Thinking Sideways: Brandon Swanson

we're going to talk about another cool mystery. This of course the last of our summer series where we talk about mysteries that are kind of crappy, not really, actually this is this is actually a pretty good little mystery, but it's a little bit. Then we are going to debate it a little bit and we might have a few insights for you. Who knows. Okay, what we're talking about out this week is the disappearance of Brandon Swanson. Uh.

He was resident of Marshall, Minnesota. Disappeared in two thousand eight. I first came across the mystery and Cracked dot com. It was an article about phone call mysteries and I really can't top their introduction, which is great, So I'm gonna quote it here in two thousand and eight, nineteen year old college student Brandon Swanson was driving home after a night out when he crashed into a ditch on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota.

He knew as well as us that this was a classic horror movie set up, so we called his parents and asked for a ride. Unquote, thanks Crack dot com. I really appreciate the heads up on this period. Yeah, they are, they're they're actually they actually come up with some really good stuff. I love Cracked. Um. I should also give a shout out to Dustin and Diana who suggested this as well. Everybody. I think a lot of

other people have to just sometimes stopped after two or three. Yeah. Yeah, the list of names is actually bigger than the description of the mystery. Yeah, and there's only so much room the spreadsheet. Yeah and so and so all the rest that there is a finite number of rosen columns that you can have on a spreadsheet. Yeah. This this is

a very popular mystery. Um. You know, I actually I talked to a local Minnesota reporter about this last week, and she said she's that her to her third and fourth most clicked on articles are articles about Brendon Swanson. And she says it's really strange too, because because she says it'll go along and nothing will happen, all of a sudden, just the clicks just shoot up bam. And I just said, well, what happens. I know what happened?

Is that generation why? Or maybe read it or somebody posted something about it, and then bam, your clicks are going to go. Wait all yeah, yeah, you promised to to link to one of our articles for actually I actually I did, I said, And she's and she actually wants me to. She wants me to let her know when it's going to go up, and and she said she might even do another article about it. Who knows. I mean yeah, I mean, all right, so let's let's

talk about the let's talking about Brandon. Enough about us, uh, As the song says, I'm going back to the start. Brandon was nineteen when he disappeared. He lived with his parents and his sister in Marshall, Minnesota, and he had just finished his first year of college. He was celebrating with some friends in the tiny town of Lynn, which

is about six miles southwest of Marshall, Minnesota. He left Lynne around ten to ten thirty to go to the town of Canby, which is somewhat north there for another party. So just briefly, if if you're near a computer in a browser, get into Google Maps and find Marshall, Minnesota, UM and then zoom out a little bit and you'll see that Marshall is connected to the town of Camby by State Highway sixty eight. It's about, yeah, pretty much

straight line. Yeah, it's to the northwest. So if you can see the town, if if you can see the towns of Canby and Marshall and Lynde, then that gives you a great geographic reference for this whole thing. And if you're not near a computer, well, you know, go look at it. But this it's how it's really helpful to be able to see this, because this is a bit of geographic mystery. As I said, Brandon hung out at the party it can be for a bit, and

he left around midnight or maybe twelve thirty. Nobody's entirely sure exactly when he left. The date it was Wednesday, May fourteenth, two thousand and eight. At that party, he had a shot of whiskey, and he'd also have been drinking a bit at the party in Lynne. But he wasn't. He wasn't like, he wasn't anything. No, no, nobody reported that he was smashed, although, of course, on the other hand, if he was smashed, everybody to be saying, oh, no,

he wasn't because nobody wants to be liable. True, So who knows. But I should imagine a noo that Brandon, as far as I know, had no substance abuse issues. He had no mental issues. He was a normal, well adjusted kids, nineteen year old guy who went to a couple of parties and had a couple of drinks. Yeah, exactly, So you know, I don't. I have no evidence that he was smashed. When Brandon left can Be to go home to Marshall, he had a straight shot down Highway

sixty eight. You guys are starting out. Yeah, And but he didn't do that. He took the back roads. I'm assuming that he did that to avoid the police because he had been drinking. Yeah that that's really the only reason that you would do that. Pretty much. I've done it a time or two when I lived in the rural areas, and that was the only reason that I went on those back roads and credited because it's easy to get lost. Oh yeah, yeah, and hindsight, but he

really should have taken the highway. Yeah. I mean, well, if you're looking at Google, you can see you can see the back roads. And I'm talking about and this is the countryside in this area is flat farmland, and it's divided into sections as right. Yeah, yeah, it's actually their squares that are one mile on the side, and all the roads pretty much go on those section lines. So it's a grid. And we should mention, um on your phone, it's probably not going to show up, Yeah,

this whole area zooming out to see the town. Yeah you're not. You don't have a screen, just as a mention. Yeah, but if you if you get on a big screen, you can see it quite well. UMU. And so Brandon, if when he left Canby, we don't know exactly what rude he took. He could have got He could have gone dew east nine miles and then he could have turned right and gone do south six and a half miles, or he could have gone in a stair step fashion

