Warning. This episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing. 1992 Arnold Archambault and Ruby Bruyere were a young couple and members of the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. One particular December morning, they had been out all night and they were driving home when they had a patch of black ice and ended up flipping the car.
Bruyere and Archambault left the wreckage, leaving behind Bruyere 17 year old cousin Tracy Deon still inside the car and the couple simply vanished. Their whereabouts remained unknown until March of the following year, and that is when their decomposing bodies were found right near where the crash happened.
Their deaths were ruled as accidental due to hypothermia, but their families and many others, including some of the investigators, believe that foul play may have been involved because there are many bizarre questions to this case. This is a study of strange. Welcome to the show. I'm Michael Mae. And I'm joined by Brett Sagan. What I. Yes, Sagan. Let's say it again. Brooke is an actor, a performer, a director, a writer. You work in casting, too.
I believe you're one of those mini multi-hyphenate, aren't you? Yeah. Yes. I'm a creature of necessity. Got to make it all. Work as we all. As we all are. Know, you're. I'm a big fan of your work. You and I have not really spoken that much together, but we have worked together on a couple of things. Mm hmm. And you are not a big fan of yours. Yeah. Thanks. I can't miss my mullet. Yeah, And the are the mullets and 12 hour shift. Everybody check that out. Give that a plug.
Directed and written by Brett Grant. Now, that was so much fun. I was so happy I got to be on camera and. And rock a mullet. Now I'm a big fan of yours. This is a nice excuse just to, like, talk to you a little bit. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, of. Course. So let me ask you a question, because I did kind of throw you into this. Are you at all a fan or interested or get intrigued by things like True crime or mysteries or anything like that? I love it. I absolutely love it.
I probably have watched too much, you know, like when I do love the Dateline, I do love Dateline. I used to love watching Forensic Files like Murder is fantastic. You know, you end up watching those like and you know, you've seen it before, but you can't remember exactly. We know who did it. Yeah. And then you have to watch them all over, So. You got to sit through it again. Yeah, exactly. No, I'm. I'm. I'm so glad because I was like, Man, I hope she likes this kind of topic.
I do. I love the mysteries, too. But sometimes with, like, the unsolved mysteries and stuff your brain before you go into it, it's like that show Fatal Attraction where you know someone's going to get killed by a pet. You know, know what do you like? It's in the title. I know what's going to happen. It's the same thing with Unser solved mysteries like I it's I know it's going to happen. It's not going to get solved. So maybe I don't want to get invested because it's not solved. Yeah. Yeah, it's.
That's a good point. See, I like the unsolved things. I tend to gravitate towards the stories that are unsolved just because there's that intriguing ness to it. Yeah, that makes me sound super intelligent. Do you feel like you. You're going to be the person who, like, Wait, I got it. Call somebody. No. Not real. To be very honest. No, I'm not. I tend to just be like, I just want to think about this a lot and see if I can get somewhere no one else has gone.
But I never just assume I'm going to be able to solve something. Call the police. Yeah, got it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's too many of those people in the world, especially online and forums. Everybody. Yeah, exactly. Everything. And it's like, you know. It's hard not to it. It is, it is hard not to.
So this one, this cold case and listeners, people that actually follow my show closely will probably start to realize that I go through phases because I went through like a lot of serial killers in the 18. 90, my murder. So I'm on a couple of, you know, my murder phase, and now I'm in my, like, strange cold case from the 20th century phase. And this one, this one has been around. People do know this case. It's been on Unsolved Mysteries twice back in the nineties.
And like when when what's his name? Mustache Guy hosted thousands they revisited the case and so it's been around there's been some articles and stuff but it is quite a doozy and there's elements of this that are just so mysterious that it has always grabbed my attention. Yeah, and it's very interesting. So this is the story of Ruby Bruyere and Arnold Archambault. They were 18 and 19 oh no, sorry, 18 and 20 respectively. So they're young. Young cops, tough age.
And they had been sweethearts, tough age, and they had been sweethearts since high school, I believe. And they even had a young daughter, Erica marie, together, who was about I think she was 18 or 19 months when this happened. They were members of the Yankton Sioux tribe and lived on the reservation, which is in Charles Mix County, South Dakota. And Archambault worked at the Fort Randall Casino, which is near the town of Lake Andes, which is on Lake Andes.
