[4] Madruga, the only member of the group besides Mathias who had a driver's license, drove the group 50 miles (80km) north to Chico in his turquoise and white 1969 Mercury Montego. They had set out on what should've been a quick road trip to watch their favorite basketball team in a neighboring town. No trace of the men was found other than the car. Looking out, he saw a car parked behind him, headlights on, with a group of people around it, one of which seemed to him to be a woman holding a baby. He was pretty sick. It was getting cold after he wasnt able to keep the cars AC heat running anymore, but to his relief he saw headlights in the distance. Mathias, his feet perhaps also swollen from frostbite, could have decided to put Weiher's shoes on instead if he had ventured outside. One of the crime scenes from the John Collins murder series. Sullivan Ranch Crime Scene. Many, if not most should be considered armed and dangerous. A day after search parties were sent out, Madruga and Sterlings bodies were found about 11 miles from the Mercury Montego. However, no trace of him has ever been found. Instead, it looked abandoned. All five piled back into the Mercury and took off. Forest rangers searched the area for five days and found no trace of the men, but soon after the search began,a severe blizzard moved into the area, covering any potential tracks. [6], With the evidence not pointing to any clear conclusion about what happened the night the five men disappeared, police and the families were not ruling out the possibility that they had met with foul play. "He was either tricked or threatened.". The more you learn about this night out-gone-wrong, the more questions youll have. [2], Searchers returned to Plumas, following the road between the trailer and the site of the Montego. They soon started to discover some very strange facts. Episode Info Jackie Huett Photo Source Gary Mathias Photo Source The trailer was 19.4 miles away from where the Mercury Montego was found. They appeared to have died from exposure perhaps before reaching the trailer. Why did they abandon the trip to Yuba? 2023 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved. On February 24th, 1978, five men from Yuba County, California, vanished into the night on their way home from a college Let's start from the beginning The five men, often referred to as the boys by their loved ones were all very good friends. Some of them even laid out their uniforms for the team and asked their parents to make sure they woke up on time for the game. This could explain the strange story told by Joseph Schons where he said he saw flashlights around a car. [4], On June 4, with most of the higher-elevation snow melted, a group of motorcyclists went to a trailer maintained by the Forest Service at a campsite off the road about 19.4 miles (31.2km) from where the Montego had been found. This about the unsolved case of the Yuba County Five, and how five men disappeared and died, leaving no trace: read to find out more. We can't visualize someone getting the upper hand on those five men, but we know it must have been." but hadnt been diagnosed as mentally disabled and both he and Gary had served in the U.S. Army and had drivers licenses. The five friends decided to go to a basketball game together to cheer on the UC Davis team. Jake Paul vs. Tommy Fury: Who made the most money from their fight? The family identified the 10-year-old as Frankie Rosiles. $19.99 + $4.99 . From his beard growth, they knew Weiher had been living there anywhere between eight and 13 weeks. Also on the table was a gold watch, without its crystal, which Weiher's family said was not his,[2] and a partially melted candle. February 24, 1978. Itsweird. Months passed and no progress was made on the boys case. The Sutter County Sheriff's Office is responsible for crime prevention, law enforcement, and criminal investigation in the unincorporated areas of the County and in the City of Live Oak. All were fervent basketball fans, and even had a game of their own scheduled for the following day, playing on a team representing the rehabilitation center they all frequented. Don't you let me oversleep". Your favorite mother-daughter podcast explains the freaky similarities of 1959's Russian Dyatlov Robin and Adam proudly present Episode 141 of Scary(ish)! Were going to be covering a story Let's discuss the strange disappearance of the Yuba County Five.  This is a Mopac Audio podcast and is hosted by writer, producer, and podcaster Shannon McGarvey. For roughly three days, police had no break in the case, until finally a park ranger noted that he had seen a car matching the description of Madruga's on the night of the 25 th.On February 28, police located the vehicle. [5] Huett's brother said Jack hated using telephones to the point that he would answer calls for Jack whenever he received any from the other men in the group. The trailer had food and propane. If police and the families of the men were expecting closure from the discovery of their bodies, they werent about to get it. Helicopters surveyed the area from above. All the conspiracies surrounding Nicola Bulleys disappearance and death, Who killed Jeffrey Epstein? "Went haywire," is how Bob, his stepfather, put it. While it had been difficult at firsthe was nearly arrested for assault twice and often experienced psychotic episodes that landed him in a local Veterans Administration hospitalby 1978, Mathias was being treated on an outpatient basis with Stelazine and Cogentin and was considered by his physicians to be "one