of some kind exactly. He could have taken an infinite number one maybe not infinite, but a whole there's a whole lot of possibilities there, but he wound up essentially going south for six and a half miles and anybody right turned and went west for one mile on a dirt road that went across the middle of one of these sections, and then he tried to turn left onto the Lion Lincoln County Road left being south, but he screwed up. He turned it just a little bit too

soon and drove into the ditch. And it seems like that would be pretty easy to do because his car wasn't like new, was it. So you know, if you have the like dimmer headlights and there's and there's definitely not street lights out there, you know, so it's going to be dark. And you know, I've driven out in that kind of country and it's I mean, I think we all have it's hard to judge where that his

road and where it's ditch. And you know, if if he made the mistake of trying to be covert and drive with just his low beams on instead of his high beams, or even if his high beams were I mean, I've had the cars where the high beams are still terrible compared to the every other car around. Oh yeah, Well, you know, you don't know too. I mean again, he was taking the back roads. He actually taking this route that he took, was actually going the opposite direction from

where his objective was, which was Marshall. And he might have had his lights off. He might have actually been maybe a pair of headlights showed up in his review mirror and he decided to take off Denis dirt Road turn his lights off. That's entirely possible. That's that's really paranoid. That is paranoid. Yeah, I mean, and you know, again, Brandon would have been well served. He actually would have been much much better off to have been pulled over

by law enforcement and arrested for dewey. Yeah, that intoxicated. Yeah, I don't even know if he was a smash. But so he makes his turn and get stuck in the ditch and he pulls out his cell phone. What time was this? This was one am on the fourteenth of fourteenth of May. He started calling his friends and nobody was picking up. Yeah, and so they were probably all asleep, or maybe they were partying so hard and so loud they didn't hear their phones going off. At four am,

he called his parents. Ye, that has just got to that's just the call you want to get. Ye. You know, my my brother when he was in situations like that, would just call me because I was lame, was a lame older sister and just like, yeah, no, I was asleepy, You'll come pick you up. Yeah, but yeah, sooner or later, when nobody else is picking up, you gotta call the parents. And that's what he did. His parents are Brian and Annette Swanson, and by the way, they are still wondering

what the hell happened to Brandon. So Brandon, if you're listening, please call home. Brian Andnette got into the family pickup truck and they left to go find Brandon. Now he was he had committed some navigational errors. I was going to say, he probably wasn't super sure where he was.

Yeah he was. He was way off. Yeah, this is this is what doomed their rescue mission because Brandon told him he was stuck just off Highway twenty three and near Lynn, between Lynn and Marshall, which is way farther south. It's it's like twenty miles away. Yeah, And this, to me is one of the most truly puzzling things about this story is that how he could possibly have believed that he was anywhere near Lynn when he was so far away. So I actually I thought about that, and

I have an idea. Okay, he knew how long it took to go from town A to Town B on the highway, let's just say thirty minutes. So he's been driving on these dirt roads where he's got to go much slower and taking all these turns, and he's like, well, I've been driving for thirty or forty minutes. I've got to be almost there because I've I've made that same mistake because you don't think about the fact that you're not going in a straight line and you're going slower.

So I can see how that is. But the other thing is that we are all spoiled today. We think, I know somebody's gonna say this, Well, why didn't he just look at his phone and see what the map said? His phone wasn't It was a motor motor role of silver is what it was. I was reading about it, and it didn't have that capability. It could hold MP three's and play music, but it didn't have that Internet capacity that you'd have to have for doing doing maps. Okay, yes,

it was a silver, not a silver I had one. Yeah, sorry, I just want to make sure here. Yeah, I don't know it was I mean it was the it was the flat version of the razor, right. Yeah, it's kind of like that. I think they call that style the candy bar. Yeah, but I thought it was the bread loaf. But well, I mean I guess I think also, you know, it's it's not as though there are street signs on those dirt roads, those back roads, and I bet he

thought he just turned the wrong way. Well, you know, said that the all the roads all looked the same in that area, and I can believe it. I mean, I've been on street View and I've I've looked around the area and yeah, it's flat. Well I was. You know, that's funny, as you say about the street signs, is that I was reading on one one site and it

was the funniest thing. It was some wiki And this is what cracked me up, is that somebody had gone through and written the wiki, and somebody else had come back through and edited and put all of their um their responses to statements in italics. The snarky yeah is that the one that I put out there? And yeah, you said that one to me, And it's because it says there's no street size. It says, yes, there are there everywhere, So it doesn't sound like it was completely unmarked.

It probably wasn't every intersection, but it was probably a significant number of Yeah, I should have given him some idea unless he wasn't paying attention to which is probably. It's entirely possible. But no, I mean, if he's to wind up where it was, he I could see where he would, he would leave Canby and drive due east. But somehow in the mistaken belief that he was driving

due south instead, and so that's entirely possible. It's totally possible, but still it's still it's still kind of a mystery to me. But it doesn't really matter. It was a huge navigational air but uh, Brian and Annette, Brandon's parents got into the vicinity of Land, which is only six miles away from their home in Marshall's, so they got very quickly. They started driving up and down the side roads.

