In 1978, five friends from Yuba County, California vanished after a basketball game. Their abandoned vehicle was found deep in the snowy mountains, miles away from their intended route. Why the men went there and what happened next remains one of America’s strangest unsolved mysteries.
Today’s case is a truly bizarre one. We are going to discuss the Yuba County Five. This is an older case, from 1978. Five men, each with mild intellectual disabilities or psychiatric conditions attended a basketball game in Chico, California on February 24, 1978. They left the venue and were never seen alive again. Four of the men would be found dead in strange circumstances and one remains missing to this day. You may have also heard this case referred to as the ‘Mathias Group Incident’, ‘The Yuba City Five’ or the ‘ American Dyatlov Pass Incident.’ We will circle back later as to why it is sometimes referred to as the Dyatlov Pass incident.
The men involved are Bill Sterling (29), Jack/Jackie Huett (24), Ted Weiher (32), Jack Madruga (30) and Gary Mathias (25).
As this case happened almost 50 years ago, some of the terminology around the mens’ conditions is outdated but it was what was reported at the time.
As some background into the men, Gary Mathias was stationed in West Germany as part of his US Army Service in the early 1970’s. While there, Gary developed addiction issues and he would eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Gary was given a psychiatric discharge from the army. Gary worked as an assistant in his stepfather’s gardening business.
Jack Madruga was also an Army veteran. He was said to have a low IQ. Gary and Jack were the only ones out of the five to have a driver’s license. Jack had worked for a time as a busboy for Sunsweet Growers. He was said to dislike cold weather.
Ted Weiher worked for a while as a janitor and a snack bar clerk. According to the website ‘Dyatlovpass.com’ Ted was encouraged by his family to quit the jobs as they thought his slowness was causing problems.
Jackie Huett was said to have loved being friends with Ted. Ted was said to have been protective of Jackie and would dial the phone for him if Jackie ever had to make a call.
William Sterling was close friends with Jack. He was said to be deeply religious and would spend hours at the library reading literature so that he could teach about Jesus in psychiatric facilities.’
The men were all enrolled in a day program for developmentally disabled adults. According to an archived article by the Washington Post, Ted and Jackie had been diagnosed with intellectual disabilities and Jack and William were considered ‘slow learners.’
Each of the men lived with their parents. Their families collectively referred to the group as ‘the boys.’
The men loved to watch and play sports together. They played basketball together on a team called the Gateway Gators.
“[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.
On Saturday February 25, 1978, their basketball team was due to play the first game in a tournament that was sponsored by the Special Olympics. The winning team would win a prize of a free week in Los Angeles.
The men were excited – they had prepared the night before, laid out their uniforms and asked their parents to wake them up. Ted asked his mother to wash his new white high-topped sneakers and said “We got a big game Saturday. Don’t you let me oversleep.”
They all decided to go to Chico, California on Friday February 24. They wanted to cheer on the UC Davis Basketball game. Chico is around a 50 mile/80km drive from where the men lived. Jack drove the men to the game in his white and turquoise 1969 Mercury Montego coupe.
The weather on that night was said to be cold, inclement and rainy. The men only wore light jackets.
The Davis team won the game. The men left the venue and decided to stop at Behr’s Market in downtown Chico to get snacks and drinks, presumably for the drive home. The store clerk remembered the men specifically as she said they entered the store right on the 10pm closing time and delayed her process of closing the store. They bought one Hostess cherry pie, one Langendorf lemon pie, one Snickers bar, one Marathon bar, two Pepsis and a quart and a half of milk.
When the men failed to return home from Chico, their families became concerned and called authorities. A search for the men began.
Jack Huett, Tom’s brother, spoke about finding out that his sibling was missing. His mother called him and “[She asked] ‘Have you seen your brother? Have you heard anything?’ And I’m like, ‘no, why?'” he said.
“And I remember her saying, ‘They didn’t come home from the game last night.'”