of our sterling success cases". Our groundbreaking Augmented Reality technology accurately recreates crime scenes and allows users to experience and investigate them just as detectives at the actual crime scenes did. Find us on Elle Crime and Mo Tibbs comin' in hot with another unsolved crime. On February 24, 1978, a group of friends from Yuba City in California;Gary Dale Mathias, Jack Madruga, Jackie Huett, Theodore (Ted) Weiher, and William Sterling; set out on a trip to watch a basketball game. Stars Tim Donahue Michael May Dominick Sherry Afterwards, they stopped at a local market for snacks and drinks. [2], After the Davis team won the game, the group got back into Madruga's car and drove a short distance from the Chico State campus to Behr's Market in downtown Chico. But they did. Police became aware that Madrugas 1969 Mercury Montego was stranded on the side of a mountain road about 50 miles away from home. Besides, who knows. Hours later, back inside his car, he saw what he thought were flashlights. It was a straight shot on the hiway from Chico to Yuba. He could have survived there, but only a couple cans had been opened. A propane tank connected to the trailer, which could have provided a ready source of heat and cooking fuel, was untouched. . It was possible, police believed, that the group had decided to follow the tracks it left, through snowdrifts 46 feet (1.21.8m) high, to wherever they led, in the belief that shelter was not too far away. The authorities and the boys parents alike wondered what on Earth they had been doing on this dirt mountain road. She relishes raving about her favorite shows and turning peoples drafted darlings into polished finished products. Erin covers the Yuba We're back! Several months later, in June, the body of Ted Weiher was found in a trailer with missing shoes and badly frostbitten feet. Did they somehow leave the car and lose the keys. The Montego's undercarriage had no dents, gouges, or even mud scrapes, not even on its low-hanging muffler, despite having been driven a long distance up a mountain road with many bumps and ruts. He saw a group of men, a woman, and a baby walking together, but they ignored him calling for help. True Crime Out Loud B and Jen Coast2CoastCrime Coast2CoastCrime The Women of Death Row Mariel and Amanda True Crime & Consequences Kari & Brian Current Inside Crime with Angeline Hartmann Angeline Hartmann: Journalist and Crimefighter True Crime and Coke truecrimeandcoke Unnatural: A True Crime Podcast Emily and Andy In 1978, a group of five friends disappeared after attending a college basketball game. The next night, Archie and his buddies went out in search of victim number one. In one version, whilst he lay in his car, at about 11:30, he saw two sets of headlights coming up behind him - one was a car, and the other a pickup truck. It still remains one of the most baffling cases within the US. Sadly, these men were able to cheer on UC Davis, but they never made it to their own basketball match. 12 min ago Aaron Tobias Quinn, an Oroville man who was involved in a police chase and shooting with a California Highway Patrol officer, was sentenced Friday morning in a Yuba County. The boys stopped at a convenience store for junk food: Hostess pies, soda, candy bars. Soon, police found two other corpsesthose of Sterling and Madruga4.5 miles away from Weiher's remains. What had brought them to the middle of nowhere and why had Shones seen them with a woman and a baby? Ronald Charles Trapp, 34, of Marysville, died around 9:35 a.m. Tuesday after being shot while driving a Honda Accord on Dunning Avenue, south of Hammonton-Smartville Road, in Linda, a news release . This conspiracy theory will surely tug on your heart strings and have you asking, "What One freezing night in 1978, five young men mysteriously disappear. As for getting a real answer in the case, we may never know unless someone talks or, maybe, Mathais is found. In this week's episode, Emilie and Shannon discuss the unsettling and still unsolved case of the Could the "boys" from Yuba County have been targeted by a stranger? Mathias's tennis sneakers were in the trailer, and the C-rations had been opened with a P-38 can opener, with which only Mathias or Madruga would have been familiar from their military service. A still-unsolved mystery, the Yuba County Five . Investigators could not determine why the car was abandoned, as it was in good working order and could easily have been pushed out of the snowpack it was in. An impromptu road trip was definitely out of character. There was no reason to mention having seen the Mercury until newspapers began to blare out notices about the five men who had gone missing that Friday. Two days later, just off the same road but much closer to the trailer, Jackie Huett's father found his son's backbone along with a pair of Levis and ripple-soled "Get Theres" shoes. The whole case is weird. What did they find Mystery True Crime und wahre Verbrechen aus Deutschland