Brian was driving and that was on the phone with Brandon, and they were flashing their headlights and saying, hey, can you see her headlights flashing? And Brandon was saying, no, can you see my headlights flashing? And he was still with the car at this point in time, which is obviously not really surprising that nobody saw the flashing headlights.

At this point, Brandon was apparently getting a little snippy with his mom and losing patients, and so Brian Brandon's dad dropped his mom off at home and went back out to look for Brandon again. He called him at two twenty three am and they were on a long

phone call for forty seven minutes. Brandon had at this point left the car, which is not something you should be doing, but well, in this particular case, it probably wasn't a good idea, but he left the car and his his intention was to walk into the town of Lynne, which he still believed he was near, and he was seeing glowing lights of a town nearby. The town. Actually, I believe it was Porter. I think that's correct. Yeah, I think it was Porter. Or what's the other one

that starts with the T, Yeah, Taunton. It's one of those two. He had to be said, well, he was headed towards Porter. He was, Yeah, he was meet him at the tovern. He told him, Yeah, he told his dad to meet him at in the parking lot of the Lynwood Tavern in Lynn, which, by the way, is still there if you do a little do a little googling on them there. They still have a web page, but street view won't let you go into the bar to look around. No, it won't. Y you know, that's

why pokemon goo exists, right seriously. That yeah, I'm so, I'm amazed it took this long to work. Well there, that's the whole reason that it exists is because Google wants to map the inside of buildings. And since you know, you have to take video all the time and you upload it to the cloud, that's how they're mapping it. Really, and that's it. That makes sense. I just want to say, and and and so tasteful that that that the Holocaust Museum is part of the pokemon go Yeah, yeah, okay,

back to the story that what we're talking about. He was so, Brandon is out of the car and he's heading towards what he thinks is the town of Lynde, which is in actuality of the town of Porter. So he's walking down according to his father, he's what he was walking down a gravel road towards Lynde. At the end, he said he was cutting across the field to save time. He mentioned that he came across two fences, which I

assume he climbed over. Yeah. He said there was water nearby, which I am assuming was the Yellow Medicine River, which kind of meanders all throughout the area. You guys have seen the arials. And then at three ten, Brandon said in an alarm tone, and the phone went dead. And that's the last time anybody who from Brandon Swanson. So

obviously this set off a few alarm bills. The family kept searching all night, and they kept calling Brandon's phone, and the phone would ring several times and then would go to voicemail after indicates that the phone was still on.

Apparently still on but not necessarily functional. No, no, I mean you're not always because we've talked about this before that the phone ringing doesn't necessarily mean that the phone is ringing, Yeah, exactly, So just I want to make sure we talked about that, because we'll bring something up

in theories in a minute. Yeah, but now, I mean people have read a lot into that though, because for about a day and a half until until about Thursday afternoon, the phone would ring several times in a good voicemail, and starting about late on Thursday, it stopped ringing. When you call it, it would just go straight to voicemail, which most people I've interpreted as the phone was still on and then the battery died and at that point started going directly to voicemail, which is uh, which is

actually a reasonable interpretation. But apparently it does appear that the phone was not functioning, and we don't know because that was never found. Brandon phone was never found, so we don't really know. I mean, he could have when he when he his whole o s I'll call it from his whole os moment. A lot of people have read that to be, yeah, exactly, I've read that to be like, you know, he was walking along, cutting through this field and then suddenly a serial killer popped up

with a chainsaw. Nobody knows. Really, we really don't know. So they looked for Brandon, obviously, yeah they did. Uh Yeah. The police were notified at six thirty am the Brandon was missing. One of the first things, of course, that they did, as they checked with Brandon's cell provider and they found out that he when he was talking to

his parents on the phone. He was connected to a cell tower in Minneota and sorry Minnesota residence if I've mispronounced that, but Minneota, which is several miles southeast of Taunton, which is the town that he was closest to, and that was definitely not the cell tower he would have been accessing if he was anywhere near the town of Lynne, which,

as I've said already, was way far away. So that's how they kind of gave their initial circle of where to search at, yeah, exactly, and so they focused their their efforts on the area around Highways sixty eight to the northwest of Marshall, uh and a twelve thirty pm on the day of the fourteenth, the sheriff's deputy did find Brandon's car in the ditch, but there was no Brandon. There were initial efforts were made to find amusing dogs

he was These were kind of inconclusive. The next day, on Thursday, they brought up bloodhound and used the bloodhound to track his to track his trail from where he left the car, and they gave the bloodhound something to take get a cent for apparently. So the first dogs were just less search without something where they like cadaver dogs or something, you know. I don't know. I think I think they were actually tracker dogs, but they weren't bloodhounds,

you know. And there's yeah, there's a difference between bringing a dog in and trying to have a track ascent and giving it to That's why my question is, like, why weren't they just doing that in the first place. Why did they have to wait for the bloodhound? But whatever, I I don't know, it might for that bloodhound is much higher. Yeah, it's continued. Yeah, not every yeah, not every county is going to necessarily have bloodhounds on hand.

