Brandon Swanson // 411
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What is going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello, everybody. Today's case is the very first case that we ever covered on Going West. This was episode one. Can you guys believe that? Over 400 episodes ago. It's so crazy to think about. And by the way, for anybody wondering, we've gotten a lot of questions about this over the years. We lost, I think it's the first eight episodes.

Or is it nine? Yeah, first eight episodes. Of the show years ago in a transfer. So I just thought, you know...

Why don't we recover this one? This case is definitely one of my pet cases, if you will. So I think about this case frequently, and I thought it would be good to kind of redo it because we very much re-researched this and spent so much time digging way deeper than we did originally because when we covered this in episode one, we had no idea what we were doing. Yeah, yeah. Now we do. It's safe to say, you know, first episode ever. And yeah, this is one of the most mysterious cases of young men gone missing, so...

Pay attention. We're going to try not to confuse you guys. I know. I feel like I need to crack my knuckles for this one. This is the kind of case where you want to pay attention, put your thinking cap on, open your ears, because the details, like Keith said, we're going to try not to confuse you guys and go slow and take it easy, but there is a lot to this story. So let's go. All right, guys. This is episode 411 of Going West, so let's get into it. ♪

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In May of 2008, a 19-year-old man left his friend's house in rural Minnesota, taking the back roads instead of the highway. Shortly afterwards, he accidentally drove his car into a ditch and called his parents asking for help.

During a frustrating ordeal in the middle of the night, his parents couldn't find him amongst all the flat farmland, even though he was confident he was in a particular area and giving them clear instructions. Almost an hour into their call, he shouted an expletive and the call ended, leaving his parents even more frantic to find him.

Eerily, when police located his vehicle the next day, it was in a ditch 25 minutes away from where he thought he was. So what happened to him after that call dropped? This is the story of Brandon Swanson.

Brandon Victor Swanson was born on January 30th, 1989 in Marshall, Minnesota to parents Annette and Brian Swanson. And a year and a half later, his younger sister was born. Marshall is a small city in Southwest Minnesota near the South Dakota border. It's a college town. And in 2008, its population was just around 13,000 people. So just remember, it is a small and quiet place surrounded by a ton of open fields and weirdly,

many cemeteries. Like I looked at the map and it was cemetery, cemetery, cemetery, cemetery surrounding this whole area. So I don't know what that's about, but anyway, back to Brandon. So he was always known to be an incredibly responsible, kind, and intelligent person. He was a big reader, especially history. And he really enjoyed physics as well as talking and learning about the string theory and

Which is the idea that reality is made up of infinitesimal vibrating strings that are smaller than atoms. So it's no surprise that Brandon was a class debater.

He was also interested in renewable energy. So after graduating from Marshall High School in 2007, he was excited to begin attending Minnesota West Community and Technical College in nearby Canby, Minnesota, so he could study in the wind turbine program. And this was in hopes, you know, to help the world use wind to make electricity without releasing any carbon emissions.

And working in the wind turbine field is one of the fastest growing careers in the U.S. So it was a good path for Brandon. Now, Canby, which is pretty much a focal point of today's story, is just a 35-minute drive outside of Marshall if you're taking the highway. And it's a much smaller city that's also surrounded by a ton of rural plains and flat farmland. But we're going to dive more into specifics here in a little bit.

So in the fall of 2007, Brandon began his freshman year of college. And in May of 2008, classes officially ended for summer. At this time and for the last four years, Brandon had been working at the local Hy-Vee supermarket in Marshall in the bakery department. So he was working and going to school and living at his parents' home in Marshall.

On the night that classes ended, which was Tuesday, May 13th, 2008, Brandon decided to go out and celebrate the start of summer with his college friends. Now, at first, he went to a friend's house in Linde, where a few different friends had a rental house together there.

And if you want to go look at the map that we created on our socials, it displays all of this. But we will also explain it because location plays probably the biggest location is probably the biggest piece in this entire story. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, location is everything here.

So, Linde, Minnesota is a very small town with just under 500 people living there in 2008. With the center of Linde being about 8 miles or 13 kilometers from the center of Marshall. So it's just a 12 minute drive away. It's not very far. Now, in Linde at this party there was only about 5 people at this house. So it wasn't really a party and kind of more of like a little get together. And Brandon did not stay there all night.

He actually went back to Canby, where his school is, to attend a different get-together at around 10:30 p.m., making the 40-minute drive there that night in his car.

Now his main reason for attending this other get-together was to say goodbye to a classmate friend of his who was moving away the very next day. Now at this friend's house, 19-year-old Brandon consumed some alcohol, though people at this house say that he wasn't drinking in excess. Like, he wasn't drunk, but it's known that he had at least one shot of whiskey. And by the way, Brandon weighed about 120 pounds, so keep that in mind.

So he stayed there for a couple of hours until after midnight when he decided to make the drive back home to Marshall. But his drive wouldn't have been the easy 35 minutes that it would take if he drove on Minnesota Highway 68, which is a complete straight shot. Because for whatever reason, Brandon decided to take one of the many rural back roads that connect between Canby and Marshall.

Now a lot of people have speculated on why Brandon would make this decision since it's not officially known, but it seems most likely that he kind of wanted to avoid police since he did have a couple of drinks that night. Because even though the legal driving limit in Minnesota at the time was .08, meaning that you consumed between two and five drinks, he was 19 years old. So if he got caught, he would get his license suspended and would be charged with a misdemeanor crime.

Thus, Brandon drove down the incredibly dark farming roads outside of the main highway, meaning that it would have taken him up to twice as long to do so, because there are other highways in the area, Highways 23 and 75, that he'd have to avoid as well. So I dug into Websleuths, and someone was able to pull up a prior conviction for Brandon, and I actually cross-referenced it on the Minnesota Judicial Branch's website of online court records.

And I was able to confirm that this conviction is very real. And a lot of people have kind of talked about this online. Like I heard he had a conviction, whatever, but I was able to confirm that this is true. So basically Brandon Swanson, same middle name, birthday, et cetera. This is

him ran into trouble with a DWI or driving while intoxicated before the night that he went missing the night that we're talking about right now. So on August 5th, 2006, when Brandon was 17 years old and about to enter his senior year of high school, nearly two years before he went missing,

he incurred the following misdemeanor charges with the Marshall Police Department. One, traffic DWI operate motor vehicle alcohol concentration .08 within two hours. Two, traffic underage drinking and driving. Three, traffic accidents involved driver fails to give information. And four, traffic accidents collision with unattended vehicles.

