Haunted Cosmos - What Happened To The Yuba County Five? (S6, E7)

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

The disappearance of the Yuba County Five remains one of the strangest and disputed cases of missing peoples ever. To this day, the whereabouts of one member is totally unknown!Join us as we explore this story. Equal parts tragic and fascinating, this one is a wild ride!Join us at the New Christendom Press conference, The War for Normal, this June 11-14 in Ogden, Utah. https://thewarfornormal.com/Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes and monthly AMA's with our co-host, Ben Garrett, by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosThis episode is sponsored by: Jake Muller Adventures is an immersive, mysterious, and engaging audio drama. Use code "HAUNTED" to claim 10% off all digital downloads. https://www.jakemulleradventures.com/haunted Indigo Sundries Soap Company - Go to http://indigosundriessoap.com and use code HAUNTEDCOSMOS for 10% off your whole order!Armored Republic: Making Tools of Liberty for the defense of every free man’s God-given rights - Text JOIN to 88027 or visit: https://www.ar500armor.com/ New Dominion Design Co. Visit their website here and learn more! http://newdominiondesignco.com/Stonecrop Wealth Advisors! Go to this link to check out their special offers to Haunted Cosmos listeners today. https://stonecropadvisors.com/hauntedcosmosGray Toad Tallow. Visit their website here and use COSMOS15 at checkout for 15% off your order. https://graytoadtallow.com/Buy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!Support the show

This episode is brought to you by Jake Mueller Adventures, a thrilling Christian audio drama. In 525 BC, the Persian king Cambysus II roused a group of 50,000 fighting men. The army's sole purpose was to march across the desert as a show of force to the Oracle of the Egyptian god Ammon, who had slided the Persian king and called doomed down upon Cambysus himself. The Oracle's prophecy against Persia was no small matter, even to the Egyptians. It required incredible courage to publicize such talk, since Cambysus was in the midmost of a campaign to conquer all of Egypt. All that separated the two opponents was a 64-mile stretch of desert,

west of the Nile and east of the northern tip of the Red Sea. The western desert is a brutal place. But the ancients knew their way around its wilderness. The oracle was not immune to risks of retaliation, and Cambysus' army was meant to remind him of just that. So it was that the Sea of Men set out from the Sue of the Sea, the U.S. Canal in the mid-afternoon. For a few hours, the heat was stifling to the marching army, slipping up and over dunes, squishing together to taste the shade beneath the black desert mounds.

The vast nothingness slowly faded into a night of primordial and mystic darkness. Still, the men marched. For now that the sun was gone, real progress was possible. Then, in the early morning hours of that lifeless void, waves of wind started to beat against the side of the ranks. Gusts of great power made those closest to the side stumble and sometimes fall. The officers on horseback felt their beasts leaned steeply into the approaching storm, and when the storm finally hit, it was a terror. A thick blanket of whirling sand rushed into the army.

The little beads of stone ripped across exposed skin. Men's faces bled, horses whinnied in pain and fell to the earth. All ranks dispersed and ran wild through the night searching for cover, but there was none. Lightning flashed through the great sandstorm, like a strobe light intermittently revealing the hellscape prison they were all locked inside of. Seasoned veterans of terrible combat cried out in desperation bereft of hope. And when the storm finally passed,

the evidence of its strength was found only in what was not there anymore, the army. Whether it was a bad hand of fate or the work of false wilderness gods, the entire 50,000-man Persian force had been buried without a time, trace in a single night. Neither they nor any of their gear was ever seen again. Thus Herodotus, the first historian of the West, recorded an early case of what might happen when man catches the wrong side of his home world. Off the northwestern coast of Scotland, there stands the Flan Isles. There are a small group of seven islands that make up the most remote edge of the outer Hebrides. The aisles are craggy and rugged, constantly beat by thunderstorms from above and violent

seas at their inhospitable shores. Throughout human history, few people have ever visited the aisles for long. Even fewer have made a permanent residence there. Still, despite their hardness, there has always been an air of importance residing upon them. Somehow, perhaps it is precisely because of their being at the edge of the world, man has been drawn to a sense of holiness or preternaturalism contained in their rocks. Christians made pilgrimages there during the Middle Ages, and a single stone shelter remains from pre-Christian times that speaks to similar behavior in the pagan past. The islands are the perfect juxtaposition of creation's wrath and beauty. Men naturally connect these physical attributes with the spiritual ones as well, seeing in the

islands and her seas an image of the creator's incredible power. In 1895, one of the aisles was chosen as the site of the new lighthouse. Construction began that year and ended in 1898. The first three-man crew made their abode in the lighthouse on December 7th, and with the light ignited, the North Sea became just a little bit safer. But while sailors appreciated the warning of the lighthouse, the men who worked it never shook the sense that some heavy weight of doom was over their temporary home. When their tenure ended a few months later, the seasoned keepers were very relieved. A year went by, and a new crew stepped on to the shore of Ellen Moore, the aisle's own name.

They were James Duccott, a 43-year-old veteran lighthouse keeper, Thomas Marshall, a 28-year-old assistant, and Donald MacArthur, a 40-year-old relief keeper. Little is known about the crew's first fortnight on duty, though some rumor of those days would surface sometime later. What is known is that on the 15th of December, the steamer Arctur on route to Leith from Philadelphia, noted in her ship logs that the light was out. This raised enough alarms for the captain of the Arctur to inform the northern lighthouse board immediately after reaching port. A relief vessel, the Hesperus, was assigned to check on the crew the morning of December 20th. Unfortunately, the relief vessel was delayed by a raging storm that blew in the evening of the 19th. The sky was black with thunder clouds long before night fell,

and men standing on the docks could no longer see the distant flan aisles. The still-unlit lighthouse was enveloped in a torrent while the sea churned around her, and sent waves crashing far up onto her grassy hills. This continued for five full days with no relief before Hesperus could finally make the journey out to the Flannans. Upon arrival, the relief crew immediately noticed a few oddities. For one, the flagpole had no flag. Not only that, but none of the usual provision boxes were present on the dock,

something they would have expected given the apparent urgent need for help. However, the crew was initially able to explain these things away by the storm. Maybe it had ripped the flag off the pole, maybe a massive wave, had swallowed up the provision boxes. Sure. But the one thing they could not ignore was also the thing that troubled them most. There was no sign of the crew. It was not a rule, but it was such a usual custom for the keepers to greet a relief team at the docks when they arrived, that the absence of the keepers spoke volumes to everyone on the Hesperus.

The captain blew the ship's horn and fired a flare from their position, but even after waiting for an hour, there was no response. Joseph Moore, an experienced relief keeper himself, left the Hesperus and explored the island alone. His findings only added to the worry and the intrigue. The gate and main door to the lighthouse compound were both tightly closed, and he had seen no sign of any men on the outside. When he entered the lighthouse, though he found nobody actually there, he did see signs of recent life in the beds being unmade.

Beyond this, though, every piece of evidence pointed to the compound being abandoned for some considerable time. The clock was unwound, the actual lamps were gummed up with dirt and emptied of fuel as if the light had just burned out on its own and had been unattended, and a set of oil skins were found hanging in the mudroom as if one of the keepers had left without putting them on, like they had left in a rush. But if the others had put theirs on, the conditions apparently required it, so why did a third man refrain from suiting up? More called up more help in the search, but despite an extensive look over the whole island, none of the keepers of the Flanin Isles' lighthouse were ever found again. Where does man go when he disappears? Why don't we think of the peril around us all the time? Why don't we consider how at any moment the winds could change, the clouds could shift,

the rain could pour, and the darkness could descend, and we could just be lost without a trace? Why doesn't the risk of the world make us terrify constantly? One bad driver in front of, behind, or beside you. One tree branch, weary with its own weight and cracked from the inside. One lightning strike. One unseen malevolent force residing in the shadows of the wilderness that you are walking through on a holiday. Any of these things, and all of them could happen to any of us, and then we're just gone. Of course, it would be foolish to be afraid of such things all the time.

To do so would be cowardice, and one thing about cowards, they're also sluggards. The proverb says that the sluggard says, There's a lion outside. I shall be killed in the streets. There's no lion outside. There could be, but that doesn't mean there is. And so again, it's good that we don't live in fear of the one in a million mysterious force

that could take us out of the world and make it as if we had never even been here before. Still, though, just like the lion and the proverb, it's not that it can't be there. Oh no, these things could happen. We all know that. Perhaps that's why these stories interest us so much. They're like a subtle systems check for the amygdala.

They remind us that while we shouldn't be worried all the time, we should be vigilant all the time. We shouldn't be not worried, if you want to call it that. Diatlov Pass, the Kamar-Dabon incident, things that we've talked about before, the world swallowing Dathan and Abiram in the wilderness, Cambysus's army, the lighthouse vanishing, Amelia Earhart.

The list could go on and on and on. These stories are like distilled drops of life in a fallen world where things sometimes go wrong. We were drawn to them for their humanness, not because they show us as we should be, but because they show us and things as they are. But there is one story that I've not mentioned yet, one that we've not covered on the show yet, that is near the top of the pantheon of eerieness for such a genre as this. It has the documentation and unresolved nature of Diatlov Pass, the uncanniness of Kamar-Dibon, and the overwhelming sorrow of the Flaninan Isles Lighthouse. This is the story,

of the Yuba County 5. On the morning of October 15, 1952, Gary Dale Matthias was born in Marysville, California. Little is known about his early life. One even has a difficult time determining the state of his household. Was he raised by a single mother or father? Was his a happy childhood? Was he rich or poor? Very few can say for sure, and it's possible that none of those few are still alive today. What is known is that Matthias grew into a young man convinced of his duty to his country for one reason or another. Thus, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, and upon graduating basic training, was deployed to West Germany in the 1970s. While the global geopolitical games of the Cold War made the Berlin Wall region seem very chaotic and important all the time,

most days in that region were actually slow and filled with waiting for something that only came much later. Thus, Matthias found himself with a great deal of downtime. He was sociable, and eventually he formed a bond with a group of other soldiers, and locals that introduced him to hard drug use. Matthias took to the pills and powders with reckless abandon. Within a year, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by the army and received a psychiatric discharge. Considering himself to have hit rock bottom,

Matthias returned to Marysville in shame. He had let his country down. More than that, he had let his own name down. He humbly accepted the consequences of his actions, but a weight of lingering sorrow meant he continued to struggle with old demons. These vices manifested in violent outbursts towards innocent people in the local area. He would lash out, come to, and then sincerely repent for his crazed actions. The cycle got him nearly arrested on assault charges twice, but Matthias' genuine regret got the charges dropped both times.

On multiple occasions, he descended into full psychotic breaks while undergoing treatment at Marysville Mental Hospital. In response, the staff signed him over to the VA clinic in Yuba County, which is very close to Marysville. Under the VA's care, Matthias finally began to break free of the self-destruction. He started a supplement of medicine that eventually resulted in his being treated on an outpatient basis. He was no longer a threat to himself or society. He continued the treatment, and just as quickly as the drugs had ruined his life, these new drugs were making the doctors refer to Matthias as a, quote, sterling success case, end quote.

Gone were the schizophrenic episodes. Gone were the voices in his head. Gone were the violent outbursts and psychotic breaks. Gary Matthias had his life back. He started working at his stepfather's gardening shop to supplement his disability pay from the Army, but he was not content with working in the morning and spending the rest of the day alone.

He sought ways to get plugged into the community. He desired friendship and camaraderie, the kind that he had known in the Army. He found the answer to this desire in the form of a recreational basketball league administered by the Gateway Projects, a Yuba County program developed to support people with mental troubles. His team's name was the Gateway Gators.