Funny enough, that Lake Andes would be on lake surprising and surprising. Have you ever been to South Dakota? Honestly, no, I have not. I mean, I know whereabouts it is. It's below North Dakota. That's right. That's right. That I'm aware of. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to have it done it. Yeah. Yeah, me too. And one of the mistakes of this story is this is this mystery begins on December 11th, in 1992.
And you think South Dakota, you think snowy tundra, or you might think that like someone from myself, I'm from Florida and live in L.A.. I know you're from Louisiana. Uh huh. So I think South Dakota in December, I think massive snow everywhere. Yeah. I would think. However, the night that this happens, it is cold. Like I think the lake is frozen and stuff like that, but there's not a massive amount of snow on the ground.
So just keep keep that in the back of your head because that does relate to some theories about this. Yeah. So the story goes that on the night of December 11th, like I said, 1992, Rudy and Arnold went out first for some fun. You know, they're young, their parents. They probably want to get out and have some fun with friends. I probably haven't been able to do that a lot since having a baby.
I relate to that. I understand. And and their young daughter stayed in the care of Ruby's uncle, and the couple took the uncle's daughter, Tracy Dionne, with them as they went out. And Tracy was not a kid. It's not like they were babysitting her as they went out to have fun. She was 17. So all of them are around the same age. They're all friends. The story goes that they went and visited a variety of places that night. They saw a bunch of friends.
They went went around town, I think when Unsolved Mysteries covered it. I think that was the thing I watched that that says it this way. But they were like they went bar hopping. I don't know if they necessarily went bar hopping. I think they just went to like they did go to some multiple places. But it may not have been just quote unquote bars. Right. However, they didn't come home until 6 a.m. So they they went out for the whole night. Yes. It was a full evening. Full evening of fun.
And their uncle noticed that they had been drinking when they returned. And he wisely suggested, hey, you guys need a sober up before you can take your daughter anywhere. So go home, sleep sober up, come back later. And they agreed. Luckily, they agreed and they left. So the uncle said, get back in the car, drunk people and go. So that's the one part that I don't like. Yeah. The wise thing is he said, Don't do this with your little daughter.
But however, he should have just been like, Hey, crash on the couch or something until you're sober. That's what I would have thought. But yeah. Wait, because they still had his daughter, is that correct? Yes. Yes, they did. Yes. Tracy. Tracy is. They're his daughter. So like, you can't take your daughter because you're drunk, but please take my daughter. This is. I guess so. This is wild. South Dakota, man. South Dakota man, I guess. I don't. Know. He Southerners.
We knew you do some weird stuff. You know, when you're out in the country, you got a truck, you know, you put some kids in the back of a pickup truck. Listen, I'm not judging anyone's choices. No, no, not at all. Me. Me neither. Around 7 a.m., they were. They were driving home and they were turning from a sort of a small a small side street. They were going to turn left on U.S. Route 281, which at the time was Route 18. Today it's 281. So that's Lane. I'm just going to refer to it.
And this small intersecting street that they were on, they stopped at a stop sign sign. Arnold was driving and he turns left on to Route 281. And as soon as he did, apparently he hit black ice and spun out, flipped in the car, kind of stops upside down in a ditch next to the road. And this, depending on what kind of article or source you read or interview, you you listen to this ditch is sometimes called a depression. Some people think it's like a run off.
You know how next to highways they like dig it out, dig a ditch so that water can run off. Apparently, this is it's like that. However, from what I've read, it's actually more of a natural farming depression in the ground. Okay. And next to that, on the other side of of the ditch from the road is where old train tracks used to be. So that's naturally kind of built up a little higher, too.
So this ditch gets filled with water, both from precipitation and also from the fact that Lake Andes is like right on the other side of those train tracks. Okay, So I think it's water from a lake, it's water from precipitation. And the water in this this ditch, this depression was frozen. So their car is on top of this, like frozen water. Obviously, it's cold, it's dark. They're slightly drunk. They've just been in a major accident. And this is where things start to get a little confusing.