So it seems that Brandon hid a car with no one in it while under the influence of alcohol and under .08. And he pled guilty to three of the charges, the first, the third, and the fourth charges.

And they were all deemed petty misdemeanors. So he had to pay a few hundred dollars in fines and undergo one year of probation from October of 2006 to October of 2007, which is when he was starting his freshman year of college.

And in the case details, it includes random testing, attend MAD Impact Panel, which is a class that helps drivers, you know, understand the tragic effects of their actions and what it does to victims. Remain law abiding. And then it also says to serve a term of 30 days in the local Lyon County Jail. So I'm not sure if he ended up having to do that, but either way,

He faced multiple penalties, and it's clear that Brandon would not want to be caught drinking and driving again because if something were to happen and he were to be pulled over and breathalyzed, he could have faced serving a year in jail and fines up to $3,000, according to DWI slash Minnesota.com regarding a second DUI. So it makes it hard for me to believe that such a smart young man like Brandon would have had...

much to drink at all at the fear of risking such extreme penalties. So this is just great information to have for what's to come. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, it gives us a little insight into where his head was at and what he could possibly be thinking here. But then, of course, we do know that he at least, like you said, took a shot of whiskey at the second person's house, meaning that he did drink a little bit knowing that he was going to have to drive. But how much? We're not sure.

And this comes into play because on the way home, it appears Brandon got considerably lost and even stuck.

It's important to note here that Brandon, since birth, due to having congenital blindness, was blind in his left eye. And his vision in his right eye wasn't great because he had poor depth perception. So he had to wear glasses. And his sight, as you can imagine, was the worst at night. So especially driving down such dark roads, although Brandon was used to his visual impairments, he seemed to get super, super mixed up when he was driving.

Also, he did know the area fairly well, obviously. He grew up in Marshall, so we can assume he knew the surrounding area at least...

Yeah, or pretty well, yeah. Yeah, and even though he had only been driving for two to three years or so at this point, he did take Highway 68 multiple days a week for about nine months to go to and from school, to and from Marshall and Canby. So I'm sure he took the highway most of that time, but maybe he knew the back roads because his friends lived off the highway here somewhere.

without a GPS, he felt confident enough in taking those back roads to get home. Sure. Yeah. And I mean, I just wanted to point out, you know, I come from a small town as well in Oregon and I know all the surrounding back roads just because I've lived there my whole life basically. And,

It's hard for me to believe that he didn't know at least most of these back roads, you know? It's so funny because being from LA, we just rely on the freeway so much that I am not at all a back road person, but good to know from a small town, you know that more. Perspective, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's just Oregon for you. Yeah, but.

Brandon did not take the highway. If he had taken Highway 68, the southeast journey would have been like a backslash. So Heath said it was a straight shot. It is. But if you want a visual, think of a backslash.

from Canby down Southeast to Marshall. Right. So since he seemed to have taken the back roads, it was more like a stair step route. And you can think about this like a, in like a grid, right? So all the streets are like in squares around the highlands.

Yeah, so you have to go down, over, down, over, down, over, basically. Exactly, especially because he was going southeast. So exactly like that, just so you can picture it as we describe this. Now, we can guess that he thought he knew the back roads better than he really did because, again, he did not have GPS in his car or on his phone whatsoever.

which was a Motorola Sliver. Yeah. This was 2008. I was just about to say that. It's 2008, so yeah, GPS is not great, and phones didn't have Apple Maps and stuff like that. The iPhone was a year old at this point, or not even a year old, and he had a Motorola Sliver. So not a thing yet. So during Brandon's drive, sometime between 12.30 a.m. and 1.15 a.m.,

Brandon's car got hung up in a ditch. So while driving for a mile down a minimum maintenance road, so unintentionally not going in the direction of his home, Brandon, whether impaired or tired or unable to see properly at

attempted to make a left turn onto a gravel road, but accidentally swung into a ditch. Remember, it is incredibly dark. He probably didn't even see that the ditch was there, thought he had enough room to swing his car around, but he didn't.

Yeah. One thing, quick thing to mention is that this is rural Minnesota. I mean, it's pitch black. It's pitch black out there. You know, hardly any light pollution and just stars. That's basically all you got. Stars in the moonlight. Exactly. So it was determined later that the frame of his car got stuck on the steep yet fairly shallow ditch that he was in.

meaning he was not able to drive forwards or backwards to get out of it because his wheels were in the air. So they're not able to gain any kind of traction onto the ground so that he can get out of this. He would have to get his car towed. So he is completely like shit out of luck here, right? Now, initially, Brandon called a couple of his friends in seek of help.

but he didn't receive any answer from his friends. And to me, it seems likely that he was either waiting for them to call him back or thinking on his issue or maybe actively trying to get his car out of the ditch because it wasn't until 1.54 a.m. that Brandon finally decided to call home to his parents. Remember, it's believed that he got stuck in the ditch somewhere between, a lot of sources say 12.30, a lot of sources say 1.15. We're not completely sure. So he waited until

Yeah, and I'm thinking, you know, during this time, he's, like you said, he's calling his friends. He's seeing what the damage might be to his car or if it's possible for him to even get it out or trying to kind of reverse and go forward, trying to get it out.

So, yeah, I mean, it makes sense that he's taking a little bit of time here to figure things out. Well, I also wonder about the relationship between his parents, because I think certain people feel more comfortable calling their parents than others. I know as a teenager, I could have called, you could have as well. Oh, yeah, definitely. Called our parents if we had an issue and they'd be right there. But I wonder if because he had had at least one drink that night,

because his parents obviously knew about it, maybe this was a point of contention and this was something they were very disappointed or upset about, you know, that he felt like, oh my God, I can't call them. They're going to be so mad at me. Yeah. And I think a lot of teenagers in that situation would think the same thing. They don't,

You know, it's like he's coming home from a party. He gets his car stuck in a ditch. It's, you know, almost the middle of the night. He doesn't necessarily want to, you know, go to his parents first. He wants to call some friends to see if they can pick him up. Exactly. But when they didn't, he felt like, okay, I'm going to call them now. And when they answered, he explained what happened and asked them if they would pick him up in Lindt.

