July 10, 2018 • 51 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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there.
So this is stuff you should know. Yes, how you doing, Chuck?
(00:24):
Do I look tired? You 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
(00:46):
trying to go to bed super 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, It's
all I can say. Sorry, man, Sorry, I'll live. But hey,
we're about to fly to Denver and that will correct
all those ills. Yeah, that'll definitely um make you catch
(01:10):
up with your sleep. Yeah, immediately that they being in
a different time zone two hours later for sure. But
a quiet, cool hotel that that'll help. It will help, man,
I'm glad it's gonna be two good shows, Charles, two
good shows and three because I am I'm kicking one
off the old bucket list venue wise and going to
a show at Red Rocks Friday. Who are you going
(01:32):
to see the Avid Brothers? Oh? Wow, that's really something.
Don't they wear like pocket chains and stuff? I don't
think so okay, Now, I was I was trying to
just go to any Red Rock show and if you
look at the Red Rocks calendar, there's a lot of
stuff on there that would not appeal to me at all,
a lot of groove jam yeah stuff. And then this
(01:53):
aligned with Ava Brothers and it's like, yeah, that's great,
I'll take it. That's great. Well, I'm glad it worked
out for you. Man, it will be good. I'm on
Row seventy of seventy, so I'm on Row seventy as well.
Are you going? Now, I'm just teaching. Yeah, I think
if I don't have a heart attack on the way
up to Row seventy, it should be Okay. It's supposed
(02:13):
to be a cool venue. I've always heard. Yeah, I've
been enamored of it since the Sunday Bloody Sunday video
when I was a kid. Oh that's right. That was
at Red Rocks, wasn't it? Absolutely nice? Well, here's to
your bucket list. Thanks and I and I could die
on row seventy and at least one thing will have
been accomplished. Right, Yeah, you'll have your butt, you'll have
(02:34):
your bucket list with you and just the one scratched off.
I hate that term anyway. Yeah, it's pretty pretty bad,
but I know that's what the people understand. You could
call it your death list. That's even better. It's more like,
I've got some music venues i'd like to see, and
that's one of them. Okay. Some people do that with
(02:55):
like baseball stadiums. They go to every baseball Yeah, before
they die. I try to go to as many of
those as I can. Um when I'm in different towns,
for sure. Just when i've been to you want to ask, Oh,
I'm sorry, Yeah, what was the best one you've been to?
Man Pittsburgh? Oh for three rivers, isn't that one? Well?
That was the old name. I think it has a
(03:17):
different name now. Was that the time when we went
and shot those Toyota commercials? Yeah? You went and that
was the best baseball stadium we've ever been to. It's gorgeous.
What what was so great about it? It's just, you know,
it's position right there on the river, and if you
have the right seat, you can look out over downtown
and see like all those beautiful bridges. It's just lovely. Wow. Okay, cool, Yeah,
(03:40):
I remember quite clearly. I stayed in my room and
gorged myself on chicken sog. It was totally worth missing
the Pittsburgh based remember that. It was funny. I hurt
myself on that stuff. All right, I'm glad we killed
some time before we got into this very mysterious, sad story.
It's a good one, though, isn't It is extraordinarily sad,
(04:02):
Probably the saddest true I don't know. It's up there
as far as true life true crime disappearances go. Um,
And it's the one about Gary Matthias, and that's what
they call it. They call it the Gary Matthias disappearance.
But that really doesn't do it much justice, or it
doesn't serve it well, because it was a lot more
(04:22):
than Gary Matthias involved. Yeah, I've seen it more so
called the Yuba County five. But you know, I guess
It just depends on where you're looking. I had not
run across that. 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.
(04:42):
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. Yeah, I'm not sure what age he was,
but he was definitely between twenty four and thirty two.
(05:04):
I'll tell you that narrows it down. Bill Sterling, and
then again Gary 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,
the cognitively impaired or cognitively challenged. Yeah, because three of
(05:26):
these guys, UM. 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 night terms. Really, but
(05:48):
Madruga was undiagnosed, but according to his mom, Uh he
was generally thought of, as she said as quote slow
end quote. And then Matthias Uh was the only one
not diagnosed with a developmental disability, but he was under
drug treatment for schizophrenia. Right, So all five of these
(06:12):
guys had some sort of 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,
(06:35):
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,
(06:56):
they all lived at home with their parents. They were
always going to live at them with their parents. It
was just what what the plan was, UM, Like I
think Ted ted Weir had a UM had a job
Um as a janitor and then later on as a
snack bar clerk. Um. Yeah, that was another one. And
(07:20):
they actually all played together on the basketball team for
the Vocational Rehab Center, basically like they hang out the
place where they hung out, they played basketball on that team.
