The five friends lived with their families around Yuba City and Marysville, in California’s Sacramento Valley, and played together on a basketball team organized through a local program for adults with disabilities. Jack Madruga, 30, and Bill Sterling, 29, were close friends. Ted Weiher was 32 and Jackie Huett 24. Four of the men had mild intellectual disabilities. The fifth, Gary Mathias, 25, was an Army veteran who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was managing it with medication. Their families described all five as capable and used to traveling together.
What happened
On the evening of Friday February 24, 1978 Madruga drove the group in his 1969 Mercury Montego to Chico, about 50 miles north, to see Chico State play basketball on its home court. Their own team was due to play in a Special Olympics tournament the next day, and a win would have taken them to the finals in Los Angeles. After the game ended at around 10 pm they bought snacks and soft drinks at a convenience store. Then, instead of heading south for home, they drove east and climbed into the Sierra foothills.
Their families reported them missing the next morning. On February 28 a Forest Service ranger identified the Mercury on Oroville-Quincy Road in the Plumas National Forest, at about 4,400 feet, roughly 70 miles from Chico and near the winter snow line. The car was unlocked with a window down and a quarter tank of fuel. It had no damage and the keys were missing. Its wheels appeared to have spun in the snow, though the author Tony Wright later argued the men could easily have pushed it free.
A Sacramento man, Joseph Schons, had been stuck in snow on the same road that night while having what turned out to be a mild heart attack. He told police he saw headlights and heard voices, called out for help, and saw the lights switch off. Early the next morning he walked about eight miles to a lodge, passing the empty Mercury on the way.
The investigation
Snowstorms soon halted the search. On June 4, 1978, after the thaw, a group of motorcyclists came across a Forest Service trailer at a remote camp, its front window broken, about 19 miles from the car by the route the men are thought to have walked. Ted Weiher lay on a bed, wrapped in sheets. He had lost close to half his body weight, his feet were badly frostbitten, and his beard suggested he had survived for some weeks. Some of the stored military rations had been opened and eaten, but a locker of dried food, the heating fuel, matches and books that could have fed a fire went unused. Mathias’s sneakers were in the trailer, and Weiher’s shoes were missing.
The next day searchers found Madruga and Sterling on the road about 11 miles from the car. Within days Huett’s father found part of his son’s remains about two miles from the trailer, and a deputy found his skull, which was identified from dental records. Gary Mathias was never found. Yuba County’s undersheriff called the case “bizarre as hell”.
The explanations
The leading theory among investigators is a long chain of bad decisions in bad weather. The men may have been heading to see friends of Mathias in Forbestown, taken a wrong turn near Oroville and kept climbing. After the car stuck in the snow they may have set off on foot along snowcat tracks toward shelter. Madruga and Sterling would have died partway, and Huett not long after. Once Weiher died, or appeared to, Mathias may have tried to walk out in his friend’s leather shoes.
Some relatives have always suspected foul play, perhaps that someone chased the car or forced the men out of it. A 1994 file recorded a family member’s suspicion of a relative of Mathias, but it rests on hearsay. Wright, who reviewed the sheriff’s files for his 2018 book Things Aren’t Right, argues that Madruga, a careful driver who knew the area, would not have chosen that road, and that the men did not simply get lost. No evidence of pursuit, violence or a weapon has been found.
Where it stands
The case is cold, though books and podcasts have brought it new attention. The detour, the abandoned car and the four deaths are documented. Why five friends drove into the mountains that night, and what happened to Gary Mathias, are unproven.