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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com slash forensic tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Rogers, North Dakota is a tiny farm town in the Midwest United States. Not much happens there.
Andrew Sadek was your typical 20-year-old college student. A quiet kid who did his homework and had no enemies. On the morning of May 1st, 2014, his roommate noticed he wasn't in his bed. Strange, but not alarming. One day goes by, and his teachers notice. Two days go by, his friends notice. As the search intensifies, everyone makes a shocking discovery.
The small-town farmer's son is not who you think he is. He's actually an undercover confidential informant. And now, he's missing. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 193. The mysterious death of Andrew Sadek. ♪
Thank you.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. You can support my work in two simple ways. Become a valued patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales and leave a positive review.
Before we get to the episode, we've got five new supporters that I want to thank. Thank you so much to Kat, Shannon A., Carlos M., Quincy, and Carol L. for becoming the show's newest Patreon supporters. Now, let's get to this week's episode. On the weekend of April 25th, 2014, 20-year-old college student Andrew Sadiq went home to visit his parents.
His parents, Tammy and John Sadiq, had a small family farm in this small town just outside of Rogers, North Dakota. A tiny farm town in Barnes County with only a handful of residents. Most people living in or near Rogers are just like the Sadiqs, families who own and operate their own small cattle farms.
In 2014, Andrew was a North Dakota State College of Science student studying to become an electrical technician. Students just like Andrew go to NDSCC to pursue finance, health science, and marketing degrees. On this particular weekend in April 2014, he went home to visit his parents and work on their cattle farm.
After the weekend, Andrew returned to his college dorm on the NDSEC campus to prepare for his classes. Not long after Andrew got to his dorm room, he spoke with his mother Tammy over the phone. She wanted to make sure he got back to school okay after visiting. Andrew told his mom he was getting ready to go to bed in his dorm because he had classes the following day.
So Tammy said goodnight to her 20-year-old son, not realizing that this was the last time she would ever hear from him again. A few nights later, on April 30th, Andrew hung out with some of his college friends. They spent most of the night watching movies and talking. It was just a typical night for a few 20-something-year-old college students. After the movie ended, Andrew, his roommate, and other friends all went to bed.
Andrew and his roommate stayed in their dorm room, and the rest of the friends left to go back to their rooms. But when Andrew's roommate woke up the following morning, Andrew was gone. He wasn't in his bed across the room. He was just gone.
At first, Andrew's roommate thought he might have left to go visit his girlfriend. It wouldn't be the first time that Andrew left without telling him. So initially, the roommate didn't think too much about it. He probably went to go visit his girlfriend, or maybe he just went to go run an errand. So the roommate went about his day. Hours later, Andrew was still gone.
Andrew's roommate thought something might be wrong. Not only did Andrew leave his dorm without saying anything, but he also didn't show up to class. According to Andrew's college professors, he was a no-show that day. As soon as the roommate heard this, he knew something was off. Andrew wasn't the type of kid to skip out on class. Maybe other college students might ditch a class or two, but not Andrew.
So as soon as he heard he was a no-show, he and a few more of Andrew's friends decided to report him missing to the ND SEC campus police. After the report was taken, the campus police started by combing through surveillance cameras around Andrew's dorm room. If they could see when he left the night before, maybe they could figure out where he was headed. Fairly quickly, the police spotted Andrew on the surveillance tapes.
cameras at Nort Guard Hall, Andrew's dorm, captured him leaving the building just after 2 a.m. on May 1st, only a few hours after he was inside his dorm watching the movie with his roommate and friends. He was wearing jeans and a Tampa Bay Buccaneers hooded sweatshirt. He was also wearing a backpack and holding his cell phone.
After Andrew left his dorm building around 2 a.m., the police had no idea where he went or where he was headed. The only thing the surveillance cameras proved for sure was that Andrew left the night carrying his backpack. But where he was going was a mystery. Because after that surveillance camera sighting outside his dorm at 2 a.m., Andrew was never seen alive again.
Andrew's family, friends, and the police continued the search for him for the next two months. But this wasn't your typical missing 20-something-year-old college student search. Andrew Sadiq was far from your average college student. And this was anything but a standard missing person search.
One year before Andrew disappeared, he was an NDSEC freshman. He enjoyed everything from lake activities to golfing, bowling, and helping his family on their cattle farm near Rogers, North Dakota. He grew up with an older brother, Nicholas, who was tragically killed in an accident in 2005.