But um Jack Madrew Good'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,
(07:42):
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 him more than one place, they said,
they're referred to their lives as very predictable and scheduled,
(08:06):
which is why this interesting. Uh, 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
(08:26):
as much as anyone did in ninety eight. Uh So,
on this night, February twenty four, there was a Friday
night eight um. The boys left their homes around Maryville
and Ubas City in California, and they traveled I think
about fifty miles north to cal State Chico which is
(08:47):
now called Chico 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 won eighty four, which would have pleased the boys tremendously. Sure,
so they went to the game. That much as known,
and then they left the game that much as known too,
because around ten o'clock when they left the game, they
(09:07):
went to a convenience store called Bears Market and they
bought some stuff. Yeah, 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
(09:29):
the the lead investigator in a minute. But yeah, they
bought just a few things. 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,
(09:52):
right exactly for the drive back home fifty fifty miles
about an hour. Yeah. The thing is is they, um,
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
(10:12):
friends sometimes. But um, with the other four like they
slipt in their bed at 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
(10:36):
about this game. Yeah, which 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
(10:58):
they were all super excited about this bast ketball 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
(11:18):
that evening, 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
(11:39):
on Tuesday, uh, Jack Madruga's car was discovered, 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
(12:02):
drove the thing. He took pristine care of it. It
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
(12:24):
was north of their homes. This was east of southeast
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
(12:45):
to say from that point on, nothing made any kind
of sense. So here's a few things about the car
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
(13:07):
but the car wasn't stuck, and these five dudes could
have pushed it free pretty easily apparently, right, this thing
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
(13:28):
or anything like that. Yeah. The last thing they found
were all these maps of California and um, so it's
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
(13:49):
up to his reputation. Right. See, I guess the toughest
candy bar to get through. Yeah, that's that's how they
build it, some weird cartoon cowboy. Yeah, so you know
that's the d of 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,
(14:12):
has these five dudes inside, these grown men. Uh, And
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
(14:34):
the ladder because I think Madruga did was probably would
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
(14:55):
have known that road. It's not like there's a lot
else to do up there but that. And evidently, uh,
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
(15:19):
with his family there eight years before. Yeah, and he
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
(15:41):
could that was it was a lead that the cops
would have chased 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 are and really worrying. Should we take a break?
(16:02):
I think we should? Man, all right, you and I
are going to go hang out in the woods and
we'll be back right after this. So I've never swept
(16:34):
the woods before. That was really interesting, right, spicking 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. This is February in
(16:55):
the mountains in California. UM, I would guess the Sierras
is what it sounds it's like, right, So, yeah, Cheek
is in the Chicos in the Sierra Nevadas. I think
it's north of Sacramento. So, um, it would be very
very cold and the snow would be pretty tough to
get through. Um So, but they still tried. They got
(17:16):
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,
(17:36):
the mountain falls 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,
(18:00):
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 caught 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
(18:22):
a way that like he couldn't have possibly tucked himself.
So somebody had tucked him in like that, and he
ted Weir had 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
(18:43):
think that's what I am. Sure, sure, I call you
beer belly foxy. Okay, okay, so um, but he was
beer belly handsome. He was. He was a thick guy.
He's like five ten two pounds. He had a few
extra pounds on him right when they found him, though,
he way aid about a hundred and twenty hundred to
a hundred and twenty pounds, which means that between the
(19:06):
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. Ted gold Yeah,
(19:29):
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
(19:52):
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 a thirteen week number
is that if he survived thirteen weeks, that means that
he would have died just days before his body was found.
Is that right? Yes? Did you did you do the math?
(20:13):
I did the math because think about so they disappeared
on February and he was found June four, So you've
got Mark April. 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
(20:35):
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
(20:57):
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
(21:18):
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, where 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.
