Yuba County Five

The Yuba County Five were young men from Yuba County, California, United States, each with mild intellectual disabilities or psychiatric conditions, who were reported missing after attending a college basketball game at California State University, Chico (also known as Chico State), on the night of February 24, 1978. Four of them—Bill Sterling, 29; Jack Huett, 24; Ted Weiher, 32; and Jack Madruga, 30—were later found dead; the fifth, Gary Mathias, 25, has never been found.

Several days after their disappearance, Madruga's car, a 1969 Mercury Montego the group drove to Chico, was found abandoned in a remote area of Plumas National Forest, on a high mountain dirt road far out of their way back to Yuba County. Investigators could not determine why the car was abandoned, as it was in good working order and could easily have been pushed out of the snowpack it was in. At that time, no trace of the men was found.

In June 1978, four of the men's bodies were discovered after the snow had melted. Ted Weiher was found inside a United States Forest Service (USFS) trailer some 20 miles north of the abandoned car. Only bones were left of Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, and Jackie Huett as a result of scavenging animals; Weiher had apparently lived for as long as three months after the men were last seen, starving to death despite an ample supply of food and heating materials in and near the trailer. Weiher was missing his shoes; investigators found Mathias' own shoes in the USFS trailer, suggesting Mathias also survived for some time beyond the group's last sighting.

A local man later came forward, claiming that he had spent the same night in his own car a short distance from where the Mercury was found. The witness told police that he saw and heard people around his car that night, and twice called for help, only for them to grow silent and turn off their flashlights. This, and the considerable distance from the car to where the bodies were found, has led to suspicions of foul play.

Background

While he was stationed in West Germany as part of his United States Army service in the early 1970s, Gary Mathias, a resident of Marysville, California, developed substance issues. This eventually led to him being diagnosed with schizophrenia and given a psychiatric discharge. Mathias returned to his parents' home in Marysville and began treatment at a local mental hospital. While it had been difficult at first—he was nearly arrested for assault twice and often experienced psychotic episodes that landed him in a local Veterans Administration hospital—by 1978 he was being treated on an outpatient basis with trifluoperazine and benzatropine and was considered by his physicians to be "one of our sterling success cases".

Mathias supplemented his Army disability pay by working in his stepfather's gardening business. Off the job, outside of his family, he was close friends with four men who either had intellectual disabilities (Weiher and Huett) or were informally considered "slow learners" (Sterling and Madruga, the latter also an Army veteran). The men lived in Yuba City and nearby Marysville. Like Mathias, each man lived with his parents, all of whom referred to them collectively as "the boys".

The men's favorite leisure activity was sports. Their families said that when the five got together, it was usually to play a game or watch one. They played basketball on a team called the Gateway Gators, a team supported by a local program for people with disabilities.

Disappearance

On February 25, the Gators were due to play their first game in a weeklong tournament sponsored by the Special Olympics for which the winners would get a free week in Los Angeles. The five men had prepared the night before, some even laying out their uniforms and asking their parents to wake them up on time. They decided to drive to Chico that same night to cheer on the UC Davis basketball team in an away game against Chico State. Madruga, the only member of the group besides Mathias with a driver's license, drove the group 50 miles (80 km) north to the Chico State campus in his turquoise and white 1969 Mercury Montego coupe. The men wore only light coats against the cool temperatures in the upper Sacramento Valley at night that time of year.

After the Davis team won the game, the group returned to Madruga's car and drove a short distance from Chico State to Behr's Market in downtown Chico, where they bought snacks, sodas and cartons of milk. It was shortly before the store's 10 p.m. closing time; the clerk later remembered the men because she was annoyed that such a large group entered and delayed her process of closing the store for the night.

When morning came and the men had not returned, the police were notified by the men's families.

Investigation

Police in Butte and Yuba counties began searching the route the men took to Chico. They found no sign of them, but a few days later, a Plumas National Forest ranger told investigators that he had seen the Mercury parked in the forest along Oroville-Quincy Road on February 25. At the time, he did not consider it significant, since many residents often drove up that road into the Sierra Nevada mountain range on winter weekends to go cross-country skiing on the extensive trail system, but after reading the missing persons bulletin he recognized the car and led the deputies to it on February 28.

Discovery of the car

Evidence inside the car suggested the men were in it between the time they were last seen and when it was abandoned. Empty wrappers and containers from the food and drinks they purchased from the store in Chico were present, along with programs from the basketball game they attended and a neatly folded road map of California.

The car's location, 70 miles (110 km) from Chico, was far from any direct route to Yuba City or Marysville. None of the men's families could speculate as to why they would drive up a long and winding dirt road on a winter night deep into a high-elevation remote forest, without extra clothing. Madruga's parents said he did not like cold weather and had never even been up into the mountains. Sterling's father had once taken his son to the area near where the car was found for a fishing weekend, but the younger man had not enjoyed it and remained at home when his father took later trips there.

Police were puzzled by the car's abandonment. The road was at 4,400 feet (1,300 m) in elevation, about the location of the snow line that time of year, a short distance from where the road was closed for the winter. The car had become stuck in snow drifts, and there was evidence that the men tried to spin the wheels to get out of it; police noted that the snow was not very deep and that five healthy young men should have easily been able to push the car out. The car keys were not present, suggesting at first that the car had been abandoned because it might not have been operating properly, with the intention of returning later with help; when police hot-wired the car, the engine started immediately and the fuel gauge indicated the tank was one-quarter full of gasoline.

Police towed the car back to the station for a more thorough examination. The Mercury's undercarriage had no dents, gouges or even mud scrapes, not even on its low-hanging muffler, despite having been driven a long distance up a mountain road with many bumps, ruts and potholes. Either the driver had been extremely careful or it was someone familiar with the road, a familiarity Madruga was not known to have; his family said that Madruga would not have let someone else drive the car. The car was unlocked and had a window rolled down when it was found; Madruga's family indicated it was unlike him to leave the car so unsecured.

Efforts to search the vicinity were hampered by a severe snowstorm that day. Two days later, after searchers in snowcats nearly became lost themselves, further search efforts were called off due to continuing bad weather. Other than the car, no trace of the men was found.

Sightings

In response to local media coverage of the case, police received several reports of some or all of the men being sighted after they had left Chico, including some reports that they were elsewhere in California or the country. Most reports were easily dismissed, but two sightings stood out. Joseph Schons of Sacramento told police he inadvertently wound up spending the night of February 24–25 near where the Montego was found. He had driven up there, where he had a cabin, to check the snowpack before a weekend ski trip with his family. At 5:30 p.m., about 150 feet (46 m) up the road, Schons, too, had gotten stuck in the snow. While trying to free his car, he realized he was beginning to experience the early symptoms of a heart attack and went back in, keeping the engine running to provide heat.

Six hours later, lying in the car and experiencing severe pain, Schons saw headlights behind him. He saw a car parked behind him, headlights on, with a group of people around it, one of whom seemed to him to be a woman holding a baby. He called to the party for help, but they stopped talking and switched their headlights off. Later, he saw more lights behind him, this time flashlights, that also went out when he called to them.