Tony Wright ”The Mystery of the Yuba County Five” pt. 2

[00:00:00] From the darkest reaches of space, to the deepest corners of your mind, welcome to From the Void Welcome back to From the Void. I'm your host John Williamson and we're back with part two of my conversation with author and researcher Tony Wright.

[00:00:24] So welcome to this week's mystery, the conclusion of the mystery of the Yuba County Five on From the Void. Hey, that is really interesting. I heard the piece about the man in the woods.

[00:00:47] It seems to be a little bit more in line with what they know at that point versus the instance where they're spotted wearing different clothing and would explain it seems to reason that had they had access to a payphone at some point, they probably would have made calls

[00:01:06] home and it doesn't seem that there's any record of them making any calls to any other family or friends at that point. So initially when law enforcement arrives, they're following up on these leads. They see this abandoned car, they see footprints off into the snow essentially.

[00:01:25] What happens at this point? Because it's quite a bit of time between when they locate the vehicle and as you mentioned, this is a prize possession. Jack's prize possession and I think I remember hearing that the window was rolled down as well. Right.

[00:01:42] It seems like sort of careless in terms of the way he typically treated this car that was such a prize possession. So talk about what happens in between when the first initial member of the group of

[00:01:55] five is located and when they find the vehicle because quite a bit of time passes. So the vehicle's found February 28th and it's on this road in the middle of nowhere. And if you drive that way up into the plume, it's nowhere.

[00:02:10] I mean there's people that live up there but it's the middle of nowhere. So when that car is found abandoned, yeah, the window's rolled down and it's unlocked which is very unusual for Jack Madruga. He would lock his car, leave the windows up.

[00:02:26] He had basically a set of rules for his car. He didn't want people like drinking beer in his car. He didn't want backseat drivers. He just wanted to get from point A to point B, no questions asked.

[00:02:40] So when that car's found abandoned, it is said in the Files of the Unexplained episode that there were four sets of tracks that went from the Montego into the Plumas National Forest. That has been said by Jackie Hewitt's father who was Jack Hewitt Sr.

[00:02:59] Jackie Hewitt's dad claims that he saw four sets of footprints. The only thing that is kind of hurting that is the fact that when they did their investigation of that abandoned car, people were up there on the 26th, 25th, and possibly the 27th up in that area.

[00:03:23] So we don't know if it's the men or if it was other people up there because just as Shones who had his car abandoned up there and said he had a heart attack, had his wife and a couple of family friends come get that car and move it.

[00:03:38] Then there were sightings of other people up in that area sort of doing whatever skiing or doing whatever winter sports they were doing. So if there were footprints going from the Montego into the woods, it's hard to tell who made the footprints.

[00:03:55] And if there were four, just because the weather had kind of changed a little bit from being snowy to rainy so we don't know how much of the rain melted some of the footprints and could have made it look like there was four instead of five.

[00:04:11] But anyway, when the investigation begins up in the Plumas starting February 28th, they don't get any kind of break until early June of that same year when three guys are on a motorcycle adventure through the Plumas. And when they're out and about, they kind of underestimate the conditions

[00:04:36] of the roads because it had been a bad winter and a bad spring. So trees are down. There's like debris in the road and what they thought was going to be an easy Sunday drive is just turning into a headache.

[00:04:48] They know that there's a map somewhere and it's at a location called the Daniels Inc. Campground. So the Daniels Inc. Campground is probably 12, 15 miles from where they abandoned the car towards the northeast when they get there, they're hit with like this wall of just

[00:05:04] just this foul smell and they kind of know maybe what it could be like maybe an animal died or something happened. And they begin to look around the area and they noticed there's these trailers and they're used by Forest Service employees and people who do like if

[00:05:23] there's fires or any other kind of lumber work to be done up there, they will use those trailers. They notice one of the windows is broken out of the trailer and a guy just kind of peeks in and there's beds and like tables and like a

[00:05:37] kitchen area set up in there and they noticed them on the beds. There's a dead body. So the guy kind of pulls his head out and says, you know, there's a dead body and the other guys don't believe him.