So but anyway, they brought him in. The bloodhound tracked from the car from where the car was tracked his trail half mile south and then a mile west towards Porter about a half mile north and then he left the road, uh and went across this and and this totally tracks with what his father said he was talking about.

He was talking about walking down gravel roads. And then he left the road and cut across an abandoned farm that was and his track was basically parallel to the what is the Yellow Medicine River, which, by the way, is probably the most exhaustively searched river in human history. Yeah, they have definitely scoured that river for his body. And

it's not really a river. It's not something at that time. Yeah, yeah, that would have been the main It's probably still there, probably still some some snow run off or spring run off, that kind of thing. But we're not talking like a roaring, fifteen foot deep, you know, ten foot wide river. We're talking like a creek that you might get your feet

up to your knees. I mean, it's it's one of those things, are you know, if you if you if you fall into it, you could definitely bash your head on a rock and wind up with your face underwater, and but it wouldn't also wash you away. Your body would probably be there. It could it's not a creek. They could wash you a little ways, but it's like not away forever. The question I'm trying to well, no, it's been it's been characterized by locals as being more

of a creek than a river. Okay, okay, and they and yeah, so I just want to clarify it's not something that would just wash a human away. No, No, I don't think so. Well, at one point that the bloodhound. It followed. It followed his track through this field, and then at one point it actually went to the Yellow Medicine River and jumped into the river, which led people

to believe that Brandon maybe had fallen in. But then it climbed back out of the river and it picked up his track again, and his track went all the way up to a hundred sixty avenue, which is, by the way, not an avenue. It's gravel road, just like all the other gravel roads we've been talking about. It was on a section line and the trail ended at the road. Um, so my theory is that Brandon was

abducted by aliens. That makes sense, Yeah, sense totally. Well. Actually, though there were no burn marks from their reaction list thrusters, and there were no crop circles, even though there were lots of crops nearby, and they think, why would aliens not leave crop circles exactly. So okay, let's let's discard that theory. But I'm more likely theory as a trail vantaged because on the morning of May fourteenth, this is why the trail ended it the road. This is why

possibly the trail ended the road. There's are there are other possibilities, but the that particular road was regraded that morning, Yeah, bad time. It was was just that road regraded or were more roads in the area I never could sign. Yeah,

I couldn't find exactly which ones were regraded. And and so I mean, obviously, if if the other roads, like the roads that that the bloodhound followed him on, were also regraded and that didn't erase his scent, which is entirely possible, It's tirely possibly come along and just sort of rearrange the gravel a little bit and it doesn't destroy the sense. The only reason I was asking is that because I was wondering, if they were regrading everything in that area, how did the guy drive in the

grade or not notice a car in the ditch. That's why I'm well trying to believe that only a few roads, not they were doing the whole area. Yeah, I don't know. I guess it was a local regrading, not the county or whoever. Yeah, I I really don't know. And it might it might very well be that the guy did notice the car in the ditch and he actually called the sheriff's department, well, or maybe didn't even call. I mean, you grew up in a small town with ditches around.

Did you every time you saw a truck in the ditch, did you call the cops and say, oh, there's a truck in this ditch or did you just say property and understood did they yeah, yeah, because it's it's But wasn't property. Weren't a lot of the farms around there abandoned, just the one that It actually seems like it was mostly all being there. There was that one abandoned farm that you cut across. But if you know, at the end at the time, I don't really know, but it

doesn't seem like there were that many abandoned farms. I mean, I guess, you know, it would be my inclination to say that. You know, if it's a town where there's lots of college kids kind of driving through the area, you wouldn't necessarily if you saw a car in a ditch, you woke up the next morning, you'd go, you know, is there somebody in there? No, okay, great, bye, they'll come for it. It's not. Yeah, it sounds somebody will

take care of it. Obviously, people are motivated to retrieve their cars, and if it's there three days later, well, then obviously you want to go out and pour lighter fluid on it and fire. But of the two, yeah, something like that. Oh where was I though? Um? So, the search for Brandon has been going on ever since, and it's been a very intensive search. The last big push was in October. A lot of people search the

mud Creek area in northwest of Porter. And uh, I don't really I don't really know if Brandon could have would have made it that far. I don't know why he would have actually gone anywhere beyond Porter. But apparently it's some HRD dogs mud Creek north west, I should say. You know, mud Creek is it's kind of kind of hard to find on the map. It's kind of north

of Porter. And so he would have passed Porter. Yeah, yeah, and and and that the thought is, of course the watershed from mud Creek is much bigger than bud Creek itself. They're thinking some HRD dogs and HRD Human Remains Detection dogs. Yeah, and there's that's so there's a bloodhound which can follow your set, and then there's especially trained dogs that can

