The Disappearance of Brandon Swanson

This week on The Secret Sits we are diving into the strange disappearance of Brandon Swanson; he was 19 years old.   Brandon was last seen on May 14, 2008, leaving a friend’s house. His car was found abandoned in a ditch with the car doors open and keys missing.

 To provide or request additional information, please contact:
 - Sheriff Chad Meester, Lincoln, MN COSO, cmeester@co.lincoln.mn.us
 - Agent Derek Woodford, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, 651-793-7000
 - FBI ViCAP, 1-800-634-4097or vicap@leo.gov

We are looking for hometown True Crime stories for future episodes.  Please send your stories to us at: TheSecretSitsPodcast@gmail.com

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Transcript

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The phone rang at 01:54am in Brian and Annette Swanson’s home.  Their son Brandon was on the other end of the line, he needed their help, little did they know, this would possibly be the last time they would ever hear their son’s voice.

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Welcome to The Secret Sits, I’m your host John Dodson.  Join us every Thursday as we uncover the Secrets behind the world’s most fascinating true crime cases.  You can find all episodes of The Secret Sits for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts.  And if you like what you are hearing, reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook @The Secret Sits Podcast or on Twitter @SecretSitsPod. Now, on with our story.

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Brandon Swanson is missing, let us start right there, Brandon is still missing.  He graduated from Marshall High School in 2007, and he had become interested in wind turbines, lucky for Brandon, the Minnesota West Community and Technical College had courses in Wend Energy Technology and this school was not far from his home, so he enrolled.  Brandon was 19 years old and he was really into green energy development. The Canby campus of the school was where he would attend his classes in wind technology.  Brandon finished his courses on May 13th, so he and some of his friends decided to go out and celebrate. Brandon had already applied to transfer to Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs, Iowa, a few months later in August 2008, where his overall goal was to enroll in a four-year university program to follow his passions in science.  Brandon lived with his parents and his little sister in a town called Marshall, but he and his friends began their night at a party which was taking place one town over in Lynd, about 7 miles southwest of Brandon’s family home.  After the group had, had their fair share of a good time at the bar, they headed out to a different party.  This party was taking place about 35 miles from Lynd, in Canby, where Brandon attended school.  Brandon did consume some unknown amount of alcohol during this evening, some have said he had one beer and one shot during the course of the evening, but his friends would later all recount that Brandon did not seem impaired, in fact, they were not even concerned about him driving his own car the 40 minutes it would take him to get home.  Just after midnight, Brandon left the party to drive home, this was an easy trip, it only consists of one road the entire trip and Brandon drove this route every single day to attend classes.  

Highway 68 directly connects the towns of Canby and Marshall; it is 30 miles of just mind-numbing highway.  Because it was later at night, there was no traffic to speak of, which should have made Brandon’s drive home even quicker.  But Brandon had some trouble on this stretch of highway and somehow Brandon accidentally ran his Chevy Lumina off of the road and it became stuck in the small ditch along side of the road.   Now Brandon is a smaller guy, he stands at 5 foot 6 and he weighed in around 125 pounds sopping wet, so there was no way he was going to get this car unstuck by himself, although he did try, to no avail. After a few arduous attempts to get the car unstuck by himself, Brandon decided that he had better call some friends to come and help.  Brandon called several friends, but it was late and many of his friends were still out partying and Brandon’s calls to his friends went unanswered.  

Receiving no hope of a rescue from his friends, Brandon decided he needed to call his parents to come help him.  

In the silent darkness of the night, Brian and Annette were startled awake by the phone ringing, Brian looked at the clock, 01:54am.  The couple knew that Brandon was out celebrating with friends and they were a bit surprised when it was Brandon who was calling them so late.  Brandon immediately told his parents not to worry, he was not hurt or anything, he had just driven his car off the road and now it was stuck in the ditch.  He also told them that the car was undamaged, he just could not move it on his own.  So, Brian and Annette got out of bed and threw on some cloths so they could go help their son.

Brandon told them that he knew precisely where he was, he was half way between Lynd and Marshall on Highway 68.  Brian immediately understood the assignment and he figured it would take about 10 minutes before they reached their son.  It was the middle of the night and Brandon was stuck on the side of the road, so his parents decided to just keep him on the phone the entire time they drove to help him, but as the couple approached the spot Brian understood his son to be at, there was nothing.  The couple could not locate the boy’s Chevy Lumina.  Although Annette had tried to keep Brandon on the phone the entire time, there were a couple of times when the call dropped, signal was not super reliable in this area, but they kept calling each other back and maintained their communication the entire time the couple had been driving.