Upon joining, he met a group of four friends who had already known one another for a few years. Bill Sterling, Jack Hewitt, Tedwire, and Jack Madruga. Matthias made fast friends with the group, and thus the Yuba County Five was formed. Bill Sterling was an energetic 29-year-old, social and boisterous. He could talk his way into and out of anything. He was a devout Christian who spent many of a Saturdays reading to and praying with the terminally ill in the local Marysville Hospital. He was the only member of the five to have graduated high school.

And that had not been particularly hard for Sterling, but since life came easy to him, he never really applied himself to it. Less a mentally ill patient, Sterling was more of just a failure to launch. But he sure loved his friends. Everyone called them the boys. And he loved his church. He was content. Jack Hewitt was the youngest of the crew at 24.

He was also the most notably handicapped due to being illiterate and unable to speak very fluently. Nonetheless, he had friends and a family that loved him, and he was among the most likable people in town. Everyone loved Jack, actually. And not out of pity either. He was an easy guy to talk to. He was quick to listen, and he was always ready to take people out to his dad's farms to ride dirt bikes. He was an avid and skilled rider, and he was a pretty good mechanic, too. Ted Weyer was the oldest of the group at 32.

He was especially best friends with Hewitt, and he considered himself a kind of big brother to this younger man. Though more mentally adept than Hewitt, Ted was still a little off on some things. Namely, he didn't seem to have much reasoning skills. For example, he could never quite understand why people stopped their cars at certain signs and lights while they happily drove right past other signs and lights.

His was a friendly countenance, which served him well at his grocery store job. Ted's biggest vice, according to others, was that he seemed timid or afraid of things that really shouldn't have scared him. Finally, we have Jack Madruga. He was 30 years old, and he was the only member of the boys to own a car. It was a 1969 Mercury Montego, and it was Madruga's prized possession. With the exception of Matthias, Madruga was the most well-developed and quote-unquote normal member of the group of friends. He wasn't the leader.

Everyone agreed Matthias was the informal leader of the group, but he was a kind of parent to the rest of the boys. He had long-term work that he had excelled in, and he was a veteran of the army just like Gary. He was financially stable and independent enough to help his mom with her bills, and he was relatively intelligent to boot. What made Madruga fit in with his friends was a kind of social awkwardness. He was just pretty shy, and he had a hard time connecting with people. That was, until he found the boys. With them he could be himself. He therefore happily, even proudly, served as a kind of chauffeur to the group.

It was February 24th of 1978. The boys were finally together and beaming with excitement. Each man had spent the whole day genuinely looking forward to that night and the week to come afterwards. You see, their basketball team, the Gators, was set to start in a tournament the following morning. They had been practicing for months because this tournament was a big deal. It was sponsored by the Special Olympics, and it was a five-day round robin, which promised a grand prize of a week-long all-expenses paid vacation to Los Angeles to the entire team that won. The boys felt strong and competitive, and on the eve of the first round, wanted to maintain this high energy. They knew that the UC Davis basketball team was playing that night against Chico State at Chico's campus.

Since Chico was a short 50-mile drive north from Marysville, the boys laid out their gear in the their bedrooms for the next morning, waved goodbye to their parents, and piled into Madrugas' 1969 Montego. They would go watch the game, come home straight after, and then go straight to bed. It was a cold night in the valley. Bill Sterling was scolded by his parents for not wearing enough clothes before he left. Bill assured them that they would be in the car or in the hot stadium for basically the entire night and he'd have no need for a jacket. Some of the other boys were dressed similarly. Their parents acquiesced. It was true after all. They wouldn't really be outside, for more than a few minutes for the entire night.

They went to the game, UC Davis won, they got back in the car and began the hour or so drive back into Yuba City and Marysville. They had not planned on making any stops along the way back, but all the boys agreed they were famished after watching the game. Thus, the car pulled into a local market in Chico before getting back on the highway. At that market, the friends loaded up on snacks for the road,

some soda, some milk, some chips, and some cookies. The cashier confirmed their visit and the time of the time thereof to be about 9.50 p.m. The cashier was able to remember that exact time because the store closed at 10, and the boys were the last customers of the day. Back at their respective homes, parents stayed up waiting for their sons to return. They knew how much this tournament meant to them. They knew they wanted and needed the rest before it started. You can therefore imagine the surprise of each parent, as the hours ticked by without any sign of their sons. When the first light of dawn ushered in the morning, and still none of the boys were back home, the parents notified the police.

The police comforted the families, saying that the odds of the friends being on a joy ride were very high. They shouldn't worry too much. And normally, this would have been a reasonable line of comfort, but the parents knew better. They knew something was wrong. The boys were not going to miss that basketball tournament. And indeed, the parents were right. For it would come about that the cashier at the market on the night of February 24th, was the last person, perhaps, to ever see the Yuba County Five alive.

But in the subsequent searches that spanned over many months, all that would be uncovered was more questions, deeper questions, about what really happened on that fateful night. It has gone down in the annals of missing persons cases as one of the strangest to ever occur. Now that we know the cast of characters and now that the setup is complete, it's time to dive into the details of the case. Be warned, this case may leave you doing more than scratching your head. for it seems that someone or something had it out for those boys

and put them through a hellish trial that we still fail to fully comprehend to this very day. Welcome back to what is sadly and tragically the final episode of Haunted Cosmos ever this season. The doctors did everything they could. They tried their best. And she's going to be okay. She's going to be okay.

Guys, we're glad that you're here with us. I'm Brian. This is my guy Ben right here. Hello. Over here. He's just vibing. He's looking good. He's looking handsome. He's looking like he recently lost 45 pounds. You know who else is losing a lot of weight at the moment? I was hoping. Is my co-star, Brian Sovey. Can you walk us through your method for losing all of the way? First of all, you're my inspiration for just about everything I do. Yeah, I couldn't say it. Thank you for asking. I actually don't know how you know this, but I actually am on a cut. Well, it's because it's so noticeable on your body. Okay, yeah, yeah. I'm just on a cut, guys. That's it.

You don't need to hear about it. High protein, calorie deficit. You know what I'm talking about. What else? You know, I just, I try to keep, like, movement in my life. I got to have motion. Do you try to get like 10,000 steps a day? 10K mini.

10K day. Absolutely. Lift a lot of weights throughout, which is when you're on, when I'm in a calorie surplus, I'm flourishing, I'm fit, I'm moisturized, I'm in my lane. Yeah. When I'm on a cut, everything withers in my life.

Yeah. The world becomes gray scale. The world is a vampire. I cannot lift massive deadlifts anymore. Only, I can hardly, I could almost deadlift your mom before I was on the cut. And now,

that would have been a world record. Not even close. And yeah, that's close to a world record because it's as big as the world. So I want to walk you through my nutrition. just yesterday,

yeah, let's hear it. Okay, let's hear it. So I left work. Yeah. I went, I slammed some casadillas. How many? At Tate's house. Well, like three or four.

Okay. Okay. That's a lot. Well, and then we went to Sampson. Yeah. And after Somsing, I walked around Christmas Village in Ogden with my kids. Yeah. And yeah, went home, went for a run.

Okay. And then ate. Some cheesecake. Okay. More cassidias after the cheesecake. And then three... Where are you getting these casadias? And then three sugar cookies.

Oh my good. Allie made a bunch of casidias. Okay. It was so good. How are you not morbidly obese? That's how you lose 45 pounds. That is not how you live in 40. Ben regularly tells me, I woke up, I weighed myself.

I was 198. I got to get back to 192. Somehow gets back by like noon that day to 192. It's fine. It's not eating. Yeah. Anyway, guys, we're glad that you're here and we do. We have some tragic, tragic mysteries to discuss in this episode. Yeah, a tragic story to match the tragic tone of it being a season finale. We're so sad to leave you guys. But before that, before we do that, we want to say a couple things to you. Number one, don't think we're going away just because this is a season finale. You remember the graveyard shift?

Oh, we did before the beginning of this season? I remember the graveyard shift. I hope you remember the graveyard shift because you're about to remember it. again when it happens again, but with different episodes. That's right. Graveyard shift. Second installment. Let's go. Our stories. It's going to be fun. So make sure that you're there.

Subscribe on YouTube. That is the best place to see because you can watch what's happening. You can see all of the glory of the set that Ben and I personally built without any help from anybody else. Right. Definitely not Evan and Martin. Evan and Martin didn't do it completely themselves. No.

Without our help whatsoever. That's not what happened. They definitely didn't do 100% of the work with zero percent of the credit. And the other thing is that if you are a patron of the show, you're going to be getting early and ad-free access to the graveyard shift, as you do with all of our episodes. But also, one lucky sign up today, someone who signs up to support our show, any level of patronage today,

we're going to send you a signed copy of one of my vinals. I don't know if you know this, but actually released music. Some of you were like, what are you talking about? Some people are like, I don't want it. Fine. No, it's actually good. It's not like, oh, my, cousin has a mixtape, would you listen to it? I hope not. No, it's like actually the good music.

So there's one of my albums back there on vinyl. There's another one behind me here in the set. You can probably see it. That's Harth songs. It's got a nice green view. We'll let you pick if you want to, you know, I've got three different albums in vinyl. You can pick, I will sign it. And this is going to be the only vinyl in the entire catalog of my music. They're signed by both me and Ben. And not only is it the only vinyl signed by me in your catalog of music, but also in the entire world. You've never signed a vinyl. I've never signed a vinyl. I've never signed. I've never signed. a vinyl and I will never again. Until I finally release

my own studio punk rock Christmas album. But that could be still decades from now. That could be, that could never happen. I mean, let's pray. I mean, let's join in prayer now. It could.

It could prevent that from happening. It also could happen. But if it does happen. So that's, those are our giveaways today. And man, we just really appreciate our patrons. You guys make this show possible. are great Christian sponsors. You guys make this show possible

so that the rest of the freeloaders can just enjoy free your mom jokes. And that's our promise to you. Even with a topic such as this, we are still going to deliver on all of the things that make Cona Cosmos a serious scholarly project.

Yeah. Your mom jokes. You know what I think happened in the Flan and Isles Lighthouse crew? Your mom is diving board on another Flan and Isles, diving board into the ocean, We're locked in.

Boom, tidal wave. The inevitable title wave that results. You know what, though? For real, Flanin and Iles, love this story. This is one of those crazy, mysterious. Like, it's got a lighthouse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, you know what?

I just realized this. I forgot to put into the cold open the alleged notes from one of the guys' diaries that was like leading up to the day. I don't remember this. Okay, so I remember the big points. But basically, he was walking through, in his journal, like how terrible the storm was.

Yeah. And he was saying like, so, you know, so and so is distressed. We're running out of food. Everyone is very scared. Like, we could probably die. Please pray. All this stuff. Just in his own personal journal. And then, like, three days before the storm actually ended,

the journal entry was, Storm has passed. God is good. To him be all glory. But on that day, the storm was still raging. But, and then that was the last entry. and then they all disappeared. Drums, drums in the deep.

Dude, yeah. The lighthouse keeper delved too gleely and too deep, and they awoke in the darkness, fire, and shadow. For the true silver. Yeah. So that's crazy. Wow, that's wild. But it just adds to the mystery.

I can't believe I didn't include that. Yeah, that is a huge, huge hell. Huge hell. Sorry about that, everybody. My theory for the Flanin is that it was a rogue wave. I think it was a giant, massive rogue wave. Yeah. Like the band or just a...

No, no, no, no. An actual wave that was rogue. Okay. And that it hit because there was some... Like on the landing, there was some of the railing bent way high up the stairs. Because, I mean, it's like,

it's pretty steep. You got to go way up a hill to get to the lighthouse. And there was some metal railing that was all bent. And it's like the force that it would take to bend metal railing like that. Like your mom would have to sit on it.