[00:05:47] So as they're looking around the area, they begin to realize this guy is telling the truth that there's someone's dead in that trailer. So they have to go to like a pay phone somewhere and call the sheriff's

[00:06:01] department say, we just found the dead body up at the Daniels Inc. Campground. You need to come look at it. And at first the sheriff's department's like, no, I don't think you guys are telling the truth or you're just pulling our leg.

[00:06:10] And finally, after convincing the sheriff's department goes up that way and they look at the guy in the trailer and it's Ted Weir, who's one of the five missing men. When he goes missing, he's probably 200, 220 pounds. When they find him, he's probably lost 80 to 100 pounds based on

[00:06:33] their estimates. They also noticed that when he went missing, it was clean shaman. He had a full beard. So they began to think, how long did he survive up here? His shoes were gone. His feet were, you know, he didn't have socks on.

[00:06:49] He was badly frostbitten and his cause of death was something called pulmonary edema, which is sort of a fluid built up in the lungs. And they just can't believe what they found that this guy is 12 miles northeast of the car that has gone missing.

[00:07:10] And the only way to get there is to follow these intricate sort of like mountain roads that lead up to that area. And so it puzzles them that this guy made it that far. And I think researchers from the time they, when they find the

[00:07:28] car on the 28th, knowing it was abandoned on the 24th knew those guys were going to get hit with like hypothermia and they were going to be walking through snow and this was not good for their survival.

[00:07:39] And when they find Ted weird, they're thinking, how did he live for so long? And then they began to notice that in the trailer, there's all these military C ration cans that have been opened. So they begin to think, okay, he's not here alone.

[00:07:52] And also when they find Ted, he's been sort of tucked into his bed a certain way where he has these layers of blankets on him. And they said, you know, Ted couldn't tuck himself like that nobody could tuck himself like that.

[00:08:05] They begin to figure out, okay, maybe two people have been in here, maybe three. So they start to search the area about three miles south of the trailer. They find the remains of Jack Madrugar, the driver and Bill Sterling, one of the five.

[00:08:21] Jack has his keys on him to the car. Bill's remains have been scattered like Jack's. So there's really not much they can do with examining that scene. And then a day or two after that, the remains of Jack Hewitt are found and they're found about a mile south

[00:08:37] of the trailer. So now we have four of the five. Gary Mathias is the last person. And when they begin to finish their search, it's probably June 10th, June 11th. And eight days later, they call off the search and say, we're done. We can't find Gary Mathias.

[00:08:56] Maybe we'll find him another time. And that's where the story ends as far as the investigation June 18th, June 19th, 1978. And these guys just, you know, they're doing all the searching call today. So Gary's never been found since that time.

[00:09:13] So when they find Ted, Ted's the only person they find who's, I guess you would say in a complete state. The others is just scattered bones and scattered remains. And they don't know how they all ended up there. But they do surmise that hypothermia and exposure

[00:09:30] played a key role in their deaths. And they just don't understand how Ted lived for as long as he did, because they believe he could have lived anywhere from like four to eight weeks in that trailer by himself or someone else, giving him food and possibly water.

[00:09:47] Yeah, that's what's really one of the many puzzling pieces of this case. One of which is, you know, I think one of the layers that I kind of inferenced earlier is the fact that I think a lot, it seems like a lot of

[00:10:03] the media and even law enforcement really leaned heavily into the fact that, you know, several of these gentlemen had mental disabilities. And as we know with any mental disability, it could be any wide, wide range of mental disabilities from very, very minor to a little more significant.

[00:10:23] And the family members have been pretty adamant about the fact that these guys were equipped enough to the point where, as you had said, they had made road trips many times before without incident. And so this should have been no big deal. Right.

[00:10:41] There's some, as you said, suggested some evidence that they were able to find these rations that were left behind, at least one of the gentlemen anyway, and survive off of this food for a while. In fact, I think if I read correctly, two of

[00:10:57] them had military history had been in the military as well. And so I had some experience there as well. So it kind of leaves the question sort of open ended in terms of, you know, what first of all, what led them out there into the middle of nowhere?