(21:38):
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
(21:59):
it to you. 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,
(22:21):
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.
(22:43):
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,
hate right, they didn't. They also didn't even um cover
up the broken window that they used to get into
(23:03):
the trailer. It's just weird, just bizarre decision after bizarre decision. Right.
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
(23:28):
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 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
(23:51):
in here at one point. Okay, so I have to
say that 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
(24:14):
the 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 Weird. 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 the point where he was chasing down
(24:37):
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. And Lance Ayers was so consumed
(25:00):
with this that he actually drove every street of Oroville
over a two day period trying to find that house
based on the tip of a psychic. That's how obsessed
he became 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 a man named
(25:20):
Joseph Shoon's 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 with 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 thirty that evening just
(25:44):
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 um he gets
(26:06):
out to push a push his beetle right and has
a heart attack. He's he's fifty five in this night,
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 snow line of a
mountain eight miles away from help. That the place that
(26:29):
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. And that's a
mild heart attack, we should point out, but enough that
if you, Joseph shown, you are probably freaking out. I'm
(26:52):
not trying to uh diminish like his danger level. But
it wasn't like, uh, he was like laying there near
like he would eventually hike eight miles out right after
this heart attack. Yes, so he but but while he
was laying there trying to like gather his strength again.
So this happened about five thirty And he said a
(27:13):
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, and he said he
called out to them, and they ignored it and turned
off the lights, and he got back in his car,
(27:35):
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 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
(27:58):
the the five boy 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 sounds stop 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
(28:18):
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, out
of like an eight gallon gas tank. So it eventually
runs out of gas um it also now they think
about it doesn't have a very efficient heating system, Like, uh,
(28:42):
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 and
the floorboard that like came straight off the engine. Wow,
that's 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
(29:04):
that I had another Beetle that had that did have
a little fan. 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
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
(29:25):
I said earlier, to walk eight miles to a lodge
called the Mountain House. Is that where he had gotten
the drink? Yeah? Alright, So he comes back and they're
like Showans, and he's like, don't shoons me. You 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,
(29:48):
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 when I 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 sudden,
(30:09):
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 Shoes was probably the last person
to see those five guys alive. Uh. Well, yeah, they're
(30:29):
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 promise
(31:08):
more sad Discoveries lay it on him. Alright. 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
(31:28):
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 it been in that okay. 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,
(31:51):
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 drawed his body
to a stream. He was 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
(32:13):
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 sons. I think spine
(32:34):
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
(32:55):
was wearing very stylish platform shoes called get There's which
I had to look up and they were actually pretty fresh. Yeah.
Not not in 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 on like Clark's like Clark Wallabyes, like the thick
(33:18):
rubbery so I think it's called crepe sold They were
like those, but platform shoes and 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, And
I guess I mean they're pretty they're pretty cool. That
(33:40):
that wavy 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
(34:03):
Jackie Hewitt. So they found everybody, everybody that is, except
for Gary Mathias. He was still missing. Yeah, and he's
he still is actually if you go on the Uba
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
(34:26):
for sure, though, but 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
(34:48):
I can't get 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 assault
a couple of times. But UM all accounts say that
(35:09):
for the 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. Ye hadn't had one of
(35:30):
those in 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. So I take him for his word
(35:53):
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 did, he had he
had gone without him. He left him at home. And
the reason why he left him at home is because
(36:13):
he fully expected to be back home a couple of
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 her
(36:37):
belief that, um, somebody had either tricked or threatened her
son and the other boys into going up that mountain
or um, somebody else was was responsible for for this
series of decisions. Yeah. So they learned a few things
(36:58):
afterwards that are sort of clues but never ended up
solving anything. Um. One is that a snow cat for
a service. Snow cat had been up that road I
think of what the just the day before. Yeah, yeah,
and packed in a path of snow so it was walkable.
So they you know, it led up to that trailer.
(37:21):
And they surmised that the 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 divining or divining divining rod to
(37:42):
pick up human minerals and traces of humans. That led
them to another cabin where they found a disposable lighter
and this was about three quarters of 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 guy's didn't carry a lighter, right, So there were
(38:02):
a lot of dead ends like that and that like that.