It was strange to everyone involved that they could not find one another.  Brandon was on the phone, telling his parents exactly where he was, his parents arrived where Brandon had told them to and yet, nothing.  It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone™; they were speaking to him on the phone and standing in the same spot he told them he currently was in.  It was almost like they were existing in parallel dimensions.  Brian began honking the horn on his pickup truck and flashing his lights hoping they were just further apart from each other than they realized.  Brandon said that he could not hear the horn, nor see the lights from his parents’ truck.  Brian then asked his son if he was sure about his location, Brandon answered, yes, he knew exactly where he was.

Brandon’s parents decided to have Brandon begin flashing his headlights, this way the couple could possibly spot their son that way.  Brain says he could clearly hear the click-clack of the headlights as Brandon flipped them on and off.  Annette peered through the inky black night, trying spot her baby boy, but there was nothing.  None of this made any sense, it is not as if there were major obstacles blocking their view, the couple were surrounded in all directions by vast open fields.  From where they were standing, they should be able to see Brandon even if he was half a mile away.

Through all of this, Brandon is still on the phone speaking to his parents and he is beginning to become a bit agitated at this point, he could not understand what was happening, why could his parents not see him?  Brandon once again told them where he was standing and told his parents how to get to him, but they could not find him, Brandon was certain that it was his parents who were lost or disoriented or something.  After Brandon and his mother’s frustrations came to a head, he hung up on his mother Annette.  She immediately called her son back and began profusely apologizing, she understood how frustrated he was and she could relate, why could they not find him.

This entire time, Brandon had stayed right there next to his car, but with his parents unable to locate him, Brandon was sure it was his parents who were confused and lost, so he began making his way, on foot to where he thought they may be.  Brandon said he could see lights flickering in the distance, he assumed that those lights were coming from the town of Lynd.  Brandon decided that he would just walk to town and his parents could meet him in the parking lot of a local bar.  Brain and Annette agreed to this plan and they got back into their truck, Brian ran Annette home and then he headed back out to pick up Brandon at the bar in Lynd.  Now I included this part about Brian taking Annette back home, but this is not reliably sourced and this is one piece of the story that changes depending on the source material.  

Brandon remained on the phone with his dad the entire time he was walking toward the lights in the distance, constantly updating his dad on his progress and position.  Brandon told his dad that he was currently walking on a gravel road after having cut through an empty field.  Then Brandon told his dad that he could hear running water somewhere close to him, although he could not see the water due to the blackened night.  Brandon kept talking to his dad and he kept walking toward the lights.

Brian was driving to the bar and just listening to Brandon narrated his walk.  Then, right around 2:30am, 47 minutes into the call between father and son, Brain heard his son cry out “Oh, Shit!”.  Brian called out on the phone for his son, but there was no answer.  Brian decided to hang up the phone and attempt to call Brandon back.  Brian’s thought was, if Brandon had fallen and been knocked out or even if he was simply dazed, by calling him back, the sounds and lights from the phone could possibly rouse Brandon.  Brain frantically tried to get his son back on the phone, but Brandon never picked up again.  Brain says that he called 4-5-6 times all right in a row, Brandon never picked up and a few hours later, every attempt to call Brandon’s phone went straight to voicemail. Brain was now unsure exactly what to do, he drove over the same stretches of road, back and forth several times, he found nothing.  He saw nothing.

Brandon’s parents then began cold calling some of Brandon’s friends and several came out to help look for their vanished friend.  The couple and the boy’s friends searched through the night, they drove down every road they could find, they searched for hours, they looked every place they could think of, they still did not find anything.  Brain made his way back to Lynd and checked the bar they were suppose to rendezvous at, but the bar was dark and empty and there were no signs of Brandon.  As 6:30am arrived, so did Brian and Annette’s panic.  It was then, that the Swanson’s called the Lynd police to report their son as a missing person.

As we hear about in countless cases involving missing persons, the Swanson’s were much more concerned about their missing son, than the local police department.  The couple was told that their son was an adult and he had the right to go missing if he wanted to.  Annette tried to explained to the police that this was not the case of an overprotective, overbearing parent, her son was actually missing, not out partying and Brian had been speaking to him on the phone when he disappeared and the phone was cut off.  Several hours later, after the Swansons repudiated what they were being told, police begrudgingly reported Brandon Swanson as a missing person.

Police conducted what we will call an obligatory search around the town and they felt confident asserting that Brandon was not in the town of Lynd.  All of the roads leading into the town were also searched, with no results.  With the sun now up, Brain and Annette were also back out, driving around the town and looking at every road they could, still, no signs of Brandon or his car.