Kalifornien, Februar 1978: Am ! [7] On March 3, the woman, who saw fliers that had been distributed with the men's pictures and information about the $1,215 ($5,000 in 2021 dollars),[8] reward the families had put up, told deputies that four of them had stopped at the store in a red pickup truck, two days after the disappearance. There they bought snacks along with sodas and cartons of milk to drink. The Russian case is as mysterious as the Mathias Group in Californias Plumas National Forest. Deputies think that one of them may have given in to the need to sleep that comes with the last stages of hypothermia, while the other stayed by his side and died the same way. The day after Weiher's body was discovered, searchers found the remains of Madruga and Sterling. This time the victim was a 14-year-old girl named Dawn Basom. LINDA, California A Linda mother accused of drowning her two children in a bathtub is facing murder charges, according to Yuba Superior Court. Marduga still had the keys to the Mercury. The case has been called the Mathias Group Incident, the Yuba City Five Case and the American Dyatlov Pass incident. A dozen C-ration cans from a storage shed outside had been opened and their contents consumed, but a locker in the same shed that held an even greater assortment of dehydrated foods, enough to keep all five men fed for a year if that had been necessary, had not even been opened. It wasnt until June when the snow in the mountainous area had mostly melted away that motorcyclists helped make a break in the case. yuba county 5 crime scene photos They made it to the game, but none of these "boys," as they came to be called, ever returned home. They found a body tucked into a bed, draped in sheets from head to toe. The Yuba County Five were a group of young men from Yuba City, California, with mild intellectual disabilities or psychiatric conditions, who attended a college basketball game at California State University, Chico, on the night of February 24, 1978.Four of themBill Sterling, 29; Jack Huett, 24; Ted Weiher, 32; and Jack Madruga, 30were later found dead; the fifth, Gary Mathias, 25, has . His car had gotten stuck in the snow, and pushing it out by himself brought it on. May 21, . All either had some sort of intellectual disability or a mental health issue. As of late, his condition had greatly improved though, and he was able to work in his stepfathers gardening business. Kilka dni pniej ich A year after their disappearance, police were no closer to solving the mystery. The trailers heating system was never turned on. It was the fact that Shones had likely wound up being the last person to see Ted Weiher, Gary Mathias, Jack Madruga, Jack Huett, and Bill Sterling alive. This dark comedy will be available on digital and in select theaters Feb. 12. One of them made a phone call from a nearby phone booth, and the other two stayed in the truck. The passengers then left together in one car. They entertained a number of eyewitness sightings of the men, including one where they were driving the pickup Shones had mentioned, but none seemed plausible. [6], Efforts to search the vicinity were hampered by a severe snowstorm that day. [2] The sheets all over Weiher's body also suggested that one of the others had been there with him, as his gangrenous feet would have been in too much pain for him to pull them over his body himself. Not until the thaw came. Gary Mathias, 25; Bill Sterling, 29; Jack Huett, 24; Ted Weiher, 32; and Jack Madruga, 30 were all friends. [2] For whatever reason, the men had left the Montego; they had, instead of going back down the road (where they had passed the lodge that Schons later returned to), continued along the road in the direction they were originally going. If authorities couldnt make any sense of how the group's day had ended on February 24, they at least had some idea of how it began. In a storage shed outside, there was a years supply of c-rations. Johnny Arismendez, 32, and his uncle, Victor Arismendez, 57, both of Yuba City, were booked into the jail on Sunday. Why do that unless something more frightening was right behind them? This proved to be the last time any of them were seen . [2][5], Weiher's mother said ignoring someone's pleas for help was not like her son, if indeed he had been present. "We know good and well somebody made them do it," she said. The five would either play sports together or watch them. They found no sign of Gary Mathias. Police have no idea. We know he was in the trailer where he left his shoes, and it's assumed he took Weiher's, which would have fit his frostbitten feet a bit better, but his remains have not been found after 47 years. Valerie Lane and Doris Derryberry [Photo Credit: Yuba County Sheriff's Department] Valerie Lane and Doris Derryberry were two young girls who were murdered by Larry Don Patterson and William Lloyd, and their bodies were found in a wooded area in Yuba County, California, more than 45 years ago. All five lived at home with their parents and were bound together by a love of sports. Maybe something supernatural did happen to the boys of Americas Dyatlov Pass. Those kinds of mysteries still pervade the Yuba County Five case, as the men were known to follow patterns rather than deviate from them so drastically and right before a life-changing opportunity. He got out of his car to flag them down. On Tuesday, February 28, authorities found the Mercury on the same mountain road where Shones had last seen it, and where a park ranger had reported its location after hearing the missing persons bulletin. [2], In response to local media coverage of the case, police received several reports of some or all of the men being sighted after they had left Chico, including some reports of them being seen elsewhere in California or the country. But there had been no apparent attempt to start a fire despite the freezing temperature on the mountain. The last time any of these people were seen was at a college basketball game at California State University. The men, panicking, may have believed their car was stuck and that they needed to get help. "I'm positive he never