YUBA COUNTY, Calif. — The Plumas National Forest has held the mystery of the Yuba County Five for almost 50 years. Their disappearance has puzzled people around the world.
The five men, who lived with intellectual disabilities, were known as "the boys." They were Ted Weiher, Jack Huett, Bill Sterling, Jack Madruga and Gary Mathias.
"Madruga was from Yuba City and everybody else lived in Yuba County in the Olivehurst area," said Brian Bernardis with the Yuba County Sheriff's Office.
Dallas and Perry Weiher remember their brother Ted as a gentle giant. Tony Wright, the author of "Things Aren't Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five," describes the other boys as very active and friends who loved to spend time together.
"You had Jack Madruga who was 30 years old. He was a very quiet introverted person but very very smart, very kind and loving. That's how he was remembered by his family. Bill Sterling was 29. He was a very avid bowler, he too was an athletic individual known for being very sweet individual. There was Gary Mathias who was 25 years old. He was very athletic, known as a great brother, he was a musician who played in a rock band in high school, was a great harmonica player, spent time in the military. And then there was Jackie Huett. He was 24 years old. He was a great friend. A very loving person. Very kind, very sweet," said Wright.
The boys met in the 70s on a basketball team for a Yuba County nonprofit helping people with disabilities. They followed UC Davis basketball and on Feb. 24, 1978, the five men piled into Madruga's car to watch a college basketball team in Chico.
"I think it was Chico State and UC Davis. Davis was their kind of home team. They really want to see them do well so they had traveled this before. It wasn't the first time for him, so he was familiar with the territory," said Bernardis.
Bernardis, the cold case investigator for the Yuba County Sheriff's Office, says there's no doubt the boys made it to the game.
"The editor of the Chico newspaper actually recalls seeing the five of them there where they were because they were kind of out away from everybody else. There was something very distinctive about them," said Bernardis.
They stopped at a convenience store in Chico after the game.
"Their next reported appearance would have been at the Behr Market not too far from the college. They'd stopped in there and picked up candies and cakes and milks," said Bernardis.
But what happened next still puzzles law enforcement agencies today.
"We know nothing. From that point, we know nothing. They literally disappeared into nowhere," said Bernardis.
They vanished without a trace and their families reported them missing the next day.
"That night they were saying, 'Well, they're grown boys, they can go do what they want. They're not lost or anything.' Well, those weren't normal grown boys. They were different boys," said Perry.
"Back then they, that small town, small community, everybody knew everybody. It paid a large impact on how they responded and how they felt about the case," said Bernardis.
The five men had big plans to play in a basketball tournament the following day. The prize for the winning team was tickets to Disneyland.
"These men were not going to miss that basketball game for any reason. It was of utmost importance and they were going to get home come hell or high water," said Wright.
Jack Madruga's car was found in the snow on the Oroville Quincy Highway in Butte County four days later — about 70 miles in the wrong direction from home. ABC10 asked what condition the car was found in.
"It was intact and undamaged? (The) best way to describe it. It was abandoned for lack of a better term. Windows were down or at least one of the windows were down. The candies and milk and things that they'd purchased at the store; those wrappers were in the car. There were some maps that were found in the car which Madruga was kind of a map student, so nothing would indicate that there was any foul play or some type of heinous act that occurred," said Bernardis.
A massive search followed near where the car was found.
"So now you have Yuba and Butte counties both working the case. They brought in snow equipment so they could travel across the snow and search the area looking for the guys. They'd spent a couple of days, but then that was a very bad snow year and the weather came in and put a complete halt to any efforts to look further," said Bernardis.
Families searched for their missing loved ones for days on end. Detectives wouldn't get a break in the case until about three-and-a-half months later.
Motorcyclists off-roading near a rural Plumas County campground came upon some portable buildings used for fire crews during fire season. They found a broken window and went to take a closer look.
"When they opened the door, the smell of decomposition was pretty intense and they realized that something significant was in there and they found a body, a human body in there on a bed. So that was four months after the disappearance, a little less," said Bernardis.
It was Ted Weiher's.
"Ted was laying in the bed on his back and he was wrapped up very neatly in several blankets as if somebody was trying to keep him comfortable or take care of him. He was in a tremendous state of decomposition. He had been there for some time," said Bernardis.
