Friday.
Joseph Shones was scouting some back roads
in the Plumas National Forest.
He spent the better part of the day
navigating his Volkswagen in hopes of returning
with his family the next day.
However, due to harsh weather conditions,
his venture led to his car becoming stuck around 5:30 PM.
Miles away from help and with dwindling options,
he hopped out of his car to give it a push.
In a strikingly unlucky turn of events, though,
this physical exertion would lead
to him enduring a heart attack at the worst possible place
and the worst possible time.
He returns to the confines of his vehicle,
enduring the pain and contemplating on what to do.
A short while later, though, he'd catch his biggest break.
Two sets of headlights coming from the opposite direction,
and the shadows of what looked like a woman, a baby,
and a group of guys walking towards him
while engaging in conversation.
After realizing that this could be his ticket home,
he fumbled out of the car and began calling for help.
Once he started doing so, the headlights turned dark,
and the conversation fell silent.
A couple hours later, with his car still running,
Shones would encounter another anomaly,
flashlights shining in the far distance.
As expected, he'd jump out once more,
vehemently pleading for one of them to notice him.
However, this too, fell unsuccessful.
Another couple of hours pass,
and Shones' car runs out of gas.
Fortunately, though, by this point,
he'd felt well enough to exit his vehicle
and begin a trek up the road
towards a lodge roughly eight miles away.
It was on this walk when he'd witness a 1969 Mercury Montego
with no passengers inside.
Considering the circumstances and having spotted
numerous people in the last few hours,
he didn't think much of it.
His trek to the mountain lodge took him
to the early morning of the next day,
and there he was able to obtain medical treatment
and much-needed help to get his car out of there.
What he failed to realize, however, was the fact
that on this journey, he passed the vehicle of five men
that would soon become enveloped in one
of the strangest unexplained mysteries in history.
February 24th.
It was on this day when the lives
of five long-time friends would converge.
30-year-old Jack Madruga would make his rounds
within Yuba City and Oroville, California
to pick up the others for a night out
at a Chico State Basketball game.
29-year-old William Sterling, 24-year-old Jack Huett,
32-year-old Theodore Weiher, and 25-year-old Gary Mathias
made up this close-knit bunch,
commonly referred to as The Boys,
and they all were eager for a night out
before competing in a basketball game of their own.
The group played for a team called the Gateway Gators,
an extracurricular segment of the Yuba City Gateway Program.
This was a rehabilitative center aimed
at helping them learn a trade
while overcoming their mild intellectual disabilities
and mental health issues.
It was because of this notion that the group lived
with their parents, and with this came the expectation
that they'd return home later that night.
Jack Madruga, the owner of his prized 1969 Mercury Montego,
was known to have recently worked as a dishwasher
at a local fruit company.
He was keen on handling his finances.
However, due to what family describes as him
being "slow in thought", he found it difficult
to maintain a job.
William Sterling was known to be Madruga's best friend.
He was deeply religious and enjoyed spending his free time
reading literature to console patients in mental hospitals.
Ted Weiher, the oldest of the bunch,
enjoyed confiding in his friends, however,
was known to lack basic common sense.
According to his brother, he was known to have spent
over $100 on pencils for no reason.
He was employed for a bit as a janitor and snack bar clerk,
but was later urged by his family to quit
since they believed he was causing problems.
Jack Huett was known to be slow to react,
and typically hung around Weiher.
He was taken under his wing, so to speak,
and frequently required his help to perform basic tasks
such as dialing phone numbers.
Gary Mathias was the most enigmatic of the group.
He was the only one that lacked an intellectual disability.
However, in it's place,
suffered severe mental health issues.
The most prominent was his schizophrenia,
which was the cause of his discharge
from his brief time in the Army.
Both Mathias and Jack Madruga were the only two
in the group that possessed a driver's license.
And so they embarked.
A roughly one-hour trip was ahead of them,
and conversation ensued surrounding sports
and the anticipation of a win
for themselves the very next day.
The Boy's uniforms were already laid out back home
by their parents, so they were ready to roll.
Things were going good.
(crowd cheering)
10:00 PM.
Chico State's road opponent UC Davis takes the win.
Considering the men's favorite team were UC Davis,
it's safe to say that celebratory snacking was in order.
They hit up a local convenience store
by the name of Behr's, where they loaded up
on a Hostess cherry pie, a lemon pie,
a Snickers bar, a Marathon bar, a couple Pepsis,
and a quart of milk.