Now, I'm going to explain this in the least confusing way possible for those who cannot go look at the map that we have in our socials. So Brandon was in Linde earlier that evening, as Heath told us. Yeah, the very first party. Right. But he was coming home from Canby. He was in Canby at school. Then he went to Linde for the first get-together, back to Canby for the second one to say bye to his friend. And now he's believing, for whatever reason, that he is back in Linde, that he has made it back home.

in the area of Marshall. Because remember, we had said that to go from Canby to Marshall, where his parents live, it is a straight shot southeast down the highway in the appearance of a backslash. It's about a 35-minute drive.

Well, to get from Linde to Marshall, it's much closer, like he said. A lot closer. Yeah, it's 12 minutes by car, but it's a straight shot in a forward slash appearance going northeast from Linde to Marshall.

So Lind is south of Marshall, while Canby is north of Marshall. It's northwest of Marshall. So how he believes that he ended up in Lind is super confusing. Like I said, there are many squares of little roads between all these areas. So it is possible that Brandon believed that he went down south to

And then on his way east, he got into a ditch and thought that he was in Lind and all he had to do was go north to get home. But get ready for things to become very confusing because Brandon was not anywhere near Lind as we will discuss. So Brandon told his parents that he was just off of Highway 23 on the left side of a maintenance road.

Now, Highway 23 is the highway that connects Lynn to Marshall, whereas Highway 68 connects Canby to Marshall. Brandon explained on the phone that he would start walking towards town, fully believing that he knew where he was. His parents, Brian and Annette, then hung up and then got into their pickup truck to make the 12-minute drive to Lynn to begin looking for him. Now, according to them, Brandon sounded totally fine. He didn't sound under the influence at all.

Quickly, his parents arrived to Lind, because again, it's just a 12 minute drive. But they didn't see him anywhere.

So they're driving around on these off roads looking and he's just nowhere to be found. He's not standing out anywhere like he said he was going to be. And his car wasn't in that area. And Brandon is just totally dumbfounded that they can't see him. He's saying, hello, like I'm right here. Can't you see me? He can't see them either. But he's saying, I'm standing in this spot exactly where I'm telling you. How are you not finding me? Right. Like, can't you see me? And frustrations here are just, you know, starting to mount because it's like,

They're both looking for each other, trying to find one another, and they just can't. So there were a few phone calls between Brandon and his parents, and when they either thought that they were just about to find him, or if Brandon was getting frustrated because they were all at this point, Brandon would hang up. And this happened a couple of times.

Because again, you know, he was sure that he knew where he was and didn't understand how his parents couldn't find him. So at this point in the night, it was quite cold, you know, it was 45 degrees Fahrenheit or 7 degrees Celsius, but Brandon was both inside and outside of his car. Sometimes during this time, he would walk to the road, others, he would be inside his car reportedly flashing his headlights to see if they could spot him because again, super dark out there and it's a very, very flat area.

But they couldn't see him anywhere. So his parents started driving around and just flashing their headlights, but he couldn't see them either. And they're in a pickup truck. So that, especially if he's up on a maintenance road and they're down on the small highways and the more main roads that he should be able to see.

and they're flashing their lights, there should be no reason that he wouldn't see them except for as we're gonna get into it, they're in completely different towns. But at that time they're like, how are we not crossing paths? And this is such an eerie part of the story. Like they're all out there in the dark, in the middle of the night, asking each other if they could see their flashing lights and they just can't. It's so creepy. So after about 15 to 20 minutes of searching,

Brian decided to apparently drop his wife Annette home so that she could go to sleep because they felt confident that Brandon was safe, but it would just take a little bit more work to find him. Right. You know, they're on the phone with him here and there. They're like, we are going to find you at some point. Yeah. And he's safe. He's fine. He's just annoyed because he wants to go home. You know, everybody's ready to go to sleep.

And like Heath said, Brandon was getting pretty frustrated, particularly with his mom. So apparently she decided to go home and let Brian find their son. And I say apparently because there's some conflicting reports on this that we're going to get into, but it's not super relevant anyway. But at 2.23 a.m., Brian called his son Brandon back and began what would become a 47-minute phone call, trying to find him the entire time.

While Brian was driving back into Linde, Brandon told his dad that he was going to walk to his friend's house and that he should meet him there. But they stayed on the phone because, again, Brandon thinks he knows where his friend's house is in relation to where he is at this point. So he's saying, just meet me there and we'll stay on the phone and I'll just find you there. You know, along the way, Brandon kept explaining his whereabouts, like saying that he was walking along a fence line and could see the lights of town ahead of him.

He said that he was walking through land instead of down some of the roads at one point because he felt like it would be faster to cut across.

And he also told his dad that he heard running water nearby, which makes sense because the Redwood River runs right along and through Linde. And since he could apparently see the town's lights ahead, he had told his dad to instead meet him in the parking lot of the Linde Tavern. So that's where his dad went. He's waiting for him there. And, you know, again, he's on the phone saying, oh, you know what?

Town's just ahead. I see it. I'll just meet you in the parking lot. Yeah, so this feels like good news for his dad, Brian, because he's like, well, my son can see some lights. He's headed towards town. I'm sure that I will meet him there in just a few minutes. Yeah, and we're talking and he's telling me what he's seeing. This is a 47 minute phone call. They're talking the entire time about what Brandon's seeing and just, you know, his dad is keeping him company while he is making this very lonely walk.

But then, terrifyingly, everything came to a halt when 47 minutes into this phone call with his dad at 3.10 a.m., Brandon yelled, oh shit, and the call abruptly ended.

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So as we mentioned before that quick break, 47 minutes into Brandon's call with his dad at 3:10 a.m., Brandon shouted, "Oh shit!" and his dad, through the phone, heard a slipping sound, possibly to signal Brandon slipping or falling somewhere, and then the call abruptly ended.

Now, I want to quickly address some minor discrepancies. One, all reports state that his mom was home for much of this search. That when the call dropped, she wasn't there, it was just Brandon's dad who had heard this happen. And then two, that the phone call did not immediately drop when he said, "Oh shit!" But that the phone stayed on, and Brandon just wasn't saying anything.

