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The mysterious case of the Yuba County Five

Gary Mathias, Jack Madruga, Jack Huett, Ted Weiher and Bill Sterling, disappeared February 24, 1978, Oroville, Plumas National Forest, California. Bodies found June 4, 1978 (Except Gary Mathias).

Revised June 2024

The Yuba County Five Case (Mathias Group) Background

On the night of February 24, 1978, five friends from Yuba City, California—Gary Mathias, Jack Madruga, Jackie Huett, Ted Weiher, and William Sterling—set out on a trip to Chico to watch a basketball game. The evening held the promise of camaraderie and sport, but what followed was a plunge into a dark enigma that would haunt their names forever.

After the game, the men drove off into the night up a mountain road into the snow, never to be seen alive again. Days later, their car was discovered abandoned and eerily intact deep within the shadowy confines of the Plumas National Forest. The vehicle showed no signs of struggle or distress, yet the men had vanished without a trace.

In the early days of June 1978, the wilderness finally relinquished its grim secrets. The bodies of four of the five men were found in the forest. Their deaths were shrouded in bizarre and chilling circumstances. The mystery of their fate has since been dubbed the “Mathias Group Incident”, the “Yuba City Five Case”," and the "American Dyatlov Pass Incident," drawing eerie parallels to the infamous and unsolved deaths of nine hikers in the Ural Mountains of the Soviet Union in 1959. Read more at The Mysterious Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident in Russia's Ural Mountains

What led the Yuba City Five into the icy grip of the Plumas National Forest? Did they cross paths with a hostile stranger in Chico? Did a cruel twist of fate lead them astray into the mountains' treacherous snow? Or did a malevolent presence stalk them on their journey home, turning a night of fun into a deadly game of survival?

Speculation abounds, with theories ranging from accidental misdirection to the presence of a serial killer or even a violent altercation within the group itself. Yet, over four decades later, the truth remains buried in the beauty of the Plumas National Forest. The fate of the Yuba County Five lingers as one of California’s most baffling mysteries, a tale that continues to inspire countless podcasts, blog posts, and YouTube videos.

The forest remains silent, the answers obscured by time and the shadows of the trees. The sinister enigma of what truly happened to Gary Mathias, Jack Madruga, Jackie Huett, Ted Weiher, and William Sterling endures. It is a chilling reminder of the darkness that can lie just beyond the reach of understanding.

The Gateway Projects

Robert Sutherlin was blind in one eye and struggled to find employment, forcing him to try and hide his blindness. After enrolling at a business school in Oregon and a nine-month program at the University of San Francisco, he got involved in rehabilitation training. He saw a need in Yuba and Sutter counties and aimed to move the 1000 adults in the area from receiving welfare payments to earning a wage so they could contribute to society and earn some money.

After receiving grants from the federal government, the state of California, and private donations, Sutherlin established Gateway Projects in 1970 as a non-profit agency. Its purpose was to train people with disabilities and mental health conditions for employment. He left the program in April 1972.

Those who wanted to participate needed to take physical and mental tests and assess how well they would fit in with other workers. Some had to participate in a trainee work evaluation program, where they were monitored.

Gateway trainees were generally referred by state and area mental health clinics or by probation centers and were required to give five days a week and 7 hours a day.

After Sutherlin departed, a new director, Donald Garrett, took over in October 1973. Then, on February 18, 1975, a fire damaged a Gateway warehouse on Franklin Avenue in Yuba City, causing $100,000 worth of damage. Then, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Gateway building on Calusa Avenue in Yuba City, and a bomb threat was called in at another facility.

On April 6, 1975, at around 8.30 pm, 43-year-old Garrett was found dead in the Sugar House apartments in Yuba City, having been set on fire. He was divorced with two children. Investigators found the death highly unusual and suspected foul play. An autopsy confirmed the cause of death was fire, and there were severe burns on sixty per cent of his body.

Attacks on employee cars followed, and the media called the perpetrator the “Weirdo the Fireball Freak”. The attacks, seven incidents in total, stopped in August 1975.

Gateway closed in the 1990s, and Garrett’s apparent murder was never solved. The identity of Weirdo the Fireball Freak remains unknown.

Ted Weiher, Jack Madruga and Jackie Huett joined Gateway Projects in 1974-1975. Gary Mathias started working there in 1976-1977, and Bill Sterling’s arrival date has not been reported. Whether they were concerned about the arsons and murders is not certain, but it could have been unsettling for them.

Who were the Yuba County five?

Four of the five men, aged between 24 and 32 years of age, had some degree of developmental or intellectual impairment, with only one, Gary Mathias, suffering from severe mental disease (schizophrenia).

