Stuff You Should Know - The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

In 1978, five friends set out for home from a basketball game. The next day, their car was discovered in a lonely mountain road. The next spring, their bodies began to turn up. What happened that night remains a mystery to this day.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Chuck Wicks from Love Country, Talk to Chuck, where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also, if you love country, here's the deal, you love country music. You can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan of country music, or you can call in any time, you're like, oh, I want to talk about this.

Hall Cogan called in. He's like, Chuck, Zulkster, I love your podcast. Jason Aldeen, Jimmy Allen, Carly Pierce, Lauren Alaina. Welcome to new episodes of Love Country, Talk to Chuck every Monday and Thursday on the Nashville Podcast Network, available on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you should know. Yes. How are you doing, Chuck? Do I look tired? You seem a little, a little low-key. Tired, man. What's going on with you?

I've just been waking up like too early for no reason. Going to bed too late, though, because if you go to bed early and wake up early, you're fine. Well, going to bed late sometimes, not getting enough sleep, then going and trying to go to bed super early to make up for it. But I don't know about this making up for a sleep deficit. I don't buy all that. I feel like we talked about it before that there's, that doesn't actually work.

Yeah, I'm just tired. That's all I can say. Sorry, man. It's all right. I'll live. But hey, we're about to fly to Denver, and that'll correct all those ills. Yeah, that'll definitely make you catch up with your sleep immediately, being in a different time zone two hours later.

For sure. But a quiet, cool hotel, that'll help. It will help, man. I'm glad. It's going to be two good shows, Charles. Two good shows, and three, because I'm kicking one off the old bucket list, Venue Eyes, and going to a show at Red Rocks on Friday. Oh, cool.

Who are you going to see? The Avet Brothers. Oh, wow. That's really something. Don't they wear like pocket chains and stuff? I don't think so. Okay. Now, I was trying to just go to any Red Rock show, and if you look at the Red Rocks calendar,

there's a lot of stuff on there that would not appeal to me at all. A lot of groove, jam, crest stuff. And then this aligned with Avet Brothers, and it's like, yeah, that's great. I'll take it. That's great. Well, I'm glad it worked out for you, man. Yeah, it will be good. I'm on row 70 of 70, so.

I'm on row 70 as well. Are you going? No. I'm just teasing. Yeah, I think if I don't have a heart attack on the way up to row 70, it should be okay. It's supposed to be a cool venue. I've always heard. Yeah, I've been enamored of it since the Sunday Bloody Sunday video when I was a kid.

Oh, that's right. That was at Red Rocks, wasn't it? Absolutely. Nice. Well, here's to your bucket list, Charles. Thanks. And I could die on row 70, and at least one thing will have been accomplished. Right.

Yeah. You'll have your bucket list with you, and just the one scratched off. I hate that term anyway. Yeah, it's pretty bad. But I know that's what the people understand. You could call it your death list. That's even better. It's more like, I've got some music venues I'd like to see, and that's one of them.

Oh, okay. Some people do that with baseball stadiums. They go to every baseball stadium before they die. I try to go to as many of those as I can when I'm in different towns, for sure. All right. Best one I've been to? You want to ask? Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, what was the best one you've been to, man? Pittsburgh. Oh, for three rivers, isn't that one? Well, that was the old name. I think it has a different name now. Was that the time when we went and shot those Toyota commercials that you went? And that was the best baseball stadium you've ever been to? It's gorgeous.

What was so great about it? It's just, you know, it's positioned right there on the river, and if you have the right seat, you can look out over downtown and see all those beautiful bridges. It's just lovely. Wow, okay. Cool. Yeah. Well, quite clearly, I stayed in my room and gorged myself on chicken sock.

It was totally worth missing the Pittsburgh baseball stadium. Yeah, I remember that. It was funny. I hurt myself on that stuff. All right, I'm glad we killed some time before we got into this very mysterious, sad story. It's a good one, though, isn't it? It is extraordinarily sad. Probably the saddest, true, well, I don't know.

It's up there as far as true life, true crime, disappearances go. Yeah. And it's the one about Gary Mathias. Well. That's what they call it. They call it the Gary Mathias disappearance, but that really doesn't do it much justice or it doesn't serve it well because it was a lot more than Gary Mathias involved. Yeah, I've seen it more so called the Yuba County Five, but, you know, I guess it just

depends on where you're looking. I had not run across that. Oh, yeah? Oh, God, that makes me wonder what all stuff I missed. Well, you know there were five guys. What? So no, there actually were five guys. There were five friends.

Gary Mathias was one of them and there were four others. There was Ted Weir, who was the oldest. He was 32. Correct. There was Jackie Hewitt. He was the youngest. He was 24. There was Jack Madruga.

