Crime Junkie - MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Arnold Archambeau & Ruby Bruguier

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

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Hi, Crime Junkies, and happy Crime Junkie Thursday. Kids are out of school, you might be going nuts, but I got you. Crime Junkie time is your time, and all summer long, we're giving you twice the Crime Junkie time by unlocking some of our fan club vault episodes to celebrate five years of our fan club being a thing. Now, we have our own app now, in case you didn't know.

I built it from freaking scratch. Not actually me, a bunch of great developers, but you get what I mean. I wanted a place for crime junkies to listen to the episodes the best way possible. A place for us to be a community. And every month in the fan club, we give you not only all the episodes you normally hear ad-free,

but also one extra full-length episode, one mini episode, and one piece of bonus content. You've seen what each of those can look like over the last three weeks, and today I'm dropping another mini episode for you. One that I am truly obsessed with and legit where we got into a fight with the Sheriff's Office, who holds this case over records. They're actually still being pretty unreasonable about it, so if anyone knows anyone at the Charles Mixed County Sheriff's Department, tell them to help a girl out. I'd love to do some follow-up reporting on this case

because I have all the questions still. And you will too. So take a listen. Here is your Unlocked Vault episode. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today

is about a young couple who vanishes from the scene of a car accident, only to turn up dead months later. And the circumstances around their deaths sparked an investigation that has drawn heavy criticism and left everyone puzzled for the last 30 years. This is the story of Arnold Archambault and Ruby Brugier. In South Dakota in December, the sky is still dark around 7 a.m. and there aren't a lot of cars out on US Highway 281 near Lake Andes that early. Which is why two beams of light coming from the side of the road up ahead stand out like a beacon to a driver who's cruising along. As this driver gets closer, they realize

that what they're looking at are the headlights of a vehicle that is upside down in this deep ditch beside the road. So they jump out of their car and make their way down the slope toward the crash, looking for anyone who might be injured. Carson Walker reports for the Argus leader that the car is in about seven inches of water, and when the driver looks in the window, they see a teenage girl trapped inside.

Now she's conscious, and miraculously, she doesn't appear to be injured. I mean, there isn't even any sign of blood or anything like that. And despite being all alone, in the middle of the front bench seat, she seems to be relatively composed.

Or relatively in shock. Fair. Now it doesn't take much to get the door open, just enough for this girl to crawl through, and once she's free, they turn their attention to calling authorities. Now, it's 1992, so cell phones did exist, but they weren't as widespread as they are today, and my source materials don't clarify if the girl, the driver, had one. So I'm not sure how they get authorities there, but eventually they do make the call, and it's not long before EMS and the sheriff's deputies arrive at the scene.

But before they can even begin assessing the damage and checking the young woman for injuries, she tells them that they need to start searching the area right away because she wasn't the only one inside the car when it crashed. She said there are two more people who were with her. Now she tells the officers her name is Tracy Dion. She's 17 years old and she says that the night before

she had been out with her cousin, 18 year old Ruby Brewer and Ruby's boyfriend, 20 year old Arnold Archambault. Despite being underage, the trio had been drinking and stopped at a few parties throughout the night. And they'd been out for a while, so by the time they decided to head home, it was like in the early hours of the morning.

So she says they all piled into Arnold's car with him behind the wheel, starting to drive towards Arnold and Ruby's place. Now some sources say they lived with Arnold's aunt, some say they lived with Ruby's, which would have been Tracy's mom, like I'm not 100% sure where they were headed. But either way, the drive was going smoothly until they came to an intersection. Now she says Arnold stopped safely at the stop sign and since there was no one else around, he hits the gas.

But after that, things become hazy. Tracy thinks he must have pressed the pedal too hard or maybe the roads were slick from the recent bout of winter weather because the next thing she knew, they were spinning out of control. Unsolved Mysteries actually covered this case back in 1995, and according to that episode, when Tracy gets her bearings after the vehicle quit moving, she says that she and Ruby were like hanging upside down in the car and Arnold was just nowhere to be seen.

