The Bizarre Disappearance Of The Yuba County 5

[Music] hey guys welcome back to freak week so on today's episode I'm gonna be telling you about another extremely bizarre disappearance of a group of people it's a very interesting one and I think you guys are going to be very confused at the end and have a bunch of different theories of what could have happened but let's go ahead and get started talking about the Yuba County five so first I have to tell you about this group of men these guys were often referred to as boys their family called them the boys I think I'm gonna go ahead and call them men in this video because they are between the ages of 24 and 32 I think they're referred to as boys often because they had mental challenges so let me tell you about each of these men first Theodore Earl we're or Ted he was 32 years old at the time that he went missing and he was described as an extremely friendly and outgoing person almost friendly to a fault he waved to random people always wanted to strike conversation up with anybody that would talk to him and he would actually get upset if someone didn't wave back or didn't engage with him back he was just a very social and friendly guy Ted went to Marysville High School with his younger brothers and in high school Ted was considered to be a pretty average kid and the only difference between him and his peers was that he had a little bit of a intellectual disability Ted had been working at a local snack bar type situation but his family actually was hoping that he would quit because they thought it was becoming a little too stressful for him so that's what was currently going on in his life then there's Jackie Charles Hewitt he was the youngest in the group twenty four years old and he was described as being slow in the head in work situations and educational settings he was really close with Ted the two of them spent a ton of time together even though they had a pretty big age difference but Jackie really looked up to Ted like his older brother next there's William Lee Stirling at the time he was 28 years old and William was an incredibly nice human a really good soul he was a very generous person who actually spent a lot of his time volunteering at mental institutions he would read to the different patients spend time with them get to know them make them feel like they were less alone and he would also bring them religious texts because he was definitely a man of faith and he wanted to share that with as many people as possible then there was Jack madruga who was 30 years old he was actually a US Army veteran who had previously served in Vietnam and Jack and William were actually really good friends and like the other men he did have a slight mental disability but he was definitely high-functioning all of these guys were considered high functioning and he was even able to drive and then there was Gary Dale Mathias who was 25 years old at the time during his time in his life he was actually working part-time for his stepfather Bob in this landscaping company that he owned as an assistant gardener Gary used to serve in the Army but he was actually discharged because he started having a problem with drugs and he was definitely experiencing some major mental health concerns overseas so he was still on disability money for the army but he was no longer serving he was actually released at age 20 and was put on medication for paranoid schizophrenia but after a while Gary worked out a lot of these problems and he was considered to be high functioning even with schizophrenia because his symptoms would only really act up in high-stress situations where his mental state would kind of deteriorate it pretty quickly all five of these men were part of this program called it the Gateway project and this project was a Yuba County day project for people in the community with disabilities and this is the way that most of the men met and the five of them kind of linked up and became good friends they actually played Special Olympics basketball together and were extremely close because of that so let's go to the time of their disappearance so it was February 24th 1978 the group was actually preparing for a big basketball game they had coming up for the Special Olympics they were very very excited about this game so they played the game they had a great night great time and then around 10:00 p.m. they actually left the basketball game together and they got into Jack's 1969 turquoise and white Mercury Montego which this car meant everything to Jack madruga he he was extremely protective of his car very proud of it never let anyone else drive it and he was so excited to be the one driving everyone around so the five of them got in the car and they left out the parking lot and they went to go get some snacks so they're supposed to be coming home from the basketball game but hours passed and they never showed up at their houses at various times the different family members started to get nervous because their loved one wasn't home yet they had no idea where they were or what happened to them and they couldn't get ahold of any of them I mean this is 1978 so it's not like they had cell phones on them and they just started to panic so for days the families were worried about them they contacted police but then four days after they disappeared they actually found Jack madruga scar the car was actually found 70 miles from Chico on a road where locals said that in order to get to it you basically have to purposely go out of your way to get to that road it wasn't the type of thing