The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski.
And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski.
And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases.
Hello everyone and welcome back.
Welcome back everyone.
I'm Eli.
And I'm Ali.
And this is Cold and Missing.
And this is episode 41.
The 41st episode.
Way to go, baby.
We are here zeroing in on a year of Cold and Missing.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Slowly but surely.
It'll be here before we even know it.
Yeah.
But without further ado.
Yeah.
Would you like to start us off?
Yeah.
Let's just get into it.
I have a lot this week.
So.
Oh, okay.
Great.
Let's get started.
Groovy.
So today I have for you a missing person case.
And it is the missing person case of Brandon Swanson.
And this takes place in May of 2008 in southwest Minnesota.
We're going to be mentioning a few towns, but it's centered around Marshall, Minnesota.
But first, a little bit about Brandon.
Brandon is 19 years old in 2008.
He was born January 30th, 1989.
And he would be 34 years old today.
He was born and raised in Marshall, Minnesota.
He had just finished his freshman year at Minnesota West Community College and Technical
College at the Canby campus.
He studied wind turbines and had planned to transfer to Iowa Western Community College
and major in science.
His family and friends say that he had a big heart.
His smile lit up his whole face and he believed in doing the right thing.
And at this time in 2008, he drove a green Chevy Lumina.
And now into the timeline of events.
On Tuesday, May 13th, 2008, Brandon spends the day celebrating the end of the school
year.
He spent the day in Lynd, Minnesota with friends.
He was wearing baggy jeans, a blue striped polo shirt, a black hoodie, a white twins
baseball cap, wired rimmed glasses, and a silver necklace.
Brandon pops into his house to say goodbye for the night.
Only his mom Annette was home.
She said, quote, I said the things I normally say to him.
See you later.
Be safe.
End quote.
Brandon then spends the night celebrating the end of the year in Canby near his campus.
Brandon was observed drinking alcohol at two of the parties that he attended that evening,
but none of the attendants say that he was drunk.
Just before midnight, Brandon leaves Canby to drive home to Marshall, Minnesota.
A trip that he did a lot because he was commuting back and forth to school.
It's roughly a 30 mile drive.
But instead of taking highway 68, which would have been a straight shot home, Brandon decided
to take the back roads that evening.
So Brandon leaves the party and it's just after 1 a.m.
So this is now May 14th, 2008.
Brandon is driving west down a maintenance road between two large crop fields.
He was attempting to turn south on a gravel road when he missed the field approach and
went into the ditch at a low speed.
The ditch was shallow but steep and the car frame was hung up so Brandon could not move
the car.
At 1 15 a.m. he starts to call a few friends for help, but he's unable to reach anyone.
Finally, at 1 54 a.m. he calls his parents.
He asks his parents to come and get him and he tells them that he's in a ditch between
Marshall and Lynd, Minnesota.
Brandon tells his folks that he can see lights from the nearby town of Lynd.
Brandon's parents, Brian and Annette, hop in their pickup truck and head towards what
they believe is Brandon's location.
He stays with his car and on the phone with his parents.
The call drops occasionally, but they're able to call him right back.
When his parents get to where they believe Brandon is, they try to signal each other.
Brandon tries flashing his lights, the parents try flashing their lights up and down the
road, but could not see each other.
Brandon, according to his parents, was certain of his location and did not seem intoxicated.
Eventually, Brandon, still talking to his mother, gets frustrated and hangs up on her.
When she calls him back to apologize, he says he's walking towards Lynd and to meet him
there.
He'll meet them at the Lyndwood Tavern, which was a popular bar in the area.
Brian calls Brandon back at 2 17 a.m.
During the call, Brandon says that he is walking next to a gravel road but decides to cut across
a field, thinking it will be quicker.
Brandon also told his father that he had to hop fences and could hear water running nearby.
Eventually, at 3 10 a.m., Brandon says, oh shit, followed by silence.
His parents keep the line active, but they can't hear anything.
They call his name, thinking maybe he dropped the phone and would be able to hear them to
find it because it's the middle of the night and Brandon is walking by moonlight at this
time.
After a few minutes, they hang up and call back, thinking that the phone will ring and
light up so he'll be able to find it.
The phone rings a couple of times and then goes to voicemail.
Brandon's parents continue to look for him and try to call him, but they are unsuccessful.
At 6 30 a.m., Brandon's parents call police to report him missing.