It's been noted that the clerk that checked them out
that night was trying to close,
and as a result was mildly annoyed by them being there.
Little did they know that they'd be one of the last ones
to ever witness this group alive.
The Boys jump back in the car
and embark on their journey back home.
They didn't make it back home that night.
Instead of driving south, they took a detour east.
Their journey that night encompassed their ride
from Oroville to Chico.
You would think that they'd head straight
back down highway 99 and Highway 70, but that didn't happen.
Right before arriving in Oroville,
the driver took a detour off of Highway 70
and onto the Oroville-Quincy Highway,
a road that runs across Lake Oroville
and up towards the Plumas National Forest.
They drove until the road ended
and continued their journey up a dirt trail
until their vehicle became stuck in the snowdrift.
It's unclear what happened from this point forward,
but sometime after this arrival,
they'd exit the confines of their car
and embark into the night.
Back at the lodge,
Joe Shone's medical treatments had gone well.
He paid no mind to the Mercury Montego
since it wasn't out of the ordinary,
and by mid-day he was able to get his car gassed up
and headed home.
Concurrently, since The Boys were nowhere to be found,
the mothers of Ted Weiher and William Sterling
were contacting police pleading for help
in finding their children.
It was out of character for every single one of them
to be away from home for prolonged periods of time,
and so they believed that the worst had happened to them.
- [Reporter] Government officials insist
that this is an isolated incident.
(audio garbled)
We will continue to keep you informed as this story unfolds.
- [Narrator] Tuesday.
A forest ranger scouting the area
notices an abandoned turquoise Mercury Montego.
It was left on an unpaved road near Elk's Retreat,
a staggering two-and-a-half hours
from where the basketball game took place.
The vehicle appeared ordinary.
It was unlocked, the window was down,
and snack wrappers littered the seats.
In the gas tank was more or less a quarter tank of gas,
and by the time it was located, it wasn't stuck.
Jarringly, considering how rough the terrain
up this trail is, the vehicle was found
with minimal damage.
Yuba County PD began broadcasting the details
and photos of the missing men, and for the next five days
their search team would scour the region.
This would soon prove difficult, however,
considering the fact that this was in the middle
of a harsh winter in the mountains.
It's been reported that the search team
nearly lost people on a couple occasions,
and by Sunday, a harsh winter storm would move in,
dumping nearly nine inches of snow in the area.
It was because of this, the environmental hazards
and the fact that time was running against them,
that led the police to call off the search
until snow melt that spring.
And as the case sat on hold, their families were frustrated,
and the five men were left out there.
Isolated.
Nowhere to be found.
June.
A group of bikers are out on a weekend ride and head up
onto the site of an abandoned forest service trailer
at the Daniel Zink campground near Bucks Lake.
The facility involved a main, large trailer in the middle
with multiple smaller satellite ones around it.
When they pulled in, they noticed a prominent,
malodorous smell emanating from the main structure.
Immediately after, a broken window.
They head inside, curious on what they've stumbled upon,
and a body.
From head to toe were bedsheets concealing their identity,
and after pulling them off, they discovered
that it was one of the five men
that disappeared four months prior.
It was Ted Weiher, eighty pounds lighter,
and with a considerable beard,
lending credence to the possibility
that he took refuge here for more or less two months.
In the bed, they discovered his body with his shoes missing.
With that, his feet badly frostbitten.
It appeared that he passed away due to starvation
and exposure to the elements.
However, he strangely could have
avoided this fate altogether.
Since he took shelter inside of a forest service trailer,
he had access to ample heat sources
and enough canned food to last all five men months
if they chose to stay there.
While they found 12 open cans scattered throughout the room,
the vast majority of them were unopened,
and it also appeared that no effort was taken
to block off the window that was broken when they entered.
The scene?
Bewildering, especially considering
that it was 19 miles away from
where Joe Shones spotted their abandoned car.
But all in all, it was the jumpstart investigators needed
to get back on this case.
The search continued.
With mounting public attention and hope for closure,
search teams prowled the new focus area
southeast of Bucks Lake.
It would only take a day
before they'd catch their next break, too.
On June 8th, police discovered the corpses
of Bill Sterling and Jack Madruga
nearly five miles south of where Ted Weiher was found.
In Madruga's pocket, his car keys.
It was noted that he'd been dragged a short distance
and was partially eaten by animals.
For Sterling, his remains were scattered
around the area a few feet away.
He was nothing but bones.