The five, collectively known as “the boys”, were all enrolled in a day program for handicapped adults at Gateway Projects. But that did not mean they could not function in society; it was quite the opposite. They were considered high functioning but could struggle to cope when placed in a stressful situation.

They all lived in the Yuba City area, around 40 miles north of Sacramento, either in Olivehurst, Linda or Marysville.

Madruga, Sterling, and Huett had known each other for years, whilst Mathias was a relative newcomer to the group.

Gary Mathias

25-year-old Gary Dale Mathias had the most severe mental health challenges, but if he took his medication, he was able to function in society and was an assistant in his stepfather's gardening business.

He was suffering from schizophrenia and was on medication to control his symptoms. Mathias took the prescription drugs, Stellazine (Trifluoperazine) and Cogentin (Benztropine), the former is an anti-psychotic used in the treatment of schizophrenia, and the latter is a medication used to treat movement disorders like Parkinsons disease and dystonia, as well as the extrapyramidal side effects of antipsychotics. In addition he was on Prolixen/Plixen (fluphenazine), a a high-potency typical antipsychotic medication.

When he was young, Gary, jumped out of a moving car and hit his head meaning he damaged his eyesight and would have to wear strong glasses after that to see properly.

He was a huge rock music fan and so when he attended Marysville High School he was the lead singer of a rock and roll band called the Fifth Shade and they won a Battle of the Bands competition in 1969. He was also an athlete and played football, roller skated and enjoyed bowling.

After graduating from high school in 1971, he decided to enlist in the Army and would work as a supply clerk in Germany. During this time, he was suspected of illicit drug use and was diagnosed as a schizophrenic. The army sent Mathias back to the USA as he failed to take his drugs and lapsed into a disoriented psychosis. He was sent to Letterman Veterans Administration hospital in San Francisco in California for treatment. In November 1973, Gary was discharged from the army.

Although Gary was diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was not properly medicated between 1972 and 1975 and suffered badly from hallucinations, delusions, psychosis and disorganised thinking that are characterised by the disease. "Went haywire," is how Bob, his stepfather, put it.

He could drive a car and could defend himself if threatened. He was considered the odd man out, and his basketball coach said he was spacey and could flip at any time.

Gary had many run-ins with the law and had the most “criminal-like profile” of the five.

Before he joined the army in 1971, he had some minor incidents with law enforcement and was linked to some burglaries, but this was never proven. In 1968, he was investigated for pulling stop signs with other teenagers.

Police records showed he had become violent on occasion and was charged with assault twice, including battery of a police officer and intent to commit rape. The violent episodes are not related to schizophrenia, as a person with the disease is as likely to commit violence as someone without.

On June 27, 1972, when he was living in the Olivehurst area, Gary was involved in an altercation in downtown Marysville with a gang of youths. At around 1 am, a drunk Mathias was thrown into a window at Flurry’s Buy and Sell, with only minor injuries. The Marysville Police Department investigated but made no arrests, despite knowing the identity of the assailants.

Following this, he was sent to the Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco, where he escaped and walked 130 miles back to Oliverhurst. He was reported Absent Without Official Leave (AWOL) by the Army on January 13, 1973.

On February 3, 1973, someone contacted the Yuba County Sherrif’s office that Mathias had been allegedly involved in a rape.

Mathias had visited an acquaintance at his home on February 3, and as they watched television, Mathias got up to say he was going to the bathroom. When he didn’t return, the friend went to check what had happened, and he found Gary on top of his sleeping wife, fondling her breasts. On being discovered, Mathias ran out of the home without it being seen whether he had exposed himself. The sheriff’s department tracked him down at his parent’s home and attempted to question him, but he refused without his attorney being present. He was arrested and booked into the jail.

Around eight days later, on the evening of February 11, 1973, Mathias was causing a disturbance, and three officers went to his cell. As they opened the door, he was naked, and he escaped the cell before one of the officers called Sgt. Lloyd “Pat” Finley caught up with him, and Mathias punched him in the face. He then tried to attack another officer before he was subdued and returned to an isolation cell.

When asked why he’d hit Finley, he said, “I’ve been in the Army, and I don’t like it, and I thought if I hit a cop, maybe they’ll let me out.” After pleading guilty to battery of a police officer, he was sentenced to six months in the Yuba County Jail on May 21, 1973, but charges relating to the alleged rape were dropped after a plea deal.

In December 1973, he was reported as a prowler at a woman’s property who may have been in a relationship with Gary. The woman had a three-year-old child, but reportedly, Gary told the toddler, “I thought I’d kill you once, but I’ll do it again.”

In 1974, Mathias was taken to the Stockton State Hospital after Stockton police admitted him, but after two days, he escaped by climbing down a drainpipe and wearing his hospital gown; he hitchhiked back to Olivehurst.

He was also involved in a hit-and-run incident on July 20, 1974, and he was arrested for driving without a licence, driving at night without headlights and disturbing the peace.