The Lynd police initially are unconcerned and tell them it's normal for a young man to
stay out all night after a semester ends.
One officer even tells Annette that Brandon had, quote, a right to be missing, end quote.
Eventually, Lynd police officers do begin to look for him, but can find no trace of
him in or around Lynd .
So they call the Lyon County Sheriff to help expand the search.
The Lyon County Sheriff obtains Brandon's cell phone records, which actually put him
near Taunton, Minnesota, about 25 miles away from Lynd.
Police find Brandon's car at 12 30 in the afternoon.
Sheriff Eric Wallin says, quote, 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,
end quote.
There was no serious damage to the car, but the car frame was hung up enough to keep two
of the wheels on one side from touching.
The car did not have the keys in it.
It is presumed that Brandon has them, but the car was unlocked.
And according to the FBI, the doors were open inside the car.
It's reported that there was a cannabis pipe and curiously, Brandon's glasses.
Brandon was legally blind in his left eye and had trouble with depth perception, especially
at night.
So it's curious that he would leave his glasses behind when he was walking in the dark.
Investigators focus on the area around Brandon's car, but nothing is found.
On Thursday, May 15th, so this is the next day, the Lyon County Sheriff requested the
help of the Codington County search, dive and rescue team from South Dakota.
And by 11 a.m. they arrive.
The bloodhounds pick up Brandon's scent.
From Brandon's vehicle, the scent went half a mile south and turned west onto 390th Street,
where it continued for a mile.
The trail then turned north for half a mile and then turned west onto a driveway of an
abandoned farm.
The trail followed the driveway a quarter of a mile and then left the driveway and roughly
followed the course of the Yellow Medicine River heading northwest.
At one point, the bloodhound jumped into the river and exited.
The dog handler interpreted this as Brandon possibly falling into the water at some point,
but getting back out.
The bloodhound picked up on the trail again, headed toward a drainage ditch where it continued
north towards 160th Avenue.
Here the dog lost the trail.
The Department of Natural Resources deployed gates into the Yellow Medicine River because
at this time it was 10 feet deep in some places.
Searchers scoured the area around the river with dogs, ATVs, horseback and drones.
The next day, Brandon's phone stops working.
People had been trying to call it continuously over the past day and it had continued to
ring but today it stops ringing.
Police continue their efforts in searching for Brandon, focusing on a five mile radius
around the car.
The thought being that in the 47 minute phone call with his dad, he would not be able to
walk more than five miles an hour.
An average adult can walk about three miles an hour.
On May 20th, six days after Brandon disappeared, police call off their search.
Brandon's parents immediately begin organized searches that same weekend.
And almost every weekend for the next several years, weather permitting, they would be out
searching.
Police at this time believe Brandon is in the Yellow Medicine River and that it could
take weeks for the body to emerge.
Lyon County Sheriff Joel Dahl says, quote, If I had to lay any money down, I'd say
we're missing him somewhere in the water.
He's in an eddy somewhere being held down by a log.
He's got to be here.
Everything is consistent that he was walking and something happened to him.
End quote.
So Brandon's family continue to search for him over the weekends.
And by July of 2008, Brandon's family are helped by David and Linda Francis.
They had a son, Jon, who went missing while climbing mountains in Idaho.
It took over a year to recover his body.
But in his memory, his parents have created the Jon Francis Foundation to help locate
those missing in the wilderness.
Brian Swanson says, quote, They've been very supportive.
They talked with us.
They listened to us emotionally.
That has really helped coming from somebody who has gone through this terrible situation.
I hope nobody else ever has to go through this.
I wish it would never happen against anybody.
It's just so painful.
We're going to keep looking.
That's all we can do until we find him.
There's no way I could stop until I know where he is.
Either way it ends, it ends its closure.
End quote.
Brandon's parents have also left the porch light on for him.
And this is something that they continue to do into 2023.
Brandon's mother Annette says, quote, That morning when we left, we turned the porch
light on for him.
Well, we haven't turned it off since.
We're leaving it on until he comes home.
End quote.
The search for Brandon continues almost every weekend through the summer and fall.
But by November of 2008, the police rejoined the search.
At this time, crops had been harvested and the area that Brandon went missing is mostly
farmland.
The water levels of the Yellow Medicine River had also drastically lowered.
So these were all favorable conditions to find any evidence of Brandon, but nothing
is found.
No cell phone, no keys, no clothing, no jewelry.
