- [Narrator] The frigid
night of February 24th, 1978
would be something Joseph
Shones would never forget.
It was perhaps the most
terrifying moment he experienced
in his entire life.
The 55-year-old was heading up
a treacherous snowy mountain
road in Northern California,
Heading up to check the skiing
conditions at his lodge.
He quickly found himself
trapped in the snow.
Things would only get
worse for Joseph from here.
While trying to free his
Volkswagen Beetle to no avail,
Joseph felt a sudden tightness
in his chest that was quickly building,
growing into an unbearable searing pain.
He realized he was alone, stuck,
and having a heart attack.
Freezing and panicking,
he quickly jolted back in his car
and kicked a heater on to warm up.
He hoped someone passing by
would be able to transport him to safety,
but what happened next wasn't
anything like he expected.
Joseph had been trapped
or six hours straight
when he noticed a dim light beginning
to seep into his car.
Had he grown so delirious
that he was hallucinating?
Before he could think
about what was happening,
he was engulfed in light.
Headlights were beaming
in from behind him.
Joseph was relieved.
He thought he was finally going
to be rescued from this nightmare,
but then something bizarre happened.
Peering up, he spotted six
people getting out of the car.
He noticed one of them
appeared to be holding a baby.
Joseph was bewildered,
but he didn't have time
to question why these people would be deep
in the snowy mountains late at night.
(wind whooshes)
After what he felt like an eternity
of being confined in his car,
he was growing frantic and delirious.
He cried out for help.
For a moment it was completely
silent, then oddly enough
he saw the car's
headlights abruptly go out.
Now blanketed in pitch darkness,
Joseph was baffled and had
no clue what was going on.
His mind was reeling.
Why would they ignore his cries for help?
Were the mysterious visitors
going to just leave him there to die?
The sight the flashlight
beams startled him
from his morbid thoughts,
and he was hit with a pang of relief.
For good measure, he
shouted for help again,
but something was very wrong,
just like before, the lights went out.
(dramatic music)
Trapped in the confines of his car,
Joseph lay completely helpless.
Whoever had pulled up behind him
had no intentions of saving him.
They were lurking somewhere
outside of his vehicle,
and for reasons unknown to this day,
they were ignoring him.
Things only got creepier from here.
They got closer.
Joseph heard an ominous
whistle from outside his car.
This time, instead of relief
it filled him with dread,
but the whistle faded away
and it grew silent once again.
Joseph lay defenseless and alone.
Eventually he ran out of gas,
and it was getting unbearably cold.
Joseph had no other choice
than to enter the snow flurry
and seek help on his own.
He cracked open his door
and felt the biting cold
of the night stinging his face.
Aside from the crunch of his
shoes reluctantly stepping
onto the snow, it was
eerily quiet and pitch-dark.
Whoever had been outside his
car was now completely gone.
Joseph then marched eight miles
to a cabin where he was able
to finally find some help.
He was taken to a hospital
for treatment and recovered,
but what he didn't realize
is he may have been the last person
to ever see the Yuba County Five alive.
(dramatic music continues)
Located in Northern California
along the Feather River,
Yuba County is home
to miles of open wilderness
mountainous slopes
and budding families.
However, five Yuba County
local families were forced
to experience the dreaded pain
of their loved ones
mysteriously disappearing
in the night one cold
winter evening in 1978.
Unexplained missing person cases
are typically reserved
for younger children
or adults traveling alone
or with one other person.
Which is why this case is so disturbing.
What made the disappearance
of the Yuba Five so bizarre
was at five adult men managed
to vanish into thin air
without any solid explanation.
To this day, this case remains unsolved.
The night of the disappearance
Bill Sterling, Jack Madruga,
Jack Huett, Ted Weiher, and Gary Mathias
were lovingly referred to as the boys.
Aged between 24 and 32, four of the group
had mild intellectual disabilities,
while Gary was diagnosed
with schizophrenia
and had violent tendencies.
Unlike the other boys,
Gary wasn't intellectually challenged.
According to the Yuba County
Lieutenant Lance Ayers.