After he graduated from Valley City High School, he started attending NDSCC in 2012 with hopes of becoming an electrical technician. Andrew's former teachers described him as polite and a good student. He was never one to miss class or speak out when he wasn't supposed to. He attended school every day, paid attention, and did his homework. His family and friends described him as being shy and quiet.
It took a while for Andrew to open up to you, but it was impossible not to become his friend when he finally did. In April 2013, one year before he disappeared, Andrew worked towards his degree, but his plans almost fell off track. Sometime before April 2013, Andrew began selling marijuana. Now it's unclear how much he was selling and to whom.
but in April 2013, he made a massive mistake and sold it to the wrong person. Andrew was caught twice selling marijuana to a confidential police informant. The first drug sale happened on April 4, 2013, and the second was on April 9, 2013. Both drug transactions were relatively small. The amount of marijuana Andrew sold to the CI was only about $80,000.
But both of these transactions were enough to get Andrew arrested for felony drug sales. Several months later, on November 21, 2013, agents with the Southwest Multi-County Agency Drug Task Force, or SEMCA for short, searched Andrew's dorm room to see if he had any other drugs. And inside his room, they found a grinder with more marijuana still inside and some cash.
The next day, the police brought Andrew in for questioning on November 22nd. He was being charged with two felony drug charges and one misdemeanor charge. Specifically, he faced two felony counts of delivery of a controlled substance for selling drugs to the CI on April 4th and April 9th. And the misdemeanor charge was for another charge related to possessing the marijuana grinder in his dorm room.
So all of this is to say that Andrew was in a lot of trouble at this point. During this interview with the police, Andrew was questioned by Deputy Jason Weber. He told Andrew that he was facing up to 40 years in prison for all of these felony charges. Now, this entire interrogation was videotaped and has since been released online. But at one point, the detective is heard telling Andrew, quote,
You are facing two felonies and then, of course, the misdemeanor charge from yesterday. Two felonies of deliveries since they took place on campus. Both of them, they're enhanced. So they are Class A felonies, 20 years in prison, $20,000 fine, and or both, okay? Potentially, the max is 40 years in prison and a $40,000 fine. You understand that? End quote. Andrew then said, yeah.
Back to Deputy Jason, quote, Okay, obviously you're probably not going to get 40 years, but it is a good possibility you're going to get some prison time if you don't help yourself out. Yeah, there is, end quote. Later on, another cop says, quote, That's probably not a way to start off your young adult life and career, right?
What I'm going to ask from you is to do some buys for me. Then, depending on how you do, a lot of this could go away. End quote. But what buys were they talking about? And how could Andrew help himself out and avoid going to prison for possibly up to 40 years?
Instead of pleading guilty to multiple felony drug charges, Andrew agreed to work as a confidential informant for the Southeast Multi-County Agency Narcotics Task Force. Like the informant he unknowingly sold marijuana to in April 2013, he agreed to work as a CI from November 2013 through January 2014. In exchange, the police would drop all of the charges.
he wouldn't have a 40-year prison sentence hanging over his head. So under police supervision, Andrew bought more marijuana from other drug dealers around campus. Under the terms of his contract, Andrew bought drugs three times for the regional task force over the next three months. And according to this agreement with the police, he needed to buy drugs one more time to fulfill his end of the deal.
But this fourth and final deal never happened. Once Andrew signed his paperwork on November 22, 2013 to become a CI, he was completely bound by the terms of this agreement. If he completed the drug sales he needed to from November to January, he would have all the charges dropped against him and he wouldn't be sent to prison. If he didn't do it, he would be arrested again.
Besides buying drugs, Andrew had more conditions he needed to follow. One, he had to maintain continuous contact with Deputy Jason Weber. Andrew needed to check in with him every few days. He gave the deputy information on other drug dealers on campus or potential deals. Second, Andrew always needed to let Deputy Weber know if he was about to make a purchase from someone.
The deputy needed every transaction details, including who, when, where, and for how much. And third, Andrew had to keep the terms of his CI work completely confidential. Not even Andrew's parents or friends knew about his undercover work. So by all accounts, the only two people who knew about this agreement were Andrew and Deputy Weber.
When the Drug Task Force heard that Andrew was missing in May 2014, they assumed that he just ran off and didn't want to be a CI anymore. He already made three purchases and was almost done with his duties. They never considered the possibility that something else might have happened to him. Police just assumed that he didn't want to be a CI anymore, so the cops issued a warrant.
The police also charged him with two additional felonies for running away. They hoped that if word got back to him that he was being charged with more felonies, that he would eventually turn himself in. Maybe they could all work out another deal together and he would avoid more prison time. They could just simply extend his contract as a CI. But neither the arrest warrants nor the additional felony charges worked.
