Yuba County Five

On February 24, 1978, five men from the Yuba City area (Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, Jack Huett, Ted Weiher, and Gary Mathias) drove to Chico for a college basketball game. Four of them had intellectual or learning disabilities, and three of those four had been diagnosed; Madruga never was. Mathias was being treated for schizophrenia, and his doctor said the illness had not resurfaced in the 2 years before that night. After the game, the five stopped at Behr's Market, three blocks from campus, shortly before its 10pm closing, and the clerk there is the last confirmed witness to have seen the group. A Plumas National Forest ranger passed Madruga's car on February 25 without thinking it significant, and on February 28, after reading the missing persons bulletin, he led deputies to it. The 1969 Mercury Montego sat undamaged at the snow line on a mountain road deep in the Plumas National Forest, about 70 miles from Chico and far off any direct route home. Its tank was a quarter full, and when police hot-wired it, the engine started immediately. None of the men was known to have any reason to drive that road.

A storm dropped about 9 inches of snow on the upper mountain the day the car was found, and searchers in Snow-cats nearly became lost in the drifts 2 days later. On June 4, 1978, a group of motorcyclists found Ted Weiher's body inside a remote U.S. Forest Service trailer 19.4 miles from the car. The trailer had been broken into through a window. The growth of Weiher's beard suggested he had lived 8 to 13 weeks, and he had lost 80 to 100 pounds before dying of hypothermia and malnutrition; his feet were badly frostbitten. More than a dozen C-ration cans from a shed outside had been opened, but a locker in the same shed holding enough food to keep all five men for a year had not. The next day, searchers found the remains of Madruga and Sterling on opposite sides of the road to the trailer, 11.4 miles from the car. Huett's father found his son's remains 2 days later, closer to the trailer. Gary Mathias has never been found.

Investigators never established foul play. In July 1978, The Washington Post reported that they could not prove it and could not explain the case without it. In 2019, Jack Beecham, a former Yuba County sheriff who worked the case, told The Sacramento Bee that the men "were either forced or manipulated." No one has produced a motive for why the group drove so far off course or why they abandoned a working car to walk into a winter forest in light clothing. Proposed explanations range from a fear-driven psychological "flight" reaction to a confrontation with someone they met after the game, to sudden disorientation in severe weather. None of these reconcile every detail, including how Weiher crossed 19.4 miles of deep snow to reach the trailer, or why none of the men flagged down help on a road that, however remote, was eventually traveled by others.

The car was found at the snow line along the Oroville-Quincy Road, a mountain road inside Plumas National Forest whose upper stretch is typically snowed in and impassable from late fall through spring. There is no marker, trailhead, or visitor facility at the site, and it is not a recommended destination.