Some of the boys had IQs
as low as in the 40s.
The five friends had all met one another
through an organization called Gateway
that provided a community for individuals
with special needs to engage
in various activities and events.
The boys favorite activity
in particular was basketball.
On the fateful evening
of February 24th, 1978,
the boys had gone to watch
a basketball game together
at California State University in Chico,
50 miles away from
there Yuba County homes.
The five basketball
fanatics were also scheduled
to play a Special
Olympic-sponsored game together
for their own team, the Gateway
Gators, the following day.
They couldn't wait, they were so excited
about their upcoming basketball game
that a few of the boys even
laid their uniforms out
the night before heading to Chico.
Gary was incredibly eager
to play their upcoming game,
reminding his mother and
to not let him oversleep
the next morning.
They wouldn't have
missed it for the world.
but no one could have possibly
expected what would happen
later that night.
On Ted's way out the door,
his grandmother insisted
that he take a coat with
him, but he refused.
"Oh, Grandma, I don't need a
coat," Ted said, "not tonight."
The five men piled into
Jack's prized Mercury
and took off out into the cold snowy night
never to be seen alive again.
William Lee Sterling aka Bill,
originally from Yuba County,
William Lee Sterling, often
called Bill by his friends,
was 29 years old.
He was described by many
as being deeply spiritual,
and can often be found
reading religious texts
that he would share
throughout mental hospitals,
hoping to help other patients find faith.
He had been diagnosed with
mild developmental disabilities
and live with his parents
for necessary support.
Some strangers, however,
had taken advantage
of his disabilities.
Back when he was a dishwasher
at Beale Air Force Base,
Airmen would frequently
persuade him to get drunk
so they could steal Bill's money.
Bill also was not very
fond of the outdoors.
After just one fishing
trip with his family,
he never wanted to go ever again.
Jack Madruga, Jack
Madruga was 30 years old
and a close friend with Bill.
Jack was a high school graduate
who had served in the U.S. Army.
In more recent times,
however, he had been working
on a factory line where
he was eventually fired.
Although Jack had no official diagnosis,
his family believed him to have
mild learning disabilities.
He drove a turquoise and
white 1969 Mercury Montego,
which was his pride and joy.
And he also lived with his family.
Jack Huett was the youngest of the group,
aged 24 years old, and also
the most severely handicapped
of the entire group.
He hated being away from home
for any extended period of time.
He had been diagnosed with
mild learning disabilities
and was best friends with Ted Weiher.
The two of them were often
described as brothers,
and they took two doing
most things together.
Theodore Earl Weiher was 32 years old.
He had attended Marysville High School
and was described by
others as a friendly guy
with a reputation for
relentless positivity.
He also lacked basic common sense,
having once spent over $100 for pencils
for absolutely no reason at all,
and didn't understand why you
had to stop at stop signs.
"He'd wake me up in the
middle of the night and say
'How come Mickey Mantle can
hit the ball farther than me?'"
His brother, Dallas Weiher, said.
Despite his challenges, he was outgoing
and had been working in a snack bar.
Though his family had urged him to quit
on account of the stress levels
they felt he suffered due to
his learning disabilities.
Gary Dale Mathias was age
25 he wore thick glasses,
which were prescribed for
his extremely poor eyesight.
He was a U.S. Army veteran,
but had been discharged
due to psychiatric reasons in
1973 while serving in Germany.
He was later diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia,
a condition that once gave him
endless behavioral trouble,
and resulted in an occasional
very violent outbursts.
After treatment, he had been
able to control his illness,
and learn to cope with the
help of daily medication.
At the time of his disappearance,
Gary had lived a fairly stable life
with schizophrenia over
the past two years,
and had even started working
part-time as a laborer
for his father-in-law's
small landscaping business.
Further into the night
of the disappearance,
the boys were giddy once the game ended.
Their favorite team
had reigned victorious.
They had got back into Madruga's car
and drove a short distance from the campus
to Behr's Market in downtown Chico,
planning to sink their teeth
into some treats to celebrate.