Yeah. I'm not sure what age he was, but he was definitely between 24 and 32. I'll tell you that. He had to put his arrows down. Bill Sterling. Uh-huh. Gary Mathias. And those five guys were a set of friends and they met at the Yuba City Vocational Rehabilitation

Center for what you would call today the cognitively impaired or cognitively challenged. Yeah, because three of these guys, of course, this one article you have from 1978 doesn't use appropriate terms anymore, but three of these guys were intellectually disabled. Um, or developmentally disabled, not an exact, like, it's kind of hard to get an exact diagnosis from these 1978 terms, but, uh, Madruga was undiagnosed, but according to his mom, uh, he was generally thought of, uh, as she said as quote, slow, uh, in quote. And then Mathias, uh, was the only one not diagnosed with, uh, a developmental disability, but he was under drug treatment for schizophrenia.

Right. So all five of these guys had some sort of challenge going on in their life. Right, exactly. So, so there's a lot of details you can kind of glean because you're absolutely right. Like reading the really great Washington Post article, which is basically the comprehensive document on the case from 1978, um, you can kind of glean an idea, a picture of these guys. They had five friends, thickest thieves, even within this, this tight little group of friends,

there's subgroups of even tighter friends, like, um, Ted Weir and Jackie Hewitt were particularly close and Bill Sterling and Jack Madruga were particularly close. Um, they had like, they were just these, these five guys known as the boys, right? They all lived at home with their parents. They were always going to live at home with their parents. That was just what, what the plan was, um, like, I think Ted, uh, Ted Weir had a, um, had a, uh, a job, um, as a janitor and then later on as a snack bar clerk, um, made a little basketball.

Yeah. That was another one. And they actually all played together on the basketball team for the vocational rehab center, basically like their hangout, the place where they hung out. Right. They played basketball on that team. But, um, Jack Madruga is worth saying had a driver's license, whereas three of the other ones didn't, although Gary Mathias did as well.

So these guys, they just, they were friends. They like had a, um, a tight kinship together. They had very normal, reliable lives that were basically home centric and, um, when they were out doing stuff, you could expect them home for dinner kind of thing. Like it was just a given. Yeah. So that's super worth pointing out here early on as they, uh, saw them more than one place. They said they referred to their lives as very predictable and scheduled, uh, which

is why this interesting, uh, the events that occurred, uh, on February 24th, 1978 were very, very unusual. Right. So on February 24th, 1978, the boys, that's what their families all call them because apparently all their families were at least in touch, if not friendly with one another. Yeah. They supported one another. It sounds like as much as anyone did in 1978.

Sure. Uh, so on this night, February 24th, there was a Friday night, 1978, um, the boys left their, uh, homes around Maryville and Yuba city in California and they traveled, I think about 50 miles north to Cal State Chico, which is now called Chico State University. And they went to go see their team, the Cal State LA team beat up on Cal State Chico and Cal State LA actually won 86 to 84, which would have pleased the boys tremendously. Sure. So they went to the game, that much is known, and then they left the game, that much is

known too because, uh, around 10 o'clock when they left the game, they went to a convenience store called Bears Market and they bought some stuff. Yeah. Apparently, uh, the, they were trying to kind of close up and so the clerk was a little bit annoyed that they showed up and these are the kind of details that aren't so important, but it just shows that, you know, they really did their investigating pretty thoroughly, uh, including, well, we'll, we'll get to sort of the, the lead investigator in a minute. But uh, yeah, they bought just a few things.

They bought a Hostess Cherry Pie, um, a Langendorf Lemon Pie, Snickers Bar, a Marathon Bar, a couple of Pepsi's, and a quart and a half of milk, uh, which is to say it's not like they were stocking up on food, they just got some, uh, some, some snacks. Right, exactly. Yeah. For the drive back home, 50, 50 miles, about an hour, yeah. The thing is, is, they, um, they would have been fully expected back home, not just because there was, you know, this was, it wasn't like any of them to spend the night away, right?

Yeah. Except Matthias. He, he had friends and he would stay out with friends sometimes, but, um, with the other four, like they slept in their bed at home every night. That's just what they did. So their families fully expected them to come back. Um, and another reason why they expected them to come back was because the next day, Saturday, they had a basketball game for their vocational rehab team, the Gateway Gators.

And the, uh, they apparently were all extraordinarily excited about this game. Yeah. Which again, is just another point being made that there was, these guys had every intention on coming home, super excited about the game. Uh, I think, uh, Matthias even was kind of driving his mom a little baddie saying, you know, don't let me oversleep. Got this big game. Apparently the guys had their clothes laid out, uh, and they were all super excited about

this basketball game. Uh, and then they don't come home. And you know, these parents and grandparents start waking up at various points in the middle of the night or in the morning and start getting in touch with one another. You know, all verifying, like your kid's not there, your, your kid's not there. And they start to freak out. And by eight o'clock that evening, I believe, uh, the mother of Madruga actually finally called the cops.

