Suspect, No Evidence in Missing Woman Case

April 23 -- It was nearly 18 months ago that then-21-year-old Erika Dalquist disappeared after she took a ride home from a Brainerd, Minn., bar with a man. Police have a suspect who seems to have confessed, but he's walking free.

That's because police have not been able to find the young woman's body or other physical evidence linking her to the suspect, William Gene Myears.

The situation has left Dalquist's family frustrated, though not with the police, who they say continue to work the case aggressively.

"The rights of the suspect are greatly protected, but the rights of the victim get no representation," said Colleen Dalquist, Erika's mother. "To have this individual say as much as he did and then say no more is very frustrating."

But she said her family is not so concerned with Myears or what happens to him — they are leaving that to police.

"Our goal has always been to find Erika and bring her home," she said.

Like the case of Dru Sjodin, a 22-year-old University of North Dakota student from Pequot Lakes, Minn., who disappeared Nov. 22, 2003, police have a suspect but were not immediately able to find out what happened to the young woman. It was five months after Sjodin disappeared that her body was found in a ravine near Crookston, Minn., the hometown of the man suspected in her kidnapping.

That suspect, Alfonso Rodriguez, did not cooperate with investigators, but police were able to keep him behind bars because, they said, there was some physical evidence linking him to the missing woman.

With Dalquist, though, all that police have are the accounts of witnesses who saw her with Myears the night before she disappeared, the statements from acquaintances of Myears who said he asked them to mislead investigators about what happened that night, and a disjointed statement from the 25-year-old man.

Dalquist has not been seen since Oct. 29, 2002, when she left a bar in Brainerd and is believed to have accepted a ride home with Myears and two other young men in a van that Myears had borrowed from his job at a door repair company.