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[Music] thank you welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend [Music] today we are drinking hazy Jane by well
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I was going to say our friends but the truth of the matter is we are in love with them hazy Jane is by the king of
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craft beers and that of course is brewdog in Scotland and of course from right here in Ohio as well garage grade
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four out of five bottle caps hazy Jane is a juicy Vermont style IPA that features pineapple stone fruit mango and
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hints of lime peel and just like the both of us here in the garage it's full-bodied baby and today's beer was
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out the blog and that is enough other business all right everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer
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let's talk some true crime [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] to fbi.gov vicap stands for the violent criminal
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apprehension program this database maintains the largest investigative repository of major
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violent crime cases in the U.S it is designed to collect and analyze information about homicides sexual
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assaults missing persons and other violent crimes involving unidentified human remains
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this week we are reviewing a missing person's case listed on the vicap page Brandon Victor Swanson was last seen on
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May 14 2008 in Canby Minnesota his car a green Chevy Lumina was found abandoned near Taunton Minnesota
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according to the FBI's website the vehicle was in a ditch with the doors open and the keys missing
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at the time of his disappearance Brandon was just 19 years old he is Caucasian five foot five inches to
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five foot six inches tall and approximately 120 to 130 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes he was last
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seen wearing baggy blue jeans a blue striped polo shirt a black hooded zip front sweatshirt with emblem on back a
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white Minnesota Twins baseball cap glasses and his sterling silver chain he was carrying a black Motorola slvr
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cell phone his wallet with identification and his keys if you have any information regarding
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Brandon Swanson's whereabouts or the circumstances of his disappearance please call the Minnesota Bureau of
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Criminal apprehension at 651-793-7000 or call the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office at 507
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694-1664 this is True Crime garage [Music] May 13 2008 Brandon Victor Swanson age 19 he
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just finished his last class of his one-year program of study at Minnesota West Community and Technical College in
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Canby Minnesota Brandon was studying wind energy and he was already enrolled in a second Technical School in Iowa
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this was going to start in August of 2008. after that he planned to transfer to a four-year college to get his degree
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in science so after a year of hard work it's mid-may school's out for the summer
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it's time to go out meet up with some friends and have a lot of fun and that's just what the plan was for
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Brandon on the night of May 13th now before we get into the details of that night let's review a little
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background information about Brandon Brandon was born January 30th 1989. he lived with his parents Brian and
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Annette and his younger sister they lived in Marshall Minnesota the town in Lyon County the population at
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the time was about 13 500. Brandon was close with his family they describe him as a sweet good kid who
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loved reading and debating he was very intelligent and he liked to read and Ponder complicated topics like
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string theory Brandon worked at a local grocery store for four years the last two years
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working in the bakery so not just a smart kid but seems like quite a reliable young man as well yeah
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and Brandon was similar to you because he's dedicated to the environment particularly renewable resources and he
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loved politics history and music he also loved the Minnesota Twins Brandon was not a big dude he was just about five
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foot five five foot six inches tall and only about 125 pounds and one thing that
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may be quite important as we move through this Brandon wore glasses and he was illegally blind in his left eye
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on the night he went out and didn't come home he was wearing baggy blue jeans a blue
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striped Polo sweatshirt over a white T-shirt a black Zip front jacket a white Minnesota Twins baseball hat he tended
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to wear this hat sideways and he wore his white sneakers as well now I point that out again Captain because even
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though it's going to get quite chilly that night he was wearing fairly warm clothing
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right he had a one stud earring in each ear and his wire rimmed glasses on now with him he had his black Motorola SL VR
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cell phone as always he drove his green Chevy Lumina that evening he left his parents place around 6 PM Brandon went
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to a graduation party in the lind Lind is a small town near Marshall so not far from where Brandon lives