Something. that mass. But I think there was a rogue wave. It came up and it just absolutely took them. I think that is the prevailing theory. Is it? Is it? It was a rogue wave. It seems to explain

the most of the data points. But there's still those weird inconsistencies, the journal entry. Why was one of the oil skins not taken if the other two were? Like it was clearly still bad condies, if you will. Yeah. And then nothing. nothing was ever found. Like no bodies, no nothing, no floating shoe, no, I don't know if the shoe's floating.

You know what I mean? Yeah, but true, there was no floating shoe. There was no floating shoe found. But there was nothing found. What about Cambyses? Yeah, Cambyses also nothing found. So getting into the Yuba County 5. Yeah, yeah.

No, that's good. That's good. No, no. Canvases is another interesting story. It's great. Here's why I love that story from Cambysesies or Cambysus, as I kept saying, which is definitely wrong. like Herodotus put that into his histories.

And it's just like he's talking about something else. He puts that in there. Moves on. Talks about something. Classic ancient historian move. It just goes to show. These like missing persons disappearance cases have interested us from the very beginning. Like there's just something about them.

Yep. It gets us curious. It tickles that kind of fear bone. Yeah. The fear bones connected to the curious bone. It's into bones. Yeah. And,

and I just thought that was kind of cool. like even from the ancient history. Yes, ancient, ancient. We've been recording these things. Like even lost civilizations. Yeah, Atlanta. Yeah, same exact thing. We are fascinated when people disappear.

When something as important as a person disappears without trace. It's just like, so there's no closure. And some of the most tragic stories in, I mean, you read them. I was the hot clothes today. I'm dropping way ahead. You'll hear it in the hot clothes of the story. It's one of those ones that, haunts you.

Yeah. You just, where it's like everything seemed to work together to lead to the worst possible scenario. And you find yourself in these situations where looking back, after you hear a couple of these stories, you go, oh, I could have been on the brink of that

like my trip. Yeah. Coming back from the camp. Why don't you tell the people about it? It is crazy. I was helping out with a camp. It's like a Christian family camp in Kentucky. Shout out to Refere.

church in Kentucky. Jerry Doris. What a mention. Jerry Doris guy. And Tanner Cartwright, all those guys. So we were, we were hanging there and then driving back. And it was like winter period, like February or something like that. And we rode trip down because I brought the kids. Lexi was helping to. So we were driving back. And when we hit about Colorado on our route back, well, first of all, we had to take an alternate route because it was like, I think, I-80. Constantly closed. I-80's the northern route. What is the Wyoming one?

70 is Wyoming. Yeah, it was closed because there was just massive snowstorms, almost as big it. And so we were, we went through Colorado and ended up in like the most unsafe driving conditions I've ever been in. It's a 12 passenger van, rear-wheel drive. We had good snow tires on it for the trip. But it was like, I grew up driving in Utah where we routinely get over foot of snow. like driving in the mountains even, snowboarding, skiing, tons of winter driving, snow driving.

It was the sketchiest driving I've ever done. I got my whole family in the car. Yeah. And it was like a white out. I couldn't, we were on top of a mountain, 8,000 plus feet. I think even might have been 10,000 feet. And we were blinding snow, couldn't see.

There had been a semi at a last stop. We heard of a guy just getting hit at like 70 miles an hour. by a semi coming from behind him. Oh my gosh. Because you couldn't see. And you know who's driving the semis. Yeah. They have to go back.

And I'm like fish tailing around. All of my winter driving skills are locked in. Like I'm not going to kill my family today. Mountain tumble down to your death on one side. Finally, we get to this little town, like population 40 people. Mm-hmm. And in the mountains. And it was like, we're just, we're not.

going to continue. Yeah, you got to stay. It was like miraculous that we made it there. Yeah. But you can picture how this happens. You take a wrong turn off on a little service road of force. There are roads in Utah that are closed for the winter. Yeah. They close a gate. You're not supposed to go there and nobody goes there. Nobody plows it. No one checks. There's no other traffic. If you find yourself stuck. So you look back in your life and you go, it's the providence of God. It's the kindness of God that this could have happened to me. Yeah. I could have been one of those stories that ends up on unsolved mysteries or one of those travel channel shows. I feel like we probably all have.

have one of those. Like by the end of your life, there's that one that you're like, man, I actually narrowly escaped something really bad. Mine was, I was driving that pulpit to Chase Davis's church. Shout out Chase, Jay, Jay Day. And my guy Matt Pat. They love it when we call them that very much. Yeah, those names.

And I was borrowing a friend's truck and a friend's trailer. And I was hauling a pulpit for a friend. Church, yeah. Like none of it was my stuff, you know. And I took I-70 in late March. I was like it's late March. It should be fine. It's going to be fine.

Wrong. Wyoming is hell. It's like 1,000 mile in our winds. And it's like snow just appears. It doesn't even fall from the sky. It just appears coming out of the ground. And so I get like halfway through Wyoming and it starts. And I'm like, oh boy, here we go.

Here we go. And my plan was to drive through the night. Give the pulpit to the guy the next morning and then just drive back that day. And so I get. to the turnoff where you're supposed to get off 70 and go down that highway through like Fort Collins into Colorado. Yeah. And the snowhead like kind of chilled out a little bit. So I felt pretty good about it. Dude, I get about 10 miles down that highway. And I, and I'm like, this is so bad. I'm going to die. I pulled over intending to just like sleep on the side of the road. I'm like,

I can't do this. But then I was like, I'm going to get stuck. If I, if I just stay here. And I would have. I know that. So I did like an 18,000 point turn to not slip off the road and fall into the ditches and all this stuff with the trailer. It's dark. It's dark. Like when it's snowing, if you haven't driven in the snow. Oh, I can't see it.

If it's at night and it's snowing, the headlights don't work. They illuminate the snow. And it reflects back to you. You can't see anything. So anyway, I finally get back and I just like stayed at a hotel for a few hours and then went the long way. But it was like that. It was like, no, that was bad.

Yep. I think it's time to move on and start talking about YPanac 5. Yeah, let's talk about YPcouny 5. These guys, what I want to emphasize about these guys, and I think because once you hear the full mystery, maybe you've heard this story before, people can put too much into the basket of these guys having various forms of mental handicaps and kind of dismiss them. Yeah. But the more you get to know these guys, it's just...

Dudes, man. This sounds like our friend group. This sounds like the ideal situation. in many ways. I wish that I had known these guys. You like what's the, who was the one, he was the most intellectually disabled,

but he was like, Jack Hewitt. Jack Hewitt. My guy, he loved dirt bikes. This guy is like, let's go ride dirt bikes at the farm. He's really good at tinkering around

with dirt bikes and engines and stuff. Dirt bikes and basketball. Like, come on. And like chocolate milk. Let's go. Let's go. That sounds. Dude,

dude, you-hoo's basketball, dirt bikes. You're telling me, you're going to a basketball game with the bros. not a woman and not a girl inside just the boys you stop at a gas station you get cookies you don't care but you're not on a cut first of all you've never even heard of a cut no you're buying yeah dude you're

buying all the snacks yeah you're you're you're you're riding with the boys you go see the basketball game and and what's better you're like let's get some tips because we're about to playing the freaking special olympics yeah and hey well they know brian they weren't playing in the special olympics it was sponsored by the special. Okay. I get it. I got my wires crossed. And it was because, it was precisely because they weren't special enough

if you pick up my drift. See, that's what I'm saying. That, no, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, but they, the point being people put so much, they're like, oh, and then dude, after the basketball game, they go get more U-Hus, they dump some Mount Athos protein in there for some good recovery. They mix and in, yeah, so they can play their best basket. Exactly. Mount Athos

perform. So Jack Hewitt, he's really cool. He's chill. Who else we got? We got Bill Sterling. Bill Sterling's great. Can talk himself into and out of anything. Brian and I can certainly relate to that kind of personality. And this guy, okay, Bill Sterling. He's a Christian. This dude is like, I'm going to go read to the terminally ill on the weekends. What a nice guy. Read the Bible. Yeah. Like he's just a good old guy. Loved his church. He was just, you know, people said like, yeah, he just didn't really apply himself to life. So he never really did anything. Even Matthias, people, Gary Matthias, he gets a bad rap. Well, well, unfold it more in the story, but because he had a troubled background. He was the, he was discharged from the army, served in West Germany. He ended up getting a schizophrenia, right, diagnosis. Yeah. Did drugs. But in the program where he met these guys, I mean, he, they called him like a Sterling

patient. He was, he was doing really well. Yeah, it's kind of confusing because there's Bill Sterling, and they keep calling him a Sterling, any of the sources. A sterling case of success. But he was, he was, he loved the, the other guys. He was protected. of them. Oh yeah. Very high functioning guy. Like he, he wasn't mentally handicapped in terms of his IQ, like some of the other guys were, but he had other issues. But he was on medication. It was managed really well. He was doing very well. He was holding on a job. He had a driver's license and he, and he was legal to drive. Like he could drive around. He could do whatever really he needed to do. The thing, I was going to say is that Gary Matthias, when he was a young boy, it is known,

that he was totally normal, like completely normal. But then I can't remember if it was like a car accident or some other like injury to his head. TBI. What is that? A traumatic brain injury. Yeah, sure.

And so he got a TBI. And then he started acting up. Yeah. And then in the army when he got introduced to drugs, it became like he couldn't hide from it. It was just out for everybody to see and it was really bad. Yeah.

But then he got out of it. He got on the right medication. What I love is that, okay, I'm sorry, I'm bouncing around. Going back to Bill Sterling. Yeah. I thought of a funny thing. Yeah. That's also appropriate.

Okay. What I love about those days is that you had this guy Bill Sterling, super charismatic, outgoing. Yep. Genuinely, like, not a genius, but not a dumb guy. No. And his big thing was that he was lazy. Uh-huh. And they're like, oh, you're lazy.

We'll check you into a mental institution. That was what they did. That was what they did. Failure to launch. They were like, you are. The psych ward. Okay, one of my favorites, though, is Ted Wire. Yeah.

He's like Jack Hewitt. So he's the oldest. Ted is the oldest. He's like the youngest. Jack's the most handicapped. Ted was like his big brother. He protected Hewitt. He also, this is the best thing.

He like didn't understand street signs. No, or whites. So he sincerely did not get when why people were listening to these signs. He's like, you have a car, it can go. Yeah, why would you stop? Just because a sign told you to? Well, that's...

Which I think he's actually right. He repeatedly, the boys and his family members repeatedly explained the concept of traffic law. And he was like... To him and he's like, absolutely, I don't understand that. It reminds me of when I literally wept as a child. I'm not making this up or exaggerating. I was probably first grade.

I discovered that. that you had to use a turn signal to change lanes. And I wept because I had this vision in my head that one day you got a driver's license, you got a car, and you could just go hogwound. You could do whatever. You could do it. There were no rules.

And I was so excited about that. And then my mom and dad were like, no, you have to stay between these lines. You can't go too fast. It was the turn signal that got me. I was thinking, you're kidding me. You're telling me that in America, Yeah.

A man can't turn without letting everyone know. Talk about the long house, dude. HR ladies are out of control. They get them out of the traffic wall legislation. Okay. So I am with, it was, it was Ted Wire. It was Ted Wire. I get them mixed up.

So I've got my list here. But yeah, friendly but poor reasoning. Basically what we're saying is these guys sound like great guys to be around. He worked at a grocery store. The, yes. Okay. So Jack Hewitt. not really good at holding down a job.

He was the most low functioning. Ted Wire was probably the most low functioning after him. But, like, with the exception of those two guys, which genuinely they were mentally slow. Yeah, they had handicaps. The other guys were more just like they didn't have much of an education and they had some social awkwardness. And then Gary Matthias had a history of schizophrenia

that was being treated. Yeah. Like, they weren't, they were not like rocks. No, people, people... They put way too much stock into that. They go, how much have we unfolded so far in the cold open? We're out in the story. Nothing.

So where in the story are we? We've introduced the cast of characters and we've said that they disappeared on the night of February 24. So you know they disappeared. And it's called like, there was a bunch of clues. Multiple stories of people vanishing before we started this story. So I think you're with... The title of the episode is probably something like, where did they go? They fell off the face of the planet.

Something like that. So people, people do say, oh, they disappeared because they were just dumb. They made a bunch of, you know, they couldn't think for themselves. They basically, like, should have had supervision. But these were men who were accustomed. First of all, they were men. They were not boys. They were like 20s and 30s.

They were accustomed to working jobs, going places, you know, some of them drove. They would do stuff routinely together. They could all go by themselves 50 miles north to this basketball game on the night of the 24th and back. And no one had any concerns about it whatsoever. So in this section, before we get into the next story, what I want you to know is like, one of the things that makes this story so tragic, fascinating, it just sticks with you is that these guys were just,

they were like cool guys. They were just viking. They were dudes being bros. I would love to be friends with these guys and hang out with them. They were not stupid. You know, they were not unable to function. So as the story unfolds, keep that in mind. Yeah.

Because, yeah. I was just going to say, like, we're going to get into some pieces of evidence that a lot of people look at and they explain away its difficulty by being like, well, they basically had down syndrome. And so they couldn't think critically at all. That just isn't true. It's not actually the case. And so it actually, and that makes the case more difficult. Yeah. And in some ways more tragic.

Yeah. Because you're like, wait, there are no easy answers here. There's no easy answers. So how about this? We've introduced the story. Yeah. We've given some very tasteful banter about how much we love these guys and they sound awesome. Let's get deeper into it, shall we?

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And they smell great. Visit indigosundrysoap.com and order today. And hey, subscribe for regular shipments and get 10% off every time. The nighttime is crawling with dangerous creatures. Bigfoot, sleep paralysis demons, the moth man. Now imagine what would make them even more. more terrifying. That's right, guns. Cryptids with guns. That's where Armored Republic comes in. They equip law-abiding citizens to stand against the unthinkable, even if it's a gun-wielding,

devil-worshipping Bigfoot. From combat-tested coatings to high-performance carriers, every piece of their ballistic armor and tactical gear is built to protect. Visit armoredrepublic.com or text join all caps, J-O-I-N, to 88027 to get to involved in the preparedness effort. On February 24th, 1978, at about 4.30 p.m., a Sacramento man named Joseph Shones drove across a bridge over Lake Orville and began climbing the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the northeast. Shones was a fairly well-to-do man from the city. Years prior, he had purchased a kind of mountain getaway on the western side of the Plumas National Forest, where he could take his family skiing during winter months. On that fateful night, though he didn't yet think of it as a

anyway, fateful for himself yet. Shones was going to stay at his cabin to check the snowpack and make sure all of the utilities were working for an upcoming visit the family had planned. The night was already severely dimmed when he passed over the lake, but it was still light enough for him to see the crystal blue water. The sky above him was clear,

and stars were becoming visible with the onset of night. He turned to look up the foothills where he was headed and saw clouds blocking the sky there. He thought little of this and pressed on. After 30 minutes or so of winding up the mountain, the snow started to fall. Shones figured it would be nothing more than a passing flurry, but even if it proved worse, he would be fine. He had chains for his tires should he need them. It was that time of year where traveling in the high sierras required one to be prepared for nearly anything.

Shones pressed on. He kept going even after the snow started sticking to and piling on his car. He kept going even after the forest road he drove on wore a thin but seemingly impenetrable veil of white. He kept going, not realizing how bad the weather was due to its gradual change from his perspective, until he slid into a snowdrift on the road's shoulder and came to a thudding stop. His car was completely stuck. It was then 5.30 p.m. Shones was not far from his cabin. He exited the car and examined his situation. He dug out a little bit of snow and started pushing as hard as he could on the vehicle from different angles to try and free it. After each push,

he climbed back in the driver's seat to try and drive clear. It was a lot of effort for the aging man. He had to double over and catch his breath numerous times. But of course, the effort was worth it. What other choice did he have? He kept at it for some time before he felt the heart attack ramp up. His arms grew numb and his breathing quickened. He could feel his heart beating viciously and recklessly in his chest,

skipping time and speeding up or slowing down instantaneously. He knew what was happening. The night was long past full, rot when Joseph Shone settled into his driver's seat, turned the car's heat up slightly, and sat scared and waiting, hoping for the cardiac event to pass. Outside, the snow kept pouring in a constant wave of white washing over the mountain. Six hours passed. Shone's car was still idling, but the fuel gauge was getting dangerously low. The chest pain had not diminished, and in the macabre tranquility, the poor man wondered at how cinematic a place that mountain road would be to die. But just that

there came a ray of hope in the form of headlights cresting the hill behind him. He initially said that there were two cars. He later amended this statement to say it could have been one, that he could have been seeing double in his near-death state. Either way, it was somebody. Shones climbed out of his car and braced himself against the cold. He faced the headlights and covered his eyes against their brightness. He could hear voices.

The sound of a man and woman, and he thought the cries of a tired and cold baby. He tried to focus hard through the pain and saw the silhouettes that confirmed it, a small family. But he swore he could hear other voices, too. Other male voices speaking in softer tones. Shones gathered all of his strength and shouted for help repeatedly. He knew if he could hear them that they could hear him, and he was right. But their response was far from comforting. At the end of his crying, he refocused his eyes and ears on them.

All at once, he watched the previously lit headlights go dark and heard the same. sound of voices dwindled down to a whisper and then nothing at all. He cried for help, but whoever else was out there just ignored him. Some hours later, lightning struck twice when Shones looked up from his aches to see what appeared to be flashlights dancing around in the night near to where the other car had been earlier. Of course, the man scrambled out of the car. He was now desperately weak and shuffled through the snow toward the lights while shouting again. But once more, the lights shut off and the muffled voices faded. way. Shones never forgot those odd encounters. In the early morning hours, with snow still falling,

his car finally ran out of gas. Lucky for him, the lengthy rest had caused the cardiac pain to almost completely settle. He was feeble and delirious with fatigue, but he could at least move well enough by them. He therefore climbed out of the car and paced as quick as he could back down the road towards a lodge. No more than 50 yards into it, Shones passed a white 1969, Montego. It was right where he figured those lights and voices from last night were. He thought little of it. Eight miles after the riskiest and most difficult hiking Shones had ever done, he made it to the lodge. The manager bandaged him up and drove him to a hospital. Little did Shones know that he had been the first man to witness the final destination of Jack

Madruga's prized vehicle. It would be another four months before much else was found of the Yuba County 5. The search really began on the 27th, two days after anyone had seen the boys. Once Saturday passed without any news, police set about a diligent investigation of the route toward Chico where they had watched the UC Berkeley game on the night of the 25th. Of course, nothing came of this effort, and the police were immediately stuck with no leads. Then, however, a Plumas National Forest Ranger contacted Yuba County Police and gave them information that set off this great mystery for the public eye. The Yuba forces had, of course, sent missing persons' bulletins out for all of the men. Those bulletins included information regarding the car the boys

were believed to have disappeared in. This ranger told the Yuba officers that he had seen just such a car, the infamous 1969 Montego, on the side of Orville Quincy Road late on the night of the 25th. At the time, the ranger thought nothing of the car being there. The forest was a popular alpine and cross-country skiing destination for local weekend warriors. As such, Madruga's car was not the only one parked on the side of the forest road that night. So it was that police found the abandoned car on the morning of the 28th with the guidance of this forest ranger. The state of the car was something that became a point of special interest later in the search. You see, Jack Madruga loved his car. He was almost obsessed with seeing to its every need with rigorous attention. He cleaned and

detailed it himself frequently. Anytime a scratch or scuff showed up on the paint, Madruga buffed it and polished it out that same day or night. This attentive care from the owner was still evident when the car was seen, but that should not have been the case. The road the boys had taken on that night had turned nasty for the last leg of the trip, the motivation for which is still unknown today. But you would not know it if the car's condition was all you had to go on. Sure, it was stuck in a shallow snowdrift, but other than that, it was perfect. In those days, the Forest Road was hardly a road at all, and Jack had driven it through snow on its dirt and rock sections that were especially hard on

vehicles of that low ground clearance. Potholes, massive rocks, tree roots, and feld branches, these were all over the road that night. But somehow, Madruga's car had gotten through everything unscathed, only to get stuck in a very manageable snowdrift a few hundred feet away from the fence marking the closure of the rest of the road for the winter season. It was just odd. How could a man with such little experience driving in those conditions drive such a less than ideal car so flawlessly through them? What's more, the fact that the car was stuck raised its own questions.

Yeah, the snow drift was there, and yes, the car could not be driven out under its own power, but five men of such size and mechanical competency should have had no problem whatsoever pushing the car free from the drift. There was also the distance from the car back to the more tame sections of road. The mercury was only just into the snowline. The boys could have pushed it out and driven or otherwise walked back the way they had come and would have found the same lodge Shones later found, but in much less time than he did. Finally, there was the minor inconsistencies with how the car was left that made some wonder

if Madruga had been the last one there at all. The vehicle was unlocked and one of the windows was left down. Jack would never have done this. At the same time, his family also said that Jack would have never let anyone else drive his car. The fact that that was the scene which presumably marked the beginning of the boys being lost was bizarre and kind of nonsensical, to be honest. Right away, people wondered if some other factors, some unknown human factors, may have been at play the night of the 25th. Something didn't smell quite right to the investigators. Unfortunately, searchers could not capitalize on this momentum due to terrible snowstorms

that started battering the area on the afternoon and evening of the 28th. Days later, with the storm still raging, searchers driving snow cats through the area were almost stuck or lost. And so the search was entirely called off, and hard evidence stopped coming to light until fully four months later at the beginning of June. On June 4th, 1978, a group of motorcyclists wound through the forest following that same main road, Orville Quincy. The last of the snow had only just melted in the area, but the road had been fully opened up already for multiple weeks. They kicked up dirt and dust in the same place where the Mercury Montego had been found months prior.

They zipped past the trees that Joseph Shones leaned on, and they kept on going, dodging rocks and limbs, and at times detouring through single track and the trees for another 19 miles up the road. At which point, the group decided to take a break next to some survival cabins maintained by the Forest Service. On paper, these cabins are meant for official forester use only, but the USFS has a gentleman's agreement with the rest of the public that, should anyone be in dire need of shelter or supplies, they can always get into one of these cabins to find the essentials in case of emergency. Well, the bikers parked near to one of these cabins and immediately noted a terrible smell

escaping a busted window next to the front door. At this point, the listener will be tempted to predict all that was found there. One would even be forgiving for assuming that the bodies of all five missing men were found rotting away in this little haven in the woods. But one would be wrong to assume. The bikers broke down the door. The wall of stench that met them was even far stronger than what they had smelled traces of outside. It was the scent of rot and decay. Each man covered his mouth and nose with

his shirt and stepped in warily. It did not have to walk far. On the bed lay a dead body, later determined to be that of Ted Wire, one of the boys. A blanket was wrapped snug around his head and the rest of his body was tucked tightly into the blankets, save his feet. They stuck out from under the blanket and were black with frostbite and seriously eroded. Amid the obvious shock that consumed the bikers and investigators called to the scene, other evidence was uncovered that only made the Yuba County Five mystery thickened further. For one, the state of Ted's corpse betrayed a strong likelihood that he did not die alone. The nature of the body being tightly wrapped around the face and torso was the first tip of this to the investigators. That suspicion

was confirmed when someone took a closer look at the shoes propped next to the doorway into the bedroom. The bikers assumed they were Ted's shoes, but they weren't. They were actually shoes that belonged to Gary Matthias, and his family confirmed that he had been wearing them the night of the group's trip to the basketball game. Ted Wire's boots, for he had been wearing leather boots that were at least better for the snowy environment, were nowhere to be found. It was therefore surmised that Lees Matthias had been with Ted in the cabin at some point before or after his death. This deduction, however, brought new questions with it. You see, These cabins are fully equipped with enough heating supplies and clothing and food rations to keep a group of people nourished for a year.