Mathias was close to his grandmother, Viola Watterman, who lived near Portland, Oregon. In 1975, Mathias enrolled in a course at Yuba College that his parents warned would be too challenging, but Gary was adamant. As expected, he could not keep up and too embarrassed to tell his father, he decided to visit Viola, who kept his whereabouts a secret. Later, Gary’s parents contacted him and persuaded him to return. Five weeks later, a dishevelled Gary turned up after walking from Oregon over 500 miles, surviving by stealing food and milk.

On April 25, 1975, Gary broke into a home in the early hours and was discovered by a couple in their bedroom. The couple knew Mathias as they had lived near his parent’s house around ten years earlier.

Mathias was asked what he was doing there and replied, “I want my ring. I’m looking for Satan. He’s got my ring.” He was chased from the house, and law enforcement found him in the backyard. He had no ID, but one of the officers recognised him. An investigation of the scene indicated he had broken a window to gain entry to the house. He explained that voices in his head had told him to break in, and he didn’t intend to harm anyone. He asked the officers to take him to jail as he had nowhere to stay.

Mathias was sent for a mental health assessment, where he told staff that he wanted to be at the house because Satan had his ring, and he wanted it back to save his marriage. He also said he had been living in a graveyard.

It is also believed that Mathias may have dated the woman or was infatuated with her.

On May 27, 1975, Gary was charged with Grand Theft Auto after he stole a car from a mental health clinic.

It was the turning point in his life when Gary joined Gateway Projects. His last appointment for medication was on February 21, 1978, and his next appointment was seven days later. He was taking his prescription drugs at the time of the Yuba incident and was able to control his schizophrenia when complying.

Of the group, he was considered to be the leader.

Theodore “Ted” Weiher

Theodore “Ted” Earl Weiher was 32 years old and was always considered “slow” by family members from birth.

He could hold down a job but needed supervision. He was employed for a while as a janitor at Yuba Gardens Middle School. He also worked as a snack bar clerk but quit at the urging of his family, who thought his slowness was causing problems. When he went missing, he was a labourer for Pacific Gas and Electric in the area, packaging, winding or repairing cables.

He was kind, outgoing, friendly, and could read and write. He enjoyed being active and would walk for miles. But he had a poor sense of direction, especially at night. He was also afraid of the dark.

Some behavioural problems examples included being forcibly removed from his bed even though the house was on fire whilst he preferred to carry on sleeping. He didn’t understand why he should flee the scene.

Ted would often walk to Jackie Huett’s home over a mile from his own, and the two were inseparable friends, despite Jackie being 8 years younger. They met during the early 1970s, and Weiher was Huett’s protector. Ted would also walk the seven miles to Bill Sterling’s home in Yuba City, a trip of around 2 hours. Gary Mathias also lived in the same area as the Weihers and Huett’s.

The Yuba County Sheriff’s Department report said that Ted was not a violent person, but it would not take much to make him mad. Others easily influenced him. His mother said in a dangerous situation, he would just run and hide.

The report said he was dating a woman at the time of his disappearance, probably someone Ted met at the Gateway Projects and who was also linked to Jackie Huett, possibly romantically.

Jackie Huett

24-year-old Jackie Charles Huett, who had a slight droop to the head, had been handicapped from birth. After his birth, doctors had at the time described Jackie to his parents as being “retarded”, a word commonly used at the time but that is now considered unacceptable. He suffered from asthma and lived with his parents, two brothers, a sister and grandparents at the family home

Although reports have consistently stated that Jackie was the most handicapped of the group of five men, members of his family dispute this, stating that he was able to function well.

Jackie was sometimes slow to respond, very shy, and somewhat reclusive. He didn’t speak much, and when he did, it was with a noticeable speech impediment described by his family as a lisp. He couldn’t read or write and had never stayed away from home.

He was reported to be a talented athlete who enjoyed going on fishing and hunting trips with family members. He owned a motorbike and could drive, but didn’t have a driving license.

He was a loving shadow to Ted Weiher, his best friend, and inseparable. They met sometime in 1970; by 1974, they were both involved in the Gateway Projects. Both men worked for PG&E, packing and winding cable.

He would look after Huett in a protective way and dial the phone for him when he had to make a call. They were almost constant companions.

Jack “Doc” Madruga

Jack “Doc” Antone Madruga, 30, was from a family with a Portuguese background, specifically on the islands of the Azores.

He was nicknamed Doc by his family as he would go around the family home shouting “What’s up Doc?” from the Bugs Bunny cartoons.

He loved basketball and baseball, as well as music and swimming.

He was said to be a shy loner, introverted and not mentally handicapped but was somewhat slow. His family said he was intelligent and fun-loving. Jack had a low I.Q. but hadn’t been diagnosed as mentally disabled, and he had a driver’s license.