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in fact Lynn is just about an 11 minute drive Southwest down Route 23 from Marshall
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this graduation party was really just a small gathering of only five or so people right these are all people that
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Brandon was friends with from school and to be clear it sounds to me like these were all high school Buddies
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remember Brandon's only 19 so just having graduated from Marshall High School just the year earlier
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at the small party Brandon was drinking this is not in question what is the question is how much as the general
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report from all leaves us with this broad statement that he was said to have consumed an unknown amount of alcohol
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but he was not overly intoxicated according to the people who were at this party well think about how many parties
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you've been to if I ask you how many beers your buddy was on would you know how many beers he drank no only if I had
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like some extreme indicator right like if somebody shows up with a six pack and then there's none of that beer left
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right then you're like well he probably had six when you're hanging out and you're you're really you're catching up
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with your buddies there's a lot of talking going on there's multiple people there you're not really counting
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anybody's drinks one and then on top of that too everybody knows this you're not really
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checking the time either you know so there's there's a lot that you're not really keeping up on because of the
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conversations and stuff like that however if these people knew him for a fair amount of time I think that they
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would reasonably be able to judge if he was drunk or not right right now of course there's varying degrees of being
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buzzed but Brandon left this Gathering alone around 10 30 or 11 pm from there he drove to another friend's
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party this was like a house party this for the purpose of saying goodbye to one of his former classmates now I do not
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know exactly who this person is but the party was in Canby where Minnesota West Community and Technical College is
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located so Brandon is quite familiar with this area the party was attended by other college
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kids who were friends with Brandon here Brandon was noted to have one shot of whiskey
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he left this party alone and was going to head home back to his parents place in Marshall
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sometime between midnight and 1 30. now the this seems like a huge window of time reports vary wildly
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I want to bring this up because I I don't know how important this is later so much so because we have some time
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accounted for Brandon's whereabouts later right I think the thing in question here is depending on what time
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he left means there could be some unaccounted time [Music] the reason why with these reports vary
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is as we just mentioned you're not really counting people's drinks you're not really counting the time looking at
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your clock looking at your watch they said that he had one shot of whiskey I don't know if he
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consumed any other alcohol at the time but that is what the general report is see I don't remember what they said
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about the first party if he was just drinking beer or if possibly he was drinking a mixed drink because I did
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hear on several accounts that he was drinking like like a rum and coke or you know whiskey and Coke so you just
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go was he doing that at the first party or the second party sounds more likely they
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could do it at the second party if if they said well we know he had a shot of whiskey and me and some others we found
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reports that state that he left as early as midnight and some reports that left as late as 1 30 in the morning yeah
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again normally we would take Umbridge with that statement it wouldn't fly here in the garage but this time we're going
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to let it fly because we have a lot to get to and because of the details that we have not got to yet it will be clear
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that the exact time that Brandon left the party while in dispute may not be so important
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all right let's get into the geography of this whole situation this is super important to this case the last party
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Brandon attends the night in question is in Canby this is about 30 miles from his
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hometown of Marshall it's a 30 to 35 minute drive that is a straight diagonal shot along a two-lane road which is
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route 68. Route 68 is a highway that runs between Canby and Marshall in Camby you hop on Route 68 heading
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Southeast and you will go straight to Marshall this drive should have taken him no more
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than 30 to 35 minutes assuming he took the most direct route Highway 68 which connects the Two Towns Brandon drove
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this route daily for the entire school year and again would have been very familiar
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with this but for some reason that we can only speculate Brandon does not appear to
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have taken the highway to get home he took a different route yeah I believe he took the back roads because he had