[00:11:15] And then how is it that some of them at least appeared to survive for extended period of time and where the hell is Gary? Gary has just never been found. And why did they just suddenly call off the search after finding four of the five and not

[00:11:30] continue to find the fifth person? So what's the guys going from the car to the trailer that really stunned law enforcement because they didn't think they could make that walk because it's 12 miles, there's snow freezing temperatures. It was raining, it was sleeting. Hypothermia would have kicked in quickly

[00:11:50] for those guys because one person told the press the minute they got out of the car, their lives were measured in minutes and not hours or days. So that really blew their minds. But the family members said, look, when you talk to us about these guys, we

[00:12:08] said all five could walk long distances. And that's one thing that they said to members of law enforcement, Ted Weir could walk five to seven miles. And he would take Jackie Hewitt with him or Bill Sterling could do the same amount. Gary was a good athlete as well.

[00:12:29] Gary, when he was schizophrenic in his sort of diagnosed early with schizophrenia, he wasn't taking medication. He had an episode where he walked from Portland, Oregon, somewhere in the suburbs to Sacramento and that's 500 miles. He walked it. And he said he had survived stealing either

[00:12:51] like milk off of people's porches when that was a thing. And he would find like cat food or something to eat, dog food. And when his family saw him, they're like, where have you been? Like we haven't seen you forever. And he said, I walked from Oregon.

[00:13:08] And so if these guys have the ability to do all this walking, they were able to get from a car to the trailer, which surprised the searchers because they thought the guys would go downhill. Because when you go into the plumbers, you're going up and they thought the

[00:13:24] guys would walk down the road and they would try to look for a place. And there was a place called Mountain House, which was a local sort of hang out hotel sort of mountain hangout place and bar. It could have been open. Someone could have been around.

[00:13:43] They could have used a phone there because that's where Joseph Shones walked to the next day. So that whole part of the investigation is puzzled people for a long time. If they walked across the terrain, it'd be five miles. But due to the ruggedness of the

[00:13:59] plumbers and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, it's impossible to make that walk. I mean, you're not doing that easily at all. So to this day, it stumps people. How many of them made it to the trailer? Some people think all five made it to the trailer.

[00:14:17] It's been theorized that Jack Madruga, the driver and Bill Sterling fell behind early and the plan was to go back and get them. So when they got to the trailer, it probably would have been Ted Weir, Jackie Hewitt and Gary Mathias. And with Mathias having a military

[00:14:32] background to open the sea rations, you need something called, I think it's like a P 36 or P 38 can opener. If you know how to use it, you can open them fairly easy. And some of the cans have been opened with that. Some of them have been opened with

[00:14:47] something called a church key, where if you're familiar with what you use to open certain bottles of beer and it kind of has that point at top, you kind of have to go through very painstakingly and open a can that way. So someone was opening the cans

[00:15:01] and eating the food. We don't know who did eat all the food. Due to Ted Weir's weight loss, excuse me, I think it's easy to assume he may not have eaten food and his family thinks that he could have been under the impression

[00:15:19] that stealing and he didn't want to be a person who was stealing from other people. But again, how would he have been able to live so long without food? Was he getting water? Also, the trailer where they found Ted had a propane hookup

[00:15:36] and all you had to do was turn it on and there's a way to heat up the trailer. But at the time with the amount of snow and maybe their thinking capabilities being impacted by hypothermia, they may not have been acting rationally and that plays into the whole

[00:15:55] theory as well. And now getting to Gary, they stop in June because they don't know where to find this guy. He's nowhere near where they think he is. And an idea of the plumus or giving you an idea of how big the plumus is, it's one, what, 1.1

[00:16:13] million acres. So I think some of these guys just thought he could be anywhere and we don't have all day to search the plumus National Forest. And in my opinion, I think they decided to call it a day. They thought we'll find this guy

[00:16:27] eventually someone will find them like hunters or people who are just going exploring in the wilderness, but he's never been found. So to this day, Gary Mathias is missing, but the belief of a lot of us, including myself, is that he died in the plumus.

