The Disappearance of Gary Dale Mathias
This is a highly unusual case I haven’t heard anything about:
On February 24, 1978, five young men, all affected by slight psychological problems (though none on a level where they would be considered dangerous) drove out in a Mercury Montego to see a basketball game. Their names were Bill Sterling (29), Jack Huett (24), Ted Weiher (32), Jack Madruga (30), and Gary Dale Mathias (25). Afterwards, they visited a local store to buy snacks and drinks. After that, none were seen alive again.
Their car was found a few days later, dozens of miles from where they were last seen alive, in a heavily snowed-in mountainous area. The car wasn’t stuck in the snow and appeared to still have enough gas to drive. The police could not determine any reason the men would have driven up there. Initially, a search was conducted for them, but the weather proved to be too severe - the search was stopped. The men remained lost without a trace.
In June of 1978, a group of motorcyclists visited a hut approximately 20 miles from where the car was found. Inside, they made a gruesome discovery: They found Weiher’s badly decayed body lying in the bed. It was determined that he had lived for multiple months after the men had disappeared. He apparently died either of hyperthermia or starvation. He had suffered bad frostbites to his feet, rendering him unable to walk. Oddly, neither the hut’s ample food resources nor the supply of firewood or paper had been touched.
In the following days, the remains of Sterling, Huett, and Madruga were found in the vicinity of the hut. Decay and wild animals had only left scattered bones. However, the body of Mathias was never found -- making him an unsolved case even today.
Foul play couldn’t be ruled out. Multiple reasons -- the fact that the men drove into the middle of nowhere seemingly without reason, the fact that they apparently moved into the hut instead of returning but didn’t touch the huts supplies, and the absence of Mathias remains, even after years of search -- make it seem like this isn’t just a case of five men getting lost in the wilderness, but possibly a criminal case.
Some (unconfirmed) sightings of the men after their ‘disappearance’ only make this case seem even more mysterious. A man who suffered from a slight heart attack at that time remembered that after he parked his car, he noticed another car, fitting the description of the one used by the group, was parked behind him. As he screamed for help, the men inside the car stopped talking, turned off their headlights, and started to drive away.
Another report comes from a woman working in a store about 30 miles from where the car was found. She remembered that during the night of the disappearance, two men, whose description fitted Huett and Sterling, used a phone cell outside the store, before coming in to buy some food. This is odd, as Huett’s brother stated that he hated using the phone and avoided it as much as possible.