Gary Mathias

Several days after their disappearance, the group's car, a 1969 Mercury Montego, owned by Madruga, was found abandoned in a remote area of Plumas National Forest, on a high mountain dirt road that was far out of their way back to Yuba County.

Investigators could not determine why the car was abandoned, as it was in good working order and could easily have been pushed out of the snowpack it was in.

At that time, no trace of the men was found.

Madruga, the only member of the group besides Mathias who had a driver's license, drove the group 50 mi north to the Chico State campus in his turquoise and white 1969 Mercury Montego.

The men wore only light coats against the cool temperatures in the upper Sacramento Valley at night that time of year.

After the Davis team won the game, the group got back into Madruga's car and drove a short distance from Chico State to Behr's Market in downtown Chico.

There they bought snacks, sodas and cartons of milk to drink.

It was shortly before the store's 10 p.m. closing time; the clerk later remembered the men because she was annoyed that such a large group had come in and delayed her from beginning the process of closing the store for the night.

None of the men were seen alive again after that point.

At their homes, some of their parents waited up to make sure they returned.

When morning came and they had not, the police were notified.

Police in Butte and Yuba counties began searching along the route the men took to Chico.

They found no sign of them, but a few days later, a Plumas National Forest ranger told investigators that he had seen the Mercury parked in the forest along Oroville-Quincy Road on February 25.

At the time, he had not considered it significant, since many residents often drove up that road into the Sierra Nevada on winter weekends to go cross-country skiing on the extensive trail system, but after reading the missing persons bulletin he recognized the car and led the deputies to it on February 28.

Evidence found inside the car suggested the men had been in it between the time when they were last seen and when it was abandoned.

The empty wrappers and containers from the food and drinks they had purchased from the store in Chico were present, along with programs from the basketball game they had attended and a neatly folded road map of California.

However, the discovery of the car raised more questions than it answered.

While he was stationed in West Germany as part of his United States Army service in the early 1970s, Gary Mathias, a resident of Marysville, California developed drug problems.

This eventually led to him being diagnosed with schizophrenia and being given a psychiatric discharge.

Mathias returned to his parents' home in Marysville and began treatment at a local mental hospital.

The Yuba County Five were a group of young men from Yuba County, California, United States, each with mild intellectual disabilities or psychiatric conditions, who were reported missing after attending a college basketball game at California State University, Chico (also known as Chico State), on the night of February 24, 1978.

Four of them—Bill Sterling, 29; Jack Huett, 24; Ted Weiher, 32; and Jack Madruga, 30—were later found dead; the fifth, Gary Mathias, 25, has never been found.

After the snow melted in June 1978, four of the men's bodies were discovered.

Ted Weiher was found in a US Forest Service trailer some 12 mi north from the car.

Only bones were left of Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, and Jackie Huett as result of scavenging animals; but Weiher had apparently lived for as long as three months after the men were last seen, starving to death despite an ample supply of food and heating materials nearby.

Weiher was missing his shoes; investigators found Mathias' own shoes in the US Forest Service Trailer, suggesting Mathias also survived for some time beyond the group's last sighting.

A local man later came forward, claiming that he had spent the same night in his own car a short distance away from where the Mercury was found.

The witness told police that he had seen and heard people around his car that night, and twice called for help, only for them to grow silent and turn off their flashlights.

This, and the considerable distance from the car to where the bodies were found, has led to suspicions of foul play.

While it had been difficult at first—he was nearly arrested for assault twice and often experienced psychotic episodes that landed him in a local Veterans Administration hospital—by 1978 he was being treated on an outpatient basis with Stelazine and Cogentin and was considered by his physicians to be "one of our sterling success cases".

Mathias supplemented his Army disability pay by working in his stepfather's gardening business.

Off the job, outside of his family, he was close friends with four slightly older men who either had slight intellectual disabilities (Sterling and Huett) or were informally considered "slow learners" (Weiher and Madruga, the latter also an Army veteran).

The men lived in Yuba City and nearby Marysville.

Like Mathias, each man lived with his parents, all of whom referred to them collectively as "the boys".

The men's favorite leisure activity was sports.

Their families said that when the five of them got together, it was usually to play a game or to watch one.

They played basketball together on a team called the Gateway Gators, a team supported by a local program for people with mental disabilities.

On February 25, the Gators were due to play their first game in a weeklong tournament sponsored by the Special Olympics for which the winners would get a free week in Los Angeles.

The five men had prepared the night before, some even laying out their uniforms and asking their parents to wake them up on time.

They decided to drive to Chico that night to cheer on the UC Davis basketball team in an away game against Chico State.