For example, that watch that had been found with Ted
weird that it was missing its 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
(38:22):
most of the evidence in this case, or just those
just little dead ends. Yeah, 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 Yuba City, and apparently the turn is
easy to miss, and there was some speculation like maybe
(38:43):
he was taking his buddies to go see these people
he knew got lost, but apparently 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 basketb All game in the morning that they
all wanted to be um fresh as a daisy for
(39:04):
you too, And and like Gary Mathias had been badgering
his mom, I think, like you said, 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
(39:26):
turn off and ended up on a mountain road at
the snow line. I thought 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 drifts
for six eight ft um and even if it was
(39:46):
packed down with a snow cat, it doesn't make sense
to go forward. Unless they thought, well, 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
h 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.
(40:08):
So it's possible that that was that aided in their
decision making. But again, okay, so then let's say that
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
(40:31):
the propane tank and not even think that your trailer
is going to have that kind of thing. But the
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
(40:52):
you're turning over everything, you're lighting a fire with whatever
you can get your hands on. Those plenty of stuff
to make a fire. Uh 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, shoans snopes. That'd be snoop talk, that could
(41:15):
be chalked up to him in the state of a
heart attack in the 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,
(41:36):
which is what Shoans was scouting for. You know, how
did Matthias never get 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 the journalist,
says that, um, probably you know, he he laid there
on the snow somewhere that they just didn't find or overlooked,
(41:59):
or he got buried in the snow, 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
(42:19):
was any sort of speculation that he 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
(42:42):
they all set out independently to go look for 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
(43:04):
um Jack Madruga hadn't had never made it to the
to the trailer, that they would 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
(43:26):
I think happened after that was Gary nurse Ted. Gary
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
(43:48):
of them, and then like you said, seeing Ted was
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. Ye, 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,
(44:09):
I mean six to eight fot snow drifts. That's cold. Yeah,
they're also on this snowpacked 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
(44:30):
that like I did, it's entirely possible that twenty mile
hike up a mountain they succumbed to the weather. Yeah,
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.
(44:53):
Like when they get to this cabin, like did um
Matthias is because you know he didn't have his meds
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
(45:15):
able to figure out maybe to light a fire, light
a fire, or how to use that can opener, or
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 the basic root of this
(45:38):
whole thing. Yeah, but that's that's why they call this
the American Diet 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
(46:01):
you said, some of the parents firmly believe like they
witnessed something at 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, it came
after him or something. That's what Ted weird sister in
law always believed and speaking of Ted Weir, you got
(46:22):
anything else on this, no, except to only say if
that was the case, then 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 to that that like,
that virtually proves that they weren't chased. If anything, it
(46:42):
shows that they that that says something happened to them
and somebody ditched their car. Who who knew the area?
I think more 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 OCAM's razor. It's probably the
(47:03):
most simple explanation is you know, maybe they just went
on a little joy ride, got a little lost, got
turned around 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
(47:24):
Washington Post articles called five Boys Who Never Come Back
by Cynthia Gorney. You can find it online. But um, they,
she describes Ted, were as you're ready for this, that
Ted got a good chuckle out of phoning Bill Sterling
and reading from newspaper items or eyeball names from the
(47:45):
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, like Ted, We're
like 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 Bill is just laughing on the other
(48:06):
end of the line, and like that they 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 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
(48:28):
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 is very sad. Well, if you
have any theories on the what did you call him?
The Uba City six, five Uba County or Uba City five,
Ubi City five? Um, we want to hear him. You
(48:50):
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 off 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.
(49:13):
Since I said some stuff I'm not supposed to say,
it's time for listener mail. Yes. And speaking of which,
this listener mail is rated rated R okay, that's all.
I'll say the S word no, but it doesn't use
curse words. It's just um talks very frankly about sex
(49:34):
and it's good p s A though, So we know
this stuff. Uh and this is from Emily, not my wife. Hey, guys,
listen to the select episode on 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
(49:56):
that you can and should use condoms to prevent pregnancy
and or st eyes when a penis is involved, but
there's far less awareness about protection when you've only got
vaginas in the mix. 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
(50:18):
using a dental dam. It's a sheet of latex placed
over the bulba or anus or oral sex. That's all, uh,
And that's all there really is to it. If you
don't have one 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,
(50:40):
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 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
(51:02):
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,
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.
(51:27):
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
on stuff you should Know dot com, and you can
send us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there.