I mean, this seems like a pretty intense crash. Was he thrown from the car? Well, I don't think so. I mean, from what I can tell, again, this is the middle of December, so I think it's safe to assume all the windows were up and none of the source material mentions the window or windshield being broken or having big holes as if someone went through them. So initially, Tracy thinks that somehow he was able to open the door and just get out

while she was still like in a daze. She just didn't notice. Now luckily, neither she nor Ruby appeared to have any severe injuries, but she says that Ruby was like freaking out, screaming, banging on the inside of the car, trying to get out. And eventually she was able to wedge one of

the doors open just enough to claw her way outside. But instead of holding the door for her cousin, she basically just let it slam behind her. And Tracy at this point is like calling out for help, begging Ruby not to leave her, but Ruby doesn't respond at all. So Tracy just stays there, all alone until that driver found her. By the time she got out of the car, there was no sign of Ruby or Arnold. How long had she been in there? I don't know exactly. All I know is that according to that Unsolved Mysteries episode, the officers

got there by sunrise. But it couldn't have been that long. Yeah, since they were partying till the early morning hours. Right. And if Ruby and Arnold were on foot, they couldn't have gotten super far. Right. I don't think so, because I mean, police are thinking that they probably both went into shock after the crash and just like wandered away in like the state of confusion. So they're thinking, hoping that they're going to find them close by. And so they start searching the rest of the ditch.

And here's where things are messy. So like full disclosure, descriptions of this ditch are all over the place. It's 25 yards wide and about the length of a football field, but the amount of water in the ditch varies from report to report. Like in Unsolved Mysteries, they say there's only a few inches of water, but other articles say that parts of this ditch are like super deep, more like a pond than a ditch. And they say there's this layer of ice on the top that you could fall through if you stepped on the wrong spot.

Now, the car obviously isn't in one of these deep, flooded parts because it would have fallen through. But regardless of the depth, officers stand on each side and walk the ditch up and down looking for these two, but they don't see anything. No footprints, no cracks in the ice. Now on the other side of the ditch are railroad tracks, and then beyond that is this vast woodland. So they start searching there as well.

But hours tick by, and at the end of the day, everyone is left scratching their heads. There is no sign of the couple anywhere. Now they don't just give up. This search continues over the next few days, but Arnold and Ruby don't turn up. So police start to consider other scenarios for what may have happened. And their top theory is that they aren't really missing at all. They think that if Arnold had been drinking

the night of the crash, that he might have still been under the influence when the crash happened, and he could have been afraid of getting in trouble with police, so maybe he grabbed Ruby, he fled the scene, and is just hunkering down somewhere until everything blows over. Okay, but if that's what happened, they what, just left Tracy there in a flipped over car? I guess. Now, officers pay a visit to the couple's friends and family, checking to see if they're

hiding out somewhere, but they don't find them. And everyone that they talk to says that if they were really driving under the influence, they wouldn't have just fled like that. Like, sure, Arnold was known to party a lot, but he also was a good guy. And same with Ruby. There's no way she would leave Tracy. Family is super important to her. I mean, she even has a tattoo of the word love on her ankle, which they say is a testament

to her kind personality. And aside from this crash, this one incident, everyone else is saying they don't have another reason to disappear. Like, neither of them has any financial trouble, legal trouble, criminal issues. And even if they did want to just, like, up and leave for some reason, Arnold and Ruby have a daughter together who is still at home with family and they wouldn't leave her behind. So officers go back to their original idea that Arnold and Ruby may have wandered off after the accident

and gotten lost somewhere in the woods. So they focus all of their energy on searching both the ditch and the woods multiple times, as do Ruby and Arnold's families and even local volunteers. But each search has the same results. No one can find any sign of the missing couple. By early March, 1993, Arnold and Ruby's families post a $1,000 reward for information

and the Sheriff's Department brings in the FBI, the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to assist in the search. But even with all these additional resources, they don't find anything, and eventually the case starts to lose steam. Well, at this point, if they really are out there in the woods, they've been out in the frigid South Dakota elements with no food, no water, no shelter for, what, months? I feel like the odds of finding them alive, they aren't too high. Right, but I mean, even though the odds aren't exactly on their side,

everyone is still so hopeful that they're gonna show back up alive and well. But unfortunately, that's not how this story ends. On March 10th, police get a call from a local man who says that he was driving along Highway 281 when he looked out his window and saw a woman's body floating in a ditch. But everything about this discovery will raise a thousand more questions than it ever answers. Carson Walker reports for the Argus leader that when investigators get to the scene,

they realize the body is only about 75 feet from the exact spot where Ruby Arnold and Tracy had ended up after the accident. And even before, they can positively ID her. They are pretty sure that they found Ruby. Um, I'm sorry, how? It seems impossible, how? It seems impossible, right? Yeah, right by the crash scene where they've searched that exact area multiple times with

multiple agencies. No one can wrap their heads around how she could have been there the whole time. But before they even address that, they need to determine if this really is Ruby. They start by removing the woman from the water, but she is so decomposed that they can't make an ID based on her facial features, so they check her ankle. And sure enough, there is a small tattoo that spells out love. Now when they found her, Ruby is fully clothed in the same outfit that she was wearing the day of the accident.

