The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five

By Jessi Dixon

Joe Shones was having a heart attack on the road. He quickly jumped out of the car and headed toward the oncoming vehicle, screaming for help and waving his arms. But no one paid him any attention – later, he said he watched as a group of men, a single woman, and a little baby walked right by. It must have been hours later, he remembered, when he thought he saw flashlights in the trees. He tried calling out again, but – again – got no response...By the time his car ran out of gas, the excruciating pain in Shones' chest had receded enough that he felt he could handle the eight mile walk down the snowy road to a lodge he knew would be occupied. On the way, he recalled, he spotted a 1969 Mercury Montego on the side of the road – complete empty. He assumed the vehicle belonged to the people he'd seen passing by hours before...In that moment, Shones wasn't too worried about the strange group of people he'd encountered – he was focused on handling an emergency of his own. Later, though, authorities pieced together that it wasn't Shones' near-death experience that was the strangest thing to happen that night. Instead, it was the fact that Joe Shones had – in all likelihood – been the last person to see Bill Sterling, Ted Weiher, Jack Madruga, Jack Huett, and Gary Mathias alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201077334

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THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE YUBA COUNTY FIVE

JESSI DIXON

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE YUBA COUNTY FIVE

THE COLD CASE OF LEAH ROBERTS

STALKED & ABDUCTED

KELSIE SCHELLING

BRITTANEE DREXEL

MISTY COPSEY

RAILROAD KILLER

MISSING MADELEINE

BEAUMONT CHILDREN

PATRICIA MEEHAN

ARLIS PERRY

When Joe Shones left his house on February 24, 1978, he seemed to be in good health. He felt fine, especially for 55, and he’d decided that day to venture up a lonely road through the Plumas National Forest, close to Rogers Cow Camp, to check the weather conditions in the area. He was hoping to come back the next day, this time with his family, to enjoy an outing in the mountains.

However, as Shones forced his little Volkswagen further and further down the snowy trail, the car started fighting back. And when it finally gave in to the mounting snowdrifts, Shones got out of the car and set to work pushing it.

That’s when the pain started – deep in his chest, then radiating outward. Miles and miles from any help, Shones was suffering a heart attack.

Unable to rescue his car from its snowy encasement, Shones climbed back into the driver’s seat and started thinking through his possible next steps. It was then that he noticed headlights coming toward him – two sets, even. The first set of lights, he could tell, were from a pickup truck.

Shones quickly jumped out of the car and headed toward the oncoming vehicle, screaming for help and waving his arms. But no one paid him any attention – later, he said he watched as a group of men, a single woman, and a little baby walked right by. It must have been hours later, he remembered, when he thought he saw flashlights in the trees. He tried calling out again, but – again – got no response.

By the time his car ran out of gas, the excruciating pain in Shones’ chest had receded enough that he felt he could handle the eight mile walk down the snowy road to a lodge he knew would be occupied. On the way, he recalled, he spotted a 1969 Mercury Montego on the side of the road – complete empty. He assumed the vehicle belonged to the people he’d seen passing by hours before.

In that moment, Shones wasn’t too worried about the strange group of people he’d encountered – he was focused on handling an emergency of his own. Later, though, authorities pieced together that it wasn’t Shones’ near-death experience that was the strangest thing to happen that night. Instead, it was the fact that Joe Shones had – in all likelihood – been the last person to see Bill Sterling, Ted Weiher, Jack Madruga, Jack Huett, and Gary Mathias alive.

A spontaneous mountain drive

None of the five men had any reason to be more than 50 miles from home, on a treacherous mountain road, that February day. They lived in homes in Marysville and Yuba City, California, with other family members – all five had been diagnosed with either intellectual disabilities or various psychiatric issues. And, although they were between the ages of 24 to 32, they were typically referred to as boys. But they were not the kind of boys to embark on a spur of the moment road trip.

While the group’s visit to the forest continued to mystify the authorities, investigators were able to establish a timeline to explain how the day started off. The Mercury was owned by Madruga, who had driven himself and his four friends to California State University, Chico. They were avid basketball fans, and were headed out to watch a collegiate game at the campus. The next day, they planned to play, themselves – they all played together on a team that represented their local rehabilitation center.

