May 21, 2022 • 49 mins
In 1978, five friends set out for home from a basketball game. The next day, their car was discovered in a lonely mountain road. The next spring, their bodies began to turn up. What happened that night remains a mystery to this day. Explore what we know with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, It's me Josh and for this week's Select
I chose our two thousand eighteen episode on the Mystery
of the Yuba County Five. I was actually inspired to
choose this one because I was recently a guest on
another podcast called The Yuba County Five hosted by Shanon McGarvey.
And it's actually a really fascinating deep dive into this
(00:21):
long standing mystery, and it expands on and actually does
a lot of updating on what we talked about in
this episode. So if this one strikes your fancy, go
check out the Yuba County Five podcast from Mopac Audio.
And in the meantime, I hope you enjoy our episode
on it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
(00:45):
of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you should no. Yes,
how you doing, Chuck? Do I look tired? Do you
(01:07):
seem a little a little LOGI tired? Man? What's going
on with you? I've just been waking up like too
early for no reason, going to bed too late though,
because if you go to bed early and wake up early.
You're fine, well, going to bed late, sometimes not getting
enough sleep, then going trying to go to bed super
(01:28):
early to make up for it. But I don't know
about this making up for a sleep depisode. I don't
buy all that. I feel like we talked about it
before that there's that that that doesn't actually work. Yeah,
I'm just tired, that's all I can say. Sorry, man, Sorry,
I'll live all right. I'm glad we killed some time
before we got into this very mysterious sad story. It's
(01:50):
a good one, though, isn't it. It is extraordinarily sad,
probably the saddest true well, I don't know it's up
there as far as true life true crime. Disappeared his
go um, and it's the one about Gary Matthias. That's
what they call it. They call it the Gary Matthias disappearance.
But that really doesn't do it much justice, or it
(02:10):
doesn't serve it well, because it was a lot more
than Gary Matthias involved. Yeah, I've seen it more so
called the Uba County five. But you know, I guess
it just depends on where you're looking. I had not
run across that. Oh yeah, Oh god, that makes me,
wonder what all stuff I missed? Well, you know there
were five guys, what so, No, there actually were five guys.
(02:34):
There were five friends. Um, Gary Matthias was one of them,
and there were four others. There was Ted Weir who
was the oldest, he was thirty two. There was Jackie
Hewitt he was the youngest, he was twenty four. There
was Jack Madruga. I'm not sure what Ah was, but
he was definitely between twenty four and thirty two. I'll
(02:56):
tell you Bill Sterling. And then again Gary are Matthias
And those five guys were a set of friends and
they met at the Yuba City UH Vocational Rehabilitation Center
for the what you would call today UM cognitively impaired
or cognitively challenged. Yeah, because three of these guys, UM.
(03:20):
Of course, this one article you have from nine seventy
eight doesn't use appropriate terms anymore. But three of these
guys were intellectually disabled UM or developmentally disabled. Not an
exact like it's kind of hard to get an exact
DIA diagnosis from these terms, really, but h. Madruga was undiagnosed.
(03:42):
But according to his mom, uh, he was generally thought
of as she said, as quote slow end quote. And
then Matthias was the only one not diagnosed with a
developmental disability, but he was under drug treatment for schizophrenia. Right,
So all five of these guys had some sort of
(04:05):
challenge going on in their life, right, exactly. So, so
there's a lot of details you can kind of glean
because you're absolutely right, Like reading the really great Washington
Post article, which is basically the comprehensive document on the
case from UM, you can kind of glean uh an
idea picture of these guys. So they're just five friends,
(04:26):
thickest thieves. Even within this this tight little group of friends,
there's subgroups of even tighter friends like um Ted Weir
and Jackie Hewitt were particularly close, and Bill Sterling and
Jack Madrugo were particularly close. Um. They had like they
were just these these five guys known as the Boys, right.
(04:47):
They all lived at home with their parents. They were
always going to live at home with their parents. It
was just what what the plan was, um, Like I
think Ted ted Weir had a had a job, um
as a janitor and then later on as a snack
bar clerk. Um. Basketball, Yeah, that was another one, and
(05:11):
they actually all played together on the basketball team for
the Vocational Rehab Center, basically like their hang out, the
place where they hung out. They played basketball on that team.
But um Jack madrew God's worth saying head a driver's license,
whereas three of the other ones didn't, although Gary Mathias
did as well. So these guys, they just they were friends.
They like had a tight kinship together. They had very normal,
(05:34):
reliable lives that were basically home centric, and when they
were out doing stuff, you could expect them home for
dinner kind of thing, like it was just a given. Yeah,
I think that's that's super worth pointing out here. Early on,
as they saw them more than one place, they said
they referred to their lives as very predictable and scheduled,
(05:57):
which is why this interesting. The events that occurred on
February nineteen seventy eight were very very unusual. Right, So
on February eight, the boys that's what their families all
call them, because apparently all their families were at least
in touch, if not friendly, with another. Yeah, I think
they kind of supported one another. It sounds like as
(06:18):
much as anyone did in ninety eight. Uh So, on
this night, February twenty four, there was a Friday night. Um,
the boys left their homes around Maryville and Ubis City
in California, and they traveled I think about fifty miles
north to cal State Chico which is now called Chico
(06:39):
State University, and they went to go see their team.
The cal State l A team beat up on cal
State Chico and cal State l A actually eighty four,
which would have pleased the boys tremendously. So they went
to the game. That much is known, and then they
left the game. That much is known too, because around
ten o'clock when they left the game, they went to
a convenience store called Bear's Market and they bought some stuff. Yeah,
(07:03):
apparently that they were trying to kind of close up,
and so the clerk was a little bit annoyed that
they showed up. And these are the kind of details
that aren't so important, but it just shows that, you know,
they really did their investigating pretty thoroughly, including well, we'll
we'll get to sort of the the lead investigator in
a minute. But yeah, they bought just a few things.
(07:25):
They bought a Hostess cherry pie, um, a Langendorf lemon pie,
snickers bar, a Marathon bar, a couple of pepsis, and
a court and a half of milk, which is to say,
it's not like they were stocking up on food. They
just got some uh some some snacks, right exactly for
the drive back home fifty fifty miles about an hour. Yeah.
(07:49):
The thing is is they they would have been fully
expected back home, not just because there was you know,
this was it wasn't like any of them to spend
the night away, right except Matthias. He he had friends
and he would stay out with friends sometimes. But um,
the other four like they slipped in their bed at
(08:09):
home every night. That's just what they did. So their
families fully expected them to come back. Um. And another
reason why they expected them to come back was because
the next day, Saturday, they had a basketball game for
their vocational rehab team, the Gateway Gators, and they they
apparently were all extraordinarily excited about this game. Yeah, which
(08:29):
again is just another point being made that there was
these guys had every intention on coming home super excited
about the game. I think Matthias even was kind of
driving his mom a little batty, saying, you know, don't
let me oversleep. Got this big game. Apparently the guys
had their clothes laid out. Uh, and they were all
(08:50):
super excited about this basketball game. Uh. And then they
don't come home, and you know, these parents and grandparents
start waking up at various points in the middle of
the night or in the morning and start getting in
touch with one another, you know, all verifying like your
kids not there, your your kids not there. And they
started to freak out. And by eight o'clock that evening,
(09:10):
I believe the mother of Madruga actually finally called the cops. Yeah,
and the cops, um, we're kind of I don't have
the impression that they were like, well this is I'm sure,
this is fine. I think they got involved pretty early on.
But things really picked up when I think on a Tuesday,
that was that was Saturday night that they finally called
the cops. And on Tuesday, Uh, Jack Madruga's car was discovered,
(09:35):
and it was discovered in a very very unusual place, right, Yeah,
what was this thing in old Mercury, Montego Yeah, sixty
nine Montego a land yacht is what it was. And
they found it. Um. And this was, by the way,
this is Jack Madruga's prized possession. Like no one else
drove the thing. He took pristine care of it. It
(09:57):
was like his baby. His car was right, So to
find it abandoned with the window one of the windows
rolled down up a mountain road, which was, um, I think,
seventy miles away from the basketball game, in a different
direction away from their house. Right, so the basketball game
was north of their homes. This was east of southeast
(10:20):
of the basketball game and up a mountain road. It
was extremely bizarre and also I'm sure quite worrying. When
the families were already worried, I think finding this car
like this probably really set them into panic mode. Well yeah,
and here's where, uh in this article is very clear
to say from that point on, nothing made any kind
of sense. So here's a few things about the car
(10:42):
that definitely don't add up. You might think, all right, there,
you know, there was a snowstorm, so they drove up
here and they got stuck. Apparently that is not true.
The car stopped at about the snow line, and they
said they did confirm that the wheels had spun some,
but the car wasn't stuck, and these five dudes could
have pushed it free pretty easily. Apparently, right, this thing
(11:05):
number one, thing number two is that it had a
quarter tank of gas still, so they didn't run out
of gas. Right then when the cops hot wired the car,
the keys were gone. Uh. And when the cops heartwired
the cars started up immediately. There wasn't any engine trouble
or anything like that. Yeah. The last thing they found
were all these maps of California and um, so it's
(11:27):
not like they had no way of knowing where they were.
And then they found all the you know, all the
rappers from the food items. Uh. The only thing, ironically
that wasn't fully eaten was the marathon bar um, living
up to his reputation. Right. See, I guess the toughest
candy bar to get through. Yeah, that's that's how they
(11:47):
build it, some weird cartoon cowboy. Yeah, so you know,
that's the deal. The underside of the car wasn't damaged,
which they say was pretty interesting because on this road,
apparently there were a lot of deep, deep ruts. This
thing kind of hangs low anyway, has a low hanging muffler,
has these five dudes inside, these grown men. Uh. And
(12:07):
there was no damage under the underside of this car,
which means, you know a couple of things. If you
kind of are surmising, which is the either the driver
kind of knew where they were going and drove through
the darkness with a lot of precision, or they just
maybe drew drove really slow. Yeah, I think it was
the ladder because I think Madruga did was probably would
(12:30):
have been very unhappy that his car was on this
road now. So I just took it slow and took
it super slow. I saw somewhere that there wasn't even
a large mud spot on it. It was they had
taken it that easy. Yeah, And apparently Madruga uh didn't
like the cold, he didn't like camping, so he wouldn't
have known that road. It's not like there's a lot
else to do up there but that, right, And evidently, uh,
(12:53):
none of the boys were big into outdoorsy type stuff.