On Tuesday February 28, four days after they went missing, a forest ranger found Jack’s car abandoned on an unpaved road in Oroville. The car was found around 2.5 hours away from Chico, in the opposite way that they should have driven home. The car was found in the mountains in the Plumas National Forest.
Police found no evidence of foul play near the vehicle. The car was unlocked and one window was down. The keys were not in the vehicle. Candy wrappers, milk cartons and basketball programs were in the car. Maps were found in the glove compartment. There was no obvious damage to the car. It still had around ¼ tank of gas. The car started immediately when police later hotwired it. Some reports say the car was not stuck in the snow, while others say it had become stuck in shallow snow drifts. These same reports say there was evidence that the men attempted to spin the wheels to get out. The snow was said to be not deep and that the men could have pushed the car out of the drifts. The road in the area was bumpy and investigators were surprised to find the car had not sustained any damage. Despite the vehicle having a low-hanging muffler, there were no dents, gouges or even scrapes.
They said the driver had either taken great care or that they had known the road well enough to anticipate any rut.
As mentioned earlier, Jack’s family said he hated cold weather and had never been to that area of the mountains. They also said he would not have let anyone else drive the vehicle which raises questions about how someone unfamiliar with the area could have navigated the terrain so well. Jack’s family also said he would never have left the car unsecured with the window down.
A search for the men began and it carried on for five days. A blizzard hit the area during this time and it hampered any search efforts and also covered any possible tracks. Around nine inches of snow fell in the area. Searchers on snow cats almost became lost due to the hazardous conditions and the search was called off.
There were sightings of the men after they went missing. A man named Joseph Schons said that he had seen the men at around 11pm on Friday February 24. He said he had been driving up the gravel road to his cabin when his car became stuck in the snow at around 5.30pm. He said he got out and tried to push it but suffered a heart attack.
There are differing versions about what happened next:
In one version, Joseph said he lay in his car and at 11.30pm, he saw two sets of headlights approaching his vehicle. One belonged to a car and the second to a pickup truck. He got out of his own car and tried to flag down help. The cars stopped 20 feet away from him. Joseph called to the people for help but they apparently switched off their headlights and stopped talking. He said that the passengers from one vehicle got into the second one and left the scene.
Joseph would later say that he was almost delirious from the pain he was in so he possibly did not recall what happened correctly.
“I was half-conscious, not lucid, hallucinating and in deep pain,” he told the Los Angeles Times in March 1978.
“Whether I half-saw or half-imagined the second vehicle, I just don’t know.”
In the early morning of February 25, Joseph’s vehicle ran out of fuel and he felt slightly better. He decided to walk 8 miles (13km) to a lodge for help. He arrived there and the manager drove him home. They passed Jack’s abandoned vehicle on the way, in the location where he had heard voices.
Joseph would receive medical attention and it was confirmed that he had suffered a mild heart attack.
After hearing about Joseph asking for help and the people ignoring him, Ted’s mother said that was not like her son. Both he and Bill had been able to help a friend receive medical attention following a previous overdose.
A second sighting was reported to have occurred on the day after the men disappeared. A store clerk in Brownsville (around 30 miles/48km from where the car was abandoned) said that the men had arrived at the store in a red pick up truck on the day after their disappearance. The store owner corroborated this story.
The clerk said that Bill and Jackie were in a phone booth outside the store and that the other men went inside. The men purchased burritos, chocolate milk and soft drinks.
Police believed that the clerk was a ‘credible witness’ and said they took her account seriously.
As warmer weather approached in 1978, the snow in the area began to melt. On June 4, 1978, a group of motorcyclists stopped a trailer that was maintained by USFS. The trailer was a campsite around 19 miles/31 km from where the car had been abandoned. The front window of the trailer was broken.
When the group went inside, they could smell decomposition. Ted Weiher’s body was found inside in the trailer.
The discovery of Ted’s body sparked a new search. The road between the trailer and where the car was abandoned was focused on.