And while some of the ration cans were missing from the storage shed just outside the cabin, not nearly enough to make any sort of sense. Maybe a dozen cans had been used, enough to keep one man alive for a few months, two men on strict deficit diets. But the rest of the food was untouched. The clothing was still hanging in the closet within sight of the bed. The fireplace, complete with plenty of wood and kindling next to it, hadn't been lit a single time. Ted and whoever was with him had even failed to turn on the cabin's central heating system, something easily accomplished by a minimal amount of nosing around on the property. Ted's death at least seemed totally avoidable.

In fact, investigators scratched their heads wondering why they were not finding all five men alive and well, though a bit smaller in the waist, in the cabin. But ultimately, Ted Weyer's cause of death was noted as a pulmonary edema brought on by malnutrition and hypothermia. He weighed half the amount he had when he went missing, and his beard growth indicated that he had survived on the mountain in the cabin or without for nearly three months. Beggs the question, who else was with him other than Gary? Why didn't they all go down the mountain when the winter started to wane? and why didn't they use the assets afforded by the cabin? But perhaps most astonishing of all,

how did any of the men make it 20 miles up the mountain and to the cabins in that condition without dying beforehand? After wire was found, the floodgate of evidence opened up for a precious season. Given the distance between the car and the cabin, and the cabin being in the exact opposite direction of where the searchers assumed the men would have gone, efforts were refocused in the area between the winter snowline and the cabin. It took less than 24 hours for the bodies of Jack Madruga and Bill Sterling to be found on opposite ditches of the forest road leading up the mountain.

They had succumbed to hypothermia 12 miles away from the car. Madrugas body had been defiled by scavenging wildlife in the area. Sterling's remains consisted only of bones which had been scattered around the area that stretched into the trees. many have wondered at the coincidence of both men dying at the same time and place. Their well-documented and close friendship led some investigators to believe that one of them fell behind due to the cold and fatigue, and that the other, though still strong enough to continue, stayed by the other man's side. So they died as they had lived together.

Two days after Madruga and Sterling were found, Jack Hewitt's father found a jacket resembling one his son used to wear, tucked under a bush two miles away from the trailer and further up the mountain. The poor man reached down to see if it could be Jack's body, only to find that his son's backbone was still inside of the jacket. Searchers responded to his tortured cries and found Hewitt's shoes and pants on their way to the boy's dad. The next morning, a sheriff found Hewitt's skull about 300 feet away from where the backbone had been. Given the scattered clothes, his death was also ruled as hypothermia, The paradoxical undressing that extreme cold inspires in its victims is what made the investigators assume the cause of death for Madruga, Sterling, and Hewitt. In these days, the only other evidence found were some forest service blankets and a rusted out flashlight tucked into some leaves on the side of Orville Quincy Road about a quarter of a mile beyond the cabin further up the mountain.

Many assumed that these supplies were left there by Gary Matthias, but that's impossible to know, since no trace of Matthias has ever. been found. To this day, his whereabouts are completely unknown. Okay, yeah, so that gives us a little bit more insight into the story. We're going to talk more about Joseph Shones. So I actually want to put a pin in Joseph Shones, but he does introduce a wrinkle that actually becomes more interesting. It does, yeah. So put a pin in that. It's already kind of weird. Like he's this guy up there having a heart attack. Maybe he sees the boys pull up behind him, asks for help, and everything just goes dark. and quiet. Like,

it just introduces a layer of mystery that I think is really interesting. But it actually gets, it gets crazy. Is he reliable? We're on this at nine. We will see.

But in terms of the actual series of events, the story, like part of why this story has grabbed the attention of so many is because from Jump Street, it makes no sense. It's just weird. The location that the Montego was found

makes no sense. It's up on the middle of a mountain in the Plumas National Forest. And here's the thing. Like maybe we can pull up. Maybe Evan can put a little picture of the map of where things are. But you have Chico right here. Okay. You have Yuba and Marysville right here. And then you have this little place, Oroville, that's just to the west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. If you go through a canyon into like Orville Valley, basically, behind the mountains. And then you can get into Plumas National Forest by going further and further east. Yeah. Then you'll eventually end up where the Mercury Montego was found.

There's no reason that anyone can think of. None of the parents can think of why. No, no other friends can think of why. They would have gone that direction. No. There's some hearsay. There's some wild hypotheses that maybe we can get into after the next scripted section. Yeah.

But just like from the get-go, there's no reasonable explanation that could that could help us determine why Jack Madruga if he was driving was driving his Mercury Montego up into Plumis National Forest

and then once they get there inexplicably all hell breaks loose basically. They flee into the wilderness very Diatlov Pass-esque leaving the window rolled down Yeah they leave the window rolled down the door is unlocked

very out of character for Jack Madrug Some people think that maybe Gary, Gareth was driving at that point for some reason. But the family of Madruga and Matthias say that this probably wasn't the case. Because Madruga was so in love with this car, he didn't, like even though he loved his friends, he didn't let anyone else drive. I wouldn't have let my friends drive my car.

You haven't let me drive your Tesla one time. I did. Yeah, that's true. He was real for that. Only you, though. I almost crashed it. No, that's not true. But the other thing too, like, all right, so.

That's already weird. The fact that they were up there doesn't make any sense at all. Then people found the car. Yep. They found the car, door unlocked, window down. That already is out of character for Madrugo. Okay, but whatever, right? But the way that the car was stuck was like one little nudge from all four of the guys with one guy driving at once, and it's immediately out.

And they were mechanically aware. Yeah. They worked on vehicles. They were not dumb as rocks. Like these guys could fend for themselves. They could hold down jobs. Many of them were mechanically inclined, including Jack Hewitt. Even my guy, Jack, the lowest functioning guy.

Dirt bike jack? Dirt bike. He would have gotten that car out of there easily. Motorcross Jack? Yeah, like he was like Brian Deegan out there. He's like Travis Pastrana out there. Yeah, yeah. Brian Deegan.

He's a member of the metal militia. It does not make sense that they wouldn't have just thought if they had been in normal, not distressed, no one chasing them, no creature. or big footts or whatever, you would get out of the car, you go, oh, we're stuck. We've clearly gone the wrong way. Yeah.

Three of you guys push. We'll get it out, turn around. Let's go back down the hill. Because here's the thing. The car worked. There was on the wrong with the car. They were like a quarter mile past the snow line. Yeah.

At that point. And like not far behind them. So first of all, there was a non-snowy road. Yeah. Very close to them. Right there. The other way. But also not far behind them was a lodge that they had passed.

Like, so here's the thing. they get stuck. All right, lapse in judgment or they're panicking and so they don't get the car unstuck. Fine. But why would they flee further up the mountain if they're fleeing from anything? When they could have fled the other way and it was like safety was basically within eyesight. There were there are roads like this all over the Utah mountains. Where if you go up like, you know, we go hiking a bunch, but even in the winter, there are roads on the way to ski resorts and things like that where I can picture this scene. It's just so like it's familiar. And if you're not familiar with what snowy wilderness is like in the mountains, the idea that a normal person would get out of the car, look at that scene and go, especially with no equipment, not even jackets in some case. Yeah.

I'm going to go into that in the dark is insane. Insane. You would have to be not just like, oh, my IQ is slightly lower, or I have some social issues. You would have to be out of your mind. You have to be like possessed. Or have some really compelling reason. Like I'm running away from something that I am fearful of.

I feel like I'm in grave danger. It did make me think of that zone of fear thing. Yeah. What was that guy? It was from... He's the guy that did the Mothman. Yeah. John Kiel.

John Kiel? No. Maybe John Kiel? I just remember Kiel. Whatever. He was the investigator in the Mothman incident who, after visiting the TNT area where they had witnesses. the moth man with multiple other women

and men like they were investigating. One of them had experience like bleeding from the ear. It's super late at night, almost midnight. The other people go home, but keel is like, you know, he's got- He's keel, man. He's got stones. He's like, I'm gonna keep investigating. And he ran into this, he was literally driving

where he crossed like a plane on the road and he was like overcome with terror. So of course he turns around, parks his car, gets out of his car, like the night. And he said that he could take like a few steps and the fear would be gone. Overwhelming fear, no fear. And then a few steps back and the fear would be back. A light switch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he found like both edges of it. Yeah. And then he was like, oh, this is an odd phenomenon. I guess I'll write down to my note, man. It was so bad that when he got to the other side of the zone of fear, he considered staying there on the shoulder until morning. Yeah. To not go.

It was like 100 yards back to his car. So you just wonder. And this is, that was a science, a man of science. and a journal, and he was like an investigator, and he was meticulously describing this. So unless he made it up, you have, which would be weird, you have these incidents sometimes where people describe just like,

I don't know why, but I was terrified. Overwhelming dread. I mean, even some of our graveyard, you know, previous graveyard shifts, we've gone into this a little bit. Yeah. And I think that this is probably a more common experience for people than many that haven't experienced it

might suspect. Yeah. where it tends to be fairly, I'm not going to say like universal, but it's pretty common where people at one point in their life will just go into a place and they'll just be like,

I should just not be here. I need to leave. There's an episode of astonishing legends, a very early episode in their catalog, like 2016 or something like that. And it's an emergency room doctor talking about an experience he had where he liked to solo backpack.

And he would go like hiking. up through, he went hiking, you know, one late evening up into this mountain valley and he got there and he just like all of a sudden went, I'm not supposed to be here. And he describes this experience and there's, the crazy thing is there's nothing overt, like he doesn't see a big foot, he doesn't see something like that, but he's, he's like a doctor. He's not a dumb guy. And he's an experienced backpack. And he just says, I like his flashlight broke. It was a series of weird events. His flashlight broke. And then he's like walking down the path at night. And he's like shouting, I'm leaving, I'm leaving,

because he felt like there was present, like a presence or some kind of intelligences that were like driving him like demons. Yeah. And then he got to his car and he said like the moment he touched his car, it was over. It was gone. Like a switch.

So people have had these experiences and it makes you wonder the circumstances. A, did people, were there people that were chasing them? Was there some kind of nefarious, even maybe bullying or something like that? some kind of like, was there some kind of misunderstanding, or did they run into a drug deal? Did they, was there some supernatural, preternatural thing that terrified them?

Why did they get out of their car and flee to their deaths? Yeah. And why, presumably, did a guy like Gary and Matthias participate in it? Because of all the guys, like, yeah, we've tried to emphasize they're not, they're not as like mentally handicapped as a lot of people make them out to be.

But a lot of them did have mental, uh, hindrances, you know, you call it that. But Gary Matthias really didn't. He was like on his medication. He was doing really good. He was a stable guy. Um, and he could think critically, at least well enough to have been in the army. Yeah. And past basic training and all this stuff.

And you'd think like, what made that guy all? also participate in all this. Yeah. You know, some people think that he was a part of it, like on the other side of the foul play, where he like had it out for his friends. Yeah. I think that that's a ridiculous theory.

