'The Dakota Entrapment Tapes': How police charges against Andrew Sadek turned the people of Wahpeton against him
In 2014, 20-year-old college student Andrew Sadek went missing from his college dorms while he was working as a confidential informant (CI). Sadek had been apprehended in 2013 for selling marijuana and was told by the police he could be sentenced to a long time in prison. He agreed to work as a CI for a local multi-jurisdictional law enforcement task force in exchange for having the charges dropped. Under police supervision, he bought more marijuana from other dealers around the North Dakota State College of Science campus.
The following year, when Sadek disappeared, the task force initially suspected that he had run away to avoid being a CI. They charged him with two felonies to motivate him to return. However, two months after his disappearance, Sadek's body was found in the Red River near Breckenridge, Minnesota, just across from Wahpeton. The body was beyond recognition and was identified through dental records.
While the police believed Sadek's death to be a suicide, his parents did not. He was two weeks away from graduating when he disappeared, he had a new girlfriend, and had even made plans for the weekend after his disappearance. Virtually no protection was given to Sadek as he carried out the dangerous work of a CI and after his body was found, no law enforcement agency took charge in finding out the truth behind his death. Sadek's death is the subject of a new docuseries on Sundance Now called 'The Dakota Entrapment Tapes'.
'The Dakota Entrapment Tapes' features Sadek's friends and family talking about him and the ordeal they went through. There is one point that was said by Andrew's mother, Tammy Sadek that specifically stands out. On top of not knowing that their son was working as a CI for the police when he disappeared, after the police filed charges against Sadek, public opinion of the 20-year-old college student changed.
When the charges were filed, NDSCS Campus Police Sgt. Steve Helgeson told Wahpeton Daily News, "We’re maintaining our focus on him. There are some criminal things he’s going to have to answer to, when and if we find him, and get him back to his parents, which is for another day. Our focus is to get him back to his parents, to the community." Helgeson had worked in the Southeast Multi-County Agency (SEMCA) drug task force for four years before joining campus police and even said that he did not believe they were holding anything back when that was not the case.
It was potentially because of the way that law enforcement spoke of Sadek that the townspeople of Wahpeton and Valley City -- where Sadek was from -- grew lax in their search for the missing student. With the information they were putting out, the townspeople believed that Sadek was a drug dealer according to Tammy Sadek's statement in the documentary, and that picture of her son made the town turn against him.
'The Dakota Entrapment Tapes' premiered on Sundance Now on Tuesday, October 27 at 3 am EST.
