Dru Sjodin's parents speak about daughter's murder
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(AP) - The mother of slain college student Dru Sjodin says she wishes she had warned her daughter about "monsters that look like humans."
"It wasn't that she was dumb or naive. It's just that she could never comprehend such evil entering in her world," Linda Walker said in an interview with Fargo's WDAY radio.
A federal court jury convicted Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., a sex offender from Crookston, Minn., of kidnapping resulting in Sjodin's death, and voted unanimously for the death penalty.
Walker said Rodriguez turned down an offer from prosecutors that could have spared his life if he pleaded guilty and led authorities to her daughter's body. Sjodin disappeared in November 2003, and her body was found in April 2004, in a ravine near Crookston.
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Rodriguez is scheduled to be formally sentenced Thursday in Fargo.
Walker's husband, Sid, said it was difficult to keep his composure at times during Rodriguez's trial last fall.
"Sitting in the courtroom and looking at him, you get so mad and you realize why guards are there to keep you away, because it would be easy to just lose it and try to take care of him," Sid Walker said.
"It wasn't so much that we were pushing to have him given the death penalty," Linda Walker said. "But we wanted to do it for his past victims and for Dru."
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
