Community Rallies Support To Find Missing Northfield Man

NORTHFIELD, MN — The Northfield community plans to rally at noon Saturday at Bridge Square to bring attention to Daryl "Dice" Budenski, 71, who has been missing since Oct. 1.

"As a 71-year-old missing person, he's no Gabby Petito," said Dallas Drake, one of the rally's organizers, referring to the 22-year-old woman who went missing in August and whose body was found a month later.

"A 71-year-old person that goes missing doesn't have a large contingent of people to necessarily advocate on their behalf," Drake said. "So we want to raise the visibility for this case to let people know that Dice is still missing and that we need to continue to look for him."

Budenski, a lifelong Northfield resident, was reported missing Oct. 1 by a friend, and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension quickly shared his photo to help spread the word.

Police began a search Oct. 2 with Northstar Search and Rescue, a private nonprofit that provides services to law enforcement. It deployed cadaver dogs, search dogs, aerial surveillance and a water drone, and searched for two weeks but did not find Budenski. Since then, the search for Budenski has gone cold, though groups of volunteers continue to look. But Northfield residents haven't given up hope of finding Budenski and are now trying to rally community members to keep the search active.

Drake is a senior researcher at the Center for Homicide Research, he told Patch. He helped train teams of volunteers to search for Budenski at the request of his sister, Bobbi Bolton, who lives in Northfield. Both are part of Facebook group "Search for Daryl Budenski," which is composed of nearly 540 members looking to help find Budenski.

Bolton will attend the rally, which will feature yard signs to bring awareness to Budenski's case, she told Patch.

On Oct. 6, police found a wallet and hat in a ditch on the east side of Division Street between a traffic circle and a cemetery, the Northfield Police Department's Sgt. Kevin Tussing told Patch. The wallet was a money clip with credit cards and business cards but no cash. Budenski was seen wearing the hat in video surveillance from a Wells Fargo bank on Sept. 28, Tussing said.

After the discovery, teams "searched well into the night with us that night," Tussing said. "We searched areas near where his hat was found, near his apartment complex, near areas he was known to possibly hang out in, like Sechler Park, and we searched up and down the Cannon River area."

Northstar Search and Rescue came back Oct. 9 to assist investigators, Tussing said. But the only scent picked up by the team's dogs was near Budenski's apartment building off Koester Court, he said.

Since the first two weeks of the search, Tussing has helped volunteer searchers keep track of which areas have been searched so the volunteers don't search the same place twice, Drake said.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's original post said that Budenski had dementia, but Tussing said that it appears the original report was incorrect.

Tussing said he met with a homicide investigator from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and has been trying to find more video surveillance.

Northfield police spoke with Budenski's two brothers, his sister-in-law and his niece, Tussing said.

It also reached out to casinos that Budenski had been known to visit, Tussing said. Budenski's player's cards for the casinos were also frozen and would alert authorities if someone attempted to use them, Tussing told Patch.

Authorities have also applied for a search warrant for Budenski's Wells Fargo bank account and medical records and are trying to find his dental records, Tussing said. Police are also collecting DNA from Budenski's family members in preparation for a "worst-case scenario" — if authorities find his body, Tussing said.

Tussing also fields calls on the police tip line from people who think they've seen Budenski or believe they know something useful. So far, no tips have led to Budenski. But Tussing said all calls are checked thoroughly.

Drake trains homicide investigators in his position at the Center for Homicide Research, he said. He believed that the discovery of Budenski's hat and money clip suggest foul play.

But Northfield police are keeping an open mind about what may have happened, Tussing said.

"Besides him being gone and his wallet and hat found in the ditch, there really isn't anything else that would lead us to believe there were suspicious circumstances," he said.

Nevertheless, investigators are looking into every possibility, Tussing said. He declined to discuss information that might tip off somebody who could have been involved in Budenski's disappearance if foul play was involved.

Budenski's disappearance has affected the Northfield community, Drake said.

"When someone is killed or even when someone goes missing, it impacts all of us," he said. "It impacts our sense of safety and security. As an elderly person, it really impacts our sense of security, because we don't have the resources that we maybe once did as a senior person. And we think, 'Well, could that happen to me? If I went missing, would someone come looking for me?' And to think, 'What if nobody cared?'"

"The gathering on Bridge Square is to say, 'No, we all care,'" Drake said. "We can't control what somebody does to a victim. ... But what we can control is the message and the actions that we take afterwards to show that we don't tolerate this. We can come together as a community and support one another and we go out, and we search and we organize."

Anybody with any information about Budenski was asked to call Northfield police at 507-645-4477 or 911.