Since the bodies were discovered closer to the vehicle
and on a potential road they could've taken northbound,
they believed that on their hike
the pair couldn't press on any further
and met their demise through a combination
of the elements and mounting fatigue.
Two days later, the father of Jack Huett discovers
numerous articles of clothing belonging to him
a couple of miles northeast of the service trailer.
Soon after, his remains.
Interestingly, a short distance west of their location
service blankets and flashlights
were discovered lying by the road.
This discovery led investigators to the belief
that he and Gary Mathias more than likely made it
to the trailer with Ted Weiher and lived with him
for an undetermined amount of time.
Their reasoning was because of the existence
of Mathia's tennis shoes left in the room
that Weiher was found in.
The theories are tenuous, but they believed
that they spent most of their final weeks
alongside Ted Weiher in the trailer.
After he passed away, however,
they wanted to get away from the corpse
and set out towards the northeast to achieve that.
It was on this hike that the pair would meet their demise,
spending their final days exposed to mother nature.
Now, it would make perfect sense.
However, to date, the remains of Gary Mathias
have never been found.
As of now, his missing persons case remains open,
leaving questions abound surrounding the motive
and the circumstances that late winter night.
Without a doubt, there are questions about this case.
The main one, though, encompasses the following,
why did they not head home?
Backing up and taking a look at this case
presents an anomaly that's frequently brought up.
Gary Mathias.
He had a friend that lived in Forbestown,
a few miles away from Oroville and where the car was found.
This has led many to consider the potential
that Mathias had more to do with this
than some were letting on.
If we take a look at their route that night,
mapping it from Chico to where they abandoned the car,
it makes sense.
The Oroville-Quincy highway is just north of Oroville,
and the potential of Gary Mathias having driven up there
in the past wouldn't be far-fetched.
So let's entertain the idea that Madruga was convinced.
He drove the car up the Oroville-Quincy Highway
and missed the turnoff to Forbestown Road.
As a result of this, he kept driving and driving,
until he eventually became stuck,
miles up a mountain trail.
Now up to this point, the events that night
seem like honest, innocent mishaps.
What led the mother of Jack Madruga to think otherwise,
however, was the fact that after they were stuck,
why, with five sizable guys, that could've rectified
the situation with relative ease, did they decide
to abandon the car and press onwards into the unknown?
What was restricting them from turning back
and undoing the mistake that they'd gotten themselves into?
According to Jack's mother, she plead that,
"There was some force that made them go up there.
They wouldn't have fled off in the woods
like a bunch of quail.
We know good and well that someone made them do it.
We can't visualize someone getting the upper hand
on those five men, but we know it must've been."
Considering the circumstances at the time,
postulating the potential of nefarious activity
wouldn't be out of the ordinary.
The state that Jack Madruga's car was found in led
to even further questions than it did answers.
According to reports, his car was found
in immaculate condition, something almost unheard of
considering the rugged terrain that existed
on the road they'd taken.
With five moderately-sized men packed
into an already heavy and low-sitting vehicle,
undercarriage damage was nearly a guarantee.
Given the fact that Jack had never driven up
on this road before, it seemed weird that he was able
to navigate it with such prowess near midnight.
Furthermore, when the car was found,
Jack's window was rolled down, which his mother claimed
was extremely uncharacteristic of him.
Bearing in mind the fact that Mathias and Madruga
were the only two with drivers licenses,
suspicion grew regarding the actual driver that night.
Was Jack Madruga truly at the wheel,
or did Mathias demand the keys
while taking them up there?
Considering Mathias' numerous run-ins with the law,
this wouldn't be entirely outside the realm of possibility.
Prior to 1976, he was known to have been unpredictable,
however, straightened out after
being prescribed schizophrenia medication.
It was reported by his stepfather that,
"He had no notable contact with police
during the two years leading up to his disappearance,
and he hadn't 'gone haywire' in private during that time."
The reason I bring this up is because I see it mentioned
all the time on various articles and forums.
However, the evidence presented, especially considering
his own disappearance, is relatively insubstantial.
While this is a notable possibility, in my opinion
there are others that carry a bit more weight.
Let's talk about Joseph Shones.
We can recall that he spent the better part
of his Friday night stuck
around the same area The Boys were.
It's staggering that he spent most of his night
under the unluckiest of circumstances.
However, I digress.
In his testimony, he claimed that he witnessed something.
A group, consisting of a woman, a man, and a baby,
all walking within the path of two sets of headlights.
If we're assuming that his recollection is correct,
then this leaves us questioning the identities
of the other party involved.
