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

[summergirl1]

My theory:
Sue talked to Dale that day on the phone while working, so he knew where she worked and where she was that night. He was waiting for her in the parking lot at Kmart when she got off work. Planned or not, not sure. Either way, Sue wanted him to meet her mom. It didn’t raise the alarm bells when he was there and said hey I’m free tonight and I’d love to meet your mom and sister, I won’t stay long because I know you are planning to watch a movie with them. Having someone follow her home in the bad weather was also a comfort. Her car overheats, she pulls into the gas station, since he was planning to go to her house anyways, off they go together in his car. Even at 19 I understood that a car overheating needed to cool down, and cooling down takes time. She simply thought, we’ll go to my house and visit for a bit and then he can take me back to get my car and then I’ll take it home. The car would have time to cool down and she was only a mile ish from home.

Or-
I wonder if that gas station sold coolant? Dale could have said they’d stop elsewhere to get coolant and bring it right back to put in the car. Seems easy enough. Car fixed and Sue can head home. No need to grab all of her stuff if she thought she’d be right back.

Is it a coincidence that Dale also got gas? I mean who plans to abduct someone on an empty tank of gas?

Sue’s family said she needed her glasses and why did she leave them in the car, but if she needed them so badly, why weren’t the glasses on her face?

I do believe Dale was from the chat lines. It doesn’t make sense to me that he would be from the under 21 dance club Bumpers. I also don’t think it was some rando stalking her from work. She hadn’t been working at either of her jobs very long. I don’t think it was someone from college or else why didn’t they do something while she was there before she moved home.

He told Sue his name was Dale and he was a stripper. If he was working as a stripper, that seems it would narrow things down, a lot! Where would a man be working as a stripper in that area in the 80’s? Any thoughts?

I wonder if they ever looked into where "Dale" might have worked. If Dale was his real name, then it may have been a nickname or a middle name, as well his legal first name.

 

[BethAnn777]

I wonder if the phones calls to Sue’s work from Dale, or whomever it was that was calling, stopped after Sue disappeared? If the calls abruptly stopped, that person knew she was gone and therefore stopped calling.

 

[Reminder]

"Dale, The Stripper" always made me think Chippendales which were popular ladies night entertainment in the 1980s. Dale, The Chippen-dale? I just don't think so. This whole thing about Dale the Stripper always sounded a little goofy to me. Knowing that Sue was on the chatlines, Dale sounds like it could have been somebody's handle and stripper his story, but there were morons everywhere in 1988. Sue seemed to find them where ever she went.

There were several of them described in that Still Missing Podcast by an early investigator. Detective Jesse Kurtz says that everybody he talked to said things that were "interesting."

1. One of them they called the Habitual Liar (and a real "di**").
2. Another in Arizona botched a polygraph twice.
3. The Bumpers Guy has massive issues of his own.
4. Sue was 19 when she started dating her younger boyfriend who was just 15(!) when they met - he turned 16 a couple months later.
5. One guy was married and was on the chatlines pretending to be single.
6. A coworker reported that another guy on the cleaning crew at Sue's Kmart job knew Sue's schedule and would follow her around.
7. She had somebody calling and apparently sending flowers at her other job in the mall - possibly even stopping in during her shift.
8. She was surely talking to other anonymous guys on the chatlines.
9. There's a guy who calls himself Dale and says he worked as a stripper.
10. She was last seen getting into a car with somebody who has never been identified, at least publicly.

Investigators at Washington County Sheriff's Office definitely know who most of these guys were. Some of them might be the same identity. If Dale is a match for any of them, maybe they have a handle on that too. I doubt they would reveal anything about it if they do. The big mystery seems to be the guy she was last seen with, but again if they have any kind of handle on it, we aren't going to get that information.

 

[BethAnn777]

I wonder if Michael DALE Benson was ever looked into? He is a suspect in the disappearance of Vickie Sundgaard from Alexandria, MN in April 1987. She has a thread here MN - MN - Vickie Arleen Sundgaard, 23, Alexandria, 19 Apr 1987.

Michael Dale Benson may have lived with his father Dale Blue on in St. Paul when Sue went missing. St. Paul to Lake Elmo is 14 miles. Michael was 42 in 2006, so he would have been about 23 or 24 when Sue went missing. In 2006 he was described as Native American, 5’11 with brown hair and brown eyes and a slender build.

