Tag: unsolved mysteries

Families plead for answers in the mystery of the Yuba County Five almost 50 years later

The Plumas National Forest has held the mystery of the Yuba County Five for almost 50 years. Their disappearance has puzzled people around the world.

The five men, who lived with intellectual disabilities, were known as “the boys.” They were Ted Weiher, Jack Huett, Bill Sterling, Jack Madruga and Gary Mathias. 

“Madruga was from Yuba City and everybody else lived in Yuba County in the Olivehurst area,” said Brian Bernardis with the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office.

Dallas and Perry Weiher remember their brother Ted as a gentle giant. Tony Wright, the author of “Things Aren’t Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five,” describes the other boys as very active and friends who loved to spend time together.

“You had Jack Madruga who was 30 years old. He was a very quiet introverted person but very very smart, very kind and loving. That’s how he was remembered by his family. Bill Sterling was 29. He was a very avid bowler, he too was an athletic individual known for being very sweet individual. There was Gary Mathias who was 25 years old. He was very athletic, known as a great brother, he was a musician who played in a rock band in high school, was a great harmonica player, spent time in the military. And then there was Jackie Huett. He was 24 years old. He was a great friend. A very loving person. Very kind, very sweet,” said Wright.

The boys met in the 70s on a basketball team for a Yuba County nonprofit helping people with disabilities. They followed UC Davis basketball and on Feb. 24, 1978, the five men piled into Madruga’s car to watch a college basketball team in Chico.

“I think it was Chico State and UC Davis. Davis was their kind of home team. They really want to see them do well so they had traveled this before. It wasn’t the first time for him, so he was familiar with the territory,” said Bernardis.

Bernardis, the cold case investigator for the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office, says there’s no doubt the boys made it to the game. 

“The editor of the Chico newspaper actually recalls seeing the five of them there where they were because they were kind of out away from everybody else. There was something very distinctive about them,” said Bernardis.

They stopped at a convenience store in Chico after the game.

“Their next reported appearance would have been at the Behr Market not too far from the college. They’d stopped in there and picked up candies and cakes and milks,” said Bernardis.

But what happened next still puzzles law enforcement agencies today.

“We know nothing. From that point, we know nothing. They literally disappeared into nowhere,” said Bernardis.

They vanished without a trace and their families reported them missing the next day.

“That night they were saying, ‘Well, they’re grown boys, they can go do what they want. They’re not lost or anything.’ Well, those weren’t normal grown boys. They were different boys,” said Perry.

“Back then they, that small town, small community, everybody knew everybody. It paid a large impact on how they responded and how they felt about the case,” said Bernardis.

The five men had big plans to play in a basketball tournament the following day. The prize for the winning team was tickets to Disneyland.

“These men were not going to miss that basketball game for any reason. It was of utmost importance and they were going to get home come hell or high water,” said Wright.

Jack Madruga’s car was found in the snow on the Oroville Quincy Highway in Butte County four days later — about 70 miles in the wrong direction from home. ABC10 asked what condition the car was found in.

“It was intact and undamaged? (The) best way to describe it. It was abandoned for lack of a better term. Windows were down or at least one of the windows were down. The candies and milk and things that they’d purchased at the store; those wrappers were in the car. There were some maps that were found in the car which Madruga was kind of a map student, so nothing would indicate that there was any foul play or some type of heinous act that occurred,” said Bernardis.

A massive search followed near where the car was found.

“So now you have Yuba and Butte counties both working the case. They brought in snow equipment so they could travel across the snow and search the area looking for the guys. They’d spent a couple of days, but then that was a very bad snow year and the weather came in and put a complete halt to any efforts to look further,” said Bernardis.

Families searched for their missing loved ones for days on end. Detectives wouldn’t get a break in the case until about three-and-a-half months later.

Motorcyclists off-roading near a rural Plumas County campground came upon some portable buildings used for fire crews during fire season. They found a broken window and went to take a closer look.

“When they opened the door, the smell of decomposition was pretty intense and they realized that something significant was in there and they found a body, a human body in there on a bed. So that was four months after the disappearance, a little less,” said Bernardis.