The only things missing are her shoes and her glasses. They search around the ditch to try and find those things, but they come up empty. The only other thing they discover is a clump of dark brown hair that's on the shoulder of the road. And it looks like Ruby's, but they send it off for testing

just to be like 100% sure. So now that they found Ruby, the question then becomes, where is Arnold? Again, there's still hope that he could be out there somewhere, but just to be safe, they decide to drain the ditch. They're like, okay, this is where we found her. Maybe he's here somewhere.

It takes the rest of the day into the next morning, but when they pump the last of the water out, just before noon on Thursday, they are crushed to see Arnold's body sitting at the bottom, just 15 feet from where Ruby was found. And they had to pump all the water out to find him. Mm-hmm. I guess I'm confused. Didn't you say that the ditch was only a few inches deep where they were and the other parts were frozen

over? Girl, I'm so confused is like what this episode should have been called. Like, because I literally walked away from this with a thousand questions. And I mean, it all comes back to those discrepancies about the conditions and the depth of the ditch. I mean, obviously, it's really flooded now or they wouldn't be draining it. But jury's still out on how high the water level was when the crash happened and if it was even frozen over at all.

Because if it was frozen over, then it makes sense that their bodies are only now just being discovered because again, we're at a point where the weather is warming up, ice is melting. Okay, but during the searches, they hadn't found any spots where the ice was cracked or broken through. So how could they have gotten in in the first place? Okay, you're getting a little bit ahead of me. I promise we're going to come back to that. So anyway, Arnold is fully clothed, although they aren't able to confirm that his clothes are the same ones that he went missing in. According to that same Unsolved Mysteries episode, they find a set of keys in his pocket with what looks like a car key and two house keys

Now they think the set likely belongs to him, but they're not a hundred percent sure yet But what really stands out is the condition of his body? Arnold's way less decomposed than Ruby Now the reason for this isn't automatically clear like they're gonna have to determine that in his autopsy But it's something that they notice right away. The big question here now is, how do two bodies go unnoticed for months despite multiple searches? Because just like you said, Brett, even if they had fallen through and drowned, there would have been a hole in the ice that someone would have noticed. Yeah.

But no one saw anything. And that really only points to one answer. That someone put them there after all the searches happened. Exactly. And after news about the discovery of their body spreads, a local man comes forward and corroborates this theory. He said that back on January 31st, he had searched that specific area for a hubcap that he had lost on the highway earlier that day.

According to another article for the Argus Leader by Carson Walker, he didn't find his hubcap, but he tells police that he didn't see anybody's either. So they take this as further proof that Arnold and Ruby weren't in the ditch until recently. Now, they're hopeful that the autopsies are gonna give them more answers as to how and when they died, but the coroner's report doesn't actually answer much. Dental records confirm that the heavily decomposed body

is Ruby, and the coroner finds that neither Ruby nor Arnold has any noticeable injuries, either from the accident or afterward. He also can't determine a time or a manner of death, although his best guess is that they both died on December 12th, which was the day of the accident. And as for cause of death, he believes that they died of exposure. But none of this is making any sense to me. How did they end up in the water then?

Well, officers are still believing that the bodies were dumped by someone, not just because they didn't find anything in previous searches of the ditch, but also due to evidence like that clump of hair on the road that they think is Ruby's, like they're getting it tested. But when you think about it,

that wouldn't have remained on the road for three months. It would only be there if Ruby's body had been moved recently, assuming that it is her hair. Again, the results aren't back yet. Okay. So let's say they died of exposure, like the coroner said. Maybe out in the woods or somewhere the searchers couldn't find them outside of the search radius. Then someone stumbles across their bodies and instead of calling authorities and being like, uh, I just found two bodies, you're looking for two missing people, maybe you should check this out.

Whoever finds them is like, oh, I know, I'll just take them back to where they should have been found. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully team they were moved, but I guess I'm not buying the exposure thing. It doesn't make sense. Why? Why would you move them if you didn't have anything to do with their deaths? I don't get it.

