybe she didn't leave these items in her car, but somebody came back to her car later that night and planted the items. It would be consistent behavior with all the other apparent manipulation. Examples: A. the sabotage of the car's cooling system - somebody had to unscrew that radiator drain plug. B. the sudden appearance of the red pants and shirt under Sue's bed (!) on the same day somebody entered the family's home while they were away. C. That same strange visitor also left the hidden key on the porch in an unusual place, left dishes in the sink that shouldn't have been there, and a burning odor hanging in the air.

The Mother thinks Susan returned home days later because dishes were in the sink and it smelled like cigarettes...did LE test for fingerprints?

Susan's sister has stated on the Swedell Strong Facebook page, "Our house was not dusted for fingerprints."

 

[Sweetluv]

@Reminder ..thanks for answering my questions!

 

[Reminder]

@Reminder ..thanks for answering my questions!

Glad I could help. Thanks for asking and keeping this thread alive!

 

[Reminder]

MISSING - Susan Anne Swedell | Solve the Case

On the evening of 1/19/88, 19-year-old Susan Swedell had left work and stopped at a gas station close to her house during a blizzard. Susan was experiencing car troubles and was allowed to leave her car at the station. She was next seen getting into a car with an unknown subject after they had...

www.solvethecase.org

Thanks for posting this, @mlhenn. I didn't know about that site. It looks like Susan Swedell's sister has teamed up with one of the PIs at SolveTheCase and created a new page about the case. There's a discussion started there by said PI. And Susan's sister has posted about it on her Swedell Strong Facebook page.

 

[Richard]

Susan has been missing for over 37 years.

 

[Incomprehensible]

In the third paragraph from the bottom it says a few days after the disappearance there was an odor of cigarette smoke in the residence and dirty dishes in the sink. The red pantsuit Swedell had been wearing on the day of her disappearance....

How unusual. Most abductors do not allow the victim to return home.

Someone had her keys

 

[Sweetluv]

So i am not too knowledgeable when it comes to automotive parts. How hard is it to locate the petcock part on a car?
Would that be a general choice for someone wanting to disable someone's car?

 

[Reminder]

So i am not too knowledgeable when it comes to automotive parts. How hard is it to locate the petcock part on a car?
Would that be a general choice for someone wanting to disable someone's car?

It's easy. And it was virtually common knowledge in the 1970s and 1980s, especially for young males. For decades generations of young men were raised to assist their fathers in the garage taking care of routine car maintenance. The winterization of a cars cooling system was a very common thing people did in their garages by themselves. It was routine. So were oil changes. So was periodically draining the cooling system just to change out the coolant/antifreeze.

It was a well known way that you could sabotage somebody's car because you didn't even need to pop the hood open to do it. The petcock was within arms reach if you crawled under the front bumper of a 1975 Cutlass Supreme. Easy peasy.

I'll put this into further perspective. I remember a conversation some older kids were having when I was about 14 or 15 (1980s). These guys grew up taking antique cars apart and fixing them with their dads. They had way more than common knowledge about automobiles. I distinctly remember the impression they made on me when they were talking one day about easy ways that cars could be sabotaged. This was mostly in the spirit of something that might happen to your own car, but also the mischevous awareness that you could really stick it to an enemy. One of the things they talked about was reaching up under the front bumper and turning the petcock out on the radiator so the car would overheat and stop running or even possibly damage the engine.

I spent some time looking into this in digital newspaper archives. There were a few examples of cars being vandalized by somebody draining the radiators going back into the 1940s. Far and few in between but it did get occasional mention in newspapers. There was one I posted above somewhere about a woman who was assaulted by a man in Florida in the 1970s who had apparently sabotaged her car's cooling system by draining the fluid and then followed her and pretended to help her along a busy Miami highway. There is nothing original under the sun.

 

[Sweetluv]

I have read conflicting information on the car keys. Were they found in the car with Susan's purse and glasses...or never found?

 

[Reminder]

I have read conflicting information on the car keys. Were they found in the car with Susan's purse and glasses...or never found?

According to her sister, the keys were never found. The car was locked. Missing were Sue, the clothing she had changed out of as she left her shift at Kmart, and the car keys. Her purse (containing cash and driver's license) and her glasses were found on the front seat to the right of the driver's seat.