01x03 - File: Missing Yuba County Five

[bunniefuu]

[gentle music plays]

[woman] The story starts

in this sweet way.

You've got five friends.

They are pals from a disability center.

And they head off to a basketball game.

And then no one quite understands

what happened after that.

I was a young reporter then,

but even then I knew

none of it made any sense.

[dramatic classical music plays]

[reporter] Yuba County lawmen called this

one of the more bizarre

missing person cases they've ever handled.

Families are panicking

because we got five young men missing.

The car has been found

70 miles in the wrong direction.

Somebody made them kids do this.

Did they get here on their own,

or were they brought here deliberately?

That's the million-dollar question.

[woman] Why do you start walking

in the freezing cold,

clearly having no idea where you're going?

How did anyone miss this trailer?

The sheriff's department

didn't take it serious.

How much longer will you search?

[officer] Until we find the rest of them,

or until there's no hope.

Someone has to know where they are.

[mysterious music plays]

[narrator] On the evening

of February 24th, 1978,

five men disappeared

after leaving a basketball game

in Chico, California.

Their car was found abandoned

seventy miles away from their homes.

For almost 50 years,

the case of the Yuba County Five

has perplexed investigators.

Nothing adds up.

[ethereal music plays]

Why did the men drive

so far in the wrong direction?

Why did they leave the car

and walk into the snowy night?

Were they lost?

Or did something more sinister happen?

[melancholic piano music plays]

[man] Yuba County to me,

it was just a beautiful place.

We'd go hunting and fishing.

You couldn't drive down the road

without somebody waving at you,

'cause you knew everybody.

I had no clue

what the high crime rate was until

It's all this stuff started.

[ominous tone plays]

[woman] This is the one I like.

I like that picture.

- That's Jackie, right?

- [man] Yeah.

From when he was like six, seven.

- Look at that hair.

- [woman] I know. He was so cute.

You and your brother had the same eyes.

[man] That's my mom.

That's me, and that's Jackie.

That looks like Christmas.

No date Oh yeah, it does.

Look at that, that's his last Christmas.

That was 1978.

[lighthearted music plays]

[Tom] My brother, Jackie,

Bill Sterling,

Jack Madruga,

Gary Mathias,

and Ted Weiher,

they first met

when they went to the Gateway Project.

- The Gateway Project helped autistic or

- Disabled.

Disabled people to learn sports

and learn how to mingle with other people.

Basketball was their big thing.

The The Gateway Gators,

they lived for that.

My big brother, Jackie,

he was 24 years old,

but he had the mindset of a 16-year-old.

He was slower than most of us growing up.

But nobody ever treated him slower.

He could write his name.

He could use the telephone.

- He had a girlfriend.

- Had a girlfriend.

Talked to her for hours on the phone.

[Claudia] Jackie didn't see people as bad.

You know, he was just always smiling,

always happy.

[Tom] My brother Jackie and Ted Weiher,

you'd think they were brothers,

they were together so much.

If you'd seen Jackie,

Ted wasn't far behind.

[man] Ted loved, uh, macaroni and cheese.

Fact, that's what my wife

got him for Christmas, so I mean, if he

if he had some macaroni and cheese,

you had one happy dog, man. [chuckles]

- Yeah, he was cuter than a button.

- [laughs]

But it His Just his mind

and the way he projected his self,

he just couldn't put everything together.

[peppy music plays]

Uncle Ted, I never thought of him

as being special.

Of course, they used

a different word back then, the R word.

He was the fun uncle.

Goofy, hairy, burly.

Curly hair.

He was the janitor

at a junior high school.

But he was ours.

And you protect your own.

And we loved him, and we knew he loved us.

Jack Madruga wasn't as outgoing

as my uncle Ted.

But they were friends.

Uncle Jack, he was very quiet,

socially awkward.

He'd get nervous speaking to people,

they thought

there was something wrong with him.

Well, he was just

a very, very reserved person,

but there was nothing

slow about him at all.

He went to Vietnam.