He was a high school graduate who was called into the U.S. Army for two years. He was likely stationed in Germany driving trucks and was discharged in 1968. A veteran was laid off in November 1977 from his job as a busboy for Sunsweet Growers, where he worked with Bill Sterling as part of Gateway Projects.

He lived with his mother but took care of his finances. He could assess situations and make an appropriate judgement. He was the only one with a car and was the only one allowed to drive it. His best friend was Bill Sterling.

William “Bill” Sterling

William “Bill” Lee Sterling, 29, was considered social and intelligent but some described him as lazy.

He spent an unspecific period in two mental health institutions, Napa State Hospital and DeWitt General Hospital, between the ages of eight and nineteen years old. He was living at home with his parents at the time of his disappearance from the age of 19, and it is unknown whether he had any mental health support at this time.

He was suffering from hyperactivity during his periods in the hospital, and he could be viewed as a danger if other people got in his way. His family decided to send him away so he would not be a threat to others. During his time in the Napa State Hospital it was reported that he a violent confrontation with another patient that may have resulted in a death if a custodian hadn’t intervened. Bill’s mother had said she believed this person had been sexually harassing her son.

Bill’s best friend was Jack Madruga. He graduated from high school and held down a job, including at Sunsweet Growers, where he worked with Jack.

He was a good walker and could go for miles. His mother said he could easily walk nine or ten miles because of his fast pace. He also enjoyed bowling and mini golf and was a member of a bowling club called Pin Pickers, which had a team with various disabilities.

Bill was also involved with several churches in the area and would read Bible quotes to patients in mental hospitals. At the time of his disappearance, he was a member of the Community Church of Marysville. He was involved with Californian Christian Singles, which organized events for single people in the area.It is unknown whether he was romantically involved with anyone.

The trip to the Chico basketball game

At around 6 pm on Friday, February 24, 1978, the five men drove about 55 miles north from the Yuba City area to Chico, California, to watch their favourite college basketball team, the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Aggies, play the Chico State Wildcats.

The journey was just over an hour in Madruga’s Mercury Montego, with Jackie Huett being picked up last at around 6 pm. There are two highways running parallel from the Marysville-Yuba City area - Highway 70 from Maryville to Chico, California State Route 99, from Yuba City to Chico. Both merge near Oroville,25 minutes south of Chico. Leaving at 6 pm, they would arrive in Chico just past 7 pm and then watch the game at the Art Acker Gym at Chico State that started at 7.45 pm.

The boys believed it was worth staying out late despite a big basketball game of their own the following day, as it was the last chance to see UC Davis before the end of the season. Their parents were relaxed about the trip, as they had headed out of town several times to see games, and if anything went wrong, they always called home. They were expected to be back before midnight,

UC Davis won the game 98-86. When it ended at around 10 pm, they stopped three blocks away at Behr's Market, mildly annoying the clerk Mary Davis (who was trying to close up), and bought one Hostess cherry pie, one Langendorf lemon pie, one Snickers bar, one Marathon bar, two Pepsi’s, and a quart and a half of milk.

From there, they were expected to return to their homes in Marysville-Yuba, but unexpectedly and mysteriously, they failed to arrive.

After Oroville, Madruga took the Oroville-Quincy highway into the Plumas National Forest for reasons unknown.

The search for the Yuba County Five

As the hours passed on the evening of February 24, and they had failed to return home, the group's parents became increasingly concerned. They called each other to see if anyone had heard anything, but no one had.

Friends and family spent Saturday, February 25, searching the Chico and Yuba area and the highways between them, looking for signs of Jack’s car or the men. But there was no luck.

The five men were supposed to play basketball on Saturday, February 25, as part of a Special Olympics basketball tournament, “The Sacramento Valley—Motherlode Special Olympics Basketball Tournament,” at Sierra College, a community College northeast of Sacramento.

They were part of the “Gateway Gators" basketball team formed from members of the Gateway Projects coached by Robert Pennock, whose car had been burnt during the 1975 arson attacks during a pool party. They were meant to meet at 8 am at a Montgomery Ward department store in downtown Marysville. From there, they would take a bus to Rocklin for the tournament at Sierra College.

The winning team would progress to the Special Olympics event in 1978, the California Special Olympics State Games at UCLA in Los Angeles on June 23-25. This was a week-long trip that included a trip to Disneyland.

Some of the men’s basketball clothes had been laid out the evening of the 24th before they left for Chico, as they were excited to play in the game.

Weiher had asked his mother to wash his new white high-topped sneakers for the tournament, saying, "We got a big game Saturday. Don't you let me oversleep".