Weiher was the oldest of the five boys – a former janitor who had struck up a close friendship with the youngest member of the group, 24 year old Huett. Sterling was best friends with Madruga, who’d served in the Army – as had Mathias, but he’d been discharged due to persistent psychiatric problems. Although he’d been formally diagnosed with schizophrenia, he’d chosen not to bring his medication with him on the trip to Chico. He likely assumed he’d be home in plenty of time to take his next dose.

At around 10 p.m., the game wrapped up and the group decided to hit up a convenience store for some snacks for the road. With their hands full of candy bars, soda, and Hostess pies, they climbed back into Madruga’s Mercury and headed back on the road. They all lived approximately 50 miles to the south – but for some reason, Madruga pulled out of the parking lot and started driving east.

He didn’t stop driving east for a while. By the time Shones discovered the car abandoned along the mountain road, it was more than 70 miles away from the location of the basketball game the boys had attended at California State.

It was February 25 before Shones got himself to the lodge, early in the morning. He finally received medical treatment for his heart condition, and promptly put the bizarre encounter with the group of strangers and the deserted vehicle out of his mind. That is, until he noticed headlines in newspaper after newspaper, alerting locals that five young men had been missing for days.

Bill didn’t come home, either.

Ted Weiher’s grandmother Imogene, who he lived with, had tried to convince him to take a coat before he left the house to attend the basketball game with his friends.

I won’t need a coat, he told her. Not tonight.

She woke up in a panic at around five o’clock the next morning. While she’s not certain exactly why she jerked awake so early in the morning, she said that, perhaps, the Lord decided it was time to end her one last night of solid sleep, according to an interview with The Washington Post in 1978.

When she went into her grandson’s room to check on him, she found Weiher’s bed completely empty.

Although the house was still and dark, with the not-quite-dawn chill in the air, she decided to call the mother of one of her grandson’s closest friend. Bill Sterling’s mother, Juanita, said she’d been awake since 2 a.m.

Bill didn’t come home, either, she told Imogene.

She’d already called the mother of Jack Madruga, Melba, who confirmed that her son hadn’t returned from the trip, either. Imogene called Jack Huett’s mother while her daughter-in-law walked to Gary Mathias’ stepfather’s house, just down the street. The news wasn’t good – all five boys were gone.

After a day of waiting by the phone, the families decided they couldn’t put it off any longer. At around 8 p.m., Melba Madruga called the police.

It was incredibly unusual for the boys to be gone – they were supposed to play basketball themselves the very next day, in a tournament that awarded a free week-long trip to Los Angeles to the winners. They’d prepared for the game before leaving the night before, cleaning and laying out their matching beige Gateway Gators t-shirts, representative of the Yuba City vocational rehabilitation centre they played for.

Weiher’s mother had washed her son’s new white high tops for the big game, which he’d scuffed up a bit while trying them out, and Mathias’ mother said he’d almost driven her crazy with his excitement over the upcoming competition.

We got a big game Saturday, she remembers him saying. Don’t you let me oversleep.

But Saturday came and went.

The authorities found Madruga’s Mercury that Tuesday, on February 28, parked on the stretch of road where Shones had also seen it days earlier. A park ranger had notified the police about the location of the abandoned vehicle after hearing a bulletin about the missing boys. Inside, investigators discovered that most of the snacks had already been eaten – except for half of one candy bar. The car keys appeared to be missing, however.

While there was still plenty of gas in the vehicle, the tires appeared to have spun out in a snowbank. Still, police determined, the four strong young men shouldn’t have had much trouble pushing the car out of the snow and back onto the road, with Madruga behind the wheel. But the car looked to have been abandoned in the ditch – surrounded by thick, wintry forest, which didn’t seem like it would have been a better choice for a group of young men who hadn’t dressed for the conditions.

Authorities couldn’t find the keys to the car, but when they hot-wired it to see if it was dead, they found that the engine started up right away.

Also unusual was that, despite being driven along a treacherously bumpy mountain trail in what would likely have been complete darkness, there wasn’t a single scratch to the underside of the car – a heavy car with a low muffler, likely with five grown men inside of it. According to investigators, the driver had either been shockingly careful and precise or had been familiar enough with the dangerous road to anticipate each bump and rut.