Oh yeah, that's a really good point, Chuck. So like
that none of them had any connection to that, to
that area, and certainly not to that mountain. One of them,
I think Sterling, Bill Sterling had been had gone camping
with his family there eight years before. Yeah, and he
(13:14):
didn't even like I think they went back again and
he was like, no, I don't want to go right,
So he didn't like the outdoors, he didn't like the cold.
And then I think ted uh Ted Weir had gone
deer hunting or something once with friends way west of
the area. Um but still, I mean enough that you
could that was it was a lead that the cops
(13:34):
were to chase down. Um. But but then too, he
didn't enjoy himself and he didn't like the woods either,
So there was no let's go hang out in the
woods kind of thing going on here. Just everything about
the fact that they found this car and where they
found it, in the state they found it in was
really bizarre and really worrying. Should we take a break?
I think we should. Man, all right, you and I
(13:56):
are going to go hang out in the woods and
we'll be back right up to this. So I've never
(14:25):
swept the woods before. That was really interesting, right, It's
not spick and span out here. So um, So they
find the car, and when they find the car, Chuck.
I think it was the next night after they had
gone missing, a storm blew into the area and it
dumped like almost a foot of snow on the mountain.
(14:45):
This is February in the mountains in California. UM, I
would guess the Sierras, is what it sounds like, right, So, yeah,
Cheek is in the Chicos, in the Sierra Nevadas. I
think it's north of Sacramento. So it would be very
very cold and the snow would be pretty tough to
get through. Um So, but they still tried. They got
(15:07):
guys on horseback, they got helicopters out, they looked for him,
but they found nothing. They found not one bit of
of um and not a single trace of these guys
after just the car and that was it. Yeah, the
snow certainly didn't help anything because it would not be
until June. On June four, after this thing, you know,
(15:28):
the mountain faws out somewhat when these uh Sunday you
know motorcycle bikers, they'll go right around the mountains. They
went into an old Forest service trailer camp at the
end of a road and said, do you smell something
that smells like perhaps a dead body, And sadly it
was Ted Weir. And this is where things get even stranger. Yeah,
(15:52):
so the I think the trailer caught their attention, but
what caught their attention even further was that a window
had been broken to get into the trailer and then yeah,
like you said, what really called their attention was the
smell in the sight of of ted weirds decomposing body.
But what got what made it very, very weird is
one he's wrapped in sheets tucked under his head in
(16:13):
a way that like he couldn't have possibly tucked himself.
So somebody had tucked him in like that and he
ted weird been a portly fellow. Um. Cynthia Gorney, who
wrote the Washington Post article on this this case in
calls him, um, beer belly handsome, which I've never heard
those words put together in my entire life. I think
(16:35):
that's what I am. Sure, sure i'd call you beer
belly foxy. Okay, okay, so um, but he was beer
belly hands he was. He was a thick guy. He's
like five ten, two hundred pounds. He had a few
extra pounds on him right when they found him, though,
he weighed about a hundred and twenty a hundred to
a hundred and twenty pounds, which means that between the
(16:57):
time that they went missing and the time that he died,
he'd lost anywhere between eighty and a hundred pounds. Yeah.
A couple of more interesting tidbits. He his leather shoes
were gone and missing completely. Um. On the little night
stand by his bed was his his own ring because
it had his name engraved on it, his gold yeah,
(17:20):
ted his gold necklace, his wallet with money uh. And
then weirdly a watch that was not his. It was
a gold Waltham watch that had a missing crystal. Uh.
And all of the families said that this No, none
of our kids had this watch. So that's one interesting tidbit.
And the other is that he had a big, full
(17:44):
beard that indicated that he lived in that cabin for
anywhere from eight to thirteen weeks. And what's really really
underving about the thirteen week one thirteen week number is
that if he survived thirteen weeks, that means that he
would have died just days before for his body was found.
Is that right? Yes? Did you did you do the math?
(18:05):
I did the math because think about so they disappeared
on February and he was found June four, So you've
got a I really really hope I call on the
Saints that that not to have been the case, like
that he perhaps died a couple of days before. Yeah,
that that he he would have expired like like weeks
(18:27):
before that. There was just no chance for him, like
if he was destined and doomed to die. I really
hope it wasn't a couple of days before they found
his body after starving for thirteen weeks. Yeah. And to
cap it off, I don't think we we've mentioned yet,
this cabin was almost twenty miles from their car. Oh yeah,
so in the middle of the night. Uh. And at
(18:49):
this point, this is this is all we know is
about Ted in our story, he walked or ran almost
twenty miles in four to six ft snow drifts to
go to this trailer, where he spent the next two
to three months slowly dying. Yeah. So okay, that's pretty
weird in and of itself. And they found that his
(19:09):
feet were terribly frost bitten, right, which is why his
shoes were off. But again his shoes were missing. Um,
what gets even weirder. And this is just where the
case truly turns. Bizarres, one of the Yuba County Sheriff's
deputies are under sheriff, called it Bizaar's Hell is like
the quote of this story, Um, this this the trailer,
(19:30):
the cabin was actually like a forest Service trailer and
it was an emergency trailer from what I understand, and
it was fully stocked with a year's worth of food
that would have kept all five of those boys alive
for a year. It was built to keep you alive,
yes exactly. And they found it, but they didn't put
(19:50):
it to use. Now, let's not to say that they
didn't find the food. There was. There were twelve rations
like um sea rations like army meals opened and eaten,
but that was it. The other stuff wasn't touched. There
was a whole locker of other dehydrated food and like
fruit cups and stuff that hadn't been touched at all. Okay,
(20:12):
and bear in mind, this is all right here while
Ted ted Weir is starving to death. Yeah, so all
this food is there. Uh, they found out The investigators
determined that there had not been a fire built, even
though there were paperback novels, there was wood, furniture, there
were matches, like everything was there to build a fire.
(20:34):
And not only that, but there was a propane tank
that all they had to do, Uh, it was in
another shed outside. All they had to do was open
this thing on and they would have actually had gas heat, yes, Het, right,
they didn't. They also didn't even um cover up the
broken window that they used to get into the trailer.
(20:56):
It's just weird, just bizarre decision after bizarre decision, right. Yeah.
So there's one other thing in the trailer that that is,
um pretty interesting. They find Gary Matthias's tennis shoes. So
Gary mathias Is tennis shoes are there, and um, Ted
Weir's shoes leather shoes are missing. Uh. And what they
(21:19):
think possibly is that Gary Matthias was in the trailer
with Ted. Ted had terrible frostbite. Ted would have had
bigger feet than Gary. Gary probably had frostbite too, so
he used Ted's shoes to put them on and go
back out into the wilderness. Yeah. I mean they pretty
much determined that probably all five of those guys were
(21:43):
in here at one point. Okay, so I have to
say that's that's I don't think that's true really because
that's what I saw. So I think so what I
saw was that they so, okay, we should probably tell
everybody that the we should continue on, Chuck. But the like,
I think a day after they found Ted Weir, they
started looking around the area and they started finding the
(22:05):
other boys remains. Yeah, and you know this is thanks
to what I said would be sort of the lead investigator, uh,
Uba County Lieutenant Lance Ayers, who actually had gone to
high school with We're uh didn't know him that well,
but he was really consumed by this case UM and
seems sort of obsessed with trying to solve it to
(22:26):
the point where he was chasing down leads from psychics.
At one point, Yeah, apparently he met with a psychic
who um I told him that the boys were in
Araville or had been murdered in a red house either
brick or stained in Oraville with the house number UM
either four four seven to three or four seven five three.
(22:49):
And Lance Ayers was so consumed with this that he
actually drove every street of Oraville over a two day
period trying to find that house based on the tip
of a psychic. That's how Upset TV came with this case. Yeah,
so we've put a pen in our were they all
in the cabin debate? We're coming back to that right right,
All right, So now we pick up a story of
(23:11):
a man named Joseph Shoens, and this is where things
get even more odd. So this guy was fifty five
years old. He got in touch with the cops because,
you know, some strange things that had happened that night
of the disappearance. He was gonna go camping with his family,
um on you know, up that road, and so he
decided to take his little Volkswagen Beetle um around five
(23:34):
thirty that evening just to check out the snow line
to see if it was passable and if it was
going to be safe to take his family camping that weekend.
He found out it was not. Yeah, he got his
his car stuck right right above the snow line. And
this was to be about fifty yards further than where
that mercury would eventually be found. Right, so he has
(23:56):
um he gets out to push a push his Beetle
right and has a heart attack. He's he's fifty five
in this nine, which means he he lived on nothing
but scotch and steak. So you can imagine that that
was the outcome, right when you have to push your
Volkswagen Beetle and um, he's like in a bad spot
right there. He's a phone in the wilderness at the
(24:16):
snow line of a mountain eight miles away from help.
That the place that he had stopped to actually get
a drink probably of scotch on the way up the
mountain to check out the snow line had been eight
miles back in the other direction. So he very wisely
like leaves his car running with the heater on and
just lays there and tries to collect himself and gather himself.
