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	Sister, Doctor Describe Killer's Struggles Testimony Aims to Spare Rodriguez's Life By Shannon Prather St. Paul Pioneer Press September 14, 2006 http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/15512747.htm Fargo, N.D. — Sylvia D'Angelo described watching helplessly as a church worker molested her 4-year-old brother, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., at a Catholic camp for migrant children in the 1950s. In a separate instance, a migrant worker sexually abused Rodriguez at the house they were staying in near Crookston, Minn., she said. D'Angelo was only 6 at the time, but being the oldest of five children born into a struggling migrant family, she felt responsible. D'Angelo, often in tears, testified Wednesday at Rodriguez's death penalty trial in an effort to save his life. Federal prosecutors are seeking death by lethal injection for Rodriguez, who kidnapped and killed Dru Sjodin in 2003. Rodriguez's defense team has asked jurors to spare his life. They argue poverty, racism, sexual abuse and possible brain damage from farm chemicals sent his life spiraling out of control. Prosecutors portray the repeat sex offender as a cunning killer who tortured 22-year-old Sjodin and deserves to die. Sjodin's body was found half-nude, with her throat slashed and her hands tied behind her back. D'Angelo, who now lives in New Jersey, described the hard times she and her siblings endured while her parents worked in the sugar beet fields of the Red River Valley. The family was so poor that the children would scavenge in the dump for toys. She said she suffered learning disabilities and health problems, including four miscarriages, tremors, headaches and dizzy spells. D'Angelo has never been able to have a child. She has achieved some success with a career in public relations in the medical field. A psychologist from Kansas City, Mo., testified that Rodriguez, 53, wasn't able to overcome his early problems and failed to find success in life. Dr. Marilyn Hutchinson said she spent more than 80 hours evaluating Rodriguez's case history and meeting with the defendant when he was in jail awaiting trial. She described three distinctive parts of Rodriguez's personality: Part of him is quiet, shy and devoted to his family. There's a "boastful, cocky" side in which he brags about his intelligence, sexual experience and lack of emotions. A third side is characterized by anger, triggered by issues of sex and racism, Hutchinson said. She told jurors that while Rodriguez came from a loving family, from infancy on he missed critical steps in his emotional development. Deprivation and malnourishment as a baby meant he never learned to trust. He failed first grade and was teased about his race and his large head. "His first experience outside the home was a failure," Hutchinson said. "Alfonso is a very distrustful person. He thinks the world is dangerous to him." His molestation also did damage, Hutchinson said. Rodriguez started drinking alcohol and smoking by age 9. He failed most of his classes. By his teens, he was using LSD, marijuana and other drugs and inhaling lighter fluid and paint fumes. He also was making obscene phone calls to women. He dropped out of the ninth grade at age 18. He tried to enlist in the military but was rejected because one leg was longer than the other and he had two kneecaps on one of his legs. He was in the state security hospital in St. Peter, Minn., by age 23 for two sexual assaults. He served a 23-year prison sentence for an attempted kidnapping and assault of a third female victim in 1980. Hutchinson said Rodriguez has confused sexuality and sexual preoccupation. "He feels anger that women have the power to make him feel sexually aroused," Hutchinson said. "He felt women sexualized him and that they wanted sex from him." Hutchinson characterized this as deluded or "magical" thinking. "When he felt angry he would do sexual fantasies. They were always fantasies about unavailable women," she said. "When he gets angry, he has sexual thoughts or he explodes." She said Rodriguez called out for help four months before his May 2003 release from prison when he told a prison psychologist that he wasn't sure he was ready to go free. Prison officials released him, and he abducted Sjodin, of Pequot Lakes, Minn., from a Grand Forks mall parking lot five months later, on Nov. 22, 2003. "Living in the world day-to-day is too hard for him," Hutchinson concluded, saying that Rodriguez functions on the level of a 10- to 13-year-old. "He can't handle life on the streets." On cross-examination, prosecutors pointed out that Hutchinson has testified only for the defense in other death penalty cases and that racism and poverty don't turn others into killers. They also said Rodriguez's drug abuse could have caused him mental damage. Shannon Prather can be reached at sprather@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5452.
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