Five go missing in the mountains

I’ve long been interested in mysteries and mysterious things — my current fave is the mystery of how Cadbury knows to crap when we’re at least a mile from the nearest bin — but recently I stumbled upon a puzzling and slightly creepy case that I’d never heard of before.

It’s become known as America’s Dyatlov Pass after a similar-ish incident in 1959 in Russia (about which I wrote a post a few years back on my old blog, said post now enjoying the holiday of a lifetime on my external hard drive.) The Dyatlov Pass Incident also inspired the bloody awful movie Devil’s Pass which is terrible so just don’t.

On February 24, 1978, five men left their homes in Chico, California, to attend a basketball tournament at California State University in Yuba. On the way back they stopped at a convenience store to buy some snacks. They got back in their car and set off on the 45-mile drive home, a journey that should take them about an hour.

Aged between 24 and 32, the five were Gary Dale Mathias, Jack Madruga, Jackie Huett, Theodore Weiher and William Sterling. All were described as developmentally disabled but capable of functioning in day-to-day life. Huett and Mathias had both served in the US Army and Mathias had schizophrenia, for which he was taking medication.

Photo: Wikipedia

Four days later Madruga’s car, a 1969 Mercury Montego similar to the one pictured above, was found 4,500 feet up in the mountains near Oroville, stopped at the snowline. It was left unlocked with one window rolled down, seemingly abandoned. The back seat was littered with empty snack wrappers and programs from the basketball game the five guys had attended. 

Police discovered that nothing was wrong with the Montego — it had a quarter of a tank of petrol and after hotwiring it the car started first time — but investigators were baffled as to how the heavy car, carrying five adults and with soft suspension, had made it up the unpaved rutted track with seemingly no damage. There was no sign of its occupants. The area was searched for five days with no success until a blizzard forced the search to be called off.

In June 1978 a group of motorcyclists rode into an isolated Forest Service trailer camp. Noticing one of the trailer’s windows was broken, one of the group went for a closer look and discovered Weiher’s decomposing body lying on a bed.

Search parties were alerted and the following day they found the remains of Madruga and Sterling. Madruga had been partially eaten by animals and Sterling’s bones were scattered across a wooded area. Two days after that, parts of Huett’s skeleton were found closer to the trailer. His skull was found the next day.

There was no sign of Mathias.

Map showing the location of the guys’ homes, the basketball game, and
where the car and bodies were found.

So what makes this case spectacularly odd? Where do I start?

No one has the slightest idea why the five would drive up the trail to where the Montego was found. It’s also unknown how the driver managed to get the car to where it was found without doing some damage to it, however minor.

The trailer containing Weiher’s body was 19 miles from the Montego in an uphill direction. Madruga and Sterling were found 11 miles uphill from the car. Huett’s remains were about 18 miles from the car. How did they hike so far in deep snow and freezing temperatures while wearing clothing totally unsuitable for the conditions? 

Most horrifyingly, investigators estimated that, going by Weiher’s weight loss — about 100 pounds (45kg) — and beard growth, he’d been alive in the trailer for two to three months. He’d died of a combination of starvation and exposure.

The trailer contained plenty of material to stay warm, such as winter clothing, wooden chairs, paper and matches, but there was no evidence of any attempt to make a fire despite the freezing temperatures. Not only that, the trailer was connected to a propane tank that would have provided heat and cooking gas. It hadn’t been turned on. 

A storage shed outside contained a supply of military C-rations. Investigators found that several had been opened and emptied. In a locker in the same shed was a supply of freeze-dried food that could have lasted a year. It hadn’t been touched.

Weiher’s last entry in his notebook/diary. Photo: Los Angeles Times

Just to add some creepiness to the mix, Weiher was found on the bed tucked tightly into several sheets, something he couldn’t have done himself. His shoes were missing but Mathias’s were found in the trailer.  According to the men’s families, a gold watch found on a table didn’t belong to any of them. 

And all this is without the statement of a witness who came forward shortly after the men went missing. Joseph Schones got in touch with police to say that on that night he’d been driving up the trail to his cabin when his car became stuck. While trying to push it he suffered a mild heart attack and got back into his car. Soon after he saw the lights of another car and heard voices. Schones got out of his car and saw what he said were four men and a woman, who was carrying a baby, illuminated in the lights of the other car. He called for help, which made the voices stop and the lights go out. Schones didn’t hear anything else and stayed in his car overnight. In the morning he walked eight miles back down the road to get help, passing the Montego which was parked just down the hill. When he heard the men were missing he contacted police.

So what happened? Maybe this: Mathias, Madruga, Huett, Weiher and Sterling drive up the mountain and once stopped at the snowline get out of the car. Something happens that freaks them out and they lose the car keys meaning they can’t use the Montego. Instead of heading back down the mountain they go up. After 11 or so miles Madruga and Sterling collapse through cold and exhaustion and are left behind. Huett collapses after 18 miles but Mathias and Weiher somehow make it an astonishing 19 miles before spotting the cabin (there’s no evidence that they knew it was there). The two hole up for weeks before Weiher finally succumbs to exposure and hunger. Mathias strikes out on his own (taking Weiher’s shoes as they were bigger and it’s possible Mathias’s feet had swollen from frostbite) and dies on another part of the mountain, his remains yet to be found.

Of course this doesn’t answer why Weiher starved to death despite there being sufficient food for something like 18 months close by the trailer. It doesn’t explain why he and Mathias — who’d served in the US Army and who must have had some kind of basic survival training — apparently never attempted to light a fire. It doesn’t explain what witness Joseph Schones saw and heard. It doesn’t explain why Weiher, who kept a sort of diary in a notebook found on his body, made no entries during the time in the cabin. It doesn’t explain why they drove up the mountain in the first place. And Christ knows what state poor Mathias would have been in mentally after weeks without his schizophrenia medication.

There’s a surprising dearth of information on this case — a 1978 Washington Post article (where I got most of the information for this post) is about it. A documentary is rumoured to be on the cards so if that does happen hopefully it’ll shed some new light on what happened to Gary Dale Mathias, Jack Madruga, Jackie Huett, Theodore Weiher and William Sterling.

Sources

5 ‘Boys’ Who Never Came Back, Washington Post.

Los Angeles Times report from 1978.

The Mathias Group from Yuba City — Strange deaths on U.S. mountains from strangeoutdoors.com.