"Regarding the Cell Phone Many inferences have been made regarding the fact that Brandon's cell phone rang for a time before it went straight to voice mail. Unfortunately, little can be accurately inferred from this. According to one of our members who is an executive at a regional telephone company, the ring that you hear when you call someone has little to do with what is happening at the other end (the recipient's phone). It is an artificial sound that is being generated at a switch in some building, not by the recipient's phone. It is a holdover from the old analog phone days.The way a phone handles voice-mail when it is turned off or disabled is entirely dependant on how this function is programmed at the phone carrier's computer systems. Therefore, there is a great deal of variability regarding how it works between carriers, calling plans, and even models of phones.While there are many possibilities regarding what happened at the end of Brandon's phone call to his father (the phone may have been lost, shorted out in water, battery dead, working but Brandon wasn't able to use it, etc.), the only thing that can accurately be inferred is that Brandon wasn't able to reestablish contact with his father after that point.Jeff"