missing person reports: Why families can act now
Before dawn on May 14, 2008, Brandon Swanson called his parents for help after his vehicle veered off a rural road near Marshall, Minnesota. He was 19. During the final call, his father heard him exclaim and then fall silent; his parents kept the line open before hanging up and trying to call him back. They reported him as a missing person early that morning, but the investigation did not begin until that afternoon. His disappearance would eventually move his parents to campaign for a law requiring immediate investigations when adults vanished. Swanson was never found, and no physical evidence in his case had been uncovered by January 2025.
A popular story says families must wait 24 hours before reporting someone missing. There is no legally required waiting period for reporting a child or an adult. Television shows have helped spread the idea of a mandatory delay, although its origin is unclear. Prompt reports give investigators an opportunity to pursue critical leads and determine whether someone is endangered. Stearns County Sheriff's Office Lt. Zach Sorenson emphasized that timely investigations help public safety professionals and the public work together to locate someone. Delayed reports, he said, can hinder those leads.
Long before Swanson disappeared, Belinda Van Lith vanished while house-sitting on Eagle Lake outside Monticello, Minnesota. She was 17 when she went missing on June 15, 1974. Her wallet and other belongings stayed behind, yet police initially treated her disappearance as voluntary and waited 24 hours to begin investigating. A year later, a suspect emerged, and police reversed their earlier position. Van Lith was never found. A family photograph showed her two years before she vanished, preserving an image of the young woman who had been house-sitting beside the lake.
Another Minnesota disappearance followed a party at St. John's near St. Cloud on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2002. Joshua Guimond, 20, left without saying goodbye. By Sunday morning, his friends discovered that he had not returned to his dorm. They reported him missing 24 hours after he was last seen; the official investigation began on Monday. Guimond was never found. His case placed the interval between last contact, discovery of his absence, and the start of police work across a weekend. An enhanced image from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension later showed what he might look like as of 2017.
National changes for children had begun with the National Child Search Assistance Act of 1990. Law enforcement agencies were required to accept reports concerning missing minors and investigate without delay. Six years later, the Amber Alert system added immediate distribution of information about missing children. In 2005, the FBI launched Child Abduction Rapid Deployment, offering law enforcement agencies immediate assistance from agents specializing in child abductions. Every state also maintained a clearinghouse containing information about missing minors and adults, available to both police and the public. These measures expanded rapid responses to child disappearances while adult investigations continued to depend on agency discretion.
Swanson's parents successfully lobbied Minnesota lawmakers for Brandon's Law in 2009. The law required an immediate investigation after an adult was reported missing. Previously, agencies could decide how to handle adult cases, with waiting rooted partly in the belief that adults had a right to go missing. Minnesota's requirements also addressed the acceptance of a missing person report: agencies had to accept it regardless of jurisdiction, elapsed time, or a belief that the person had left voluntarily. When a person was determined to be missing and endangered, the case had to be entered immediately into the National Crime Information Center, extending the response beyond the agency receiving the report.
Evidence of danger brought another required step in Minnesota. When someone was believed to be endangered, law enforcement had to promptly contact the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The statute required immediate consultation during the preliminary investigation, recognizing the importance of the first two hours. North Dakota likewise prohibited rejecting a missing person report because the individual was an adult or had been gone only briefly. South Dakota required cases to be entered into the National Crime Information Center and its clearinghouse, although its law did not explicitly require an immediate investigation. The states' reporting and information-sharing duties therefore differed in their details.
In January 2025, Tony Mangan, communications director for the South Dakota attorney general, encouraged people to contact local law enforcement as soon as possible after a disappearance. Writing for InForum, crime reporter Trisha Taurinskas published regional and national totals on January 14, 2025. Figures from the National Missing and Identified Persons System showed 201 open cases in Minnesota, 38 in South Dakota, and 37 in North Dakota. Across the country, the total number of open and active missing person cases stood at 25,508.