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been drinking at least a little bit so I found some reports that state that Brandon had a DUI
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in the past and that he had successfully completed a Year's probation because of
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the charge so what we do know is Brandon was under the legal drinking age on this
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night he's only 19 years old right and we do know again it's not in question if he had been drinking or not
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the question was how much had he been drinking right regardless of how much all reports say that he did consume some
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alcohol that night so if he were concerned about maybe a DUI checkpoint on something like Highway 68 or getting
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on or off of Highway 68. well again this take Highway 68 we have different roads
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different highways different uh interstates that you don't want to travel on because they're notorious for
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just pulling people over in general so maybe that's the case here yeah he he wants to fly under the radar
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so to speak he wants to take a Less Direct less populated route to get home that's all
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we can assume by what we know that was going on that night we can't say exactly what occurred between the time that
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Brandon left the party in Camby and the next known contact with him reports are that during this time frame Brandon
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tried to contact two or three of his friends by phone but he couldn't reach them
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so at 1 54 am so this is technically now May 14th Brandon called his parents he told them he got his car stuck in a
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ditch he was okay though this ditch was as he said on a gravel road just off of Highway 23. this is the
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road that runs between Lind the town where he went to the first party and Marshall where he lived according to
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Brandon he was somewhere between Marshall and Lind just off the highway now as we said it wouldn't make much
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sense for Brandon to be between Marshall and Lynn if he were coming from a party
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in Canby Canby is a straight shot to Marshall down Route 68. Lind is out of the way and not along Route 68 at all
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but we believe that Brandon was intending to take backroads as the captain said avoiding the highway and
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it's possible he could have been deliberately off of Route 68. now you said that he tried to call some of his
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friends do we know the sex of those friends where they just all male friends do we have any contact of female friends
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no and and here's here's my actual belief here as far as gender goes I believe that it's possible that those
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phone calls were not made while he was traveling or before he chose his destination as home part of me wonders
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if he got his vehicle stuck in that ditch right called it tried to call friends before calling Mom and Dad and
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admitting hey I got the car stuck you've been drinking a little bit so there's that fear that they come to help you and
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at least smell something on your breath and then after having the DUI then the repercussions of that right right and
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yeah it could just be a whole bad situation for him if he's able to get a hold of somebody else instead he's an
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adult maybe he could find somewhere somebody to pick him up at least well the location just seems funny to me
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that's why I wondered if there was any contact that he had with a a female that he was going to like meet up after the
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party yeah I don't know what the what the nature of that call those the intent of those calls were right because he
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never connected with them I agree with you it's kind of fair to say chances are he he got stuck in this ditch called his
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friends for help before he caught his parents especially and I don't want to hang on this too long Captain but but
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keep in mind where he says that he is with the car stuck in the ditch he says he's he's near the town of Lind
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well he was at a party just earlier that night with high school buddies so maybe
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he thought it'd be very easy very convenient for somebody near him to come and offer some type of assistance right
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the major major problem here is it's not where he was wherever he believed that he was is not really even close to his
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actual location right and this is where it gets confusing for me in this case because the claim is that Brandon knew
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his whereabouts and knew these roads well yeah yes he did it he may have had some things working against him though
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uh if you look at a if you look at line County Minnesota on Google Maps first you'll see that it's incredibly rural
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flat and the roads are almost laid out in a grid-like pattern so basically the Farmland is broken up into squares by
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Country Roads named things like 150th Avenue 300th Street for example basically everything looks the same the
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clever names yeah the crops are high there is virtually nothing delineating one area from the next
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and the Street and Avenue names are all confusing because they're they're just numbers right the landscape is dotted