smell a dead body. These HRD dogs have just have scented something in mud Creek so they're thinking, somewhere in mud the Mud Creek watershed, there's a corpse, and so they've they've been searching it and again. And I know that part of the reason they were thinking that far is that they based they based the distance that a normal person can walk in a in a certain amount of time. And then that's and then they created their their whole area that they were going to look and

based on that. Yeah, that's how they got to it. I think at some point, yeah, you just kind of say, well, okay, you know what, he could have walked. And you know, if you're if you're still looking what you know ten fifteen years later, you're not just saying, well, he would have stopped in Porter, So why didn't he stop in Porter? You know, you're saying, I don't know, he could have walked to Wisconsin for all I know, And you don't really know. I mean, you're going to start searching all

that stuff. I think, Yeah, but yeah, I don't doubt there probably is a corpse somewhere in that watershed. I don't know if it's Brandon or not, but apparent it wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. Yeah, And also at one point and I'm not sure exactly when, but at some point more recently, much more recently, in two thousand and eight, five different HRD dogs showed a very intense interest in a field cultivator like a tiller, which is kind of

gruesome to think about. But yeah, somebody, somebody necessarily even Brandon, but somebody apparently got tilled into the soil and one of those fields around there's there's there's a lot of things that gets spread on fields for fertilizing. You know, maybe somebody got somebody got thrown in the fertilizer or you know, I think I'm going to assume that the human remains detection dogs are smart enough and well trained

enough to only be detecting dead things. But it's possible that they're they just detect human you know, things like blood and like those things. So like if somebody got there, like foot cut off on act the farm. Accidents are very very common, yeah they are, and they probably don't send for the cultivator back to the factory to be sterilized. People somebody gets are torn off for me, you know.

On the one hand, I do want to assume that the dogs would be smart enough to just ignore that but also I don't necessarily know why they would be smart enough to ignore that. I don't know what they're training to react. So possible that somebody got the arm pulled off, and that's the way less geresome. Yeah, well, it's still pretty gread. Somebody just cut themselves while working on the piece of machinery. I mean, it would have been probably a bit pretty big cut. Yeah, I don't know.

I've I have cut my arm pretty badly, and though it wasn't a big scarring wound, it was a bleeder and so I bled everywhere as I was trying to staunch the flow. So then I can see something like that again, I guess they just assumed that it's more than blood that those dogs are detecting. And that's an assumption that I it's it's hard to say, is that correct or not? That's all I'm saying. Well, okay, I'm not going to get into all the details of all

the searches. There's been a lot of them, and against it seems like almost one or two a year. Yeah, yeah, since he disappeared. Yeah, and and as I said again, the Yellow medicine River is everybody's favorite theory fell into the river, and that's been thoroughly scoured, and I'm pretty sure he didn't fall into the river. But let's talk about our theories about what happened. First theory is that

Brandon fell into the Yellow Medicine River and drowned. And people on various websites have sort of, you know, sort of said that, you know, maybe he got swept downstream, his body got pinned under a rock, and that's why it's never been found. But there's a few problems with this that I have. Of course, as I just said, the river has been very very thoroughly searched, and the HRD dogs again he even remains. Detection dogs have sniffed, the sniffed the river and they they don't haven't picked

up any trace of a body in the river. And at his os moments, he was close to the river. But the river at that place, if you look at the area, you can see this, it's it's actually lined with trees and and then rushing everything. Yeah. And so because you can't form up to the bank of any body of water. Yeah. Now, and Brandon's objective was to reach a hundred sixty avenue as quickly as possible. That's why he that's why he took his shortcut, and that's when he had his OS moment. But he was he

was cutting. He was cutting across the field the head towards the light that he saw in the distance, not necessarily the road. He didn't know where exactly. Well, he knew it was up there, yeah, but he also I mean, if he decided to cut across the field, he said, screw this, I'm tired of going up and you know up, so I'm just going to go straight towards it. So he wasn't He could have been heading that direction, but not. But he wouldn't go into the trees. That was my point.

But did he know that a hundred and sixty was up there? He thought he was in a totally different place. He didn't know what road was up there. That's why I'm saying. He was heading towards the light of the town that he saw in the distance and didn't know what road. He didn't care what road because he was cut across this crop. Now he but but Brandon made the quite reasonable he'd walked a half mile up this

road before he cut across the field. He made the quite reasonable assumption that again, these roads are every mile on the section lines he made, and so he made the reasonable assumption that there was a road right over there, and he cut across that field. And again, why would he go into the woods and tumble into the river when why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't it because because going into the woods it's not part of the mission. His mission was to get to get to the next road.

He doesn't he doesn't know what's in the woods. He doesn't know if it's just uh is it copes or corpse of trees, trees, He doesn't know if it's just because it's pitch black, there's no moon at this point, be blind in one eye, so his depth perception is really poor. He has no idea what's in there. So you're looking at a map and saying, well, obviously he had to be doing this, but he could have had no idea and thought, that's a little bunch of trees,

I'll just go through it. I feel like every reason that you just gave is a reason for him to not go in there, because he doesn't know. I mean, he because he doesn't know what's through there. And if I know anything, it's that when you start cutting through trees you're no longer walking in a straight line exact plays and his track mostly parallel the Yellow Medicine River. It didn't and it didn't really intersect it, except the

dog did run over and jump in the river. Is that that made everybody think he jumped he fell into the river. But I don't see why he would have. So here's the thing, Joe is forgetting something and you haven't had this experience, which is being a peeved off nineteen year old dude who just says, iff it, I know what I'm doing, I'm going there. Nothing's getting well.