where you just make a wrong turn and continuously drive without noticing that something was off also this road is very dangerous and sketchy it's an extremely winding road and it was covered in snow and ice at this time and it looked nothing like the other highways or roads in the Chico area it was a dirt road in the mountains in the middle of nowhere also remember they left at 10 o'clock at night so it's dark it's scary there's no reason for them to have been driving up there the car itself was found in the mountains on the gravel road that was east of Oroville California on Plumas National Forest Road the conditions were so bad and dangerous that the road was actually technically closed because of all the snow however it wasn't like physically blocked off so you could still just drive right onto it so some people thought maybe they ran out of gas but it turns out they still had a quarter tank of gas there is a map of California in the car but the keys to the car were gone and I'm not sure this is 100% true this is kind of like debated but some sources say that the back of windows were rolled down which is weird because it is super super cold there was about 10 inches of snow on the ground and they realized that the car was stuck in a position where the tires were just spinning in the car they found none of the men but they did find their snack wrappers had finished pretty much everything that they got except for half of a marathon bar investigators instantly thought it was a super weird location for a car to just be found it was practically the middle of nowhere and it was freezing cold also Jack madruga the owner of the car absolutely hated camping he didn't like to be uncomfortable he did not like to be cold so this whole thing made no sense because he was probably the one driving he would never let any of his friends drive or anything so he was probably the one that drove the car up there most likely the car itself didn't have any sort of damage or dents or scratch to the body of it even underneath the car was completely fine and this led investigators to believe that whoever was driving the car must have been very careful with it and may have had some experience with driving on that road before however none of the five men had actually had experience driving on this road before so it didn't really make sense a lot of people thought that maybe the boys were chased up there somehow that someone drove behind them or scared than one forced them to drive up there but investigators were a little bit wary about this idea because the car was in such good condition and if they were running away from someone being chased up the mountain the car probably would have had some damage to it don't you think their families were also instantly worried about them because they were not dressed at all for the occasion the boys were wearing like regular clothes and it was a total blizzard up in the mountains that night once they kind of had a general area of where they last were where the car was they decided to send out a search team they actually had several different search groups and rescue dogs and they didn't find anything part of the reason for that though was because it was so damn cold and snowy but the conditions were awful and they ended up having to call off the search so finally investigators did get a tip and this is a pretty big part of the case a 55 year old man named Joseph Jones claims that he went to the exact area where those boys went missing that night and his reason for going up there was that he was going to be bringing up his wife and daughter to this area and wanted to see what the conditions were like and if it was safe to drive on he said he went up there around 5:30 p.m. the same night as the boys and his car actually got stuck there and while he was working on the car trying to get it on duck he actually suffered a heart attack so since he was stuck there and having all these health concerns he thought he may not even make it through the night so he decided to get back in his car he could not work on it anymore and he just turned on the heat and like laid back and tried to relax now the crazy thing is he was parked about 150 feet from where Jackman George's car was found and then Joseph said that at one point during the night around 11:00 p.m. he actually heard whistling noises coming from the side of the road so he said he got out of the car hopefully trying to get some help and this is when he saw a group of five men and a lady with a baby doesn't that sound so creepy he also said he saw two vehicles one of them being a pickup truck and the weird thing is is he kept calling out for help but it seems that they just ignored him and eventually they quieted down and the lights from the cars went out and he eventually just gave up and got back in his car so Joseph actually had changed his story a couple of times because he says he can barely remember what was going on that night because of his heart attack now it almost sounds a little sketchy to just be like oh I had a random heart attack it sounds like a little convenient especially and a crime where there could have been foul play but they actually did check his heart and it turns out he did have this heart attack so his story is true he just has trouble recalling the details of what exactly happened but he also changed his story and said that he was just in the car sleeping and then he heard voices and a light shining into his car and then he called out for help but was ignored so pretty much the same version of the story it's the