There's no real basis. There's no evidence for that whatsoever, except for that he's the only one that hasn't been found. And also the evidence, who was the other guy that died at the cabin? So Ted Wire was found in the cabin by the bikers. With frostbite. Yeah.

And in my opinion, the evidence actually points to Gary Matthias, was basically like, I'm going to try to keep Ted alive as long as I can. I care about this guy. Because he had horrible frostbite on his feet. Yeah. And you look at some of the other pieces of evidence in the cabin. There was like playing cards that were out on the table.

There's, you know, books. And even in Gary Matthias's handwriting, there were phrases in the books. And they were phrases that he had learned during his treatment. Yes. To help him stay sane. Yeah. So he was writing these phrases down, trying to keep himself clear because he was off his medication now for apparently months.

He didn't have enough medication to be for weeks or months. He's trying to keep Ted alive because like Ted is the last guy. He's playing cards with him. He's trying to make him comfortable. And then finally when Ted goes, he's like, okay, I'm going to like give this man the respect and then I'm leaving. He wraps him up. Yeah. He takes the better shoes.

Yep. And then he apparently went into the – this is the part, though. There are elements of the cabin that are even more mysterious. Yes. they have enough food. For all of them. For all five of them to have survived the whole winter. Now here's the thing.

The reason that all five of them weren't there, I think this is pretty obvious, is that it was so far away. It was like 19 miles, 16 miles. It was like 16 miles. It was like 16 miles as the crow flies. You could have taken a direct path that was 16 miles long to get there. That's the path that the motorcyclist took.

Jack Hewitt's friends, probably. And then there was a winding like single track path that was 20 miles long. Yeah. So Madruga and Sterling were found on the main road. About 11 miles away from the Mercury Montego. They had died early on. Windygoon talks, he goes into pretty good detail about this. He has a great episode on this case where it's most likely that they died the night that they disappeared.

But there's wrinkles to that that we'll get into in a moment. And then it was who was the other guy? So there was, oh, no, Bill St. Sterling, wait a minute, Madruga, Hewitt. Medruga and Hewitt were the ones that were found on the road. And then Bill Sterling was found further off the trail on that 20-mile winding path. And he was actually found by his father, which is very, very tragic. Yeah, Madruga and Sterling's bodies were 12 miles from the car.

Hewitt scattered remains were two miles from the trailer. Okay. And then Matthias has never found. and um and ted was in the cabbikers find ted yeah his body and he lived the longest yeah from what they could tell unless matthias unless matthias is still alive but and matthias made it longer than him because someone had to have wrapped up yep um ted's body and then there was like us us forest service jackets that were found three miles further east of the cabin that presumably matthias had taken yeah here's the other thing though. Okay. So by the time Ted Wire is dead, it had been months. Yeah.

So already you're running into issues with why didn't they ever try to go back? Yeah. When maybe there was a break in the weather in that time. Maybe not. Yeah. But it was like the storm didn't last for three months. No. The reason that it took them four months to find them in the cabin was because the cabin was 20 miles away. No one thought to look there. one thought to look there. You don't think that... And it's 20 miles away further into the wilderness. You don't think that five guys with no equipment are going to walk that far when there was a lodge down the street or... Yeah. Again, it's like one of those things being in Utah, you can...

There's a level of understanding. We've all been in snowstorms here. Oh, yeah. At night. I've done lots of backpacking in the high you into the winter with snow shoes pulling sleds with your equipment. Yeah. Like even as a teenager, you know, that kind of thing.

I've done a lot of alpine touring with... skis, it's very difficult to make it 20 miles, even with all the great equipment, let let alone in a snow. Very difficult. The weather can be perfect. Doesn't matter. That any of them made it to that cabin is amazing. Jeans in a T-shirt. Absolutely amazing. It's absolutely insane. So you see why Ted had such bad frostbite. Yeah. He easily could have died on the night getting there. And we don't know if they got there that night too. It could have taken two days to get there for all we know. But the the heat never being turned on. And maybe they couldn't figure it out, but it's not actually that complicated.

A guy serving the army. Matthias is a smart guy. Like, Matthias knows what he's doing. There were not that much, there wasn't that much food missing. Yeah, not enough. Like enough for a couple weeks eating real scant. Right. And. Well, Ted Wire had lost like a hundred pounds.

It's just, it doesn't make, it's almost like even when they got there, they were trying not to draw attention. Right. To the cabin. Like, oh, we're not going to start a fire. We're not going to turn lights. We're going to be quiet. We're going to hide in here.

That's the impression again and again that you get along the way is that they think that they're in danger and can't venture out. Yeah. A lot of the equipment was in a shed just outside of the cabin. Yeah. And so it's like we're not going to leave the cabin too many times. And so we're only going to get what we absolutely need. We're going to take as few trips as possible.

But then Gary Matthias leaves. He leaves. And the other thing that's weird about Gary Matthias leaving is that he went the wrong way because the stuff that was found that he had presumably taken from the cabin was further east further away and now granted he had been off his medication for months at that point true yeah and so he could have been genuinely struggling to and he had just been locked in a cabin with his dead friend his dead friend like he's in a bad place yeah but it is still strange where you're like wouldn't you walk downhill instead of uphill.

So I think that's the story so far, the mystery. Maybe now we can get into some of the other wrinkles unless there's any more that you wanted to highlight. Just one more thing. I think just one more thing that I thought was worth noting. And we talked about it in that section. But at that time, the road that they were driving on, Orville Quincy Road, was not paved and it was not well maintained.

It was a forest road. Nowadays, it's paved and, you know, it's easy to drive on. But the place where the Montego was found was like already probably a mile or two past the end of the pavement. There were a ton of potholes, tons of rocks, tree roots, all this stuff. It's snowy. You can't really see what you're driving over. It is weird that the Mercury Montego had no scratches or dents, even to the undercarriage. There was no damage, despite the snow level being up to the...

I was just thinking of a time when I was a scoutmaster for a Boy Scout troop when I was a young adult, like 19. My dad and I started a church Boy Scout troop. And I had been helping with a winter camp in the Uintas with, you know, but I had to leave because that Sunday morning I was leading worship at church. Yeah. So I left the camp in the dead of, it was like January at five in the morning to make this multi-hour. drive back to the church and like get ready. And on the way there, the road was super icy. But there was a rock slide that I, it was five in the morning. I basically didn't see it until it's too late. And I drove right over a big rock and it like bashed up my, it turned out it bashed up

the oil pan so that I basically had no oil in the car. But somehow I made it all the way back. I didn't know because I'm like, I'm not stopping. It's five degrees out. And I'll die. What am I going to do? What am I going to do about it? So I just kept. going. It was cold enough that like the engine actually it made it little Mazda protege. Heck yeah, dude. Dude, what a what a car. First of all, driving a Mazda protege up into the high windows.

Like, bold move. This is what I'm saying. I should be dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's a bold move. With that level of judgment but it is weird because that was a good road and they're just hey, there's a rock boom. These mountain roads when they go bad, I mean, with all of the heating, cooling. It's brutal, man. the weather, you get big, big holes in the road and limbs and like, yeah, you're, if you don't

have a four by four, that's not a four by four. No. So it is, I think, a surprise. It's at least another just weird for a guy who loved his car, especially when you consider that Madruga, according to his family, had no experience driving on roads like that. Yeah, he was like, this is my baby. Yeah, and he's just going to slain it up. He's just going to keep going? Yeah, so. You would think he'd run into the first sign of rough road and go, we've gone the wrong way. Right, right. Or maybe, maybe not the wrong way. Maybe we changed our plan and we're not, but I'm not going up there. Again, it seems like something was compelling them to keep going against what their natural instincts would have. Beyond just mirror, hey, let's go check that out. Right. It wasn't enough. No, not enough. So let's go check out

driving 70 miles the wrong way up a mountain, up a road. My car shouldn't go up. Stop. And then, oh, hey, let's run off into the snowy wilderness and storm. Right. Right. Like, so going into this next section, just broad strokes. February 24th, they go missing. Yeah. The search starts the second day after that, 26th.

And the search is almost immediately called off because of bad snowstorms up on the mountain. Very, very lengthy period of time, like a couple weeks. Well, yeah, yeah, you're right. A couple weeks go by and then the search re-ups, but they don't find anything until four months later when the bikers find. and the thaw. The thing, and then all the bodies show up except for Gary Mathis.

And the snow is so bad that the snow cats were getting struck. The snow cats were getting. And these are like heavy duty. They're made to go in deep snow. Right. Like those are the machines they take up ski resorts to go up the mountain and groom them and get equipment. It was that bad. Right.

It was very, very bad. And then it seems like Bill Sterling, Jack Madruga, and Jack Hewitt died probably the night of the disappearance. Jack Hewitt maybe a day or two later trying to find the cabin. Yeah. Ted Wire died months later in the cabin, having made it there with Gary Matthias. Gary Matthias has never been found, so we have no idea what came of him. So now a little bit more of some wrinkles, some later testimony, and more on Mr. Schoen. Yeah, and then we'll get into some theories. How many demons, ghosts, or vampires are lurking in your investment portfolio? If you're invested in the S&P 500, it's probably more than you think, since it's full of companies that actively

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forged and timeless iconography, not fleeting trends. Every brand built is made to endure for generations. See what he's built for others and book your free brand consultation at new dominion designco.com. Mention haunted cosmos and you'll receive 10% off. Once the snowstorm put a stop to all search efforts on the mountain through winter, police turned their attention to any other hearsay or circumstantial evidence they could dig up. To help jog the memories and the nerves of the public, they offered about a $1,200 reward to anyone who could give them helpful information regarding the Yuba County Five case. As one might expect, reports immediately started to flood in,

the lion's share of which were useless fabrications in the hopes of getting an easy buck. But some of the people that called were more credible, and what they shared may someday prove to be among the most helpful pieces of information related to the case. In particular, two of the reports must be considered. The first came from a woman who worked at a convenience store in Brownsville, California, a small town about 30 miles south of where the Montego was discovered. She and the owner of the little store, called Mary's Country Store, both said that four men stopped in the store to buy snacks and drinks on February 25th and 26th.

She made this report because upon seeing the men's pictures on the request for information, she recognized the four men from those two days as Ted Wire, Jack Hewitt, Jack Madruga, and Bill Sterling. She did not have any knowledge of Gary Matthias. She and the owner concluded their report by saying that the men seemed to be in good spirits on both of their visits, and that they drove an old, rusty, red pickup truck to and from the store each time. The other relevant report came from a Yuba City resident named Mr. Redrick. Upon seeing the flyers and request for information, he relayed to the police that a year prior to the disappearance, he had had a strange encounter with Ted Weir.

Mr. Redrick was a wealthy and respected man in Yuba City. His family had lived there for years and was very influential in the goings-on. By all accounts, he was an honest guy. With his family history and personal success, came the opportunity for Redrick to purchase a mountain getaway just outside of Plumas National Forest. He and his family enjoyed hunting and camping and skiing retreats there year-round. Like I said, a year before the disappearance of the boys,

Redrick drove up to his mountain house to check on the utilities and perform some menial chores. Given the remoteness of the area, he was shocked to see another car parked in his driveway as he pulled up. When he exited his car, however, his questions were answered, as Ted Weir, along with two others whom Redrick did not know, walked up through the pasture to tell Redrick that they had parked in his driveway to do some scouting for a future hunting trip. Now, at this point, it's worth making clear that Redrick never claimed, to know Ted Weir before this interaction. He made the connection with this only when he saw the flyer featuring Ted's likeness. He also didn't make much of the interaction apart from Ted being there,

near to the place he would vanish from, a full year before the vanishing occurred. As Redrick tells it, he asked the men not to park on his property again, and that was pretty much the end of things. But this account is important for two reasons. One, Ted Weir was known to have a distaste for the outdoors, for hunting, and for firearms in general. When the Weir family heard this account from Redrick, they were shocked and assumed that it was a mistake. They just knew Ted would never do that.