And I guess that is the Other truth is that if he was walking down it for so long, he was walking parallel to it, and he was like, oh my god, I'm never going to find a bridge to hell with this. This is I've I've made these kind of decisions as a very young man, and they were very dumb, and he could have just said, you know what, I can make it. He's overconfident in his abilities to navigate through it in the dark. But I don't think

he's in the river. But I am using that as a reason to say that he may not have just been going up to one. He may have actually thought to cross the water. Yeah, and it's fair, It's fair might have I mean, I think that would be a dumb move, but I tend to trust the Bloodhound. I mean, I think probably tracked him, and so that would suggest that he also did not perish in the river that he crossed the river, it appears to the Bloodhounds. The track it appears to be from what I have read,

and you guys have read the same stuff. Yeah, he was tracked all the way to the road hundred sixty Avenue. He was tracked all the way there. So whether he made a little side trip to the river or not, I'm not really sure. There's something that he might have fallen into the river, gotten soaked, and then gotten back out. Well, that would also explain the phone a little bit maybe.

I mean, there's the potential that it got wet enough that the ringer and screen were no longer working, but it was still you know, quote unquote, yeah, it was still ringing sort of working, but it wasn't functional. So on his end, it wasn't ringing, and he couldn't I couldn't see who he thought it died. That's actually Yeah, So as far as falling into the river goes. All the evidence suggests that he made it two hundred sixty avenue. So from that point there were only two other places

where he could have fallen into the river. There was a culvert about half a mile three course of a mile down the road. Because I'm assuming, and I think it's fair to assume this that he continued westward on D six, So there was a culvert where the river passed under the road. He could have fallen in there.

I don't think he did, um, because you know, it's like when you're walking on the gravel road, you kind of know when you're getting off the road because you stopped hearing that crunchy sound that your feet are making. So even if he was completely blind, you know, and completely unable to see in the dark, he still could have made his way just by the noise and then the texture of them. And so I don't think he fell into that culvert. And then the next place was

just right outside the town of Porter. There's a bridge there. I see. I assume that you guys have seen it on the arials. Yeah, And the bridge would be really it's got a guard rail and everything like that, so that would be kind of impossible, and again it's it's reasonable to trust the bloodhounds tracking probably probably, Yeah, but that's where it went, so okay, So we don't think he fell and drowned. So we don't think he fell

out of the river and drowned. Yeah. Another theory is that Brandon fell and he was knocked unconscious and died from exposure. And it was it was it was a bit chilly out. It was forty six degrees fahrenheit, which, by the way, is about eight degrees centigrade. You're welcome. Yeah, but Brandon was actually dressed for cool weather. I mean, he wasn't dressed for freezing cold. But he had on a T shirt, a polo shirt over that, and also hoodie's a hoodie sweatshirt. So I mean enough. Do you

think that was enough? Yeah? I mean if he was soaking, if he had indeed fallen into the river, yeah, and was soaking wet in cold water, and you know, came out and was walking and then fell and got knocked unconscious and was really out cold, yeah, he that would have. Yeah, that's a reasonable assumption to make. But if we're saying he was dry and walking in a hoodie, I mean I think that's enough. Yeah, he's not it's not gonna be comfortable, but you're not going to die of hypothermia.

Oh no, not at all. And and of course if he if he was knocked unconscious, well where's the body. Yeah, so I have an idea on that. Yeah, we already talked about this is that the road got graded. So if it's a crappy road, before they grade it, typically what you'll do is drive along pouring gravel and then you grade it and the shoulder always grows the shoulder of the road because there's always excess gravel getting shoved over. So if he's right on the shoulder, he could have

been buried. Now why the dog didn't find him, I know, so don't give me the but he could have been buried in extra gravel. Well for me, for me, it's more than that. It's been a really long time. I'm sure that road has been like all the gravel has been stripped off it and re graded, and they've done

a lot of stuff to that road. The shoulders. Yeah, I'm sure that it's moved around enough that if there were a body of a nineteen year old man in there, I'm just I'm saying this is another way people always say, well, you know, this couldn't have happened. Well, but technically it

could have. It probably didn't because it hasn't been discovered yet. Yeah, I mean there's all kinds of problems with the whole he fell and died of exposure, which is that he no matter where he fell, he would be like right in plain sight. Yeah, and there's just some ways that people maybe he could have missed it. With the amount of dogs they've used in this search, I don't think

they would have missed it at this point. A dog would have found it human if even if he was kind of hidden, you know, or like in some brush or you know, under gravel. I think they've used enough body detection dogs that they would have been found. He would have been found. I think so. And there's other things too. It's like, you know, we've all we've all discussed hypotheramy before and how people like get this delusional feeling that they're too warm, they start stripping their clothes