So this is stuff you should know. Yes, how you doing, Chuck?
(00:24):
Do I look tired? You 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
(00:46):
trying to go to bed super 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, It's
all I can say. Sorry, man, Sorry, I'll live. But hey,
we're about to fly to Denver and that will correct
all those ills. Yeah, that'll definitely um make you catch
(01:10):
up with your sleep. Yeah, immediately that they being in
a different time zone two hours later for sure. But
a quiet, cool hotel that that'll help. It will help, man,
I'm glad it's gonna be two good shows, Charles, two
good shows and three because I am I'm kicking one
off the old bucket list venue wise and going to
a show at Red Rocks Friday. Who are you going
(01:32):
to see the Avid Brothers? Oh? Wow, that's really something.
Don't they wear like pocket chains and stuff? I don't
think so okay, Now, I was I was trying to
just go to any Red Rock show and if you
look at the Red Rocks calendar, there's a lot of
stuff on there that would not appeal to me at all,
a lot of groove jam yeah stuff. And then this
(01:53):
aligned with Ava Brothers and it's like, yeah, that's great,
I'll take it. That's great. Well, I'm glad it worked
out for you. Man, it will be good. I'm on
Row seventy of seventy, so I'm on Row seventy as well.
Are you going? Now, I'm just teaching. Yeah, I think
if I don't have a heart attack on the way
up to Row seventy, it should be Okay. It's supposed
(02:13):
to be a cool venue. I've always heard. Yeah, I've
been enamored of it since the Sunday Bloody Sunday video
when I was a kid. Oh that's right. That was
at Red Rocks, wasn't it? Absolutely nice? Well, here's to
your bucket list. Thanks and I and I could die
on row seventy and at least one thing will have
been accomplished. Right, Yeah, you'll have your butt, you'll have
(02:34):
your bucket list with you and just the one scratched off.
I hate that term anyway. Yeah, it's pretty pretty bad,
but I know that's what the people understand. You could
call it your death list. That's even better. It's more like,
I've got some music venues i'd like to see, and
that's one of them. Okay. Some people do that with
(02:55):
like baseball stadiums. They go to every baseball Yeah, before
they die. I try to go to as many of
those as I can. Um when I'm in different towns,
for sure. Just when i've been to you want to ask, Oh,
I'm sorry, Yeah, what was the best one you've been to?
Man Pittsburgh? Oh for three rivers, isn't that one? Well?
That was the old name. I think it has a
(03:17):
different name now. Was that the time when we went
and shot those Toyota commercials? Yeah? You went and that
was the best baseball stadium we've ever been to. It's gorgeous.
What what was so great about it? It's just, you know,
it's position right there on the river, and if you
have the right seat, you can look out over downtown
and see like all those beautiful bridges. It's just lovely. Wow. Okay, cool, Yeah,
(03:40):
I remember quite clearly. I stayed in my room and
gorged myself on chicken sog. It was totally worth missing
the Pittsburgh based remember that. It was funny. I hurt
myself on that stuff. All right, I'm glad we killed
some time before we got into this very mysterious, sad story.
It's a good one, though, isn't It is extraordinarily sad,
(04:02):
Probably the saddest true I don't know. It's up there
as far as true life true crime disappearances go. Um,
And it's the one about Gary Matthias, and that's what
they call it. They call it the Gary Matthias disappearance.
But that really doesn't do it much justice, or it
doesn't serve it well, because it was a lot more
(04:22):
than Gary Matthias involved. Yeah, I've seen it more so
called the Yuba County five. But you know, I guess
It just depends on where you're looking. I had not
run across that. 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.
(04:42):
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. Yeah, I'm not sure what age he was,
but he was definitely between twenty four and thirty two.
(05:04):
I'll tell you that narrows it down. Bill Sterling, and
then again Gary 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,
the cognitively impaired or cognitively challenged. Yeah, because three of
(05:26):
these guys, UM. 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 night terms. Really, but
(05:48):
Madruga was undiagnosed, but according to his mom, Uh he
was generally thought of, as she said as quote slow
end quote. And then Matthias Uh was the only one
not diagnosed with a developmental disability, but he was under
drug treatment for schizophrenia. Right, So all five of these
(06:12):
guys had some sort of 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,
(06:35):
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,
(06:56):
they all lived at home with their parents. They were
always going to live at them with their parents. It
was just what what the plan was, UM, Like I
think Ted ted Weir had a UM had a job
Um as a janitor and then later on as a
snack bar clerk. Um. Yeah, that was another one. And
(07:20):
they actually all played together on the basketball team for
the Vocational Rehab Center, basically like they hang out the
place where they hung out, they played basketball on that team.