Jack Madruga’s mother, Melba Medruga, called the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department at around 8 pm on the 25th but was told to file a report 24 hours later in case the five showed up. Deputy Jim Harris and Reserve Deputy Jess Loftis were assigned.

The next day, a search was immediately started. The Sherrif’s department put out an ATL (Attempt to Locate) for overdue persons and notified neighbouring Sutter and Placer counties and Highway patrol in the area. The initial assumption was that Madruga’s car had broken down or that they had got lost.

Four North California law enforcement jurisdictions worked together to search for the five men with the help of friends, family, and local communities. The local press picked up the story, and it soon spread nationally.

The authorities continued the search for the next two days, but nothing turned up. On the 27th and 28th, family members were interviewed to gather as much background information as possible on the missing boys.

False leads

After all the press coverage, it was inevitable that many people contacted the Yuba County Sheriff's Department with apparent leads.

On February 28, Sutter County informed the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department that a woman called the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department with a sighting at the skating rink in Sacramento. Whilst there, she said she saw six men that she described as “potentially retarded”. Police checked the parking lot, but the Mercury Montego wasn’t there.

On the same day, a cashier at a convenience store near Marysville said a customer had told her that a blue Mercury was parked at the Metro Airport parking lot in Sacramento with its lights on. The customer had seen the car early on Sunday, February 26, but airport security confirmed the car was not there overnight.

A security guard said he saw six men at a Weinstock’s department store in Sacramento.

Jack Madruga’s Mercury Montego found

Then, on the evening of Tuesday, February 28, a dispatcher from Butte County contacted the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department. They informed us them that a U.S. Forest Service worker, William Burris, who was marking timber, found Jack Madruga’s abandoned car on an unpaved road near Oroville on the old Quincy Highway the day before.

The car was near Rogers Cow Camp, past Elke Retreat, at an elevation of 4,200-4,500 feet. The white over light blue 1969, two-door Mercury Montego, license plate Califonia XQG831, was located around a 1 hour 15 minutes drive from Chico, in the opposite direction from the route they would have been expected to drive home, and way up in the mountains in the Plumas National Forest in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The car was parked in the middle of the road and appeared stuck in the snow. Since the area was used for snowmobiling or hiking during the winter, Burris didn’t think much at first about finding the Montego, so he waited a day before calling his find-in.

The car would have had to travel using the Oroville-Quincy highway from Oroville, off Highway 70. Madruga would have had to drive through Oroville, cross the Bidwell Bar bridge on Lake Oroville and drive up the winding, unmarked road. It would have been evident that this was the completely wrong way to go.

Temperatures where the car was found were well below freezing, with snowdrifts of ten to twelve feet. Given this, the five men would have been in trouble as they left for the basketball game in Chico with light clothing, as the temperatures had been moderate, and they wore short-sleeved shirts, light jackets, jeans, and tennis shoes—inappropriate clothing for sub-zero temperatures and snow.

Police found no evidence of foul play at the car's site, but it was unlocked, one window was partially rolled down, and the keys were nowhere to be seen. Candy wrappers, milk cartons, a newspaper, and basketball programs (with scoring statistics) were inside, but maps were left in the glove compartment.

Despite the bumpy, unmade road, the Montego had no obvious damage. It had around a quarter tank of gas and was not stuck in the snow. The investigators figured the driver had used astonishing care and precision or knew the road well enough to anticipate every rut.

turquoise and white 1969 Mercury Montego — 1969 Mercury Montego

Forest rangers searched the area for five days and found no trace of the men. Soon after the search began, a severe blizzard moved into the area, covering any potential tracks. Around nine inches of snow fell on the upper mountain. Two days later, the search teams nearly lost men themselves as their Snowcats struggled through the drifts.

Possible sightings of the Yuba Five - Joseph Schons

A man called Joseph Schons contacted the police after he heard about the disappearance to say he had seen the men between 11-12 pm on the Friday that the group disappeared.

He was driving up the gravel road to his cabin when his Volkswagen Beetle car became stuck in the snow, and unfortunately, whilst trying to push his car out, he suffered a heart attack.

The big question was - what was Schons doing on that isolated, unpaved road in the middle of the night?

He was in his mid-50s and lived in the Berry Creek area, just outside the Plumas National Forest, around 14 miles from where the Mercury was found. He was known to suffer from alcohol abuse and dishonesty so questions remain about the reliability of his evidence. He had a police record for vehicle theft and drunk driving on several occasions.

The story from here is a little confusing. In one version, whilst he lay in his car, at about 11.30 pm, he saw two sets of headlights coming up behind him - one was a car, and the other a pickup truck. He got out of his car to flag them down. The two cars stopped about 20 feet from him. The passengers then left together in one car. Joseph spent the rest of the night in his car before walking back down the mountain in the morning to Mountain House, a lodge with a bar and restaurant around 8-9 miles from his car, arriving at 9 am.