So I just wanted to mention those two things because Annette did a short interview that we're going to play here in a bit, and we're not sure which situation is true, but just thought that we would mention it anyway. Yeah, again, it's not a huge thing whether she was there or not, but it's good to know in case anybody knows the conflicting information, and because we do want to play that clip later. Sure. But anyway, so after the call ended, since it was very alarming to his dad, Brian, he tried to call Brandon back multiple times,

But Brandon never answered the phone again, even though it wasn't going straight to voicemail, like it did ring. But I mean, this could mean anything that something happened to Brandon or that something happened to his phone. Did his phone fall in the mud? Did it fall in the water? I mean, did the battery die? I mean, you'd imagine that if it wasn't going straight to voicemail, that it was still in working order, but that's not necessarily the case.

So this doesn't concretely mean that something happened to Brandon in this very moment, though that is also a possibility. But either way, Brandon and/or his phone were incapacitated when the call dropped at 3:10 AM. With Brian calling his son back over five times to no avail, Brian immediately began calling various friends of Brandon's to recruit them in helping search for Brandon.

So for the next three hours, that's exactly what they did. They searched all the country roads off of Highway 23 in the Linde area, as well as between Linde and Marshall. But Brandon was just nowhere. Then at 6:30 a.m., 30 minutes after the sun rose and Brandon could still not be found, his mom Annette finally called the Lyon County Sheriff's Office and reported 19-year-old Brandon missing, requesting help in searching for him.

But unfortunately, since at this point Brandon had only been missing for a few hours, and because he was also an adult, the police said that Brandon had likely stayed out all night or was with a friend. Despite his parents explaining, you know, how the call dropped and how they had basically been searching for him, you know, this entire time. Yeah, and there is that very alarming detail of, he called me for help, and...

And we were trying to find each other for over an hour. And we had this long phone call. And then it ended with him saying, oh, shit. So that leads everybody to believe that something is going on. But they originally are feeling like this could be something else. Yeah. And that's kind of the part of the story that pisses me off. The fact that...

You know, after explaining all of this, any rational person, like you just said, would think that, you know, this is of importance, like...

We've been trying to find this kid. We can't find him. Like, we've been on the phone with him this entire time. He's lost. Let's do something about it. Especially because time is really of the essence here. We don't know if something happened to him, like you said, in the moment that he said, oh shit, or if something happened and then he was okay and then something occurred after that. Like, finding him quickly could change everything, basically.

But they didn't look right away. Yeah, and it wasn't until hours later that police decided to actually join in on this search, realizing that something could have happened to him.

And later that same afternoon on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008, police tracked Brandon's cell phone pings and discovered that he was not near Lind when all of this happened, which I will give them credit for, you know, looking into his phone records. That is, I think, the best way to help figure out what area he was in, especially because for hours and hours, they're looking in the Lind area and he's not there. They're thinking...

Is he here at all? Is he maybe somewhere else? And he was somewhere else. So they took to this other area until they, that afternoon, located Brandon's green Chevy Lumina within the city limits of Taunton, Minnesota. So to make this a little easier to visualize, there are four Taunton,

tiny cities, like tiny hosting, maybe a couple hundred people each. Can't even call them cities. They're more just like, you know, little towns. They are technically cities, but yes, I totally agree. That feels way too small to technically be a city. But anyway, so there are four between the 30 mile stretch of Highway 68 between Canby, where Brandon started driving from, and Marshall, where Brandon lived. And here are them in order going southeast. So it's

Can be. And then there's Porter, Taunton, Minnioda, Ghent, and then it's Marshall.

meaning Brandon's car was not anywhere near Lind. In fact, Taunton is about a 30-minute drive from Lind because if Brandon had taken Highway 68 to get home, Canby to Taunton is only 15 minutes away, leaving about 20 minutes remaining on the highway until he reaches his home in Marshall.

So his car was found on a small rural road called Lyon-Lincoln County Road, close to the cross street of 160th Avenue.

Just south of this area is the Yellow Medicine River within a short walking distance. So either 20 minutes or 25 minutes away, depending on which way he was walking. So when Brandon was on the phone telling his dad that he could hear running water, it had to have been the Yellow Medicine River that he heard. And the town lights that he saw was not Lind, but either Taunton or Porter.

And the location of his car, by the way, was just over a mile from Highway 68. So a two-minute drive or a 28-minute walk to the highway. Yeah. So basically, earlier we were talking about how when he first heard that running water, we thought that it was the Redwood River, right? Mm-hmm.

Well, in fact, it was not the Redwood River like everybody assumed because, again, he thought he was in Lind, but it was actually the Yellow Medicine River that was near Porter in Taunton. And this is why...

they can't find each other because he's saying, here's where I am. Can't, why can't you see me? And it's because they are practically 30 minutes away from each other. Yeah. And I was going to say, you know, this, the stair stepping that he was doing on his way home, I think probably confused him the most because he probably thought that he had been driving, uh, the same amount of time that it would have taken him to get from can be, uh, to Lind. Um,

But that wasn't the case. Because he was stair-stepping, he thought he was driving for a lot more time than he really was. And I imagine that all of these roads look the same. They're all farmland. So I imagine it's very easy to get confused. And like you're saying, he was driving for a while. His vision isn't great.

you know, there's a lot of factors here, but I think it's very interesting that he didn't say, well, I think I'm in Linde. I'm not really sure. Hey, I'm going to walk to the end of the street and I see a sign that says 160th Avenue. Do you know where that is? You know, and because 160th Avenue does not cross through Linde. It's north of Linde, like even north of Marshall. So I think that would have been a great thing to note if he was

kind of shouting out these different street names that he is seeing, but it doesn't seem like that happened. That conversation occurred. Yeah, sorry. I was kind of confusing there for a second, but basically what I was trying to say is that if you were driving Highway 68...

It would take you this amount of time, you know, to get to Marshall. But then when you're doing that stair-stepping like that... It takes a lot longer. It takes a lot longer. But then you think, oh, I must be... Or he was probably thinking, oh, I must be close to Lind because I know how long it takes to get from Canby to Marshall. And it should have taken the same time with him doing the stair-stepping, but he didn't account for that. And because of that, this is where it gets really tricky because...

