He Was on the Phone With His Dad for 47 Minutes. Then He Said "Oh, Sh*t!" and the Line Went Silent. Brandon Swanson.

It was about two-thirty in the morning on Wednesday, May 14, 2008, in the farm country of southwest Minnesota.

A father was on the phone with his nineteen-year-old son. They had been talking for forty-seven minutes. The son had driven into a ditch, and his parents were out on the dark country roads trying to find him.

He was walking through the fields toward lights he thought were a town.

Then he said, "Oh, shit!"

And the line went silent.

Nobody has heard from Brandon Swanson since.

Who was Brandon Swanson?

Brandon Swanson was born on January 30, 1989, in Marshall, Minnesota. His parents were Brian and Annette Swanson. He had a sister, Jamine.

He graduated from Marshall High School in 2007. Then he spent a year at a community college campus in the town of Canby, studying wind turbine technology.

On May 13, 2008, classes ended for the year.

The drive home

Brandon stayed in Canby that night to celebrate the end of the school year. He was seen drinking at two parties. Friends said he did not seem visibly drunk.

Before midnight, he started the drive home to Marshall, about thirty miles away, in his Chevrolet Lumina.

Sometime after midnight, his car went into a ditch.

The call

Just before two in the morning, Brandon called his parents.

He told them he was fine. He was not hurt. But his car was stuck in a ditch, and he needed them to come get him. He said he thought he was near the small town of Lynd.

His parents got in their car and drove toward Lynd. They stayed on the phone with Brandon the whole way, through dropped calls and reconnections.

When they thought they were close, Brandon flashed his car's headlights. His parents flashed theirs.

Neither saw the other's lights.

Walking toward the lights

Brandon decided to leave the car and walk toward some lights he could see in the distance. He thought they were the town of Lynd.

He walked through the fields, still on the phone with his father.

Forty-seven minutes into the call, at about two-thirty, he said, "Oh, shit!"

Then nothing.

"His right to be missing"

At six-thirty in the morning, his parents reported Brandon missing to the Lynd police.

According to his mother, an officer told her it was Brandon's "right to be missing." He was nineteen. He was an adult.

Lynd police searched that morning. They found nothing.

Then cell phone records changed everything. Brandon's calls had been coming through a cell tower near Minneota. The phone records put him near the town of Taunton, along Highway 68.

That was about twenty-five miles from Lynd.

Brandon had not been where he thought he was. Neither had his parents' search.

On the phone that night, Brandon had believed he was near Lynd. Whether he knew he was somewhere else entirely is not known. His parents had spent hours driving the wrong roads, flashing their lights into the wrong darkness. And the police had searched in the wrong place that first morning.

By May 15, investigators had narrowed the phone's location to within about five miles of the tower near Minneota.

The car

Searchers found the Lumina in a ditch off a gravel road on the Lincoln County line, about a mile north of Highway 68.

It had no problems other than being stuck.

Investigators found no tracks near the car.

Southwest Minnesota in May is wide open farmland. Fields, fence lines, gravel roads, and creeks and rivers cutting through it all. At night, with no moon and no streetlights, a farmyard light miles away can look much closer than it is. It is easy to see how a young man could walk toward a light he thought was a town and end up somewhere he never meant to go.

The river

Bloodhounds were brought in. They picked up a scent and followed it about three miles.

The trail appeared to lead into the Yellow Medicine River.

Boats searched the river. Deputies searched the banks. No body was found.

Brandon's mother disputes the idea that he went into the river. She has said the dog's trail continued past it.

The search went on for years. From the fall of 2008 through 2011, searchers covered about a hundred and twenty-two square miles. In 2010, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension took over as the lead agency and set up a tip line. Later, the search area moved toward Mud Creek, north of the town of Porter.

They never found him.

For years, his family kept their porch light on.

They kept it on for at least five years, as a sign of hope that Brandon would find his way home.

By 2015, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's tip line had received ninety leads. None of them brought Brandon home.

Brandon's Law

What happened that morning at the Lynd police station led to a change in the law.

In May 2009, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signed what became known as Brandon's Law. It passed the House unanimously.

It says that police in Minnesota cannot refuse to take a missing person report just because there is no sign of a crime, or because not much time has passed, or because the person might have left on purpose. It makes the agency that takes the report the lead investigator. And it requires police to quickly decide whether the missing person may be in danger.

Four other states have passed similar laws.

In other words, what happened at the Lynd police station that morning, a family being told their son had a right to be missing, is not supposed to happen in Minnesota anymore. Brandon's case is the reason why.

What we still don't know

There are a few theories.

That Brandon slipped and fell into the river, or a creek, in the dark, and drowned. That something else happened in that field, possibly involving another person. The county sheriff said he could not rule out foul play, but no evidence of it was ever found. And a remote possibility, that he chose to disappear. His parents do not believe that.

We do not know what made Brandon say, "Oh, shit." We do not know if he slipped, or saw something, or someone. And we do not know where he went in the dark.

What we know is this. A nineteen-year-old called his parents for help. They talked to him for forty-seven minutes. And then he was gone.

If you have any information, contact the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

What do you think happened to Brandon Swanson?