But he did very well in school.

Signed up for college all on his own.

He was more like a bigger brother

than an uncle.

We called him "Doc." [chuckles]

He used to haul me and all my friends

around all the time for us.

We'd ditch school,

I'd call him up, "Come and get us."

[laughs]

We were very close.

[George] Doc and Bill Sterling,

they were best buddies.

Bill Sterling, I remember

him giving me pointers

on how to release the ball in bowling.

He was a sweet guy and very friendly

and just wanted to help people.

Wanted to be be there for folks.

And Gary Mathias,

he joined the group a little later

than the rest of the guys.

But the five of them became a great team.

[man] Gary

As a little brother, I looked up to him.

Oh, he was an athlete,

or he was a musician.

He was all kinds of things

that inspired me.

He stood up for me a couple of times.

I was going to get my butt kicked,

and he stepped in.

See, that was the kind of guy he was.

He would back up his family, no questions.

[woman] When Gary was in the military,

he was given a medical release.

They believed he was schizophrenic,

and he got a new psych doctor,

and they changed his medications,

and they got him doing really, really well

that he started working

for our step-father.

Gary was a very caring person.

[Tom] All five of the boys,

they were friends for eight or nine years.

They would walk everywhere.

Until Jack Madruga got his car,

a '69 Mercury Montego.

That was Jack Madruga's pride and joy,

that car.

They would just pile in there,

all laughs, the windows down,

waving to people.

[somber music plays]

Their favorite team was UC Davis,

and UC Davis was playing Chico.

So, they planned to go watch this game.

And it was close,

I mean, just an hour drive.

And some of the families didn't want them

to go to that game that night

because they had a big game

the next day their self.

I mean, you cannot express the excitement

they had for their game, that next day.

They had already won

all their other games

- Yeah.

- To make it to this tournament.

It was the championship tournament

for the Gateway Gators.

Well, I remember

Jack Madruga pulling up in the driveway

in his Mercury Montego.

My dad told my brother

on his way out the door,

"No booze, no smoking, and no girls."

And my brother looked at my dad

and said, "Oh, come on, Dad."

He turned around and walked out the door.

They were all just happy

and hooting and hollering

about their favorite team,

and left to go to Chico.

[tense music plays]

The next day, my mom telling me,

"Your brother's not home."

I asked her,

"What do you mean, they're not home?"

I was an 11-year-old boy,

and I wake up on a Saturday morning,

and my mom says,

"Get up, we've got to go

to your grandma's house."

"Uncle Ted hasn't come home,

and your grandma's really worried."

Because of their special needs,

it sent up the alarms quick.

Something was up.

[telephone rings]

Families started calling each other,

"Hey, did you see Bill?"

"Have you seen Jack?"

"Ted didn't come home."

Now the families are panicking

because we got five young men missing.

My brother Jackie

did not stay the night anywhere, anytime.

He was home every single night.

He wanted to be home

where he had his comfort, safe zone.

They would have been home.

From that basketball game,

they would have been home.

[sparse suspenseful music plays]

When they did call

the Yuba County Sheriff's Office,

they said there was nothing they could do

'cause they were all over 18.

Well, you have to wait

this 24, 48-hour time frame

before you can report them missing.

And family members said,

"But wait a minute,

they all have intellectual disabilities."

Nothing they'd do.

Bullshit.

It's bullshit.

The families on February 25th

do what they can.

They're frantically calling people.

They're driving the highways.

There's no sign of the boys.

And at 8:00 p.m. they call back

the Yuba County Sheriff's Department

and say,

"Look, we need help finding these guys."

[man] The initial investigation tried

to retrace where they knew they had been.

They were supposed to be

at Chico State watching a basketball game.

And the editor of the newspaper in Chico,

he had been at the game that night.

He saw them. He very much remembered them.

[gentle suspenseful music plays]

So they were able to verify

they were present.

It was really quiet

for the first couple of days.

[tense music plays]

[Tony] February 26, February 27th,

no information.

