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The story starts in this sweet way.

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You've got five friends.

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They are pals from a disability center.

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And they head off to a basketball game.

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And then no one quite understands what happened after that.

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I was a young reporter then, but even then I knew.

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None of it made any sense.

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You the county lawman call this one of the more bizarre missing person cases they've ever handled.

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Families are panicking because we got five young men missing.

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The car has been found 70 miles in the wrong direction.

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Somebody made them kids do this.

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Did they get here on their own or were they brought here deliberately?

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That's the million dollar question.

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Why do you start walking in the freezing cold clearly having no idea where you're going?

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How did anyone miss this trailer?

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The sheriff's department didn't take it serious.

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How much longer are you going to continue the search?

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Until we find the rest of it.

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I want to tell you there's no hope.

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Someone has to know where they are.

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On the evening of February 24th, 1978, five men disappeared

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after leaving a basketball game in Chico, California.

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Their car was found abandoned 70 miles away from their homes.

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For almost 50 years, the case of the Yuba County five has perplexed investigators.

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Nothing adds up.

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Why did the men drive so far in the wrong direction?

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Why did they leave the car and walk into the snowy night?

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Were they lost or did something more sinister happen?

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Yuba County, to me, it was just a beautiful place.

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We'd go hunting and fishing.

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You couldn't drive down the road without somebody waving at you because you knew everybody.

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I had no clue what the high crime rate was until all this stuff started.

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This is the one I like. I like that picture.

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That's Jackie, right?

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Yeah. It was like six, seven.

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Look at that hair.

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I know. You're so cute.

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You and your brother had the same eyes.

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That's my mom.

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That's me and that's Jackie.

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It looks like Christmas.

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No date? Oh yeah, it does.

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Look at that. That's his last Christmas.

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That was 1978.

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My brother, Jackie, Bill Sterling, Jack Madruga, Gary Mathias, and Ted Weir.

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They first met when they went to the Gateway Project.

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The Gateway Project helped autistic or disabled people to learn sports

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and learn how to mingle with other people.

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Basketball was their big thing.

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The Gateway Gators, they lived for that.

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My big brother, Jackie, he was 24 years old, but he had the mindset of a 16-year-old.

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He was slower than most of us growing up, but nobody ever treated him slower.

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He could write his name. He could use the telephone.

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He had a girlfriend.

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He had a girlfriend, talked to her for hours on the phone.

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Jackie didn't see people as bad.

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He was just always smiling, always happy.

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My brother, Jackie, and Ted Weir, you would think they were brothers.

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They were together so much.

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If you've seen Jackie, Ted wasn't far behind.

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Ted loved macaroni and cheese.

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In fact, that's what my wife got him for Christmas.

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He had fed the macaroni and cheese, and you had one happy dog.

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He was kidding a button.

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But it was just his mind and the way he projected himself.

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He just couldn't put everything together.

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Uncle Ted, I never thought of him as being special.

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Of course, they used a different word back then, the R word.

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He was the fun, Uncle.

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Goofy, hairy, burly, curly hair.

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He was the janitor at junior high school.

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But he was ours, and you protect your own.

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We loved him, and we knew he loved us.

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Jack Madruga wasn't as outgoing as my Uncle Ted,

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but they were friends.

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Uncle Jack, he was very quiet, socially awkward.

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He would get nervous speaking to people,

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and they thought there was something wrong with him.

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He was just a very, very reserved person.

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But there was nothing slow about him at all.

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He went to Vietnam.

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He did very well in school, signed up for college all on his own.

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He was more like a bigger brother than an uncle.

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We called him Doc.

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He used to haul me and all my friends around all the time for us.

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Or we'd ditch school and call him up, come and get us.

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We were very close.

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Doc and Bill Sterling, they were best buddies.

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Bill Sterling, I remember him giving me pointers

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on how to release the ball and bowling.

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He was a sweet guy, and very friendly,

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and just wanted to help people, wanted to be there for folks.