So Tracy Deon, the cousin, she recalls that after the crash, she didn't see Arnold in the car. So we don't know if he was ejected while the car flipped and spun or if maybe she got knocked out and she isn't aware of it. Like maybe she was out for a little bit of time and when she came to Arnold had crawled out of the car, she was saying that Ruby was in the front saying, Oh my God, oh my God, and kind of banging on things.
And eventually Ruby got her door opened, crawled out, and then the door shut behind her. So Tracy was left in the car. Her cousin got out of the car and left her in there. And that's one of the really weird aspects of this case, is that Tracy's left in the car and she's probably calling for help. I think she even tried to get a door open herself and she couldn't get anything open, so she just left alone and she doesn't know where Ruby or Arnold went.
And yes, so the first thought I have is why didn't Ruby stay to help Tracy, but also. Right. Like Ruby is intoxicated. Yeah, she may have had an head injury, so you're not thinking straight, right? You're just. You're so it doesn't. I don't know. I guess I'm not too shocked by the behavior, if that makes sense. Yeah, Same for Tracy, too, right? Like what? She's probably, you know, they're all drunk, and I would imagine, like, spinning, getting in a crash. You're very disorientated. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. However, it is weird and bizarre to think that you're just left in the car after an accident, and two people that are family and friends just kind of leave you there. So Arnold and Ruby never returned to the car. And luckily, this is a highway, we think. And when I say we, I mean some idiot like myself thinks that it's South Dakota. There's not a lot of people. Things are very spread out.
Desolate. Exactly. But it is a main thoroughfare where people are going into the town or away from the town of Lake Andes. So a passing car comes by pretty quickly, I think, and sees the accident. Authorities are notified. People come, they save Tracy. They were able to get her out of the crash and immediately people start searching for Ruby and. Right. And this is talk. We're like this like 7 a.m., right? Or 8 a.m. like. Dale Yeah. So it's like daylight.
Yes. Yes. Especially by the time like the search and rescue people show up like it is daylight. And so they're searching in the day. And the first thought is, okay, there's ice around, there's ice in the ditch. There's also ice in the lake. So if they were wandering around, they could have stepped in the lake and break through ice and fall on the lake. So they're searching all over these places and there's no evidence of anybody falling through ice.
There's no people buried under, you know, big sayings of snow or whatever you would call. Right. And yeah, they they searched everywhere. And one of the thoughts from a deputy Bill Young strum, since he assumed since the driver was drinking and a lot of cases where there's an accident after a driver has been drinking, the the driver will leave the scene. Yeah. They walk out of they're in trouble. Mm hmm. Yeah. So they leave. And so he's like, All right, they'll come back like it's Arnold.
It's a small town. He's going to go somewhere. We're going to hear from him in, like, a day. That's just what happens. However, Arnold never came back. Ruby never came back. Family never heard from them. They were not found. And as time goes on, everybody is devastated. They obviously they had a baby daughter. They had family, friends. Apparently, both of them were were very well-liked in the community. Arnold had been prom king just a year or two earlier.
And according to Unsolved Mysteries and a few articles I've read, Deputy Young Strom continued to search the area almost every day like he took it upon himself to really put in the work to try to figure out what happened. Because this is so bizarre. And then March of 1993 comes. So it's what, three months? December, January? Yeah, yeah, March. There we go. I can do math. That's how it happens. That's how you do it. And people start, as we do as humans.
People start suspecting and theorizing all sorts of different things. Some people assumed the couple did this on purpose and they left town to start new lives. Other people thought that, you know, some killer came by and snatched them up and took them somewhere. And. Yeah, and none of that really makes sense to me. The family doesn't believe something like them leaving is a possibility because they didn't love their daughter. Ruby was still breastfeeding. It's like you don't.
And also, this is a lot of work to go through just to leave town. Like there's other ways to do this. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And then on March 10th, someone, a passing driver saw a body floating in the meltwater in that depression off Route 281, about 75 feet away from where the initial crash was. Authorities came out and the body was too far decomposed to really figure out who it was. Immediately, however, they were able to find a tattoo on an ankle and a matched a tattoo that Ruby had.
