[3] Several days after their disappearance, the group's car, a 1969 Mercury Montego, owned by Madruga, was found abandoned in a remote area of Plumas National Forest, on a high mountain dirt road that was far out of their way back to Yuba County.

[1] Only bones were left of Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, and Jackie Huett as result of scavenging animals; but Weiher had apparently lived for as long as three months after the men were last seen, starving to death despite an ample supply of food and heating materials nearby.

[4] A local man later came forward, claiming that he had spent the same night in his own car a short distance away from where the Mercury was found.

The witness told police that he had seen and heard people around his car that night, and twice called for help, only for them to grow silent and turn off their flashlights.

[5] While he was stationed in West Germany as part of his United States Army service in the early 1970s, Gary Mathias, a resident of Marysville, California, developed drug problems.

While it had been difficult at first—he was nearly arrested for assault twice and often experienced psychotic episodes that landed him in a local Veterans Administration hospital—by 1978 he was being treated on an outpatient basis with Stelazine and Cogentin and was considered by his physicians to be "one of our sterling success cases".

Off the job, outside of his family, he was close friends with four men who either had intellectual disabilities (Weiher and Huett) or were informally considered "slow learners" (Sterling and Madruga, the latter also an Army veteran).

[3][6] On February 25, the Gators were due to play their first game in a weeklong tournament sponsored by the Special Olympics for which the winners would get a free week in Los Angeles.

The men wore only light coats against the cool temperatures in the upper Sacramento Valley at night that time of year.

At the time, he had not considered it significant, since many residents often drove up that road into the Sierra Nevada on winter weekends to go cross-country skiing on the extensive trail system, but after reading the missing persons bulletin he recognized the car and led the deputies to it on February 28.

The empty wrappers and containers from the food and drinks they had purchased from the store in Chico were present, along with programs from the basketball game they had attended and a neatly folded road map of California.

None of the men's families could speculate as to why they might have driven up a long and winding dirt road[a] on a winter night deep into a high-elevation remote forest, without any extra clothing.

The Mercury's undercarriage had no dents, gouges or even mud scrapes, not even on its low-hanging muffler, despite having been driven a long distance up a mountain road with many bumps, ruts and potholes.

In the process of trying to free it, he realized he was beginning to experience the early symptoms of a heart attack and went back in, keeping the engine running to provide heat.

After Schons' car ran out of gas in the early morning hours, his pain subsided enough for him to walk 8 miles (13 km) down the road to a lodge, where the manager drove him back home, passing the abandoned Montego at the point where he had recalled hearing the voices originate from.

[7] The other notable report was from a woman who worked at a store in the small town of Brownsville, 30 miles (48 km) from where the car had been abandoned, which they would have reached had they continued down the road.

[9] On March 3, the woman, who saw fliers that had been distributed with the men's pictures and information about the $1,215 ($5,700 in 2023 dollars)[10] reward the families had put up, told deputies that four of them had stopped at the store in a red pickup truck, the day after the disappearance.

[7] Additional details came from the store owner, who told investigators that men whom he believed to be Weiher and Huett came in and bought burritos, chocolate milk and soft drinks.

[8] With the evidence not pointing to any clear conclusion about what happened the night the five men disappeared, police and the families were not ruling out the possibility that they had met with foul play.

[6] On June 4, with most of the higher-elevation snow melted, a group of motorcyclists went to a trailer maintained by the United States Forest Service (USFS) at a campsite off the road about 19.4 miles (31.2 km) from where the Montego had been found.

[8] Two days later, as part of one of the other search parties, Huett's father found his son's backbone[3] under a manzanita bush[8] 2 miles (3.2 km) northeast of the trailer.

[8] In an area to the northwest of the trailer, roughly a quarter-mile (400 m) away, searchers found three Forest Service blankets and a rusted flashlight by the road.

[8] On a table next to the bed were some of Weiher's personal effects, including his wallet (with cash), a nickel ring with "Ted" engraved on it and a gold necklace he also wore.

Similarly, another shed nearby held a butane tank with a valve that, had it been opened, would have fed the trailer's heating system.

It was possible, police believed, that the group had decided to follow the tracks it left, through snowdrifts 4–6 feet (1.2–1.8 m) high, to wherever they led, in the belief that shelter was not too far away.