And then searches halt in the winter times, especially in Minnesota, which gets a lot
of snow, which would make ground searches extremely difficult.
But in March of 2009, the searches continue.
On Wednesday, May 6, 2009, Brandon's law was signed into effect by the governor.
This waives the 24-hour waiting period for missing adults under suspicious circumstances.
The searches continue, but one of the most notable things that I found in the searches
come from the November 14 through the 15 search of 2009.
So at this time, searchers believe that they are getting close to the remains.
And they point to two moments of the search that make them think this.
The first is the scent of human remains was transferred to a searcher's boot.
All three of the dogs hid on it.
Searchers believe that the scent was blown into the area.
And the second event is two of the three dogs alerted to a field cultivator that was parked
alongside a field.
Searchers believe that there are a number of ways the scent had got there.
But all this considered, they believe they are very close.
But nothing was found of Brandon's during this time.
Searchers also become interested in Mud Creek, which runs north of Yellow Medicine River,
because dogs alerted there also.
But again, nothing is found there.
Now the search for Brandon continues year over year over year.
The last notable search took place in the fall of 2021.
The Yellow Medicine River had dried up due to drought.
Eric Wallin, the Lyon County Sheriff says, quote, we've had excavators come and sift
through the dirt looking for something, whether it's remains or property, end quote.
However, an issue that has persisted since the start of the search is land access.
Farmers don't want the dogs around their cattle or to damage crops.
And there are still fields that searchers have not been able to access since 2008.
So they've never been searched.
Ken Anderson of Emergency Support Services, who help run the search for Brandon now, says,
quote, in at least a couple of circumstances, that problem is still in existence.
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, end quote.
Police say they continue to get tips in the case, but they all fizzle out.
Lyon County Sheriff Eric Wallin says, quote, it seems that every tip that we receive, we
investigate and we run into a dead end.
It was either false or the information wasn't accurate.
They all seem to run into a dead end, end quote.
Annette Swanson, Brandon's mother, stopped physically searching for him in 2008.
She said she couldn't be the one to come across him.
But she spearheads the fundraising efforts to keep the search going.
And she says, quote, I want people to remember Brandon, talk about Brandon.
Brandon is a real person.
He touched a lot of lives and don't forget him, end quote.
So with that, if you know anything about the disappearance of Brandon Swanson or his whereabouts
today, please call the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
And you can specifically ask for Agent Derrick Woodford.
And that number is 651-793-7000.
And the sources for today's podcasts come from the St. Cloud Times, the Argus Leader,
CNN.com, the Marshall Independent, the search for Brandon Swanson.blogspot.com, and the
Crime Wire.
So that is the case of Brandon Swanson.
You chose a missing person case that I actually know quite a bit about.
Really?
Yes.
This is a more popular case.
It's been done on a lot of podcasts.
It's just one that as soon as I heard about it, it's just it's stuck in your head.
And so I wanted to cover it.
And I wanted to look into it because there's been a lot of rumors.
There's been a lot of theories out there.
So I just wanted to know what the facts were of this case.
And these are the facts that I could come up with and verify.
And I've been following this case for multiple years.
I was a fresh I was just finishing my freshman year of college.
I was the we're the same age.
And particularly I took an interest in it because we had a pond on my college that unfortunately
someone had fallen into.
Resulted in them passing away, which is sad.
But anyway, just it was the time and yeah, I took an interest in it and have followed
it ever since.
So I have not that anyone has asked for it, but I have my own theory that mostly I echo
what law enforcement says in this case, and it's quite possible that because of probably
wasn't that cold.
Actually, I looked this up.
It did get really cold that night.
It was.
Yeah, yes.
It was like upper 30s, lower 40s to the point where if he did get wet, hypothermia would
have set in.
Yes.
So what I think I think that the oh shit he dropped his phone.
It was damaged, but we know the phone was still taking calls into the following day
for two days.
Yeah.
So the phone was still taking calls.
I think like just a possibility of a few drunk things happened in the moment that made him
kind of like ping pong around.
And then eventually he fell into the river.
But the thing about Yellow Madison River is that it is a watershed.
It's a drainage basin, which you already mentioned.
And especially that time of year.
If if that happened, then like that's where he is.
And it's pretty clear to me, his remains are in those spaces that we've never had access
to.
And I feel like that makes close to 100 percent sense to me.
So that's my theory is that he's there.