Reports say the boys could have possibly traveled up to 19 miles to the area where the trailer was located from where the car was found.
When Ted's body was found, investigators say he had lost almost 100 pounds and the cause of death was starvation, although there was enough canned food in a locker outside the trailer to feed Ted and his friends for months.
Ted's boots were missing and Gary's shoes were left behind in the trailer, and there was a propane heater that hadn't been touched.
"Well, for lighting the fire, they say there were propane tanks that all they had to be was turned on. They might not have known that. And then also they say there was cans of food open with a military can opener, so who opened those? I don't know and I don't know if Ted would have known that or not," said Perry.
Bill Sterling and Jack Madruga's bodies were found next on the side of a road, about five miles from where the car was found. Jackie Huett's body was found in a wooded area about a mile from Ted's. The harsh discovery was made by his own father.
"That was probably the most tragic part of the whole thing. He finds his son's remains, not on the road if I remember correctly, but he finds a very small portion of his son's remains and some of his clothing which helped identify who it probably was," said Bernardis.
Four of the boys were discovered dead, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Gary Mathias was never found.
"The big question is why did they go in that direction? There's no reason to talk to the families. I think early they speculated that Gary Mathias had friends in Forbestown. If you know your way around the hills up in this area, you could get to Forbestown by going out or Quincy Highway. It ain't an easy drive, especially back in 1978. Madruga was very guarded over his car, so he's not likely to have gone that route," said Bernardis.
Now, decades later, the question remains: why did the boys take the path that led them into the woods? And did someone make them?
"Why were they up there? And I keep saying somebody made them and maybe not so much made them. (They) might have promised them something, might have said, 'Hey, you wanna go find some girls?' ... I don't know," added Perry.
In the years since, there have been rumors the boys were involved in a fight outside the convenience store in Chico where they stopped. There are also reports of a so-called town bully confessing in church to being part of killing the five. After decades of investigation, none have led to the truth.
"They were not going to take some sort of last-minute joy ride up into the Plumas National Forest, into the foothills, the Sierra Nevada in the middle of winter," said Wright.
And there's the question of Gary Mathias' whereabouts, too.
"I mean, everybody... law enforcement included, really suspected that he was somehow responsible for their demise. He was the one in the group that his condition was not naturally occurring and he did have a troubled past, so if somebody was to have been responsible, he was most likely," said Bernardis.
Mathias' family declined to speak with us for this story. ABC10 asked what makes this case so difficult to solve.
"No independent information, no witnesses. I mean, you're dealing with the passage of time, you add speculation and all the rumors that have floated around, and the likelihood that the only people that truly know what happened that night perished in those hills. I speculate too that even Gary Mathias perished in those hills," said Bernardis.
There's a lack of evidence, too.
"Fingerprint and blood typing would have been the only things that you might have been able to do, but to my knowledge none of that was done. DNA, absolutely impossible. You couldn't have done that then. That was solely within the last 20 years. Again, this was a missing person's case and never really elevated to the level of a murder or homicide investigation, so a lot of the things that could have or would have taken place didn't occur," said Bernardis.
Ted's brother Dallas turned 80 this year and says he has faith this case can still be solved, but he doesn't know if he'll be alive to see it happen.
ABC10 asked what closure looks like to them.
"I don't know. I don't know, like you said, unless somebody comes forward and knew what happened, that's the only way it could be because there's no forensic evidence," said Dallas.
The answer isn't as clear for Perry.
"I don't know if I can have any," he said. "I don't know what would solve it. And maybe with what you guys are doing, what two other people have done, it might get it wider out and somebody, 'Oh, I know something there,' that would be the only thing probably," said Perry.
There's hope someone knows something about the deaths.
"Sometimes (with) the passage of time people get closer to their own mortality and they feel compelled to confess to something they did because they realized how bad it was. Who knows what those motivations are but there's a lot of reasons for it, so it's always a possibility," said Bernardis.
"It's been 46 years. (There's) no need for this to go on any longer. The families need answers on what happened that night, what went down and how everything unfolded. It's very important to get this information out to the people," said Wright.
The Yuba County Sheriff's Office says it receives calls about the case here and there, but it's usually speculation. Anyone with information on the case can call the sheriff's office at (530) 749-7777.
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