It was shortly before the
stores 10:00 p.m. closing time,
and the clerk distinctly remembered them
because she resented that
such a large group had come in
and delayed her from starting the process
of closing up shop.
Little did she know, she
would be the last person
to ever see them alive.
Loading up on Hostess Pies, candy bars,
and all sorts of sweets,
the boys piled back
into Jack Madruga's Mercury
Montego and hit the road.
That night, some of the
men's parents stayed up
to make sure they returned,
but when morning came
and they had not, police were notified.
They quickly came upon their first clue.
It was utterly bizarre, and
just didn't make any sense.
Upon beginning the investigation,
the police received a
tip from a local ranger
who had found a car matching
the dispatched description.
It was a turquoise Mercury Montego,
parked off the side of the
road east of the location
of the college basketball
game the men had attended.
It was Jack Madruga's car,
but Jack Madruga's car
wasn't parked in just any location.
Somehow they had ended up 70 miles away
from the basketball game on
a remote bumpy mountain road
winding through the Sierra
County mountain range.
Madruga was completely
unfamiliar with this area.
It made absolutely no sense
why they had been out there.
Something that no one
can explain to this day
is what in the world could
have possibly lured the boys
so far from the game.
Things only managed to get
more and more eerie from there.
The car was left unlocked
with one of the windows rolled down,
which was incredibly odd
considering the freezing night temperature
and constantly falling snow.
The wrappers from the
snacks and men had bought
at Behr's Market the night before,
where the only trace
left of the five friends.
They lay scattered around the vehicle,
but the boys were gone.
One half-eaten candy bar
seemed to have been dropped
in a hurry in the backseat.
The keys to the car were also missing.
For no explainable reason whatsoever,
the boys had abandoned the
safety and warmth of their car
for the freezing cold and snow outside.
Even more strange with the
fact that Madruga's car
was in perfect working condition.
When the police hot-Wired it to see
if they had experienced engine trouble,
they found that it started
the very first time
without a hitch.
In fact, the car still
had a quarter tank of gas
which would have provided
the boys heat in the event
that they had gotten stuck,
but it didn't seem that they
had gotten stuck at all.
Despite the evidence in the
snow that the wheels had spun
for some time, it easily
drove out of the low drift.
Why had the five man chosen to
abandon a safe, warm vehicle
in the middle of a rural wintry terrain
in the middle of the night?
Under further inspection,
investigators noted
that there was no damage
to the undercarriage of the vehicle.
This led them to believe
that the men had driven
extremely carefully
along the bumpy, pot-filled track
before seemingly abandoned the vehicle
and disappearing into the night,
poorly dressed for the
cold mountain conditions.
"Oh, Grandma, I won't need a
coat," Ted said, "not tonight."
The search, immediate search
efforts proved fruitless
as the dangerous winter
conditions continued
to worsen for weeks after
the men's disappearance.
Snowstorms were rolling in and fast.
Rescue teams are putting their lives
at risk combing the nearby
area for any signs of the boys,
in the ever-deepening snow,
the searches were called off
to wait for safer weather,
but time continued to
press on with no signs
of the missing boys.
As a families of the men grew more
and more concerned over the
disappearances of their sons,
witnesses and potential
leads began to trickle in.
From here, the story only
grew more and more creepy.
after seeing the report
of the five missing men
and their car, Joseph Shones
came forward and admitted
to seeing a turquoise
and white Mercury Montego
around 20 yards down the
road from his own vehicle
the night he had a heart attack.
Perhaps the lights Joseph
saw that night belonged
to the five men wandering away
from the safety of their own vehicle
before vanishing into the woods,
but why would the boys
just ignore Joseph's cries for help?
If Joseph truly spotted
the men that night,
who was a sixth person
he spotted getting out
of the Mercury Montego,
the woman with a baby?
Ted's mother was quick to report to police
that ignoring someone's pleas
for help was not like her son,
if indeed he had been present.
She recalled how Ted and Bill
had once helped a friend get
to the hospital after
overdosing on Valium.
If the group had also been
in trouble that night,
why would they have kept quiet
when they happened to stumble upon Joseph.