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with streams ponds and lots of drainage ditches serving the agricultural Fields now on the night of the 13th 14th it was
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dark the moon was only half full we also have this situation of Brandon had been
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drinking it was possibly even fatigued at this late hour and he's blind in one eye right all this simply is to say that
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that Brandon might have been confused about where he was he left a party and then he called his
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parents at 1 54 a.m let's just bring it into the question that this could be evidence of how intoxicated he might
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have been well and the thing too is having called his parents at 1 54 a.m in the interim
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even though we don't know what time he left we know that Brandon had not actually traveled nearly as far as he
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thought or at least he didn't end up as far along in his journey as he thought so after this initial phone call at 1 54
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am both his parents Brian and Annette they got in their pickup truck and they set
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out to find him Brandon said he's going to wait in his car he's talking to them on the phone periodically to give them
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directions to where he believes he is he told them he was on the left side of the road just off of Highway 23.
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his father Brian told CNN that Brandon quote was absolutely positive he knew where he was and quote
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it was only about 10 minutes from the Swanson home his parents drove to this area that he was describing but they
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couldn't see him or his car after several interim phone calls in which everyone was getting frustrated
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and Brandon even hung up on them at some point his mother called him back this is
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at 2 17 a.m saying that they were sorry but they just they just couldn't find him they couldn't see him could be wrong
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about this but I heard at one point that they were flashing their lights at him yes this is this takes place from this
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phone call 217. okay so when they couldn't find each other his mother came up with the idea of let's flash our
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headlights you know let's this is a flat area and there's not a lot of lights out
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there so this might be something that your eye will pick up on fairly quickly if it's taking place in this general
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area right right so Brandon's parents they're flashing their headlights over and over again turning them on and off
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on and off Brandon's mother says that not only does he say that he's doing the same thing
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but she says that she could hear the actual the switch being flipped on and flipped off through the phone through
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the phone because you know how it some of them will make a little click noise yeah
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the problem with this is this is a great idea but Brandon's he's in his car on the
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phone flipping the lights and saying don't you see me and they couldn't see him well again how
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far away is he from where he's claiming he is he's he's actually quite far and we'll
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go through the the very detailed description of where they end up finding this car correct yeah
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so again Brandon is getting frustrated and I'd be pissed well I mean I mean I'm flashing my lights don't you see me no I
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don't see anything it's dark out here well I think I think the whole reason why he's probably pissed is that he's
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giving them fairly detailed instructions on where he believes he is right they go
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to where he's telling them to go and they're like look we're right here and he's probably you know how it is when
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you're 19. you're probably on the phone going my parents are idiots I told him where to find me right that I I just
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want to get home it's late and they can't figure out how to find me but as it turns out he's nowhere near he's
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telling them to to find him well and you also Wonder Hey as you're flashing these lights if
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they don't come find me first does a police officer find me so that's one and you have that fear because you have the
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the DUI in the past but this this is weird because to me it points to two things one it points to
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evidence that he's intoxicated because he's giving somebody directions to a place that he's not at
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but then the parents would know if he sounded intoxicated or not and they don't make
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any claims that say that he sounded hammered or anything right and so while you're trying these different tactics to
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locate one another first which is giving simple directions now we're both sitting parked flashing
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lights on and off trying to see each other in the distance now that's not working so now your next strategy is
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going to be well maybe we could meet up at some type of landmark that we both believe that we can easily get to so now
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Brandon's very frustrated with his parents he comes up with the idea that he's going to get out of the car and
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he's going to walk to lend now remember Lind is the town that he was at at one point in the evening and he says he
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could see lights from a town in the distance and he's going to walk in that direction
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he believes that he's seeing lights from the town of Lent he says hey let's go and let's meet in a parking lot of the
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Linwood Tavern this is a bar in Lind meanwhile his dad drove Brandon's Mother home after dropping her off he set back
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out to meet Brandon at the spot that Brandon suggested [Music] foreign [Music] we're back cheers mates
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Cheers Cheers Cheers Captain it's just gonna get more interesting from this point on
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okay well you're absolutely right about that and the thing is here captain now where we left off we have Annette
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Brandon's mother Brian his father drove her back home the the whole trying to find Brandon thing is not really working
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out people are getting frustrated and we also have Brandon who says look I see lights in the distance and I believe
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that's the town of Lind meet me in the Lynn Wood Tavern parking lot so his dad's driving to find him he's gonna
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call his son and get back on the phone with Brandon this call started at 2 23 am Brandon said he's walking along a
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gravel road away from Marshall in the direction of Lind after a bit Brandon tells his dad that
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he was leaving the gravel road to cut across the land because he said quote it will be quicker than following the road
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Brandon then told his dad that he had encountered two fence lines and he could hear running water nearby
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shortly after that Brandon said quote Oh [ __ ] and Brandon's dad says he heard a sound
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like something slipping then at 3 10 AM the line went dead on Brandon's end Brandon's dad attempted to call his son
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back repeatedly calling five or six times but while the phone rang before going to voicemail no one ever picked up
00:27:29
yeah now this is another little sticky situation normally we have situations where you call a phone it rings Rings
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rings and that means that there's still battery life left on the phone it doesn't go straight to voicemail so
00:27:45
that's something that you might want to assume here but with this model of phone
00:27:50
with um this early technology it it and it varies so it's not as simple as well it was ringing so we
00:28:01
believe his phone was still working it could have been dead at this point or submerged in water or whatever
00:28:09
yeah and I think that's a general misconception regarding these phones is that if it is ringing then it means that
00:28:17
the phone is still live still active and then going to voicemail and that once the phone goes to voicemail immediately
00:28:24
that the phone is dead that may be that may be the situation for certain phones for certain models right but or maybe
00:28:33
even a higher percentage of phones do that but I've had plenty of times where people try to call me and I'll get a
00:28:40
joke text like oh you sent me straight to voicemail and I go let's send it straight to voicemail the phone didn't
00:28:45
even ring you know right or you know in this situation we have expert opinion experts who have weighed in on this
00:28:54
exact situation so kind of you to call me an expert and say that look when when you hear that ring that that's not
00:29:02
indicative of activity on that actual phone yeah it's it's just a noise that you hear when you're calling well it's
00:29:10
proven that you have activity on your end correct it doesn't prove that they have activity on their end well said my
00:29:16
friend so he calls Brandon's dad unable to find his son calls friends of Brandon's for help they
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come out they agree to drive along these country roads all around Route 23 between Lind and Marshall looking for
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Brandon frantically there is no sign of Brandon and there's also no sign of his car
00:29:40
at 6 30 a.m Annette called the Lyon County Sheriff's Office and reported Brandon missing
00:29:49
all right this this is a bit of an uncomfortable part here for me Captain but look it it is certainly police
00:29:57
protocol in regards to taking a missing person's report when we are talking about a missing adult
00:30:04
but I like the cases and the stories we tell here in the garage where someone jumps into action immediately you know
00:30:12
hey these people are concerned we're going to see if we can help unfortunately that was not the case in
00:30:19
this in this story yeah seems like there was a little pushback from police the police pointed out that
00:30:25
look and I agree with this statement it's not unusual for a 19 year old to not come home right and but one okay one
00:30:34
officer even points out that it is the young man's right to be out that if he doesn't want to come home
00:30:41
yeah but the argument is pretty simple the this young man was on the phone with his
00:30:48
parents asking for help right and so and therefore that makes this situation immediately different than all those
00:30:56
other possible situations right this idea of well you know there's many uh teenagers that just don't come home yeah
00:31:03
but did they call in the middle of the night asking for help saying I'm walking around in the dark yeah I mean this is
00:31:09
ridiculous and and they should be able to find his car pretty quickly and there's evidence that uh we have a
00:31:16
situation see this is I mean it's just unfortunate that's pathetic really it's unfortunate
00:31:23
for a number of reasons but here's here's at the very least play along play the game right you you could
00:31:31
send an officer out in a car to just do a little driving around and you chalk it
00:31:37
up to patrolling the area anyway which is Serve and Protect which you're supposed to be doing anyway why not just
00:31:42
send a car to this general area where this concerned mother and father are saying they're young
00:31:48
man son 19 years old is wandering around in the dark well it's absolutely pathetic because like I said you Serve
00:31:55
and Protect and these These are taxpayers these are good people in your community and they're just asking you to
00:32:01