And on February 28th,

the Forest Service says,

"We found a car

in the Plumas National Forest."

Basically, 70 miles

in the wrong direction,

up in the mountains.

[dramatic classical music plays]

It's a 1969 two-door Mercury Montego,

and it matches the car of the missing men.

The Plumas National Forest

is a very rugged area.

It's very mountainous.

Where they disappeared

is about 4,000 feet above sea level.

There were major snow drifts up there,

up to ten, twenty feet in spots.

There are drop-offs in certain areas

where you could just lose your footing

and fall a thousand feet.

Nobody goes up that way.

That's no man's land.

[Tom] When I walked in the house,

my mom was sitting

on the kitchen floor crying,

saying that they found the car

but none of the boys.

[narrator] The men were known

to adhere to rigid schedules.

It was unheard of for them to do something

as spontaneous as drive into the mountains

in the middle of the night.

What could possibly

have brought them there?

[mysterious music plays]

[Brian] The boys,

this is not common for them.

They shouldn't have been there

in the first place.

There was no reason

for them to have gone to the snow.

When they left their house,

they were very lightly dressed,

for a basketball game in a gymnasium.

The car was,

for the most part, unremarkable.

No damage, nothing to suggest

anything bad had happened.

The keys were missing.

[mysterious music intensifies]

What they did have in there

were milk cartons, candy wrappers.

Things that you'd more likely associate

with children partying

than you would with adult men

traveling from a basketball game.

One of the investigators

contacted the distributor of the milk

and found out

who their local vendors were.

So, they started at Chico State

and went to those stores one by one,

looking to see if anybody recalled

seeing the boys in there that night.

They came across the Behr Market in Chico,

and fortunately, they were able

to speak with a woman

who was working the night of the 24th,

and she did recall them.

They were at Behr's Market

right around closing time.

Which puts them there

probably around ten o'clock at night.

From there, they disappeared

between Chico and Marysville.

[menacing music plays]

[Tony] It could be possible that sometime

between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.,

they exited off of the highway

into a town called Oroville.

From there, they drive

into the Plumas National Forest,

and probably sometime around 11:00 p.m.,

maybe 11:30 p.m.,

they drive up a rutted, snow-covered road

in the middle of nowhere.

And their car gets stuck

in probably five to six inches of snow.

And at that point,

these guys wearing tennis shoes,

blue jeans, and lightweight jackets,

just run into the darkness,

snow, freezing temperatures,

for no reason.

[intriguing classical music plays]

[woman] When I set out to do the piece,

I was able to talk to the investigators

and really sit down

and spend time with the families.

The questions that I remember

being most bewildered by

Why do you make that turnoff?

Why do you stop the car there?

Why do you get out of the car?

Why do you start walking,

clearly having no idea where you're going?

[musical arrangement intensifies]

The thing was,

is they had their game the next day.

[buzzer sounds]

Some of them had their uniforms

laid out on their beds.

[forlorn music plays]

And they wouldn't do anything voluntarily

to miss that day.

Uncle Doc, he knew how to get to Chico.

He had done this drive hundreds of times.

The car was found

with the driver's window down.

His car was his baby,

and to leave his car there abandoned

with the window down, no way.

There's no reason for those men

to even get out of that car,

unless they were forced or scared.

To some folks,

they didn't know what they were doing.

Well, they didn't make a mistake.

[moody classical music plays]

[Tony] So this is the Bidwell Bar Bridge.

It crosses Lake Oroville and leads you

into the Plumas National Forest.

This is an obvious landmark.

But if the men saw this bridge,

they would know

that they were far, far from home,

and they were going the wrong way.

And then if they see

a sign for the Plumas,

they got to know better.

As you can see, the road is closed.

Eight miles north up the road,

that's where the Mercury Montego

was abandoned.

I mean, it was a logging road.

It didn't go anywhere.

Maps wouldn't have taken them this way.

There's no reason for them to be here

just on a joyride.

There's something

that brought them up this way.

There's no way they got lost.

This night, something was going wrong.

Really wrong.