- [Narrator] A second witness
later came forward stating
that she had seen the boys.
The woman was a store clerk
at Mary's Country Store in Brownsville,
just 30 miles southeast
of where Madruga's car was discovered.
She reported seeing five men,
matching the photographs
released by the police,
at around 2:00 p.m. on
Saturday, February 25th.
Jack and Bill, she claimed,
were using a phone inside the store,
while the others sat in a red pickup truck
in the parking lot outside.
The story was confirmed by her
boss and the police found her
to be a credible witness,
but the families weren't exactly sure.
They stated Jack had an
extremely intense aversion
to speaking on the phone.
They couldn't possibly
believe it was him talking
on a phone inside the store.
His brother even said
that he often took most
of Jack's phone calls
from his group of friends
because he was so uncomfortable
with the interaction.
The boys remain lost with no leads
for close to another four months
after that bizarre winter night.
On Saturday June, 4th,
an incredibly disturbing
discovery was made.
A group of weekend bikers were
out riding their motorcycles,
when they stumbled upon an
abandoned forest trailer park
deep in the woods.
Hoping for a quick break from riding,
they instead discovered
something repulsive.
Pulling the rusty trailer door open,
they were immediately hit
by a stomach-turning stench.
According to then Yuba
County Undersheriff Beecham,
"When you got up in that area,
you could smell the death.
It was horrible, that stench."
After taking a moment
to catch their bearings,
they had to take a closer look.
(dramatic music continues)
(object thudding)
On the bunk bed lay a body wrapped
in eight layers of blankets
that even covered the head.
On the bedside table sat an
engraved Ted ring, necklace,
and wallet alongside a gold watch.
It was Ted Weiher, he wore no shoes.
In fact, his shoes were gone.
His feet had been badly frostbitten
and were becoming infected.
His pants were rolled up to his knees,
and it was clear five of
his toes were missing.
Police estimated from his
weight loss and hair growth,
Ted had somehow survived
for up to thirteen weeks
in the freezing trailer
before slowly starving,
freezing, and dying of
exposure and pulmonary edema.
But this wasn't even the
strangest part of the discovery.
Now, this is where this story
gets simply unbelievable.
This trailer park was
almost 20 miles uphill
from the abandoned car.
This meant that some way, somehow Ted
would have walked almost 20 miles
in thick snowdrifts up to six feet,
just to reach the park.
Evidence in the trailer
was thoroughly searched,
but rather than piecing
the puzzle together,
things only managed to get
more and more perplexing.
You see, the trailer was ample of supplies
that could have easily saved Ted's life.
It was simply baffling.
The supplies lay unused
and absolutely useless,
despite the fact that Ted was freezing
in the biting cold of winter,
the thick forestry clothing
that could have warmed
him, remained untouched.
There were matches in the trailer,
and a collection of paperback books
that could have easily
been used for kindling,
but no attempts at starting
a fire had even been made.
Even more curiously, there
was a full butane tank
that had not been switched on
to warm the frigid trailer.
The only thing Ted
seemed to manage to crack
into was a nearby storage shed,
but investigators quickly realized
that Ted couldn't have been the only one
in the trailer.
First of all, based on the
grisly decay of Ted's feet,
there was no way he could
have pulled the blankets
all around himself without
experiencing agonizing pain.
Second of all, 31 C-Ration
cans from the shed lay empty.
These C-Ration cans were
opened with a P-38 can opener.
This is the same exact type of can opener
that only Gary and Madruga
would have been familiar
with using, thanks to their
experience in the Army,
Ted simply couldn't have been alone.
The other boys, or at
least a couple of them,
must have also made it here,
and there was absolutely no
reason Ted should have starved
and froze to death.
If they had simply peeked
into a locker in the same exact shed
they found the C-Ration cans,
they would have discovered
an incredible amount
of dehydrated food that
would have fed all of them
for over a whole year.
Investigators then
discovered Gary's sneakers
in the trailer, but
could find no other sign
of him anywhere nearby.
Police speculated that perhaps
Ted took Gary's sneakers,
even though they were way too big for him,
leaving Gary with Ted's
sturdy leather shoes.