look into their missing son and like you said just send out a cruiser yeah just say hey look uh we're sending on a
00:32:08
cruiser we'll let's see what we can do and here's the thing if you end up finding the kid you're the
00:32:14
hero of the day man you're the hero of the day so what ends up happening though Captain is the
00:32:20
Swansons they are obviously convinced that something bad has happened to their son I'm not really certain how but it
00:32:29
seems that they were able to push the sheriff enough to actually get them involved
00:32:34
so the sheriff's deputies join in on the search and a county-wide request was made to expand the search area for this
00:32:43
young man now in a brilliant move this is where I do give some credit the sheriff quickly obtained the cell phone
00:32:50
records for Brandon's phone good and what those records showed changed everything
00:32:57
Brandon's phone the last activity on his phone caused the phone to Ping on a cell
00:33:02
phone tower that was nowhere near where he told his father that he was so Brandon thought he was near Lind
00:33:11
saying he would meet him in the parking lot of the Linwood Tavern so instead of lend his phone hit off of
00:33:19
a tower 20 miles away in the town of Minneota so now they need to go search this area
00:33:27
the area that was covered by that cell tower sure enough it is during this search at
00:33:35
12 30 pm on the 14th of May that officers found Brandon's Chevy Lumina in a ditch off a gravel road as he
00:33:43
described it to his parents this is several miles from Canby where Brandon started off
00:33:50
and 25 miles from Lind the car was in a ditch alongside a minimum maintenance Road off of Lion
00:33:58
Lincoln County Road which runs north to south and separates the two counties just west of Taunton and east of Porter
00:34:07
if you're looking for this location on a map it's about a mile and a half north of the intersection of Lyon Lincoln
00:34:15
County Road and Highway 68. so so you're saying Brandon's about 25 minutes away from where he claimed to be
00:34:24
correct and this is where this this is where the case gets me because again well this is where it makes absolutely
00:34:30
no sense well you're right because the claim is that this kid knows his way around these roads that he knows the
00:34:37
directions around there and and that's not always a claim that that uh fathers would make about their sons when it
00:34:45
comes to driving right right and they're making these claims that he knows these
00:34:49
roads he he knows his whereabouts and he's 25 minutes away from where he said he was
00:34:57
that's bizarre so there I mean there's so many things bizarre about where he he ended up I
00:35:04
mean I I was sitting there the other night and I thought that to to put together the the description
00:35:10
of where everything is and where he ends up where he thinks he is I mean you're left there sitting looking
00:35:18
at a map going this just doesn't make any sense and he's not that far away from the party he's much closer to the
00:35:24
party than where he was supposed to end up at his parents house so I mean basically if you take if you take Canby
00:35:32
and draw a diagonal line on a piece of paper South East to Marshall it'd be a straight shot right right south of that
00:35:41
south of Marshall where he lived where he's trying to get to is Lind so he goes way he believes that he is near Marshall
00:35:51
near land which is technically out of the way but where he ends up is somewhere along that diagonal line
00:36:00
basically he's he's north of Lind in Minnesota which is much closer to Canby and very
00:36:07
in 20 25 minutes away from Marshall and land well it seems like you know somehow
00:36:14
he gets confused and gets on on a road that he thinks is familiar but is not correct well and that's where I think
00:36:22
the trouble lies with this case is I think you could be pretty sober and get turned around even if you do know
00:36:30
the area fairly well because again everything kind of looks the same the roads are all just basically numbers
00:36:38
when I I also question are any of these phone calls that he's making to his friends look we've we can assume that
00:36:46
he's not calling anybody until the car he fears off and goes in the ditch right but I'm telling you it was a a bad habit
00:36:55
I would get on the road when I'm playing gigs and every time I was on the damn phone I'd miss an exit and it was always
00:37:03
an exit that I that I knew from I was familiar with and I'd be going ah again you know so that's why I also wonder was
00:37:12
he talking to somebody on the phone where just by being on that phone he gets on the wrong road
00:37:20
and then he you know travels I think it would have been incredibly easy to make a wrong turn right and but but what
00:37:28
that's not so hard to believe what's really hard to believe is that he he clearly hasn't traveled much of a
00:37:38
distance and and he hasn't traveled as far as he believes that he has traveled so then you start to wander necessarily
00:37:45
and the reason why is because he could have been heading One Direction and then once he makes the wrong turn or or gets
00:37:54
confused he could have actually been heading back the other direction no and that's what I mean we we don't know
00:38:01
he he could have been driving for as long as he anticipated right right and that's where I think the problem lies
00:38:07
and I think that that might be where I think that might be why he thinks he was was where he thought he was which is a
00:38:16
weird statement to say but he knows generally how long of a drive it would be from Canby to Marshall or can be to
00:38:23
lend and I think he probably drove around about that amount of time and says well
00:38:29
that's where I must be right is lend where as you pointed out and I think what's probably correct here is that
00:38:36
he's made several wrong turns turned around a couple times tried to correct himself and ultimately he's just getting
00:38:42
more and more lost more and more confused about where he where he is actually located right and again this
00:38:49
becomes an issue because we don't know how intoxicated he is or like you said just you know being exhausted you know
00:38:57
right we don't know so Lincoln County Sheriff Jack vaseki offered a description of Brandon's car
00:39:06
he said the car was found on the Lincoln County side of the County Line quote it
00:39:11
was off the side of a field approach and the vehicle was hung up it's sort of a Sharp incline nothing major but enough
00:39:20
that the car would get hung up so the wheels are too high off the ground to get any traction end quote
00:39:27
Brandon's car while immobilized was technically fine you know it was operating just fine there was no real
00:39:36
damage to it and this is further backed up by Brandon's mother Annette right there's no evidence that he had been
00:39:44
hurt in this incident and furthermore he tells his parents he's fine from the incident and there was no evidence that