That's because Andrew never turned himself in, and he was still missing. Andrew's parents, John and Tammy, didn't think their son simply ran away. Even if he was a CI, that wasn't Andrew. Plus, he was so close to finishing the work. Just one more drug sale and he would be done. After a few weeks, John and Tammy went on the news and pleaded publicly for him to come home.
They assured him that they loved him no matter what. And if he just came home, they could fix things together. They pleaded for Andrew, but no response. The search continued for two months. Eventually, the investigation led to the Red River near Breckenridge, Minnesota.
On June 27th, some people visiting the Red River, a river that flows a little over 500 miles between Breckenridge, Minnesota and Winnipeg, Canada, spotted a body in the water. They immediately called the police, and within minutes, dozens of officers arrived at the river. Initially, they could only determine that the body was a male, but that was it. By the looks of it, they had been in the water for weeks, if not months.
So decomposition and exposure to the elements and the water had really set in, making an immediate identification almost impossible. The body was sent to the nearest medical examiner's office to be identified. Authorities didn't know if he was from the Red River area or if that's simply where his body ended up. But as soon as Andrew's parents heard that there was a body found in the river, their minds instantly went to the worst-case scenario—
They feared the body might belong to their son. And they were right. Their worst fears came true. The body was identified through dental records as belonging to missing 20-year-old Andrew Sadiq. When the authorities finally found him, they estimated he had likely died two days after disappearing. This meant Andrew was in the river for almost two months before his body was discovered. But that wasn't the worst part.
When the authorities pulled Andrew's body out of the river, they saw that he had been shot once in the head. His backpack was filled to the top with rocks, his wallet was missing, and the jacket he was wearing wasn't the same one he was seen walking out of his dorm room on May 1st. According to his family, the jacket he was wearing wasn't even his.
The discovery of Andrew's body floating in the Red River was only the start of this story. The next logical question became, who killed Andrew Sadiq? What really happened to Andrew Sadiq? Who pulled the trigger? And what did the forensics uncover that could change everything? Hold tight. The answer to these mysterious questions are just moments away. Do you know what I don't miss at all? That vicious week before my period each month.
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That's happy mammoth.com and use code tails for 15% off today. Andrew's official autopsy results weren't released until almost two months after his body was found. And despite performing a full autopsy, including a toxicology report, little was discovered about what actually happened to him. According to the medical examiner, Andrew died from a single gunshot wound to the head.
But the examiner couldn't determine whether the gunshot was fired at close range, a crucial detail about this case. Since the medical examiner didn't know if the bullet was fired from close range or from far away, they also couldn't say whether the gunshot was self-inflicted. If it had been fired from close range, it was likely self-inflicted, and Andrew's death would probably be ruled a suicide. But if he was shot from farther away, this might indicate a homicide.
so the examiner couldn't determine his cause of death. There was also nothing suspicious in Andrew's system when he died. No drugs or alcohol showed up in his toxicology report, so that didn't have anything to do with his death either. And when all was said and done, Andrew's official cause of death was ruled undetermined. Besides the vague autopsy report, there were many other strange circumstances about Andrew's death,
The first was that the investigators never found the gun. Despite a team of divers searching every part of the river, the gun was never recovered. The second was Andrew's backpack. When his body was found, his backpack was filled with rocks used to weigh him down in the water. So who put the rocks in there? If Andrew committed suicide, did he put them in there so that no one would find his body?
Or did someone else fill the backpack with rocks for the same reason? Andrew's wallet was also missing. Did that have anything to do with what happened? Or was it accidentally washed away in the river? Finally, there was his sweatshirt. The last known footage of Andrew was on May 1st around 2 o'clock a.m. when he was captured on his dorm surveillance camera leaving the building.
In the video, you can clearly see that Andrew was wearing a Tampa Bay Buccaneers hooded sweatshirt. But when his body was found, that particular sweatshirt was nowhere to be found. And according to Andrew's parents, he was wearing someone else's hoodie. So did Andrew change hoodies? Maybe his parents didn't know that he had that sweatshirt and it was actually his. Or maybe he really was wearing someone else's clothing. But if that's the case, why?
Right after the medical examiner released its findings on the autopsy, Andrew's parents took to the press. They were adamant their son didn't commit suicide, even though that's not what the medical examiner said. They ruled his death as undetermined. But there was some talk about the police in particular who were about to write this off as a suicide.