(24:37):
And that is a mild heart attack, we should point out,
but enough that if you, Joseph shown, you are probably
freaking out on not trying to u diminish like his
danger level. But it wasn't like, uh, he was like
laying there near death like he would eventually hike eight
miles out right after this heart attack. Yes, so he
(24:57):
but but while he was laying there trying to like
gather his strength again. So this happened about five thirty
And he said a couple hours after that, some um
a car at least one but probably two cars, and
one of them would have been a pickup truck, came
up and had their lights on, and he saw the
silhouettes of some men and a woman with a baby,
(25:18):
and he said he called out to them, and they
ignored it and turned off the lights, and he got
back in his car, and he said he laid there
for another few hours before he heard some whistling sounds
and some flashlight beams a little further down the mountain,
probably about fifty yards. Uh. And that would have been
(25:40):
a couple of hours, probably about five or six hours
after his um his heart attack. And they think that
the second group at least was the the five boys
with Gary Matthias. Yeah, and well I think at this
point they were right outside his car window. Yeah. So
again he gets out, calls for help, and the whistling
(26:02):
sounds stopped, and the flashlights get turned off, and so
he goes back in his car and lays back down,
and he's like to two groups of people have come
up this mountain. I'm having a heart attack here, and
somehow calling for help has chased both of both of
them off, both groups off. Yeah. So that that Volkswagen Beetle,
like I can tell you from experience, had of like
an eight gallon gas tank, so it eventually runs out
(26:25):
of gas. Um it Also now they think about it
doesn't have a very efficient heating system, like, uh, my
first Beetle didn't even have a fan. We just called
it the ankle burner, Like if you when you turned
on the heat, it literally just opened vents on the
floorboard that like came straight off the engine. Wow, that's
(26:47):
that's sharp design. So you wouldn't even like you had
to be moving for there to be actually a hot
air running through it. Man. But I do know that
I had another Beetle that had that did have a
little fan end. So let's just presume that Shans had
the fan. I'm not going to I'm going to presume
the opposite, Okay, I'm going to presume that this was
(27:07):
a hellish experience for him in every way, all right.
So eventually the car runs out of gas. Uh, it's
still dark, and he manages after this heart attack, like
I said earlier, to walk eight miles to a lodge
called the Mountain House. Is that where he had gotten
the drink? Yeah? All right. So he comes back and
they're like Showans, and he's like, don't shows me. You
(27:29):
have no idea what I've been through. Uh. It turns
out it's pretty serious. And on the way out he
passes this Montego sitting empty in the middle of the
road about fifty yards further down the mountain behind his car,
where he stopped at the snow line. That's right. So
Showance doesn't think much of this. He just is like, Okay,
well there's a car in the middle of the road
the snow lines here. I'm not the only one who
(27:51):
got stuck last night. Those guys are jerks for not
coming to my aid when I shouted for help. And
he he doesn't think much of it until all of
a sudd on the news he starts seeing these reports
of these five guys who went missing the same night
that he had his heart attack on the same road,
in the same mountain, and he came forward and the
cops figured out like that, Joseph Shohnes was probably the
(28:14):
last person to see those five guys alive. Uh. Well, yeah,
they're silhouettes at least. Yeah. Uh should we take a break?
I think so. Man, all right, we're gonna take a
break and get to some more uh sad discoveries right
after this. Okay, we're back, Chuck, we are you promised,
(28:59):
more said discoveries laid on him. All right. So the
next day, after Weird's body had been found, you know,
the search is really on at this point. Uh, they
found a few things. They found the remains of Sterling
and Madruga there on different sides of the road. Uh,
that same road that led to the trailer, but about
(29:19):
eleven and a half miles from the car, right, so
presumably another what nine miles from the trailer, Yes, which
is why I think that they never made it to
the trailer. Put a pin in that. Uh. Madruga had
very gruesomely been partially eaten by animals, of course up
there on the mountains, probably after he had died though, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(29:43):
I think it sounds like all of this was they
succumbed to nature and then the animals kind of took
it from there, right. Uh, So they dragged his body
to a stream. Uh, he's laying their face up, they said,
with his hand curled around his watch. And then Sterling
was in the woods and very gruesomely they said that
his remains were, or his bones I guess, were scattered
(30:05):
over about fifty ft yes. And then I think a
day or so after that, there was another search party
that was launched, and Jackie Hewitt's father insisted on being
a part of it, and Jackie Hewitt was still missing,
and very sadly his dad was the one who discovered
his remains. He found um, his son's I think spine
(30:25):
is what he came upon. Yeah, in the same road,
a lot closer to the trailer though, but he right,
like just a quarter mile or something, right, Uh yeah,
I think that's about right, something very very close to it.
And they also found, um, his his clothes. They knew
it was him because he was His levies and his
shirt were also found nearby, and so were um. He
(30:47):
was wearing very stylish platform shoes called get Their's, which
I had to look up and they were actually pretty fresh. Yeah,
not nothing the kind of shoes that you want to
be hiking around the snowy woods in. No, definitely not.
I mean again, platform shoes. They're like, um, you know
that that uh that rubbery sold thing that like you
find in like Clark's, like Clark Wallabyes, like the thick
(31:10):
rubbery so I think it's called crepe sold They were
like those, but platform shoes and like a rippley bottom. Yeah,
probably look at these things. Yeah, they're probably the worst,
the worst hiking shoes you could ever imagine what these
would be good for actually catching ladies? Probably, right, I guess.
I mean they're pretty they're pretty cool that that wavy
(31:32):
soul though looks so strange. Well I look that up.
It's it's to keep your center of balance when you're
way up there. Okay, yeah, well that makes more sense. Then. Yeah,
there were there was a lot of thought put into
those shoes. Uh. And then finally the next day there
was a skull discovered about a hundred yards downhill, and
that was the final remains from Jackie Hewitt. So they
(31:57):
found everybody, every dy that is, except for Gary Matthias.
He was still missing and he's he still is. Actually,
if you go on the Yuba County Sheriff's website on
their missing person's page, he's still listed there. Yeah, his
shoes were inside again and that trailer um, which you
know that They can't say anything for sure, though, but
(32:19):
it suggests that he was in there at one point,
and they surmised that he may have, like you said,
taken them off to where the leather shoes guests, presumably
because they were warmer, or his feet were frost bitten
and had swollen, so he needed the bigger shoes um
to strike out back outside like he was. He was like,
I can't go out there barefoot, and I can't get
(32:40):
my tennis shoes on any longer. Yeah, And so to
deal with Matthias, like we said, he was under treatment
for schizophrenia. UM. He was in the army in Germany,
and apparently UM had occasions post war where he had
become violent. He was charged with the salt a couple
of times. But UM all accounts say that for the
(33:01):
at least the last two years he had really been
on his meds. He had been working in his stepdad's business.
He was They called him one of the our sterling
success cases, as doctor did. Yeah, and they were really,
you know, he was really coming around and hadn't had
any what is his dad he said, he called them
haywire episodes. Yeah, I hadn't had one of those in
(33:22):
in a in a couple of years. And the stepfather
said that he had. He had been taking his meds
the week he disappeared, right, and his stepfather would know
because his stepfather owned a gardening business, and um Gary
Mathias had been working with him side by side for
a couple of years by that time. So he he
also didn't seem like one to really mince words or bs.
(33:42):
So I take him for his word that his his
son was fully medicated and his schizophrenia was under control.
It sounds like so. Um, the problem is is he
hadn't taken his pills with him, so if he did survive, Um,
he he had, he had gone without him. He left
him at home, and the reason why he left him
(34:04):
at home is because he fully expected to be back
home a couple hours after he left for the basketball game. Yeah,
no more evidence that, Like, it's just really bizarre that
they went anywhere but home, and that raised a lot
of questions for the families. Um. Back in the day,
the I think Madruga's mom, Mabel, was very vocal about
(34:29):
her belief that, um, somebody had either tricked or threatened
her son and the other boys into going up that
mountain or um it was somebody else was was responsible
for for this series of decisions. Yeah. So they learned
a few things afterwards that are sort of clues but
(34:53):
never ended up solving anything. Um. One is that a
snow cat for a service snow cat had been up
that road. I think what the just the day before
Yeah yeah, I think and packed in a path of
snow so it was walkable. So they you know, it
led up to that trailer, and they surmised that the
(35:14):
boys may have this might have been the only walkable
path forward, so they might have followed that path to
the trailer. Uh. They hired a water witcher at one
point and uh he was in Paradise, California, and he
said that he fixed his little uh is it dibbening
or divining divining rod to pick up human minerals and
(35:35):
traces of humans. That led them to another cabin where
they found a disposable lighter and this was about three
quarters a mile from the trailer where they found the body.
And all the parents said, no, like, they didn't have
a lighter like this. The guys didn't carry a lighter, right,
So there were a lot of dead ends like that.
(35:55):
And then like that, for example, that watch that had
been found with Ted weird that it was sing it's
crystal and you know, all the families said, that wasn't
any of our boys watch. I mean, it could be
totally meaningless. It could have been a forest ranger who
had left the watch behind because it had broken or
something like that. But that's most of the evidence in
this case, or just those just little dead ends. Yeah,
(36:18):
that Gary Mathias apparently knew some people, and they're really
just sort of reaching at this point new people in Forbestown,
which is about halfway between Chico and Uba City, And
apparently the turn is easy to miss, and there was
some speculation like maybe he was taking his buddies to
go see these people he knew got lost, but apparently
(36:40):
those friends were like, we hadn't seen him in years,
and it would be really like unlikely that he just
would have randomly come to visit. Yeah. I could also
see the other boys not wanting to go along with
that too, because they had that basketball game in the
morning that they all wanted to be um fresh as
a daisy for it too. Yeah. And and like Gary
Mathias had been badgering his mom, I think, like you said,
(37:00):
to make sure he didn't oversleep the next morning because
he was excited about that basketball game too. Yeah. So
the thing is, though, Chuck, is even if let's say
that is the case, Let's say that they all got
a wild hair and they decided to go see Gary
Mathias's friend and they started up this mountain because they
got lost. They missed the turn off and ended up
on a mountain road at the snow line. I thought
(37:22):
the car was stuck. What why why would all of them,
all of them collectively and individually, say well, let's go
up rather than back down. Let's go up into the snow.
