It was a cold February night in 1978 when a car carrying five men made its way up into the snow-covered mountains of California.
After months of searching, four bodies would be found – one having apparently starved to death after weeks inside a remote cabin.
One of the men would never be seen again.
Almost half a century later investigators, relatives and armchair detectives remain searching for answers — what happened to the "Yuba County Five"?
'Just nice friendly boys' who didn't come home
They had been at a basketball game — less than 100 kilometres away from their homes.
Four of the group had some form of learning disability. The fifth, Gary Mathias, was being treated for paranoid schizophrenia.
Together they bowled, they went to dances, they had formed a basketball team. They loved sports.
When they got together, it was usually to either watch a game or play one.
"[They were] just nice friendly boys who went to games together and went home," one of their mothers told the Los Angeles Times in 1978.
Jack Madruga
Jack Madruga, nicknamed "Doc", was 30 years old and had served in Vietnam in 1968.
His family said he used money from his military service to buy the car that drove the group up into the mountains, a Mercury sports coupe.
"There was no reason to go up there," his mother Melba told media, describing her son as her "stand-by".
"It was a bad road. He wouldn't drive his car up the bad road. He respected it.
"They were supposed to play basketball the next morning at 8am. He had his clothes laid out on the bed."
Bill Sterling's sister Debby told the Hanford Sentinel Madruga had once refused to take Jack Huett home, fearing the road would damage the car.
"He made him call his parents [to] come and get him."
Bill Sterling
Bill Sterling, 29, loved to read and spent a lot of time at the library "doing research about mentally handicapped people", according to his sisters DeAnna and Debby.
He was, according to the Washington Post, deeply religious and wanted to bring Jesus to patients in psychiatric hospitals.
He had been camping with his family as a boy but hadn't liked it.
"Bill didn't like the snow," Debby told media. "They knew that it was cold up there."
Ted Weiher
Ted Weiher, 32, lived with his mother Imogene and worked alongside Jack Huett at a job they had both gotten through a community group for the disabled.
"[He] was a very loving person," his mother said, according to the Hanford Sentinel.
"The night he disappeared he had all his clothes laid on his bed to play basketball in a tournament the next morning."
He had asked his mother to wash his new white shoes in time for the game.
His sister Dorothy told media: "His was the kind of problem where he couldn't understand why, when he waved at people, they didn't wave back."
Gary Mathias
Gary Mathias, 25, had joined the group a few months before they disappeared.
He had been discharged from the army, and, according to missing persons non-profit the Doe Network, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
His stepfather, Robert Klopf, had given him a job at his gardening business and he had been consistently taking his medication for some time before the disappearance, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Jackie Huett
Jack "Jackie" Huett was the youngest of the group, just 24 years old.
He lived on a farm with his family, reported United Press International's Carrick Leavitt in 1978. He had a beagle named Beau and a 90cc motorbike.
His mother Sara told media he was "a delight" who was "inseparable" from his best friend Ted Weiher.
"He was just slow, but real happy," she said. "Ted always took care of Jackie."
'Have you heard anything?'
The basketball game — at California State University in Chico — ended just before 10pm on February 24, a Friday night.
The group of five climbed back into Jack Madruga's Mercury to drive to their homes in nearby Yuba City and Marysville.
A worker at Behr's Market, a small shop close to the university campus, said she saw them stop for snacks, telling The Sacramento Bee they seemed excited and happy.
From Chico to their homes, it was a distance of around 78km at most.
But instead of arriving home, police say they turned off the motorway and headed up onto a mountain road.
Then they vanished.
It would be several hours before their mothers — some waking to find beds empty, others like Juanita Sterling, who the Post said had sat awake since 2am — began to raise the alarm.
Tom Huett, Jack Huett's brother, got a call from his mother, he told author Tony Wright, who penned a 2024 book about the case.
"[She asked] 'Have you seen your brother? Have you heard anything?' And I'm like, 'no, why?'" he said.
"And I remember her saying, 'They didn't come home from the game last night.'"
