The Yuba County Five: The 1978 Disappearance

On February 24, 1978, five friends left a college basketball game in Chico, California and never came home. Days later their car was found abandoned on a remote mountain road in the Plumas National Forest, seventy miles in the wrong direction. Four of the men were eventually found dead. The fifth, Gary Mathias, was never found at all.

In this episode:

• The night of the game and the drive that went seventy miles off course
• The abandoned Mercury and Joseph Schons, the stranger stranded on the same road that night
• The Forest Service trailer, the tucked sheets, and Ted's months of survival
• The search for Gary Mathias and the 2020 sheriff's memo calling it a homicide case
• Every major theory: the wrong turn, foul play, the bridge, and what the evidence actually supports

Sources: Wikipedia (Yuba County Five), StrangeOutdoors.com, Den of Geek, Tony Wright's Things Aren't Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five (2024), Netflix's Files of the Unexplained Season 1 Episode 3, Stuff You Should Know.

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Keywords: Yuba County Five, Gary Mathias, 1978 disappearance, Plumas National Forest, Chico California, unsolved mystery, missing persons, Ted Weiher, Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, Jackie Huett