off and stuff, and that didn't happen here apparently. Well, but he would have been unconscious, well, so he wouldn't have been stripping his close off. Yeah. Well, I mean, there are other other theories, and that is that he um, he was freezing cold because he was he was wet, and he was suffering from hypothermy and not quite right in the head, and he crawled into a hidy hole. He crawled underneath an outbuilding and a falling dogs. Dogs

would have found it. For humans, I mean, oh yeah. Well, another theory, and this is very popular, is that he fell into a well or a cistern. And this was the first thing I thought of. Yeah, and and those things are out there, but they've been checking every sister and every well, every basement, every coal shoot in the area. They've chad. I mean that they that they know there's

could be ones out there that they don't know. And that's what I that's what I was thinking, is that it's a poorly covered one he falls in, and then within weeks the vegetation covers up that hole. Again, it's possible. It's that's possible. Actually spent a lot of time on the map looking for those kind of things. Yeah. Yeah, But but the thing about it is is, um uh, if that was his os moment, he's walking through that field and suddenly falls into a well, and if it

were me, I wouldn't. I wouldn't be going I would I wouldn't, I would scream. I mean, I don't know what you guys would do. I mean, I think i've the falling motion would be where you said you had your OS moment. That's always my yeah. I would say yeah, and I you know, when I trip, I go up yeah yeah, or you know, God blessed America or whatever. Um. But you know that's all My initial reaction to things like that is to go oh something, not to scream. Well,

I don't know. I mean it was so you know, if he goes oh and then drops the phone, it goes dead, and then he's like into something that is a mild team yeah yeah, is not I don't know, it would be something that was several feet down. So I don't know, And i've been I've not been able to find out what his exact tone of voice was, whether it was like oh shoot, or was it oh shoot, or was it I don't know. I don't know what

his thought exactly. It was okay, yeah, So the open well of sister and all more to say about that later. Why I don't believe he did. Yeah, I don't think he did another. Another theory said he just broke his phone and actually his OS moments as oh shoot moment was actually not any huge crisis like he fell into the river, got it wet and then yeah, or like like a serial killer didn't show up with a chainsaw.

It wasn't that. He's like, it's more like he tripped over something or stepped into cow pie, you know, something like that. But he continued walking. His phone wasn't working, but he died of hypothermia later. But if he did make it two hundred sixte and all evidence indicates that he did, then he would have passed a farmhouse. You guys have seen the arials. I'm assuming there's a farmhouse. They're just like, I don't know, less than a mile down the road. I have to assume he was continuing west.

He would have passed that farmhouse. Uh. They probably wouldn't have been thrilled to be woken up at three thirty or so in the morning. But it's of than dying, it's better than freezing to day. If he wasn't truly in a crisis. There's other series out there. One is, of course, this one. This one always comes up in these disappearances, He ran away to join the circus. He started a new life, and I think, yes, he's living on a farm with Dorothy. I think, yeah, take him.

Yeah you think so? Okay, So, so you guys aren't liking this theory. What's the next one? There's of course alien abduction. What do you guys think there's no proof it was there like crop circles? No, there weren't. This is just another one to be fun. Yeah, now, and then another one. And this is always it's always stressed when you when you read the web pages about him, it's all law enforcement always stresses that there's no evidence

of foul play. Well, there's no evidence general, there's no evidence. Well, yeah, there's no evidence of any of these things as far as it's like hypothermia, drowning, there's absolutely no evidence falling into a sister, and there's no evidence for anything. There's some variations on the foul play theory. And then this

isn't and this is just in my head. Uh so what if Brandon actually did stop at that farmhouse that I was mentioning a minute ago and knocking the door, but the farmer turned out to be a serial killer, the bloody benders lived there. Yeah, it could have been. Yeah, so we'll see. So he did a lot of walking for nothing, or an alternative theories that the farmer was a very suspicious, paranoid type and he shot branded to

death because there's a guy in here. There's a guy in your property, Yeah at that three thirty four in the morning, stumbling around and being weird. Yeah, and so might maybe shot him with death and then maybe maybe thought about it and thought maybe I should like hush this up a little bit, put him underneath the green silo. Yeah, he buried him somewhere and actually in the area of the farm. Uh, there is a spot that's a little

bit greener. Yeah, Okay, I'm just kidding, but you know, and I don't think that's what happened, but that's you know, that's possible. Another possibility as a Brandon made it all the way to the town of Porter, which I think he might just have. But the time was all rolled up and nothing was open, and I have no idea if there was a phone booth or any kind of public phone and porter at that time. I don't know. Two thousand and eight, I mean, phone booths are almost

all gone. There's still one that I know of down on like twelve Yeah, you know the one I'm talking about. No, but it doesn't matter. It's a weird, lonely, little lonely little phone thing, um yeah, on this in this vacant lot. But anyway, I don't see I looked on street view. I didn't see anything resembling a public phone. Maybe maybe there was. Or you know, if you an eighteen year old kid stumbles into a bar and says, I crashed my car in a ditch three miles back, I walked here.