[00:16:42] No one knows where his remains were are. And also over the years there have been series of forest fires in that area like the campfire and there has been a few others and that may have sort of it may have as remains buried or something

[00:17:00] may have happened where it's just never been uncovered. So to this day, Gary Mathias's view is missing, but the people that know Gary are well of the impression that he died at some point. And we think it was 1978, probably February, March. And so

[00:17:19] people have been trying to figure out what's where Gary went because no one's been able to find his remains. Yes, it's interesting. And I would imagine at that point law enforcement's looking at her from the perspective of, well, this investigation just changed from missing persons to, you know,

[00:17:39] searching for remains at this point. You know, right? So the sense of urgency probably wasn't there as it was in the early, early stages. Now, there's there's some talk between the family and and some other witnesses to suggest that, you know, law enforcement was told of the

[00:17:57] existence of these trailers, but again, didn't think that there was any credence to the fact that they could have made it there. And so therefore, maybe could have checked and didn't. Is there in your research, is there any evidence to suggest that that was the case?

[00:18:11] That maybe, you know, they could have potentially at least saved a couple people had they had they checked a little early on. See, that's a huge area of contention between law enforcement and the families because the the trailers were managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

[00:18:32] So when these guys go missing due to where the men lived and where the car is located in some of the locations in the plume is it ends up being four sheriff's departments working together to do all the searching. So the different sheriff's departments decided will handle

[00:18:48] certain aspects of the case and the search and rescue and this and that. So while they're looking for the men, someone says or allegedly says the U.S. Forest Service has these fire service trailers that near the Daniels in Camp Crown. Do you want those examined? And from

[00:19:09] the talk I've heard from people, it is rumored that they turned it down saying no, they wouldn't make it that far. They couldn't do it. But when they're found there, one of the investigators says how did they make it to this point because

[00:19:25] you just don't go from point A to point B. You got to really know what you're doing to follow these roads and the mountains to get to this point. It was also brought up that maybe a snowcat had plowed an area on the roads, which

[00:19:39] some people believe that they did because with the snow being heavy that year and those trailers being relatively new, they wanted the snowcat to go to those trailers and get the snow off the top of the trailers to avoid any kind of like pressure on

[00:19:54] the roof for damage or water leaking in from when the snow begins to melt. They just wanted to avoid that. And what's interesting, they claim that the snowcat went up to those trailers on February 23rd, which is the day before they went missing. So if they disappear, could

[00:20:11] they have gone on the road and eventually found it found it or discovered the road where they could have walked and would have led them to the trailer? Could the snowcat have if they follow the tracks or whatever, they would have felt like, oh, well, we're going

[00:20:26] to go somewhere. But if they get to the trailer, what is also discovered, nobody made any effort to do anything like burn something because they were books in the trailer. They could have been a barrel they could have used or matches in the in the trailer.

[00:20:43] Could they have set something on fire to do a smoke signal or something like that to catch the attention of people? Because when they're doing all this searching in the plumus early March, they even call in the helicopter from the California Highway Patrol to search the area.

[00:20:58] And if their claims are right, the search area could have covered where they are and would have gone over that region. So there's all these claims being made of we didn't know where the trailer was. We did an extensive search. Nobody told us about the trailer.

[00:21:15] Nobody did this. And so there's a lot of finger pointing. I think people are just trying to not be blamed for certain things that went down. Sure. Yeah, I can I can absolutely see that. Kind of to go back to the to the sort of claims of

[00:21:31] discrimination, too, because I do feel like a lot of the families who are very clear in the fact that they felt like, hey, like even in the way it's reported in the newspapers, you know, there's some terminology in regards to mental disabilities that we don't

[00:21:45] tend to use anymore and a little outmoded that's printed in the newspapers and sort of there's an emphasis placed on that that part of the story and seems to be used as sort of an excuse as to why perhaps certain things weren't done in the case.

[00:22:01] You know, it goes back to Oh, this this that would have played a role in why they could not have potentially made it this far or, you know, it's five guys who aren't altogether with it, who got lost, you know, it seems like that was leaned

[00:22:16] into quite heavily in your research. You know, do you feel like that played a role in maybe perhaps things that may or may not have been done in regards to this case? I think it played a role because even talking to the families, they believe

[00:22:33] that once it was reported that four had disabilities and one person had schizophrenia that everyone just assumed it was their own fault and they weren't smart enough to figure out how to drive and, you know, be left unsupervised. Who does that? You know, who lets five guys drive

[00:22:53] from point A to point B? But if they've been doing this for years, have no. You know, history of being lost and everything's fine and the families trust them, then there's nothing to worry about. But once it starts getting reported and their disabilities become highlighted

[00:23:13] in a way with a certain word sort of maybe at the time was probably used to bring sympathy to the story or urgency to the story just gives people the impression well is their own fault. Well, they got lost because they didn't know what they were doing.

[00:23:32] But if you look at the way that you would have, or look at the way if you would drive the road from Chico back to Marysville and you would go through Oroville to get to where they ended up, that's not a simple mistake of making

[00:23:46] a wrong turn, that's a continued drive through the Plumas and Jack Madrover grew up in the area near Loma Rica. He was familiar with the area. Some of the other guys been up to the Plumas before so they would have known that's the wrong way

[00:24:01] and just turn around and go home. So our belief is at something or when I say we along with some of the families and researchers when they went to Oroville they probably exited the highway to use a restroom or someone may have had to

[00:24:15] use a pay phone or something had to have been done there just to get off the highway. And the belief is when they got to Oroville, they either ran into someone they had previous issues with personally or they ran into some drunk people who are just

[00:24:34] maybe seeing that these guys with disabilities may want to start at a fight and things escalated in Oroville which leads to it either a chase or some sort of pursuit or some sort of threat where they head towards the Plumas thinking that they can

[00:24:49] you know get out of the way and not be bothered by these guys or you know person. So it's just so frustrating and instead of sort of looking at the possible foul play that goes into this they're sort of more looking into their disabilities and mental illness

[00:25:09] instead of focusing on you know what probably went wrong. It's it's a very frustrating case and the more you look into it you begin to see more theories and more ideas. It's unbelievable. Yeah, one even to this day and you know in the documentary

[00:25:28] you know it seems like law enforcement's prevailing theory is still that you know you've got these guys who aren't mentally equipped to kind of water it off and made a mistake and and perished in the in the forest as a result of the of the of the

[00:25:44] weather and the you know the environment. And it still does not quite it's not satisfying in the sense that it doesn't explain how they ended up there in the first place. And and it I think diminishes the fact that these guys were quite capable.

[00:26:00] And as you said earlier had made multiple road trips in fact to the same destination and returned without problems and yet for some strange reason something would have missed in that particular evening that led them to where they they met their demise.

[00:26:15] And so what are some of the prevailing theories that you feel like hold the most weight? I you know I do recall one at the end of the documentary series mentioned by one of the family members that there was a known bully in the area that

[00:26:28] you know perhaps was you know as you said chasing them or are causing some some some issues that may have led to them ending up where they did. So there is the bully theory which is someone that had issues with one or all of the men.

[00:26:45] And that person is believed to have done something that night to either intercept the men or interact with the men. And with the interaction everything went just everything got ugly and it ended up with them in the Plumas National Forest. So it's it's it's very frustrating

[00:27:12] but we have no proof to link that these guys had any kind of interaction with anyone. We just have theories and I think the prevailing theories that people have are so if they got on the Orville Quincy Highway they had to have been in Orville

[00:27:28] and something happened in Orville. Did they see the bully in Orville? Did they meet with some other people in Orville when they were traveling was there some sort of person following them sort of maybe being threatening in some kind of way like road rage or something like

[00:27:45] that is that possible too. And maybe they exited the highway to get away from that person thinking they could take another way home. But you know it ended them with being in the Plumas because I just don't buy getting lost. You know as they say getting

[00:28:02] hopped up on chocolate milk and candy that's not going to lead you going the wrong direction. So the theories have been the bully possibly interacting with them. Maybe it bears market and Chico convincing them like we're going to take a drive. No questions asked.

[00:28:21] Follow us to this spot. And that's where you know maybe the the guys got away from the guys that were tormenting them along with the bully and ran into the woods for help or to hide maybe thinking that they could lay low for a

[00:28:34] while and not be hurt. And I think that's the same with the possibility with interacting with like drunk people or someone else in Orville where things went bad. People have thought of other things like maybe they saw a UFO and the UFO took them to the Plumas.

[00:28:53] There was a guy who said there was a rogue group of military ex commandos who had helicopters that would terrorize people. I've heard theories from MK Ultra to anything that's sort of out there. But one one I heard recently was did anyone check the car

[00:29:17] to see if it had a potential like I guess you'd say like a carbon monoxide leak because if they were driving with the windows closed and there was probably a bad carbon monoxide leak could that have impaired them in some way. And it caused some sort

[00:29:33] of confusion having carbon monoxide poisoning and they could have gone in the wrong direction. That's possible as well. I never saw anything in the report about the car being checked for that because when they find the car they're looking for fingerprints and they finally let Jack

[00:29:47] Matruga's fingerprints and they find Gary Mathias's fingerprints. But the other guys didn't have anything on file for fingerprints and they didn't have anything to work with. But the car didn't seem to be in a state of like there wasn't any blood or there wasn't anything

[00:30:06] that looked like something bad had happened inside the car. They were inside the car then they were gone. And that's even more frustrating as how long were they in the car when they get on this road in the Plymouth National Forest. They end there for five minutes.

[00:30:20] They end there for a few hours. And the guy who sees them has a reputation for not telling the truth and for lying and being a little bit a little bit shady himself. So how much of his story is true. But I think what people are

[00:30:36] starting to theorize is that they have to put together the problem. The problem is how did it happen and how they go into the Plymouth National Forest. And to this day it's still a huge mystery. It's definitely not getting lost. It's definitely not a UFO or

[00:30:53] Bigfoot or anything like that. It's there was a fear of something or someone and it just got them off the beaten path. And it led them to the Plymouth. And I think that fear continued with them finding the trailer. And it's probably one of the

[00:31:07] reasons why they didn't signal for help. They thought that whenever it was bothering them or whoever was threatening them would come after them or their families or something there was some sort of fear. And with no real clues to use to our advantage in this

[00:31:23] research we're kind of stuck throwing out theories. And one investigator said he had a thousand theories back in the 70s. He felt like he could shoot holes through all of them once he started thinking about them and it just drove crazy. He said to eat.

[00:31:37] He couldn't figure out what happened. And with the book I've got I think it's at this point the the most in depth research we've got in any information that people have which I believe at this time there are people still alive who know what

[00:31:53] happened that night and are not speaking because of fear of like retaliation or they don't want to be viewed as a tattle tail or anything like that or a nark or or something. So hopefully we find out something and learn more about what happened that night. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:32:10] I think that's one of the more frustrating thing about cases of this of this nature. It's almost been 50 years now and the further the time goes on the fewer witnesses we have potentially that could speak up and you know lend lend some information about what truly

[00:32:28] happened. And so you just hope that somebody, you know, whether it's on their deathbed or prior, you know, have the guts to speak up and say, I know what happened that night so we can finally put this to bed. But but I think that's

[00:32:41] I think you that's the the point that kept being driven home to me is just there's really two questions that have never been satisfactorily answered. Number one, how did the car end up so far away from their destination? And number two, what caused them

[00:32:59] to exit the car, leave the vehicle behind and flee into the forest? And until those two questions are answered, it feels like there's still a mystery out there. And and yeah, the the official answer does does not seem to answer either one of those two questions.