He was fairly close to the center of Taunton. Again, Hotland. And from where he was, it was a five-minute drive or an hour walk from his car. So obviously that's still a long walk, but it's closer than Porter because it does seem, as we're going to get into, that he was walking towards Porter, which would have been a seven-minute drive or an hour and a half walk. So again, though...

It's difficult to know that for sure because on Google Maps when I'm doing this and I'm hitting the walk button and I'm kind of moving it around as I will, it depends if he's going along the roads or if he's going across a field, right? If he's cutting across like we know he did as we'll talk about. So it's around an hour and a half roughly to Porter walking around an hour roughly to the center of Taunton.

But like I said as well, these towns are both super small, or these cities rather, with a couple hundred people in each. Both downtowns are tiny and minimal, so it's not like he's seeing high-rise buildings or anything. I imagine he is somehow seeing a small collection of lights.

Which is still hard for me to believe for these two tiny cities, especially at such a late hour. So that's very confusing because I went onto Google Maps and I went to the center of both Porter and Taunton. There's like nothing there. So I don't know where these lights are coming from.

Well, again, you know, we're out in this rural area. It's very, very dark out there where there's hardly any light pollution. So when there is a light there, whether it be, you know, a light on a barn or a street lamp or something like that,

It would be pretty visible, you'd think. Right. And we don't know exactly when he started walking towards the city lights that he describes, but know that it would have been right before or right after he got on the phone with his dad at 2.23 a.m. And their call, again, was 47 minutes.

I think it would have been very helpful to know how far into this call that he heard water as well, because it would help with placement. Because based on how the Yellow Medicine River runs, it runs just outside of the center of Taunton and all along that area, but not Porter. It stops...

halfway between where Brandon's car was found and where the center of Porter is, which would roughly be a 45 minute or 45 minutes into his walk. So either could be possible going in either which direction, but it does appear that he was walking towards Porter. So the, the larger distance.

But back to when police found his car. So Lyon County Sheriff Jeff Vizzecki said this about the placement of Brandon's car. Quote,

Strangely, apparently the doors, all the car doors were open, even though Brandon would have no reason to do this and hadn't explained doing so to his parents. Yeah. And I mean, if anything, he'd want to keep them closed because, you know, it was pretty cold outside. Yeah. So having them all open is a pretty eerie thought. Yeah.

Now, the police didn't find any drugs or alcohol in his car. There is a big conversation that I didn't really want to add in here because there is a lot of speculation and rumor about this case. And a lot of comments on Reddit and web sleuths will say that there was a pipe found in his car, whether it be a marijuana pipe or some other type of pipe, we're not sure. But...

I'm not sure if there was that found. Yeah, that can't be confirmed completely. Yeah, so I didn't really want to bring it up, but for anybody who has heard this case and had heard that there was a pipe, it hasn't been confirmed. But otherwise, there was no actual drugs or alcohol found in the vehicle. There was no sign of a struggle. No blood.

and no indication that Brandon got injured, especially because the car itself was not damaged at all. Yeah, you would think that if he crashed into this ditch, maybe something on his car would be damaged, but that was not the case. And that could help as well indicate if he had, you know, hit his head or gotten injured in some other way when he veered into this ditch, but...

he didn't mention this to his parents. He, there was no indication that he had gotten injured during that minor little accident that he had.

And just to note as well, there aren't any public images of Brandon's car being in the ditch. Remember this. So we don't know what this exact spot looks like. Google Maps does not even go down that road or the roads around it. So we're going to post a lot of photos of the area and maps, but there are a couple photos online alleging to be Brandon's car, but they are not his. There are no public photos of Brandon's car when it was found.

Now, as far as footprints go, police were hoping to be able to physically track his movements that way, but there weren't any notable footprints around his car or anywhere else that they looked that pointed to Brandon. Once they located his car, especially since it was just around 12 hours since he had last been seen, police were hopeful that their search in the immediate area would bring forth more clues as to where Brandon was.

They brought in canine units to sniff around the area for him, and the dogs actually led police to the banks of the Yellow Medicine River, which is really by far the most likely source of running water sounds that Brandon had heard.

Now, at the time he went missing, this river was high and it was flowing fast. Well, we are going to post a photo of it because it's much wider than we had originally imagined. Like, you can't really just, you can't jump over it by any means. No, I thought it, I had thought it was narrow for some reason in my mind until seeing these photos. It's wide in some areas and it can get up to 15 feet deep. So yeah, that's, that's.

I mean, for certain areas of the river. But in other areas, it's about knee deep. Now, because the dogs picked up his scent along the banks of the river, police began to theorize that Branton had fallen in and that this was one, the source of his oh shit remark. And two, the reason he couldn't pick up his cell phone again.

So they extensively searched down the river with so many different crews on boat in the water. Yeah. So many different tools. Yes. But eventually they ruled this out because they knew his body would have floated downstream and absolutely surfaced, but it never did. And there are so many comments online where people are like, he's in the river, he's in the river, but they seriously spent so much time searching for him in this river that

If he was in it, they would have found him. Meaning if he had fallen into the river, he got himself out and something happened after that. And one of the dogs actually jumped into the river and then jumped back out. So police wondered if Brandon had done the same thing, fallen in but was able to get out.

There is also the slight possibility that Brandon encountered another nearby body of water called Mud Creek, but searches of that area were not fruitful either. Yeah, cadaver dogs had apparently hinted to that area and...

but they didn't find any remains in that area. And Mud Creek also, don't you agree? Like it doesn't seem very likely because even though it's just about the same distance away from Brandon's, but going in the other direction, it wouldn't have made sense for Brandon to go north because all the towns that would have lights were southeast and southwest, whereas Mud Creek is,

is north and there's just a bunch of nature preserves there. There's no cities. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't make sense that he would have been going in the opposite direction of where he saw these lights. Exactly. And as Heath said earlier, he was trying to clear up that stuff with his mom, Annette, being there when the call dropped and all that. Or not being there. Or not being there, yeah. We're going to play a little clip of Annette being interviewed on HLN so you can kind of hear her perspective. Okay.