Ted Weiher's sister has come forth theorizing
on the potential that the men witnessed something nefarious
that night sometime after the basketball game.
Perhaps they saw an attack or some sort of signal,
whether domestic or not,
and decided to follow the family to help.
I'm not entirely sure how large the distance
between Shones and the group he witnessed were,
but hearing the cries of someone in need
would surely spark some sort of desire to help
instead of shutting up entirely.
I find it strange that the headlights cut off
and the conversations halted in both instances
when he saw people.
While the circumstances don't scream maliciousness,
they definitely don't drive the situation towards innocence.
That is, if his recollection was correct.
You see, since this testimony came out,
Shones' story had slightly changed each time he shared it.
While this, of course, could be a simple case
of memory distortion, the notion that he changed it at all
ultimately weakens his story altogether.
According to sources, conversing with Shones
after the fact was admittedly frustrating.
He would claim that he was very ill
during the moments he believed he witnessed the others,
and essentially admitted that he could've hallucinated
some of the details.
Bearing in mind that the other parties stopped dead
in their tracks both times he called out for them,
it could've easily been a figment of his imagination.
But what if it wasn't?
That's just it.
The nature of word of mouth testimonies weakened
by the circumstances of their situations
ultimately leave them up for debate
and shrouded in uncertainty.
While a nefarious situation is plausible,
we can't discount the potential that The Boy's predicament
that night was all one big accident gone wrong.
Let's put Gary Mathias in the spotlight once more.
Entertain this.
The men are at the game.
All is going well, and they leave that night without issue.
They hit up Behr's to grab some snacks
before hitting the road back home.
They're driving down Highway 99 towards Oroville,
and somewhere on the way, Mathias convinced the others
to visit his friend in nearby Forbestown.
Jack agrees, and they detour right before Oroville
onto the Oroville-Quincy Highway
where they eventually miss the turnoff onto Forbestown Road.
The Oroville-Quincy Highway is incredibly dark
at that time of night so it would make sense.
Hesitant to turn around since the highway tightly winds
through the back country, the others suggested
alternate turnoffs that were supposedly ahead.
Alternate turnoffs that, as we know, they never took.
Before they know it, they're up a mountain road,
lost in the darkness, before becoming stuck.
Now, while they could've dislodged the car
and turned around, we can't rule out the possibility
that they simply didn't think to do so in this situation.
On top of this, it was reported that a day prior
to their dilemma a snowplow had cleared a path
along the road that they got stuck on,
potentially instilling a sense of optimism
that some external party would soon be back to help.
A party that never came.
And so they roughly map out the nearest spot to get help,
jump out of the car, and start a trek
towards their destination.
Since the service trailer was a whopping 19 miles away,
it's safe to assume that surviving a trek of this magnitude
against harsh weather is more or less a death sentence.
As we know, the only ones that made it
to the trailer were Mathias, Huett, and Weiher.
An undetermined amount of time later,
Huett and Mathias would either leave to go get help
for Weiher or abandon his corpse and embark on
yet another last-ditch effort
to get themselves out of isolation.
And it's on their way out that both Huett
and Mathias both succumb to the elements,
drawing their predicament to its unfortunate end.
If you ask me, I think Mathias pressed on northeast,
trying to make his way towards the Meadow Valley area.
What he likely didn't realize, however, was the fact
that it was roughly 21 miles away.
If he were with Weiher, someone that shedded
nearly half his body weight, then we can assume
that Mathias mirrored this to some magnitude,
leaving him weaker than when he initially arrived there.
I believe Mathias died somewhere
around the Meadow Valley region, and wildlife got to him
before search teams could ever make it out there.
But that is just my postulation.
The case of The Boys from Yuba County is,
by all accounts, one that doesn't make sense,
and details that support one theory
ultimately weaken the other.
It seems that we have the segments in front of us,
and they're mostly put together.
Without the whereabouts of Mathias ever materializing,
however, that's really all that we can do.
Like, how was the car unscathed through rocky terrain?
Why didn't they react to the cries of Joe Shones,
someone that they could've seen as their beacon for help?
Why was the heat source and food
that could've lasted them months untouched?
It's cases like this that engulf me with fascination
even though there are still countless questions.
Countless loose ends.
Countless unknowns.
The Boys embarked on that brisk Friday night to
what was supposed to be a night of sports,
a night of laughter, and a night that they'd never forget.
What transpired, in reality, were events that the world
around them have been trying to piece together,
because it's all of us that can't forget them.