Supposedly the snow driss for six eight ft um and
even if it was packed down with the snow cat,
it doesn't make sense to go forward unless they thought, well,
(37:44):
the last side of civilization behind us was too far right,
Maybe there's something up here which is a thing that's
a that's an economic theory called sunk cost, where you're
so invested in something, you're so far along that you
don't want to just stop and turn back or or quit.
So it's possible that that was that aided in their
decision making. But again, okay, so then let's say that
(38:05):
they're like, okay, the snow cat track is gonna lead
us to safety or something. When they get to the trailer,
like why not eat the food? Why not make a fire?
I can I can even see missing the propane tank,
just not being you know, um, just with it enough
from the harrowing experience that you could just totally miss
the propane tank. And I even think that your trailer
is going to have that kind of thing. But the
(38:26):
food that you've already started to eat, that you already
show you have a can opener and know how to
use it. Like, how do you just starve to death
after that? Well, I mean the food. The other food
was in a locker they never opened apparently. But like,
if you're there, especially for two to three months, like
you're turning over everything, You're lighting a fire with whatever
(38:48):
you can get your hands on. Those plenty of stuff
to make a fire. Uh. What's up with the supposed
woman and the baby? That could be chalked up maybe
pretty easily to uh what was his name? Snopes, shoots shows,
Shans Snopes snoop talk that could be chalked up to
him in the state of a heart attack in the
(39:09):
middle of the night, just sort of seeing things could
have been or could have just been an entirely different
party of people who had nothing to do with it
or everything to do with it, But it could have
They could have been there too. I mean it was
you know, it was a mountain. Some people lived on it.
Some people apparently like camp there, which is what Shones
was scouting for. You know, how did Matthias never get
(39:31):
found at all? I don't know I saw him. I think, Uh,
I think. At the end of the WAPO article, um
Cynthia Gorney, the journalist, says that, um, probably, you know,
he laid there on the snow somewhere that they just
didn't find or overlooked, or he got buried in the snow,
(39:52):
and then when the thaw came, he sunk down to
the ground and was covered over by some some mountain vines.
I guess so. But it seems like after all these
years a bone or one of those leather shoes or
something would have been found. Yeah, you'd think both of
those would still be intact. Yeah, I mean, what I
did not see was any sort of speculation that he
(40:13):
had had any nefarious like actions. Um, but we did
put a pin in something. I don't remember what it was.
I saw a couple of theories that they they speculate
that all of these guys went to the cabin at
one point and maybe, uh, we are wasn't doing so well,
so they all set out independently to go look for
(40:36):
help and each died or maybe in pairs, maybe since
the two guys were kind of found together. But I
don't know. I mean, it's all just speculation. You saw
that they don't think they were all there? Yeah, what
I saw was that um Jackie Hewitt and um Bill
Sterling and um Jack Madruga hadn't had never made it
(40:59):
to the to the trailer, that they would have split
up on the way up. No, No, that they were,
That they had um or died during that twenty mile hike. Yes, interesting.
And then Ted and Gary had continued on upped and
made it, made it to the trailer, and then what
I think happened after that was Gary nurse Ted. Gary
(41:22):
had been in the army and the can opener that
was there was actually a very simple thing called the
P thirty eight, but you kind of had to have
been in the army to to know how to use it,
and Ted wouldn't have been and Gary would have been,
So I think Gary may have stayed, probably fed both
of them, and then like you said, seeing Ted was
(41:42):
not doing so well, set out again with Ted shoes
and died um going off to get helps somehow, That's
what I think happened. Yeah, I would have think they
get split up on the way up though, Like I
just don't even know, like these guys would have died
that quickly on on the way on this twenty mile hike,
I mean six to eight foot snow drifts. That's cold. Yeah,
(42:05):
but they're also on this snow packed trail supposedly. Sure,
but they also have like they're dressed for mild weather,
Like they didn't have jackets, sweaters, their shoes were like
like like converse kind of things, aside from the the
platform shoes that, like I did, it's entirely possible that
twenty mile hike up a mountain they succumbed to the weather. Yeah,
(42:30):
And you also, like it was hard to determine what
level of intellectual impairment these boys had, so I don't
know how much that plays into it, if at all.
Like when they get to this cabin, like did um
Matthias is because you know he didn't have his meds
(42:51):
after that, did he start kind of breaking down with
with some episodes of schizophrenia and leave? Did the other
guy not fully understand? I mean at that point, he's
exhausted and maybe hurt and scared. Was he not even
able to figure out maybe to light a fire light
of fire or how to use that can opener or
(43:12):
maybe he felt he couldn't get out of bed because
of his feet. Yeah, and he he was just stuck
there after Gary struck out to go get help that
there was nothing he could do, and the poor guy
starved to death. But what were they doing up there
to begin with? That's the basic root of this whole thing. Yeah,
but that's that's why they call this the American diet
(43:34):
law pass Right, we gotta do an episode on that
one too. But because there's some there's like a mystery
within a mystery within a mystery, there's so many many
like other mysteries. Yeah, that that just kind of um
crescendo from the first mystery, which is what were they
doing there? Yeah? Well, like and like you said, some
of the parents firmly believe like they witnessed something at
(43:56):
this basketball game and we're then chased up this mountain. Yeah,
Like I don't even know what that means, like like
they witnessed a crime, I came after him or something.
That's what Ted Weird sister in law always believed. And
speaking of Ted Weir, you got anything else on this, no,
except to only say if that was the case, then
(44:19):
why was the car seemingly driven very slowly and carefully
up this road? If they were being chased. Oh okay,
So you make a good point. And I think I
saw that elsewhere too, that that like that virtually proves
that they weren't chased. If anything, it shows that they
that that says something happened to them and somebody ditched
their car. Who who knew the area? I think more
(44:42):
likely um Jack Madrugo. It just would have driven extraordinarily
slowly because this is his, his baby car. Yeah, it's
all just very sad. I think it's just one of those.
It's probably like Okam's razor. It's probably the most simple
explanation is you know, maybe they just went on a
little joy ride, got a little lost, got turned around
(45:03):
in the woods, and succumbed to nature. Yeah, so I
find this. I said at the beginning that this is
just a very sad story to me. And one of
the things that got me was in that Washington Post
articles called five Boys Who Never Come Back by Cynthia Gorney.
You can find it online. But um they she describes
(45:26):
Ted Weir as you're ready for this that Ted got
a good chuckle out of phoning Bill Sterling and reading
from newspaper items or a ball names from the telephone
book like that's what he was into, that's what made
him happy. And I'm sure Bill Sterling thought it was
hilarious too, But like they were just this group of
friends and can't you just imagine my kid, we're like
(45:47):
going through the phone book looking for silly names and
going and picking up the phone and calling his friend
Bill Sterling and saying, Bill, get a load of this one,
and Bills just laughing on the other end of the line,
and like that they just had like this such a
pure life, like almost like an enviable life in a
lot of ways, and that they died so horribly is
(46:09):
just just bitterly sad to me. Yeah, I mean, they
weren't troublemakers and even um, even the one who had
had gotten convicted of assault a couple of times. Gary, Yeah, Gary,
it seems like all signs point to the his mental
illness is playing a big factor in that which he
had gotten in check, right, exactly. All very sad. It
(46:30):
is very sad. Well, if you have any theories on
the what you call him the Ubi City six five,
Uba County or Uba City five, Ubis City five, um,
we want to hear him. You can find all of
our social media connections on our website Stuff you Should
Know dot com and if you like, you can also
send us an email to shoot it off to Stuff
(46:51):
Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. Wait, we haven't
done listener mail, have we know? You're just gonna let
me keep going, weren't you? You know? All right? Well,
hold on, everybody, hold on, don't stop yet, don't stop yet.
Since I said some stuff I'm not supposed to say,
it's time for listener mail. Yes. And speaking of which,
(47:13):
this listener mail is rated rated R. Okay, that's all
I'll say. Use the S word no, but it doesn't
use curse words. It's just um talks very frankly about
sex and it's good. P s A though, so we
know the stuff. Uh. And this is from Emily, not
my wife. Hey, guys, listen to the Select episode on
(47:34):
condoms the other day. Thanks for all the great info.
Appreciate you covering topics maybe slightly controversial or divisive and
do so with such grace. I wanted to throw a
little extra P. S A in there though, for your listeners.
Most people are aware that you can and should use
condoms to prevent pregnancy and or s t I S
when a penis is involved, but there's far less awareness
about protection when you've only got vaginas in the mix.
(47:58):
Although you certainly can't get pregnant, it is possible to
spread or contract an s t I from sex between
two women or other vagina having people. But you can
greatly reduce your risk of this by using a dental dam.
It's a sheet of latex placed over the bulba or
anus for oral sex. That's all, uh, And that's all
there really is to it. If you don't have one
(48:19):
on hand, you can safely d I Y one by
unrolling a regular condom, cutting off the clothes end and bam,
it's a dental dam. In the case of digital sex,
not as in computers, as in fingers, latex gloves are
perfect or perfect for the job. Of course, these can
also be used by absolutely anyone. There's a lot more
awareness of protection for heterosexual and male homosexual couples, and
(48:41):
not a lot for queer women. Well that's my stuff
you should know, and now you know it. Thanks for
consistently great work and outstanding effort and educating and entertaining
us every week and Happy Pride month. Uh And she
wrote back, I just realized I gave an incomplete d
I Y instruction. You would cut off the close end
of the condom uh, and the ring on the open end,
(49:04):
then cut down the middle and now it's a flat sheet. Bam.
So that is from Emily. Thanks a lot, Emily, Happy
Pride Month. Indeed good info. Uh yeah, it was good info.
