MN MN - Brandon Swanson, 19, Marshall, 14 May 2008

[RubyRed]

The Search for Brandon Swanson

SUMMER UPDATE​

Searches have been conducted this summer. The weather has played a main factor inhibiting the schedule. The search teams & dogs have also been active in other searches in the State. As soon as the water recedes in the area our search for Brandon will resume.​

http://thesearchforbrandon.blogspot.com/​

 

[tagryn]

http://thesearchforbrandon.blogspot.com

AUGUST 7 - 8 SEARCHES:
A team of ten people and three HRD canines from six organizations met to search the weekend of August 7 - 8, 2010. We again focused on the portion of Mud Creek in question. As is typical in this case, we had a couple of things working in our favor and a couple of things working against us. The water level in Mud Creek was very low as we had hoped for, which eliminated scent movement by water transport. There was also little wind over the two days of the search, which minimized scent movement by air. However, the extreme heat and the very tall vegetation in the creek made searching very difficult. In spite of those difficulties, we were again able to obtain canine results that strongly suggest that Brandon's remains are in a portion of Mud Creek.

With the heavy vegetation in the creek (the cattails are over eight feet tall), it is nearly impossible to spot disarticulated remains visually. The HRD dog still remain the most effective and efficient resource for completeing this search. However, to effectively utilize them, we need to knock down the vegetation to below head - level on a dog. We hope to return to the area in early October with a fairly large team to cut the vegetation in the creek so that the dogs can pinpoint the source of the scent.

 

[RubyRed]

Thanks for the up-date. I hope they soon get a resolution, they are searching under tough conditions.

 

[emmymicro!]

STILL no answer???

 

[carterkatt]

No news? Hunters in the fall didn't find anything?

 

[Mom who cares]

Hoping the arrival of Spring will bring Brandon home.

 

[chasing.halos]

JVM is spotlighting Brandons case right now.

 

[cluciano63]

His car was almost 25 miles from where he told his parents were...I fear he was on some type of drug and had no idea where he was. This case reminds me of a young couple in Nebraska a few years ago; they had tried meth for the first time that night and ended up in a blizzard in a corn field, calling 911 with hallucinations etc...and could not tell LE where they were at all. When they were found the next day, they were both dead.

I read an LE website just now about this case and the searches have been continous, withl many hits for human remains by the dogs but nothing actually found. I think he either went into the river or, as one dog hit on a combine of some sort, he might even have gone into a piece of equipment LE says they are searching for his remains, and believe he will be found, it does not seem as though they are thinking this is foul play.

 

[cluciano63]

Jean C. does a good job with this show, I wish they would pick it up as a regular show, we know they would never run out of missing people

She just asked his mom to tell her all about Brandon and his mom seemed taken aback for a second and then said "I'd love to." It made me think no one has ever asked her before. Very sad.

 

[SheWhoMustNotBeNamed]

Brandon Swanson: Nancy Grace America's Missing

When a phone call between 19-year-old Brandon Swanson and his parents ended abruptly they immediately knew something was wrong. That was May 14, 2008. Brandon was making a 30 mile drive home from visiting friends.

He called his parents when his car went into a ditch. His parents set out to look for him but came up empty until later the next day when police located the college student’s vehicle by using cell phone pings. Multiple searches in the area have focused on the Yellow Medicine River which is located 0.2 miles from where the 2001 green Chevrolet Lumina was found. Trained dogs used to search in the area have detected human remains but Brandon has yet to be found.

http://nancygrace.blogs.cnn.com/

 

[kathyn2]

I saw this case on Nancy Grace tonite and found it interesting. I read the first 4 pages here but didn't see anything on this:

If the boy told his dad that this other town was close by and he could see the lights BUT the town the boy thought was there was really 20 or 25 miles away, what town was he seeing and what lights was he heading for? I have never heard this mentioned in this case. It seems a big clue would be whatever city this boy was looking at. Was there one? Did anyone ever talk to his friends? Why did the boy think he was much closer to home than he really was? They claim he really knew the roads. It all seems so odd. It also seems odd he would leave the road since it was dark and apparently he had no flash light. Since he said he went into a ditch, why didn't he go back up onto the road to walk? He said early in the conversation when his mom was still there that he was going to walk back to his friends house so then why did he think he was so close to his parents house?? His friend was 20 miles back or more since he claimed he thought he was within 10 minutes of his mom (according to her). Why did he think he was so close to his house if he wasn't?? Wouldn't most of us be able to discern if we had been on the road 20 minutes driving home or only be a short distance from where we left? I would love to know what his friends thought that he was with. Has anyone ever talked to them?

 

[writer7]

I saw this on JVM, too. I wonder if the property owners past the river were told to check out their outbuildings, etc in a reasonable amount of time at all? So sad.

I was in my mid-twenties when my fiancee decided to take a shortcut (to our car after a hike) through crazy terrain as the sun was setting. I knew we'd end up spending the night in the cold woods; I wanted to stay on the paved road. He was going to keep walking in pitch black, too, right by a huge twisty creek with dense terrain and hills and stuff! I made him help me get firewood and we stayed put till dawn. Search dogs that night didn't find us. That's how crazy the terrain was.

People don't always use your own logic, that's for sure. This kid didn't have to be on anything. He just must not have known the woods, rivers, or the weather. People don't think about what really can happen out there. That's normal, unfortunately.

RIP, Brandon, and Good Journey. Peace to those who love you.

 

[DPR4444]

I saw this on CNN last night also. Can anyone provide some information regarding the Yellow Medicine River that is near where the car was found? How deep is it? How strong is the current , if any? Was Brandon a capable swimmer? Thanks.