Now if you really want to go down the pathway that some people have that something sinister
has happened on those properties and that's why we don't have access to them.
Go for it.
The theories are out there, but I don't think that that's the case.
I don't think maybe anything nefarious happened to him.
But I did have a different theory coming out of this as to what happened to him.
Based off of the scent dog, my theory is, you know, he kind of follows that trail.
The oh shit moment, whatever that is, if he slips, if he falls, if he goes into the water,
if he drops his phone.
I think at some point he does fall into the Yellow Medicine River, but because the dogs
do pick up his scent on the other side of the river, I think that could suggest that
he continued walking, but he's wet, it's cold, hypothermia would start setting in.
So I think it's possible that maybe he sat down to try to warm himself up, to get his
bearings, whatever, but he falls asleep in a field, on a field, near a field.
And as those big machines come around and start tilling and moving the land and digging
it all up, you wouldn't necessarily always see what's underneath you and he kind of gets
mixed up in these big machineries and in the field.
Because if maybe after you were done using your machinery and you noticed some whatever
on it, whether it be material, clothing, you know, just something odd stuck in your machine,
near your machine, maybe you would put two and two together and decide, I'm never going
to let them on my property.
I'm never going to let them on here because I don't need this and I didn't do anything
wrong.
So because I just don't know why else you wouldn't let someone on your property.
And especially after all this time, I would think that they would almost want to let them
search it just to be done with it, just so that they would stop asking, you know what
I mean?
Because that feels like part of it, but maybe it's not.
But that's my theory.
Oh, yeah, about hypothermia.
After a certain point, especially when you're drunk, you start, you believe that you are
hot.
So you take your clothes off.
Yeah.
And you would maybe step into the river to cool off.
It is interesting to me, though, that just they've really searched this river, like in
all the missing person cases I've covered, even ones that have had very extensive searches.
It is curious to me that, you know, no clothing, his hat, his shoes, the necklace he was wearing,
nothing has ever been found.
To the point that some searchers have said that, you know, he's not in Yellow Medicine
River, he's in Mud Creek.
And this is the creek I briefly mentioned.
But it's north of it.
Yeah, it runs north of Yellow Medicine River.
And there have been canine hits there as well of human remains, but still no sign of him
in Mud River either.
I guess I want to make clear that I wasn't saying he was in the river.
Like that's where his remains are.
I think he's it's the field, it's Mud River, Mud Creek.
This search, I think, will be kind of historic and will like go back and be analyzed about,
you know, scent trails and grid searches and things like that, just because it has been
so extensive.
It's been over 10 years of searches.
Well, ultimately, we could talk about our own theories all day long.
Yeah.
And most importantly, is figuring out what happened to him.
You know, answers.
There's family.
Yeah, they absolutely deserve answers and just, you know, bringing him home after all
of this effort.
And I think a lot of people are invested in the search for Brandon and just want to see
him come home and, you know, be at peace and resting.
Yeah.
Again, for me to literally one man's opinion, because I'm sure there are people that do
not agree with me, which is totally fine.
I encourage that.
I definitely welcome it, especially in true crime.
I think it's important to stay mindful of all of the possibilities, because that's where
we find, like, where error happens.
Is that enough people believe one thing and everyone gets stuck in that?
Yeah.
I mean, it's just whatever the evidence leads, you know, whatever the evidence suggests,
like you can't all facts are friendly.
So you got to take them all into account until until you got the whole picture.
But yeah, there's and this is one of those cases that there's 100 theories out there.
But ultimately, we just want Brandon to come home.
So again, if you know anything about the disappearance of Brandon Swanson or his whereabouts today,
please call the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and specifically Agent Derrick
Woodford at 651-793-700.
Thanks so much for being with us for Episode 41 and for continuing getting Brandon's name
out there.
This case has been there for a long time.
And if you go to our website, cold and missing dot com and click on Brandon's episode, I'm
going to have just a Google Maps or technically it's Apple Maps picture of the sent trail
that the dog picked up just because I know I was saying like half a mile this way and
then you turn west.
So just if you are a visual person, which I am, you can go to cold and missing and find
Brandon's episode and that will be on the web page.
You can also follow us on Instagram.
You can search us at cold and missing that'll pop right up and follow us there.
We'll get updates if we ever have to delay an episode or come out a day late.
You'll be full in the know.
So follow us there and have a good week and stay safe y'all.
Stay safe y'all.