Andrew didn't want to work as a CI anymore, but he knew if he quit, he was going to go to prison. So basically, to escape all of his troubles at this point, he decided to shoot himself at the river. That seemed to be the police's theory. But Andrew's parents completely disagreed with that. And here are their reasons why. They said Andrew had never once talked about suicide and wasn't even depressed.
He never expressed having any suicidal thoughts. He didn't leave behind a suicide note or anything like that. Plus, Andrew had so much to look forward to at the time of his death. His college graduation was only two weeks away. He was almost done fulfilling his duties as a CI. He really only needed to make one more drug purchase before he was done and could eventually move on with his life.
Andrew basically had everything to live for at that point, at least according to his parents, Tammy and John. But the police weren't as convinced. Although the autopsy results came back as inconclusive for a cause of death, they seemed to think that Andrew might have been suicidal and his parents just didn't know about it. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a young college student killed themselves, leaving their parents shocked and completely in the dark about their struggles.
But Andrew's parents couldn't deny the missing .22 caliber handgun. Shortly after Andrew's body was discovered, his family reported to the authorities that a .22 caliber handgun was missing from their home near Rogers, North Dakota. When the police asked them about where they thought the gun went, they said that Andrew took it. But he didn't take it for the reasons you might expect.
They said he didn't take the gun because he planned on killing himself. They said he needed it for protection. His parents believe this theory makes even more sense after they discovered that their son was working as a drug CI. They think that he probably took the gun because he felt like he needed it for self-defense when making drug deals with other drug dealers on campus. He didn't take it to kill himself.
But there's one problem with this theory, and that is Andrew was shot with a similar small caliber handgun. So it's possible he was shot and killed with his parents' own gun, although it's impossible to say that for sure because the gun's never been found. All we know for sure is that he was in fact killed with a similar small caliber gun, just like his parents' .22s.
Shortly after Andrew's initial disappearance, his family drove to the NDSCC campus to pick up his parked car. When they picked up the car, they noticed several strange things about it. First was that the carpet inside the car was completely wet. They reported that several inches of water were underneath the carpet, in the car's trunk, and underneath the spare tire in the trunk. According to them, it almost looked like someone had dumped water inside the car.
or the car had been driven through a body of water. Stay tuned for answers to these burning questions. Why was the car drenched in water? Was it submerged? Who was the unknown driver? And what kept the police from investigating? The shocking conclusion is just moments away, so don't go anywhere.
The discovery of water inside Andrew's car only heightened his parents' suspicion of foul play. According to them, this suggested someone might have killed Andrew, put his body in the trunk, and driven it to the river before returning to campus. This would explain a lot.
Police then looked for surveillance video of the parking lot on campus where the car was parked. But unfortunately, the cameras weren't working. So there wasn't any video footage of anyone driving Andrew's car. So it's impossible to say whether someone drove the car after Andrew disappeared. Over the next several months, Andrew's parents grew increasingly frustrated with how the police were handling the case, or rather, how they weren't handling it.
Since Andrew's death was ruled undetermined, his family didn't believe the police were still actively working to solve it. Instead, they felt like they were just writing it off as a possible suicide. So in August of 2014, Andrew's mom, Tammy, called the North Dakota Attorney General, Wayne Steham, to investigate Simca's handling of Andrew's work as a C.I.,
His family wanted the DA to investigate the drug task force because they felt like Andrew's death might have been caused by his work as a drug CI. Maybe he was planning to meet up with someone by the river to buy drugs and was shot to death. So the family wanted to know if in fact his work as a CI had anything to do with what happened to him. It wouldn't be the first time that someone's either been injured or killed while working as a CI. It's an inherently dangerous position.
Anytime someone is put in a situation where they're buying drugs from a drug dealer, something can go seriously wrong. Drug deals go bad all the time. So when Andrew agreed to work as a CI, he essentially agreed to all the risks associated with it. And his family wanted to know if that's what happened because the forensic evidence alone couldn't exactly say what killed Andrew.
His family believed that their son was simply a casual marijuana smoker and that the police involved him in the drug trade at a deeper level. After hearing the family's pleas for help, the North Dakota District Attorney agreed to investigate Andrew's death and put together a panel of three very experienced law enforcement officers. Two of the officers even came from different states, so they wouldn't be biased about what they uncovered.
The entire independent investigation lasted over six months, and the final report was issued in early 2015. The independent investigation found that SEMCA, the Southeast Multicounty Agency Narcotics Task Force, didn't do anything wrong in Andrew's case. They followed every procedure in law when working with CIs. And since Andrew agreed to all of this, he understood the risks associated with it.