He is convicted of rape and says he has raped other women in Colorado and California. If he is responsible for Vickie’s disappearance then he might also be a murderer.

$10,000 reward offered for escaped sex offender

Authorities offered a $10,000 reward on Thursday for information that leads to the capture of Michael Dale Benson, a convicted sex offender who escaped from a secure hospital in St. Peter on Saturday.

www.dl-online.com

Charges against father of sex offender dropped

Associated Press

www.postbulletin.com

 

[Reminder]

I wonder if Michael DALE Benson was ever looked into? He is a suspect in the disappearance of Vickie Sundgaard from Alexandria, MN in April 1987. She has a thread here MN - MN - Vickie Arleen Sundgaard, 23, Alexandria, 19 Apr 1987.

Michael Dale Benson may have lived with his father Dale Blue on in St. Paul when Sue went missing. St. Paul to Lake Elmo is 14 miles. Michael was 42 in 2006, so he would have been about 23 or 24 when Sue went missing. In 2006 he was described as Native American, 5’11 with brown hair and brown eyes and a slender build.

He is convicted of rape and says he has raped other women in Colorado and California. If he is responsible for Vickie’s disappearance then he might also be a murderer.

$10,000 reward offered for escaped sex offender

Authorities offered a $10,000 reward on Thursday for information that leads to the capture of Michael Dale Benson, a convicted sex offender who escaped from a secure hospital in St. Peter on Saturday.

www.dl-online.com

Charges against father of sex offender dropped

Associated Press

www.postbulletin.com

I remember seeing this guy all over the news when he escaped from the facility in St. Peter in 2006. I just learned they eventually found him in Kansas City, Missouri on a tip from somebody who saw him on America's Most Wanted.

I don't believe his father ever lived in St. Paul. This was a Native American family and his father died at Mahnomen, MN which is on the White Earth Reservation, at least 150-200 miles northwest of anything near St Paul or Lake Elmo. Lake Elmo is at least 100 miles from Alexandria where Vickie Sundgaard was last seen with Benson or from St Peter where he escaped.

As a Native American, or at least part Native, I don't think he would match the description of the man described as last seen with Sue Swedell. MO is also very different from all the weirdness in Swedell case. He broke into a woman's home in 1989 before raping her and threatening to kill her.

I don't see any connection. But I bet they looked at him and many other known offenders!

 

[summergirl1]

This is probably far fetched, but I came across the case of this guy, Jerry Westrom, who's been convicted through DNA evidence of stabbing a sex worker in 1993 in Minneapolis (he also tried to hire one online in 2016). He wasn't from the Twin Cities area and is said in articles only to have lived in the area from 1990 on. I did see online, though, that going by where he attended college, he seems to have been in the Minneapolis area in 1988. He later became a Isanti/Cambridge MN businessman who interestingly owed a gas station or two where he apparently hired mostly young females according to one article I read. I didn't find any mention of an interest in chat lines, but maybe he did when he was younger.

Anyway, this is a recent article about him and I noticed he has dark, curly hair although it's short now. His eyes seem smaller and shaped different than the sketch of the man Susan was last seen with, though. He was 21 in early 1988 according to his birthdate online. I wonder if he ever wore his hair longer? I couldn't find any younger photos of him, but maybe someone else can.

Jerry Westrom's appeal in Jeanie Childs murder conviction goes before Minnesota Supreme Court Monday

A Minnesota man sentenced to life for stabbing a woman to death is back in court.

www.cbsnews.com

And this his thread on here: GUILTY - MN - Jeanne “Jeanie” Childs, 35, murdered, napkin DNA linked to Jerry Westrom, Minneapolis, 1993 *Arrest 2019

 

[Caring1]

12 Unidentified Person Exclusions

 

[Reminder]

Susan Swedell's sister has planned another Walk for Sue for Saturday, May 18, 2024.

She posted in Facebook:

Please join me on Saturday, May 18th for the 2024 Walk For Sue!
I will be staying overnight in Stillwater the night before, and hope you can join me for dinner and talk about what we can do to elevate Sue’s case in the public eye.
The walk will begin at 10am in front of our house on 3524 lake Elmo Avenue and go to Reid Park and back. There is also a thought of going from our house to the gas station and back to give you an idea of how close she was to getting home.
*More information to come*

2024 Walk For Sue

Event by Swedell Strong on Saturday, May 18 2024

www.facebook.com