Yeah. And the cops, um, were kind of, I don't have the impression that they were like, well, this is, I'm sure this is fine. I think they got involved pretty early on. Yeah. But things really picked up when I think on a Tuesday, that was, it was Saturday night that they finally called the cops. And on Tuesday, uh, Jack Madruga's car was discovered and it was discovered in a very,

very unusual place, right? Yeah. What was this thing? An old Merk, uh, Mercury, Montego. Yeah. A 69 Montego. A land yacht is what it was. Exactly.

And they found it. Um, and this was, by the way, this was Jack Madruga's prized possession. Like no one else drove the thing. He took pristine care of it. It was like his baby, his car was, right? Yeah. He found it abandoned with the window, one of the windows rolled down up a mountain road, which was, um, I think 70 miles away from the basketball game in a different direction

away from their house, right? So the basketball game was north of their homes. This was east of Southeast of the basketball game and up a mountain road. It was extremely bizarre and also I'm sure quite worrying when the, the families were already worried. I think finding this car like this probably really set them into panic mode. Well, yeah. And here's where, uh, and this article is very clear to say from that point on, nothing

made any kind of sense. So here's a few things about the car that definitely don't add up. Uh, you might think, uh, all right, there, you know, there was a snowstorm. So they drove up here and they got stuck. Uh, apparently that is not true. The car stopped at about the snow line and they said they did confirm that the wheels had spun some, but the car wasn't stuck and these five dudes could have pushed it free pretty easily apparently.

Right. So that's thing number one. Thing number two is that it had a quarter tank of gas still, so they didn't run out of gas. Right. Then when the cops hot-wired the car, the keys were gone, uh, and when the cops hot-wired the cars started up immediately, there wasn't any engine trouble or anything like that. Yeah.

The last thing they found were all these maps of California. And, um, so it's not like they had no way of knowing where they were. Uh, and then they found all the, you know, all the wrappers from the food items. Uh, the only thing, ironically, that wasn't fully eaten was the marathon bar, um, living up to its reputation as the, I guess the toughest candy bar to get through. Yeah. That's, that's how they build it. Some weird cartoon cowboy.

Yeah. So, you know, that's the deal. The underside of the car wasn't damaged, which they say was pretty interesting because on this road, apparently there were a lot of deep, deep ruts. This thing kind of hangs low anyway. It has a low hanging muffler, has these five dudes inside, these grown men. Uh, and there was no damage under the underside of this car, which means, you know, a couple of things if you kind of are surmising, which is that either the driver kind of knew where

they were going, uh, and drove through the darkness with a lot of precision, or they just maybe drew, drove really slow. Yeah. I think it was the latter because I think Madruga was probably, would have been very unhappy that his car was on this road now. So, it just took it slow. And took it super slow. I saw somewhere that there wasn't even a large mud spot on it.

It was, they had taken it that easy. Yeah. And apparently Madruga, uh, didn't like the cold. He didn't like camping, so he wouldn't have known that road. It's not like there's a lot else to do up there, but that, right. And evidently, uh, none of the boys were big into outdoorsy type stuff. Oh yeah. That's a really good point, Chuck.

So like the, none of them had any connection to that, to that area and certainly not to that mountain. One of them, I think, uh, Bill Sterling had been, had gone camping with his family there eight years before. Yeah, and he didn't even like, I think they went back again and he was like, no, I don't want to go. Right. So he didn't like the outdoors.

He didn't like the cold. And then I think Ted, uh, Ted Weir had gone deer hunting or something once with friends way west of the area. Um, but still, I mean, enough that you could, that was, it was a lead that the cops would have chased down. Um, but, but then too, he didn't enjoy himself and he didn't like the, the woods either. So there, there was no, let's go hang out in the woods kind of thing going on here. Just everything about the fact that they found this car and where they found it in the state

they found it in was really bizarre and really worrying. Should we take a break? I think we should, man. All right. Let's go hang out in the woods and we'll be back right up to this on the podcast. Hey dude, the nineties called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show. Hey dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the nineties. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips?

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you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

There's a Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I've never swept the woods before. That was really interesting. All right. It's an awesome spick and span out here. So they find the car and when they find the car, Chuck, I think it was the next night after they had gone missing, a storm blew into the area and it dumped like almost a

foot of snow on the mountain. This is February in the mountains in California. I would guess the Sierras is what it sounds like, right? So yeah, Chico's in the Sierra, Nevada's. I think it's north of Sacramento. So it would be very, very cold and the snow would be pretty tough to get through. But they still tried. They got guys on horseback, they got helicopters out.

They looked for them, but they found nothing. They found not one bit of, not a single trace of these guys, just the car. And that was it. Yeah. The snow certainly didn't help anything. Because it would not be until June, on June 4th, after this thing, the mountain falls out somewhat. When these Sunday motorcycle bikers, they'll go right around the mountains, they went into

an old forest service trailer camp at the end of a road and said, do you smell something that smells like perhaps a dead body? And sadly, it was a Ted Weir and this is where things get even stranger. Yeah. So I think the trailer caught their attention, but what caught their attention even further was that a window had been broken to get into the trailer. And then, yeah, like you said, what really caught their attention was the smell in the sight of Ted Weir's decomposing body.

