College Student Mysteriously Vanishes
In the early morning hours of May 14th, 2008, 19-year-old Brandon Swanson was driving home after partying when he was in a minor accident. He was uninjured, as he’d soon tell his parents on the phone, but needed them to come pick him up, since his vehicle was in the ditch.
He struggled to give them accurate directions and, as it would later be learned, was actually roughly 25 miles away from where he had believed himself to be. He began walking, heading for what he thought was the city of Lynd.
Despite being legally blind in one eye, Brandon left his glasses behind. After spending the better part of an hour on the phone with his parents, he suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, shit!” and then fell silent. He was never seen or heard from again.
What happened to Brandon Swanson?
Who Was Brandon Swanson?
The oldest of two children, Brandon Swanson was born on January 30th, 1989, in Marshall, Minnesota, to parents Brian and Annette.
Intelligent and funny, Brandon was an avid reader who excelled in school and was close to his family.
In 2008, 19-year-old Brandon was a college student enrolled in a wind turbine program at Minnesota West Community and Technical College in Canby. He intended to transfer that fall to Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and major in science.
Night of the Incident
The spring semester had just come to an end, and on the night of May 13th, 2008, Brandon went to two different parties to celebrate. He was seen drinking at both parties, but according to his friends, he didn’t drink enough to become overly intoxicated.
The route Brandon drove from the gathering in Canby to Marshall was familiar to him. It was the same route along Minnesota State Highway 68 that he had taken every day to attend classes. But for some reason, he avoided the highway and took the back roads.
When he reached the 3900 block of Lyon Lincoln Road, Brandon suddenly swerved off the road and into a ditch. At around 2 a.m. on the morning of May 14th, he called his parents from his cellphone, informing them that he had essentially “high centered” the vehicle. He assured them that both he and the car were fine and that he merely needed to be picked up.
He told his parents that he believed himself to be near the city of Lynd and that the lights he spotted off in the distance were coming from there. So they drove to the area to look for him. Both Brandon and his parents had agreed to flash their headlights on and off in order to signal to each other. However, after several failed attempts at locating Brandon using this method, tensions began to rise.
“Don’t you see me?” he asked his parents, exasperated.
Brandon’s Final Call
Finally, Brandon decided on a different course of action. He started walking through a field in the direction of the lights and asked his parents to meet him in the parking lot of a popular nightclub in Lynd.
Unfortunately, he would never make it there.
Forty-seven minutes into the call, Brandon suddenly exclaimed: “Oh, shit!” Then there was silence. The call didn’t end at that point, though. There was just an eerie quiet as Brian and Annette waited in agony for their son to tell them what was wrong. But he never did.
Unsure of what else to do, they hung up and tried calling him again multiple times, each time getting no response.
Brandon Swanson would never be seen or heard from again.
The Yellow Medicine River
Sissy Panties
Anton Woode: 11-Year-Old Murder Convict Sent to Adult Prison
Book Review: A…
The Search
Brian and Annette Swanson reported their son missing at 6:30 a.m. that morning. However, local police initially didn’t take their concerns seriously, stating that it wasn’t unusual for a young man his age to stay out all night. Deputies advised them to just be patient and wait for him to return on his own.
“It’s his right to be missing,” one officer reportedly said to the worried parents.
Discovery of Brandon Swanson’s Car
When police obtained Brandon’s cellphone records, they discovered that on the night he disappeared, he had actually been near Porter, approximately 25 miles away from where he told his parents he was. Shortly thereafter, his car was located in a ditch near Taunton.
Lyon County Sheriff Eric Wallen said that Brandon’s phone was working well into the next day and that officers continued to try calling it and getting his voicemail.
“We were able to use the cellphone tower technology to have an idea of where his last communications or phone calls came from, so that put us on a cell tower up in that area,” said Wallen. “So then the search was focused there, and the car was located.”
His car keys were missing, along with his cellphone, but there were no obvious signs of foul play.
“The vehicle simply looked like it was stuck in the ditch, or partially in the ditch. There was nothing odd about it. If a person passed by, they would think it was just parked there, or broken down and stuck.”
Search Dogs Pick Up His Scent
Once the search finally did begin, it was an extensive one, including hundreds of volunteers, trained search dogs, and air surveillance. Search operations covered both the land and the Yellow Medicine River, as some of the search-and-rescue personnel speculated that Swanson could have fallen into the current and drowned.