Ted had starved and froze to death
surrounded by food and potential warmth,
for reasons that will
forever remain unknown.
However, according to his
family, it wasn't surprising
that Ted didn't take advantage
of the readily available food
and heat sources.
They recalled that one night
their house caught on fire.
In the midst of escaping the
blaze and suffocating smoke,
they had a drag Ted out of
his bed, he did not want
to miss his job the next day.
Investigators discovered
one item of great interest
in the abandoned trailer.
The discovery of a gold
watch alongside Ted's body,
was a piece of evidence
investigators felt was crucial.
Could it prove that foul play
had been involved in the
disappearance of all five men?
Unfortunately, the gold
watch was a complete mystery.
Upon closer inspection,
family members all agreed
that the watch did not
belong to any of their boys.
No solid evidence was gathered
to prove anything more,
and it was impossible
to tell when the watch
might have been left at the trailer.
Despite the fact it was
discovered at the same time
as Ted's body, it does not
mean that it was left there
around the same time.
Just two days later, after
the discovery of Ted,
there was another grim
find deep in the woods.
The skeletal remains of Jack
Madruga and Bill Sterling
were found only 4 1/2 miles
south of the abandoned trailer,
just off the road.
It appeared they had tried to make it
through the heavy snowdrifts
with Ted, Gary, and
Jack Huett, but failed.
Madruga's car keys still remained
in the pocket of his pants.
His cause of death was
ruled to be the result
of hypothermia and exposure,
but Bill's cause of death
was unable to be determined.
All that was left of Bill
was a few scattered bones.
Investigators didn't
think it was a good idea
that Jack Huett's father joined them
on this grisly recovery mission,
but Jack was determined
to bring his son home one way or another.
He insisted on joining
them during the search.
Two days later, they were
combing the woods yet again,
looking for the still-missing Jack Huett
and Gary Mathias.
That's when Jack Huett
Senior saw something
out of the ordinary not
far from the trailer,
a jacket laying in the snow.
(wind whooshing)
Rushing to pick it up,
his son's spine fell out of the jacket
onto the forest floor.
His bones were, again, scattered.
Just feet away, sat Jack Huett's skull.
Had Jack Huett also failed
to traverse the snowdrifts
to the trailer, leaving
Ted and Gary the only two
to make it there, or had he made it there
and wandered out to die?
Despite continued searches,
no remains of Gary
Mathias were ever found.
Police put out descriptions
to all local hospitals
and mental health facilities,
but no information ever
surfaced to help locate him.
If he was still alive
he had been surviving
with no money, no identification,
and crucially, no medication
for his schizophrenia,
but roughing it wouldn't have
been something new to Gary.
Back in 1975,
Gary had suddenly abandoned
his schooling efforts
at Yuba College and
moved to Oregon to live
with his grandmother.
His mother and stepfather
begged him over the phone
to return home, but Gary
simply hung up on them.
That's when something incredible happened,
weeks later, his family opened their door
to find a disheveled and grimy Gary.
He had somehow managed to
travel on foot over 540 miles
from Portland, Oregon to
Marysville, California.
According to Gary, he
stole milk and ate dog food
to stay alive.
In another instance,
when Gary was admitted
to a state mental hospital,
he managed to somehow escape by squeezing
through a drainpipe.
He then made it all the way back
to Marysville by hitchhiking,
still in his hospital attire.
Gary Mathias remains a
missing person today,
and no more information to his whereabouts
have surfaced since his
tragic disappearance
along the mountainside,
that mysteriously took the
lives of his four friends.
Could Gary have gone on
another unbelievable trek
throughout the mountains ending
up in such a remote location
that he will simply never be found?
One of the biggest
questions that still remains
is how the five men
managed to somehow end up
on the mountainous roadside to begin with?
Authorities later learned
that Gary had friends
in the small town of Forbestown,
and police believe that was possible
that in an attempt to visit
them on the way back home,
the men may have taken a
wrong turn near Auroville
that put them on the mountain road.