In a second, more mysterious version, whilst inside the car, he heard “whistling” noises and saw what he thought were a group of men and a woman with a baby, walking in the light of another vehicle’s headlights. Schons called for help and the lights turned off and the whistling sounds stopped. A few hours later he saw flashlight beams outside his car and called out for help again, but immediately the lights went out. Schons stayed in his car until it ran out of gas, then walked eight miles down to get help, passing Madruga’s car on the way. He didn’t think much about what he’d seen until he heard about the disappearances in the press.

A woman reported seeing the five men in a red pickup truck on Saturday and Sunday, about an hour’s drive from the site of their abandoned car. She owned a store there, where two of the men came in to buy food. One of them made a phone call from a nearby phone booth, and the other two stayed in the truck.

Discovery of the Mathias Group Bodies

There was no news for months until the spring snow melted on the mountains. Then, there was a significant development on Sunday, June 4, 1978.

Lorin Koch and his sixteen-year-old son Roger joined William Reamue for a motorcycle trip from Oroville to Quincy. They decided to take a more scenic route, passing through the Plumas National Forest, planning to use the Oroville-Quincy Highway and then stop at Quincy. As they traveled into the Forest, they came across snow and fallen trees. The three thought there would be little snow as it was June, but they encountered a section with at least four feet of snow drifts and were unable to cross it, so they took an alternative route. They passed some forest service trailers near the Daniel Zink campground and were soon confronted by more snow and fallen timber. So they decided to head back to the campground to ask for help. The area was around 12 miles northeast by road (5 miles as the crow flies) of where Jack Madruga’s car was abandoned in the previous February.

When they got to the campground, they smelt a terrible odour from one of the trailers measuring eight by thirty feet. Roger Koch headed towards the smell and noticed a broken window. He poked his dead through into the darkness but could make out a body on the bottom bunk of a three-bunk bed right next to the window. Not quite believing him, William also looked and saw the body. It was covered with a sheet up to its neck.

Shaken by the discovery, they got on their motorbikes and headed to Oroville to try to phone law enforcement. They rode to Denny’s restaurant and phoned Butte County Sherrif’s department at 9.45 pm. Initially skeptical, the Sherrif’s department eventually agreed to send someone to the campground to investigate further. The three motorbikers met with them to show the exact location on a map. That evening, law enforcement got to the campground and confirmed a body was there, and subsequently, the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department was contacted.

Sherrif’s department investigation of the trailer at Daniel Zink Campground

On June 5, 1978, members of the Butte, Yuba, and Plumas (as the campground was in this county) County Sherrif’s departments entered the trailer and found the body wrapped in eight sheets. The body was very underweight, with a heavy beard with curly, unkempt hair. It was lifted, and investigators quickly realised it was Ted Weiher, wearing the same clothes as when he went missing.

Weiher’s feet were badly frostbitten, and his pants were rolled up to his knees, with his hands on his chest. Three toes from his right foot and two toes from his left foot were missing, with evidence of gangrene.

His leather shoes were off and missing. A table by the bed held his nickel ring with "Ted" engraved on it, his gold necklace, his wallet (with cash inside), and a gold Waltham watch, its crystal missing, which the families say had not belonged to any of the five men.

Investigators examined the trailer thoroughly, noting the broken window on the north side that had been damaged from the outside.

Empty C-ration cans were found outside the trailer window and near Weiher’s body. In a storage shed outside, there was a year’s supply of C-rations. These were individual canned, pre-cooked, and prepared meals issued to the U.S. military. The men consumed 36 of the meals but left the majority untouched. In addition, there was a huge supply of freeze-dried meals. One of the C-ration cans had been opened with an Army P38 can opener.

To open the rations, you would need a can opener called a P38. However, the cans were believed to be opened with a standard church key-style can opener. This was strange as Jack and Gary had served in the army and would have been familiar with the P38, as would Jackie, who had been taught to use one by his father on camping trips.

Some coal oil heating stoves and heating cans for the C-rations were left untouched and unused.

Books were found outside the trailer's back door, and a white sheet and sock were located 30 feet away. A candle that had been lit at some point was also in the trailer.

The tennis shoes that Gary Mathias was wearing when he disappeared were found, as well as some notes on a memo pad believed to be written by him.

A tool shed with a lock had been broken into, and another shed with a generator had not been accessed. It looks like a file was used to break the lock.

The adjacent trailer had been ransacked, and there was untouched dehydrated food.

Heavy clothing, matches, playing cards, books, wooden furniture, and other materials could have easily been used to start a fire were located. But there had been no apparent attempt to start one either inside or outside the trailer despite the freezing temperature on the mountain during the winter. A propane tank connected to the trailer, which could have provided a ready heat and cooking fuel source, was untouched. "All they had to do was turn that gas on," says Yuba County Lt. Lance Ayers, "and they'd have had gas to the trailer and heat."