The panel also refuted the family's claims that the police involved him in the drug trade at a deeper level. There was significant forensic evidence downloaded from Andrew's cell phone suggesting that he had been buying and selling marijuana long before he was ever arrested for it. And Semke never had him buy more marijuana as a CI than the amount he purchased himself.
So when the entire review was said and done, the panel didn't find anything out of the ordinary. Semke followed all rules and procedures while working with Andrew, and they couldn't find anything tying his death to his work as a CI. However, the independent investigation didn't stop Andrew's parents from pursuing answers.
Two years after his death, they filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Richland County and SEMCA officer Jason Weber, the officer who offered Andrew to become a CI. In the lawsuit, Andrew's parents alleged that the police didn't fully inform or train Andrew as his duties for a CI. They also argued that Officer Weber exaggerated the 40-year prison sentence just to get Andrew to agree to work for him.
Under any other circumstance, he would have never been sent to prison for that long based on a relatively small amount of marijuana. They just told him that and said that he was going to get sentenced to 40 years just to get him to cooperate. After at least two separate delays, the trial was set to begin in 2019. But before it could get started, the unexpected happened.
Before the trial started, the defendants, Richland County and Officer Weber, filed a motion for summary judgment. Basically, they were asking the judge to dismiss the entire case without it ever going to trial. And after reviewing the entire motion, the circuit court judge agreed. In his ruling, the judge said that Andrew's parents didn't have any evidence proving his work as a CI contributed to his death.
And if that's the case, there's also no evidence proving the defendants, which were the county and the police, had anything to do with his death. The judge also didn't think the police lied to Andrew about the 40-year prison sentence. Under the state's sentencing guidelines, he could have received a similar sentence.
Of course, that probably wasn't likely since Andrew was young and had many mitigating factors in his favor. But still, under the state's sentencing guidelines, it was still a possibility.
But the biggest aspect of the judge's ruling was the forensic evidence. Simply put, there was no forensic evidence proving exactly how Andrew died. His death was ruled undetermined, not suicide, not murder, and no evidence proving that his work as a CI contributed to his death. So without evidence, without cold, hard forensic evidence, there can't be a legitimate wrongful death lawsuit, and the case was dismissed.
But the battle in court didn't stop there. In 2022, Andrew's parents filed a motion for post-judgment relief. In other words, they thought the original court made a mistake when dismissing the case, and they argued they should be allowed to continue the lawsuit.
But like the earlier court decision, the second judge overseeing the case disagreed. He even sanctioned Andrew's parents almost $2,000 for filing what he described as a frivolous lawsuit. This decision almost guarantees that Andrew's parents won't be allowed to sue anyone for his death. Not the county, not the police, no one.
Andrew's mysterious death led to lawsuits, but it also raised some red flags about using CIs. In December 2015, the CBS television show 60 Minutes aired an episode that featured Andrew's story. Not only did they talk about Andrew, but they also talked about another NDSCC student who was also arrested for selling marijuana on campus.
But unlike Andrew, this particular student didn't take the deal to become a CI, even though the officers basically said the same thing to him that he would probably get decades behind bars. But instead of taking that deal, the student left the police station and hired a private attorney. And without becoming a CI or going to prison, he received probation and an $800 fine.
a far cry from Andrew's 40-year prison threats. There was even a law passed in North Dakota following Andrew's death. It's called Andrew's Law. The law provides more protections for CIs, including stricter guidelines for the police to follow. It also requires law enforcement to better inform potential CIs about all the risks and dangers associated with it.
Andrew's law aims to provide better training for law enforcement agencies in North Dakota who use drug CIs, as well as to ensure that participants in this program know about all the dangers of the underworld that they're entering. Nine years have passed since Andrew Sadiq's mysterious death. His parents continue to seek out answers. Andrew's death remains undetermined.
Not even the forensic evidence can explain how exactly Andrew was shot and killed. Did he steal his parents' .22 caliber handgun and decide to use it on himself? Or did someone else shoot him? Why was his backpack filled with rocks? Did Andrew purposely do it so that his body would be harder to find? Or did someone else do it for the same exact reason?
What about Andrew's wallet? Did it accidentally float downstream? Or did someone steal it? Where was Andrew going at 2 o'clock a.m. when he left his dorm room that night? And why was he wearing someone else's sweatshirt when his body was discovered about two months later? And finally, why was the gun never recovered? Andrew Sadiq's mysterious death continues. To share your thoughts on this week's story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.
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