Vanished in the Twin Cities: Minnesota’s Most Mysterious Crimes
Minnesota, with its sprawling wilderness areas, 10,000+ lakes, and varied landscapes ranging from urban centers to remote rural communities, presents unique challenges for investigators working on the state’s most perplexing unsolved cases. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) maintains dedicated cold case units that collaborate with county sheriff’s departments and local police forces across the state’s 87 counties, employing advanced forensic techniques including genetic genealogy, isotope analysis of unidentified remains, and specialized dive teams trained to search the state’s numerous waterways where evidence or remains may have been concealed for decades.
The dramatic seasonal extremes of Minnesota’s climate, with harsh winters frequently reaching subzero temperatures and significant annual snowfall, create distinct patterns in the state’s unsolved cases, particularly those involving missing persons. Investigations are often complicated by evidence being obscured by snow or ice for months at a time, making search operations seasonally dependent and sometimes delaying discoveries until spring thaws. The state’s extensive wilderness areas, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and millions of acres of forests, present additional challenges for search operations when individuals go missing in remote locations, sometimes resulting in cases remaining unresolved despite extensive search efforts.
Lost in the Land of 10,000 Lakes: Minnesota’s Forgotten Victims
Minnesota’s position of sharing borders with Canada and four U.S. states creates unique jurisdictional complexity in certain cold cases, with the potential for missing persons or perpetrators to cross state or international borders. This has led to innovative multi-agency task forces combining resources from multiple states and federal agencies when investigating cases with potential connections across jurisdictional lines. Organizations like Minnesota Missing and Project Jason have emerged as powerful advocacy forces, maintaining databases of unsolved disappearances, organizing volunteer search efforts, and providing crucial support for families living with the uncertainty of not knowing what happened to their loved ones.
The psychological impact of these unresolved cases extends throughout Minnesota communities, where annual vigils, memorial runs, and fundraisers for reward money demonstrate how these cases maintain their grip on public consciousness years after traditional media coverage has faded. The state’s strong tradition of community involvement has created unique public-private partnerships in cold case investigations, with civilian search organizations like United Legacy specializing in organizing large-scale volunteer search operations that have successfully resolved several high-profile missing persons cases when conventional search methods failed to yield results.
Minnesota Cold Cases: Mysteries in the Land of 10,000 Lakes
Here is a list of cold or unsolved cases in the state of Minnesota (MN) that I’ve written about, sorted from oldest to most recent:
Joshua Guimond: A College Student’s Vanishing
Missing since November 9, 2002 · Collegeville, Minnesota
Joshua Guimond’s disappearance from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota on November 9, 2002, continues to baffle investigators and haunt his family and friends more than two decades later. The 20-year-old political science student was last seen leaving a card game at Metten Court on campus around midnight, seemingly intending to walk the short distance back to his Seton Hall dormitory room. When his roommates realized Josh hadn’t returned the following morning and missed a debate team practice—something completely out of character for the dedicated student—they reported him missing. This triggered an extensive search of the university grounds and surrounding wilderness areas that found no trace of the young man despite deploying dive teams, cadaver dogs, helicopters with thermal imaging, and hundreds of volunteers combing the rural landscape.
Brandon Swanson: The Mysterious Phone Call
Missing since May 13, 2008 · Canby, Minnesota
Brandon Swanson’s disappearance on May 13, 2008, has evolved into one of Minnesota’s most perplexing missing person cases, beginning when the 19-year-old called his parents around midnight after his car had gone into a ditch while driving home from a party near Canby. Brandon remained on the phone with his father for 47 minutes as he attempted to guide them to his location, describing walking through fields toward the lights of what he believed was the town of Lynd. The call ended abruptly when Brandon suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, shit!” before the line went dead—words that would become the last anyone ever heard from him. When his parents arrived at the location Brandon had described, they found no sign of him or his car, which was later discovered abandoned in a completely different location near Porter, approximately 25 miles from where Brandon thought he was walking.
Henry McCabe: A Haunting Last Call and an Unexplained Death
Went missing on September 6, 2015 and found deceased November 2, 2015 · Mounds View, Minnesota
Henry McCabe’s case stands among Minnesota’s most bizarre and unsettling unsolved deaths, beginning when the 32-year-old state revenue department auditor vanished in the early morning hours of September 6, 2015, after a night out with friends in Minneapolis. The Liberian immigrant was reportedly dropped off at a gas station in Fridley around 2:00 AM by a friend, though confusion exists about why he would be left there rather than taken to his nearby home. What transformed this missing person case from concerning to truly haunting was a disturbing two-minute voicemail received by McCabe’s wife around 2:28 AM, containing what analysts have described as growling, moaning, screaming, and gurgling sounds, followed by what appeared to be McCabe saying “stop it” before the call abruptly ended—leaving investigators with what many consider one of the most chilling pieces of evidence in Minnesota criminal history.
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