So they were able to identify Ruby through this tattoo. And then they were like, Well, wait, what if Arnold's out here, too? And this ditch is like 3 to 4 feet deep of water. So they they drained it. They pump the water out, and the next day they find Arnold's body just 15 feet away. So both of them were right there near the crash. So you might think so. Yeah. So case closed. They got out. They felt the rice. It was just really hard to see. But a big but a boom. There we go.
It's really sad. It's really terrible. Yeah. However, there are some, again, just bizarre, strange things that come up. We have questions. I want to hear some of these crazy theories. We're going to get to those. Well, first, here are some facts that are strange and bizarre. Yeah, the bodies, Arnold and Ruby, they had different levels of decomposition, which doesn't make sense if they died at the same time, at the same time. Yes.
Now, some people have looked into like, hey, Arnold's bigger than Ruby, so maybe his body decomposes differently. Well, it turns out no, it doesn't really matter what size you are. It just looks like they were killed or died at two different times. Yeah, they found. They found what is commonly called a tuft of hair that belonged to Ruby. And the hair was in better condition than her body.
I don't know how you can deduce that with hair, but that is what you read and what is commonly talked about in this case. Also, Ruby did not have her shoes or glasses. Okay. That doesn't that doesn't shock me too much because glasses, they were just in an accident spun out like they could have been flown off and gone somewhere else. Right. Right. A shoes is definitely weird. I have from from some previous work on a different project I worked on.
I've actually come across a lot of missing person cases where shoes are found or people are found without shoes on. It is. Yeah, it is far too common and there's a lot of different reasons why it doesn't really make sense in this case, because sometimes it has to do with water because fish can actually eat like feet and stuff. And it's also usually the first part of the body to decompose. But there's nothing about her feet being off her body or anything.
So it is it is weird that her shoes are missing. And also it was cold. Like, why does she have her shoes off? Right. Maybe it's more comfortable. And I don't know. It's just it's weird. Again, it's just one of the bizarre pieces, Pieces of evidence. Arnold's clothes could not be determined that that's what he was wearing the day of the crash. A lot of people online make a big to do about this because they're like, oh, he's a different clothes.
And it's like they went. Home and then they came back. And then they came back. But they can't. They just say they can't determine it's the same clothes. It doesn't mean it was different clothes and people online really grab onto this and like, oh, of course something nefarious happened. Yeah. However, it is it is weird. It is weird, but how often do you remember what someone wore? Really remember what someone had on the day before and you can't even remember what you wore the day before?
That's not. Exactly. Exactly. I don't think there were pictures of them that night. You know, I don't think they posed for a photo before going out. Yeah. No, no CCTV footage from all this bar hopping. Yeah. Something tells me there's not a lot of CCTV cameras in South Dakota in 1992. So the weirdest thing to me, my own personal weird saying that stands out is Arnold was found with a set of keys on him, and it was keys to a house and keys to a car.
The keys were not to his house, not to rubies, not not to any known house they could ever figure out. And the car key was not to any car that they could ever figure out. So that is super weird. As very. And the time of death could not be. Yeah, the time of death could not be determined. But they both died from the elements, from hypothermia.
And the coroner's report said that they likely died somewhere else entirely or sorry, not the report, but there were comments from investigators saying, yeah, this is really weird. They likely died somewhere else. And on top of that, an additional report. There was evidence that was sent to a lab in New Mexico and the evidence came back from New Mexico saying hypothermia may have killed them, but it could also have been something else, which is a very open ended question.
That just leads you to more mystery. Right? So that is another weird thing I have not been able to find that report or details about this lab in New Mexico. So this is for listeners out there. If anybody's really been following this case and has a copy of that or has more details than just like, oh, it may have been something else, I would love to actually know details of that. Feel free to reach out to me at a study of Strange at gmail.com.
And yes, so Ruby's father, Quinton Bruyere, had his own theory. He's quoted as saying 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. And this leads us into this idea since the decomposition levels were different, said with the car keys, the question about clothing, the question about like, okay, was it hypothermia? Was it not hypothermia? This is getting really weird leads now to the conspiracy.
