Brandon Swanson was born to Brian and Annette Swanson o January 30, 1989. He was born and raised in Marshall, Michigan. Brandon had recently graduated from Marshall Senior High School in 2007. He was enrolled in a one-year program in Wind turbines at Minnesota West Community and Technical College located in Canby, Minnesota. The day Brandon went missing. Leading up to Brandon’s disappearance, he was celebrating the end of his program at Minnesota West Community and Technical College. His friends threw him two parties on May 13, 2008. The first party Brandon went to was located in Lynd, Minnesota which is 7 miles away from his home. Around midnight, Brandon left the first party and drove approximately 40 minutes to Canby, Minnesota to attend the second party. Friends who went to both parties, recall that Brandon had consumed alcohol but he was not intoxicated.
By 1:45 a.m. Brandon crashed his Chevy Lumina in a small ditch. Thankfully, Brandon is not injured, but he does call his parents to help get out of the ditch. At this point, he was in between Lynd and Marshall. His parents set out to find Brandon, they recall that they thought they knew exactly where Brandon was. However, when they arrived there was no car or sign of Brandon. Brain called his son again to see if he could see headlights or hear the car horn, but Brandon could not see or hear anything. His parents were aware that Brandon had the wrong directions. Brandon was confident that he was giving his parents the correct directions, which led to frustration but nevertheless, he stayed on the phone with his mother.
Brandon told his mother he would stay on the phone but would leave his car and attempt to walk toward the lights he could see in the distance. Brandon had assumed that it was towards the town of Lynd, he did this all while on the phone with his parents. He remained on the phone with his parents for 47 minutes. Around 2:30 a.m on May 14, 2008, Brandon screamed “Oh Shit” before the call ended. His father tried to call him back several times but Brandon never picked up.
His parents reached out to Brandon’s friends for help and they searched all night, driving through farmland and dirt roads, but unfortunately, there was no sign of Brandon. By 6:30 a.m. Annette reported her son missing to Lynd Police Department, and it wasn’t long before officers joined the search for Brandon. There was still no sign of Brandon. According to a CNN article, the search response was delayed because it was not unusual for a 19-year-old to stay out all night after finishing school. One officer also told Annette Swanson that her son “had the right to go missing”. Police were able to locate Brandon’s car roughly 25 miles from Lynd and were unclear as to which direction he was headed while on foot.
Brandon Victor Swanson stands at 5’6” and weighs 125 pounds. He has brown hair, and blue eyes and was last seen wearing blue jeans, a white or black hat twisted to the side, and a white short-sleeve shirt.
Brandon’s case remains unsolved. On July 1, 2009, Brandon’s Law went into effect in Minnesota. The law requires that authorities conduct a preliminary investigation once a missing person report is received. If anyone has information about Brandon Swanson please call the Lincoln County sheriff at (507) 694-1664.
Source 1: https://uncovered.com/cases/brandon-victor-swanson-marshall-mn Source 2: http://immelman.net/brandon-swanson Source 3: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/18/grace.coldcase.swanson/index.html
If you look at a topography map of Lincoln county MN you can see about a 1000ft variation in that general area. Maybe he fell into a ravine, hence the “oh shit”?
Great point. I always wondered if he fell into the river, but apparently it was searched extensively and nothing was found. There’s also been theories of Brandon falling into an abandoned well which is another possibility.
If I recall that river really wasn’t very deep. It seems unlikely that he’d have drowned in it, and even more unlikely that a body in the water wouldn’t be easily spotted.
I’ve always wondered if he fell into an old well.
It’s possible certainly, though i would hope that searchers over the years would have sited old homesteads in the area and checked for possible well locations there. That said, an unrecorded one is definitely possible.
An old undocumented well is also more likely to have been shoddily covered up when it went out of use too making it more likely that he fell through.
There was a case back in '13 of a dude named Greg Monroe who fell into a well in Mojave and died. I learned about his case from the Missing Enigma’s “How Do People Vanish Without A Trace? A Few Case Studies” video (which is quite good i think as a video).
This article from the time period discusses it a little: https://www.pressenterprise.com/2013/11/14/mojave-desert-searchers-find-body-believed-to-be-missing-hunter/
The tl;dr though is that the dude just walked into a well that was hidden in the brush and disappeared. They found him by pure luck. It’d be even easier to do so in the dark and if you were not really paying attention to your surroundings as you walked.
Someone already brought it up but a Well seems the most likely……but yeah this one lives rent free in my head