No, I mean, you're totally right. Like, again, because I mean, I know DNA necessarily wasn't a huge thing, but like, you're gonna risk getting seen pulling bodies out of the woods and just be like, I was just trying to help them get fat. Like, no. Yeah. Yeah, that's what it feels like. Like, I'm just going to help them get found by not doing what I'm supposed to do by calling the people who are looking for them. None of it really makes sense. But also the foul play thing doesn't necessarily make sense because for that to happen, like, was someone just lying in wait, hoping somebody crashed their car into a random ditch? To be fair, Tracy said that she didn't know how they crashed. Maybe it could have been

a setup? Yeah, I mean, I guess she was in the car the whole time. So like, someone could have been in the woods hoping, okay, if they set this up for the car to crash flip, whatever, just sitting there waiting, hoping they survived, they get out of the car. And then again, they hope that they like come to them instead of like waiting on the side of the road for help. Like, and you know what I can't get over is the different levels of decomposition.

To me, if it's foul play, aren't they likely dead at the same time? I don't know, not necessarily. But even if you want to say that exposure is more likely because of the different levels of decomp, maybe one could last longer in the cold than the other, how do you explain them making it back to the same exact spot, Ashley? I don't know. There are a few episodes where there's no explanation, right? There's one other one I can think of. We haven't done it yet. We're still working on it because

it's so complicated. But like in every other case, you can at least imagine a scenario that at least is plausible. You can like make the puzzle pieces fit. Yeah, even if that's not what happened, you're like, I could see it. It's all physically possible in this way. This is one of those were like, explain to me anything that makes sense. That ticks all the boxes, that explains everything in a reasonable way at least, and it doesn't even get close. Yeah. Well, Arnold and Ruby's clothing, some blood samples and fingernail scrapings are all sent off for testing. Everyone's hoping like, maybe something there will provide some answers. But they don't.

At least none that have been released to the public. The only thing I know for sure is that they confirm the clump of hair from the side of the road was Ruby's. But get this, in that same episode of Unsolved Mysteries, it's reported that the keys that they found with Arnold aren't actually Arnold's. What? The car key isn't to his vehicle and the two additional keys aren't to his house like they thought.

Okay, where are Arnold's keys and who the f**k does this other set belong to? I don't know. None of the source material ever mentions Arnold's keys being found in the ditch or in his car, because my first question was like, well, where's his set of keys? We know he was driving his car. Right.

Part of me thinks that maybe they're still in the car, because remember his headlights were on when Tracy was found? So maybe they're still in the ignition. But I don't actually know that for sure, because sometimes you can turn the lights on without having the keys. But as far as the set of keys that they did find, investigators have no idea who they belong to or what they go to.

And just to be clear, these keys weren't just like nearby, in the ditch somewhere. No, they were in his pocket. So I mean, I keep thinking like you find the owner of those keys, those are all the answers that you need, right? Yeah. Now, as if investigators' brains don't hurt enough trying to make sense of the nonsensical, over the next few days, as word spreads about the discovery of the bodies, investigators' luck turns around when they get several calls from the public. But when they look into these tips, they're left even more confused because multiple people

say that they had seen both Arnold and Ruby alive in the time after the crash. Six different people contact investigators, and while I don't know the details of all of the sightings, there are a few that have been reported on because they stick out so much. One person claims that they saw the couple get into a car along the highway on the morning of the accident. A second person claims that they saw Arnold driving

with three other people on New Year's Eve, which would have been weeks after the accident. And a third claims to have seen Ruby about 20 minutes southeast of Lake Andes in Wagner, South Dakota. And they say that happened on January 20th. Now, it's unclear from the reporting if Arnold was seen with her. Officers conduct polygraph tests on each of these people mentioned, but each one passes with flying colors.

So just to be sure, they track down two of the three people seen with Arnold on New Year's Eve and bring them in for questioning. But they have a different story. These people swear up and down that they haven't seen or heard from Arnold or Ruby since the accident, and they claim that they weren't even out on New Year's Eve. They were all home. So police asked them if they're willing to take a polygraph and they agree and they both fail. Listen, I know how we feel about polygraphs and honestly, how much credit can you give to something not ever admissible in court? But it feels like too much of a coincidence for both of these people to fail when everyone else passes. Mm-hmm. Totally.

And I wish I could say that the investigators dig into this a little bit more because even if one of those six sightings are correct, it throws everything that the coroner set into question. But for some reason, police just go radio silent. Like even the families are no longer getting updates. And up until now, they've been in pretty regular contact with the investigators and had overall been pretty satisfied with how things were going, but now they're getting nothing.

And this silence becomes the new standard for their relationship with law enforcement. That feels so shady. Why the cold shoulder? I don't know. And investigators never explain, which obviously this causes a ton of frustration to build, because to the families, it feels like answers are just around the corner.