I shouldn't even say conspiracies. It's just theories that something else may have happened to them entirely and that they were brought back to this site. And that is one of the main theories of people from people that believe that something else went on here besides just a car crash. And I'm going to have you read, Brooke, the saying I sent you. Yeah. This is a quote from an article in The Argus Leader on March 13th, 1993, which is one of the local papers. So do you have that in front of you?
I have it in front of me where we read the whole thing that you sent. The whole thing. The whole thing is. Yeah, gotcha. A lake. And these couple most likely did not die in the ditch where their bodies were found this week. But early autopsy results show the two died of exposure. A prosecutor said Friday officials found the body of Arnold Archambault. Listen.
I have to say a friendly Arnold Archambault, 20, on Thursday, about 15 feet from where the body of Ruben Brucia, I'll say it for Angele, 19, was found Wednesday floating in several feet of water in a ditch, about one quarter mile east of Lake Andes. The bodies were found about 75 feet from the accident site. We're certain these bodies were not there at the time of the accident, said Tim Whalen, Charles Mix, County state's attorney.
Although he can't say how long the bodies got there, although he can't say how the bodies got there. Whalen said it's unlikely the couple died where they were found. I don't believe that they did for two reasons. One, they weren't there to. All of a sudden, the bodies show up on March 10th and 11th. Their manner of time, their manner and time of death is still under investigate. Gee, that's wild. Yeah. So even authorities are questioning what happened. What's going on? Tim Whalen.
Yeah, come on. Tim. Oh, come on, Tim. I also like the way that he just says that, like, they weren't there. They weren't there at the first investigation. Like, were you guys drinking? Were you also drinking? What happened? What's going. On? I'm actually going to jump ahead in some of my notes, Brooke,
because you bring up something I want to I wanted to comment with this story. So the big theory about something else happened and they were brought back because that is what a lot of people like I said before, it's what a lot of people think. And even here in, you know, an authority figure in the investigation is saying they weren't there. I actually think my personal theory, again, I'm jumping ahead CASM, skipping over notes. But my personal theory is that they did die there.
I think that makes the most sense. I think it's the simplest thing. I think simple things usually end up being true. I think they fell through ice or got covered up with ice. Yeah. And even if they wandered off, even if they wandered off, like, again, drunk head injuries, all that kind of stuff, they could have fallen into the lake and only via Google Maps. So I could be wrong. I'm not there in person, but I'm there in person as you can get digitally.
But there does seem to be from where the crash site was an area almost like almost like a there's like a bridge where this old train track was. And underneath it there is an area for like runoff of the lake water to come in to that depression area. So I actually think between the thawing and refreezing of water, because it was still warm enough in December that time of year, where during the day it would get above freezing.
So you have water which is warming and then freezing and then thawing and then freezing and then moving and then freezing. You have all this kind of stuff where I actually think they could have fallen underneath the ice and moved around a bit over time and maybe even have fallen in the ice in the lake. And it's sort of been brought back in over three months of all that that natural thawing. Yeah, the bodies could have washed into there. That's that's kind of what I'm thinking.
I, you know, I could be wrong. I'm happy to be wrong with these things. But even if they didn't go into the lake and then sort of drift in over time, even if they just disappeared right there, there are thousands of stories of missing people where, yeah, no one can believe when they eventually find like a dead body. People are like, But we searched here. We searched here three months ago. We searched it yesterday. We were right. We were right. Here. And we didn't. Notice the same thing.
When I lose my keys, I'm like, Oh, you find them. You're like, I looked here, but maybe aliens came and took my keys and then brought them back. I don't know, because I look. I mean, that's what I was going to suggest. That's what I was going to suggest. No, but it is it is a weird thing. How hard it is to actually find stuff. And it's again, this happened in December. From what I looked up, there was not a ton of snow on the ground, but there is ice and there was about to be more snow.
So if they had fallen through the ice that day and it froze back over or whatever, even if they keep searching now suddenly more snow is coming. Things are happening to the environment to change it. It makes it very hard to to look for people. So anyway, I jumped ahead on my own personal theory there. But that's kind of what's going on in my head.
