The Yuba County Five

On the night of Friday, February 24, 1978, five young men from Yuba City, California, drove about fifty miles north to Chico to watch a college basketball game.

They were huge fans of the Chico State Wildcats, and they were excited. In a few days, they themselves were going to play in a basketball tournament — a tournament for athletes with disabilities, sponsored by a program they belonged to, where they’d win a free week’s vacation if their team took the title. They had been practicing for weeks.

The game ended around 10 p.m. The men stopped at a convenience store in Chico, bought some snacks — burritos, sodas, candy bars — and got back into their car for the drive home.

They never got home.

The Five

The five men were close friends who lived with their families in the Yuba City and Marysville area.

Jack Madruga, thirty, owned the car they were driving, a turquoise-and-white 1969 Mercury Montego. He was an Army veteran who had served in Vietnam, and was the most independent of the group.

Ted Weiher, thirty-two, was a gentle, trusting man who loved his family. Jack Huett, twenty-four, was shy and devoted to his friends. Bill Sterling, twenty-nine, was deeply religious. Gary Mathias, twenty-five, was a former Army soldier who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia after his service, which he managed with medication.

Four of the men had mild intellectual disabilities. Their families described them as childlike in some ways, dependable, and creatures of routine. They didn’t stay out late. They didn’t drink or do drugs. They always came home.

The Car

When the men didn’t return that night, their families called the police the next morning.

Four days later, on February 28, a forest ranger found Jack Madruga’s Mercury Montego on a remote, unpaved road high in the mountains of Plumas National Forest, about seventy miles from Chico, in the wrong direction from home. It was parked on a snowy road at around 4,400 feet elevation. Snow had piled up around it.

The car was in good condition. It had about a quarter of a tank of gas. The keys were missing. When the police later got it running, it started easily. It wasn’t stuck. Investigators believed the men could have pushed it out of the snow easily if they’d tried. Inside were candy wrappers, empty soda cans, and maps of California. There was no sign of a struggle.

Why five young men would have driven seventy miles up a lonely mountain road in the middle of the night, on their way home from a basketball game, and then abandoned a perfectly good car in the snow, was a mystery.

The Witness

A man named Joseph Schons came forward with a strange story. On the night of February 24, he said, he had been driving up the same mountain road to check on his cabin when his car got stuck in the snow. While trying to dig it out, he suffered a mild heart attack. He lay down in his car to rest.

During the night, Schons said, he saw headlights behind his car. He heard voices — men’s voices, and what sounded like a woman and a baby. He called out for help. The voices stopped, and the lights went off. Later, he said, he saw flashlights. Again he called for help. No one came.

At dawn, he abandoned his car and walked down the mountain. On his way down, he said, he passed a car that looked like Madruga’s Mercury.

The Trailer

The heavy snows of that winter made searching the mountains nearly impossible. It wasn’t until early June, after the snow had melted, that a group of motorcyclists came upon a Forest Service trailer in the mountains, about twenty miles from where the car had been found.

Inside the trailer was the body of Ted Weiher.

He had lost about a hundred pounds. He had a thick beard. His feet were badly frostbitten. He was wrapped in bedsheets. Investigators believed he had survived inside the trailer for as long as thirteen weeks before he died of starvation and exposure.

What made the discovery so baffling was what was in the trailer. There was a cabinet nearby filled with military-style C-rations — enough to feed a man for a year. There was a propane tank that could have heated the trailer. There were matches and fuel. There were warm clothes. No one had used them.

And there were signs that someone had been in the trailer with Ted — a few cans of food had been opened, and Ted’s own shoes were missing. A pair of tennis shoes believed to belong to Gary Mathias was found in the trailer.

The Others

The next day, searchers found the remains of Jack Madruga and Bill Sterling, on opposite sides of a road several miles away. Animals had disturbed them. Investigators believed they had died of exposure as they tried to walk through the snow.

A few days later, searchers found the backbone of Jack Huett, and a pair of shoes believed to be his, near the trailer.

Gary Mathias was never found.

The Questions

Almost everything about the case of the Yuba County Five is hard to explain.

Why did the men drive so far up a remote mountain road, in the wrong direction, in the middle of the night? Some suspect they may have been fleeing from someone, or that they were following someone, or that Gary Mathias, who knew the area, suggested a detour. Some believe they may have taken a wrong turn and simply kept driving, confused and frightened.

Why did they leave their car? Perhaps they panicked when it slid in the snow. Perhaps they saw headlights — Joseph Schons’s car — and walked toward them for help. Perhaps someone else was on that road.

And why did Ted Weiher starve to death in a trailer full of food and fuel? The men may not have known what the C-rations were, or how to open them. They may not have known how to work the propane heater. They may have been too frightened, or too confused, to try. There’s no way to know.

As for Gary Mathias, some believe he died in the woods and was never found. Others believe he survived and walked out of the mountains. Mathias was the only one who was taking medication for schizophrenia, and he did not have it with him.

The Families

The families of the five men never accepted the idea that their sons had simply gotten lost and frozen. They believed something must have happened that night to make them drive into those mountains — that someone must have frightened them, chased them, or led them there.

Investigators found no evidence of foul play. The case was never solved.