[somber piano music plays]

[Brian] Law enforcement agencies began

a comprehensive search of the area

immediately surrounding

where the car was found.

It was multi-agency,

at least four agencies involved.

Well over 200 people

participating in a search,

between horseback, on foot,

and vehicles that could go

some distance in the snow, and aircraft.

It was extensive.

My dad, Jack, went to where the car was

and started searching.

He was there every single day.

We hunted those areas.

We knew those areas up there.

Jack Sr. got out and he walked

for miles on the side of that mountain.

Jack told me, he stated out loud vocally,

"I will find you, son."

"I won't stop until I do."

All the families were out

searching the woods.

It was hell.

- I mean, you wake up every day

- Yeah.

Just not knowing.

That's the worst part, not knowing.

[morose music plays]

[Tony] The weather at the time

became very snowy

and became very treacherous.

The search and rescue teams would begin,

and then they'd stop.

March is their busiest time.

April, May,

things have slowed down considerably,

and by June they're not really looking.

We had hope every day.

Every day, you'd wake up,

and, "All right,

they they're going to find him."

"He's gonna be okay."

The silence would just

Unbearable.

[inhales sharply]

[sobs]

Sorry.

[ominous music plays]

Some motorcyclists, coming past

this Forest Service campground,

smell something awful.

There's a camp trailer

with its window smashed in,

inside of which they find

the emaciated body of Ted Weiher.

Ted Weiher's body is on its back.

His hands are crossed over his chest,

the way you would imagine someone

preparing a body for mummification.

He was wrapped very tightly

in, uh, several sheets,

almost as if y-you were swaddling a child.

It's not something

he could have done to himself.

[Tony] Ted had suffered

horrendous frostbite.

He was about six-foot, 220,

when he went missing,

and was probably down to 120 pounds

when he's found.

He was clean-shaven

when he had disappeared.

He had a full beard.

[Cynthia] Because of the beard growth,

the coroners who looked at him

were able to determine

that he had been alive

for some eight to thirteen weeks.

This got to me.

Slow death by starvation and hypothermia

over at least eight weeks.

[narrator] The trailer where Ted died

was 19 miles from the abandoned Montego.

Panicked questions arose.

How could police have missed this shelter?

And was it too late

to find the other men alive?

[melancholic music plays]

My Aunt Dorothy took me up

to the place where they found the car.

This is in March sometime.

And I can't help but thinking

that when we went up there,

he was still alive at that time.

It struck me [sniffles]

that I was that close to him.

[winces]

And he must have suffered terribly.

He was still alive.

[voice breaks] And they didn't try

hard enough to find him.

About seven miles south of the trailer,

they find the badly decomposed remains

of Jack Madruga.

Across the road,

they find the remains of Bill Sterling,

and they had been scattered

over an area by animals.

[George] Doc had the keys

in his pocket when he was found.

So, he was the driver, there's no doubt.

Grandma wanted to see Doc's remains.

And our dad told her,

"Mom, there's nothing left but bones."

And she collapsed then.

She wanted to see her son.

[voice breaks] Tell him goodbye.

[George's breath trembles]

I heard someone say,

"We found him. We found something."

And I turned and walked back.

And that's when I seen

Mr. Hewitt Sr. drop to his knees.

[voice breaks] And he was crying.

[sniffles] And he said, "I'm sorry, son,

I promised I was gonna find you."

[Tom] He

[both] He knew immediately

that it was my brother.

From the clothes that he was wearing.

And

[sighs]

they picked up a bunch of bones,

and my brother's backbone

fell out of the

his shirt that he was wearing.

And he still had his wallet in his jeans.

It was a hard day.

It was a hard day.

It's still a hard day.

It's like yesterday.

How my dad kept it together, I don't know.

When those they pull the search off here

that I didn't need their help.

I'd find my son.

And I believe I proved my point.

And, uh, I'm going to continue

till I help find the rest of 'em too

one way or the other.

That's all I got to say.

