The Disturbing Deaths of Arnold Archambeau and Ruby Bruguier

20-year-old Arnold Archambeau sat behind the steering wheel of his car, looking out into the cold morning air beyond the stop sign just in front of him on a remote intersection. This intersection was on the edge of the Yankton Sioux Indian Reservation in Lake Andes, South Dakota - and the date was December 12, 1992. Sitting next to him was his 19-year-old girlfriend, Ruby Bruguier, and Ruby's 17-year-old cousin by the name of Tracy Dion was sat in the back. Taking a risk, Arnold decided that there were no cars coming, and so swerved out from behind the stop sign onto the road ahead. This snap decision would cost both he and his girlfriend their lives, and would leave Dion haunted by the bizarre circumstances of their deaths for the rest of her days...

## The Snap of a Finger

All three youths had been drinking that night, and so Archambeau was likely not thinking entirely clearly as he turned out from behind the stop sign onto the road ahead. Tracy has no real idea what happened next, but she knows that '*it was just like the snap of a finger*' before the car suddenly crashed into a nearby ditch. Tracy regained consciousness to find that she was upside-down, and that Ruby was the only other one in the car with her - after Arnold had mysteriously vanished. Ruby was in a state of total panic, apparently hitting up against the inside of the car while crying and repeating '*oh my God, oh my God*'. One of the car doors was open just enough for Ruby to swiftly slide out of the wrecked vehicle - but it fell closed when Tracy tried to reach out for it to escape the terrifying situation in which she was trapped.

After rescuing Tracy, the police had already completely scoured the area for any sort of trace of the vanished couple. Despite the ice underneath the car being entirely frozen solid, the police still feared that the missing youths may have wandered off only to fall through the ice and drown at another location. The Deputy for the Charles Mix County Sheriff's Department at the time was a man named Bill Youngstrom commented that the police '*had one officer walk on the opposite side of the railroad tracks, thinking maybe they wandered off toward the lake area, which was also frozen*'. He also admitted to speculating that Arnold might've deliberately run off to prevent being arrested under drunk-driving laws - and so he figured that he would likely return '*in a few days*'. Suffice to say, he didn't, and neither did his girlfriend...

Karen Tuttle, Arnold's aunt, refused to accept the Deputy's theory - saying '*I knew he wouldn’t hide, he would’ve come home to us or called us and told us I’m over here don’t worry about me.  But we never heard anything from him*'.

Working tirelessly, Deputy Youngstrom chased up every possible lead for the next three months - coming up empty again and again. It seemed like the couple had completely disappeared. That was, at least, until the Spring thaw arrived in early March. A passing motorist stumbled upon a macabre scene - there was a body floating in a ditch just 75ft away from the site of the accident. This body was that of Ruby Bruguier. When Youngstrom got to the scene, he was shocked by what he saw.

She was wearing the same clothes as she had been wearing when she disappeared, and they were completely intact. Her shoes and glasses were missing, however, and her body was severely decomposed. So decomposed, in fact, that it was hard to recognise her at first - and the police actually had to analyse her tattoos to gain a positive identification of the body. Bolstered by the sudden discovery of the missing woman, they decided to pump the ditch. By noon the next day, they had found Arnold. He was submerged in the water roughly 15ft away from where Ruby had been found. Oddly, his body was in almost perfect condition - '*his skin color was fine*' - and he didn't seem to have been frozen to the ground like one would expect. Youngstrom says that it is unknown if he was wearing the same clothes as he had been when he vanished.

The bodies were immediately autopsied, but it was impossible to estimate a time of death. The coroner announced that they had found that the two victims had died of exposure, but Youngstrom was skeptical of this. He says that it was absurd to suggest that they froze to death in that ditch, because they would've therefore had to have been there for the entire three months - and he had walked through that same ditch several times in the period in question. He also had '*written affidavits*' from people who had nothing else to do with the case swearing that the bodies '*couldn’t have been there*'.

Youngstrom's refusal to believe that the deceased individuals had been in the ditch the entire time was further bolstered by the discovery of two items which didn't seem to fit the official hypothesis. There was a tuft of hair found alongside the nearby road which was determined by forensic analysis to belong to Ruby Bruguier. It seems preposterous to suggest that the tuft of hair could've stayed there for three months - and Youngstrom proposed that when whoever abducted the pair brought them back to the ditch must've been '*when that piece of hair fell off of Ruby*'. Also, a set of keys were found in Arnold's pocket when he was dragged up from the ditch - as well as what appeared to be two house-keys. Youngstrom apparently still has these keys, and has said that he has since been unable to find the vehicle or the house to which the keys belong.

There was one other startling development to emerge from the mysterious case - a witness claimed that she had seen Arnold accompanied by three other people on New Year's Eve, which was almost three weeks after his disappearance. This witness was given a polygraph test (which are certainly not infallible) that she passed. Quentin Bruguier, Ruby's father, summed up the general sentiment among those connected to the case. '*They had to die someplace else.  Somebody had to come and put them back in there again, to make it look like that’s where they died*'.

## Analysis

There are several bizarre elements to this case which fit the criteria that were laid out by David Paulides to define the phenomenon that he has named 'Missing 411'. I know that Paulides is not entirely trustworthy, but I have the viewpoint that these sorts of disappearances do actually happen despite Paulides not having done an amazing job of making the cases seem credible in the public eye.

The criteria into which this case fits include the **missing being found in an area previously searched** - this one is the most obvious link to the Missing 411 phenomenon, seeing as Youngstrom utterly refused to believe that the victims could've been where they were found for the entire three month period due to how thoroughly it had been searched. An odd trend noticed in Missing 411 cases is **missing shoes**, and of course Ruby's shoes were missing - as were her glasses, while her clothes were entirely intact. Victims of the Missing 411 phenomenon often vanish **near water**, and this is obviously the case with this couple. Tracy also **lost consciousness** when the car crashed, and when she woke Arnold had vanished and Ruby seemed to be inconsolable.

Their bodies were found in different stages of decomposition despite both of them having been ostensibly underwater for a long time, and so that raises the interesting question of what Arnold was doing when Ruby was already dead. Where was he? Perhaps he killed Ruby and then went off to the New Year's Eve party at which he was allegedly later seen? Then again - I can't find a reference to a possible motive for this action. Both individuals died of exposure, and this takes a long time. Why didn't they get help? The biggest question is why Ruby didn't help Tracy. She had the opportunity to, and would've presumably went for help immediately after vacating the vehicle if she couldn't rescue Tracy herself - that is, if she wasn't either acting against her will or was trying to kill Tracy for some reason. The couple would have obviously been dazed after the crash - but Ruby at least was lucid enough to close a door behind her.

## Source

https://unsolved.com/gallery/arnold-archambeau-ruby-bruguier/

http://coldcasetheories.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-case-that-haunts-me.html