Police then pulled cell phone records for Brandon’s phone and this led to the first break in the case.  Although Brandon had driven the exact same path home almost everyday for a year, and he was completely confident about his whereabouts, it turns out that Brandon had never been anywhere close to Lynd.  Brandon was actually 20 miles from where he imagined himself to be.  The calls to Brandon’s parents were made near the town of Taunton.  Taunton is another small speck of a town located further down highway 68.  

Now this is where things get really bizarre, it did makes since for Brandon to be close to Taunton because it was a town you would pass going from Canby to Marshall, but what was strange is that Brandon left Canby just after midnight, Canby to Taunton is a 13-mile drive which should take about 15 minutes.  This would leave another 17 miles for him to get home to Marshall.  Despite this, somehow it had taken Brandon almost 2 hours to drive the 13-miles to Taunton.  This was simply unexplainable. 

Now having the evidence from the cell phone records, police moved their area of interest to the rural area surrounding Taunton.  Brandon’s car was located quickly after the search was moved to this new area, the car was found abandoned on a gravel road, just over the Lincoln County line a mile north of Highway 68.

When investigators searched the car, there was nothing suspicious, there was nothing to indicate Brandon was hurt, the only strange thing taken from the scene at the car was a pair of Brandon’s glasses.  You see, Brandon was legally blind in his left eye and he always had to wear his glasses to see, but there in the car sat Brandon’s glasses.  The scene was just as Brandon had been describing it to his parents, the only thing that was different was the location.

The car was off the road in a ditch and it was surrounded by grass and gravel, which prevented any footprints to indicate which way Brandon may have traveled on foot.  The next cell tower to ping on Brandon’s phone was in Minneota, a small town about 4 miles southeast of Taunton.  An extensive search party was launched and they began concentrating on the areas indicated by the cell phone records.  The search had air support in the form of some search helicopters, a team of bloodhounds were also brought in and they detected Brandon’s scent very quickly.  The dogs followed the scent for three miles as they wound their way through fields of corn and soy beans and then they crossed through an abandoned farm.  The dogs kept moving, noses to the air, they passed the old farm and worked their way to the Yellow Medicine River.  

As the pups reached the river, they indicated that Brandon had entered the water at a certain location.  The water is anywhere from 2 feet to 15 feet depending on where you are and the conditions.  On the day Brandon disappeared the water was at around 10 feet.  After indicating where Brandon had entered the water, the dogs were unable to pick up the boy’s scent any further.

Everyone is now concerned that Brandon had entered the water and may have possibly drowned, so the search party now proceeded to search the river banks and waters.  If Brandon had fallen into the drink, and perished, his body would have washed downstream, but once again, the searchers found nothing.  Based on the theory that Brandon may have drowned, boats from the state's Department of Natural Resources were deployed along the river, and water gates were installed.  The local sheriff Jack Vizecky, walked this riverbank up and down, everyday for 30 days and found nothing.  The investigation team decided that Brandon definitely did not drown in the river, because there was no body to recover and they moved on.

After a week the official organized searches were called off, but Brandon’s family continued the searches.  During one weekend search, which took place from Mary 31st to June 1st, a group of 40 volunteers set out to search, this group covered the area on foot, on horseback and on ATVs.  This search took place around the Yellow Medicine River in Lincoln, Lyon and Yellow Medicine Counties.  On that Sunday Human Remains Detection dogs were brought in as well.  Wendy Deane brought her dog Kyra and Sherolyn Sievert brought her dog named Gus.  These two dogs searched the spillway area of the Yellow Medicine River, a third dog named Bandit searched the shore line further down in Lincoln County with his handler Kathy Newman.  All three of the search dogs swept through the entire area without showing any interest. 

Searches for Brandon waned as the crops sprung up.  Corn and soybeans are the life blood of this area of the country, so no searches were conducted while the crops grew in.  As fall began to roll around and all of the local farmers had harvested their summer crops, the search efforts for Brandon resumed.  This time police brought in a team of cadaver dogs, once again, nothing was found.  Winter in Minnesota can be rough, snowstorms abound and temperatures drop quickly, because of this, once again, any searches for Brandon were called off.  122 square miles had been searched so far and they had found nothing, no clothing, no personal belongings and no Brandon.  500 people had volunteered, 34 dogs and dog handlers had been brought in from 9 different states and it had all resulted in nothing, not one single clue as to what had happened to this boy.

In 2010 the case was handed over to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal investigation.  The MBCI decided to focus on an area around Mud Creek, this is a tributary which feeds the Yellow Medicine River.  This also turned up no new clues, but this team will periodically return to this area over the next few years.  The MBCI set up a tip line for the case, and by 2015 there had been 90 calls to the tip line about Brandon, but none of those leads had panned out either. And I sadly have to say that this is where all of the information about this case ends.  Nothing has ever been found to pinpoint where Brandon may have gone on this night so long ago.  After listening to the details about this case, you may have developed a few theories about what could have happened to Brandon, and you would not be the only one dreaming up possible scenarios as to what happened to this young man beginning the prime of his life.