woman with the baby that we can't verify but his first version said that he didn't see her so it's been really widely debated whether or not that woman was actually there sorry had to fix the lighting there but eventually Joseph's car ran out of gas from just being run all night he decided that he was going to now walk that he was feeling better he was going to walk to his cabin that he was staying in about eight miles away from the scene which is a really long walk but as he was walking he passed by Jack madruga scar it was just sitting there empty in the middle of the road according to him and he just passed by it so aside from the information from Joseph there were a few other tips that came in but they ended up being false I could go into them but it's just gonna waste your time honestly they did not pan out there was a few people who thought that they saw the five of them buying food at one point and that wasn't the case it wasn't actually them there was also a woman who claimed to see Jack using a pay phone but that wasn't actually him so one of the families ended up deciding to contact a psychic because they thought this could be their best way to possibly find out why the men were up there one of the psychic said that they were kidnapped and were either in Arizona or Nevada another psychic was pretty specific about what she thought had happened she said that they were murdered in Oroville inside of a two-story red brick or stained wood house with the numbers four seven two three or four seven five three and because of this psychic the family actually ended up spending days going up and down Orville looking for this specific house but eventually they figured out that this house did not exist so that was just a huge waste of the family's time and that's why sometimes with psychics it's just really hard oftentimes a true crime they're so dead wrong and it's really disappointing to families and hurtful honestly so actually months went by with no sign of the boys no good leads about what happened until three months later on June 4th around this time it was finally starting to get warm and everything was starting to melt away in the mountains and that is when the first body of the Yuba County five men was found it was a Sunday and a group of motorcyclists were just out exploring and they ended up coming across a deserted Regional Park services trailer camp and as soon as they got to this camp they said that the entire area smelled absolutely disgusting it actually wreaked of rotting human flesh they described it as a smell that they had never smelled before and it was so powerful that it made them feel sick they knew exactly what it was and they knew it wasn't right so they called 911 right away so when police arrived they actually went into the trailer and they were not prepared for what they saw they found Ted Weir's body frozen just laying out on a bed slowly thawing out the weirdest part was they found eight sheets over his body meticulously wrapped around different parts of his body and they said that it seemed like someone was doing some type of strange ritual or weird practice on him it didn't look like something he did himself that day he was wearing leather loafer boots and those were nowhere to be found in the trailer or anywhere near it next to him on the bedside table there was a ring that had his name engraved on it he wore this all the time as well as his wallet and his gold necklace so he clearly had put those items there another thing that was found in the trailer was a gold Walt hem watch however this did not belong to Ted and his family said they had no idea whose this was and none of the other families recognized this watch either Ted's body was in pretty scary condition before he went missing he was around 200 pounds and when they found him he was closer to 100 he was completely emaciated and clearly hadn't eaten in a long time his feet had horrible frostbite and it was clear that he had suffered from starvation and Ted also had a beard about an inch long and after forensics looked over his body they determined that he was probably tortured and starving and uncomfortable for eight to thirteen weeks which was shocking to these families another strange thing is this trailer was found 19 miles from where Jack madruga scar was found investigators had no idea how Ted had gotten to this trailer because it was so far away there were these huge snowdrifts around that time that were taller than him also the trailer was locked and just had a broken window one thing that investigators thought was really weird is there was a lot of material in which to make a fire with such as matches books wood furniture there was no sign that he had ever tried to make any type of fire there also was more than a dozen cans of precooked ration food from the military that was found open and empty which they assumed that he consumed one of them showed evidence of being opened by a specific can opener an army p38 and this is significant because only two of the five men had actually served in the military and would be able to use this can opener but that would have been Jack and Gary now this trailer also had a couple different sheds around it one of those sheds contained a locker in in this locker there was a ton of dehydrated meals and fruit and things that they could have eaten and it was completely untouched there were so many meals that this literally would have lasted the men years and the weirdest thing of all is there was a propane tank there that they could have turned on for heat but they didn't so