However, the men's own families say
that they do not believe the boys
would have ever voluntarily
ventured onto the mountain road
on account of their dislike
of the great outdoors
and tendency to stick rigidly to habits.
Jack Madruga's mother, Mabel, even said,
"There was some force that
made them go up there.
They wouldn't have fled off into the woods
like a bunch of quail.
We know good and well that
somebody made them do it."
Furthermore, why had the men felt the need
to abandon a perfectly running car,
a car that Jack Madruga considered
to be his most prized possession?
Why had the men then
trekked a further 20 miles
up a mountain hillside
to reach a trailer park,
rather than turn around and
go back the way they came?
And when they arrived,
why had they hardly touched the food
in the trailer park locker?
Riddled with endless unanswered questions
the mysterious disappearance
of the Yuba County Five
has haunted the lives of family, friends,
and locals for years.
Will the last missing
man ever be discovered?
Are there more answers to what happened
on that night in 1978
that were lost beneath the
blanket of snowfall that winter?
But the mystery didn't end there,
this is where it gets really creepy.
(dramatic music continues)
(object thuds)
It was only three weeks after
the Yuba County Five vanished
when Yuba City woman, Debbie Lynn Reese,
received a series of phone
calls she'll never forget.
(phone rings)
The first call was incredibly chilling.
"Hello," Debbie answered.
On the other end of the
line, a man stated coldly,
"I know where the missing five men are."
He abruptly hung up.
The shocking phone call, no
doubt, shook Debbie to her core,
but it didn't stop there.
The next day rolled around, and yet again,
the phone rang.
(phone rings)
Debbie answered, "Hello?"
He answered, and startled, she
realized it was the same man.
"I need help 'cause I
really hurt those guys bad."
"Who did you hurt?" Debbie asked rattled.
"Don't play dumb with me." He hung up.
It still wasn't the last time
she would hear from the man.
Another day later, another phone call.
"Those five guys are all dead.
"They're all dead," Debbie repeated.
"They're all dead."
The mystery man hung up
and was never heard from again.
"Unsolved Mysteries"
contacted the boys' families
so they can make an episode
covering the bizarre case
of the Yuba County Five,
but it just didn't work out.
According to "The Sacramento Bee,"
curiously, every family agreed,
every family except Gary's.
In a bizarre twist,
this raised suspicions,
particularly from Dallas
Weiher, Ted's brother.
"That's just suspicious.
I'm not saying they knew, but
well, you could probably guess
what I think ," Dallas stated
When asked if he believes
Gary set the four others up to die,
he said, "That's the only
thing that makes sense."
"The Sacramento Bee" attempted
to contact Gary's surviving
family members for comment.
All of his siblings
either declined a comment
or were unable to be reached.
Jack Beecham, former Yuba County sheriff,
also seems to agree that something
is suspicious about Gary.
According to "The Sacramento Bee,"
"They were either forced or
manipulated," Beecham stated,
"and where does Mathias come into that?
Maybe he had nothing to do with it.
We'll never know, but I think he did.
I know parents at the time told us,
they told me personally,
that they had deep concerns
about Gary being involved in this.
They were unabashed in their opinion
in telling me that," Beecham said.
"The other four were always together.
They walked a lot of places
together, always together,
and he was just a
different personality type.
He didn't meld with the other four
according to the parents."
Even the case files seem
to put an emphasis on Gary.
They suggested that Gary
would typically be the most
likely member of the group
to quote, "Lead and suggest
places to go are things to do."
Even the boys basketball
coach said he felt Gary
could possibly flip out at any time.
To this day, it is unknown
how Gary was even able
to enter the Gateway program.
He didn't have intellectual disabilities
like the other boys,
but the final disturbing
detail regarding Gary
was his own prediction of his future.
Now, this part is really weird.
According to Gary's
longtime friend, Janet,
Gary repeatedly told
Janet that he had a dream
where he and several other
people would disappear.
Janet stated that Gary
was a very violent person,
hurting several men seriously,
and said that he also hates women.
Regardless of the mystery
behind their disappearances,
this strange case of close
friends is a truly tragic end
to a night that should
have been nothing but fun.
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