The only thing that throws a monkey wrench into that, though, is the different decomposition levels, because that still doesn't match them just dying at the same time of hypothermia. Right. And I did read it. I couldn't find it again. But when I was researching this, someone had commented on like it may have been like unsolved rt.com for unsolved mysteries or something like that.
But someone talked about how basically if someone was higher up in the ice and during the fall of the season, they would have started decomposing faster earlier than the other person. So everybody would have would have done that. I forget the specifics of how they set it up, but it seemed to make sense. And I tried to find that again. And I couldn't find it. But that was the only theory I saw that. MAY Yeah, that was the only theory I saw that actually kind of makes sense in that.
Yeah, I'm not a scientist. I want to stress that I'm not a scientist, but I do think ice would slow right preserved things. Yeah, I feel like absolutely. When people die on a cruise ship, they pop them in ice. Peppermint, ice. That's what they do. Well, you went to cruise ship people dying on cruise ships first. Have you been around that? No, I haven't been. For some reason, I. I read about it not too long ago.
I was like, oh, man, somebody dies on your cruise and like a family member and you kind to just stay there and, like, keep it in that buffet food and yeah, Uncle Joe is on ice below deck. He's such a tangent, but I've the only cruise I've ever been on. They thought somebody fell overboard and so they were there to stop the ship. They put search boats in the water and we I think we got locked down like we couldn't go outside.
Everybody had to stay inside. Yeah. And then they and then they I think it was like a teenager. And so the parents were like, oh, they fell overboard. And everybody's thinking this teenager fell overboard. And it turned out the teenager was like, just in their room. Yeah. And because they couldn't find him or her, they just freaked out and assumed that they fell overboard. Right. Some need to be thrown overboard. Exactly. Let's be. Let's be honest. Pesky teenagers.
So back to the sadness of this story. Yes. So there are some other theories that are a bit wackadoo. And I didn't put like all the details down because it was a little too crazy for what I wanted to do in the episode.
But there there is like a local gossipy rumor theory saying there's a guy that lived in like the mountains on the other side of the lake that came and saw them that night or that morning, I should say, and like wandering around and kidnaped them and kept them chained up in this house or cabin on the other side of the lake.
Wow. Yeah. There's there's the theory about them being dumped back in this spot after they were taken somewhere and then killed in order to cover up that somebody took them and killed them somewhere else. There's a little bit of a witness testimony that gives some validity to that, which is that somebody saw a blazer type vehicle pull up near where the bodies were found, like the morning Ruby's body was found. So that blazer type of vehicle could be it could have been dumping a body.
I will kind of debunk that right away, which is it doesn't make any sense to cover up your crime by bringing these bodies back because you're just creating more situations for you to leave evidence to get caught. You could cut your hair and you could shed hair. You could leave DNA all over the place. It doesn't actually help you to bring it back to the spot. And also more witnesses. This is a highway. Everybody thinks there's like no one driving this road. This is a busy road.
So now you have a ton of witnesses watching you dump bodies in a ditch. Like, it just doesn't make sense to me. No, no. And for that to be like, an isolated thing, Do you know what I mean? Like, if you were a person who took the took, would take people from crime scenes, torture them somewhere else, and then drop them back off. Like, that's not the first time you've done anything like that. It wouldn't be the only you wouldn't like. Do that once and then be like, I'm good. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. You know, weird. Yeah, absolutely. Here's the, I guess, theory isn't the right word for this, but here is one of a witness account that is pretty spectacular and has even made its way into unsolved mysteries and stuff. And that's that a witness claims that on New Year's Eve. So this is three weeks or so after the accident happened and Ruby and Arnold disappeared that this woman saw. I think I think it's a woman. They never say who the name.
They probably hide the name, but they say a witness. I think it was a woman. So I'm just going to say she could be wrong with that. But she claims that she saw Arnold driving a car with two people in his backseat on New Year's Eve. And they actually smoke spoke. They they interacted. It is a small town. She knows who he is. So she just, you know, oh, it's Arnold and talked to him a bit. She ended up taking a lie detector test and she passed the two people she claims were in the car with.