About a quarter-mile away, northeast of the trailers, searchers found three wool forest service blankets and a two-cell flashlight lying by the side of the road. The flashlight was slightly rusted and turned off, making it impossible to tell just how long it had been there.

The autopsy of Weiher confirmed he had died from pulmonary congestion due to exposure with no sign of foul play.

It appeared that Ted had lived 8-13 weeks after his disappearance based on the length of his beard and around 100-pound weight loss. He weighed just 120 pounds at the time of his death. Several bed sheets in a shroud were tightly tucked over his body, indicating that someone else had been with him in the trailer, as he could not have bundled himself up in this manner.

Daniel Zink Campground trailers Yuba 5 — Daniel Zink Campground trailers

Daniel Zink Campground Front of trailer Ted Weiher — Daniel Zink Campground Front of trailer where Ted Weiher corpse found

Discovery of Madruga and Sterling

On June 6, 1978, at around 10 am, two days after Weiher’s body was located, Jack Madruga and Bill Sterling were found in the Granite Basin area, three miles from the Daniel Zink campground.

Forty searchers had been combing the area and found a trail of blankets leading from the trailers. Madruga’s badly decomposed corpse was found on the northeast side of the roadway ten feet from a stream, partially eaten by animals. He lay face up, his right hand curled around his watch and the keys to the Mercury Montego in his clothing.

Sterling was found across the road to the southwest in an embankment. His remains, mainly just bones, were scattered in a wooded area over around 50 square yards. His wallet was found with identification at the scene. Gary Mathias and Jackie Huett were still missing.

Jackie Huett located

Two days later, just off the same road but much closer to the trailer, Jackie Huett's father, Jack Huett Sr., found his son's remains around a quarter-mile from the trailer. He also found a pair of Levis and ripple-soled "Get There" shoes, and then he found Jackie's jacket. When he picked up the jacket, a piece of spine bone fell out

An assistant sheriff from Plumas County found a skull the next day, about 100 yards downhill from the rest of the bones, which the family dentist used to identify the remains.

The searchers found no sign of Gary Mathias. His tennis shoes were inside the forest service trailer, which suggested to investigators that he might have taken them off to put on Weiher's leather shoes - particularly since Weiher had bigger feet. Mathias' feet might have swollen with frostbite.

Although the men’s bodies were heavily decomposed, autopsy results determined that they had likely died from exposure.

Questions about the Yuba City Five disappearances and deaths

There are many questions about this weird case.

"Bizarre, and no explanations, and a thousand leads. Every day, you've got a thousand leads,” said John Thompson, the special agent from the California Department of Justice who had joined the investigation.

"There was some force that made em go up there." Jack Madruga's mother Mabel says firmly. "They wouldn't have fled off in the wood like a bunch of quail. We know good and well that somebody made them do it. We can't visualize someone getting the upper hand on those five men, but we know it must have been." "They seen something at that game, at the parking lot," says Ted Weiher's sister-in-law. "They might have seen it and didn't even realize they seen it."

Why did the Yuba City men get lost that night and end up on the mountain?

Chico to Yuba City is a straight down Highway 70 through the Central Valley in low-lying land with no snow at that time. It is a 46-mile, around one-hour drive. The car was found several thousand feet up in an area above the snow line in a completely different direction.

Why did they abandon the trip to Yuba? Were they forced to go up Bucks Lane on the way to Palmetto City, did they decide to take a detour, or did they take a wrong turn?

Family members believed the men must have been forced off the highway back to Yuba up into the Plumas National Forest. There were many opportunities for the men to turn around if they took a wrong turn, and Madruga, who was driving, was very familiar with the area. It should have been evident to him that he was driving the wrong way, especially as they gained altitude into the Sierra Nevada mountains. The area where their car was found was on an unpaved, rutted road, surrounded by snow that was not heading back to their homes.

What happened to the car, and why did the boys abandon it?

The group's car was left open, with gas in the tank and working order.

How did the group end up around a trailer so far from the car?

Ted Weiher was found in a trailer many miles from the car, and Madruga, Sterling and Huett were found nearby. How did they walk in normal shoes without outdoor clothing so far in snow that was several feet thick? Were the group together, and did they decide to separate after Ted's death to try and find help? Did they perhaps follow some snowmobile tracks to the campground?

Why did Ted Weiher starve to death?

Some of the rations in and around the trailer were eaten, but much of them were untouched. Ted had a slow and agonizing death from starvation, having lost over half his body weight. With so much food close by, why wasn't he eating? Had the group been abducted, and the perpetrator was preventing access to food, or was Ted suffering from the effects of gangrene caused by frostbite?