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And Gary Mathias, he joined the group a little later than the rest of the guys,

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but the five of them became a great team.

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Gary was a little brother. I looked up to him.

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He was an athlete. He was a musician.

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He was all kinds of things that inspired me.

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He stood up for me a couple of times.

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I was going to get my butt kicked, and he stepped in.

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See, that was the kind of guy he was.

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He would back up his family. No questions.

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When Gary was in the military, he was given a medical release.

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They believed he was schizophrenic.

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He got a new psych doctor, and they changed his medications,

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and they got him doing really, really well.

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That he started working for our stepfather.

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Gary was a very caring person.

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All five of the boys, they were friends for eight or nine years.

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They would walk everywhere until Jack Madruga got his car.

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69 Mercury Montego, that was Jack Madruga's pride and joy, that car.

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They would just pile in there, all laughs, the windows down, wave at the people.

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Their favorite team was UC Davis, and UC Davis was playing Chico.

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They planned to go watch this game, and it was close, just an hour drive.

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Some of the families didn't want them to go to that game that night

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because they had a big game the next day, theirself.

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You cannot express the excitement they had for their game that next day.

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They had already won all their other games to make it to this tournament.

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It was a championship tournament for the Gateway Gators.

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I remember Jack Madruga pulling up in the driveway in his Mercury Montego.

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My dad told my brother on his way out the door,

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no booze, no smoking, and no girls.

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And my brother looked at my dad and said, oh, come on, Dad.

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Turned around and walked out the door.

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They were all just happy and hooting and hollering about their favorite team

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and left to go to Chico.

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The next day, my mom telling me your brother's not home,

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and I asked her, what do you mean they're not home?

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I was an 11-year-old boy, and I wake up on a Saturday morning,

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and my mom says, get up, we've got to go to your grandma's house.

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Uncle Ted hasn't come home, and your grandma's really worried.

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Because of their special needs, it sent up the alarms quick.

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Something was up.

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Families started calling each other, hey, did you see Bill?

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Have you seen Jack? Ted didn't come home.

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Now the families are panicking because we got five young men missing.

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My brother, Jackie, did not stay the night anywhere, anytime.

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He was home every single night.

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He wanted to be home where he had his comfort safe zone.

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They would have been home.

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From that basketball game, they would have been home.

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When they did call the Yuba County Sheriff's Office,

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they said there was nothing they could do, because they were all over 18.

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You have to wait this 24-48-hour timeframe before you can report them missing.

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And family members said, but wait a minute, they all have intellectual disabilities.

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Nothing they do. Bullshit. It's bullshit.

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The families on February 25th do what they can.

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They're frantically calling people, they're driving the highways.

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There's no sign of the boys.

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And at 8 p.m. they'd call back the Yuba County Sheriff's Department and say,

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look, we need help finding these guys.

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The initial investigation tried to retrace where they knew they had been.

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They were supposed to be at Chico State watching a basketball game

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and the editor of the newspaper in Chico.

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He had been at the game that night. He saw them. He very much remembered them.

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So they were able to verify they were present.

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It was really quiet for the first couple of days.

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February 26th, February 27th, no information.

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On February 28th, the Forest Service says we found a car in the Plumas National Forest.

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Basically 70 miles in the wrong direction up in the mountains.

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It's a 1969 two-door Mercury Montego and it matches the cart of the missing men.

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The Plumas National Forest is very rugged area. It's very mountainous.

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Where they disappeared is about 4,000 feet above sea level.

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There were major snowdrifts up there, up to 10, 20 feet in spots.

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There are drop-offs in certain areas where you could just go up and down.

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You could just lose your footing and fall 1,000 feet.

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Nobody goes up that way. That's no man's land.

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When I walked in the house, my mom was sitting on the kitchen floor crying

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saying that they found the car but none of the boys.

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The men were known to adhere to rigid schedules.

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It was unheard of for them to do something as spontaneous as drive into the mountains in the middle of the night.

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What could possibly have brought them there?

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The boys, this is not common for them. They shouldn't have been there in the first place.