But um Jack Madrew Good'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,
(07:42):
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 him more than one place, they said,
they're referred to their lives as very predictable and scheduled,
(08:06):
which is why this interesting. Uh, 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
(08:26):
as much as anyone did in ninety eight. Uh So,
on this night, February twenty four, there was a Friday
night eight um. The boys left their homes around Maryville
and Ubas City in California, and they traveled I think
about fifty miles north to cal State Chico which is
(08:47):
now called Chico 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 won eighty four, which would have pleased the boys tremendously. Sure,
so they went to the game. That much as known,
and then they left the game that much as known too,
because around ten o'clock when they left the game, they
(09:07):
went to a convenience store called Bears Market and they
bought some stuff. Yeah, 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
(09:29):
the the lead investigator in a minute. But yeah, they
bought just a few things. 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,
(09:52):
right exactly for the drive back home fifty fifty miles
about an hour. Yeah. The thing is is they, um,
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
(10:12):
friends sometimes. But um, with the other four like they
slipt in their bed at 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
(10:36):
about this game. Yeah, which 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
(10:58):
they were all super excited about this bast ketball 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
(11:18):
that evening, 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
(11:39):
on Tuesday, uh, Jack Madruga's car was discovered, 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
(12:02):
drove the thing. He took pristine care of it. It
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
(12:24):
was north of their homes. This was east of southeast
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
(12:45):
to say from that point on, nothing made any kind
of sense. So here's a few things about the car
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
(13:07):
but the car wasn't stuck, and these five dudes could
have pushed it free pretty easily apparently, right, this thing
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
(13:28):
or anything like that. Yeah. The last thing they found
were all these maps of California and um, so it's
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
(13:49):
up to his reputation. Right. See, I guess the toughest
candy bar to get through. Yeah, that's that's how they
build it, some weird cartoon cowboy. Yeah, so you know
that's the d of 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,
(14:12):
has these five dudes inside, these grown men. Uh, And
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
(14:34):
the ladder because I think Madruga did was probably would
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
(14:55):
have known that road. It's not like there's a lot
else to do up there but that. And evidently, uh,
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
(15:19):
with his family there eight years before. Yeah, and he
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
(15:41):
could that was it was a lead that the cops
would have chased 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 are and really worrying. Should we take a break?
(16:02):
I think we should? Man, all right, you and I
are going to go hang out in the woods and
we'll be back right after this. So I've never swept
(16:34):
the woods before. That was really interesting, right, spicking 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. This is February in
(16:55):
the mountains in California. UM, I would guess the Sierras
is what it sounds it's like, right, So, yeah, Cheek
is in the Chicos in the Sierra Nevadas. I think
it's north of Sacramento. So, um, it would be very
very cold and the snow would be pretty tough to
get through. Um So, but they still tried. They got
(17:16):
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,
(17:36):
the mountain falls 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,
(18:00):
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 caught 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
(18:22):
a way that like he couldn't have possibly tucked himself.
So somebody had tucked him in like that, and he
ted Weir had 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
(18:43):
think that's what I am. Sure, sure, I call you
beer belly foxy. Okay, okay, so um, but he was
beer belly handsome. He was. He was a thick guy.
He's like five ten two pounds. He had a few
extra pounds on him right when they found him, though,
he way aid about a hundred and twenty hundred to
a hundred and twenty pounds, which means that between the
(19:06):
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. Ted gold Yeah,
(19:29):
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
(19:52):
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 a thirteen week number
is that if he survived thirteen weeks, that means that
he would have died just days before his body was found.
Is that right? Yes? Did you did you do the math?
(20:13):
I did the math because think about so they disappeared
on February and he was found June four, So you've
got Mark April. 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
(20:35):
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
(20:57):
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
(21:18):
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, where 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.
(21:38):
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
(21:59):
it to you. 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,
(22:21):
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.