Was there a link to Gateway Projects issues?

The 1970s was a dark and troubled time in the Yuba / Marysville area. Crime was rampant in the towns surrounding Yuba.

On November 12, 1973, 12-year-old Valerie Janice Lane and 13-year-old Doris Karen Derryberry, who attended the Yuba Gardens Intermediate School, went missing. The girls were reported missing after their mothers said they never returned home overnight from a shopping trip to the mall.

Their bodies were discovered in a wooded area southeast of Marysville the next day. Both had been shot and assaulted. The case went cold for decades.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2016, cousins Larry Don Patterson, 66, and William Lloyd Harbour were arrested in Yuba County, after a state forensics lab matched DNA from the two suspects to semen found on Derryberry. The men both lived near the victims in Olivehurst.

Patterson pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder, while Harbour pleaded no contest to the same charges. They were sentenced to five years to life in prison, the maximum penalty under sentencing laws at the time of the crime.

County officials said the suspects’ names never surfaced in the 1970s, though investigators interviewed more than 60 people. They considered Patterson after he was charged in 1976 with raping two women in nearby Chico but found no link to the killing of the two girls until the DNA match last year.

Infamous serial killer Juan V. Corona was convicted of killing 25 migrant workers and burying them on farms near his home in the Sacramento Valley in California.

Corona’s victims were drifters or so called “fruit tramps” who moved from farm to farm, seeking short-term work in the valley’s orchards, groves and vineyards. No one seemed to miss these men when they disappeared.

The killings came to light after a peach farmer spotted a fresh hole in one of his orchards near Yuba City on May 19, 1971. When he returned to investigate later that day, the hole had been filled in. The farmer called the Sutter County sheriff’s office and deputies dug up the body of a man. He had been stabbed in the chest and his head had been split open. A search of the orchards in the vicinity revealed other graves, some freshly dug, some made weeks before.

The digging went on for days until 25 corpses had been unearthed. The victims ranged in age from about 40 to the mid-60s. All had been hacked and stabbed. One had been shot.

Store receipts and bank deposit slips found in some graves were linked to Corona, who, as a licensed labor contractor, recruited field hands from bars and other places where migrant workers gathered.

A search of his house in Yuba City discovered a bloodstained machete and a ledger with the names of victims. He was married with four children.

Corona maintained his innocence for years, but then, at a parole hearing on December 5, 2011, he admitted his crimes.

When asked why he committed the crimes, he called the victims “winos” and “creeps” who had been “trespassing.” It was the closest he ever came to saying why he did it. Prosecutors never offered a motive.

The first trial began on Sept. 11, 1972, in the Solano County city of Fairfield, east of San Francisco. Prosecutors were found to have misplaced or mishandled evidence, and forensic tests that were meant to have been done early on were delayed. At one point, a prosecutor improperly suggested that Corona’s refusal to testify suggested that he was guilty.

The judge, who repeatedly expressed dismay at the prosecutors, reminded the jury that the burden of proof rested totally on them to prove guilt. Corona was convicted on January 18, 1973, and sentenced to life in prison. The California Supreme Court had overturned the state’s death penalty months before the trial.

After finding him guilty, some jurors said they were perturbed that the defense had presented no psychiatric evidence on his behalf. His original public defender had planned to have him plead not guilty by reason of insanity, but the family’s lawyer later abandoned that strategy. Later, the lawyer was found to have trying to get a book deal about the case.

In May 1978, a California appeals court overturned the conviction, declaring that Corona’s defense had been incompetent.

The second trial was held in Hayward, in Alameda County, near San Francisco and lasted from February 22 to September 23, 1982. Represented by a new defense team, Corona took the stand, insisting that he was innocent.

The defense suggested that the real killer was the half-brother Natividad Corona, whom he described as an “aggressive homosexual”, but by the time of Juan Corona’s second trial, Natividad Corona had returned to Mexico and could not be located.

Convicted again, Juan Corona was resentenced to life in prison, where he deteriorated mentally and physically. A decade earlier, on December 1, 1973, he had suffered more than 30 wounds and lost his left eye when another inmate stabbed him in a prison hospital.

He died in March 2019, aged 85, at a hospital near the state prison in Corcoran.

The Gateways Project, where the Yuba 5 attended, was targeted by arson attacks on several occasions, and its executive director was murdered.

Further viewing

The Missing Enigma:

The Yuba County Five - A Tale Of Inaccuracies (Part 1)

The Yuba County Five - What Really Happened? (Part 2)

John Lordan Brain Scratch BrainScratch: The Missing Five

Further reading

Tony Wright: Things aren’t right - The disappearance of the Yuba County Five

Drew Hurst Beeson: Out of Bounds: What Happened to the Yuba County Five?

Further listening

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