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There was no reason for them to have gone to the snow.

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When they left their house, they were very lightly dressed for a basketball game in a gymnasium.

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The car was, for the most part, unremarkable.

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No damage, nothing to suggest anything bad had happened. The keys were missing.

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What they did have in there were milk cartons, candy, wrappers,

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things that you would more likely associate with children partying than you would with adult men traveling from a basketball game.

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One of the investigators contacted the distributor of the milk and found out who their local vendors were.

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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.

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They came across the bear market in Chico and fortunately they were able to speak with a woman who was working the night of the 24th.

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And she did recall them. They were at Bear's Market right around closing time, which puts them there probably around 10 o'clock at night.

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From there, they disappeared between Chico and Marysville.

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It could be possible that sometime between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., they exited off of the highway into a town.

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It was a town called Oroville.

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From there, they drive into the Plumas National Forest.

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And probably sometime around 11 p.m., maybe 11.30 p.m., they drive up a rutted snow-covered road in the middle of nowhere.

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And their car gets stuck in probably five to six inches of snow.

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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.

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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.

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The questions that I remember being most bewildered by, why do you make that turn off?

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Why do you stop the car there? Why do you get out of the car? Why do you start walking?

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Clearly having no idea where you're going.

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The thing was, is they had their game the next day.

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Some of them had their uniforms laid out on the beds.

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And they wouldn't do anything voluntarily to miss that day.

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Uncle Doc, he knew how to get to Chico. He had done this drive hundreds of times.

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The car was found with a driver's window down.

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His car was his baby. And to leave his car there, abandoned with the window down, no way.

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There's no reason for those men to even get out of that car unless they were forced or scared.

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To some folks, they didn't know what they were doing. They didn't make a mistake.

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So this is the Bedwell Bar Bridge. It crosses Lake Oroville and leads you into the Plumas National Forest.

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This is an obvious landmark, but if the men saw this bridge, they would know that they were far, far from home.

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And they were going the wrong way.

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And then if they see a sign for the plumas, they got to know better.

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As you can see, the road is closed. Eight miles north up the road, that's where the Mercury Montego was abandoned.

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I mean, it was a logging road. It didn't go anywhere.

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Maps wouldn't have taken them this way. There's no reason for them to be here just on a joyride.

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There's something that brought them up this way.

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There's no way they got lost. This night, something was going wrong. Really wrong.

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The law enforcement agencies began a comprehensive search of the area immediately surrounding where the car was found.

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There was multi-agency, at least four agencies involved. Well over 200 people participating in a search.

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Between horseback, on foot and vehicles, it could go some distance in the snow and aircraft. It was extensive.

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My dad, Jack, went to where the car was and started searching. He was there every single day.

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We hunted those areas. We knew those areas up there.

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Jack Sr. got out and he walked for miles on the side of that mountain.

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Jack told me he stated out loud, vocally, I will find you son. I won't stop until I do.

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All the families were out searching the woods. It was hell. I mean, you wake up every day just not knowing.

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That's the worst part, not knowing.

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The weather at the time became very snowy. It became very treacherous. The search and rescue teams would begin and then they'd stop.

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March is their busiest time. April, May things have slowed down considerably and by June they're not really looking.

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We had hope every day. Every day you'd wake up and they're going to find him. He's going to be okay.

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The silence would just unbearable.

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Sorry.

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Some motorcyclists coming past this Forest Service campground smell something awful.

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There's a camp trailer with its window smashed in inside of which they find the emaciated body of Ted Weir.

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Ted Weir's body is on its back. His hands are crossed over his chest the way you would imagine someone preparing a body for mummification.

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He was wrapped very tightly in several sheets. Almost as if he were swaddling a child. It's not something he could have done to himself.

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Ted had suffered horrendous frostbite. He was about six foot to 20 when he went missing and was probably down to 120 pounds when he's found.

230
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He was clean shaven when he had disappeared. He had a full beard.