And if you out there want to send us good info,
I already said it. I said it once and I'll
say it again. You can find all our social stuff
(49:25):
on stuff you should Know dot com, and you can
send us an email to stuff podcast at how Stuff
Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi everyone, It's me Josh and for this week's Select
I chose our two thousand eighteen episode on the Mystery
of the Yuba County Five. I was actually inspired to
choose this one because I was recently a guest on
another podcast called The Yuba County Five hosted by Shanon McGarvey.
And it's actually a really fascinating deep dive into this
(00:21):
long standing mystery, and it expands on and actually does
a lot of updating on what we talked about in
this episode. So if this one strikes your fancy, go
check out the Yuba County Five podcast from Mopac Audio.
And in the meantime, I hope you enjoy our episode
on it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
(00:45):
of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you should no. Yes,
how you doing, Chuck? Do I look tired? Do you
(01:07):
seem a little a little LOGI tired? Man? What's going
on with you? I've just been waking up like too
early for no reason, going to bed too late though,
because if you go to bed early and wake up early.
You're fine, well, going to bed late, sometimes not getting
enough sleep, then going trying to go to bed super
(01:28):
early to make up for it. But I don't know
about this making up for a sleep depisode. I don't
buy all that. I feel like we talked about it
before that there's that that that doesn't actually work. Yeah,
I'm just tired, that's all I can say. Sorry, man, Sorry,
I'll live all right. I'm glad we killed some time
before we got into this very mysterious sad story. It's
(01:50):
a good one, though, isn't it. It is extraordinarily sad,
probably the saddest true well, I don't know it's up
there as far as true life true crime. Disappeared his
go um, and it's the one about Gary Matthias. That's
what they call it. They call it the Gary Matthias disappearance.
But that really doesn't do it much justice, or it
(02:10):
doesn't serve it well, because it was a lot more
than Gary Matthias involved. Yeah, I've seen it more so
called the Uba County five. But you know, I guess
it just depends on where you're looking. I had not
run across that. Oh yeah, Oh god, that makes me,
wonder what all stuff I missed? Well, you know there
were five guys, what so, No, there actually were five guys.
(02:34):
There were five friends. Um, Gary Matthias was one of them,
and there were four others. There was Ted Weir who
was the oldest, he was thirty two. There was Jackie
Hewitt he was the youngest, he was twenty four. There
was Jack Madruga. I'm not sure what Ah was, but
he was definitely between twenty four and thirty two. I'll
(02:56):
tell you Bill Sterling. And then again Gary are Matthias
And those five guys were a set of friends and
they met at the Yuba City UH Vocational Rehabilitation Center
for the what you would call today UM cognitively impaired
or cognitively challenged. Yeah, because three of these guys, UM.
(03:20):
Of course, this one article you have from nine seventy
eight doesn't use appropriate terms anymore. But three of these
guys were intellectually disabled UM or developmentally disabled. Not an
exact like it's kind of hard to get an exact
DIA diagnosis from these terms, really, but h. Madruga was undiagnosed.
(03:42):
But according to his mom, uh, he was generally thought
of as she said, as quote slow end quote. And
then Matthias was the only one not diagnosed with a
developmental disability, but he was under drug treatment for schizophrenia. Right,
So all five of these guys had some sort of
(04:05):
challenge going on in their life, right, exactly. So, so
there's a lot of details you can kind of glean
because you're absolutely right, Like reading the really great Washington
Post article, which is basically the comprehensive document on the
case from UM, you can kind of glean uh an
idea picture of these guys. So they're just five friends,
(04:26):
thickest thieves. Even within this this tight little group of friends,
there's subgroups of even tighter friends like um Ted Weir
and Jackie Hewitt were particularly close, and Bill Sterling and
Jack Madrugo were particularly close. Um. They had like they
were just these these five guys known as the Boys, right.
(04:47):
They all lived at home with their parents. They were
always going to live at home with their parents. It
was just what what the plan was, um, Like I
think Ted ted Weir had a had a job, um
as a janitor and then later on as a snack
bar clerk. Um. Basketball, Yeah, that was another one, and
(05:11):
they actually all played together on the basketball team for
the Vocational Rehab Center, basically like their hang out, the
place where they hung out. They played basketball on that team.
But um Jack madrew God's worth saying head a driver's license,
whereas three of the other ones didn't, although Gary Mathias
did as well. So these guys, they just they were friends.
They like had a tight kinship together. They had very normal,
(05:34):
reliable lives that were basically home centric, and when they
were out doing stuff, you could expect them home for
dinner kind of thing, like it was just a given. Yeah,
I think that's that's super worth pointing out here. Early on,
as they saw them more than one place, they said
they referred to their lives as very predictable and scheduled,
(05:57):
which is why this interesting. The events that occurred on
February nineteen seventy eight were very very unusual. Right, So
on February eight, the boys that's what their families all
call them, because apparently all their families were at least
in touch, if not friendly, with another. Yeah, I think
they kind of supported one another. It sounds like as
(06:18):
much as anyone did in ninety eight. Uh So, on
this night, February twenty four, there was a Friday night. Um,
the boys left their homes around Maryville and Ubis City
in California, and they traveled I think about fifty miles
north to cal State Chico which is now called Chico
(06:39):
State University, and they went to go see their team.
The cal State l A team beat up on cal
State Chico and cal State l A actually eighty four,
which would have pleased the boys tremendously. So they went
to the game. That much is known, and then they
left the game. That much is known too, because around
ten o'clock when they left the game, they went to
a convenience store called Bear's Market and they bought some stuff. Yeah,
(07:03):
apparently that they were trying to kind of close up,
and so the clerk was a little bit annoyed that
they showed up. And these are the kind of details
that aren't so important, but it just shows that, you know,
they really did their investigating pretty thoroughly, including well, we'll
we'll get to sort of the the lead investigator in
a minute. But yeah, they bought just a few things.
(07:25):
They bought a Hostess cherry pie, um, a Langendorf lemon pie,
snickers bar, a Marathon bar, a couple of pepsis, and
a court and a half of milk, which is to say,
it's not like they were stocking up on food. They
just got some uh some some snacks, right exactly for
the drive back home fifty fifty miles about an hour. Yeah.
(07:49):
The thing is is they they would have been fully
expected back home, not just because there was you know,
this was it wasn't like any of them to spend
the night away, right except Matthias. He he had friends
and he would stay out with friends sometimes. But um,
the other four like they slipped in their bed at
(08:09):
home every night. That's just what they did. So their
families fully expected them to come back. Um. And another
reason why they expected them to come back was because
the next day, Saturday, they had a basketball game for
their vocational rehab team, the Gateway Gators, and they they
apparently were all extraordinarily excited about this game. Yeah, which
(08:29):
again is just another point being made that there was
these guys had every intention on coming home super excited
about the game. I think Matthias even was kind of
driving his mom a little batty, saying, you know, don't
let me oversleep. Got this big game. Apparently the guys
had their clothes laid out. Uh, and they were all
(08:50):
super excited about this basketball game. Uh. And then they
don't come home, and you know, these parents and grandparents
start waking up at various points in the middle of
the night or in the morning and start getting in
touch with one another, you know, all verifying like your
kids not there, your your kids not there. And they
started to freak out. And by eight o'clock that evening,
(09:10):
I believe the mother of Madruga actually finally called the cops. Yeah,
and the cops, um, we're kind of I don't have
the impression that they were like, well this is I'm sure,
this is fine. I think they got involved pretty early on.
But things really picked up when I think on a Tuesday,
that was that was Saturday night that they finally called
the cops. And on Tuesday, Uh, Jack Madruga's car was discovered,
(09:35):
and it was discovered in a very very unusual place, right, Yeah,
what was this thing in old Mercury, Montego Yeah, sixty
nine Montego a land yacht is what it was. And
they found it. Um. And this was, by the way,
this is Jack Madruga's prized possession. Like no one else
drove the thing. He took pristine care of it. It
(09:57):
was like his baby. His car was right, So to
find it abandoned with the window one of the windows
rolled down up a mountain road, which was, um, I think,
seventy miles away from the basketball game, in a different
direction away from their house. Right, so the basketball game
was north of their homes. This was east of southeast
(10:20):
of the basketball game and up a mountain road. It
was extremely bizarre and also I'm sure quite worrying. When
the families were already worried, I think finding this car
like this probably really set them into panic mode. Well yeah,
and here's where, uh in this article is very clear
to say from that point on, nothing made any kind
of sense. So here's a few things about the car
(10:42):
that definitely don't add up. You might think, all right, there,
you know, there was a snowstorm, so they drove up
here and they got stuck. Apparently that is not true.
The car stopped at about the snow line, and they
said they did confirm that the wheels had spun some,
but the car wasn't stuck, and these five dudes could
have pushed it free pretty easily. Apparently, right, this thing
(11:05):
number one, thing number two is that it had a
quarter tank of gas still, so they didn't run out
of gas. Right then when the cops hot wired the car,
the keys were gone. Uh. And when the cops heartwired
the cars started up immediately. There wasn't any engine trouble
or anything like that. Yeah. The last thing they found
were all these maps of California and um, so it's
(11:27):
not like they had no way of knowing where they were.
And then they found all the you know, all the
rappers from the food items. Uh. The only thing, ironically
that wasn't fully eaten was the marathon bar um, living
up to his reputation. Right. See, I guess the toughest
candy bar to get through. Yeah, that's that's how they
(11:47):
build it, some weird cartoon cowboy. Yeah, so you know,
that's the deal. The underside of the car wasn't damaged,
which they say was pretty interesting because on this road,
apparently there were a lot of deep, deep ruts. This
thing kind of hangs low anyway, has a low hanging muffler,
has these five dudes inside, these grown men. Uh. And
(12:07):
there was no damage under the underside of this car,
which means, you know a couple of things. If you
kind of are surmising, which is the either the driver
kind of knew where they were going and drove through
the darkness with a lot of precision, or they just
maybe drew drove really slow. Yeah, I think it was
the ladder because I think Madruga did was probably would
(12:30):
have been very unhappy that his car was on this
road now. So I just took it slow and took
it super slow. I saw somewhere that there wasn't even
a large mud spot on it. It was they had
taken it that easy. Yeah, And apparently Madruga uh didn't
like the cold, he didn't like camping, so he wouldn't
have known that road. It's not like there's a lot
else to do up there but that, right, And evidently, uh,
(12:53):
none of the boys were big into outdoorsy type stuff.