Besides, none of them could make any sense of the two other people that Ted was supposedly with that day. Second, and more relevant to this case, was the fact of the car that Redrick said the men were driving. It was an old, rusty, and red pickup truck. And it turns out these two alleged witnesses were not the only ones to see this mistake. mysterious truck. Indeed, it later came out that her old friend Mr. Joseph Shones may not have been entirely truthful in his story to the police. Remember before when I told you that Joseph Shones was a well-off and respected man from Sacramento who owned a cabin off of the same road the boys got stuck on? Remember how I told you that he was the terrible victim of a heart attack? And he barely survived,

a brutal night and subsequent hike in the cold, in spite of being apparently abandoned. by would-be rescuers twice? Yeah, well, some of that is definitely a lie, and a lot of it is probably a lie. Shones did not own a cabin in Plumis. He was not even on the ticket to rent any places around Plumis on the dates of his supposed family trip. He was not a well-off man, nor was he well-respected in his community. Joseph Shones was a drunk.

His car was frequently seen pushed onto the shoulder of the road around his home neighborhood, the consequence of another bout of drinking and driving. and driving. Eventually, his neighbors stopped caring to stop to help him because of his constantly rude and ungrateful attitude. Apart from his drinking habit, Shones also had a history of marijuana production and dealing. He knew the seedier side of his slice of California and could never quite seem to break away from it. He was a blame shifter. He was argumentative, and he was more than likely not a victim of a heart attack that fateful night. Rather, it is far more probable that Shones was drunk. He had been seen by multiple witnesses drinking heavily at a bar in

Oroville earlier that same day of February 24th. Folks at the bar saw him stumble out to his car and set off on a wayward and aimless path east, in the direction of Plumas. Eventually he got stuck, sobered up enough to walk down the mountain, did, and then instead of going to the hospital for a heart attack, he just went home and fell asleep for a few hours. The story that you heard earlier was the fourth and final version of that night's events that Shones gave to police once they finally did go to him at the hospital days after the disappearance. But the other versions of events were notably different. It is true that Shones spent the night of February 24th through the morning of the 25th in his car about 150 feet up the road from Madrugas Montego. It is true that in the morning

hours he made the grueling hike down to the cabin where he found some kind people willing to drive him home. But beyond this, there is inconsistency. Seeing the flyers, Shones called police and initially told them that he had walked past the car in question after his terrible night. His second call to police added a new detail, how at some point in the night he had watched the Mercury pull up and had seen, you guessed it, an old red rusty truck pull up very close behind it. He saw a crowd of people, called to them for help, and then dejectedly watched and listened, as the scene went quiet and lights went out. But he ended this call by telling police that he probably hallucinated the truck.

He urged them to brush it off as the ramblings of a man on the verge of death at the time. Eventually, Shones did go to the hospital where it was confirmed by doctors that he had suffered a heart attack at some point in his fairly recent history. The doctors could give no indication as to when this heart attack took place, though. And the drinking he engaged in the day of the disappearance makes his behavior that night much more understandable. After he had been admitted for a few days, police came in to do a final round of questioning on shones. When investigators arrived, nurses informed them of some strange behavior from the man, how he'd been crying unceasantly and inconsolably for the entire duration of his stay, multiple days at that point.

They told police to brace themselves for a difficult interview. But when they entered his room, he was a changed man. Gone were the tears and the anxiety. He was cool, calm, collected. and for this final interview, he included the detail of the red truck once more, claiming that a group of up to 12 people were standing around the mercury and the truck that night, and that after he yelled, people climbed into the truck and drove away, leaving the mercury behind. Now, in the midmost of the interview, Shones abruptly stopped, looked up at the investigators,

and said, through a grin, you're thinking that I know more than I'm letting on, don't you? Investigators didn't really know how to take this, so they just brushed it off and moved on. These three testimonies, given by three random people who did not know one another or the boys from Adam, all included that strange but specific detail about an old, rusty, red truck, being around or involved with the boys in one way or another. At first, this may strike one as inauspicious, inconsequential, or entirely coincidental, and nothing else. but is there such a thing as coincidence in a case like this? Why did they all bring it up?

Could they have all made up the same fabrication? I mean, maybe, but probably not. Maybe the red truck is not just a red herring. Maybe it points to something deeper going on. Maybe it points to a type of foul play so tragic and wild that few could ever guess it. All right, so a couple wrinkles to the story. It starts to get weird, and we start to see maybe where some of the threads of a theory might come together in terms of what explains this inexplicable ending up in this place going off into the wilderness.

Ben, can you just like walk us through some of there's the red truck? Yeah. And then maybe we can talk about what we think could have happened. Yeah. Yeah. So the easiest theory that people have come up with is that Gary Matthias turned on his friends. Yeah. And drove them all into the wilderness.

And then eventually he ensured that they all died. And then he got away and probably died. They're tenderly caring for one of them. Yeah. This is a weird theory that doesn't really match up with the character witness that they all knew of these guys. And so I think that this theory is not true. And I also think that it ignores one of the weirder pieces of evidence that that whole section was about, which is the red truck. Yeah.

So just to make sure it's clear, the reason that the red truck thing is weird is because it popped up in three independent witness statements. actually one of which should not have even been real. No, and maybe you guys didn't catch that. So here's the thing. That first one about the market store or whatever. Yeah. That market was down in Orville, like the valley side of Orville, east of the mountains. So you would have gone through to get there.

Is that right? Well, no. It's like on the way. Yeah. It would have been on the way up, but already past the Sierra Nevada Front. They're already going the wrong way. They're already going the wrong way. Miles.

And so then there's this country store. And both the employee who is a young woman and then also the only, So the owner of the store, they both attested to seeing four of the five boys, the only one missing was Gary Matthias, come to their store two days in a row, driving a red truck. They went in, they seemed in good spirits, they bought some stuff. They left in the red truck both times. But it happened after the disappearance. The two days after? The 26th and the 27th.

So it would have been three days, the third and fourth day. Yeah. And by the way, the search started on the 26th. Weird. So they claimed that they saw the guys driving this red truck. They were all in the red truck. And they had come down out of the forest to get snacks and stuff. And then they just left.

They don't know where they went. And they did that two days in a row. The reason that people give that witness testimony any level of credibility at all is because of the red truck. Yep. So the red truck also popped up with Mr. Redrick. Mr. Redrick was a respected guy. And he claimed, oh, yeah, that guy, Ted Weir, I recognize him. He was driving, he was in the car with a red truck,

or he was with two guys in a red truck, parked on my property one time randomly like a year ago. Yeah. I asked him not to park there anymore, and that was the end of it. But I remember Ted, and I remember that they were in a red truck. Then you have Joseph Shones,

a very shady character. Super shady. Really, like, untrustworthy, but in all of the twists and turns in his account, he eventually lands on the first time he said anything, and the last time he said anything, he says there was definitely, a red truck that pulled up behind the Montego and I saw it and presumably after I called for help,

people got into it and left. And everything else was quiet. Like they didn't want to be seen. Yeah. So the thing about the red truck is that it basically introduces this wrinkle of were the boys going up there to secretly meet someone that they knew? Were the boys driven up there out of fear by someone driving a red truck? but then why would they be in the red truck after the night of the disappearance

at the market store buying more chocolate milk? They love chocolate milk, which I get it. I get that. I get it. That's the least mysterious part of this whole story. Right, 100%. Chocolate milk makes total sense.

But they didn't call their parents. They didn't give anyone an update. They didn't go home. We didn't come home for the basketball game. Yeah, it just doesn't make any sense. Yep. And so one of the other theories is that Joseph Shones ran into the boys.

There was a scuffle. There was an argument. And Shones basically like somehow drove them into the wilderness while also being so inebriated, by the way, I didn't bring this up, that he pooped his pants. And like had to finish pooping outside of the driver's side seat of his car. Now he says it was from the stress of the heart attack. But like that's pretty rare.

And we know that this happened because a park ranger that went to find Shones' car saw the poop right next to his car. So he's not really firing on all cylinders. So isn't it confirmed that he did have a heart attack at some point, but they're not even sure if it was that night? They don't know if it was that night. Because he was a drunk. Yeah, he was like a raging alcoholic.

He was drunk. And people had seen him drinking heavily in Orville that same day. And then he just like goes and drives up into the mountains. That's. Yeah. It's more in character for him. Tells this weird changing story. Oh, and the story where, oh, I was just there because I was having a heart attack.

Right. And then he didn't go to the hospital right after. He went only like two days. later because he was like, well, I guess I should go to the hospital because I still don't feel very good. And that's when they said, yeah, you've had a cardiac event sometime recently. That was all they said. His story changed in some other ways, too, like we outlined. One of the other theories is that Gary Matthias had some friends in a town that I can't remember the name of, but it was like south and a little bit more east of Orville. And those friends were from his seedier days.

When he was on drugs. Yeah, when he was like into the drugs. And so one idea is that they were driving back from the game. And Gary was like, hey, y'all want to go see my friends. Like they live down here. It would be a fun time. And he talked him into it. And either they took a wrong turn and no one noticed.

And then something drove them up into the wilderness and made them inexplicably go in, run into their deaths. or more likely, they made it to the town where Gary had his friends and something went wrong. Yeah. And some bad actors chased them out of the town and up into Plumas National Forest. And basically they were running out of fear for their lives. And that's why they didn't go back and they didn't try to make a lot of noise or light or whatever at the cabin. And it eventually led to all their deaths. Yeah.

And we don't know. And we don't know. And we just don't know. We just don't know. All of those are the shown thing to me is one of the more compelling because if you know a drunk, you know that they lie about everything. Yeah. They lie about stuff that makes no sense to lie about.

Yeah. They also don't remember everything that they've done. And they do evil, horrible things. Yeah. So you just, that's the part of, and I might be biased because of, you know, family experiences and things like that and just going, this is, I don't trust that guy. And if there's a really like angry, violent man and he's chasing him or he's whatever up there, you could see how they might run from him.

And he's still, and he was there all night. Like maybe, I mean, none of the boys had a firearm. Yeah. Maybe they were being chased by someone with a firearm. Yeah. And now, like, I don't care if it's five guys versus one. If the one has a gun and he's far away, you're going to be running. You're going to go the other direction.

Yeah. I don't buy the like, oh, it was a Bigfoot. It was a Wendigo because it doesn't explain. It only explains one thing, like why they ran from the car. Yeah. Okay, maybe they ended up here and then they were getting out to turn it around and all of a sudden they got attacked by a Wendigo. Yeah, but we just made that up.

It also doesn't explain why Gary Matthias and Ted Wire would spend that amount of time in the cabin. without any attempt to help themselves. Again, they were not out of their minds crazy that whole time. Yeah. Gary Matthias probably was in a bad place at the end, but like there's some reasoning skills somewhere in there. The storm wasn't blacked out the whole time. Like something could have been done.

The fact that Shone is conveniently there. Yeah. That is the part that I just go, hmm, he happened to be there. And then there's this reward, a couple of things. He knew that it was likely to come out that he had been there. Yeah. Because he goes down to the lodge. He gets help to get back.

You know, his car is stuck there. Yeah. So he has to explain why he's there. He comes up with multiple different stories that are weird. Yeah. And that introduce other complexities. And the red truck thing, sure. But a red truck could just be something he made up.