231
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Because of the beard growth the coroners who looked at him were able to determine that he had been alive for some eight to 13 weeks.

232
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This got to me. Slow death by starvation and hypothermia over at least eight weeks.

233
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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?

234
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My Aunt Dorothy took me up to the place where they found the car. It's in March sometime.

235
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I can't help but think that when we went up there he was still alive at that time. It struck me that I was that close to him.

236
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He must have suffered terribly. He was still alive. And they didn't try hard enough to find him.

237
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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.

238
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Doc had the keys in his pocket when he was found. So he was the driver. There was no doubt.

239
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Grandma wanted to see Doc's remains. And our dad told her, Mom there's nothing left but bones. And she collapsed. She wanted to see her son. Tell him goodbye.

240
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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 and he was crying.

241
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And he said, I'm sorry son. I promised I was going to find you.

242
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He knew immediately that it was my brother from the clothes that he was wearing.

243
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And they picked up a bunch of bones and my brother's backbone fell out of his shirt that he was wearing. And he still had his wallet and his jeans.

244
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It was a hard day. It was a hard day. Still a hard day. It was like yesterday. Now my dad kept it together, I don't know.

245
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When they pulled the search off here that I didn't need their help, I'd find my son. And I believe I proved my point.

246
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And I'm going to continue to help find the rest of them too. One way or the other. That's all I got to say.

247
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The pathologist's report ruled the death is because of exposure. They succumbed to the elements. But there was not enough of them to where you could really accurately know everything.

248
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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.

249
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Gary Mathias has not been found at that scene. They just don't know where he is.

250
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It was very hard.

251
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But it gave me hope. I thought, well, the other ones are found. We'll find Gary.

252
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:22,000
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.

253
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:34,000
By June 19th, the search teams up there decided to call it a day. The Sheriff's Department says we did everything we could to find him.

254
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But there's nothing that they've been able to find for the remains of Gary Mathias.

255
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:47,000
I stayed out there two more weeks after they were gone. My husband and I and my brother-in-law.

256
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I hate to say it, but it just didn't seem like they did a very thorough to me.

257
00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:01,000
The family did more than the law enforcement did.

258
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:17,000
There's reports that members of the U.S. Forest Service claim we told law enforcement about those trailers and they never searched them.

259
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:30,000
We were hunting fish here our whole life. My dad could tell you what kind of print was in a swamp.

260
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:39,000
He seen four sets of tracks leading away from that car going up the hill north, not downward, the Sheriff's Department thinks.

261
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Jack Sr. knew those trailers were there. They told him to go up there.

262
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Jack asked them to go to those damn trailers. He asked them and I remember him saying he believes one person told him they would never make it that far.

263
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They would never make it that far. Like hell they wouldn't.

264
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The distance between the trailers and the Madruba vehicle probably close to 20 miles. I don't think anybody thought those boys in that condition and that weather could have made it that far.

265
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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.

266
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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?

267
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The men's capabilities continued to be a point of contention and for many it cast a dark shadow over the case.

268
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It makes you mad.

269
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Just the word pisses me off.

270
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Foul play suspected and disappearance of five slightly retarded Californians.

271
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And do you think that that's the word?

272
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Why would you say retarded?

273
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That's what they said back then.

274
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That's just not right.

275
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A little bit slower than if they would have said five championship basketball players for Gateway got lost.

276
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They would have probably found them.

277
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Instead of saying this shit, I think it would have went a lot different.

278
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They would have looked harder.

279
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:57,000
These were not 25 to 35 year old men who were as capable of making decisions and locating themselves as they might have been.

280
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That stigma being called retarded really shaded the whole incident.

281
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The perception of these men were just too stupid to turn around and come back and just kept going up in the forest was absurd.

282
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And I think this perception spilled over into the public's eye and especially in law enforcement's eye.

283
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They were just like, well, should we put all this effort out just to find some retarded men that got lost?

284
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I think five young men with the mental capacity were excited about having seen their winning basketball team do so well.

