Cold Cases in North Dakota
ColdCaseIndex documents 4 cases in North Dakota, dated 1981 to 2019. 1 is recorded as unsolved. The earliest is Barbara Louise Cotton (1981) and the most recent is RJR Maintenance Murders (2019).
- Unsolved 1 (25%)
- Solved or convicted 3 (75%)
Homicide clearance in North Dakota, 1965 to 2024
A homicide is "cleared" when police make an arrest or close it by exceptional means, so an uncleared case is not always an unsolved one. Source: Murder Accountability Project analysis of FBI Uniform Crime Report data, as published by Project: Cold Case. These are statewide totals and are separate from the ColdCaseIndex entries listed below.
By type
All North Dakota cases
RJR Maintenance Murders
Four employees of RJR Maintenance and Management in Mandan, North Dakota, were shot and stabbed to death on April 1, 2019. Washburn chiropractor Chad Isaak, whose mobile home sat on a property RJR managed, was convicted of four…
Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind
Twenty-two-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind was eight months pregnant when she was killed in Fargo, North Dakota, in August 2017; her baby was cut from her womb and survived.
Dru Sjodin
University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin was abducted from a mall parking lot in Grand Forks by registered sex offender Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. Her body was found near Crookston, Minnesota, in April 2004.
Barbara Louise Cotton
Fifteen-year-old Barbara Louise Cotton vanished on the evening of April 11, 1981, after leaving a restaurant on Main Street in Williston, North Dakota, and walking toward Recreation Park, blocks from her home.