But a majority of the year trickles by without any new updates from investigators. In fact, the next update that they get isn't until November, when the sheriff's department decides to get a second opinion and sends all of their case files to a lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And it's a good thing they do because even though this lab confirms the cause of death is exposure, the rest of the results are different than the findings from the initial investigation. Yeah, but before you even ask me how different, let me get ahead of you. No one knows, because according to another article by Carson Walker, the lead investigator won't release the report because he doesn't, quote,

know if there are important differences or not, end quote. What? How do you not know? Isn't it their job to figure it out? I don't even understand that statement. Right? I mean, especially after so much time passes. And okay, if you still don't know what it means, I'm going to get at this point, especially, what is the harm in sharing? Yeah. Plus, the families feel the same way. But investigators are not budging. And after a

while, it seems like their case is slowly but surely fading into the background. The reward for information is up to $5,000 in hopes that maybe more money will be an incentive for someone to come forward, but no one does. It's not until their episode of Unsolved Mysteries airs in 1995 that anything really happens. That's when police announced that they've received

tips because of the show, including one call about two men who were allegedly seen at the ditch just hours before the bodies were found. And this seems huge, right? Like, this could be the missing piece of the puzzle investigators need. If their bodies really were dumped at the ditch, these guys could be the ones responsible, or at least maybe saw the people who were responsible. But once police tell the families about this tip, I don't know what happens because they never mention it again. And look, there could be a million reasons for that.

There is not a ton of reporting out there on Arnold and Ruby's case. So this could just be something that was never reported on. Or police could be keeping things close to the vest. Again, who knows? But whatever the reason, it seems like the tip doesn't lead them to any new information because eventually the case goes stagnant again.

By 1999, the sheriff's department hands jurisdiction over to the FBI. And I don't know why they make this switch. I mean, the FBI has been assisting since the beginning, but the families aren't complaining because it seems like, okay, finally there's going to be something that happens. So the FBI does a review of the case, but the families are devastated in September when it's announced that they're closing the case for good. The Associated Press reported for the Rapid City Journal that there just isn't enough evidence of foul play to justify a criminal investigation.

Okay, what is enough evidence though? I feel like there is a list of concerning things. The different levels of decomposition, the sightings of them after the accident, the clump of hair on the side of the road. They were put there, right? Like, and again, tell me a scenario how they got there and foul play isn't involved. Right. I mean, there are too many things that just don't add up. And without knowing all of the details

behind why the FBI makes this decision, Arnold and Ruby's families are furious. And in that frustration, they slowly start to wonder if it was closed because investigators are trying to hide something. Which I was kind of starting to think earlier, but I guess I don't get what they're trying to hide. I mean, the only thing I can think of is maybe mistakes made early in the investigation.

And this is kind of the family's theory too, because they point to that second round of lab test results, because they wonder if that report hadn't been released because it showed authorities missed something or messed something up and they don't want that getting out. And here's the thing, even though the investigation is closed, none of the information that they gathered, including that report, is released to the public. Like all of that is still being kept under lock and key. And this isn't the only thing that seems fishy. They apparently never uploaded Ruby and Arnold's information into any National Missing Persons databases,

which is pretty standard practice. And they also say that when they asked to see pictures of the accident scene, just to see if maybe something was missed, investigators said that they couldn't, because even though they took pictures, none of the negatives turned out. So it's just one frustration after another,

and it makes the families wonder, would Arnold and Ruby's deaths have been solved by now if the couple had been white instead of Native American? And ultimately, they think they would have, and most of the community there in Charles Mixed County believe so as well. You see, the Yankton Sioux Reservation makes up about 60% of Charles Mix County. So the population is largely Yankton Sioux members, like Arnold and Ruby. And they all know that police response

isn't always up to par when it comes to indigenous communities, and especially when it comes to missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, and two-spirit people. According to the CDC, the murder rate for women living in reservations is 10 times higher than the national average, and homicide is the third leading cause of death for indigenous women. But despite everything that points to something more going on here, Arnold and Ruby's case remains closed.

To this day, Ruby's shoes and glasses have never been found, and they still don't know any more about those keys found in Arnold's pocket. And it's all these unknowns that urge their families to believe that there is more work to be done. While nothing can bring their loved ones back, finding out what really happened could bring them the closure that they deserve.

So if you know anything about Ruby and Arnold's deaths, please contact the Charles Mix County Sheriff's Department at 605-487-7625. Don't forget, if you want more Crime Junkie episodes like this one, new members can join the fan club for free for the rest of August when you sign up through our website and use code FREESUMMER. Just click the link in our show notes to get started. And make sure you hit the follow button here so you never miss any bonus content that we

put out in our main feed. I'm going to be back next Thursday with another vault episode. So I'll see you then. Bye, Crime Junkies. Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo