The Yuba County 5 Revisited - The New Evidence

This video covers the disappearance and search for the "Yuba County Five", as well as some new information regarding the case.

Check out Tony Wright's book on the subject - LINK BELOW
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=things+arent+right&crid=2AYUEXZFXQ4G4&sprefix=things+arent+righ%2Caps%2C178&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

PREVIOUS "YUBA COUNTY 5" VIDEOS

PART 1 - https://youtu.be/I7DTCak0DOo

PART 2 - https://youtu.be/IweN7uLhGRc

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Hi there, folks. So this video is going to be
a continuation of the series I did on the Yuba
County Five. If you're interested in that case, then this
video is for you. And there's going to be more
to come after this as well. But in this video,
we're going to be putting an emphasis on the only
witness to the tragedy that befell the Yuba County Five,

(00:40):
and that man's name is Joseph Shones. I'll also be
showing you some onseen footage of key locations related to
this case. I'll basically take you on the exact same
journey the Yuba County Five took on the night that
they disappeared. Seeing these areas, especially the location where Joseph
Shoones got his car stuck in the snow, is very revealing.

(01:01):
But perhaps most importantly, I want to go over some
new evidence that nobody really knows about. And I actually
hesitate to say new evidence, but it kind of is.
It's new evidence people haven't ever heard before, but it
comes from something old that's been around for a long time.
I'm talking about a two hour interview between Joseph Shones

(01:21):
and the families of the missing men, recorded all the
way back in nineteen seventy eight after the boys disappeared.
We'll go over the reasons why nobody has ever really
heard what's on that tape and the work it took
to try and remedy that issue for this video, so
we have the unique opportunity to hear more about what
Joseph Showones saw and experienced when he encountered the Uba

(01:43):
five on the night of February twenty fourth, the same
night that the boys disappeared. And if you're only somewhat
familiar with the Yuba County five case and you hear
me say the name Joseph Shoones, but you have no
idea what I'm talking about, or if you're totally unfamiliar
with the subject in general, then I would highly recommend
that you go to my channel catalog and watch the

(02:04):
two part series I made on this case. It's probably
the work I am most proud of. That background information
will really help in understanding the material we're going to
cover in this video. There is a whole lot of
details and information available in this case. I can't adequately
cover it all in the intro, and we're only going
to be adding to it with this video. With that said,

(02:27):
I will quickly go over the briefest of refreshers regarding
the key points and events surrounding the Yuba County five case.
This incident took place on February twenty fourth, nineteen seventy eight,
and involved five men, Jack Hewitt, ted Weer, Jack Madruga,
Bill Sterling, and Gary Matthias. All five men had varying

(02:47):
degrees of mental handicap or mental illness, the severity of
which is often overblown. That night, they traveled from their
homes in and around Yuba City and took Jack Madruga's
Mercury montegae Go up to see a basketball game in Chico,
a town to the north. They made it to the game,
but once it was over and they started heading home,

(03:08):
something happened to cause them to veer off course, and
we don't know why. Suffice to say they did not
come home that night, and a search would be started
shortly thereafter. The Mercury Montego would officially be found in
the mountains above Oroville four days after they disappeared, so
the Yuba County Sheriff finally had a place to start
a search, but it was soon discovered that There was

(03:31):
one witness to whatever occurred on the night of the
twenty fourth, a man named Joseph Schones from the nearby
town of Barry Creek, and he was in the area
that same night. He had been drinking at a couple
bars before heading up into the mountains and getting his
Volkswagen Beetles stuck in the snow. While trying to get
his car out, he had some kind of heart attack

(03:51):
and fell asleep in his vehicle. Later that night, he
claimed to be awoken by a car pulling up behind him.
He heard some whistling sounds, saw some lights, and also
saw people walking around. Now, Joseph Shones has told many
different versions of this story, and none of them are
very consistent, but they usually go a little something like this.

(04:12):
He called for help by opening the window of his car,
as he believed he was dying from a heart attack,
but he was ignored. Mister Shones then exited his vehicle
and climbed a snowy hill near by to give himself
a better vantage point. When he looked down at the road,
he saw two vehicles, the Mercury Montego that belonged to
the Uba Boys and a reddish truck parked behind it

(04:34):
at an angle. Mister Shones never pinned down the number
of people he saw. In one case, he stated there
were anywhere between two and twelve, which is quite a
range either way. Despite Shoans calling for help from atop
the hill, he claimed, everyone piled into the red truck
and left the area. Shones would spend the rest of
that night in his vehicle, and his car would eventually

(04:56):
run out of gas, which meant no heat. The following
mo warning, he made a roughly seven mile walk down
the hill to a bar called the Mountain House. After
arriving at around nine am, he sat down at the
bar and made an interesting statement to the bartender, saying
I should have done this two years ago. Two patrons
of the Mountain House offered to give Shoans a ride

(05:18):
back to his home in Bury Creek. While in the car,
Shoans told these two witnesses what happened the night prior,
except he told a completely different story. In this version,
he said he was tailgated up the road by a
car that followed him so closely he felt he had
no opportunity to turn around or pull over. When he
tried to go uphill in the snow, his vehicle became

(05:40):
stuck and he became very angry. He blamed the entire
situation on this other vehicle that had been following him.
After getting dropped off at his house, Shanes would eventually
be admitted to the hospital for a mild heart attack.
Once contacted by the police, mister Shones never told that
story about being followed by a vehicle ever again. Instead,

(06:02):
he told the story involving the red truck. Still, the
search for the Yuba boys continued and ultimately failed. The
case wouldn't see a break until June, when the snow
melted and ted. Weir would accidentally be discovered in a
forest trailer near the Daniels Inc. Campground. His body was
wrapped in sheets, emaciated, and showed signs of severe frostbite

(06:23):
on the feet. Afterwards, three other boys, Madruga, Stirling, and
Hewett would be found in relatively quick succession. There remains
being found along a forest road that leads to the
trailer where Weir's body was found. It appeared that they
died almost one after another as they struggled through the
snow and cold define shelter. The only man who wasn't

(06:44):
found was Gary Matthias, and he is still missing to
this day. Now, obviously that is a very bare bones
description of events. If you need a better refresher, please
check out the previous videos, which I will link in
the description. But let's move on to some new evidence.

(07:16):
So I'm sure most people have probably never heard of this,
but there exists a two hour conversation where the families
of the missing you BA five basically question and interview
Joseph Shoones, and one of the parents recorded it. I
have this recording thanks to another researcher and author, Tony Wright,
so I owe him a great debt of gratitude. But

(07:37):
the reason you likely haven't ever heard anything from this
tape is because nobody really knew what was on it.
It was recorded in nineteen seventy eight on a piece
of equipment that is, let's just say, not great. You
can tell people are talking, but it sounds like it
was recorded underwater by a freeway with waves crashing over it.
From time to time, I'll play you a brief little

(07:59):
role just so you can see what I mean.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Uh, the time got to warm and kind as part
of the time that uh, there was a questions.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
About me so obviously this is an unfortunate situation. We
have a long interview with the only witness in this case,
a man whose testimony we've only ever heard through the
filter of a sheriff's deputy or a newspaper reporter. Well,
I've had this recording for around a year now, I think,

(08:51):
and I've always felt like I just had this little
treasure chess that I just don't have the key to.
I tried to find some audio experts to take on
the job of cleaning it up, but nobody wanted to
do it. And that's not on them.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Obviously.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
It's an old tape recording turned into a digital file.
I can accept the fact that maybe it just is
what it is. I did try a couple of AI
audio transcribers, but they all completely choked on it. So
I felt like the final option available to me was
to put on some headphones and listen to the tape
over and over and over again and try to develop

(09:27):
some sort of transcript. I spent way too many hours
listening to this thing every day, and it was the
most headache inducing task I've ever done for this channel.
But I got pretty good at understanding garbledegook so far,
I've been able to extract about twenty one pages of
dialogue from this tape and a lot of reasonably clear
questions and answers. I'd personally say that I have a

(09:49):
confidence level of ninety percent or more in terms of
accuracy of the transcript, with the occasional word here or
there possibly being incorrect, but usually in those cases I
may make a note of it. Unfortunately, there is still
a lot of talking that is indiscernible. We may never
know what they're saying, but we have what we have.
So let's go over what I've found in this tape

(10:11):
and how it compares to what Joseph Shones has said
in passed interviews. We'll go through this recording chronologically, and
mostly I'm just going to go over the stuff that
has clear, whole sentences and thoughts. There are a lot
of small fragments I'll mostly ignore because I want to
leave most of the guesswork out of it. Anyway, let's
get into it. To begin, Shones has asked about how

(10:34):
much snow was on the ground that night. He says
his car was stuck in ten to twelve inches of snow,
and the boy's car was stuck in a few inches
at most. The family sounded really surprised to hear this.
Shoones goes on to tell the family that he was
very angry that night, that he felt that he had
been abandoned while trying to ask for help. The families

(10:55):
ask why Shoan's wife didn't call the authorities after going
up into the mountains the next day to get his
car out of the snow. He says that at the time,
she was solely worried about him, not who the people
were that owned the montago, but he had told her
to find out who the montego belonged to because he
wanted to have them arrested for ignoring his cries for help.

(11:16):
A bit later, they asked Shoanes to start from the
beginning of his story. Shoan says it was five thirty
in the evening, not quite dark yet, but twilight. He
says he got stuck in the snow and he had
almost gotten himself out when he had a heart attack.
He says he ran out of gas around midnight, and
prior to that was using the motor to keep himself warm.

(11:37):
Shoan says that he later thought about stealing the boy's
mercury Montago to get to safety, but that the keys
weren't in it. When asked what time the Uba boys
pulled up behind him, he says that it was some
time between eleven and midnight, probably eleven thirty pm. He
says that when they pulled up, he didn't hear any talking,
but he heard some whistling, and later he begins whistling

(11:59):
as an example, so he clearly implies that there was
a human whistling when the boys pulled up, like trying
to get someone's attention. It wasn't a squeaky serpentine belt
in a car or something. Shoones then says that he
saw at least two people initially, and one came up

(12:21):
to his window, though he doesn't say that he could
make out any of their features, at least nothing like
that is audible on the tape. A family member asks
if these people had flashlights. Shoan says that they might
have had flashlights, as someone was flashing a light on
and off, but it could have been something else as well.
In this version of his story, Shoanes appears to say

(12:42):
that he saw two to three people that night. He
does seem to imply that when the pickup showed up
around midnight. He saw more, but it's unclear. Shoan says
that the pickup appeared to be an older one, and
he also seems to say that he couldn't identify what
color it was. He's asked about the color again later,
probably because newspapers had reported it as being a red

(13:03):
or rust colored truck, and Shoans maintains that he did
not see the truck's color. He says the color red
or rust was suggested to him and he may or
may not have just gone along with it. A family
member asks him if he heard any commotion around the cars,
and he says he didn't hear anything.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
Shoons goes on to.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Describe how he exited his vehicle at some point and
then started crawling. This is presumably the point where he
crawls up a hill to get a better view, at
which time he sees more people moving behind the vehicles.
In describing the people, Shoan says that there was no
panic and no scattering into the night. A family member
asks Shoanes if he said he saw a woman with

(13:43):
a baby or a man wearing a cowboy hat. Shoan
says that where they were standing there seemed to be
a man and a woman and a child. A family
member asks him if the boys ever saw him or
tried to talk to him. Shoan says that while he
was in the car, he was laying down in the
back seat, and with the little light that they had,
perhaps they didn't see him. A little later, Shoan says

(14:05):
that while he was in his car, his headlights and
tail lights were on and it got too warm, but
he couldn't reach the heater control, so he cracked a
window to let the cool air in. Sean says that
he also left his door ajar just a little, which
caused the interior lights to turn on. Because of this,
he says, there's no question about him not being seen
by the people behind him. But he says these other

(14:28):
people couldn't get the Montego out of the snow, and
they couldn't get it started, so they left. Shoan says
that it wasn't all that cold up there that night,
but to bear in mind that he had been sitting
in his car. He doesn't seem to know how the
boys and others left either. His only response is they
were there and then they were gone, and I got
to thinking they were never there. Shoones goes on to

(14:50):
describe his seven mile walk to the mountain house the
morning after the incident. He says that he was constantly
on the lookout for tracks to lead him to a
house or something he could break into to find a
phone or a radio to call for help. Shoans would
later state that he had never been up in this
area before the night of February twenty fourth. The family
members seem to express skepticism about someone being able to

(15:13):
drive up that mountain road without knowing it well. Showan
seems to hit back that he has experienced when it
comes to rough roads, having lived in Berry Creek for
a while, where rough roads are common. The family had
the same feeling about the boys. They had a tough
time believing that Jack Madruga could or would be able
to navigate the road up into the mountains, but Shoan

(15:35):
says that the road is no problem and that there
is only one set of ruts, so there was only
one place to drive. One family member says that Jack
Madruga wouldn't have driven up there unless he was made
to do it. Shones is later asked if he was
intoxicated that night, having been to two bars prior to
getting stuck in the snow. Shoan says that he wasn't drunk.

(15:57):
They asked if he drank anything at all that night,
and says that he drank one beer. After leaving the
mountain house, Shoan says that he didn't have anything to do,
and he realized that he hadn't been up there in
the mountains before, so he decided to just go and
check it out. He says that he never thought about
checking the snow line or even that there would be
snow up there. He says he probably should have asked someone,

(16:19):
but it didn't occur to him. A family member asks
him to confirm or deny a previous report that he
went to go check on the snow line because he
wanted to take his family up there the next day.
Shoones denies that's what he was doing. Later, a family
member asks Shoanes if he begged the Yuba County Sheriff
to give him a lie detector. Tester ask him questions

(16:39):
under hypnosis. Shoan says that he didn't beg them, but
he made the suggestion. Later, it is clarified that he
was not hypnotized because the sheriff was worried he might
relive a traumatic event and cause another heart attack, and
the sheriff was afraid of a lawsuit. Why he wasn't
put on a lie detector is unclear. One of the
family members states that they once had a heart attack

(17:01):
and they weren't even able to walk out of the
house to get to their car, signaling that they are
a bit incredulous that Shoones was able to walk seven
miles after a heart attack. Shoenes says that the doctors
told him that he was already self stabilized by the
time he started his walk to the mountain house. Shoones
then gives the family a prescription he had received from

(17:21):
the doctor to treat his heart attack, and a family
member reads the note into the recording device. It's said
that Shoones had a mild maa cardial and farction heart attack,
and Shoones wasn't to be bothered by police and reporters
for two months and signed by a doctor, Davis. Shones
later tells the families that he knows for a certainty

(17:42):
that he saw nothing that night that his mind would
try to blank out or make him forget. He thinks
he is a pretty strong person who already had some
experiences in the war, so he doesn't think that kind
of thing would happen to him. This seems to be
in response to some more questions about undergoing hypnosis. Shoones
is asked about his prior work history, and he says

(18:02):
that he was a social worker working with mentally handicapped
people and alcoholics. Shanes briefly speaks about his mentally handicapped daughter,
who was eighteen at the time. He said that he
had taken her up to that area a couple times
before and asked her what she would do if she
were in the Yuba Boys situation. His daughter apparently said,
head down the hill, no question about it. Shones is

(18:25):
asked if his wife knew that he came to the
interview that day, and he says she doesn't. It is
a bit unclear, but the topic of his wife being
in politics and the possible negative blowback of the Yuba
Five case and Shoan's involvement seems to be brought up. Lastly,
a person who is likely Jack Madruga's mother makes a
long statement about her son and his capabilities. She appears

(18:48):
hurt that the newspapers were calling him retarded, in her eyes,
he wasn't. She says that he was just bashful and timid,
but he had finished school, gone to college, and was
in Vietnam. She felt certain that Jack would not have
gone off on a road like that. There is more,
but that is the most interesting stuff with audio that
is recognizable enough to draw a conclusion. So if you're

(19:11):
already familiar with Joseph Shoen's different stories, then you might
have picked up on some interesting alterations to his story
during this interview. For example, Shones told the parents that
he had only had one beer that night, despite visiting
two bars, the Brush Creek Bar and the Mountain House.
Shones told the Yuba County Sheriff that he had had
one beer at each establishment, so two, But the bartender

(19:34):
at the Mountain House that night distinctly remembered that Shoans
had three beers at the Mountain House alone. The bartender
at the Brush Creek Bar wasn't interviewed, so we really
don't know how many he had there, but he clearly
seems to be trying to hide the fact that he
was likely drunk that night. The amount of beers he
drank that night seems to diminish with each retelling of

(19:55):
his story. Let's move on to the reason that Shoanes
was up there in the first place, which he told
the parents that he only went up into the mountains
because he had never been up there before. He never
considered that there would be snow, and he didn't think
to ask the mountain house bartender if there was or
if it was even a good idea. But he told
the Yuba County sheriff a completely different story. He headed

(20:17):
up the hill to check the snow line. He explained
that his family would be up over the weekend and
he anticipated they would go play in the snow, and
he was curious where the snow line was and wanted
to kill a little bit of time. The families had
likely heard this same story when it was reported in
the newspapers, but in their interview with Showan's he completely

(20:38):
denies it. He says he wasn't looking for anything. He
just wanted to go for a drive basically. I believe
at one point he says he was just horsing around.
I'll add a note from the mountain house bartender to
this as well. When she was interviewed, she said that
she thought it was very strange at that time that
he did go in that direction because he lived in
the area and he knew that occasionally vehicles did get stuck,

(21:01):
and that there was very little traffic up in that area,
and he may have serious problems if he did become stuck.
Moving on, There seemed to be little discrepancies when it
comes to his descriptions of his encounter.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
With the boys.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
For example, the color of the pickup truck he says
he saw that night in the Yuba County report, he
called it rust or red colored. When he is interviewed
by the parents, he denies that he ever stated a
color and instead says that the color red or rust
might have been suggested to him by authorities, and he
just went along with it. Beyond that, when it comes

(21:34):
to how the boys and the others left, he almost
tells two stories to the parents. He says at one
point that they tried to start the car and couldn't,
so they left, and then later he says it was
like they were there and then they were gone, and
he wondered if he had ever even seen them at all,
kind of making it sound like he was hallucinating, which
was something that he told to both the sheriff and

(21:56):
the newspapers. It's almost used as an excuse, you know,
like he had been hallucinating, so don't pin him down
on any details. He told the authorities in his official
statement that the lights of the vehicle went out, the
vehicle then started, all the figures got into the second vehicle,
the pickup, and left the area. That is a whole

(22:18):
lot more than just they were there and then they
were gone. The funny thing about Showan's getting kind of
vague with the family is that he was very specific
with the sheriff's deputies, right down to saying that the
pickup truck was parked behind the montego At an angle,
when the headlights went on and off, what the figures
were doing generally, and other small details. It was clearly

(22:40):
noted in the sheriff's report that Shoanes emphasized how bright
it was that night due to the moonlight, which made
seeing things easier for him. A topic which has often
caught viewers' attention is Shown's heart attack. Some people think
he never had one, some believe that he did and
maybe he really was hallucinating. Well, finally got a clear

(23:01):
diagnosis from this audio tape. He had a mild myocardial infarction,
also known as a mini heart attack, so not to
downplay the severity of anything, but this wasn't a full
fledged heart attack. Symptoms include chest pain and discomfort, pain
radiating to the left arm, shoulder, neck, and jaw, shortness

(23:22):
of breath, nausea, and fatigue. Hallucinations are not a symptom
of a mini heart attack, though, if we're being generous,
you could argue that he entered a state of delirium afterwards,
which led to hallucinations, but that might be overly generous.
Shoan's retelling of events is quite detailed, and I wouldn't
expect that of someone experiencing a severe state of delirium.

(23:46):
Moving on, Shoan's contradicted himself another time. While talking to
the parents. Early in the conversation, he has asked if
the boys said.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
Anything to him.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
He responds by saying that they didn't, and that since
he was laying down in the backseat of the and
they didn't have much light, perhaps they weren't able to
see him. But only minutes later he's talking about how
he had his head lights and tail lights on and
his car was getting too hot, but he couldn't reach
the heater controls. Instead, he would crack a window and

(24:15):
the door to cool himself down. When he cracked the door,
the interior light would come on. He then says there
is no question about him not being seen. This makes
sense if the interior light was on when someone approached
his vehicle, he should be clearly visible. But he maintains
that nobody spoke to him throughout the whole encounter. You

(24:36):
might have noticed that most of the time when I'm
pointing out these contradictions and shown stories, I am comparing
it to the statements he gave to the Yuba County Sheriff.
Mister Shones gave two statements to the sheriff, a shorter
one which was done over the phone, and a much
longer and more detailed one which was done in person
at the hospital. If I really wanted to hammer these

(24:58):
contradictions home, I would also compare this interview to statements
he gave to newspapers, because the trend only continues. For example,
in one newspaper, he's quoted as saying he saw the
Uba boys run off into the bushes instead of leaving
in a truck. I chose not to use newspapers as
a comparison for one reason. In this interview that Shoanes

(25:19):
did with the families, there are a few times that
he complains about how inaccurate the newspapers were when reporting
on this story. At one point he speaks about how
he had hired a lawyer and he was going to
seek retraction, likely from the La Times. Given how shady
shown says looked, I know that his hiring of a
lawyer might not mean much. I mean, who knows if

(25:41):
he actually did that. But anyway, given that shows expressed
clear frustration with the reporting of the newspapers, I figured
I might as well give him the benefit of the
doubt and not include them. But even without them, there
are plenty more inconsistencies to pick a part between this
interview and the Yuba County Ship Graff's report. But it
is a great thing to actually have some testimony directly

(26:04):
from Shoan's mouth, even if it is garbled in parts,
rather than only getting his story written out by a
third party. To me, Joseph Shones has always been at
the center of this case, even if I don't know
his exact involvement. He was the one thing standing between
the Uba boys and death up in those hills. Something
happened that night, and it happened at one single spot

(26:27):
on a lonely road. Because of that, having a good
visual of this location seems paramount. It's the spot where
the cars were, where both Shoones and the Yuba Boys
became stuck in the snow. It's a pivotal point in
the story. This is the spot where the decision must
have been made for the boys to start walking upward
to their deaths. So I set out on a trip

(26:49):
to follow in the footsteps of the Yuba five on
the night they disappeared. So I went out to California,
and since I was going that far, I figured I
might as well do the drive that the Uba five did,
going up Highway ninety nine to Chico, driving through town
and then stopping by the university. Well, folks, this is

(27:09):
my first stop. I am at California State University in Chico.
This is where the boys started their night. They had
a basketball game here and then they left and they
left for Bears Market. But they began here after driving
here from Uba City. They took ninety nine presumably, and
came here to watch a basketball game. As they were

(27:32):
big fans of basketball. Now, this is just a brief
stop in the night, and probably nothing of any incident
happened here. Everyone said they were acting normal, They watched
the game, one of them kept score.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
And then they left.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
Nothing unusual happened so far, and seemingly nothing happened at
Bear's Market either, But for some reason they left this area,
started heading back on ninety nine and took a wrong turn.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
So let's start heading in that direction.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Moving back through town. We know the boys stopped at
Bear's Market and got some snacks, and then they must
have hit the highway again. This is where something strange happened.
They must have taken a turn off to Oroville, and
this would be something very difficult to do accidentally. Even
if you did, there are countless opportunities to turn around

(28:33):
once you hit Oroville. There are enough twists and turns
you have to make to reach the oro Quincy Highway
that it becomes clear that there must be some intention
to the decisions the boys made. To me, the question
becomes what would lure or drive them out this direction?
Once you hit Oroville. There are countless different directions you

(28:55):
could go, countless places to pull over and assess your situation.
But the boys took a route that took them across
the Bidwell bar Bridge and up into the mountainous region
above Oroville. As you start traveling up into the mountains,

(29:56):
the road is windy and the going can be slow.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Again.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
If you were lost, there would be so much time
to talk and assess the situation. Their drive up into
the mountains would have taken about an hour at the
very least, plenty of time to talk about what was happening.
But never once did they make the decision to stop
and turn around. You wonder what their conversations must have
been like when they traveled up this way. Was there

(30:22):
talking light and cheerful. Was it tense and quiet? Were
they arguing? Was this drive somehow against their will? It's
a question will likely never have an answer to. But
at night, this road becomes a dark and lonely one
with no lights and rarely another vehicle on the road.
When I imagine what their drive must have been like,

(30:44):
I see it being tense and quiet, with Jack Madruga
slowly and cautiously making his way up this road. Driving
on a windy road in the dark almost forces you
to drive this way. They continued up for miles until
they reached the snow, and even then they didn't turn around.
The only thing that seemingly stopped the boy's vehicle was

(31:06):
encountering a Volkswagen Beetle already stuck in the middle of
the road.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Well, as you can.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
See cars whizzing by this hill behind me, this is
where it all took place. This is where the Montego
got stuck. This is where Shown's vehicle was found. At
least this is the closest approximation I can get from
all of the info that I have so far received
on locations of both vehicles. As we know, according to

(31:50):
Showans and testimony of witnesses, Shown's vehicle was found right
here near this bend in the road. Further on down
was the Montago.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Obviously we don't really.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Know the order of events, but if you take at
least one of Showan's versions, it goes that he came
up here because he wanted to see some snow. He
found some snow and got stuck, and shortly thereafter he
has a heart attack, and then he wakes up to
some lights coming from behind him, and he sees that

(32:27):
there's some cars back there, but he can't quite see
very clearly, so he gets out of his vehicle and
he starts shouting for help. No one's listening to him,
so he climbs this hill right here to get a
better view of who's down this way, and according to him,
he sees not only the Montago, but a red truck

(32:50):
parked right behind it, and he sees anywhere from I
forget what it was, some ridiculous number like three to
fifteen people are a number is so varied that it
makes you question the entire story, but he provided some descriptions.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
At points.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
He said maybe he thought one of the people was
a woman holding a baby. Shown starts shouting again from
atop this hill right here, but again they ignore him.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
He gets no response.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
Obviously, it's probably tough to climb this hill, especially in
the snow, but still they ignore him. And apparently everyone
piles into the red truck, which you know doesn't make
sense if there's as many as ten or more people,
But he says everyone got to the truck and drives away,
leaving the Montego here just in the snow, apparently, But

(33:42):
everyone who saw it said it wasn't really stuck.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
You could get it out real easily.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
So that really puts a lot of questions on Shown's
story here, because that doesn't make a lot of sense.
And of course, as we know, Shown's is a complete,
unreliable narraider. He's told many different stories as far as
this goes, and the first one he ever told was

(34:08):
that he was being followed up this highway right here
by a car that was basically tailgating him, and he
felt like he was forced up this highway until he
got stuck in the snow on this.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
Bend right here, at which point.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
What he doesn't really say, he's talking to these people
that are giving him a ride, saying that this car
was following me and tailgating me up until I got
to the snow point, at which point I got stuck,
and he was really angry about it, so angry that
he started having a mild heart attack, supposedly, But then

(34:42):
what about the people that were following him. He didn't
say anything about that to these witnesses that heard this
first story. And again, these were the people that gave
Shanes a ride from the mountain house back to his
home after he made the long walk from this location
down to the mountain house, So which story do you
want to believe? Really the story that Shanes was followed

(35:04):
up this highway by a car that was tailgating.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
Him, possibly the boys, but again, what would they be
doing here? So you got at least two stories.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
The one that Shan's eventually stuck with was the one
with the red truck. And I don't know that he
was ever fully confronted with the first story that he
told to the witnesses who gave him a ride, if
he was confronted with the fact that, hey, what did
you mean when you say this car was tailgating you
to the point that you got stuck in the snow?
And there was nothing like that in the reports that

(35:34):
I read on this case, which feels like a big
missed opportunity in a sense, because it's important that we
get the true story from Shoones. What did he really
mean and what was he even talking about, because he's
obviously lying somewhere, or unless you want to go with
the story that he was having a heart attack and
so much of whatever happened is just kind of a mystery,

(35:57):
g even him that he can't really remember what's happening.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Sorry about that.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
We get a lot of cars on this road still,
and you might notice that the road today is fully paved,
and it's actually one of the nicer highways I've been
on in California, to be honest with you, not a
lot of potholes. It was easy to get up here.
But to me, this spot right here is the most

(36:23):
important spot of the entire case. Not the trailer, none
of that, because whatever happened here has bearing on this
entire What the cause of all this was. Now initially,
obviously we need to know why the boys would head
up in this direction in the first place.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
But whatever took place here at.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
This turn is what forced the boys out of their
car and up into the mountains. And let me tell you,
I've already been up. I've already been up driving up ahead.
It is no small feat just to get up to
where the forest road begins. So whatever happened here was

(37:04):
something serious. It was something that the boys didn't anticipate.
They must have been afraid for their lives to start
heading up instead of down because they just came from
that direction. They knew Oroville is that way, and safety
could see a lot of people are driving by wondering
what this crazy man is doing here on this random
roadside talking into a camera. But most people probably just

(37:28):
pass right by this area without realizing that a big
mystery occurred here over forty five years ago and it
still endures today. But again, the big question why did
they come up here? And when they got here, what

(37:49):
happened that forced them out of their car and up
this hellish road and possibly twenty miles of walking to
a forest trailer where at least three of them died
along the way. It's something I could not stop thinking
about on the ride up here. You just have so

(38:10):
much time to ride in that car and think about
what you're doing and where you're going. And so to me,
whatever they were doing heading up this way, it seems intentional.
It doesn't seem like they were lost. Someone would have
said something, the conversation would have gone on long enough
that they would have realized they were going the wrong way.

(38:32):
So the question is what were they doing up here?
And to me, either they were intentionally going this way
for some reason that we just don't know, or some
people have suggested that someone else was in the car
and was essentially forcing the boys up this way. Others
have suggested that maybe there was another car that was
following them, that was forcing them up this way. But

(38:54):
even that, I mean, what we're talking about a car
chase for an hour up a slow mountain road. I
don't know. It's one of these things that I really
can't wrap my head around. What occurred to bring them
here and then what occurred at this location, because you
got two big mysteries, why did they come up here

(39:16):
in the first place, and what happened once they got
to this spot. Because Shoan's is telling all kinds of weird,
nonsense stories that don't make a lot of sense. He's
bringing red herrings in the form of a red truck
seemingly and telling completely different stories initially to witnesses. And
again I put the most bearing on his first story,

(39:37):
because that is the story that he told before he
knew there was going to be any investigation, before he
knew that the boys were lost, before he knew that
the boys were possibly dead. So to me, and I
never said this in the first video I did on
the Yuba County five, but I've always gotten the sense

(39:59):
that what happened was some sort of road rage incident. Now,
this doesn't explain why the boys would be here in
the first place. But I've always got the feeling that
what happened is that the boys were up this way,
they started tailgating Showns. He got stuck in this spot,
he got angry. Now, it's been known and said a

(40:19):
lot of times that the people in Berry Creek and
up in the mountains here, this is the very rural
area that the people at that time carried a lot
of guns. And I wouldn't put it past Showns to
have carried a gun in his Volkswagen. And in the
first video I said, maybe he threatened the boys, But
in my mind, what I always had pictured was that
he didn't just threaten them with his words. He threatened

(40:40):
them with a firearm and maybe forced them to head
up this way. And of course he was probably still
buzzed at the time, who knows, but something had to
force those five men up this way that they were
afraid of, and one of the few things that would
be is a firearm, someone pointing a gun at them,

(41:00):
because obviously the five of them can overpower the one
of him very easily, but a firearm changes the game.
So was that in play, And I tend to think
it was something like that that maybe Shoanes was so
angry he pointed a gun at them and just had
them start walking. And the boys were so afraid they
started walking and they didn't turn back. To me, that

(41:21):
makes the most sense that they would leave because someone
threatened them with a gun, threatened them with death, and
so they took their chances heading up. But again, that's
why it's a mystery. We simply don't know, and Shanes
is dead, so he's not going to be telling that story.
As you may have noticed, fire has torn through this

(41:44):
entire area and it's kind of created a lot of
problems and road issues, but it seems to have opened
up mostly and the road up here is quite nice.
But this whole area is just completely burned out. There's
not a lot of greenery. You can tell there would
have been a very lush and green forest here, and
it just kind of goes to show how time changes

(42:06):
all things.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
Because the Mountain House is no longer here.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
The trailer camp, which we will head up to shortly,
or try to head up to, well, I mean, I
almost don't know if there's any point to going there
because there's nothing there. That's what I'm getting at. It's
just an empty lot. I've seen pictures of it, and
so it's to get there, you'd have to go through
a lot of forest road or take a short cut

(42:31):
through the woods. But then you'll just be taking a
shortcut to a patch of land that's empty. And sometimes
when I'm out doing these things, I wonder if there's
any point to doing that, because this case is more
about the journey they took and about what happened at
this location I'm at right now. But another thing that's

(42:52):
not the same as the forest, because it's mostly all
dead now thanks to forest fires. So forty five years
has changed this area quite a bit, to the point
where very little is left from what happened in February
of nineteen seventy eight. One point to consider, as I'd
keep staying here and looking at this area. Shown's a
man who claims to have had a heart attack, knows

(43:14):
that there's a car out over here, and so he
decides that he is going to climb this hill in
the snow to get a better vantage point. I'm sure
this doesn't come across well on this camera. Well, that
hill you're going to have to climb up it, and
I'm sure it'd be even worse than the snow. It's
not very tall, granted, but this man is supposedly having

(43:37):
a heart attack and you know, defecating all around his
car and vomiting, and yet he is climbing this hill
to get a better vantage point on cars that are
just right here.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
So why didn't he just walk over there? It's a valid.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Question, and it doesn't make any sense to me, and
looking at it, it would be so much easier to
just walk around this bend right here then to try
and climb up that hill. But I'm thinking about Showan's perspective,
why didn't he just walk over here? I just did
it in the time I'm talking to you, I walked
from about where Showan's car was to where the I mean,

(44:20):
he could have seen the people, he could have contacted them,
could have gotten help, but he didn't. So again, after
actually being here for a while and looking at this,
Showan's statement that he made to police makes no sense.
There's no reason to climb this hill instead of just

(44:43):
walking around the bend here, walking around this bend here
and coming and talking to the people in the Montego
and the people that were supposedly in the red truck. Again,
His first story makes the most sense. He was tailgated
by someone, probably the boy, and some sort of road
rage incident took place, and during that road rage incident,

(45:06):
Shoones pulled a gun or some kind of weapon and
threatened the boys to force.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Them up the hill this way.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
If we're going by any have shown stories, that's the
one that only really makes sense. And obviously I'm adding
a lot on to it, because all he told those
witnesses was that a car was tailgating him and it
forced him to get stuck in the snow. But he
admitted he was really angry about it. So it makes
the most sense that that was the boys and that

(45:36):
he did something to force them up.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
Again.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
It doesn't answer why they were here in the first place,
but it answers the critical question of why the boys
were forced upwards and into that forested area where the
trailers are, why they walked themselves to death. In order
for you to walk yourself to death in those conditions,
you must have thought that heading back the other direction

(46:00):
meant certain death, and you would rather take the chance
of going up into the snow than going back the
way you came. It's the only thing I can think
of that would make sense for five men together to
be heading in that direction. Let's head up the road
a bit, get to the point where the forest road begins,
and see what that forest road looks like today, and

(46:23):
what they had to travel down, what they had to
endure in the snow, and just get a feel for
what they went through, because from this point on it's
not really a mystery so much as it is just
a story of survival. Beyond the point that we don't
know what happened to Matthias, but you have a pretty

(46:46):
good idea that he probably left on his own and
headed north up the hill and probably died in the
woods driving further up the road. Do you realize that
even the walk up the highway wasn't a short distance,
coming in at around five miles, this was the point
that the boys turned right onto a forest road leading
into the granite basin. Why did they do this? Likely

(47:08):
because a snow cat had come this way prior to
their arrival and had gone to the Forest service trailers.
The tracks and flatten snow left by the snow cat
likely gave the boys a path to follow that felt
like it might lead some more helpful to them. Unfortunately
they were on a death march. So behind me is

(47:28):
the road that I believe the Yuba five would have
turned down after walking up the oarl Quincy Highway from
the point where they left the vehicle.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Now it's still quite a way.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Just to get up here, but I think this road
makes the most sense. There are indications that this road
was still paved even back then, and obviously they seem
to have been following some SnowCat tracks, and I think
if a snow cat was going to head off into
these forest roads, they would obviously try and go to
maybe the paved road. And there is one other road

(48:03):
that kind of reconnects with this one, but it seems
to be of a lesser quality. So I think this
one is the likeliest turn they would have taken, given
where all their bodies were found. And again it seems
like they took the longest route possible, again based on
where their bodies were found, and this probably was the
start of their turnoff onto the forest roads, probably following

(48:26):
the SnowCat tracks. And if this road was paved, you know,
it probably seemed like a reasonable way to go. But
still we're at this point where how would they even
get up this far. What reasoning would they have to
be up this far? This is insane. It goes up,
It takes so long to get here, it's so slow.
What kind of discussions were they having? Why would they

(48:48):
Why would they be here? So that's the big question here.
Going to go down this road a bit and give
it a look. Going down the forest road, it's not
long before you reach a junction. You can either continue
down the path you were on, or head north, or
even back the way you came. The north route is

(49:09):
actually much shorter than the one the boys took. The
issue is these roads are dirt and not well maintained.
The long path around the basin is the smoother ride
to reach the forest trailers and likely was back in
the day as well. The road we see in the
video has almost certainly seen work done on it since
nineteen seventy eight, but even back then, at least one

(49:31):
newspaper referred to this road as a paved stretch of
logging road. Many often wonder why the boys took this
long route, and that's probably the answer. The snow cat
followed the safest path of travel for it to get
to the trailers, which would have been the paved one
and the boys followed the tracks left by the cat.

(49:52):
So originally I was going to be heading down this
road and walking down at a bit I can s
see that. Obviously, the wildfire came through here and burned
up all the trees in this area, as you can tell,
but they haven't cleaned up this part of the forest
rode yet. There's still a ton of down burnt logs

(50:15):
and stuff in the road, and I'm not going to
try and go down there. Obviously they haven't been through here,
they haven't cleaned it up. It's a mess, and I'm
not interested in popping a tire by going down there.
The option is open to walk, but I think I
have another plan for that. But it's interesting to be
in this area, very remote. You're just walking through the

(50:39):
deep mountainous woods right here, and you know, you try
to get a sense of what it would have been
like for them, much different for myself as it often
is when I come to places. Obviously it's in the
high eighties. I think right now it would have been
very cold for them, obviously snow on the ground. But

(51:00):
you're just walking through a long, windy road in the
deep woods pines everywhere.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
It would have been a hellish walk. And given that.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
They none of them particularly enjoyed the cold and snow,
and maybe even the dark as well, you can imagine
that this would have been just a terrifying journey that
they would have been making. And it just continues to
baffle me. I wonder what forced them up here and
what forced them into walking this path. I mean, it's

(51:37):
an unimaginable thing, you know, having to do twenty miles
without proper gear in the snow. It's no wonder to
me that they at least three of them died on
the road there, and I firmly believe that they probably
died those three on the way to the trailer, you know,

(51:59):
just that kind of mileage and that kind of cold,
not having the proper gear.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
Think of how ted Wire was when he actually.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Made it to the trailer, feet frost bitten, his toes
falling off. You can imagine that the other guys were
probably in no better condition when they fell on the roadside.
And it's amazing that anyone who even made it to
the trailer was able to walk out of there. And
I'm talking about Matthias that he presumably walked out of there,

(52:28):
and that he was in any condition to do that.
But of the five, as I've said, he would be
the one who would probably be able to tough that
out and get out of there. So let's continue having
to look around, all right. I'm just moving down the

(52:59):
forest road on foot for a little while, just to
see what it's like. I think I'm gonna try and
take a short cut to the camp, or maybe I
don't know. I'm gonna see what it looks like. Originally,
I was gonna try and do the entire walk from
where the forest road starts all the way to where

(53:21):
the trailer was. That was my original ambition when I
was planning this in my head months ago. And here
in action, it's hot day and my feet have been
absolutely destroyed after hiking in Yosemite for a few days.
So I'm gonna limit my mileage a bit and try
and not walk an incredible distance to the trailers and

(53:45):
then back to my vehicle. But sometimes my thinking is terrible. Anyway,
when you're here, I can't help but put myself for
attempt to put myself in the headspace of the five
men that walk this road more than forty five years ago,
and just try and wonder what they were thinking when

(54:05):
they were here. You know, I can't tell you how
often I come to these places, and I wish I
could have just been there, you know, as tragic as
it was, I wish I could have been there to
see what developed into this situation. You know, I mean,
you got to imagine these guys were walking for miles
together in a group. What were they talking about? You know,

(54:28):
what were they thinking? Because they must have had conversations
as they were walking this way towards the trailer about
you know, how are we going to survive this?

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Where are we going? What's our plan?

Speaker 1 (54:40):
I wonder what they were going through, and obviously it
must have entailed a lot of suffering, and unfortunately in ways.
You know, this place has changed so much. The trailers
are no longer there. It's just an empty lot. The
mountain house is no longer there. You know, the roads

(55:01):
are still here, but heck, even most of this forest
is gone now, though some still does remain. But obviously
a lot changes in forty five years. The forest roads

(55:58):
in this area go on for my miles. It continues
to put into perspective the slow and arduous journey the
Uba five must have endured while walking this winding and
lonely road in the middle of the night. You could
take this road directly to the spot where the service
trailers used to be. Again, there's simply nothing there anymore.

(56:18):
I did have a thought to go to this area,
but I wanted to try a different route that a
viewer had sent to me. If you go on the
road above the trailer's location and above the granite basin,
then you can walk down the steep hillside to the
forest road below. In terms of walking, it's a much
shorter trip. But I was more interested in this route
for a different reason. This road was where the blankets

(56:41):
and flashlight were found, and if Gary Matthias walked out
of the trailer back in nineteen seventy eight, I believe
he came up this direction. Going here and walking around
in this region would give me an opportunity to understand
the terrain and possibly spot some evidence after so many years.
The last part is a real long shot, So I

(57:02):
left the granite basin roads that the Uba five used
and continued along the highway, taking a right onto the
other forest road that travels along the top of the basin.
You do wonder how those blankets and the flashlight got
up here. Why were they dropped when it's cold and dark?
Those resources are invaluable. Would anyone have been driving around

(57:23):
up here at that time? It would have been weeks
after the initial disappearance. Did Gary or whoever dropped them
discard them out of simple exhaustion? It seems like it
was more than a coincidence that they were found at
the road rather than just some random place in the forest.
But what does it mean I wanted to experience that

(57:43):
climb for myself.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
Well, I'm going to.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Attempt to kind of connect with another forest road and
go off trail so that I can maybe get down
to where the Forest Service trailer camp was. Right now,
I'm up in the area where I think Gary Matthias
would have been heading. It's the forest road just above
the camp that kind of connects back with the Ora
Quincy Highway.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
I think he came up this way mainly because there were.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
Some evidence found blankets and I think some other things
that were heading in this direction and made it seem
like maybe he'd dropped those things as he was heading
this way. So I kind of think Gary Matthias probably
died in the woods somewhere around here where I am now,
north of the Forest Service camp as he.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
Was trying to get out.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
But I'm going to be heading down into the Forest
Service camp or trying to tune out that a camp's
there anymore, just to get a look at the area.
So we'll see how that goes. Got some off trail
to do, so let's get to it. I spent a
lot of time walking along this hillside searching it. Really,
the ground was very visible, and I took it slow,

(58:50):
looking for anything that seemed out of place. Whenever I
do something for this channel that involves me going off trail,
I almost always bring a hiking buddy along. I've talked
about too many deadly cases on this channel to not
do something like that, So I had a hiking buddy
with me on this day. That way, if someone gets
hurt or injured, there's somebody else to help or to

(59:13):
get help. Well, while we were searching this hillside, my
friend must have stepped on a nest of ground hornets
or something like that. I didn't see what happened. I
just saw a lot of hornets attacking them, and they
were stung quite a few times.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
At that point, the hike.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
Was over and it was time to go, so I
didn't make it to the forest trailer lot and couldn't
spend as much time as I wanted searching the hillside.
It's worth noting that this area is very steep. It's
a tough hike upward, and for someone in poor condition,
like say Gary Matthias, it probably would have taken a
long time to get to the top. But maybe it

(59:49):
seemed like the best option. If he chose to walk
back on the road that took him to the trailers,
he knew it would have been just another nearly twenty
miles of nothingness. If Matthias made it to this road,
which way would he go? East or west? He just
have to pick one at random and hope for the best. However,
this leads to another issue. If Gary Matthias came to

(01:00:12):
a road, wouldn't he stay on the road and continue
walking until he died? But his body was never discovered
on the side of any road up here, though that
might not mean much because I don't know how well
they really looked up here. I suppose it's also possible
that hypothermia led to confusion, as it tends to do
in that case, he could have just walked off in

(01:00:34):
any direction, slowly plodding along until he collapsed. Of course,
nobody really knows what happened on the night of February
twenty fourth, nineteen seventy eight. But whatever it was, I
feel almost certain that Joseph Shoens knew more than he said.

(01:00:56):
This is a guy who told one story to the
police and media, within which elements kept changing with every retelling,
and he told a completely different story to the people
who gave him a ride home on February twenty fifth,
I mean with the sheriff alone. In his first interview,
he says there was no red truck. He said that
there was only a montego and that he didn't really

(01:01:17):
even see it leave. Then in his second interview with
the sheriff, he says there was a red truck, and
he gets real specific about the details. There are so
many things in this official story that you can pull apart,
so many things that just don't make sense. Shones is
in the backseat of his car, dying from a heart attack.
The interior light is on and people approach his window,

(01:01:40):
but he continues to stay there. He says he calls
for help, and he gets no response, but he makes
no attempt to get out and approach these people who
were just outside his door. Does that make sense. He
makes it sound like he was calling for help from
ghosts who couldn't hear or respond. This kind of thing
makes me think it's all made up, because if he

(01:02:01):
is inventing this story and he starts claiming that the
boys did talk to him, then he starts opening a
really complicated can of worms for himself, because these five
men had personalities and tendencies and he didn't know them.
It's much better to have a story where nobody even
acknowledges your existence. And when Shones finally does exit his vehicle,

(01:02:23):
instead of making these short and easy walk down the
road to approach the group of people less than a
block away, he makes the decision to climb a hill.
When I think back to my time standing there on
that road, I can't really see any reason to climate.
I mean, Shoanes was essentially already on a hill. It's
pretty easy to see down the road from where he was.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
He says.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Everyone piled into the truck and left the area, but
there was no panic. Nobody scattered into the night. Things
seemed civil, like nothing bad was taking place, almost like
the red truck was there to help. But somehow the
up to twelve people who were on scene couldn't push
the Montago out of the snow. Shoans and everyone else
who saw the montago admit it wasn't really stuck in

(01:03:09):
the snow. How then, could this group of people not
push it? Why would they all leave in the pickup.
Shoon's claims they turned around and left, but the boy's
dead bodies are telling us they clearly started walking upwards
past Showan's position. I feel like I could go on
forever with these I've said it before and I'll say
it again. It is my belief that Showan's first story,

(01:03:32):
the one he told before he knew there was going
to be any criminal investigation, the one he told before
he really had any time to think up anything else,
is the most accurate version, wherein he says a car
was following him so closely on the oor Quincy Highway
that he felt forced up into the snow where his
vehicle became stuck. He blamed the fact that he had

(01:03:54):
a mini heart attack on this car that was following him.
That scenario could make anyone very angry and if the
car that was behind him belonged to the Yuba boys,
well what happens next? Shanes is stuck, so he asked
to get out of his car to see what the
problem is. Wouldn't he approach the car that did this
to him? It would be right behind him, right there

(01:04:15):
in front of him. How could he not? Regardless of
which version of the story shows tells he's angry in
each of them. The driver's side window of Madruga's Montego
was rolled down, which you would likely only do in
the freezing mountains if you wanted to speak with someone
standing outside the car. Did Madruga roll the window down
so that he or one of the other boys could

(01:04:37):
speak to Shanes as he approached? Then I would ask,
what are the odds that Shoanes carried a gun? The
people of Barry Creek, the region where Shoans lived, were
known to be a bit of the country sort, carrying
guns and all that. It's not too far fetched to
think that Shoanes did too, though that is entirely an assumption.
But could he have forced the boys up into the

(01:04:59):
mountains at gunpoint? If he did, maybe he didn't even
think they would end up dead. Maybe he just wanted
to frighten them, but he thought that they would find
their way back down eventually, maybe even the next morning.
Like he did. He had been drinking that night, after all,
his thinking could have been clouded. Maybe he didn't realize
the gravity of what he had done until he learned

(01:05:20):
that all the boys were missing, at which point he
had to change his story to cover himself and to
be painfully clear. Because I know people like to get
into the details on this case, the timeline I am
proposing for this theory is this Shones hits two Bars
on the evening of the twenty fourth. He has quite
a few beers and gets pretty drunk. He then heads

(01:05:41):
up towards the snow. He does not get stuck yet,
because he lives here. He's good on the roads. He
says as much to the families when they interviewed him.
He basically claimed to be a rough road master. So
he stops short of driving up into the snow, but
he doesn't turn around. While there, he falls asleep in
his car in the middle of the road. He probably
never would have thought another car would come up that way. Then,

(01:06:04):
sometime between eleven PM and midnight, he gets awoken by
the headlights of the Yuba boys who are heading up
this way for reasons unknown to us. They stop behind Shoes,
shining their headlights into his car and whistling at him
to get his attention. He wakes up startled, realizing he
is sitting in the road and blocking traffic. He instinctively

(01:06:24):
starts his vehicle and begins moving forward up into the
snowy area of the mountains and the road. Shown searches
for a place to pull over or turn around, but
it's simply not possible. The further up he goes, the
deeper the snow gets. Then his car gets stuck. This
makes him angry, so he gets out of his vehicle
and confronts.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
The Yuba boys.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
They try to back up in a hurry, but their
wheels start spinning. This causes them to believe they are
actually stuck. They eventually get out of their car and
a confrontation occurs that ends with Shownes threatening the boys
with a gun, forcing them up into the hill, and
Shoans subsequently has a many heart attack from all the stress.
The following morning, things play out the same way. He

(01:07:07):
later described to me this line of thinking makes the
most sense. The only thing it doesn't account for is
what the boys were doing up in the mountains to
begin with. The reason for that may never be known,
but there doesn't necessarily have to be a connection between
Shoanes and why the boys were there in the first place.
Some theories try to link Showns in, but that's difficult,

(01:07:30):
as there is no evidence he knew any of the five,
much less had the ability to lure them to a
remote location like this. Shoones did have a disabled daughter
who attended a special school, and you wonder if they
ever encountered the Yuba boys at some point, but as
of today, we have no evidence to support that. Ultimately,
any theory attempting to explain the Yuba County five disappearance

(01:07:53):
has to try and account for a lot of elements
that we know are true. So when I hear theories
that just completely ignore Shown's involvement, I tend to immediately
disregard them. Every theory has to account for Showns somehow,
in some way, the Yuba County five were forced up
into the mountains, and in order to get there, they

(01:08:13):
had to go through Joseph Shones.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
He's the only witness, and the.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
Only story he ever told that I take seriously is
the one that he told the two witnesses when he
was getting a ride home on the morning of the
twenty fifth. As usual, I'm interested in what you think.
Let me know your theories in the comments below, let
me know what you think of my theory, and by
all means pick it apart. This is one of those
cases where it's going to take a lot of thinking

(01:08:39):
and some solid investigative work if it's ever going to
be solved. So the more people we have talking about it,
the better. And until next time, thanks for watching

Speaker 3 (01:09:01):
Than