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He said relatives were left frustrated when they contacted police: "They said they were all over 18, so you can't really report them missing until a certain time."
The abandoned car and the 'half-conscious' witness
A police report was filed with the Yuba County Sheriff's Department on Saturday night.
The car was first spotted by a forestry worker on Saturday morning, according to the Sacramento Bee, but wasn't reported until Tuesday.
A missing persons bulletin released by the Yuba County Sheriff's Office said it was found in the Plumas National Forest, just beyond the snow line.
It was sitting in a snow bank just off a dirt road, according to the Washington Post, around 112km from Chico.
The keys were gone, it had not run out of fuel, and there were maps folded in the glove compartment.
One man, Joseph Shones, told police he had driven the same road that night and gotten stuck around 45m behind where the Mercury would later be found.
While trying to free his car, according to the Washington Post, he said he suffered a heart attack and lay down in the back of his car.
He reported seeing a group of people, flashlight beams, and car headlights from a "pick-up" at different times over the following hours.
But his story, according to media reports at the time, changed several times in the weeks after he first came forward.
"I was half-conscious, not lucid, hallucinating and in deep pain," he told the Los Angeles Times in March 1978.
"Whether I half-saw or half-imagined the second vehicle, I just don't know."
The search continued.
'All they had to do was turn that gas on'
It would not be until the snow thawed that the police began to get some answers.
On June 4, wrote UPI, a motorcyclist passed by a forest service trailer in a mountain campground and noticed a broken window.
Inside was the body of Ted Weiher.
According to the Washington Post, he was tucked beneath multiple blankets, his feet badly frostbitten.
"His shoes were off and missing when we found him," Deputy Sheriff Dennis Forcino told UPI.
A police report said Weiher, who had been clean-shaven in February, had grown a full beard, which added to speculation he had survived for at least several weeks in the trailer.
Inside the trailer were matches and wood furniture, but no fire had been lit. Ration cans from a storage shed had been eaten but a locker with more food hadn't been opened.
A propane tank had also not been touched, Yuba County police officer Lance Ayers told the Washington Post.
"All they had to do was turn that gas on," Officer Ayers said.
“And they'd have had gas to the trailer and heat."
The remains of Bill Sterling and Jack Madruga were found on June 6, around 18km from where the car was left and north-east of the trailer.
Bill Sterling's father was the second person on the scene, according to UPI, when his son's body was found a few feet from the road.
He was presented with his son's wallet, containing his social security number and photos of his twin sisters.
Jackie Huett's remains were found by his father. A June 7 police report said he had located his son's watch, clothes, shoes and wallet.
A few days later, his skull was found less than 100m away.
No trace of Gary Mathias has ever been found.
Family members left without answers
Over the ensuing decades, the case has become the subject of multiple podcasts, books, and documentaries.
The families believed the group's disabilities meant there was less interest in finding them, Jack Huett's sister-in-law said in a 2023 interview.
"After they disappeared [his father] Jack asked them to check those cabins," Claudia Huett said.
"One person told them they couldn't get to them, it was too dangerous, and someone else … said they had recently been checked, and there was no way they could make it that far.
"But Jack said to me on numerous occasions, he wished he'd just went up there himself because then his son would still be alive."
Investigators at the time speculated the group had become lost in the snow and suffered from "around the corner syndrome" due to snow vehicle tracks in the snow from days prior.
"They may have thought, 'the tracks have to go somewhere' ... just around the corner," Officer Ayers told UPI.
Other detectives said they may have "just got tired and wanted to lay down".But the families insisted they would have either stayed in the car "to keep warm" or walked downhill, where there was a mountain lodge.
Melba Madruga said: "I'm positive he never went up there on his own.
"He was either tricked or threatened."
A Yuba County Sheriff's Department letter dated mid-October 2020 — made public via a records request in October 2023 — ruled Gary Mathias is believed to be "a victim of foul play".
"This case remains open as a missing person/homicide case," Sheriff-Coroner Wendell Anderson wrote.