then on June 5th the next day recovery workers found what was left of the bodies of Jack and William they were further up the road from the trailer that Ted was found on opposite sides of the road but they were still 11 miles away from the car Jack's body was found near a stream and it was pretty evident that animals had gotten ahold of his body because it was pretty much ripped to shreds William's body was completely decomposed and his skeletal remains were scattered around a fifty feet area two days later Jackie's body was actually found by his own father who was searching in the area he literally found his spine which I can't imagine what that would have been like the only body that was never discovered was Gary Mathias however his tennis shoes were found in the trailer where Ted was found so they do have a theory that maybe he had taken Ted's leather shoes instead and left with them and left his own tennis shoes there so obviously this is super strange and people have a ton of different theories about what they think happened because there's such little evidence though there's really not one theory that stands out or people believe to be generally what happened some of the family members believe that someone was trying to mess with them that maybe they had seen something in the parking lot which i think is really interesting at the basketball game maybe they witnessed something that they were not supposed to see maybe they didn't even realize they witnessed it and someone chased them up the mountain some family members think that they were chased up the mountain until they got lost but then kind of went off on their own I did find a really interesting post on Reddit from someone who's claiming to be close with a Jackie's brother but this is the Internet I definitely can't confirm this but they claimed that there was details that were never released to the public what is not mentioned is baby clothes and blankets were in the car and shell casings were found outside near the car this info may have been kept quiet at the time in hopes that a true lead follows what if Mathias was thrown off the Oroville dam wrapped in chains and never made it up the mountain which is why he remains yet to be found one of these men had sister with a baby a very angry ex-boyfriend bully who wanted payback for their breakup there are parts of this story that are not talked about so I thought that was really interesting you guys will have to let me know what you think of that post police kind of have their own theory about what happened they say that the day before they went missing a Forest Service snowcat had gone along the road in that direction to clear snow off the trailer roof so that it would not collapse and police believe that it's possible that the group decided to follow the tracks that it left through snowdrifts about four to six feet high in belief that shelter was not too far away and that maybe jack and william got severe hypothermia and ended up stopping at the trailer where they slowly froze to death but I personally feel like there's much more to this story a lot of people act like you know because they had these mental challenges that they somehow would make the mistake of just going up there or wouldn't think anything through and I just don't think that's necessarily the case I do really think there was some foul play here I mean it seems kind of obvious and it's very possible that someone would take advantage of people with mental disabilities and try to hurt them there's some more you know out-there theories some people even believe that Gary was abducted by aliens and the rest were like attacked there's some really strange ones but there's nothing really really solid there's just not a lot of evidence I just don't understand why these guys would have gone deeper into the forest if their car was stuck why not stay in the car or start walking down the road towards civilization why go deeper into the forest I think it's very interesting the whole idea about the woman and the baby being out there I think there's really something to that I'm curious about what you guys think if you have any theories on this one it is such a bizarre story if you have any information on the Yuba County five that you would like to report to police I will leave that information below it's been a very long time though and I'm not sure if this will ever be solved it may remain one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in American history I'm really curious if any of you guys have theories about this and what you think happened so let me know below if you're enjoying freak week so far be sure to give this video a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe and hit the notifications if you are not already and I will see you guys tomorrow night for another video that's it for me today guys stay safe and stay spooky [Music]

Channel: Kendall Rae

Views: 716,413

Rating: 4.9627442 out of 5

Keywords: kendallraeonyt, kendallrae, kendall rae, kendaily, mile higher, mile higher podcast, yuba county, yuba county five, true crime, dyatlov pass, mystery, gary mathias, american dyatlov pass, unsolved, unsolved disappearance, missing person, the yuba county five, yuba county ca, unsolved mysteries, top 5, strange disappearances, disappearance, cold case, unexplained, dateline, supernatural, podcast, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, crime, creepypasta, scary stories, ghost adventures, reddit, rt

Id: bL1oBB8LUNg

Length: 20min 6sec (1206 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019