00:39:51
anyone else was involved in the accident as well right so basically saying that we don't think he hit his head or
00:39:59
anything and that he was conscious of what was happening from my understanding Brandon
00:40:05
told his parents this accident happened as he was trying to turn off of an unpaved Road
00:40:12
if you if you want to try to picture this scenario basically it's like he he's trying to turn around in the middle
00:40:20
of the road and and maybe go the opposite direction right and because these are country
00:40:27
roads that typically are not wide Lanes he got hung up in in the ditch and when they say hung up they just mean that the
00:40:36
the tires are not touching the ground therefore you cannot move the car it was we've had another case that was
00:40:43
very similar to this vehicle type situation I think it was uh Brianna Maitland right where the car was
00:40:51
it worked just fine and that's what confused people so much but but if if those if the tires that move when you
00:40:57
hit the accelerator do not touch the ground your car doesn't move no traction that's right furthermore
00:41:04
many Reports say that nothing else unusual was found at the actual site however one very important source that
00:41:12
we will get into later and we've already touched upon says the car doors were found open
00:41:19
if that is true to me Captain that would be incredibly strange [Music] in any event Sheriff vaseki said that
00:41:30
officers could not determine which direction Brandon was heading after he left the vehicle which direction he was
00:41:37
heading on foot he says quote there's grass in the ditch and gravel on the road so it is possible
00:41:43
to leave that vehicle and not leave any tracks one thing the sheriff failed to mention
00:41:50
was an unfortunate coincidence the roads were graded on the morning of May 14th before the vehicle was actually found
00:42:00
and located by deputies this destroying any possible footprint or other evidence
00:42:06
that they may have found on the gravel roads let's discuss the scene where the car
00:42:13
was found we know there were no prints of use and that one source indicates that the doors were open and keys were
00:42:19
gone there was nothing unusual found in near or on the vehicle we have seen a few reports that a pipe was found in the
00:42:29
car to be perfectly clear there's no indication of what kind of pipe right it could be a tobacco pipe it could be a
00:42:37
marijuana pipe crack pipe could be a lead pipe I have no idea but the I I think the general idea here is if in
00:42:47
fact the pipe was found in the vehicle then it's possible Brandon could have been high before he set off on foot that
00:42:54
night right I don't know captain in in my opinion I want to throw this out there I feel like
00:43:00
the the pipe being found in the car might just be some bad information yes and I and I say that because there
00:43:10
is one newspaper article that references this pipe but they give no indication of
00:43:15
what it was used for what kind of pipe it was and then where I see other reports that
00:43:22
that contain they say that there was a pipe in the car they appear to me to be reports and articles that were written
00:43:28
using that first article right you might you know what I mean like it's bad information that people are passing on
00:43:34
as a rumor that's what my gut tells me also could be a small little pipe you know I worked at a hardware store I
00:43:40
could see somebody carrying around a little piece of lead pipe you know as protection
00:43:46
so that's something too the the thing that I keep going now now that we're on this uh
00:43:53
smoking the pipe right and the whole intoxicated level one of the things that has really got me about this case is yes
00:44:01
we know that he was at these two parties hanging out with his friends and yes they say well yeah we think he was
00:44:06
drinking at the first one and uh he might have been drinking on the second one we don't know how much we'd know
00:44:11
that he had a shot of Jack Daniels what I wonder was was there any um smoking of the of weed
00:44:22
um was there any usage of like mushrooms you almost sounded like a really old person there first I was smoking of the
00:44:29
weed I almost said smoking the weed boy you high on the weed he was out there smoking the weed
00:44:36
um so because I I'm just trying to think of my friends early days of college if something
00:44:44
happened to one of our buddies we'd probably start off with yes we were drinking if it was one of the days that
00:44:50
we were experimenting with shrooms I don't think we would have told the parents that we were experimenting with
00:44:57
shrooms right but I think I get where you're going with this yeah I think what you're
00:45:01
trying to say is as time passes and as the concern for your friend who is lost and continues to be lost
00:45:11
are you saying that at some point you just go into more maybe maybe be a little more upfront about some things I think
00:45:18
you would so I think so I think we would hear rumors about that and I would just
00:45:22
don't hear rumors about that right um and of course marijuana drinking all of that is totally believable because
00:45:32
that's very common at the age of 19. you know early college just at a high school
00:45:37
very common so it's totally believable but to me it feels like if the suspicion was
00:45:46
strong enough for that that the suspicion would have stood the test of time and it really has not because what
00:45:52
you have here in this case is you have Brian Swanson Brandon's father right who has said for 11 years now that he does
00:46:02
not believe that his son was in any way incapacitated that evening saying that Brandon sounded totally normal lucid and
00:46:11
coherent on the phone right but there's just so much evidence against that I mean one the you know he has to call for
00:46:19
help because of his car like you said turning around on a country road because I think that's evidence that
00:46:27
there's an impairment there uh the fact that you know if it's true that they found two doors open that doesn't make a
00:46:35
lot of sense to me that shows a sign of an impairment the fact that he doesn't know where he's at
00:46:40
sign of impairment the fact that um then he claims where he's going to start walking towards again another sign
00:46:49
of impairment so you know I'm glad that it's you know you know I I don't I'm not saying that his
00:46:57
father is a liar I'm just saying that there's a lot of evidence against the fact that he you know that he was
00:47:02
completely coherent well I mean he he wouldn't be a liar if he believed what he's saying and meaning you know
00:47:12
Brian Swanson does not believe that his son could basically he's saying look I was on the phone with him for 47 minutes
00:47:19
it wasn't a two-minute phone call it wasn't a five minute phone call right right he's saying I don't think my son
