Every Town - The Mysterious Unsolved Disappearance of Brandon Swanson

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Starting point is 00:00:58 Every town has a dark side. Oh shit. Those were the last two words. College student, Brandon Swanson, uttered to his father over their intense cell phone conversation in the wee hours of May 14, 2018. He was calling them, looking for some help after his Chevy Lumina had veered off into a ditch in the town of Camby, which was just about a 30-minute straight shot from his home in Marshall, Minnesota. His parents headed out to where he was.

Starting point is 00:01:42 he was, but couldn't find their son anywhere. A large search was organized in the days that followed, however still 15 years later. No real leads as to what actually happened to the young man had been laid out. I'm Andrew, and welcome to another episode of Everytown where today we check out the very strange disappearance case of Brandon Swanson. So, in the blink of an eye, Brandon disappeared without a trace. He was either victim of a kidnapping or foul play. A hit and run, perhaps.

Starting point is 00:02:17 Some have thought maybe he was abducted by aliens. Whatever it is, we're going to explore it. So let's head over to Marshall, Minnesota now, and dig into the unsolved and mysterious disappearance of Brandon Swanson. Brennan was the only child of Brian and Annette Swanson. He was born on January 30th, 1989, in Marshall, Minnesota. In 2007, he graduated from Marshall High School, and after that, studied wind turbines for a year at the Minnesota

Starting point is 00:02:58 West Community and Technical College campus in Camby, a small city in Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota. On May 13th of 2008, classes ended for the semester, and everybody was ready to let loose and have some fun to celebrate. Brandon was no different. He went to a couple of different parties, first attending a gathering in the town of Lind, located near his home in Marshall, where he had a few drinks. Then between 10, 30 and 11 p.m., the young college student left there and headed to another friend's house in Camby to say goodbye to a classmate who was headed home for the summer. On both occasions, Brandon was spotted unentoxicated by witnesses and friends.

Starting point is 00:03:50 He did drink, yes, but it was at a tolerable level. It wasn't as if he was shotgunning beers or playing beer pong. At the party in Camby, he did have an additional celebratory shot. Then a bit after midnight, he said goodbye to head back home to Marshall. Canby is roughly 35 miles from his house, so doing that commute was a normal routine in his daily life. But on that faithful night, Brandon decided that instead of taking Highway 68, which was the most direct route, he opted to drive along the backcountry farming roads, most likely to avoid police after he'd had a couple drinks. But soon, and for reasons unknown, Brandon found himself in a bit of trouble at around 1.30 in the morning.

Starting point is 00:04:52 While traveling along the 3,900 block of Leon Lincoln Road, he veered off into a ditch close to a farmer's field. As a result, his car's wheels were now elevated so he couldn't get any traction to drive himself back out. He then initially tried to call his friends, but no one was responding, so a little reluctantly, I'm sure, at around 154 a.m., he called up his parents, Brian and Annette, and told him about what happened. He wasn't sure of his exact location. you can imagine in the middle of the night being on a rural road you're unfamiliar with. It would be tough to pinpoint exactly where you are. But he had a general idea, and the Swanson couple got into their pickup truck to drive out to where Brandon said he likely was,

Starting point is 00:05:59 while maintaining their connection through the phone so they could hone in on him. There were occasional hang-ups and dropped calls, but they kept their connection going as best they could. and he assured his parents on a few occasions that he was perfectly fine and just needed to be picked up. He started flashing his lights on and off as a sort of bat signal to his folks so they could spot him easier. But after a while, when the parents still unable to locate their son, impatience crept in, and so Brandon finally gave up, giving light signals, and left his car altogether. During the call, he informed his father he passed some fences and gravel roads. He could also overhear water flowing in the distance.

Starting point is 00:06:50 He was walking towards the light he could see over the horizon that made him believe that he was near the town of Lynn. He asked his parents, don't you see me? As they now flashed their car headlights to try and be easier to locate, Brandon instructed his father to go to a local bar in Linde and head for the parking lot and wait for him there. Brian began driving there, still talking to his son over the phone. This location operation was.

Starting point is 00:07:32 was now going on for a total of 47 minutes. And at 2.30 a.m., Brandon, suddenly and unexpectedly uttered, Oh shit, which ended his communication with his father and mom. The phone line was still open, but Brandon was unresponsive for the rest of the call. His parents hung up thinking it was another phone issue again. They made multiple attempts to call him back, but he never picked up. He also never showed up at that bar in Linde, he said he was going to. His dad thought his son might have slid and fallen somewhere.

Starting point is 00:08:17 Leone County Sheriff Eric Whalen said, I can say that his phone was functioning into the next day. I mean, you could place a call and it would ring before turning over to voicemail. That much, I can say. But Brandon has not been seen or heard from him since. So, what could have possibly happened to him? Brian and Annette repeatedly called their son's phone that night, but it just kept going straight to voicemail each and every time.

Starting point is 00:08:48 For the rest of the night, Brandon's parents, with the help of their son's friends, search the rural areas, endless gravel roads, and farmlands in vain. The following morning at 6.30 a.m., Brian and Annette reported their son missing, but at that time, the police didn't take their concerns too seriously. As kids, Brandon's age, tended to hang out all night, and they assumed he must have crashed somewhere and would show up later in the day. The Swanson couple were simply advised to be patient and waiting for their son to return home in his own volition.