But what made it very, very weird is one, he's wrapped in sheets, tucked under his head in a way that he couldn't have possibly tucked himself. So somebody had tucked him in like that. And Ted Weir had been a portly fellow. Anthony Agourney, who wrote the Washington Post article on this case in 1978, calls him beer belly handsome, which I've never heard those words put together in my entire life. Oh, I think that's what I am.

Sure. Sure. I'd call you beer belly foxy. Okay. Okay. So, but he was beer belly handsome. He was a thick guy. He was like five, 10, 200 pounds.

He had a few extra pounds on him, right? And they found him though, he weighed about 120, 100 to 120 pounds, which means that between the time that they went missing and the time that he died, he'd lost anywhere between 80 and 100 pounds. Yeah. A couple of more interesting tidbits. His leather shoes were gone and missing completely. On the little nightstand by his bed was his own ring, because it had his name engraved

on it. Ted. Yeah, Ted, his gold necklace, his wallet with money, and then weirdly, a watch that was not his. It was a gold Waltham watch that had a missing crystal, and all of the families said that none of our kids had this watch. Right. So, that's one interesting tidbit, and the other is that he had a big full beard that

indicated that he lived in that cabin for anywhere from eight to 13 weeks. Right. And what's really, really unnerving about the 13-week one, a 13-week number, is that if he survived 13 weeks, that means that he would have died just days before his body was found. Is that right? Yes. Did you do the math?

I did the math, because think about it. So, they disappeared on February 24th, and he was found June 4th. So, you've got March, April, May. May. It would have been early June. I really, really hope, I'd call on the saints that that not to have been the case. Like that he perhaps died a couple of days before? Yeah.

That he would have expired weeks before, that there was just no chance for him. Like, if he was destined and doomed to die, I really hope it wasn't a couple days before they found his body after starving for 13 weeks. Yeah. And to cap it off, I don't think we've mentioned yet. This cabin was almost 20 miles from their car. Oh, yeah. So, in the middle of the night, and at this point, this is all we know is about Ted in

our story, he walked or ran almost 20 miles in four to six foot snowdrifts to go to this trailer where he spent the next two to three months slowly dying. Yeah. So, okay. That's pretty weird in and of itself. And they found that his feet were terribly frostbitten, right? Which is why his shoes were off, but again, his shoes were missing. What gets even weirder, and this is just where the case truly turns bizarre is one of the

Yuba County Sheriff's deputies or undersheriff called it bizarre as hell is like the quote of the story. The trailer, the cabin was actually like a forest service trailer and it was an emergency trailer from what I understand. And it was fully stocked with a year's worth of food that would have kept all five of those boys alive for a year. It was built to keep you alive. Yes, exactly.

And they found it, but they didn't put it to use. Now, that's not to say that they didn't find the food. There were 12 rations, like sea rations, like army meals, opened and eaten, but that was it. The other stuff wasn't touched. There was a whole locker of other dehydrated food and fruit cups and stuff that hadn't been touched at all. And bear in mind, this is all right here while Ted Weir is starving to death.

Yeah, so all this food is there. They found out, or the investigators determined that there had not been a fire built, even though there were paperback nobles, there was wood furniture, there were matches. Everything was there to build a fire, and not only that, but there was a propane tank that all they had to do, it was in another shed outside. All they had to do was open this thing on, and they would have actually had gas heat. Yes, heat, right? They also didn't even cover up the broken window that they used to get into the trailer.

It's just weird, just bizarre decision after bizarre decision, right? Yeah. So there's one other thing in the trailer that is pretty interesting. They find Gary Mathias' tennis shoes. So Gary Mathias' tennis shoes are there, and Ted Weir's leather shoes are missing. And what they think possibly is that Gary Mathias was in the trailer with Ted. Ted had terrible frostbite. Ted would have had bigger feet than Gary.

Gary probably had frostbite too, so he used Ted's shoes to put them on and go back out into the wilderness. Yeah. I mean, they pretty much determined that probably all five of those guys were in here at one point. Okay. So I have to say, I don't think that's true. Oh, really?

Because that's what I saw. So what I saw was that they, so okay, we should probably tell everybody that we should continue on, Chuck, but I think a day after they found Ted Weir, they started looking around the area and they started finding the other boy's remains. Yeah. And this is thanks to what I said would be sort of the lead investigator, Yuba County Lieutenant Lance Ayers, who actually had gone to high school with Weir, didn't own that well, but he was really consumed by this case and seemed sort of obsessed with trying

to solve it to the point where he was chasing down leads from psychics at one point. Yeah. Apparently he met with a psychic who told him that the boys were in Oroville or had been murdered in a red house, either brick or stained in Oroville, with the house number either 4723 or 4753. And Lance Ayers was so consumed with this that he actually drove every street of Oroville over a two-day period trying to find that house based on the tip of a psychic. That's how obsessed he became with this case.