00:47:26
could fake it through a very lengthy phone call no no I agree with that and and Brandon's friends have not said that
00:47:34
he was drunk or high although if they were like you said underage or they were doing illegal activities they might not
00:47:41
admit to this especially right away we know that there have been there was quite of of a bit of time
00:47:49
unaccounted for it seems to be that way depending on which timeline you follow for that evening right
00:47:55
but one thing that I find that's that's super interesting is the police investigators have also said repeatedly
00:48:05
that they do not believe Brandon was impaired that evening now of course it's totally unclear on how they would
00:48:14
know this or how they were able to come to this conclusion right and the impairment doesn't have to be drugs it
00:48:21
could again be exhaustion you know exhaustion it right and and the police coming to this
00:48:28
conclusion may just be because all of his friends and his dad says that he wasn't you know intoxicated
00:48:35
basically in all reports are telling us he was he was sober kind of thing yeah but what does seem clear
00:48:43
to me more so than if he was impaired or intoxicated in any way it's 100 that Brandon was very very confused
00:48:53
about where he was that evening well the other evidence that he possibly was an imperative is that he's taking these
00:48:59
back roads and instead of taking the More Travel you know well-lit roads you're taking back roads that that's
00:49:10
another sign to me and I'm not saying that he's like drunk to the point where he can't walk I'm just saying that maybe
00:49:17
he's you know buzzed enough where you know can't get his car unstuck leaves the door open doesn't know
00:49:24
exactly where he's at has to take the back roads right but I think I think a big problem
00:49:30
with this case is and there's some debate and I don't know having you know I don't live in this area or never
00:49:37
visited this area there is some debate online about how well the roads he would have been
00:49:44
traveling were actually marked if they were even marked at the time in 2008 yeah again if if the
00:49:54
Farms look the same the Farmland looks the same the streets and roads look the same
00:49:59
you know I I don't know that it it we gain much value out of debating if he was impaired or not but I can see a
00:50:07
situation where somebody would be maybe even sober as a judge and perfectly fine
00:50:13
and still get turned around in this situation he's he's in the end what we do know is he's 20
00:50:21
miles from where he thought he was and the lights that he could see remember he thinks that they're coming from the town
00:50:27
of Lind they are not we we know that uh from where his vehicle is found now you said that they had his phone records
00:50:35
they got the phone records pretty quickly but do we know I mean it was 2008 so did they have any text mess
00:50:44
any text messages um any records of that I looked up his phone and I actually thought that it was
00:50:52
another phone before I looked it up I thought it was like the the Razer remember the Motorola had like a silver
00:50:59
flip type phone yeah that's the phone that I thought it was and when I when I looked up the phone online it showed me
00:51:06
clearly a different model but what I can say from what I can view regarding that
00:51:12
phone is it did have texting I believe it to have texting capabilities right um if his regarding what kind of service
00:51:23
he had might play into that somehow remember right remember back in the day it wasn't like like today you sign up
00:51:30
get it yeah yeah today you sign up for a plan and they're like well you get everything you know back then it was uh
00:51:35
quite different so all right and I can't remember exactly when the change happened the days when you'd have to
00:51:41
like monitor how much you text well yeah that but also like you'd also text by like
00:51:48
you would have to hit you know three a couple times for C you know uh in judging by the the the picture the image
00:51:56
I saw of the phones that that were brought up in my Google search he he very likely would have been if he was
00:52:02
texting it would have been that deal where you're like tap the number one three times for the letter c
00:52:09
right type of thing right and again it might have been a new enough time 2008 where where the texting
00:52:16
was fine I don't have any detailed reports regarding his his phone logs for that night
00:52:24
but what what I what I believe to be a fair statement to say about his phone log would be that nothing
00:52:34
there doesn't seem to be anything that that is outstanding as weird or unusual because we would have that information
00:52:42
you know we would that would be included in The Narrative of this story that that
00:52:48
there not only does was there this strange situation of he's on the actual phone I mean and and that's the way that
00:52:56
this story plays out in the way that it's told on the internet and told from person to person is Brandon is on the
00:53:02
phone at the time that he vanishes which is so incredibly weird we've had so many
00:53:08
other cases that we've covered that there are there's a strange phone call involved in a missing person's case but
00:53:14
to be actually on the phone with one's father when when it's believed that he went missing yeah I mean this is and
00:53:21
it's weird too because you got Brandon Swanson and then you have the Brandon Lawson case which is oh yeah similar
00:53:28
yeah both involve phone calls strange phone calls yeah two family members yeah both Brandon's yeah so it's it's one of
00:53:39
those situations where I see what you're getting at and I wish we knew that information I think that the reason why
00:53:45
it's not reported is that it may just have no real bearing on the case it may be in fact exactly as we just
00:53:54
said that from the call records we know that he tried he attempted to call a couple of friends we know that he called
00:54:01
his parents when his parents say that he's on the phone with them and we know that his father tried to
00:54:08
call his phone several times after the call goes dead on Brandon's end [Music] there's so much more to get to in this
00:54:27
incredibly fascinating case of missing person Brandon Swanson still left Captain we have the search for Brandon
00:54:36
we have the theories about what could have happened to him plus our thoughts and the conclusion only one episode this
00:54:43
week due to the holiday if you need more garage download this Stitcher app and check out all of our old shows and also
00:54:51
we have a weekly bonus show on Stitcher premium called off the Record there's now over 70 episodes available so check
00:55:00
that out and make sure you go to truecrime garage.com and leave us your theories and thoughts on the Brandon
00:55:07
Swanson case and until next week everybody be good be kind and don't let him foreign
00:55:22
[Music]