285
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They stopped at a market and got sugared up with chocolate milk and candies and somewhere along the way they made a bad decision.

286
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And they took a bad road and they never recovered.

287
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One bad decision led to another bad decision.

288
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To another bad decision.

289
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They tried to make us believe that it's stupidity and because they were retarded that they're up here on their own and there's no way that they've done this on their own.

290
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One of the things that completely perplexed the investigators, there's a food locker outside the trailer and some sea ration cans, military food, have been removed and eaten.

291
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:35,000
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.

292
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There was a propane heater that had not been turned on.

293
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,000
So there was food there that could have fed them.

294
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:44,000
There was a heater that could have kept them warm.

295
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:46,000
Why do you not eat the food?

296
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:49,000
Why do you not turn the heat on?

297
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:53,000
Why do you lie in a bed?

298
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Covered by sheets as though someone is caring for you, starving to death, for weeks.

299
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:07,000
What happened?

300
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:18,000
Ted wouldn't have done anything that he thought would be against the law if he was stealing something. He wouldn't have done it.

301
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:33,000
And he wouldn't have known how to turn on propane in the first place.

302
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:40,000
Ted Weir could not have tucked himself into the bed like that. Someone else was with him.

303
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:48,000
In the trailer were black tennis shoes and they were the shoes that Gary Mathias was wearing.

304
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:56,000
Weir shoes were never found. Either he lost them in the plumus or Gary Mathias took them and went away.

305
00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:06,000
Ted Weir and Gary Mathias both most likely made it to that trailer.

306
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:12,000
What happened to these men? What happened to Gary Mathias?

307
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:21,000
Evidence suggested that Gary could have made it to the trailer and with no sign of his body, suspicion started to rise.

308
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:33,000
Was Gary a victim, a scapegoat or something far worse?

309
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I do know.

310
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Oh God forgive me.

311
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Doc and the other guys were scared of Mathias. Gary was just going to go to the game with them. They didn't really want them to go, but they were too scared to say anything.

312
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:55,000
I did know that for a fact and that came from my uncle.

313
00:34:55,000 --> 00:35:05,000
Gary Mathias was under medication successfully. Had had a very peaceful two years before the events of that night.

314
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:16,000
But Gary Mathias had drug problems. He'd had very checkered experience in the army. He'd had some violent and very problematic outbursts.

315
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:32,000
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.

316
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:48,000
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?

317
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:57,000
His schizophrenia is easy to use as an excuse, but there's no proof of Gary ever pulling something like this before.

318
00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:15,000
If they can get in a car, drive to Chico without incident, attend a basketball game without incident, go to Bears Market without incident, house Gary the problem. I don't buy it.

319
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:27,000
If he wasn't on his medication, he cannot function by himself. So if he was not on his medication, my dad would not let him go. Period.

320
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:40,000
Law enforcement, they really, really didn't treat my brother fairly. They snap-chugged him.

321
00:36:40,000 --> 00:37:06,000
You were the first person ever in 45 years to ever ask me a question. No one in the police department, no one from the media, no one ever asked me for nothing. I don't know what happened to him. That's part that bothers me. I need to know where he is.

322
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:23,000
More than 40 years after the men's disappearance, one crucial question looms over this case. What happened to Gary Mathias?

323
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:39,000
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 got an off-work full bar.

324
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The third bar still 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?

325
00:37:55,000 --> 00:38:16,000
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 to CNAP. 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.

326
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:30,000
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.

327
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:45,000
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 we've ever been able to substantiate.

328
00:38:45,000 --> 00:39:02,000
I could tell you what I think. I don't think Gary Mathias made it to that trailer.

329
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:21,000
When I was growing up in Barrisville, there were certain families that you knew better than to fuck with. And the bully of the town was in and out of prison his whole life. And I've seen him do things.

330
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:42,000
Very scary guy. There was rumors that this bully and a group of people that had bad blood with Gary Mathias and took his vengeance out on all of them. They started something with my brother.