(22:43):
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,
hate right, they didn't. They also didn't even um cover
up the broken window that they used to get into
(23:03):
the trailer. It's just weird, just bizarre decision after bizarre decision. Right.
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
(23:28):
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 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
(23:51):
in here at one point. Okay, so I have to
say that 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
(24:14):
the 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 Weird. 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 the point where he was chasing down
(24:37):
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. And Lance Ayers was so consumed
(25:00):
with this that he actually drove every street of Oroville
over a two day period trying to find that house
based on the tip of a psychic. That's how obsessed
he became 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 a man named
(25:20):
Joseph Shoon's 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 with 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 thirty that evening just
(25:44):
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 um he gets
(26:06):
out to push a push his beetle right and has
a heart attack. He's he's fifty five in this night,
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 snow line of a
mountain eight miles away from help. That the place that
(26:29):
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. And that's a
mild heart attack, we should point out, but enough that
if you, Joseph shown, you are probably freaking out. I'm
(26:52):
not trying to uh diminish like his danger level. But
it wasn't like, uh, he was like laying there near
like he would eventually hike eight miles out right after
this heart attack. Yes, so he but but while he
was laying there trying to like gather his strength again.
So this happened about five thirty And he said a
(27:13):
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, and he said he
called out to them, and they ignored it and turned
off the lights, and he got back in his car,
(27:35):
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 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
(27:58):
the the five boy 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 sounds stop 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
(28:18):
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, out
of like an eight gallon gas tank. So it eventually
runs out of gas um it also now they think
about it doesn't have a very efficient heating system, Like, uh,
(28:42):
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 and
the floorboard that like came straight off the engine. Wow,
that's 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
(29:04):
that I had another Beetle that had that did have
a little fan. 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
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
(29:25):
I said earlier, to walk eight miles to a lodge
called the Mountain House. Is that where he had gotten
the drink? Yeah? Alright, So he comes back and they're
like Showans, and he's like, don't shoons me. You 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,
(29:48):
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 when I 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 sudden,
(30:09):
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 Shoes was probably the last person
to see those five guys alive. Uh. Well, yeah, they're
(30:29):
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 promise
(31:08):
more sad Discoveries lay it on him. Alright. 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
(31:28):
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 it been in that okay. 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,
(31:51):
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 drawed his body
to a stream. He was 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
(32:13):
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 sons. I think spine
(32:34):
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
(32:55):
was wearing very stylish platform shoes called get There's which
I had to look up and they were actually pretty fresh. Yeah.
Not not in 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 on like Clark's like Clark Wallabyes, like the thick
(33:18):
rubbery so I think it's called crepe sold They were
like those, but platform shoes and 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, And
I guess I mean they're pretty they're pretty cool. That
(33:40):
that wavy 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
(34:03):
Jackie Hewitt. So they found everybody, everybody that is, except
for Gary Mathias. He was still missing. Yeah, and he's
he still is actually if you go on the Uba
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
(34:26):
for sure, though, but 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
(34:48):
I can't get 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 assault
a couple of times. But UM all accounts say that
(35:09):
for the 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. Ye hadn't had one of
(35:30):
those in 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. So I take him for his word
(35:53):
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 did, he had he
had gone without him. He left him at home. And
the reason why he left him at home is because
(36:13):
he fully expected to be back home a couple of
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 her
(36:37):
belief that, um, somebody had either tricked or threatened her
son and the other boys into going up that mountain
or um, somebody else was was responsible for for this
series of decisions. Yeah. So they learned a few things
(36:58):
afterwards that are sort of clues but never ended up
solving anything. Um. One is that a snow cat for
a service. Snow cat had been up that road I
think of what the just the day before. Yeah, yeah,
and packed in a path of snow so it was walkable.
So they you know, it led up to that trailer.
(37:21):
And they surmised that the 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 divining or divining divining rod to
(37:42):
pick up human minerals and traces of humans. That led
them to another cabin where they found a disposable lighter
and this was about three quarters of 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 guy's didn't carry a lighter, right, So there were
(38:02):
a lot of dead ends like that and that like that.
