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5 missing;police fearfoul playMARYSVILLE, Calif. (AP) — An intensive hunt through rough, snowy wilderness focuses on five slightly retarded men who vanished without a trace more than a week ago. Officials are beginning to suspect foul play.“We don't know what happened to them — we’ve a real mystery on our hands,” declared Yuba County Undersheriff Jack Beeeham.If the missing men, all members of a basketball team, became confused and wandered into the forest, little hope could be held for their survival, said Sheriff Jim Grant.“It’s very heavily forested country, rough and mountainous and rocky,” said Beeeham. “Some places you can only get in on horseback.”Beeeham noted that a study of the personality- profiles of the missing men shows their disappearance to be totally out of character. “In fact, as time goes on it looks more and more like foul play,” Beeeham said.Teams of deputies from Yuba and adjoining Butte counties, some 150 miles northeast of San Francisco, have been searching the mountains on horseback, with dogs, in four-wheel drive vehicles and in a helicopter.The men were to play in a basketball game the night of Feb. 25 at Chico, and return to their homes. But their car was found abandoned the next day some 20 miles east, on a Plumas National forest road closed farther on by snow.Grant and Beeeham said the men,’who live with their families and are part of a program for the mentally handicapped, were reported to be able to function well except if placed in a stressful situation when their behavior tended to “deteriorate.”“We hate to guess what happened to them,” said Grant. “They could have stopped to aid somebody, and the people they aided took advantage of them.”The families and friends of the missing men have offered a $1,215 reward for information on where to find them.The missing men are Jack Madruga, 30, and Jack Huett, 24, both of Marysville; Ted Weihel, 32, and Gary Mathias, both of Oiivehurst; and William Sterling, 29, of Yuba City.Madruga and Mathias had driver’s licenses.
Newspaper Details
Lawrence Journal World
Lawrence, Kansas, US
Thu, Mar 09, 1978
Page 14
Full Page
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DE 30 Sep 2020
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