YUBA COUNTY FIVE

Opening

On the night of 24 February 1978, five men from Yuba City, California, drove to Chico to watch a college basketball game and never came home. Their car was found days later, undamaged, on a snowy mountain road in the Plumas National Forest, about 70 miles from Chico and nowhere near their route home. When the snow melted in June, four of them were found dead. One had lived for weeks, possibly months, inside a Forest Service trailer stocked with enough food to keep them all alive. The fifth man, Gary Mathias, has never been found.

Timeline

24 February 1978, eveningGary Mathias (25), Jack Madruga (30), Jackie Huett (24), Ted Weiher (32), and Bill Sterling (29) watch UC Davis play Chico State in Chico. All five have intellectual disabilities or psychiatric conditions. They're close friends and plan to be home that night, and they have another game to play the next day.

About 10 p.mThey buy snacks at a market in Chico and leave in Madruga's turquoise-and-white 1969 Mercury Montego.

That nightJoseph Schons, stuck with his own car on the same mountain road and in chest pain, later says he saw people and a car with its headlights on near him around midnight. When he called out for help, the talking stopped and the lights went off. Later he saw flashlights, which also went dark when he called.

Days laterThe Mercury is found abandoned at around 4,400 feet. It runs and has fuel in the tank. Its underside has no dents or scrapes, although the road was rough.

4 June 1978Weiher's body is found in a Forest Service trailer about 19 miles from the car. He had lost nearly half his body weight, and his feet were badly frostbitten. The trailer held canned rations, many of them opened and eaten, plus matches and clothing, and a locker of dehydrated food that was never opened. Mathias's shoes are in the trailer.

June 1978The remains of Madruga and Sterling are found some miles away. Huett's remains are found near the trailer.

After June 1978No trace of Mathias is found.

Key figures

Gary Mathias is the missing man. He had schizophrenia and was an Army veteran who knew how to use the military can opener found with the eaten rations.

Ted Weiher is the man who survived longest. His beard growth suggested he lived for as long as three months after the drive.

Joseph Schons is the only outside witness, and his account is the source for almost everything known about that first night on the mountain.

Physical and documentary trail

What exists: Yuba and Butte county investigation records as reported in the press, the coroner's findings on Weiher, and Schons's statement. The car and the trailer were both examined.

What's missing is any account of why the car went up that road, and anyone who saw the men after they left the market.

Things you might not know

• They were playing for a trip. The men played for the Gateway Gators, and the Special Olympics tournament they were preparing for offered the winners a free week in Los Angeles.
• Weiher was wrapped in sheets. His body was found wrapped in eight sheets, including over the head. His wallet with cash was on the table beside him.
• There was a watch nobody claimed. A gold watch missing its crystal was found with Weiher's things. His family said it was not his.
• Schons walked eight miles. After his car ran out of fuel, Joseph Schons walked about eight miles to a lodge. Doctors later confirmed he had had a mild heart attack.
• The reward was small. The families offered $1,215, about $6,000 in today's money.
• There is a book. Tony Wright's Things Aren't Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five was first published in 2018, with a new edition in 2024.

Competing explanations

A wrong turn followed by exposure. The men may have headed toward friends of Mathias in Forbestown, taken the wrong road, got the car stuck or scared of the snow, and walked. Weiher's death in a stocked trailer fits confusion and fear, which the men's disabilities could make worse, more than it fits foul play.

Someone else was involved. Schons's account of people going silent and lights going out, and the car's clean underside, have led the families and some investigators to suspect someone else was involved that night. No suspect has ever been identified.

Mathias survived and left. He had the skills to use the trailer, and his shoes stayed behind. Some people suspect he walked out. He has never been seen, and he had no known reason to vanish.

Later life of the case

The case is a regular in unsolved-mystery media. It's often framed as eerie, but the documented facts are grim rather than supernatural. The families have kept pressing for answers about the first night.

Finding

Most of what happened can be explained by a wrong road, heavy snow, and men who panicked in the cold. That explanation doesn't account for why they turned up that road, what Schons saw, or why Weiher didn't open the food locker.

What still will not resolve: the decision that took the car up the mountain, and what happened to Gary Mathias.