The Bizarre Disappearance of Susan Swedell
The teenager vanished during a blizzard, leaving only a few mysterious clues behind.
Susan Swedell was in a hurry to leave work when her shift was over on the evening of January 19, 1988. The 19-year-old worked part-time at a K-Mart in Oak Park Heights, Minnesota’s St. Croix Mall, and by the time she finished work at 9:00 pm a blizzard had moved into the area. Sue lived just six miles away in Lake Elmo, but she was nervous about driving in storms and wasn’t looking forward to navigating the snow-covered roads.
Sue called her mother from work earlier that evening and told her that she would go straight home once she got done work. Her parents were divorced, and Sue lived with her mother and 16-year-old sister; the three of them planned to spend the night making popcorn and watching movies.
Right before she left work, Sue did something that her supervisor and co-workers thought was odd: she changed out of the red pantsuit she had been wearing into a sweater and a short skirt. Her supervisor commented that she wasn’t dressed properly for the stormy weather, but Sue just waved him off and left the store.
Sue cautiously made her way through the snowy parking lot and brushed the snow off of her 1975 Oldsmobile Cutlass, then ran the engine for a…