Yeah. So we've put a pin in our, were they all in the cabin debate? Mm-hmm. We're coming back to that, right? Right. All right. So now we pick up a story of a man named Joseph Shones, and this is where things get even more odd.

So this guy was 55 years old. He got in touch with the cops because, you know, some strange things that had happened that night of the disappearance. He was going to go camping with his family on, you know, up that road. And so he decided to take his little Volkswagen Beetle around 5.30 that evening just to check out the snow line, see if it was passable, and if it was going to be safe to take his family camping that weekend. He found out it was not.

Yeah. He got his car stuck right above the snow line, and this was to be about 50 yards further than where that mercury would eventually be found. Right. So he has, he gets out to push his Beetle, right, and has a heart attack. He's 55, and this is 1978, which means he lived on nothing but Scotch and Steak, so you can imagine that that was the outcome, right, when you have to push your Volkswagen Beetle. And he's like in a bad spot right there.

He's alone in the wilderness at the snow line of a mountain, eight miles away from help. The place that he had stopped to actually get a drink, probably of Scotch, on the way up the mountain to check out the snow line had been eight miles back in the other direction. So he very wisely like leaves his car running with the heater on and just lays there and tries to collect himself and gather himself. Yeah. This is a mild heart attack we should point out. But enough that if you just have shown, you are probably freaking out.

Oh yeah. I'm not trying to diminish like his danger level, but it wasn't like he was like laying there near death. Like he would eventually hike eight miles out after this heart attack. Yes. So he, but while he was laying there trying to like gather his strength again. So this happened about 530, and he said a couple hours after that, some, a car, at least one, but probably two cars and one of them would have been a pickup truck came up and

had their lights on and he saw the silhouettes of some men and a woman with a baby. And he said he called out to them and they ignored it and turned off the lights and he got back in his car. And he said he laid there for another few hours before he heard some whistling sounds and some flashlight beams a little further down the mountain, probably about 50 yards. And that would have been a couple hours, probably about five or six hours after his heart attack. And they think that the second group at least was the five boys with Gary Mathias. Yeah.

And I, well, I think at this point they were right outside his car window. Yeah. So again, he gets out, calls for help and the whistling sounds stop and the flashlights get turned off. And so he goes back in his car and lays back down. Yeah. So two groups of people have come up this mountain. I'm having a heart attack here and somehow calling for help is chase both of them off,

both groups off. Yeah. So that Volkswagen Beetle, like I can tell you from experience had like an eight gallon gas tank. So it eventually runs out of gas. It also, now that I think about it, doesn't have a very efficient heating system. Like my first Beetle didn't even have a fan. We just call it the ankle burner.

Like when you turned on the heat, it literally just opened vents in the floorboard that like came straight off the engine. Wow. That's sharp design. So you wouldn't even like, you had to be moving for there to be actually hot air running through it. Man. But I do know that I had another Beetle that had, that did have a little fan.

So let's just presume that Showns had the fan. I'm not going to. I'm going to presume the opposite. Okay. I'm going to presume that this was the hellish experience for him in every way. All right. So eventually the car runs out of gas. It's still dark and he manages after this heart attack, like I said earlier, to walk

eight miles to a lodge called the mountain house. Is that where he had gotten the drink? Yeah. All right. So he comes back and they're like, Showns. And he's like, don't Showns me. He have no idea what I've been through. It turns out it's pretty serious.

And on the way out, he passes this Montego sitting empty in the middle of the road. About 50 yards further down the mountain behind his car where he stopped at the snowline. That's right. So Showns doesn't think much of this. He just is like, okay, well, there's a car in the middle of the road. The snowline's here. I'm not the only one who got stuck last night. Those guys are jerks for not coming to my aid when I shouted for help.

And he doesn't think much of it until all of a sudden on the news, he starts seeing these reports of these five guys who went missing the same night that he had his heart attack on the same road in the same mountain. And he came forward. And the cops figured out like that Joseph Showns was probably the last person to see those five guys alive. Well, yeah, they're silhouettes at least. Yeah.

Should we take a break? I think so, man. All right. Let's take a break and get to some more sad discoveries right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? Don't leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second-hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So, I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast.

Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Okay, we're back, Chuck. We are. You promised more sad discoveries. Lay it on them. All right. So, the next day, after Weir's body had been found, the search is really on at this point. They found a few things.

They found the remains of Sterling and Madruga. They're on different sides of the road, that same road that led to the trailer, but about 11 and a half miles from the car. Right. So, presumably another, what, nine miles from the trailer? Yes, which is why I think that they never made it to the trailer. Put a pin in that. Okay, all right.

All right. Madruga had very gruesomely been partially eaten by animals, of course, up there in the woods. Probably after he died, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it sounds like all of this was they succumbed to nature, and then the animals kind of took it from there. Right.

So, they dragged his body to a stream. He was laying their face up. They said with his hand curled around his watch, and then Sterling was in the woods and very gruesomely, they said that his remains were, or his bones, I guess, were scattered over about 50 feet. Yes. And then, I think a day or so after that, there was another search party that was launched, and Jackie Hewitt's father insisted on being a part of it.