[ominous music plays]

[Brian] The pathologist report

ruled the death as because of exposure,

they succumbed to the elements.

But there was not enough of them

to where you could

really accurately know everything.

There wasn't enough left.

If there was blunt-force trauma,

if there was some other type of injury,

it was possible that would never be known.

Gary Mathias has not been found

at that scene.

They just don't know where he is.

It was very hard.

But it gave me hope.

I thought, "Well, the other ones

were found, we'll find Gary."

But after Jackie Hewitt's body was found,

it seemed like the Sheriff's Department

decided they didn't want to look anymore.

It was like, "We're done."

[Tony] By June 19th, the search teams

up there decide to call it a day.

The Sheriff's Department says,

"We did everything we could to find him,"

but there's nothing

that that they've been able to find

for the remains of Gary Mathias.

I stayed out there two more weeks

after they were gone,

my husband and I and my brother-in-law.

I hate to say it, but

it just didn't seem

like they did a very thorough to me.

The [exclaims] The families did more

than the law enforcement did.

[dark pulsing music plays]

There's reports that members

of the U.S. Forest Service claim,

"We told law enforcement

about those trailers,

and they never searched them."

[Tom] We were hunting fishermen

our whole life.

My dad could tell you

what kind of print was in a swamp.

And he seen four sets of tracks

leading away from that car,

going up the hill, north.

Not down,

where the Sheriff's Department thinks.

[Claudia] Jack Sr. knew

those trailers were there.

[Tom] They told 'em to go up there.

Jack asked them to go

to those damn trailers. He asked them.

And I remember him saying

he believes one person told him,

"Oh, they'd never make it that far.

They would never make it that far."

Like hell they wouldn't.

[Brian] The distance between the trailers

and the Madruga vehicle,

probably close to 20 miles.

I don't think anybody thought

those boys in that condition

in that weather could've made it that far.

So I'm not shocked that nobody went

all the way up to that fire camp,

which at that time probably was

under about five feet of snow.

They knew this cabin was up there,

and they didn't search it.

So, who's to say

that somebody couldn't have been saved?

[narrator] The men's capabilities

continued to be a point of contention.

And for many,

it casts a dark shadow over the case.

[music peaks, fades]

[Claudia] It makes you mad.

[Tom] Just the word pisses me off.

"Foul play suspected in disappearance

of five slightly Ret*rded Californians."

- And do you think that that's the right

- Why would you say "Ret*rded"?

- It's what they said back then.

- That's like

That's just not right.

A little bit slower than

If they would have said,

"Five championship basketball players

for Gateway got lost,"

they would have probably found 'em.

Instead of saying

this sh*t.

I think it would have went

a lot different.

They woulda looked harder.

[somber music plays]

[Claudia] These were not

25-to-35-year-old men

who were as capable of making decisions

and locating themselves

as they might have been.

That stigma of being called "Ret*rded"

really shaded the whole incident.

The perception of these men were just

too stupid to turn around and come back

and just kept going up in the forest

was is absurd.

And I think this perception

spilled over into the the public's eye

and especially in law enforcement's eye.

They were just like,

"Well, should we put all this effort out

just to find

some Ret*rded men that got lost?"

I think five young men

with diminished capacity

were excited about having seen

their winning basketball team do so well.

They stopped at a market

and got sugared up

with chocolate milk and candies.

And somewhere along the way,

they made a bad decision,

and they took a bad road

and they never recovered.

One bad decision led

to another bad decision

to another bad decision.

They's trying to make us believe

that it's stupidity

and, uh, because they were Ret*rded

that they're up here on their own.

And there's no way

that they've done this on their own.

[suspenseful percussive music plays]

[Cynthia] One of the things that

completely perplexed the investigators,

there's a food locker outside the trailer,

and some C-ration cans, military food,

had been removed and eaten.

But there was a second locker

filled with enough canned food

that it could have kept them alive

for many months,

that had not been opened.

There was a propane heater

that had not been turned on.

So there was food there

that could have fed them.

There was a heater

that could have kept them warm.