[00:33:16] Unfortunately, no, but hopefully with this book we can maybe get some help from some people who might know the area may remember some stories that they heard at one time because that's something that I've noticed from certain or noticed during my research that people know some things

[00:33:34] what they've heard, whisperings and rumblings about things that went down that night. And if we can maybe put those together and start linking people, if possible, that would be huge and it wouldn't make sense why everything went wrong that night. So anything can help

[00:33:51] and this is the reason we need to get the story out there. And I'm so happy Philes and unexplained or was able to do this episode because now more people know about the story and have the opportunity to learn about the case. So this is

[00:34:08] still frustrating and there's still pieces to the puzzle that need to be found. Yeah, absolutely. And my biggest takeaway I think from the documentary episode is just the fact that it still clearly weighs very heavily on the surviving family members. Just, you know, you can still

[00:34:26] that the pain there is still palpable and the fact that I still feel like there's not there's still questions out there that have been answered and and they're still waiting for, you know, not that there's ever closure in those situations, but some semblance of resolution to it.

[00:34:43] So I hope you're right. I hope the the book and the film you know, help help drive this case forward before I let you go. Is there any other any other things that you that you discovered on earth while doing research that maybe weren't presented that are

[00:35:02] kind of interesting to note? Or do you or do you feel like you've kind of we've kind of covered it for the most part? I think if you have a chance to, you know, learn more about the case, you'll find out more about Joseph Showns,

[00:35:16] the guy that saw what happened that night and you'll get to see more of his stories and learn more about, you know, what he told investigators. I think that right there is a person you really want to look at and start to question what could he have known

[00:35:31] something? Did he see something? How reliable is he? That's definitely a path for Yuba County five researchers to go down. Also, you get to learn more if you read my book. And there's another book by Drew Bees and called Out of Bounds. What happened to Yuba County five

[00:35:48] you get to know more about the five individually as people and what their families were like and how they were personally, what kind of athletes they were, what things they enjoyed to do. You also get a little bit of a I learned more about the

[00:36:03] community up there and some of the things that were going on. The gateway projects where they went was, you know, there was arson there at one time and one of their directors was murdered. And so it was I mean, there's so many of these

[00:36:18] avenues you can go down and these, you know, theories you can develop on the case. Once you once you're in your end, Yuba County five research I mean, you find out so much but the more we can get out to the public and have people learning

[00:36:34] about the case and the five and what went down. I mean, anything can help. And, you know, people have their theories and, you know, they have different things that they try to bring up like, hey, did this happen? Did that happen? And so

[00:36:51] like I say, feel free to check out podcasts on the topic like from Opaq Audio. They did a think like an eight part series on the on the case and the interview to a bunch of people, including myself and some of the family members that

[00:37:03] you saw on files of the unexplained and some of the law enforcement guys from the time to who weren't on the episode. So there's so much to research on this case. It's a fun rabbit hole to go down, but it can also be very frustrating and heartbreaking

[00:37:17] once you really dig deep and just find out what, you know, these guys went through and what the families have gone through for over 45 years. It's it's overwhelming. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on, spending some of your time with me before I

[00:37:30] let you go. Where can people go to get a copy of the book? And again, the book is called Things Aren't All Right, The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five. Where can they go to get a copy of that book and where can

[00:37:40] they go to stay up on top of what you're up to? So as far as the book, you can go to Amazon to get a copy of the book or you can go through Genius Book Publishing to get the book directly from the publisher.

[00:37:53] Also, the books available at Barnes and Noble if you want to order through them. Also, if you want to follow me, I'm on Instagram, Tony Wright author on Twitter, Tony Doug Wright and or you can just look for Tony Wright on Facebook

[00:38:08] and you can see what I'm up to and what I'm not up to. So yeah, absolutely come and find me on social media and talk about the case and love connecting with people who are interested in Yuba County Five. It's just been something that's really caught

[00:38:22] the attention of many people. And then the more eyes we have on the case and the more people interested, that's key for the families to getting some kind of something in the way of closure. So it's been a lot of positive feedback from people and we're meeting people

[00:38:38] from around the world that are touched by the case. So that's really nice. Yeah, that's that's amazing. Well, go check it out, folks. Check out the check out the episode on Netflix just came out, I think last week. I jumped on it very quickly and all the episodes

[00:38:53] are fascinating, but this one in particular really caught me and go check out the book and I'll have all the links in the show notes so you can find Tony's book and thanks again for coming on that. Really, thank you, John. Yeah, great show.

[00:39:06] So thank you very much. And I'm still listening to all your podcasts, so I'm getting through them.