 

[Nandee63]

I saw this on CNN last night also. Can anyone provide some information regarding the Yellow Medicine River that is near where the car was found? How deep is it? How strong is the current , if any? Was Brandon a capable swimmer? Thanks.

According to the NG show last night, the sheriff who was on the phone said that generally, the river is at it's highest point (7-8 ft. in spots) right after the spring snow melt. Then, the river basically dries up. He said last year, after the snow melts ran off that you could walk across the river on dry bed. I don't recall that he mentioned anything about the currents.

 

[MTRTA Search Manager]

I read an LE website just now about this case and the searches have been continous, withl many hits for human remains by the dogs but nothing actually found. I think he either went into the river or, as one dog hit on a combine of some sort, he might even have gone into a piece of equipment LE says they are searching for his remains, and believe he will be found, it does not seem as though they are thinking this is foul play.

cluciano63,

Just curious; what website are you referring to? LE is typically not very forthcoming when talking about cases.

 

[bdawk20]

I watched this on NG last night too. I was wondering if anyone knows if where Brandon's parents lived when this happened was where he had grown up... His mother said that they went to get him when he called and that he was "adamant about where he was", and that it wasn't that far from where they lived. I can't fathom how he could confuse an area close to home that he should be familiar with, dark out or not, with what I would imagine would be a strange area 20 miles away...so while he was driving he somehow thought he was in a totally different area? Is it so rural that that could actually happen?

 

[cluciano63]

cluciano63,

Just curious; what website are you referring to? LE is typically not very forthcoming when talking about cases.

http://thesearchforbrandon.blogspot.com/

 

[MTRTA Search Manager]

http://thesearchforbrandon.blogspot.com/

OK, thanks. That is the "official" blog we use to update the community on our search efforts.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to keep it up to date since last summer. Several things in my personal life that I had been putting off for two years caught up with me.

Rest assured that the search is alive and well and efforts are ongoing to find Brandon's remains.

 

[MTRTA Search Manager]

Several posters have questioned how Brandon became so disoriented and was sure that he was between Marshall and Lynd when in reality he was northwest of Taunton 20-25 miles away. While we can only speculate on some of this, I believe there are reasonable explanations for his disorientation.

Brandon started his evening in Lynd with a small group of friends. It has been widely reported that he was drinking alcohol at this get-together. Brandon left that gathering to go to Canby to say goodbye to a school friend. He stayed at that location for a short time and left to go home to Marshall. While it is a straight shot along Highway 68 from Canby to Marshall, he wasn't on the highway. He was traveling on gravels roads northeast of the highway. The gravel roads do not parallel the highway, they are at about a 45 degree angle to the highway, so he would have had to make multiple turns in a stair-step fashion to follow the highway’s relative path.

We know that he ended up on a minimum maintenance road and was attempting to turn back on to a gravel road when he missed the field approach and went into the ditch at low speeds. There was no damage to the car and he denied being injured. Since he was unable to back his car out of the ditch, he called his parents for help.

Why was he so disoriented as to his current location? I suspect a combination of fatigue, at least mild intoxication, unfamiliar roads, the fact that all the intersections look relatively alike (very little landmarks—mostly tilled fields), confusing street naming conventions (210th St and 200th Ave is not the same intersection as 200th St and 210th Ave), and possibly simple distraction all contributed to him not knowing where he was.

How many of us have been distracted while driving and suddenly we find ourselves 10 miles down the road with no sense of how much time has passed? Writer7 describes a good example of how easy it is to get disoriented. Most of us navigate our daily world by recognizing various landmarks. Take away those landmarks (traveling down a series of gravel roads that all look alike in the dark) and it is easy to become disoriented.

But why did he come to the conclusion that he was near Lynd? This is a little more difficult to explain. While we will never know for sure, I believe that when he got out of the car he could see a glow of lights in the distance and decided that these were the lights of Marshall. He may have also realized he had traveled down a minimum maintenance road and conducted what is called a transderivational search. He searched his memory for other minimum maintenance roads he knew and came up with a maintenance road that exists along a golf course between Marshall and Lynd. At that point, in his mind he is only about 1 to 1.5 miles away from the Lyndwood Tavern. After waiting about and hour and a half for his parents to find him, he becomes impatient and comes up with the plan to meet them at the tavern. Thus begins his fateful walk.

One can also ask; Why didn’t he recognize that he was disoriented when he didn’t reach Lynd within a mile or two? Dr. Kenneth Hill, in his landmark book Lost Person Behavior can help us here. He describes the conditions that lead to many missing person scenarios. It is quite common for individuals to fail to recognize that they are disoriented. It is also quite common that these same individuals will continue to believe they know where they are even though they have ample evidence to suggest that they are not where they believe they are.

Brandon clearly displayed this behavior. He believed he was somewhere between Marshall and Lynd even though he had no landmarks nearby to suggest that. While his parents searched that area repeatedly, he continued to insist he was there. He eventually became frustrated and began walking towards where he thought the Lyndwood Tavern was (most likely towards the northwest of his car), directing his parents to meet him there. During the entire 47-minute phone conversation, he believed he was heading towards the Lyndwood Tavern. Late in the conversation, he left the gravel road and walked cross-country because he felt it would be faster that way. Near the end of the conversation he mentions water nearby. Brandon's father reported that it sounded like he slipped on something when he uttered an expletive and the phone went dead.

Hope that helps clarify things.

 

[MTRTA Search Manager]

You might be interested in this important film project: http://www.voiceforthemissing.com/Project_Jason/Home.html