The following day, Jack and Bill’s bodies were found on opposite sides of the road, around 11miles/18km from where the car was found. Jack’s body had been consumed partially by scavenging animals and only bones remained of Bill. Autopsies on the two men would reveal that they both died from hypothermia. It was theorized that one of the men may have given in to sleep which is a symptom in the final stages of hypothermia, and the other died after staying by his side.
Two days after the two men were found, Jackie’s father found his son’s backbone while searching. The remains were found under a bush and were around 2 miles/3km away from the trailer. His shoes and jeans were found near the remains. Jackie’s skull was found by law enforcement the following days. His cause of death was also said to be hypothermia.
Gary is the only one out of the five to never be found and as of May 2026, he remains missing.
We are now going to circle back to Ted’s body being discovered. As he was found inside a trailer, his body was the most preserved and could offer a few clues as to what happened. The discovery also led to many questions being raised.
Ted was found tightly wrapped in eight sheets, including one that had been wrapped around his head. This indicates that someone had been in the trailer with him as he would not have been able to ‘ shroud’ himself in this way. His autopsy showed he died from starvation and hypothermia. He had lost almost 100lbs – he was 200lbs/91kg when he went missing and was around half of that when his body was found. The growth of his facial hair suggested he had lived for around three months after he last shaved. He had been clean shaven when he disappeared.
Ted’s feet were frostbitten and were said to be almost gangrenous. There was a table next to the bed where Ted was found and he had placed his possessions there – his wallet with cash, a ring with his name engraved on it, and his necklace. A gold watch was also on the table and Ted’s family said this did not belong to him. A partly melted candle also sat on the table. Ted was wearing the clothes that he went missing in, but his shoes could not be found.
There was a fireplace in the trailer which had not been used, despite there being materials to light it with. Heavy clothing, matches, playing cards, books, wooden furniture were all found in the trailer and could have been used to start a fire for warmth. There was also a propane tank connected to the trailer which would have provided heat and cooking fuel. That was said to be untouched. “All they had to do was turn that gas on,” said Yuba County Lt. Lance Ayers, “and they’d have had gas to the trailer, and heat.”
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 of them 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.
“Bizarre,” said John Thompson, the special agent from the California Department of Justice who had joined the investigation. “And no explanations. And a thousand leads. Every day you’ve got a thousand leads.”
Ted’s family have said that he lacked common sense as part of his cognitive disability. He was said to not understand why it was imperative to stop at a stop sign and once he had to be dragged out of bed when the house was burning around him, because he was afraid of losing sleep and being late for work.
It appeared that Gary had been in the trailer for a period of time as his sneakers were found there. The rations were opened with a P-38 can opener that only Gary or Jack were said to be able to use due to their past military service.
“There was some force that made em go up there.” Jack Madruga’s mother Mabel said. “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,” said Ted Weiher’s sister-in-law. “They might have seen it and didn’t even realize they seen it.”
There are many theories as to why the men ended up where they did. Gary was said to have friends in the town of Forbestown and it was theorized that the men took a wrong turn while trying to get to that location.
The day before the men went missing, a USFS snowcat visited the trailer to clear snow off the roof so that it would not collapse. Authorities speculated that the men may have seen the snowcat tracks and tried to follow them in the hope of finding shelter. It is possible that Jack and Bill perished from hypothermia while on this walk, followed soon after by Jackie.
If this theory is correct, Ted and Gary reached the trailer and broke the window to gain entry. The families said that as the trailer was locked, the men may have been scared to use many supplies found there in case they were later arrested for burglary or theft.
Ted died in the trailer – perhaps as his feet were too injured to try to leave to find help. It is theorised that Gary then left and tried to get help and perished in the wilderness.
A Yuba County Sheriff’s Department letter dated mid-October 2020 — made public via a records request in October 2023 — ruled Gary is believed to be “a victim of foul play”.
“This case remains open as a missing person/homicide case,” Sheriff-Coroner Wendell Anderson wrote.
SOURCE LIST
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuba_County_Five
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-24/yuba-county-five-missing-persons-case/103472558
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times/13126342
https://dyatlovpass.com/yuba-county-five
https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/2017/12/7/mathias-group-from-yuba-city