Why do you not eat the food?

Why do you not turn the heat on?

W Why do you lie in a bed

covered by sheets

as though someone is caring for you,

starving to death for weeks?

What happened?

[ethereal music plays]

Ted wouldn't have done anything

that he thought would be against the law.

If he was stea [winces]

I If he thought

he was stealing something,

he wouldn't have done it.

And he wouldn't have known

how to to turn on propane

in the first place.

Ted Weiher coulda not have tucked himself

into the bed like that.

Someone else was with him.

In the trailer were black tennis shoes,

and they were the shoes

that Gary Mathias was wearing.

Weiher's shoes were never found.

Either he lost them in the Plumas,

or Gary Mathias took 'em and went away.

[dramatic classical music plays]

Ted Weiher and Gary Mathias

both most likely made it to that trailer.

What happened to these men?

What happened to Gary Mathias?

[narrator] Evidence suggested that Gary

could have made it to the trailer.

And with no sign of his body,

suspicions started to rise.

Was Gary a victim?

A scapegoat?

Or something far worse?

[music peaks, fades]

[intriguing classical music plays]

I do know

[sighs] God forgive me.

Doc and the other guys

were scared of Mathias.

Gary was gonna go to the game with them,

and they didn't really want him to go.

But they were too scared to say anything.

I do know that for a fact.

And that came from my uncle.

[Cynthia] Gary Mathias was

under medication,

successfully had had

a very peaceful two years

before the events of that night.

But Gary Mathias had drug problems.

He'd had very checkered experience

in the army.

He'd had some violent

and very problematic outbursts.

The only explanation

that made any sense to me

was that Gary's psychosis had returned,

and that somehow,

he had persuaded these guys

that this is the right thing to do.

[fast-paced suspenseful music plays]

What would conceivably be

some other person's motive

for persuading five men

to do this long hike through the woods

and then go die in a Forest Service cabin?

[Tony] His schizophrenia

is easy to use as an excuse.

But there's no proof of Gary ever pulling

something like this before.

If they can get in a car,

drive to Chico without incident,

attend a basketball game without incident,

go to Behr's Market without incident,

how's Gary the problem? I don't buy it.

If he wasn't on his medication,

he cannot function by himself.

So, if he was not on his medication,

my dad woulda not let him go.

Period.

Law enforcement,

they really, really didn't treat

my brother fairly.

They snap judged him.

You were the first person ever in 45 years

to ever ask me a question.

No one in a police department.

No one from the media.

No one ever asked me for nothing.

I don't know what happened to him.

That's the part that bothers me.

I need to know where he is.

[narrator] More than 40 years

after the men's disappearance,

one crucial question looms over this case.

What happened to Gary Mathias?

[ominous music plays]

[Cathy] I have mixed thoughts

about what happened to Gary Mathias.

Our mother owned a bar

there in Browns Valley.

And within a year

after the bodies were found,

I had gotten off work, full bar.

Third bar stool down from the end,

there was this guy.

We locked eyes, and it was Gary Mathias.

And I went through the swing door there

that goes behind the bar.

And I told Mom, I said,

"That's Gary Mathias

sitting there at the end of the bar."

She goes, "Are you sure?"

I said, "I'm positive."

I called the Sheriff's Department.

Gary looked at us, and he jumped up

and took off running.

We could not catch him.

People told me that he had been seen

at Montgomery Ward's, Denny's restaurant,

7-Eleven parking lot,

so I really don't know what to think.

God strike me dead if I'm wrong.

There's a man driving

through the Plumas area in 1979

who claims

that Gary Mathias was hitchhiking.

But there's no mention of that

in the Yuba County

Sheriff's Department file.

There have been some reports

of Gary Mathias having been spotted

or seen after the remains were found.

Both in the area, out of the area.

We've had reports even out of the state.

Nothing that, uh,

we've ever been able to substantiate.

[somber classical music plays]

[Tom] I could tell you what I think.

But I don't think

Gary Mathias made it to that trailer.