My phone is dead. Can I use your phone to call my parents? You're probably going to say yeah, for sure, but but but I mean, it was like four in the morning at least by the time you got to Porters, So I doubt that. I doubt that there was any bar open. Yeah, but at the same time, there is a cafe porter um, and I'm assuming the cafe would have opened it. Well, do you think six seven the

morning something like that? Sometimes? Yeah, in Farmland, usually like four or five usually, yeah, So you could have just hung out and just waited for them to open up a cup of coffee and use your phone. I mean, I just don't know, and of course, I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but we don't know between the time that he got onto one sixtieth and whatever else happened. We have no idea. It could have been that a serial killer just showed up in a pickup truck on

one sixtieth right there. Yeah, and that it could have been. But I know this is why I totally don't believe he fell into a sister in a well. And that is we know he got two hundred sixtieth. We don't now we do. The dogs says we're reasonably sure. Well, okay, we'll say that we're reasonably sure. Okay, I rust those

dogs a lot. But I when it comes to this and we have no trail other than what the dogs find and it comes for not, that's when I stopped relying on it so strongly, because then widen that he could have gone. I gotta say, I am taking the word one dog for all this, and so that dog, that dog could be a liar. I have that dog making a fool. It was the dog the dog didn't Yeah, yeah, but here's serial bloodhound. But here's the reason I'm sure

he didn't fall into the river. I don't think he had any reason to go near the river, that area where they where they tracked him, where the dog tracked him all the way to one sixtieth Well, obviously that was intensively searched. That there were wells or cisterns or anything else in that field, then they would have found his body in there. This is why I have such problem with the dog trail, is that based on it,

they have scoured that area. I mean, he couldn't he couldn't be laying dead in a field because nothing was growing at that time. They had planted, but it wasn't as if the grass was three feet high, so you would see the body. Well, I guess I just don't know why. You know, we keep saying, well the road was grated, and he walked up the road, Like why is it not that somebody was driving down the road and said, hey, I saw you crash, let me give you a right into town. And then and then turned

out to be not a nice person killer. Feel like it's such an easy is that is? Yeah, I strongly believe that this was a case of foul play. And

then I took him in a completely different direction. Yeah, I don't, Yeah, I don't see fairness, he had no idea where he was anyways, right, Yeah, he could have maybe been giving them directions and they were just like they could have said, oh no, that's actually this town and you want to go to that town, Let's go this way, and then just taking him for the last ride of his life. I think. So yeah, I don't see any other explanation for it, really, I mean, he

made it. There's no reason to believe that he didn't make it to a hundred and sixtieth and from there there's no reason for him to leave the road. He would have stayed on the road all with Highway sixty eight and then Highway sixty eight Porter so um. Yeah. And you know, as as Steve was talking about, you know, the brain of a nineteen year old who's you know,

probably actually just coming off of I don't know. I'm sure you guys remember, you know, there's those times where you get like a little drunk or tipsy, and then you're awake for so long that you start to get hungover and you get real grumpy. Yeah, and I'm sure he was at that point by then, and he'd been lost for a really long time, and he'd been walking, and he was tired and he was just like mad because his parents said, he's just frustrated and he thinks

he's invincible. And a car, you know, he just puts the thumb out cars going by. Yeah, he drives around the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night kill Yeah. Yeah, So it's entirely possible. In fact, I think it's probable. Doesn't have to be serial killer though,

just somebody with bad intentions. It could be. But you know, and that's that might be the solution of this case, is that one of these days, who knows, somebody might nab a serial killer who operates in the in the Minnesota area, and then he might actually fest up to the whole thing. I mean, who knows or she? Good point? Well, okay, you guys have any more theories? No, Yeah, I think I think we pretty much soeld this one, except for

who actually did it. I don't know that we'll ever know who, but we might know what happened to him, which is kind of a bummer. Yeah, but I do think that you guys can stop scouring the countryside, but all means identify that corps it's in mud Creek. But other than that, find out where that's at. Yeah, find that out. I don't think it's Brandon really. Um anyway, Uh, since we're at the end of the episode, it's time for just a little it's time for some admin stuff.

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support us. We have merch go to our website and you can buy mugs and t shirts and all kinds of cool stuff. We don't have guns, hope yet do we never know? No guns yet okay, uh yeah, I thinking sideways, Gune, I kind of like that not happening. Yeah, yeah. What else is PayPal? You can also for a one time donation, you have do the whole PayPal thing. Uh. It's totally optional, of course, but if you feel like it. And thank you for everyone who has donated and those

who are doing the continuing donations. We did greatly appreciate it. Yes, it is totally anyway, that's about it for this week. I'm hoping that Brandon one of these days so there'll be a little resolution of this. I think it's entirely possible there will be. It's entirely possible they never will be. I don't know anyway, So until next week, to lou everybody. By guys Eye