Annette Swanson is joining us. She is the mother of Brandon Swanson joining us from Minnesota. Thank you so much for joining us from Marshall, Minnesota, actually. First of all, I want to ask you, Ms. Swanson, you were on the phone with your son a large part of those early hours when you were trying to find him and he was trying to find you. He wasn't hurt at all, right? I mean, the car went into a ditch, but he seemed to be OK.

Correct. He said he was fine, that he was not injured. And, you know, in fact, when we did find his vehicle, there was no damage to it. It was simply muddy from being on a gravel road, but no damage to the vehicle. What was it like that night to be going through this and so close to your son, but so far from your son? Yeah, you know...

As Brandon tried to explain to us where his location was, and he was extremely sure of himself. He felt confident in where he was at and that we were the ones that were confused about how to get to him. And as the conversation went on, as the minutes ticked by, it came to a point where as long as Brandon was on the phone,

As long as he was talking, as long as we had contact, it was okay. We would be okay. But the minute that he, that that call dropped, I just became sick. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was very, very bad. And just could hardly fathom, you know, what was happening at that point. Well, I can imagine. I mean, to take a breath. Now, when the call just...

hung up like that with Brandon in dire distress. I mean, those were the words that he seemed to utter when he said, oh, did you try to call him after that? And what happened? Oh, yes, we did. You know, we we didn't immediately hang up the phone. We you know, we called his name. We tried to, you know, thinking that he still had the phone, that it was very near him, that he could pick it up. We'd hear our voice and we called out to him several times. And we realized, you know, he's

He's not there. So we did. We called him back several times thinking, you know, he'll see the phone light up. Even if he didn't have it on ring, he would see his phone light up when the call came in. He'd find it. You know, he'd answer the call. And it just didn't happen time and again. It just went unanswered. What time did you finally call police?

So that makes you wonder then if the call didn't drop immediately and if Brian and possibly Annette, if she was there after all, hung up themselves when he wasn't answering, what the hell happened that wouldn't have made too much noise? Like all I could really imagine was that the phone maybe dropped or broke or something like that.

but the line technically remained open. Well, next in the search, police, as well as many amazing volunteers, continued searching the area by foot and by air, but they never found anything there either.

But let's get back to the footprint thing, because just hours after Brandon went missing and before his car was found, the area in which his car was found, where there were gravel roads, were graded, which means a motor grader was brought out to restore and level the small rural roads over in that area. So there have been a lot of questions from the public regarding this, like, is this suspicious?

Because much of the area around his car was owned by the state, so if the roads that were allegedly graded were owned by the state, we'd imagine this grading would have been planned ahead of time. But if they were on private roads, was this a quick effort to hide evidence?

Well, unfortunately, it's just not clear here. But going back to Brandon's phone pings, so Daphne explained the small cities between Canby and Marshall, and the city just after Taunton on the way to Marshall called Miniotah is where his phone last pinged from. That's where that cell tower...

was located, which is right next to Taunton, and it pinged at the intersection of County Routes 3 and 10. Now, as we've discussed in past episodes, phone pings aren't an exact science, and they're mostly just indicative of what tower they pinged off of, and what general area the phone is located, usually within five miles of where the phone pinged. So this helped to a degree, but a five mile radius is a ton of ground to cover, especially because we don't know what happened to him.

Like, just because his phone signaled in this area doesn't mean that that's where his body is. But when you compare it to the other clues, knowing that he was near water at some point, knowing where his car was, knowing that he was walking towards a collection of lights believed to be, you know, one of the small cities in question, that radius becomes a lot more clear.

a lot smaller. But again, it doesn't mean that in that spot there's evidence of what happened to him. Right, which makes it so much more difficult because they can search in that smaller radius based on, you know, this map that we have of where it's believed that he walked. But,

Does that mean that's where he ended up? Not necessarily. Absolutely. And, you know, like we're saying, that phone tower is in Miniotah, and we know that Taunton and Porter are very close to Miniotah. They're within five miles. So if it pinged,

That area is included, that the area of Taunton and Porter is included in that. Yeah, remember, it's Canby, Porter, Taunton, Mineota, Ghent, and Ghent? Yeah, Ghent and then Marshall. And then Marshall. So the map that I just hinted at where Brandon is believed to have walked while on the phone with his dad is based off a lot of different clues. And I want to dive into that again in the least confusing way that I possibly can.

So Brandon was believed to be walking northwest towards Portland.

Porter and not to the closer area of central Taunton, which was southeast because he was completely turned around thinking that he was in Lind, right? So as you'll see on our socials, and I will try to make a little video to make it easier to see, while Brandon is on the phone with his dad at 2.30 a.m., Brandon is believed to have traveled south,

down Lyon-Lincoln County Road from the site of his vehicle. He is believed to have walked down this small county road for half a mile, about a 10-minute walk on average, then turned right to go west on 390th Street for about one mile, about 20 minutes walking, until he reached 270th Street. So he is walking down these small rural roads.

And on this whole walk that I'm describing, it's just open fields. There are no farms or homes along this exact path. It's during the end of this alleged mile walk, about 30 minutes in, that Brandon would have started walking near the Yellow Medicine River.

When he would have reached 270th Street 30 minutes into walking, he is believed to have made a right. From there, he is believed to have walked north for another half mile, so another 10 minutes, making this about 40 minutes into his walk.

Or a bit sooner, as we can assume that he was walking at a very steady pace so that he could just get to his parents. It's not like he is leisurely strolling. He's probably, you know, making a good effort here. Yeah, probably maybe even booking it. Who knows? Yeah, maybe even booking it. So within 40 minutes, you know, in this area that he is reaching, he would have reached at this point. The Yellow Medicine River continues to run just along these roads. It's very much in this exact area.

And again, just about 40 minutes into this supposed walk, there is a very small access road that leads to a large farm property. And this is the area that Brandon is believed to have lost contact with his dad. Because the Yellow Medicine River runs right against this property. And this is the area where the dogs alerted to along the river and very close to where they lost their scent of him.

So where they lost their scent is just north of the river and just north of this large farm property on Highway 16, which is a very, very small highway. But that's where the trail was lost. So let's say that he fell into the Yellow Medicine River right next to this farm in this big barn or house, whatever is there. Yeah. Because it looks like a big barn from Google Maps.