When I was growing up in Marysville,

there were certain families

that you knew better than to f*ck with.

And the bully of the town

was in and out of prison his whole life.

And I've seen him do things.

Very scary guy.

There was rumors that

this bully and a group of people

had bad blood with Gary Mathias

and took his vengeance out on all of them.

They started something with my brother.

Gary Mathias stood up for him.

And these people

beat the sh*t out of Gary Mathias

and threw him over the Oroville Bridge.

And then they made the other four boys

drive up that road.

And scared them enough

that they'd not come back down that hill.

One of the boys may have carried

Gary Mathias' shoes up to trailer.

That's why there was only four sets

of footprints going up that hill.

I could feel it in my heart

that my brother's the one

who wrapped Ted up in those sheets.

My brother

would have never left Ted alone,

not if he was alive.

[melancholic music plays]

[Tammie] There had to have been somebody

in that trailer taking care of Ted.

And I believe it was my brother Gary.

And I think him and Jackie

took off to try to find help.

But Gary was weeks

without his medication.

I think it was a little while

before he started losing his mind.

I think he just got lost,

and it was still cold.

I do believe

that he didn't make it out of there

any more than the other boys did.

[Brian] Anybody who's ever worked

a case like this wants to know.

Doesn't matter

how many times I read a report,

I'll find some little nuance

that just strikes me different.

I would bet

within the first 11 miles from the car,

Madruga or Sterling became fatigued,

which is the first symptom of hypothermia.

They were close friends.

If one was succumbing to the elements,

the other was likely to stay,

and together they perished.

The three were taking care of each other,

so they were destined to continue.

Jackie Huett's remains

were found along that path.

I don't think

he ever made it to the trailer.

Ted Weiher, obviously,

we know he makes it there.

I think it's a pretty significant chance

that, uh, Gary Mathias makes it there.

I think he was there

right up until Ted perished,

based on the way that he was swaddled.

He probably took the better pair of shoes

to try to make it away,

and likely didn't get very far.

[Mark] You can only speculate.

You may answer one question,

but you're going to bring up 20 more.

The only thing

that I could ask for right now

is please find his remains.

He needs to come home.

I don't believe in closure, I don't.

As long as there's an empty chair

at that table, nothing's closed.

[bittersweet piano music plays]

Knowing how all of them were,

it had to have been so scary for 'em,

and that that just eats at my heart.

[sobs] Couldn't be there to help 'em, huh?

They were worthy human beings.

Yes, every one of 'em.

[Mark] I can't even remember

what the last words were

that I ever said to my brother.

And I'm hoping it was, "I love you."

These were vulnerable guys.

How could that happen to to these guys?

Ted, he'd probably be living

with me if he

you know, if he was still here.

Yeah, I don't think

he could be on his own.

No.

Whoever had the most macaroni

and cheese is who he'd stay with.

[both chuckle]

He He He would have been with somebody

that that knew him and loved him,

to take care of him, and we did.

[music fades]

We were a very close-knit family.

But we weren't the type of family

that did the hugs and "I love you".

The first time my dad

ever told me that he loved me, uh

was the day my brother was found.

But we knew we loved each other.

We'd still like answers.

[Tony] The way that they were viewed

as incompetent, that's not fair.

Something brought them up to that mountain

where they met their death.

You just don't know what they were doing

and what was happening that night.

Where they abandoned their car

in the darkness

on a side road, and you come up here,

and you're more confused

than you've ever been in your entire life

about this case.

[Cynthia] They can't prove

there was foul play,

and they can't explain it if there wasn't.

[narrator] What exactly happened

to the Yuba County Five

on the night of February 24th, 1978,

may forever be a mystery.

Almost 50 years later,

the truth is still unknown.

[Claudia] Can you just imagine them

standing on the street corner,

drinking their pop?

- Yup, waving at everybody.

- [Claudia] Waving at everybody.

And everybody waving back.

Somebody out there knows

exactly what happened to those boys.

[Claudia] Let there be justice.

[mysterious music plays]