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FILE 113 · VOL XIX · Nobody Came Back Out
Five Men Drove Into the Mountains After a Basketball Game. One Is Still Walking.
There was a year of food in the camp. Nobody touched it. Nobody has explained why.
Based on: The Yuba County Five
Intake record
| Recovered from | Glove box of a 1969 sedan sold at a sheriff's auction, Oroville, California |
|---|---|
| Contents | A basketball game program from February 1978, a fire lookout's log, two photographs taken eleven years apart, a trail camera memory card |
| Finder | Ray Dunning, retired fire lookout |
| Status | The 1978 deaths are documented and unexplained. One man has never been found. |
Recovered file
On the night of February 24, 1978, five young men from Yuba City, California, drove to Chico to watch a college basketball game. They were friends who played together on a local basketball team for adults with intellectual disabilities and mental illness. They were excited. Their own team had a big game the next day. [1]
After the game, they stopped at a market, bought snacks and drinks, and drove away.
They never came home. [1]
Four days later, their car was found. It was parked on a remote mountain road in the Plumas National Forest, about seventy miles from Chico, high in the snow. It was not on any road that led back to Yuba City. [1]
The car was in good shape. There was gas in the tank. The keys were missing. Investigators said it could probably have been pushed out of the snow by five men without much trouble. [1]
The men had left it there and walked uphill. Into the snow. At night. In light clothes.
Nobody has ever explained why. [2]
In June, when the snow melted, a group of motorcyclists found a Forest Service trailer about twenty miles from the car, at a camp used by work crews. Inside was the body of one of the five. He had lost a great deal of weight. Investigators believed he had survived for weeks. He was wrapped in bedsheets. [1]
In the camp there were matches and fuel. There was a locker of dehydrated food, enough to feed all five men for a year. It had never been opened. [1]
The remains of three more men were found in the woods along the road the next day and later. The fifth man was never found. [2]
Nobody has explained why they walked uphill. Nobody has explained why the man in the trailer never opened the locker. Nobody has explained what happened to the fifth man.
Investigators said at the time that they could not explain it. Nobody has since. [2]
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 113 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
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