Oh yeah, that's a really good point, Chuck. So like
that none of them had any connection to that, to
that area, and certainly not to that mountain. One of them,
I think Sterling, Bill Sterling had been had gone camping
with his family there eight years before. Yeah, and he
(13:14):
didn't even like I think they went back again and
he was like, no, I don't want to go right,
So he didn't like the outdoors, he didn't like the cold.
And then I think ted uh Ted Weir had gone
deer hunting or something once with friends way west of
the area. Um but still, I mean enough that you
could that was it was a lead that the cops
(13:34):
were to chase down. Um. But but then too, he
didn't enjoy himself and he didn't like the woods either,
So there was no let's go hang out in the
woods kind of thing going on here. Just everything about
the fact that they found this car and where they
found it, in the state they found it in was
really bizarre and really worrying. Should we take a break?
I think we should. Man, all right, you and I
(13:56):
are going to go hang out in the woods and
we'll be back right up to this. So I've never
(14:25):
swept the woods before. That was really interesting, right, It's
not spick and span out here. So um, So they
find the car, and when they find the car, Chuck.
I think it was the next night after they had
gone missing, a storm blew into the area and it
dumped like almost a foot of snow on the mountain.
(14:45):
This is February in the mountains in California. UM, I
would guess the Sierras, is what it sounds like, right, So, yeah,
Cheek is in the Chicos, in the Sierra Nevadas. I
think it's north of Sacramento. So it would be very
very cold and the snow would be pretty tough to
get through. Um So, but they still tried. They got
(15:07):
guys on horseback, they got helicopters out, they looked for him,
but they found nothing. They found not one bit of
of um and not a single trace of these guys
after just the car and that was it. Yeah, the
snow certainly didn't help anything because it would not be
until June. On June four, after this thing, you know,
(15:28):
the mountain faws out somewhat when these uh Sunday you
know motorcycle bikers, they'll go right around the mountains. They
went into an old Forest service trailer camp at the
end of a road and said, do you smell something
that smells like perhaps a dead body, And sadly it
was Ted Weir. And this is where things get even stranger. Yeah,
(15:52):
so the I think the trailer caught their attention, but
what caught their attention even further was that a window
had been broken to get into the trailer and then yeah,
like you said, what really called their attention was the
smell in the sight of of ted weirds decomposing body.
But what got what made it very, very weird is
one he's wrapped in sheets tucked under his head in
(16:13):
a way that like he couldn't have possibly tucked himself.
So somebody had tucked him in like that and he
ted weird been a portly fellow. Um. Cynthia Gorney, who
wrote the Washington Post article on this this case in
calls him, um, beer belly handsome, which I've never heard
those words put together in my entire life. I think
(16:35):
that's what I am. Sure, sure i'd call you beer
belly foxy. Okay, okay, so um, but he was beer
belly hands he was. He was a thick guy. He's
like five ten, two hundred pounds. He had a few
extra pounds on him right when they found him, though,
he weighed about a hundred and twenty a hundred to
a hundred and twenty pounds, which means that between the
(16:57):
time that they went missing and the time that he died,
he'd lost anywhere between eighty and a hundred pounds. Yeah.
A couple of more interesting tidbits. He his leather shoes
were gone and missing completely. Um. On the little night
stand by his bed was his his own ring because
it had his name engraved on it, his gold yeah,
(17:20):
ted his gold necklace, his wallet with money uh. And
then weirdly a watch that was not his. It was
a gold Waltham watch that had a missing crystal. Uh.
And all of the families said that this No, none
of our kids had this watch. So that's one interesting tidbit.
And the other is that he had a big, full
(17:44):
beard that indicated that he lived in that cabin for
anywhere from eight to thirteen weeks. And what's really really
underving about the thirteen week one thirteen week number is
that if he survived thirteen weeks, that means that he
would have died just days before for his body was found.
Is that right? Yes? Did you did you do the math?
(18:05):
I did the math because think about so they disappeared
on February and he was found June four, So you've
got a I really really hope I call on the
Saints that that not to have been the case, like
that he perhaps died a couple of days before. Yeah,
that that he he would have expired like like weeks
(18:27):
before that. There was just no chance for him, like
if he was destined and doomed to die. I really
hope it wasn't a couple of days before they found
his body after starving for thirteen weeks. Yeah. And to
cap it off, I don't think we we've mentioned yet,
this cabin was almost twenty miles from their car. Oh yeah,
so in the middle of the night. Uh. And at
(18:49):
this point, this is this is all we know is
about Ted in our story, he walked or ran almost
twenty miles in four to six ft snow drifts to
go to this trailer, where he spent the next two
to three months slowly dying. Yeah. So okay, that's pretty
weird in and of itself. And they found that his
(19:09):
feet were terribly frost bitten, right, which is why his
shoes were off. But again his shoes were missing. Um,
what gets even weirder. And this is just where the
case truly turns. Bizarres, one of the Yuba County Sheriff's
deputies are under sheriff, called it Bizaar's Hell is like
the quote of this story, Um, this this the trailer,
(19:30):
the cabin was actually like a forest Service trailer and
it was an emergency trailer from what I understand, and
it was fully stocked with a year's worth of food
that would have kept all five of those boys alive
for a year. It was built to keep you alive,
yes exactly. And they found it, but they didn't put
(19:50):
it to use. Now, let's not to say that they
didn't find the food. There was. There were twelve rations
like um sea rations like army meals opened and eaten,
but that was it. The other stuff wasn't touched. There
was a whole locker of other dehydrated food and like
fruit cups and stuff that hadn't been touched at all. Okay,
(20:12):
and bear in mind, this is all right here while
Ted ted Weir is starving to death. Yeah, so all
this food is there. Uh, they found out The investigators
determined that there had not been a fire built, even
though there were paperback novels, there was wood, furniture, there
were matches, like everything was there to build a fire.
(20:34):
And not only that, but there was a propane tank
that all they had to do, Uh, it was in
another shed outside. All they had to do was open
this thing on and they would have actually had gas heat, yes, Het, right,
they didn't. They also didn't even um cover up the
broken window that they used to get into the trailer.
(20:56):
It's just weird, just bizarre decision after bizarre decision, right. Yeah.
So there's one other thing in the trailer that that is,
um pretty interesting. They find Gary Matthias's tennis shoes. So
Gary mathias Is tennis shoes are there, and um, Ted
Weir's shoes leather shoes are missing. Uh. And what they
(21:19):
think possibly is that Gary Matthias was in the trailer
with Ted. Ted had terrible frostbite. Ted would have had
bigger feet than Gary. Gary probably had frostbite too, so
he used Ted's shoes to put them on and go
back out into the wilderness. Yeah. I mean they pretty
much determined that probably all five of those guys were
(21:43):
in here at one point. Okay, so I have to
say that's that's I don't think that's true really because
that's what I saw. So I think so what I
saw was that they so, okay, we should probably tell
everybody that the we should continue on, Chuck. But the like,
I think a day after they found Ted Weir, they
started looking around the area and they started finding the
(22:05):
other boys remains. Yeah, and you know this is thanks
to what I said would be sort of the lead investigator, uh,
Uba County Lieutenant Lance Ayers, who actually had gone to
high school with We're uh didn't know him that well,
but he was really consumed by this case UM and
seems sort of obsessed with trying to solve it to
(22:26):
the point where he was chasing down leads from psychics.
At one point, Yeah, apparently he met with a psychic
who um I told him that the boys were in
Araville or had been murdered in a red house either
brick or stained in Oraville with the house number UM
either four four seven to three or four seven five three.
(22:49):
And Lance Ayers was so consumed with this that he
actually drove every street of Oraville over a two day
period trying to find that house based on the tip
of a psychic. That's how Upset TV came with this case. Yeah,
so we've put a pen in our were they all
in the cabin debate? We're coming back to that right right,
All right, So now we pick up a story of
(23:11):
a man named Joseph Shoens, and this is where things
get even more odd. So this guy was fifty five
years old. He got in touch with the cops because,
you know, some strange things that had happened that night
of the disappearance. He was gonna go camping with his family,
um on you know, up that road, and so he
decided to take his little Volkswagen Beetle um around five
(23:34):
thirty that evening just to check out the snow line
to see if it was passable and if it was
going to be safe to take his family camping that weekend.
He found out it was not. Yeah, he got his
his car stuck right right above the snow line. And
this was to be about fifty yards further than where
that mercury would eventually be found. Right, so he has
(23:56):
um he gets out to push a push his Beetle
right and has a heart attack. He's he's fifty five
in this nine, which means he he lived on nothing
but scotch and steak. So you can imagine that that
was the outcome, right when you have to push your
Volkswagen Beetle and um, he's like in a bad spot
right there. He's a phone in the wilderness at the
(24:16):
snow line of a mountain eight miles away from help.
That the place that he had stopped to actually get
a drink probably of scotch on the way up the
mountain to check out the snow line had been eight
miles back in the other direction. So he very wisely
like leaves his car running with the heater on and
just lays there and tries to collect himself and gather himself.