And Jackie Hewitt was still missing, and very sadly, his dad was the one who discovered his remains. He found his son's, I think, spine is what he came upon. Yeah, and the same road a lot closer to the trailer, though. But he, right, like just a quarter mile or something, right? Yeah, I think that's about right. Something very, very close to it. And they also found his clothes, they knew it was him, because his leave eyes and his

shirt were also found nearby. And so, he was wearing very stylish platform shoes called Get There's, which I had to look up, and they were actually pretty fresh. Yeah, not the kind of shoes that you want to be hiking around the snowy woods in. No, definitely not. I mean, again, platform shoes, they're like, you know, that rubbery, sold thing that you find on like Clark's, like Clark Wallabies, like the thick rubbery, so I think it's called crepe sold.

They were like those, but platform shoes and like a ripply bottom. Yeah, look at these things. Yeah, they're probably the worst hiking shoes you could ever imagine. What these would be good for, actually. Catching ladies, probably. All right, I guess. I mean, they're pretty cool. That wavy sole, though, looks so strange.

Well, I'll look that up, it's to keep your center of balance when you're way up there. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, that makes more sense then. Yeah, there was a lot of thought put into those shoes. And then finally, the next day, there was a skull discovered about 100 yards downhill, and that was the final remains from Jackie Hewitt. Yeah, so they found everybody, everybody that is except for Gary Matthias, he was still

missing. Yeah, and he still is actually, if you go on the Yuba County Sheriff's website on their missing persons page, he's still listed there. Yeah, his shoes were inside again in that trailer, which, you know, they can't say anything for sure though, but it suggests that he was in there at one point and they surmised that he may have, like you said, taken them off to wear the leather shoes, I guess presumably because they were warmer. Or his feet were frostbitten and had swollen, so he needed the bigger shoes to strike out,

back outside. Like, he was like, I can't go out there barefoot and I can't get my tennis shoes on any longer. Yeah, and so the deal with Matthias, like we said, he was under treatment for schizophrenia. He was in the Army in Germany and apparently had occasions, post-war, where he had become violent. He was charged with assault a couple of times, but all accounts say that for at least the last two years, he had really been on his meds. He had been working in his stepdad's business.

He was, they called him one of our sterling success cases. As doctor did. Yeah, and they were really, you know, he was really coming around and hadn't had any, what is his dad? He said he called them haywire episodes, hadn't had one of those in a couple of years, and the stepfather said that he had been taking his meds the week he disappeared. Right, and the stepfather would know, because the stepfather owned a gardening business, and Gary Matthias had been working with him side by side for a couple of years by that

time. Yeah. So he also didn't seem like wanting to really mince words or BS, so I take him for his word that his son was fully medicated, and his schizophrenia was under control, it sounds like. Yeah. So the problem is, is he hadn't taken his pills with him. So if he did survive, he had gone without him.

He left him at home, and the reason why he left him at home is because he fully expected to be back home a couple hours after he left for the basketball game. Yeah. Now, more evidence that like it's just really bizarre that they went anywhere but home, and that raised a lot of questions for the families back in the day. I think Madruga's mom, Mabel, was very vocal about her belief that somebody had either tricked or threatened her son and the other boys into going up that mountain, or somebody else was responsible for this series of decisions.

Yeah, so they learned a few things afterward that are sort of clues but never ended up solving anything. One is that a snow cat, a Forest Service snow cat had been up that road, I think just the day before. Yeah, I think so. And packed in a path of snow, so it was walkable. So it led up to that trailer, and they surmised that the boys might have been the only walkable path forward, so they might have followed that path to the trailer.

They hired a water witcher at one point, and he was in Paradise, California, and he said that he fixed his little, is it divining or divining? Divining. Divining rod, to pick up human minerals and traces of humans, that led them to another cabin where they found a disposable lighter, and this was about three-quarters of a mile from the trailer where they found the body, and all the parents said no, like they didn't have a lighter like this, the guys didn't carry a lighter. So there were a lot of dead ends like that, and for example that watch that had been found

with Ted Weir, that it was missing its crystal, and all the family said that wasn't any of our boys' watch. Right. It was totally meaningless. It could have been a forest ranger who had left the watch behind because it had broken or something like that, but most of the evidence in this case are just little dead ends. Yeah, that Gary Mathias apparently knew some people, and they're really just sort of reaching at this point, new people in Forbstown, which is about halfway between Chico and Yuba City,

and apparently the turn is easy to miss, and there was some speculation like maybe he was taking his buddies to go see this people he knew, got lost, but apparently those friends were like, we hadn't seen him in years, and it would be really like unlikely that he just would have randomly come to visit. Yeah, I could also see the other boys not wanting to go along with that too, because they had that basketball game in the morning that they all wanted to be fresh as a daisy for you too, and like Gary Mathias had been badgering his mom, I think like you said, to make sure he didn't oversleep the next morning, because he was excited about that

basketball game too. So the thing is though, Chuck, is even if, let's say that is the case, let's say that they all got a wild hair and they decided to go see Gary Mathias' friend, and they started up this mountain because they got lost, they missed the turn off, and ended up on a mountain road at the snow line, thought the car was stuck. Why would all of them, all of them collectively and individually say, well, let's go up rather than back down, let's go up into the snow, supposedly the snow drifts were six, eight feet.