Yeah. It just happened to be a coincidence. When you look at it, you know, there's often details that your mind might want to draw a pattern from. And it's actually just noise. It's not signal in a story like this. There was also, I forgot about this. So Joseph Shones, he walked down to that lodge and he was being driven back by two, I think like a husband and wife, two people who were just willing to give them a ride.

According to them, he kept going on and on and on in that car, right? About how, oh, that dang car behind me kept tailgating me. And that's how I got stuck up in the woods. they were riding my tail and that's how I got stuck. And so even he like right away, his initial reaction was someone else is there. He got stuck on accident because someone was driving really close to him. And then that story kind of changed. He like backtracked on that a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just really odd. I don't trust him. No, you can't trust him as far as you trust him. The thing, the only. I could throw him pretty far. I couldn't. I'm not on a cut like you are.

That's what I'm saying. It actually makes me weaker. The only thing that makes his story interesting, well, I mean, it's all interesting. But the thing that like really sticks out with him is that he also mentions that red truck. And you're just like, man, what is the deal with this thing? Actually, the police, they latched on to this lead.

Yeah. And they started putting out APBs on old red trucks in the area. I figure out if something would shake loose. Yeah. And they finally, like, They checked a bunch and they were all normal. They all had alibis, whatever. Yeah.

They found one that was like a squad car passed by one that was parked at an abandoned cabin, some ways up in the valley north of Orville. And so they sent like, you know, some other guys to go check it out. By the time they got there just a few hours later, red truck was gone, cabin was abandoned once more, and they never saw that truck again. Strange. Yeah. Just a lot of loose ends that we don't know.

Like maybe nothing, maybe something. The solution to. Ultimately, just a tragic story. Yeah. Still full of mystery. We don't know what drove them to that road. We don't know what drove them from the car. We just, we're left with this very sad, strange tale.

Yeah. And no closure. That's what's frustrating about it. Yeah. Yeah. And no likelihood of ever getting closure in this life. You know, this part of why we, why I especially wanted to do this story is because it just is another example of how mysterious and strange of a place the world is, but also how, in a very

real sense, the weirdest thing about this world is mankind. And especially fallen man's reason, the struggles that he has to deal with, the nature of man that we love closure, but in a fallen world where things go wrong, we often don't get it. Yeah. And how that drives us insane. Yeah. I think that's a fascinating thing to look into, be humbled by. Yeah. But this is a tragic tale, and we're going to leave you with another tragic tale.

So ready for the hot clothes? Yeah. I mean, and this would be the last note that I would say going into this. These are the kind of stories that tell you you have to be prepared to die. Yeah. Because people don't, we're so fragile. We just assume that we're going to be good. Even in the middle of all those like, oh, yeah, my whole family is in a car in a mountain

and a snowstorm. We could die. I never thought like, I'm going to die. Right. Because we don't think that. We think, I can't even imagine that, but we're going to die. You're going to die. You could die today.

You could die in 50 years. You have to live prepared to die. The only way to do that is by faith in Christ. So I think it's yet another reminder, a tragic one, that we have to be, we have to treat this life seriously and be prepared to face eternity. And that the only safe way to do that is through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yep. Have your sins forgiven.

And be prepared. to let death be the usher that introduces you to the Lord instead of judgment. Yeah. The psalmist says, teach us to number our days. Let these stories teach us to number our days. Let it be a blessing of God that causes us to lean more on him to be more dedicated in our faith to him,

more childlike in our faith. Because these are the things that will not waste away even when our bodies go into the ground. And even in this last story, a story of masculine heroism and courage. And so with that, thanks for listening to this season, guys. We hope you enjoy the graveyard shift coming up. And if you like what we do here on Hanna Cosmos,

chipping a few bucks, become a patron, help us keep doing what we do and make it better every season. We look forward to seeing you next season. Look forward to seeing you in the graveyard shift. And now on with the show. When faced with a mysterious tragedy like this one, the temptation to theorize and develop a false sense of certainty around some theory or other is strong. Humans love closure. We love puzzles, but only when they're capable of being solved.

What picks at us and drives us crazy are those riddles with no answer or answers that just seem counterintuitive. This case seems to be just such a thing. A veridical paradox, if ever there was one. Whatever the hypothesis, whatever nail we think we found in the coffin, we have to remind ourselves, that we just don't know. We have to confess that ignorance reigns over all of the connections we may try to make. We just simply do not know what led to the terrible death of these men.

We simply don't know what happened to Gary Matthias. It'd be easy to blame the whole thing on a Wendigo or a Bigfoot or some fairy of the mountain, but this case leaves little room for such a thing. Some unknown and compelling force drove those men into the hell of snow and ice that night, and those subsequent,

days. But beyond this fact, lies shadow. Somebody probably did something out of malice, in the innocence of mishap, or in the trouble of inexcusable ignorance, and that something led to the deaths of at least four men. Indeed, probably five in the as yet to be found with Ayas. We're less scratching our heads, marveling at the awesome power of nature, at the delicacy of mankind, the tragedy on display for these men and their families, and at the mystery and intrigue of it all. Therefore, let this be a lesson for all of us. This world, this stage of glory set by and for the awesome God, is itself an awesome place. Terrible to behold, groaning and careless at times. Tread carefully. Things can turn to disaster with the turning of a single

second. Something like this happened in November of 2006. The Kim family finished their Thanksgiving holiday in the suburbs of Seattle and embarked on their journey towards home in San Francisco. The small family station wagon was packed to the gills with Father James, the mother Katie, and the two Kim daughters, four-year-old Penelope, and seven-month-old Sabine. It bobbed steadily along the rolling hills of autumn. By the time the family was across the Oregon state line, highway hypnosis held each adult in a sort of waking trance. All they had to do was stay on the Interstate 5 until the exit for Roseburg.

They could afford a daydream. Roseburg was not for many more miles. After Roseburg, it was a shorter final stretch to their luxurious overnight stay on the Oregon coast at the famous two-two-ton lodge. Katie thought long about a soothing evening in the hot tub with a glass of wine. Hours passed before either James or Katie checked the map again. When they did, they knew right away the mistake would cost them. 42 miles too far south. It was already late and James didn't want to turn back.

That would put them at the lodge way past bedtime, taking away any chance the family had at actually enjoying the lodge. The only option was to cut due west through the winding mountains of Grant's Pass in the Oregon Mountains. Besides, a scenic drive through the November Forest could only add to the trip's richness, right? James and Katie were confident. They smiled and looked on content while the hotels of Grant's Pass City drifted through the windows of their car. They turned on to Bear Camp Road and looked in awe at the Paradisal Valley. that lay between them and the mountains. The grass kept nourished by the frequent rains, still a lush green.

Old pines lined the road, directing them up and up like a stairway to some castle toward the lofty peaks of the rogue national forest. Above, the sky grew steadily more gray, a harbinger for the coming storm. Their road was 55 miles as the crow flies. At the end of it, the two-two-ton parking lot would be upon them. As they entered the Gorgothian slopes of the rogue mountains, the clouds were black with malice and billowed up like a mushroom cloud. James and Katie gave one another a sideways glance. The first signs of real fear from either of them, and it came for each simultaneously.

The four-year-old Penelope couldn't hide her disquiet at the looming storm. She hated storms. Still, James drove breakneck on and on into the wild. At first it was only rain, but as the road wound upwards, heavy flakes of snow started to fall thick, blew in from every direction. Before long, a thin coat of it was on the ground and James was having difficulty seeing. An hour later, and the road was under five inches of fresh powder. The car then crawled through switchbacks with difficulty and in an uncanny silence. Without remembering how or when it became so bad, the car started to slide down the road. James struggled to

to maintain control, and he did for a while, but the doom was sealed. He stopped and carefully turned the car around, finally done with all the risk. He backtracked until there was only rain and took a lower elevation road, an old and even less kept forest road, that eventually caught back up to the bear camp further west. Soon, however, the snow started to fall on this new way as well as before. The visibility was so limited that James passed the gate, the gate that was supposed to be already closed for the year. He never even noticed it. Not far beyond the gate, the road inclined and the snow grew deeper. It was now dark out, and he hid his worry well enough for both of his

daughters to fall asleep. Katie was even drifting in and out of sleep to his right, but he was gripping the wheel tight, terribly afraid of what had become of their situation. Another few miles came and went, and the family car started feeling more like a boat in thick waves than a car driving on a road. James felt the tires lose grip and then find purchase again with a jolt again and again. He shuddered at it because he realized that he had been jolted awake. Somehow he had drifted into a half sleep, even in spite of his panic. The fear boiled over them and James fell into despair. A quiet despair so as not to wake his wife and daughters, but a despair nonetheless. He checked the dashboard, a third of a tank of gas. He looked at the road ahead, piled high with snow that he

knew would eventually be too deep. James Kim made the agonizing decision to stop the car, leave it running, and get some sleep before continuing on the next day. Though he was suspicious then, he would not let himself fully believe, but it was true. He had driven into a prison from which there was no escape. No cell phone reception, dwindling fuel reserves, biting cold and thick snowfall, no extra food, no extra water, no other cars anywhere nearby to count on. Grant's pass was already threatening to become a grave. James woke up to the sound of seven-month-old Sabine crying. She was hungry.

Katie and Penelope awoke as well. Everyone was confused. The car was still running. His snow was still falling. And it continued to fall all day and into the night until the car was window deep in the stuff. James Kim was then forced to do a thing I would not wish on anyone. He had to look at his girls in the eye and tell them that they would be there for another night. cold and hungry and sensing the terror in their father and husband, all the girls cried.

It was the 27th of November. On the 30th, a search was finally launched. The Oregon National Guard came in with helicopters lent by James' employer. 80 civilian volunteers who knew the area well geared up to comb the hills and mountains. Park search and rescue teamed up with local law enforcement. If they could be found, they would be with such a team. In the car, though, the mood was dire. The girls were too tired and hungry to cry now.

Katie was exhausted. James was running on reserves he did not have. The car had sputtered to death sometime in the days prior. With a small fire, James had kept going outside of the driver's side door. He tried the signal for help by burning the car's spare tire. After that, there was only one more thing he could do. When December had finally come the next day, he told Katie of it. The two kissed and cried and fell asleep next to each other,

to the soundtrack of shivering sleepers in the back seat who needed their dad to save them. The next morning, James woke up quietly and packed a small bag of supplies. A couple of the snacks, they were rationing from their last stop at the gas station. It was minimal, and it pained him to take the calories from his people, but Katie agreed it was their best option. He opened the car door and stepped into the whiteout and was never seen alive again. Two more full days later, a man named John Racker was flying his helicopter over the National Forest. He was not affiliated with any of the formal search efforts, but was nonetheless keeping a keen eye peeled on the winding riverbeds and forest roads below to see any breaks in the white.

He blinked and rubbed his eyes at the sight of a woman carrying a child with another child walking beside her on a remote road. It was Katie, Penelope, and Sabine. He radioed the location into the channel being used by the search crews, and before long, the three were being airlifted out of the wilderness. Sabine woke up in the hospital. She was very warm and was next to her mother and sister, still just familiar shapes more than anything to her. She didn't remember the cold or the fear or the dark. She only recalled the crying, but that memory soon vanished too.

She didn't remember her father in her grown years. Just afternoon on December 6th, James Kim's body was found frozen in two feet of running icy water. He had died in one of the Rogue River tributary creeks that wound all through the snaking folds of the mountains. He still had the rest of his clothes on, and his backpack contained identification documents, but little else. He had traversed through snow up to chest deep

for over 16 miles in an attempt to rescue his wife and daughters. His resting place was less than a mile from a mountain lodge that, though closed for the winter, was occupied by groundskeepers and stocked with food and supplies. Want more hunted cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon. where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with brian and myself so go to patreon.com

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