(24:37):
And that is a mild heart attack, we should point out,
but enough that if you, Joseph shown, you are probably
freaking out on not trying to u diminish like his
danger level. But it wasn't like, uh, he was like
laying there near death like he would eventually hike eight
miles out right after this heart attack. Yes, so he
(24:57):
but but while he was laying there trying to like
gather his strength again. So this happened about five thirty
And he said a couple hours after that, some um
a car at least one but probably two cars, and
one of them would have been a pickup truck, came
up and had their lights on, and he saw the
silhouettes of some men and a woman with a baby,
(25:18):
and he said he called out to them, and they
ignored it and turned off the lights, and he got
back in his car, and he said he laid there
for another few hours before he heard some whistling sounds
and some flashlight beams a little further down the mountain,
probably about fifty yards. Uh. And that would have been
(25:40):
a couple of hours, probably about five or six hours
after his um his heart attack. And they think that
the second group at least was the the five boys
with Gary Matthias. Yeah, and well I think at this
point they were right outside his car window. Yeah. So
again he gets out, calls for help, and the whistling
(26:02):
sounds stopped, and the flashlights get turned off, and so
he goes back in his car and lays back down,
and he's like to two groups of people have come
up this mountain. I'm having a heart attack here, and
somehow calling for help has chased both of both of
them off, both groups off. Yeah. So that that Volkswagen Beetle,
like I can tell you from experience, had of like
an eight gallon gas tank, so it eventually runs out
(26:25):
of gas. Um it Also now they think about it
doesn't have a very efficient heating system, like, uh, my
first Beetle didn't even have a fan. We just called
it the ankle burner, Like if you when you turned
on the heat, it literally just opened vents on the
floorboard that like came straight off the engine. Wow, that's
(26:47):
that's sharp design. So you wouldn't even like you had
to be moving for there to be actually a hot
air running through it. Man. But I do know that
I had another Beetle that had that did have a
little fan end. So let's just presume that Shans had
the fan. I'm not going to I'm going to presume
the opposite, Okay, I'm going to presume that this was
(27:07):
a hellish experience for him in every way, all right.
So eventually the car runs out of gas. Uh, it's
still dark, and he manages after this heart attack, like
I said earlier, to walk eight miles to a lodge
called the Mountain House. Is that where he had gotten
the drink? Yeah? All right. So he comes back and
they're like Showans, and he's like, don't shows me. You
(27:29):
have no idea what I've been through. Uh. It turns
out it's pretty serious. And on the way out he
passes this Montego sitting empty in the middle of the
road about fifty yards further down the mountain behind his car,
where he stopped at the snow line. That's right. So
Showance doesn't think much of this. He just is like, Okay,
well there's a car in the middle of the road
the snow lines here. I'm not the only one who
(27:51):
got stuck last night. Those guys are jerks for not
coming to my aid when I shouted for help. And
he he doesn't think much of it until all of
a sudd on the news he starts seeing these reports
of these five guys who went missing the same night
that he had his heart attack on the same road,
in the same mountain, and he came forward and the
cops figured out like that, Joseph Shohnes was probably the
(28:14):
last person to see those five guys alive. Uh. Well, yeah,
they're silhouettes at least. Yeah. Uh should we take a break?
I think so. Man, all right, we're gonna take a
break and get to some more uh sad discoveries right
after this. Okay, we're back, Chuck, we are you promised,
(28:59):
more said discoveries laid on him. All right. So the
next day, after Weird's body had been found, you know,
the search is really on at this point. Uh, they
found a few things. They found the remains of Sterling
and Madruga there on different sides of the road. Uh,
that same road that led to the trailer, but about
(29:19):
eleven and a half miles from the car, right, so
presumably another what nine miles from the trailer, Yes, which
is why I think that they never made it to
the trailer. Put a pin in that. Uh. Madruga had
very gruesomely been partially eaten by animals, of course up
there on the mountains, probably after he had died though, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(29:43):
I think it sounds like all of this was they
succumbed to nature and then the animals kind of took
it from there, right. Uh, So they dragged his body
to a stream. Uh, he's laying their face up, they said,
with his hand curled around his watch. And then Sterling
was in the woods and very gruesomely they said that
his remains were, or his bones I guess, were scattered
(30:05):
over about fifty ft yes. And then I think a
day or so after that, there was another search party
that was launched, and Jackie Hewitt's father insisted on being
a part of it, and Jackie Hewitt was still missing,
and very sadly his dad was the one who discovered
his remains. He found um, his son's I think spine
(30:25):
is what he came upon. Yeah, in the same road,
a lot closer to the trailer though, but he right,
like just a quarter mile or something, right, Uh yeah,
I think that's about right, something very very close to it.
And they also found, um, his his clothes. They knew
it was him because he was His levies and his
shirt were also found nearby, and so were um. He
(30:47):
was wearing very stylish platform shoes called get Their's, which
I had to look up and they were actually pretty fresh. Yeah,
not nothing the kind of shoes that you want to
be hiking around the snowy woods in. No, definitely not.
I mean again, platform shoes. They're like, um, you know
that that uh that rubbery sold thing that like you
find in like Clark's, like Clark Wallabyes, like the thick
(31:10):
rubbery so I think it's called crepe sold They were
like those, but platform shoes and like a rippley bottom. Yeah,
probably look at these things. Yeah, they're probably the worst,
the worst hiking shoes you could ever imagine what these
would be good for actually catching ladies? Probably, right, I guess.
I mean they're pretty they're pretty cool that that wavy
(31:32):
soul though looks so strange. Well I look that up.
It's it's to keep your center of balance when you're
way up there. Okay, yeah, well that makes more sense. Then. Yeah,
there were there was a lot of thought put into
those shoes. Uh. And then finally the next day there
was a skull discovered about a hundred yards downhill, and
that was the final remains from Jackie Hewitt. So they
(31:57):
found everybody, every dy that is, except for Gary Matthias.
He was still missing and he's he still is. Actually,
if you go on the Yuba County Sheriff's website on
their missing person's page, he's still listed there. Yeah, his
shoes were inside again and that trailer um, which you
know that They can't say anything for sure, though, but
(32:19):
it suggests that he was in there at one point,
and they surmised that he may have, like you said,
taken them off to where the leather shoes guests, presumably
because they were warmer, or his feet were frost bitten
and had swollen, so he needed the bigger shoes um
to strike out back outside like he was. He was like,
I can't go out there barefoot, and I can't get
(32:40):
my tennis shoes on any longer. Yeah, And so to
deal with Matthias, like we said, he was under treatment
for schizophrenia. UM. He was in the army in Germany,
and apparently UM had occasions post war where he had
become violent. He was charged with the salt a couple
of times. But UM all accounts say that for the
(33:01):
at least the last two years he had really been
on his meds. He had been working in his stepdad's business.
He was They called him one of the our sterling
success cases, as doctor did. Yeah, and they were really,
you know, he was really coming around and hadn't had
any what is his dad he said, he called them
haywire episodes. Yeah, I hadn't had one of those in
(33:22):
in a in a couple of years. And the stepfather
said that he had. He had been taking his meds
the week he disappeared, right, and his stepfather would know
because his stepfather owned a gardening business, and um Gary
Mathias had been working with him side by side for
a couple of years by that time. So he he
also didn't seem like one to really mince words or bs.
(33:42):
So I take him for his word that his his
son was fully medicated and his schizophrenia was under control.
It sounds like so. Um, the problem is is he
hadn't taken his pills with him, so if he did survive, Um,
he he had, he had gone without him. He left
him at home, and the reason why he left him
(34:04):
at home is because he fully expected to be back
home a couple hours after he left for the basketball game. Yeah,
no more evidence that, Like, it's just really bizarre that
they went anywhere but home, and that raised a lot
of questions for the families. Um. Back in the day,
the I think Madruga's mom, Mabel, was very vocal about
(34:29):
her belief that, um, somebody had either tricked or threatened
her son and the other boys into going up that
mountain or um it was somebody else was was responsible
for for this series of decisions. Yeah. So they learned
a few things afterwards that are sort of clues but
(34:53):
never ended up solving anything. Um. One is that a
snow cat for a service snow cat had been up
that road. I think what the just the day before
Yeah yeah, I think and packed in a path of
snow so it was walkable. So they you know, it
led up to that trailer, and they surmised that the
(35:14):
boys may have this might have been the only walkable
path forward, so they might have followed that path to
the trailer. Uh. They hired a water witcher at one
point and uh he was in Paradise, California, and he
said that he fixed his little uh is it dibbening
or divining divining rod to pick up human minerals and
(35:35):
traces of humans. That led them to another cabin where
they found a disposable lighter and this was about three
quarters a mile from the trailer where they found the body.
And all the parents said, no, like, they didn't have
a lighter like this. The guys didn't carry a lighter, right,
So there were a lot of dead ends like that.
(35:55):
And then like that, for example, that watch that had
been found with Ted weird that it was sing it's
crystal and you know, all the families said, that wasn't
any of our boys watch. I mean, it could be
totally meaningless. It could have been a forest ranger who
had left the watch behind because it had broken or
something like that. But that's most of the evidence in
this case, or just those just little dead ends. Yeah,
(36:18):
that Gary Mathias apparently knew some people, and they're really
just sort of reaching at this point new people in Forbestown,
which is about halfway between Chico and Uba City, And
apparently the turn is easy to miss, and there was
some speculation like maybe he was taking his buddies to
go see these people he knew got lost, but apparently
(36:40):
those friends were like, we hadn't seen him in years,
and it would be really like unlikely that he just
would have randomly come to visit. Yeah. I could also
see the other boys not wanting to go along with
that too, because they had that basketball game in the
morning that they all wanted to be um fresh as
a daisy for it too. Yeah. And and like Gary
Mathias had been badgering his mom, I think, like you said,
(37:00):
to make sure he didn't oversleep the next morning because
he was excited about that basketball game too. Yeah. So
the thing is, though, Chuck, is even if let's say
that is the case, Let's say that they all got
a wild hair and they decided to go see Gary
Mathias's friend and they started up this mountain because they
got lost. They missed the turn off and ended up
on a mountain road at the snow line. I thought
(37:22):
the car was stuck. What why why would all of them,
all of them collectively and individually, say well, let's go
up rather than back down. Let's go up into the snow.