None of the boys knew the area, according to their families. The Madrugas asserted that Jack was the only person allowed to drive the Mercury, ever, and claimed he didn’t care for camping or being out in the cold. Bill Sterling’s father said he’d taken his son on a fishing trip about eight years earlier to a cabin not far from the spot where the car had been found, but assured authorities that Bill had had such an unpleasant time that he’d chosen to stay home the handful of times the rest of the family returned.

Weiher had gone deer hunting in an area further west of where the car was left, in the Feather River country, approximately three years before – but, according to his family, he hadn’t enjoyed himself in the forest much. And while Mathias would stay out all night with his friends on the odd occasion, the men all led overwhelmingly stay-at-home lives of scheduled, careful predictability. No one could guess what might have led them up a lonely stretch of mountain road.

This case is bizarre as hell, Jack Beecham, Yuba County undersheriff, said to reporters.

No solid leads

A search was organized to try and locate the missing boys, but the authorities knew it wouldn’t be easy – the mountainous terrain in the area was full of rocky slopes, heavy snow, and densely wooded trails. Nine inches of snow dropped the day after the car was found, and search teams reportedly nearly lost men, themselves. With helicopters scanning the landscape from above, officers mounted horses in an attempt to navigate the treacherous paths.

Yuba County Lt. Lance Ayers had attended Marysville High School at the same time as Weiher and his brothers – and, although he admitted he hadn’t really gotten to know the brothers much during their high school years, he became somewhat obsessed with the disappearance of the five young men. As eyewitness sightings were starting to come in – one even mentioned seeing the group of men driving the pickup Shones had described seeing while stranded in the woods – but not one report stuck out as being particularly plausible. People reported spotting one or more of the men in locations like Ontario, Tampa, and at a movie theatre in Sacramento, and each time, Ayers was on the case immediately. But none turned out to be much of a lead.

A $2,600 reward was collected by the families of the missing boys to be given to anyone with information that led to the recovery of the men, but it was never claimed. Ayers also petitioned psychics, desperate for any possible clue to further his investigation. One said she believed the boys had been kidnapped and taken to Arizona and Nevada; another told him they’d been murdered, directing him to a two-story red house in Oroville. The driveway was gravel, the psychic said, and the house number was either 4723 or 4753.

Ayers spent an entire two days carefully canvassing every street in Oroville, but the house the psychic had seen didn’t exist in real life.

He became an expert on the missing young men, seeking out any bit of information about them that might help him solve the case.

Theodore Weiher, Ted, had curly brown hair and warm brown eyes. He was handsome, despite a bit of a beer belly, and he had a childlike friendliness that made him brood for hours if the strangers he waved at refused to wave back. He loved to call up his friend Bill Sterling to read funny bits out of the newspaper, or silly names he found in the phone book. He’d worked as a janitor for a while, and then as a clerk at a snack bar, but his family had convinced him to give up on holding down a job – they believed his slowness was too troublesome for his employers and his customers.

The youngest man in the group, Jackie Huett, was a little slow to respond, but he followed Weiher around like a shadow. In return, Weiher was protective of his young protégé – even dialling Huett’s phone for him whenever he needed to place a call. Huett was 24, 5 foot 9 and about 160 pounds, recognizable due to the way his head drooped slightly.

Army veteran Jack Madruga was a high school graduate who stood at 5 foot 11 and 190 pounds. He was a bit heavy-set, with brown eyes and brown hair, and had been recently laid off from a position he’d kept as a busboy for Sunsweet growers.

William – or Bill – Sterling had dark hair and blue eyes, and weighted 170 pounds on a 5 foot 10 frame. He was very religious, and when he wasn’t spending time with his best friend, Madruga, he could be found in the library – reading up on how he could help patients in mental hospitals find Jesus and be saved.

An assistant in the gardening business owned by his stepfather, Gary Mathias stood 5 foot 10 and weighed around 170 pounds. He had brown hair and hazel eyes, and had also served in the Army – but he’d received a psychiatric discharge as a result of drug problems he’d developed while in Germany approximately five years earlier.

After