If he would have gotten out of the river and walked maybe through this person's property just north, maybe half a mile or less, he would have gotten to that highway where the scent trail was lost. Exactly. And I think it's very interesting that the scent trail of the dogs was lost there.

Yeah, we're going to dive into all of that in a little bit. But of course, you know, when as police are kind of noticing this with the dogs and they're picking up the scent and they lost the scent.

Police and volunteers really focused on this particular area and the surrounding areas, and they found absolutely nothing. No phone, no footprints, no clothes, no bones, no blood. And it was a little bit tough to...

his search during this time because summer was approaching. There's a lot of farmland. They're growing food. So they did another search a few months later in the fall because the sheriff believed that it would be a lot easier to see due to the soybeans and corn being harvested, but it didn't help.

I mean, the sheriff himself walked the two miles of the Yellow Medicine River in the area that Brandon is believed to have been walking. And he did this over the course of a month, just hoping to find any trace of Brandon. But he didn't come up with anything. Yeah, and that's amazing that he did that, knowing that he could have something could have happened to him along that river that they searched very extensively. But along it, inside it, no trace.

Well, the search continued for months, but eventually had to come to a stop after police felt like they just had done basically all they could do in the search efforts. And there have been more continued or many continued searches over the years, but to this day, he nor any of his belongings have ever been found. Brandon's mother Annette later stated, quote, "You know, people don't just vanish into thin air, but it sure seems like he did."

It really does because it is mind-boggling that they never found anything. Not a single bone, not a torn piece of clothing, not his glasses. That's another thing that I totally forgot to kind of think about doing the research for this was a lot of people have also wondered if maybe during when he said, oh shit, something happened to his phone or even his glasses because without his glasses, he really couldn't see. So,

he really did need those and it makes you wonder if something happened to them, but they weren't found. Yeah, nothing, nothing at all was found and it's just, I don't know, like you said, it is just totally mind-boggling.

So, it goes without saying that there are so many theories surrounding what happened to Brandon. And we want to go through some of them because it's always kind of good to talk about the possibilities since talking about cases can help get them solved. Interestingly, the sheriff stated, quote, "...someone could have been in the shadows and they got him that way," suggesting that someone could have been out there and that, you know, that's what scared Brandon.

Again, this area is super rural as we've said, you know, about a thousand times. And yes, there were farms scattered in the area and there's actually three located within a half mile of where his car was found. One which is only about 1,000 feet away.

There are also a couple very close to the Yellow Medicine River in the area where Brandon is believed to have been walking, and this is relevant because during the search for Brandon, there were multiple properties that wouldn't allow searches on their land.

I mean, you'd imagine that anybody would want to help find a local missing young man, but a few farmers in the area didn't want their land searched. And there's another property nearby that's been gaining some thoughts on some online forums, and even though it could be kinda out there, this has been discussed by a couple locals, so it's worth bringing up just in case. Because apparently, this is one of the people who didn't want their property searched.

This commenter who worked in the area at the time states that the property right along where Brandon's car was found belongs to the family of Chris Swedzinski, who's a Minnesota House representative. And this person claims that he had the roads graded that morning after finding Brandon's car and had his car towed to a different spot and then refused to let police search his property as if he has something to hide.

Because a lot of people wonder about those who didn't let police search their land. Like, was it possible that Brandon came in contact with someone or something on someone's property? Since he was clearly cutting through land and whether on purpose or by accident, he died and then they wanted to cover it up.

Yeah, and some people wonder if he did fall into the river and since it was cold that night, he got lost afterwards and then died of hypothermia and someone helped cover it up that way. Because if he had fallen asleep or something on somebody's property and then was run over by farm equipment by mistake...

It's possible that somebody didn't want their property searched because they had accidentally killed Brandon. But it's been pointed out that it was planting season at this time. So whoever would have been driving the equipment would be able to see around them and it would be hard to miss the body of a human being.

However, it was turkey hunting season at this time and shooting hours are between about half an hour before sunrise to 5 p.m. So very broad. But if someone decided to hunt turkeys that morning and shot Brandon by mistake, it's definitely possible. Or was he maybe on somebody's property and they thought he was an intruder or something so they shot him? That's possible as well.

This area also has a lot of sinkholes. So did he fall into a sinkhole or a well or a cistern or a large manure pit and was just never found because he's in a hole somewhere?

Then there's also the possibility that another vehicle was involved. But to me, it seems unlikely that Brandon was hit by a car because one, he would have noticed headlights. And also, he didn't seem to be on a road when he, you know, when this call dropped, but rather cutting through fields. Like he had just told his dad that he was going through a field and heard running water. So it really doesn't seem like he was on a road at all for this to happen.

Yeah, definitely. And you can imagine, like you're saying, if he was hit by a car, there would be some sort of evidence of that, like whether his shoe flew off or, you know, his...

His glasses were sitting on the side of the road or his cell phone was lying in a ditch off the side of the road. Yeah, we just went into this a lot in the Noah Pressgrove episode about what kinds of things happen when somebody is hit with a car, how much blood there is, what happens to your clothing, like you said, your shoes or what you have on your person. So yeah, it seems just this one is a little bit more far-fetched, I think. Yeah, I agree. Something I wonder about is if he did encounter the Yellow Medicine River, I think he did in some way.

or he tripped and fell and his phone shattered, like anything along these lines of his phone no longer working when the oh shit thing happened, then maybe he had to go find the road so that he could try to flag someone down, whether it be his dad or somebody else driving by. As we know, during the 47 minute phone call, he did not encounter a single car or else he would have told his dad or thought the person was his dad.

So it's hard to imagine that he would come across someone else at such an hour in as rural of an area that he was. But if he did, it's been discussed that he possibly ran into someone with ill intentions who

who maybe told them or told Brandon that they would take him into town and then did something else entirely. Like, it's not impossible for that to happen. People encounter bad people all the time. Wrong place, right time is a phrase for a reason. But I do find it a bit unlikely. Yeah, and, you know, just because this was a rural area and it was dark outside doesn't mean that somebody...

Didn't see an opportunity there and didn't come upon Brandon. Yeah. But I do agree with you that it just... This one feels also far-fetched. Well, Heath, something you mentioned to me before we got in the studio is that... Is with this theory that somebody picked him up because, again, the dog's scent was... It ended just at and near Highway 16. Right, right. Exactly. So...