331
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:55,000
Gary Mathias stood up for him and these people beat the shit out of Gary Mathias and threw him over the Orville Bridge.

332
00:39:55,000 --> 00:40:10,000
And then they made the other four boys drive up that road and scared them enough that they would not come back down that hill.

333
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:22,000
One of the boys may have carried Gary Mathias' shoes up the trailer. That's why there was only four sets of footprints going up that hill.

334
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:41,000
I could feel that in my heart that my brother was the one who wrapped Ted up in those sheets. My brother would have never left Ted alone, not if he was alive.

335
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:56,000
There had 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 weak without his medication.

336
00:40:57,000 --> 00:41:10,000
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.

337
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:23,000
I think he was the one who was trying to get away from me.

338
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:31,000
Anybody who's ever worked a case like this wants to know. It doesn't matter how many times I read the report, but I'll find some little nuance that just strikes me different.

339
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:42,000
I would bet within the first 11 miles from the car, Madruga, north Stirling, became fatigued, which is the first symptom of hypothermia.

340
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:52,000
They were close friends. If one was succumbing to the elements, the other was likely to stay. And together they perished.

341
00:41:53,000 --> 00:42:03,000
The three were taking care of each other, so they were destined to continue. Jackie Hewitt's remains were found along that path. I don't think he ever made it to the trailer.

342
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:16,000
Ted Weir, obviously we know he makes it there. I think it's a pretty significant chance that Gary Mathias makes it there.

343
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:23,000
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.

344
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:27,000
And likely didn't get very far.

345
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:42,000
You can only speculate. You may answer one question, but you're going to bring up 20 more.

346
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:53,000
The only thing that I could ask for right now is please find his remains. He needs to come home.

347
00:42:53,000 --> 00:43:00,000
I don't believe in closure. I don't. As long as there's an empty chair at that table, nothing's closed.

348
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:21,000
Knowing how all of them were, it had been so scary for him, and that just eats up my heart.

349
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:24,000
I couldn't be there to help him up.

350
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:35,000
They were worthy human beings.

351
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:37,000
Yes, every one of them.

352
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:48,000
I can't even remember what the last words were that I ever said to my brother. I'm hoping it was, I love you.

353
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:57,000
These were vulnerable guys. How could that happen to these guys?

354
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:03,000
Ted, he probably lived with me if he was still here.

355
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,000
Yeah, I don't think it could be on his own.

356
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:11,000
No. Whoever had the most macaroni cheese, if we would stay with him.

357
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:18,000
He would have been with somebody that knew him and loved him to take care of him. And we did.

358
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:29,000
We were a very close-knit family, but we weren't the type of family that did the hugs and I love you.

359
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:33,000
The first time my dad ever told me they loved me,

360
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:42,000
was the day my brother was found.

361
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:48,000
But we knew we loved each other.

362
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:55,000
We'd still like answers.

363
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:05,000
The way that they were viewed as incompetent, that's not fair.

364
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:11,000
Something brought them up to that mountain where they meant their death.

365
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:17,000
You just don't know what they were doing, what was happening that night.

366
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:22,000
Where they abandoned their car in the darkness on a side road.

367
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:27,000
And you come up here and you're more confused than you've ever been in your entire life about this case.

368
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:33,000
They can't prove there was foul play, and they can't explain it if there wasn't.

369
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:43,000
What exactly happened to the Yuba County Five on the night of February 24th, 1978, may forever be a mystery.

370
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:49,000
Almost 50 years later, the truth is still unknown.

371
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:54,000
Can you just imagine them standing on the street corner drinking their pop?

372
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:56,000
Waving at everybody.

373
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:59,000
Waving at everybody. Everybody waving back.

374
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:06,000
Somebody out there knows exactly what happened to those boys.

375
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:10,000
Let there be justice.

376
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:49,000
The truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the

377
00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:56,080
truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the

378
00:46:56,120 --> 00:47:01,920
truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth is, the truth

379
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:21,060
you

380
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:51,060
you

381
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:21,060
you