It’s one of California’s most enduring mysteries. The story of what happened to the Yuba County Five is the subject of an episode in Netflix‘s Files of The Unexplained, and it’s the kind of incident that brings up more questions than answers.
The Yuba County Five refers to a group of five young men from Yuba City, California, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in February 1978. The group included Jack Madruga, Jack Huett, Bill Sterling, Ted Weiher, and Gary Mathias. Four of the group had some form of learning disability, while Gary was being treated for schizophrenia. “[They were] just nice friendly boys who went to games together and went home,” one of their mothers told the Los Angeles Times in 1978.
Before their disappearance, the five men attended a basketball game at California State University, Chico, on the evening of February 24—from Chico to their homes, the distance was less than 50 miles. They were known to have left the game together in a red and white 1969 Mercury Montego, owned by Jack, and were reported to have stopped at a convenience store in Chico known as the Bear’s Market to buy snacks. This was the last time they were seen alive. So what happened to the Yuba County Five?
What happened to the Yuba County Five?
What happened to the Yuba County Five remains shrouded in mystery. Instead of arriving home after the basketball game, police say they turned off the motorway and headed up onto a mountain road that the families say none of them were familiar with. It would be several hours until their mothers raised the alarm that they hadn’t come home.
Four days later, on February 28, Jack’s car was found abandoned in a remote area of the Plumas National Forest, in an area known as the Oroville-Quincy Road, some 69 miles from Chico. The vehicle was in fine shape, the keys were gone, it had not run out of fuel, and there were maps folded in the glove compartment. The scene contained signs that they had been there for some time, including evidence of them trying to survive by seeking shelter inside a nearby trailer, where they had access to food and water.
It wasn’t until the frost thawed that investigators would finally get some answers. On June 4, a group of motorcyclists wandered into a deserted forest service trailer camp at the end of the road and smelled something foul. It was the body of Ted Weiher, stretched out on a bed inside the main trailer which was 19.4 miles from the car.
In the months it took to find him, he’d lost from 80 to 100 pounds. The growth of his beard suggested he had lived, starving, for anywhere from eight to 13 weeks. His feet were badly frostbitten. There was no evidence that anyone had tried to make a fire, though matches were found along with wooden furniture and books that would’ve burned easily.
No one had touched the propane tank in another shed outside, either. “All they had to do was turn that gas on,” Yuba County Lt. Lance Ayers told the Washington Post at the time, “and they’d have had gas to the trailer and heat.”
More than a dozen ration cans had been opened and emptied from an outside storage shed. One had been opened with an Army P38 can opener, which only Madruga and Mathias who had served in the Army, probably knew how to use. But no one had opened a locker in the same shed containing enough dehydrated food keep all five alive for a year.
The next day, the remains of Madruga and Sterling were found 11.4 miles from the car. Madruga had been partially eaten by animals; bones were all that was left of Sterling. Two days later, Jackie Huett’s father found his son’s backbone. Autopsies concluded that the men had died of hypothermia. There was no sign of Gary Mathias, but his tennis shoes were found inside the forest service trailer and only four sets of footprints were uncovered at the scene.
So many questions: Why would they abandon their car with gas still in the tank? Why trudge almost 20 miles through the snow to break into a locked, unheated trailer and die? Why did they drive up there in the first place? If they were chased, why wasn’t the car damaged?
“There was some force that made ’em go up there,” Jack Madruga’s mother Mabel told the Washington Post at the time. “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.”‘
Was Gary Mathias found?
Gary Mathias hasn’t been found by investigators, though there have been plenty of unconfirmed sightings and theories about whether he was involved in his friends’ deaths. In a Yuba County Sheriff’s Department letter dated mid-October 2020—made public via a records request in October 2023—investigators now believe that “Gary Matthias is believed to be a victim of foul play. This case remains open as a missing person/homicide case.”
In Files of the Unexplained, Gary’s sister Tammie Phillips said it was likely that he had gone “weeks without his medication,” which would have impacted his mental health. “I do believe he didn’t make it out of there any more than the other boys did,” she added. But some people believe Gary is still alive.
Jack ‘Doc’ Madruga’s niece Cathy Roberts claims the four men were scared of Gary. “I do know, God forgive me, Doc and the other guys were scared of Mathias,” she said. “Gary was going to go to the game with them and they didn’t really want him to go but they were too scared to say anything. And that came from my uncle.”
Cathy also claimed she saw Gary at a bar within a year after the bodies were found, believing she’d made eye contact with him before he bolted. Tony Wright, the author of Things Aren’t Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five, disagrees with this suspicion. “His schizophrenia is easy to use as an excuse,” Wright outlined in the documentary, “but there’s no proof of Gary ever pulling something like this before”.
He added: “If they can get in a car, drive to Chico without incident, attend a basketball game without incident, go to Behr’s market [convenience store] without incident, how’s Gary the problem? I don’t buy it.”
Files of the Unexplained is available to stream on Netflix now.