Arnold also had to take a lie detector test test. And they fail old. And they said because they said, no, that wasn't Arnold, but they failed. Now, lie detector tests are famously pretty terrible, not reliable. But this is someone that that really very much determined, very sincere in her belief that she talked to Arnold on New Year's Eve. I again, I kind of think this is not true. She may believe it, but I. Don't think it's true because, again, it's. A small town. Yeah, Yeah. Sorry, lady.
New Year's Eve, you were probably drinking. Come on. Boom, boom, right there. And also against small town. If he's hiding out, if he's supposed to be missing his family doesn't even know where he is. But now he's out just hanging with buddies on New Year's Eve like the world is going to get back to his family that he's around. And even this woman would have already known the story, right? She would have already known what happened.
So if you had a conversation with him on New Year's, maybe the conversation would be like, Hey, I thought you were dead. Where have you been? Yeah, maybe. Maybe we should go to the police. Exactly. Yeah. This was in the newspapers. I think everybody would have heard about that. So it's a bizarre thing. Now, another witness said that they saw Ruby and Arnold get into a car after the accident, which leads or ties in to that theory that, oh, maybe somebody picked him up.
And this witness says that they were heading east, which is away from town. Another witness says that they saw Bruyere in the town of Wagner on January 20th. So almost two months later, none of these witness accounts kind of led to anything specific. But those are some accounts that are worthy of of just hearing about. Yeah, the the investigation was led by local law enforcement. They ended up being criticized for mishandling the evidence and not thoroughly pursuing all the leads.
And this could be because it is claimed by some of the family and friends that because the cases involved natives, that the victims were not as aggressively investigated. And there's a long history of this, not just in South Dakota. And again, on another project, I worked on it. Oh yeah, in Oklahoma. This project I worked on, we came across this too, where there was basically a missing person who was a Native American, and the police did not put the same amount of effort in that case.
Right? Yeah. So I do believe that it does sound like some of the the deputies were working very hard at this, but this is at least a claim by the family. And I wouldn't doubt it if it if it is true. Right. The FBI ended up taking over the investigation and this is due to some reservation boundary issue lawsuits that it got really complicated when I was reading about it. So just know that there was some lawsuits involved in it.
It actually caused the FBI to take over the lead in investigating this crime. But after some time, they determined it was just an accident. There's not enough evidence to to say that it's anything more than that. So the FBI closed the case. I do want to mention this. It reminds me of a story that I worked on on a TV show I produced about the Yuba County five. Have you ever heard of that? That name, that story? It sounds very familiar.
So in Yuba County, which is in California, these five men in the seventies went to a basketball game, a college basketball game. They drove home that they never returned home. And it was later their car was found in the mountains. They couldn't find the bodies. Two bodies were found months later, miles and miles apart. There was I can't remember specifically, but I think somebody was found without shoes on and somebody's shoes were found somewhere else than their body.
So that's an interesting thing. There is a great podcast. If you just search Yuba County five, look for a series that a company produced that is really well done and they talked to a lot of the family members and staff of Yuba County five. It is an amazing mystery to do do a deep dive on. But this story reminded of that and because I know that that story so well, that may be one of the reasons why I was so interested in Arnold Archer and Ruby Bruyere. So yeah, that's kind of it.
I already shared my this is where I would normally share my personal theory, but I want to share that, that I actually think they they wandered away drunk and with head injuries and froze to death nearby. And they were just unfortunately not found until months later. Yeah, that sounds because yeah, I mean, it sounds like the investigation probably. Sorry. Tim Whalen I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know what happened, but, you know, people have a tendency, I think in small towns, small areas like that, the police would sort of also like that teenager thing I know is making fun of teenagers earlier. But I don't think they deserve to be hurt. You know, you good. Thank you. Thank you for. Clarifying. Clarify. Let me clarify.
I don't want teenagers to be thrown off boats, but, you know, you've got kids out drinking and we've all kind of like seen these this like attitude, like a law enforcement, older people in general. It almost be a feeling of like they got what they deserved or they shouldn't have been doing that or they'll turn up later. You know, or it'll all work out. So, like, it sounds like somebody dropped the ball. Yeah, maybe. Maybe it's so hard to say without being there.