For example, that watch that had been found with Ted
weird that it was missing its 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
(38:22):
most of the evidence in this case, or just those
just little dead ends. Yeah, 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 Yuba City, and apparently the turn is
easy to miss, and there was some speculation like maybe
(38:43):
he was taking his buddies to go see these people
he knew got lost, but apparently 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 basketb All game in the morning that they
all wanted to be um fresh as a daisy for
(39:04):
you too, And and like Gary Mathias had been badgering
his mom, I think, like you said, 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
(39:26):
turn off and ended up on a mountain road at
the snow line. I thought 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 drifts
for six eight ft um and even if it was
(39:46):
packed down with a snow cat, it doesn't make sense
to go forward. Unless they thought, well, 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
h 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.
(40:08):
So it's possible that that was that aided in their
decision making. But again, okay, so then let's say that
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
(40:31):
the propane tank and not even think that your trailer
is going to have that kind of thing. But the
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
(40:52):
you're turning over everything, you're lighting a fire with whatever
you can get your hands on. Those plenty of stuff
to make a fire. Uh 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, shoans snopes. That'd be snoop talk, that could
(41:15):
be chalked up to him in the state of a
heart attack in the 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,
(41:36):
which is what Shoans was scouting for. You know, how
did Matthias never get 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 the journalist,
says that, um, probably you know, he he laid there
on the snow somewhere that they just didn't find or overlooked,
(41:59):
or he got buried in the snow, 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
(42:19):
was any sort of speculation that he 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
(42:42):
they all set out independently to go look for 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
(43:04):
um Jack Madruga hadn't had never made it to the
to the trailer, that they would 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
(43:26):
I think happened after that was Gary nurse Ted. Gary
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
(43:48):
of them, and then like you said, seeing Ted was
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. Ye, 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,
(44:09):
I mean six to eight fot snow drifts. That's cold. Yeah,
they're also on this snowpacked 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
(44:30):
that like I did, it's entirely possible that twenty mile
hike up a mountain they succumbed to the weather. Yeah,
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.
(44:53):
Like when they get to this cabin, like did um
Matthias is because you know he didn't have his meds
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
(45:15):
able to figure out maybe to light a fire, light
a fire, or how to use that can opener, or
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 the basic root of this
(45:38):
whole thing. Yeah, but that's that's why they call this
the American Diet 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
(46:01):
you said, some of the parents firmly believe like they
witnessed something at 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, it came
after him or something. That's what Ted weird sister in
law always believed and speaking of Ted Weir, you got
(46:22):
anything else on this, no, except to only say if
that was the case, then 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 to that that like,
that virtually proves that they weren't chased. If anything, it
(46:42):
shows that they that that says something happened to them
and somebody ditched their car. Who who knew the area?
I think more 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 OCAM's razor. It's probably the
(47:03):
most simple explanation is you know, maybe they just went
on a little joy ride, got a little lost, got
turned around 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
(47:24):
Washington Post articles called five Boys Who Never Come Back
by Cynthia Gorney. You can find it online. But um, they,
she describes Ted, were as you're ready for this, that
Ted got a good chuckle out of phoning Bill Sterling
and reading from newspaper items or eyeball names from the
(47:45):
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, like Ted, We're
like 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 Bill is just laughing on the other
(48:06):
end of the line, and like that they 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 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
(48:28):
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 is very sad. Well, if you
have any theories on the what did you call him?
The Uba City six, five Uba County or Uba City five,
Ubi City five? Um, we want to hear him. You
(48:50):
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 off 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.
(49:13):
Since I said some stuff I'm not supposed to say,
it's time for listener mail. Yes. And speaking of which,
this listener mail is rated rated R okay, that's all.
I'll say the S word no, but it doesn't use
curse words. It's just um talks very frankly about sex
(49:34):
and it's good p s A though, So we know
this stuff. Uh and this is from Emily, not my wife. Hey, guys,
listen to the select episode on 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
(49:56):
that you can and should use condoms to prevent pregnancy
and or st eyes when a penis is involved, but
there's far less awareness about protection when you've only got
vaginas in the mix. 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
(50:18):
using a dental dam. It's a sheet of latex placed
over the bulba or anus or oral sex. That's all, uh,
And that's all there really is to it. If you
don't have one 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,
(50:40):
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 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
(51:02):
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,
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.
(51:27):
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
on stuff you should Know dot com, and you can
send us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
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