That does see, I mean, it is again possible that somebody picked him up and something happened from there because that's where the trail ended. And by that time, I mean, he could have been sitting on that side of the road being too tired or too cold to keep walking and just saying, eventually somebody is going to drive by and somebody is going to help me. And that could have happened over the next couple hours even.

When the sun was just starting to come up and people were starting to drive and something happened after that. Sure. It didn't have to be at 310 a.m. Well, let's talk about the wildlife that's in this area. So the wildlife includes pheasant, deer, doves, geese, wild turkeys and waterfowls.

In Minnesota, there are also known to be black bears, wolves, and cougars, though very few reports. So although it is possible that he was met with a wild animal, it seems likely that dogs would have been able to track the blood scent, unless

unless it happened on a private property. But if he was on someone's property and died by animal and not by man, you'd imagine that they would have told police. Yeah, you would. And this is why it's so hard to nail down one particular theory without knowing how long Brandon lived after the phone call hung up. Yeah, and I just want to remind everybody, this is farmland, so...

at worst, I feel like there's deer. You know what I'm saying? Like, like that's probably, you know, the mountains. Yeah. That's probably the most wild animal that's in this area. It's just very, very flat and rural. And there's not really a lot of like tree coverage or there's no mountains anywhere. So,

So it's just kind of like, I can't really see the black bear thing or the wolf thing or anything like that. Yeah. I mean, those animals we found, how Heath said, the cougar, the black bear. What was the other one?

The wolves. The wolves. Thank you. Those are just in Minnesota in general, but in the Marshall area, everything else he listed, the pheasants, the deer, all that stuff was, were the only ones that were listed. So yeah, I don't really believe or not really. I do not believe the animal bit at all, but I also don't believe that Brandon walked away from his life. And I unfortunately do not believe that he's alive because

I agree with Heath that it's suspicious that a couple properties or a couple property owners would not let police search. And it makes you kind of just wonder if something bad happened on one of these properties since he is believed to have been right next to or on someone's property when the phone call ended. Yeah. And, you know, the whole thing about him going off on his own. I mean, come on.

The kid's on his way home from a party, he gets lost, and he calls his parents to come help him. That is not indicative of somebody who's trying to leave their life behind and create a new identity. It's just so stupid. The only thing that I would say is that if police would have, if in his young mind, you know, he imagined that

If the police came upon him that they would put him in jail because he was drinking and driving and because he had gotten in that accident, maybe he was worried that they would have found, well, that accident. I mean, he had driven into the ditch. He was maybe worried that police were going to find this out. But still, that's not enough reason to go off forever, you know, at all. Not at all. He had a loving family. He had a great life. He was going to college. He had lots of great friends.

It just doesn't line up. And Heath, I want to touch on also, again, going back to the property owner, some of them not wanting their property searched and how you had mentioned that you would imagine if a local kid goes missing, we say kid, but he's a 19-year-old man. Yeah.

that you would want to help and do everything that you could. But I was looking into this because that didn't make sense to me. I didn't understand why somebody wouldn't, unless they were doing something illegal on their property, it doesn't make sense to me. But,

I read online that it could have led to major losses for these farmers if they let police search their property. You know, of course, farmers rely so much on the income from their crops. Right. And they're thinking that if somebody, if the police come in here and they search, they're going to, you know, maybe dig up the land and it's going to ruin the crops and stuff. But I still, in my heart, I feel like

you know, this young kid's missing. They're just trying to search for him. Let them at least do their due diligence here. I agree. It's just so hard because, you know, if you're one of the farmers and you're saying, I know he's not on my property. I searched it myself, you know, for all we know that was the case. And they're saying, if police do come in and they dig up my land for some reason, they're just going to leave it like that. They're not going to come and clean it up or fix it or pay me. Like they're just going to come

mess up my stuff and that's it. So I do understand that. But of course, I am also of the understanding that, come on, somebody is missing and they could be on your property. Maybe you didn't find them. So it would just have been nice to be able to rule these properties out. But there was a couple and we are not sure which particular ones because there is still so much information for this case since it's unsolved that has not been released to the public.

Yeah, it is a tough situation all the way around. So at this point in time, Brandon is on the FBI missing persons list, which includes a list of people who are suspected of being met with foul play, which could indicate police's belief that he was met with foul play, though others say it's because he went missing near a major highway. And that's why he's on the VICAP list, also known as the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program list.

Foul play cannot be ruled out because Brandon or any of his belongings have never been located to this day. There's also the question of why his doors were open. Did somebody go in there looking to hide any evidence? Was the road grading planned? I mean, there are countless questions in this case, and we can only hope that one day his family can have some real answers.

When Brandon Swanson was last seen in May of 2008, he was a 19-year-old white brunette with blue eyes, standing at 5'6", and weighing 120 pounds. He had piercings on his left and right ears, and was known to be wearing that night a t-shirt and blue jeans.

If you have any information relating to the disappearance and supposed death of Brandon Swanson, please email Sheriff Chad Meester at cmeester at co.lincoln.mn.us or call Agent Derek Woodford with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at 651-793-7000.

Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West.

Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this one. What an absolutely strange and mysterious and just baffling case this is. Yeah, it is. I mean, it is truly unbelievable. That's why we chose it for episode one of Going West because before we started the podcast, this was a really big case that Heath and I were personally very invested in.

And I just can't believe six and a half years since we covered it the first time that there are still no new answers. And I can only hope, like you said, that that changes very soon because it's just so unreal that this happened. And there is no evidence of anything because it's just so bizarre.

Yeah, and if you guys want to see maps of this area and where his car was found, where he lived, and just the different cities, head on over to our socials. You can find us on Instagram at Going West Podcast, and we'll also post those on our Facebook. Yes, we have two Facebook pages. We have one private discussion group, and then we have a public page that's just Going West True Crime. And yeah, both of those will have the photos and the maps and all that good stuff for you guys to view.

Please let us know what you think. Yeah, I was just about to say, I really want to know what you guys think about this case. I want to know what your theories are, what you believe happened to Brandon Swanson. Let us know. All right, guys. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. ♪♪♪

so

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