This is one of those where I really feel like you got to be there in person, got to be them. You got to like, especially, like, getting a sense of that ditch. Like, is it connected to the lake at all? Like, I think it might be, but it's saying, you know, how the water interacts. Like, how stagnant is that water in that ditch? And what is it when it freezes over in the winter? Now, I know they have investigators there on the ground that know the area that are probably very aware of these things.
But it's so hard for an outsider to kind of go in there and really. Really have to really figure out a it's a depression, not like how how big is that? And like, what's the scope where all did they search? The thing that's tripping me up the most is that it's daytime when they're doing the whole. It's so, yeah, like how cold is it? And I did look up weather information, so I think it was in the thirties when the sun was up. It does.
That's why I was saying there's some sawing and freezing happening and it's just like minor league because again we think when I first heard this case before I really dove into research, I thought, Oh, there's snow everywhere. So of course that tracks is yeah. But when I looked it up, yeah, when I looked it up there had not been a lot of precipitation recently. I think there was like a week or so after and there wasn't a ton of snow on the ground and it was freezing.
But during the day it was, I think it was getting into the forties still. So that's above freezing and it's Fahrenheit just in case any listeners outside of the United States out there. But yeah, so it's not as it's not as crazy cold. I don't know when the sun rose, but I think by by the time they were definitely they're searching, it is the day like they're not searching at night. They're searching when it's light out. Yeah, really weird hints. A study of strange So yeah.
What can we learn from this book? Is there anything to learn? Well, I mean, I don't think there's anything for us to learn. We're not teenagers anymore. Yeah, Yeah, it's true. I know everything now. We know everything. Yeah, exactly. You know? Yep. Yep. Gosh, very true. Very true. But no, this is a this is a big one. And in my show Notes listeners, I will provide links to.
If you have any information about this, I'll provide links to the appropriate law enforcement office to get in touch with if you know anything they did pass away. But if there's more information about what, what or how that happened, definitely reach out to authorities if you can. Well, thank you so much. A very sad story. And on. Your cell. Well, yeah, I'd like. To I'd like to leave you feeling sad. Yeah, it'd be it'd be nice if you could in the episode of like.
Yes, it was aliens confirmed Aliens took them away and brought them back. Yeah. You know what? Why don't let's. I'm just going to end that tonight. Yeah, that it was aliens. That's what they say. Aliens took them up. And while they were with the aliens, they had a wonderful time. It was nice. Aliens. Yeah, Civilization. It was. They actually lived full lives because they, they actually traveled through time. Time worked very differently for this alien race. That's right.
And and and so they were brought back, you know, three months after the the night that they were taken. But, however, they did live full, fulfilling lives. So good for them. Yes. Solved. Hopefully that helps you feel better. Well. Well, thank you again, Brooke. Why don't you plug some stuff? I know you got some stuff coming up. Do you want. To tell people about.
Well, you know, always I can always plug I do a show called 30 minute musicals where we take movies and we turn them into 30 minute musicals. And there's some stuff online that people can look up and watch on our YouTube channel. And if you happen to be in the Los Angeles area, you can come and see us in Los Angeles. And if you happen to live in the United Kingdom, in in August will be at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and you can see a 30 minute musical of Top Gun.
So if that's something that anyone out there is into always fun to do. Yeah, I'm glad Top Gun and getting some attention because that is a that's a series of a couple of movies that no one's really watched so I'm glad you give it some thought. No one cares about that at all. It's amazing. Now, that's amazing. Yeah. Everybody check it out. And thank you again, Brooke. Thanks for coming. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's so fun. We solved it. Solved. All right, great. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks.
That'll do it for the show. Thank you for listening. Thank you again, Brooke Sagan. Listeners, make sure to hit that plus or follow button and stay up to speed with a study of strange. And if you want to support the show in other ways, check out our patron account, which you can find through our website. A study of strange tor.com or follow us on Instagram at a study of strange.
Next week I'm returning to some paranormal activity where I'm going to do a deep dive on one of the most well-known and just dramatic stories of ghosts that's ever come out of Canada. And I'm really excited about that one. So make sure you are following and can get that episode. Thank you all again and goodnight.