Even if it was packed down with a snowcat, it doesn't make sense to go forward, unless they thought, well, the last site of civilization behind us was too far, maybe there's something up here. Which is a thing, it's an economic theory called sunk cost, where you're so invested in something, you're so far along that you don't want to just stop and turn back or quit. So it's possible that that was, that aided in their decision making, but again, okay, so then let's say that they're like, okay, the snowcat track is going to lead us to safety or something.

When they get to the trailer, like why not eat the food? Why not make a fire? I can, I can even see missing the propane tank, just not being, you know, just with it enough from the harrowing experience, that you could just totally miss a propane tank and not even think that your trailer is going to have that kind of thing. But the food that you've already started to eat, that you already show you have a can opener and know how to use it, like how do you just starve to death after that? Well, I mean, the food, the other food was in a locker, they never opened apparently.

But like if you're there, especially for two to three months, like you're turning over everything, you're lighting a fire with whatever you can get your hands on, there's plenty of stuff to make a fire. What's up with the supposed woman and the baby? That could be chalked up, maybe pretty easily to, what was his name? Snopes? Shoes? Shones.

Shones. Snopes, maybe. Snoop Dogg. That could be chalked up to him in the state of a heart attack in the middle of the night just sort of seeing things. Could have been, or it could have just been an entirely different party of people who had nothing to do with it or everything to do with it. But it could have, they could have been there too.

I mean, it was, you know, it was a mountain. Some people lived on it. Some people apparently camped there, which is what Shones was scouting for, you know. How did Matthias never get found at all? I don't know. I saw, and I think at the end of the WAPO article, Cynthia Gourney, the journalist says that probably, you know, he'd laid there on the snow somewhere that they just didn't find or overlooked, or he got buried in the snow, and then when the thaw came, he sunk down

to the ground and was covered over by some mountain vines. I guess so, but it seems like after all these years, a bone or one of those leather shoes or something would have been found. Yeah, you'd think both of those would still be intact. Yeah, I mean, what I did not see was any sort of speculation that he had any nefarious actions. But we did put a pin in something. I don't remember what it was.

I saw a couple of theories that they speculate that all of these guys went to the cabin at one point, and maybe Weir wasn't doing so well, so they all set out independently to go look for help, and each died, or maybe in pairs maybe, since the two guys were kind of found together. But I don't know. I mean, it's all just speculation. You saw that they don't think they were all there? Yeah, what I saw was that Jackie Hewitt and Bill Sterling and Jack Madruga had never made

it to the trailer. So they would have split up on the way up? No, no, that they had... Or died during that 20-mile hike? Yes. Oh, interesting. And then Ted and Gary had continued on up and made it to the trailer. And then what I think happened after that was Gary nursed Ted.

Gary had been in the Army, and the can opener that was there was actually a very simple thing called the P-38, but you kind of had to have been in the Army to know how to use it, and Ted wouldn't have been, and Gary would have been. So I think Gary may have stayed, probably fed both of them, and then, like you said, seeing Ted was not doing so well, set out again with Ted's shoes and died going off to get help somehow. That's what I think happened. Yeah, I would have think they'd get split up on the way up, though.

I just don't even know these guys would have died that quickly on the way on this 20-mile hike. I mean, six to eight-foot snowdrifts. That's cold. Yeah, but they're also on the snowpacked trail, supposedly. Sure, but they also have... They're dressed for mild weather. They didn't have jackets, sweaters. Their shoes were like converse kind of things, aside from the platform shoes.

It's entirely possible that a 20-mile hike up a mountain, they succumb to the weather. Yeah, and you also... It was hard to determine what level of intellectual impairment these boys had, so I don't know how much that plays into it, if at all, like when they get to this cabin. Like, did Matthias'... Because he didn't have his meds after that, did he start kind of breaking down with some episodes of schizophrenia and leave? Did the other guy not fully understand? I mean, at that point, he's exhausted and maybe hurt and scared.

Was he not even able to figure out maybe to light a fire? Light a fire or how to use that can opener, or maybe he felt he couldn't get out of bed because of his feet. And he was just stuck there after Gary struck out to go get help, that there was nothing he could do when the poor guy starved to death. Yeah, but what were they doing up there to begin with? That's the basic root of this whole thing. Yeah, but that's why they call this the American Dyatlov Pass.

We got to do an episode on that one too, but because there's like a mystery within a mystery within a mystery. There's so many other mysteries that just kind of crescendo from the first mystery, which is, what were they doing there? It's true. Well, and like you said, some of the parents firmly believe like they witnessed something at this basketball game and were then chased up this mountain. Yeah.