went up there on his own," she told the paper. A woman takes advantage of her growing celebrity status when the police and the public think her dead husband is just missing. There was a whole shed full of canned food but it appeared only a dozen had been opened and eaten. The disappearance at Dyatlov Pass is perhaps one of the most famous snowy mysteries the world over. Madruga's body had been partially consumed by scavenging animals; only bones remained of Sterling, scattered over a small area. Search parties were sent to investigate and more bodies were found. The story from here is a little confusing. When authorities lifted the veil, they found Weiher, his shoes missing and his feet badly frostbitten. The turquoise and white 1969 Mercury Montego was located around a 2.5-hour 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. Investigation. Two days later, Huetts own father found his sons backbone under a manzanita bush while with a search party in the mountains. The car had become stuck in some snow drifts, and there was evidence that the men had tried to spin the wheels to get out of it; police noted that the snow was not so deep that five healthy young men would not have been able to push it out. Photo via Pinterest. Shones staggered back in his car while he let the heart attack pass and then wondered what on Earth he would do to get himself out of the mess he was in. Well, that part is a little less clear. It could not be determined how long those items had been there. Movie Info. Two days later, after searchers in Snowcats nearly became lost themselves, further search efforts were called off due to continuing bad weather. At the time, Shones was preoccupied with his own emergency. The plan was for them to watch the game and then come back home to get a good nights rest before their own basketball game the next day. The Yuba County sheriff's office said they wouldn't resume the ground search unless new evidence came forward that indicated that the five men were still in the dense forest. Could they have been searching in the snow and been freaked out by his cars for help in this isolated area? This week Spencer and Ryan recount the strange Five young men travel to a basketball game and disappear. They played basketball together through a Gateway program and were that night . 1971 Press Photo Bridgeport Covered Bridge S Yuba River Nevada County CA. The trailer was 19 miles away from the car. There was nothing left of him but bones. Several months later, in June, the body of Ted Weiher was found in a trailer with missing shoes and badly frostbitten feet. Hours later, Shones felt well enough to walk to get help. They even seemed to be trying to conceal their presence since they momentarily shut off the flashlights they had been shining. "Bizarre as hell" was Beechams summary. How did the group end up around a trailer 19 miles from the car? They were always referred to by their families as the boys even though they were all full-grown men from ages 24-32. [5], The woman said she immediately realized that the men were not from the area because of their "big eyes and facial expressions". Huetts skeletonized remains were found shortly after. Thats why when the late hours of the night turned into the wee hours of the morning, and none of the boys returned home, their parents started to get worried. This team was supported by a local program for people with mental disabilities. Police and the families never ruled out foul play. When Weiher and Sterling didnt come home, their mothers began calling the parents of the others, and soon the police were involved. He was schizophrenic, a condition controlled by medication he hadnt bothered to bring along. tips for grilling chicken. 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. She owned a store there, where two of the men came in to buy food. Miles away from help, Shones thought he could flag down help. A witness later came forward, a local man who said he had spent the same night in his own car, a short distance away from where the Montego was found. Why did Ted Weiher apparently starve to death? . The Yuba County Sheriff's Department said 10-year-old Frankie Rosiles [] He was driving up the gravel road to his cabin when his car became stuck in the snow and unfortunately, whilst trying to push his car out, he suffered a heart attack. In 1975, with a short stint at Yuba College proving unsuccessful, Mathias abruptly left school and moved to Oregon to stay with his grandmother. They left after it finished and then somehow drove up a mountain into the wilderness and were never seen alive again. The initial investigation by Yuba County police was frustrated by the snowfall in the region that winter. Crime Junkie. This witness told police that he had seen and heard people around the car that night, and twice called for help, only for them to grow silent and turn off their flashlights. Updated: 1:41 PM MST March 2, 2023. It was shortly before the store's 10 p.m. closing time; the clerk later remembered the men because she was annoyed that such a large group had come in and delayed her from beginning the process of closing the store for the night. They were supposed to play a basketball game of their own on February 25, part of a tournament, with a free week in Los Angeles if they won. Is Netflix's 'The Imposter' its most terrifying true-crime story yet? It would have been a feat to walk all that way in the snow. The five men had prepared the night before, some even laying out their uniforms and asking their parents to wake them up on time.