This case has spawned many theories about what could have happened to Brandon, and I am going to share some of those theories with you now.

The first theory about Brandon’s disappearance is that he staged his own disappearance or death as a means to run away and begin a new life.  This scenario is highly unlikely based on what we know about Brandon.  He was a great student and he had just finished his courses for his certificate in Wind Technology.  On top of that, Brandon had already been setting things up to move on to a 4-year school in Iowa to continue his education.  Brandon also had no history of legal troubles and he was extremely close to his family, family meant an awful lot to Brandon, according to his immediate family members.  

The next theory I want to mention is, while Brandon was out walking in the middle of the night, and because the area he was in was so dark, he may have been hit by a car and killed.  The driver, in the middle of nowhere, panicked and hid the body.  This theory is not believed to be true, according to local law enforcement. And if you remember, when Brandon cried out at the end of the 47-minute call with his father, he was walking through fields, not on a road where vehicles would have been present.  We know that Brandon had walked through these fields based on cell phone data and the tracking dogs used in the search.

There was discussion about foul play, but this area of the country is sparsely populated, the town of Taunton had a population of 135 and the next town over, Porter only had a population of 175.  A majority of land in this area is open farmland with farm buildings and farm houses sporadically sprinkled in every few miles. No one would have been laying in wait for this young man, as he was lost in the first place, there would have been no one to know where he was going to ambush him.  A crime of opportunity is also unlikely based on the time of day and population of the area.

Most people now believe that Brandon may have suffered a tragic accident.  As he chose to leave his car stuck in the ditch and proceed on foot not truly knowing where he was going.  The night was dark and there were no street lamps to guide the young man’s way.  There were no houses or any other landmarks Brandon could use to guide his way through the abyss.  He told his father he could hear running water, but he was unconcerned as he made his way through the flat fields which would soon spring up with soybeans and corn.  Had he encountered a wild animal like a black bear or a large wild cat, probably not, animals do not get rid of evidence when they kill.  Brandon may have cried out Oh Shit if he walked up on a bear, but a bear would have left his cloths, or keys or something.  

The last theory I want to mention is that Brandon could have possibly fallen into an empty cistern or well on some of the farmland he was walking through, this may explain why nothing could be found, if he fell in a deep well and was stuck there.  But once again, the search dogs would have trailed his sent to a hole in the ground and that simply did not happen either.

Even after time had passed and search after search had been organized and conducted, Annette Swanson still had a grievance in her heart that needed a resolution.  Remember when Annette and Brian first attempted to report Brandon missing to the local police and an officer made the comment, “he has the right to be missing”?  Well, this made Annette mad and she planned to do something about it.  She and Brian began lobbying for a change in the state law, this change would require an investigation into cases of missing adults to begin as soon as they are reported.  This was already the law for missing children in cases of a possible abduction.  A bill was introduced named “Brandon’s Law” that would make this desired change by amending the law governing the state’s existing Missing Child Program to change the world “child” to “person”.  After some amendments during negotiations a companion bill was introduced which passed both houses and went on the be signed by then Governor Tim Pawlenty.  Brian and Annette Swanson, along with their daughter Jamine were in attendance for the bill’s signing.

This new law also required that police determine whether that person is potentially in dangerous circumstances. They must also notify other nearby law enforcement agencies promptly. Brandon's Law also clarifies that the agency taking the report is the lead agency investigating the case; the absence of that distinction had created some problems in the later phases of the initial search when three different counties were involved. Police are no longer allowed to refuse a report based on an initial belief that no criminal activity was involved, the brevity of the interval since the person was last seen, the possibility that the person may have intentionally disappeared, or the lack of a relationship between the missing person and the reporter.

Brandon Swanson has been missing since May 14th, 2008.  He was 19 years old at the time and stood at 5’5” tall and he weighed in at 125 pounds.  He has brown hair and blue eyes.  He was last seen in Canby, Minnesota, wearing a pair of blue jeans, a blue striped polo shirt, a black hooded sweatshirt that zipped up the front, and a white Minnesota Twins baseball cap. He was also wearing eyeglasses with silver frames, as well as a sterling silver chain. He was carrying a black Motorola cell phone, a wallet, and car keys. If you have any information on Brandon, please call the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at 877–996–6222 or email them at bca.coldcase@state.mn.us.

To this day, the Swansons leave their porch light on all night, every night as a symbol of their hope that Brandon will eventually return home or be found.