Starting point is 00:09:24 One officer was even overheard saying to Brian and Annette, it's his right to be missing. But knowing their son was in trouble because of how their calls went with him, they continued on with their search throughout the morning. By the afternoon, law enforcement finally got involved in looking for Brandon, and they succeeded in locating his vehicle. They did so by obtaining Swanson's cell phone records and where the call is pinged from and discovered that he'd actually been near Porter that night,

Starting point is 00:10:10 which is roughly 25 miles away from where he told his parents he was. Surely thereafter, his car was located in a ditch near Taunton. Sheriff Eric Whalen said, We were able to use the cell phone 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. At the car, no signs of foul play were present, and no keys were found in the vehicle or near the scene either. Sheriff added,

Starting point is 00:10:47 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 stopped. During the initial search for Brandon, that included trained search dogs, air surveillance, and hundreds of volunteers. The K-9 unit led law enforcement agents to the Yellow Medicine, River, roughly three miles away from where Brandon's vehicle was. Search dogs picked up his

Starting point is 00:11:25 scent on a trail near the river, which they followed to the water, which then led them to the other side of the river. This lent credence to the idea that Brandon had heard water as he told his parents over the phone, and that at some point he had appeared to have fallen in. On the other side of the river, they continued following his scent north along the Yellow Medicine County line, and that's where the trail suddenly ended. From that point, the canines couldn't follow what was believed to be Brandon sent. According to the sheriff, that was it. After the original search found no sign of Brandon, most efforts were discontinued, but a few persevered. One of them was Lincoln County Sheriff, Jack Vasecki, who continued to canvas around two miles of the yellow medicine area each day for a month.

Starting point is 00:12:34 As a sign of hope that Brandon would eventually return or be found, Brian and Annette left their porch light on every night. In the months that followed, volunteers, emergency personnel, and law enforcement utilized walkers, boats, horseback, and all-terrain vehicles, targeting Lincoln, Leon, and yellow medicine counties, and bodies of water, including the Yellow Medicine River. The authorities believe that Brandon fell into a body of water and drowned. However, as indicated by the search dogs, he appeared to have gotten out of the river and continued walking. The temperature that night was around 39 degrees, so the young man may succumb to hypothermia somewhere in the woods. A few times search dogs picked up the scent of human remains, specifically in an area

Starting point is 00:13:26 north of Porter near Mud Creek, but no body was ever discovered. Police didn't have any evidence to suggest foul play and believe Brandon's remains are somewhere within the 122 square mile search area. Without a clear lead in Brandon's disappearance, here are some points that need to be mentioned. First, he was legally blind in the left eye due to an injury from when he was small, so he had to wear eyeglasses. For reasons unknown, he left his eyeglasses in his car that night. The area his car was left in also has many unmarked cisterns or underwater reservoirs, and so it's possible he could have fallen into one of those. Brandon had been drinking as he went

Starting point is 00:14:17 party hopping that night, but his parents attested that their son was perfectly lucid while talking to him on the phone. It's also possible he took some sort of drug, either willingly or unknowingly, which had an effect on him that caused him to be confused. Hence, why he thought he was somewhere else, or why he left his glasses. Another odd detail was after Brandon had abruptly stopped talking, they heard nothing coming from the background, which might have provided them an idea of what it alarmed their son. Really, the best thing that came out of Brandon's disappearance case was the passing of Brandon's law on July 1, 2009 in Minnesota. It was advocated by Brian and Annette, and it requires authorities to immediately take a missing person's report and begin an investigation

Starting point is 00:15:19 regardless of the missing person's age. The couple's motivation was to prevent other families from experiencing the same obstacles that they encountered while trying to initiate the search for their missing son. While Brandon's law doesn't necessarily help the Swanson family and the search for their son, it does correct an issue, they believe, hindered what could have been a search conducted much sooner. It was their way of turning their immense grief, pain, and frustration into something useful for other families in the future. Many tips also revolved around the events leading up to Brandon Swanson's disappearance, including claims that he was involved in an argument at the time he went missing. In many circumstances, this is third-hand information, and Sheriff Whalen would not indicate specifics regarding,

Starting point is 00:16:14 an alleged argument. He said all tips are followed up on regardless of how many separate people have come forward. Yet those tips haven't led any sort of break in the case that the investigators have been hoping for. Wayland said, Seems that every tip we receive, we investigate and run into a dead end. It was either false or the information wasn't accurate. They all seemed to run into a dead end. For many years after the disappearance, the sheriff's office received additional tips,

Starting point is 00:16:50 Although they point out that not all of these are new for investigators. In other words, many of the tips that come in can be redundant, and so the amount of useful ones with new information is very small. And so it's been about 15 years since the night of Brandon's disappearance. A Swanson couple continues to hope for his return one day. Still, though, the most pressing question remains what exactly happened to him? There's still no physical evidence related to Brandon Swanson in that has been recovered, including his cell phone, car keys, clothing, and all his parents

Starting point is 00:17:32 have left of them for now are memories, and that one last chilling phone call. So that's going to do it for this week's episode of Everytown, guys. Tune in next week for another one filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because who knows, maybe your town will be next.

Every Town - The Mysterious Unsolved Disappearance of Brandon Swanson

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