Search dogs picked up his scent on a trail near the river. They followed the scent to the water and then over to the other side of the river (indicating that Brandon may have been in the water), after which they continued north along the riverbank, towards the Yellow Medicine County line, where the trail suddenly ended.
The search dogs also picked up the scent of human remains a few times near Mud Creek, north of Porter. However, nothing pertinent to the case was ever recovered there.
Wallen said that investigators had also done extensive excavation work on the river. As late as 2021, there were still teams sifting through the dirt in search of Brandon’s remains.
Ongoing Complication
Interestingly, the canine teams picked up Brandon’s scent on a piece of farm equipment nearby, but the farmer to whom it belonged refused to let authorities search his property.
At this point, Ken Anderson of Emergency Support Services realized that several promising areas couldn’t be searched because of a variety of thorny legal conflicts revolving around landowner permissions. Local cattle farmers, for example, didn’t want police search dogs on their property.
Fourteen years later, investigators were still having problems with this issue.
“In at least a couple of circumstances, that (problem) is still in existence,” Anderson confirmed. “They will not allow us on their property. We don’t dispute the reason why. We try and work out a method that would make it acceptable, and we’ve not been able to come up with a working compromise.”
Yellow Medicine County Sheriff Bill Flaten worked with Emergency Support Services on requesting landowner permission, helping to create an access schedule for the farmland so that investigators and search teams could work around the planting and harvest seasons.
The problem, he said, usually arises when law enforcement doesn’t have probable cause, although most property owners try to be accommodating.
“They know their property, and they search it and look around as well.”
Another facet to the complication, according to Anderson, has been that specialized canine scent work is a precious, and time-sensitive, resource. In the whole state of Minnesota, there have been no more than three dogs available at any given time with the capability for this kind of search.
“The problem is that as time goes on, it becomes much more complicated to fulfill the search because you need to have canines that have experience in aged scent.”
What Happened to Brandon?
It is important to note that due to a childhood eye injury, Brandon Swanson was legally blind in his left eye, leading him to have depth perception issues. He had to wear glasses for this condition but, for unknown reasons, on the night of his disappearance, he left his glasses in his car.
There were many unmarked cisterns in the area and authorities have considered the possibility that Brandon could have fallen into one.
Additionally, it was just under 40 degrees that night, so it’s also plausible that Brandon succumbed to hypothermia, especially if he fell into the river.
Despite the fact that he had been drinking that night, his parents were adamant that their son sounded perfectly lucid, albeit alarmed, during their phone call.
Brandon Swanson Update
Sheriff Wallen stated in 2023 that tips are still coming in. Within the last year, he said, the Sheriff’s Office and Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) have received new information pertaining to the night Brandon went missing and the events leading up to his disappearance. This included third-hand claims that Brandon got into an argument with someone around the time he was last seen.
None of the tips have panned out, unfortunately.
“It seems that every tip that we receive, we investigate and we run into a dead end,” Wallen lamented. “It was either false or the information wasn’t accurate … they all seem to run into a dead end.”
Interestingly, Brandon has a page on ViCAP, a database dedicated to violent crimes.
Besides his car, not one piece of physical evidence related to Brandon has been found. His keys, cellphone, and clothes were never recovered.
Brandon’s Law
Brian and Annette Swanson never forgot the nonchalant attitude they encountered from law enforcement when they first reported their son missing.
Knowing firsthand how crucial it is in a missing persons case to start investigating as soon as possible, they wanted to spare other families from having to deal with this nightmare. So they became advocates and lobbied for the passing of what would become known as “Brandon’s Law,” which requires law enforcement to immediately begin a preliminary investigation when an adult goes missing under dangerous circumstances, regardless of their age.
The bill was signed by Governor Tim Pawlenty on May 7, 2009, and went into effect on July 1st of that same year.
Sources
- “Rural roads of Minnesota remain last known location of 19-year-old Brandon Swanson,” Trisha Taurinskas, Grand Forks Herald, January 23, 2023
- “The Disappearance of Brandon Swanson,” Youtuber, Dining With Death, October 20th, 2022
- “Disappearance of Brandon Swanson,” Wikipedia
- “The Mysterious Disappearance Of Minnesota College Student Brandon Swanson,” Neil Patmore, ati, November 25, 2022
- St. Cloud Times