Supposedly the snow driss for six eight ft um and
even if it was packed down with the snow cat,
it doesn't make sense to go forward unless they thought, well,
(37:44):
the last side of civilization behind us was too far right,
Maybe there's something up here which is a thing that's
a that's an economic theory called sunk cost, where you're
so invested in something, you're so far along that you
don't want to just stop and turn back or or quit.
So it's possible that that was that aided in their
decision making. But again, okay, so then let's say that
(38:05):
they're like, okay, the snow cat track is gonna lead
us to safety or something. When they get to the trailer,
like why not eat the food? Why not make a fire?
I can I can even see missing the propane tank,
just not being you know, um, just with it enough
from the harrowing experience that you could just totally miss
the propane tank. And I even think that your trailer
is going to have that kind of thing. But the
(38:26):
food that you've already started to eat, that you already
show you have a can opener and know how to
use it. Like, how do you just starve to death
after that? Well, I mean the food. The other food
was in a locker they never opened apparently. But like,
if you're there, especially for two to three months, like
you're turning over everything, You're lighting a fire with whatever
(38:48):
you can get your hands on. Those plenty of stuff
to make a fire. Uh. What's up with the supposed
woman and the baby? That could be chalked up maybe
pretty easily to uh what was his name? Snopes, shoots shows,
Shans Snopes snoop talk that could be chalked up to
him in the state of a heart attack in the
(39:09):
middle of the night, just sort of seeing things could
have been or could have just been an entirely different
party of people who had nothing to do with it
or everything to do with it, But it could have
They could have been there too. I mean it was
you know, it was a mountain. Some people lived on it.
Some people apparently like camp there, which is what Shones
was scouting for. You know, how did Matthias never get
(39:31):
found at all? I don't know I saw him. I think, Uh,
I think. At the end of the WAPO article, um
Cynthia Gorney, the journalist, says that, um, probably, you know,
he laid there on the snow somewhere that they just
didn't find or overlooked, or he got buried in the snow,
(39:52):
and then when the thaw came, he sunk down to
the ground and was covered over by some some mountain vines.
I guess so. But it seems like after all these
years a bone or one of those leather shoes or
something would have been found. Yeah, you'd think both of
those would still be intact. Yeah, I mean, what I
did not see was any sort of speculation that he
(40:13):
had had any nefarious like actions. Um, but we did
put a pin in something. I don't remember what it was.
I saw a couple of theories that they they speculate
that all of these guys went to the cabin at
one point and maybe, uh, we are wasn't doing so well,
so they all set out independently to go look for
(40:36):
help and each died or maybe in pairs, maybe since
the two guys were kind of found together. But I
don't know. I mean, it's all just speculation. You saw
that they don't think they were all there? Yeah, what
I saw was that um Jackie Hewitt and um Bill
Sterling and um Jack Madruga hadn't had never made it
(40:59):
to the to the trailer, that they would have split
up on the way up. No, No, that they were,
That they had um or died during that twenty mile hike. Yes, interesting.
And then Ted and Gary had continued on upped and
made it, made it to the trailer, and then what
I think happened after that was Gary nurse Ted. Gary
(41:22):
had been in the army and the can opener that
was there was actually a very simple thing called the
P thirty eight, but you kind of had to have
been in the army to to know how to use it,
and Ted wouldn't have been and Gary would have been,
So I think Gary may have stayed, probably fed both
of them, and then like you said, seeing Ted was
(41:42):
not doing so well, set out again with Ted shoes
and died um going off to get helps somehow, That's
what I think happened. Yeah, I would have think they
get split up on the way up though, Like I
just don't even know, like these guys would have died
that quickly on on the way on this twenty mile hike,
I mean six to eight foot snow drifts. That's cold. Yeah,
(42:05):
but they're also on this snow packed trail supposedly. Sure,
but they also have like they're dressed for mild weather,
Like they didn't have jackets, sweaters, their shoes were like
like like converse kind of things, aside from the the
platform shoes that, like I did, it's entirely possible that
twenty mile hike up a mountain they succumbed to the weather. Yeah,
(42:30):
And you also, like it was hard to determine what
level of intellectual impairment these boys had, so I don't
know how much that plays into it, if at all.
Like when they get to this cabin, like did um
Matthias is because you know he didn't have his meds
(42:51):
after that, did he start kind of breaking down with
with some episodes of schizophrenia and leave? Did the other
guy not fully understand? I mean at that point, he's
exhausted and maybe hurt and scared. Was he not even
able to figure out maybe to light a fire light
of fire or how to use that can opener or
(43:12):
maybe he felt he couldn't get out of bed because
of his feet. Yeah, and he he was just stuck
there after Gary struck out to go get help that
there was nothing he could do, and the poor guy
starved to death. But what were they doing up there
to begin with? That's the basic root of this whole thing. Yeah,
but that's that's why they call this the American diet
(43:34):
law pass Right, we gotta do an episode on that
one too. But because there's some there's like a mystery
within a mystery within a mystery, there's so many many
like other mysteries. Yeah, that that just kind of um
crescendo from the first mystery, which is what were they
doing there? Yeah? Well, like and like you said, some
of the parents firmly believe like they witnessed something at
(43:56):
this basketball game and we're then chased up this mountain. Yeah,
Like I don't even know what that means, like like
they witnessed a crime, I came after him or something.
That's what Ted Weird sister in law always believed. And
speaking of Ted Weir, you got anything else on this, no,
except to only say if that was the case, then
(44:19):
why was the car seemingly driven very slowly and carefully
up this road? If they were being chased. Oh okay,
So you make a good point. And I think I
saw that elsewhere too, that that like that virtually proves
that they weren't chased. If anything, it shows that they
that that says something happened to them and somebody ditched
their car. Who who knew the area? I think more
(44:42):
likely um Jack Madrugo. It just would have driven extraordinarily
slowly because this is his, his baby car. Yeah, it's
all just very sad. I think it's just one of those.
It's probably like Okam's razor. It's probably the most simple
explanation is you know, maybe they just went on a
little joy ride, got a little lost, got turned around
(45:03):
in the woods, and succumbed to nature. Yeah, so I
find this. I said at the beginning that this is
just a very sad story to me. And one of
the things that got me was in that Washington Post
articles called five Boys Who Never Come Back by Cynthia Gorney.
You can find it online. But um they she describes
(45:26):
Ted Weir as you're ready for this that Ted got
a good chuckle out of phoning Bill Sterling and reading
from newspaper items or a ball names from the telephone
book like that's what he was into, that's what made
him happy. And I'm sure Bill Sterling thought it was
hilarious too, But like they were just this group of
friends and can't you just imagine my kid, we're like
(45:47):
going through the phone book looking for silly names and
going and picking up the phone and calling his friend
Bill Sterling and saying, Bill, get a load of this one,
and Bills just laughing on the other end of the line,
and like that they just had like this such a
pure life, like almost like an enviable life in a
lot of ways, and that they died so horribly is
(46:09):
just just bitterly sad to me. Yeah, I mean, they
weren't troublemakers and even um, even the one who had
had gotten convicted of assault a couple of times. Gary, Yeah, Gary,
it seems like all signs point to the his mental
illness is playing a big factor in that which he
had gotten in check, right, exactly. All very sad. It
(46:30):
is very sad. Well, if you have any theories on
the what you call him the Ubi City six five,
Uba County or Uba City five, Ubis City five, um,
we want to hear him. You can find all of
our social media connections on our website Stuff you Should
Know dot com and if you like, you can also
send us an email to shoot it off to Stuff
(46:51):
Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. Wait, we haven't
done listener mail, have we know? You're just gonna let
me keep going, weren't you? You know? All right? Well,
hold on, everybody, hold on, don't stop yet, don't stop yet.
Since I said some stuff I'm not supposed to say,
it's time for listener mail. Yes. And speaking of which,
(47:13):
this listener mail is rated rated R. Okay, that's all
I'll say. Use the S word no, but it doesn't
use curse words. It's just um talks very frankly about
sex and it's good. P s A though, so we
know the stuff. Uh. And this is from Emily, not
my wife. Hey, guys, listen to the Select episode on
(47:34):
condoms the other day. Thanks for all the great info.
Appreciate you covering topics maybe slightly controversial or divisive and
do so with such grace. I wanted to throw a
little extra P. S A in there though, for your listeners.
Most people are aware that you can and should use
condoms to prevent pregnancy and or s t I S
when a penis is involved, but there's far less awareness
about protection when you've only got vaginas in the mix.
(47:58):
Although you certainly can't get pregnant, it is possible to
spread or contract an s t I from sex between
two women or other vagina having people. But you can
greatly reduce your risk of this by using a dental dam.
It's a sheet of latex placed over the bulba or
anus for oral sex. That's all, uh, And that's all
there really is to it. If you don't have one
(48:19):
on hand, you can safely d I Y one by
unrolling a regular condom, cutting off the clothes end and bam,
it's a dental dam. In the case of digital sex,
not as in computers, as in fingers, latex gloves are
perfect or perfect for the job. Of course, these can
also be used by absolutely anyone. There's a lot more
awareness of protection for heterosexual and male homosexual couples, and
(48:41):
not a lot for queer women. Well that's my stuff
you should know, and now you know it. Thanks for
consistently great work and outstanding effort and educating and entertaining
us every week and Happy Pride month. Uh And she
wrote back, I just realized I gave an incomplete d
I Y instruction. You would cut off the close end
of the condom uh, and the ring on the open end,
(49:04):
then cut down the middle and now it's a flat sheet. Bam.
So that is from Emily. Thanks a lot, Emily, Happy
Pride Month. Indeed good info. Uh yeah, it was good info.
And if you out there want to send us good info,
I already said it. I said it once and I'll
say it again. You can find all our social stuff
(49:25):
on stuff you should Know dot com, and you can
send us an email to stuff podcast at how Stuff
Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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