Like I don't even know what that means, like they witnessed a crime and they came after him or something. That's what Ted Weir's sister-in-law always believed. And speaking of Ted Weir, you got anything else on this? No, except to only say if that was the case, then why was the car seemingly driven very slowly and carefully up this road if they were being chased? Oh, okay. So you make a good point.

And I think I saw that elsewhere too, that like that virtually proves that they weren't chased. Yeah. If anything, it shows that they, that say something happened to them and somebody ditched their car who knew the area, I think more likely Jack Madrugo, it just would have driven extraordinarily slowly because this is his baby car. Yeah. It's all just very sad.

It's just one of those, it's probably like Occam's razor. It's probably the most simple explanation is, you know, maybe they just went on a little joy ride, got a little lost, got turned around in the woods and succumbed to nature. Yeah. So I find this, I said at the beginning that this is just a very sad story to me. Yeah. And one of the things that got me was in that Washington Post article. It's called Five Boys Who Never Come Back by Cynthia Gornes from 1978 and you can find

it online, but she describes Ted Weir as, you ready for this, that Ted got a good chuckle out of phoning Bill Sterling and reading from newspaper items or oddball names from the telephone book. Like that's what he was into. Yeah. That's what made him happy. And I'm sure Bill Sterling thought it was hilarious too, but like they were just this group of friends and can't you just imagine like Ted Weir like going through the phone book, looking

for silly names and going and picking up the phone and calling his friend Bill Sterling and saying, Bill, get a load of this one. And Bill's just laughing on the other end of the line. And like they just had like this, such a pure life, like almost like an enviable life in a lot of ways and that they died so horribly is just bitterly sad to me. Yeah. I mean, he's got a lot of trouble makers and even the one who had gotten convicted of assault a couple of times.

Gary. Yeah. Gary, it seems like all signs point to the, his mental illness is playing a big factor in that, which he had gotten in check. Right. Exactly. All very sad. It is very sad.

Well, if you have any theories on the, what'd you call them, the Yuba City Six Five? Yuba County or Yuba City Five? Yuba City Five. We want to hear them. You can find all of our social media connections on our website, StuffYouShouldKnow.com. And if you like, you can also send us an email. Just shoot it off to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Wait, we haven't done Listener Mail, have we?

No. You were just going to let me keep going, weren't you? I know. You know. All right. Well, hold on everybody. Very great. Hold on.

Don't stop yet. Don't stop yet. Okay, it's time for Listener Mail. Yes. And speaking of which, this Listener Mail is rated, rated R. Okay. That's all I'll say. Does it use the S word?

No, but it doesn't use curse words. It's just, talks very frankly about sex and it's good PSA though. So we should say this stuff. Oh, I know this one. Yep, for sure. And this is from Emily, not my wife. Hey guys, listen to the Selects episode on condoms the other day. Thanks for all the great info.

I appreciate you covering topics, maybe slightly controversial or divisive and do so with such grace. I wanted to throw a little extra PSA in there though, for your listeners. Most people are aware that you can and should use condoms to prevent pregnancy and or STIs when a penis is involved, but there's far less awareness about protection when you've only got vaginas in the mix. Although you certainly can't get pregnant, it is possible to spread or contract an STI from sex between two women or other vagina having people, but you can greatly reduce

your risk of this by using a dental dam. It's a sheet of latex placed over the bulb or anus for oral sex. That's all and that's all there really is to it. If you don't have one on hand, you can safely DIY one by unrolling a regular condom, cutting off the close end and bam, it's a dental dam. In the case of digital sex, not as in computers as in fingers, latex gloves are perfect for the job. Of course, these can also be used by absolutely anyone.

There's a lot more awareness of protection for heterosexual and male homosexual couples and not a lot for queer women. Well that's my stuff you should know and now you know it. Thanks for consistently great work and outstanding effort in educating and entertaining us every week and happy Pride Month and she wrote back, I just realized I gave an incomplete DIY instruction. You would cut off the close end of the condom and the ring on the open end, then cut down the middle and now it's a flat sheet. Bam.

That is from Emily. Thanks a lot Emily. Happy Pride Month indeed. Good info. Yeah, it was good info and if you out there want to send us good info, I already said it. I said it once and I'll say it again. You can find all our social stuff on StuffYouShouldKnow.com and you can send us an email to StuffPodcast

at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas

are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Chuck Wicks from Love Country Talk to Chuck, where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also, if you love country, here's the deal, you love country music. You can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan of country music, well, you can call in anytime.

You'll be like, oh, I want to talk about this. Paul Cogan called in. He's like, Chuck, Zulkster, I love your podcast. Jason Aldean, Jimmy Allen, Carly Pierce, Lauren Elena. Listen to new episodes of Love Country Talk to Chuck every Monday and Thursday on the Nashville Podcast Network available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.