It was Ted Weiher’s.

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“We Have Finally Found the Last Piece of the Puzzle”: Scientists Solve a Long-Standing Seismic Mystery

A seismic mystery has been solved as earthquake waves, traveling almost 3,000 kilometers below ground and demonstrating anomalous behavior in their rush toward the planet’s center, have now been explained with the help of observational data.

ETH Zurich Professor of Experimental Mineral Physics Motohiko Murakami led the new study, attempting to recreate the extreme conditions of the inner Earth. Their laboratory work demonstrated a unique rock flow, distinct from that of liquid lava or brittle solid rock.

The D” Layer Anomaly

The lowest part of Earth’s mantle, the D” layer, sits 2700 kilometers deep, just above the boundary with the planet’s core. Strangely, earthquake waves suddenly alter their behavior at this depth, increasing in speed. This acceleration would typically indicate that the waves had passed into an entirely different type of material, a long-standing seismic mystery that has baffled seismologists.

Murakami made an important discovery over two decades ago, when in 2004 he found that around the D” layer barrier, the primary mineral changes from the perovskite that makes up the rest of the lower mantle. This new “post-perovskite” mineral endures extreme temperatures and pressure at that depth.

For a few years, Murakami and his team believed that the change over to this post-perovskite mineral provided an explanation for the seismic acceleration. Yet, in 2007, Murakami uncovered further evidence that the mineral change was insufficient to account for the shift in earthquake waves.

It was a complex computer model that provided the researchers with the missing piece of the puzzle: post-perovskite hardness changes based on the direction that its crystals point. The cause of the acceleration appears to result from when all the minerals’ crystals become aligned in the same direction, a phenomenon that occurs at depths of around 2700 kilometers.  

“We have finally found the last piece of the puzzle,” Murakami recently said in a statement.

Laboratory Pressure

As their medium to simulate post-perovskite, the team synthesized pure MgGeO3 orthopyroxene by using an electric furnace to heat a mixture of fine-grain germanium oxide and magnesium oxide at 1000 °C for 104 hours. The resulting substance was placed under extreme pressure measured with diamond anvils and heated with a CO2 laser to recreate the intense conditions found in the D” layer. The researchers took high-pressure acoustic velocity and X-ray diffraction measurements, which were analyzed with multiple spectroscopic techniques.

The team’s laboratory work successfully recreated the formation needed for the acceleration observed at the edge of the D” layer, demonstrating that heat and pressure can align the crystals in one direction, where seismic waves speed up. This suggests that instead of a change in material causing the anomaly, a change in deformation is responsible for the effect.

Solving the Seismic Mystery

Exactly how these crystals manage to align in parallel relies on a type of movement long suspected by geoscientists, yet one that has been lacking direct evidence until now. The hypothesis is that a form of convection similar to the boiling of water allows the solid rock in the lower mantle to flow horizontally. Murakami’s team’s experiments have finally demonstrated this long-suggested convection action. 

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Mysterious Cattle Deaths Baffle Colorado Rancher & Authorities

A macabre mystery involving the death of over a dozen cattle in a single day has stumped a Colorado rancher and state authorities investigating the case. The eerie incident reportedly occurred on May 8th at a property near the community of Coal Creek. That now-unforgettable day began when rancher Kerri Higgs and her husband discovered that a trio of cattle had inexplicably perished overnight. Concerned about the rest of their herd, they moved the remaining animals closer to an area near their home for observation. It was then that things took a weird and rather gruesome turn. “They started flopping over and dying,” Higgs recalled, “it was pretty bad.”

All told, the couple lost 15 cattle that fateful day, which prompted an exhaustive investigation by authorities that has come up short so far. To that end, tests of rainwater ingested by the animals, the soil where they roamed, and even the air around and above the property all produced no clues as to what could have killed so many creatures in such a short time. Blood tests from one of the downed cattle also only furthered the mystery. “We’re not getting any conclusive results,” Mykel Kroll of the county’s Office of Emergency Management explained, “we’re running out of boxes to check,” which has left authorities “scratching our heads.”

The futility of the investigation has understandably dismayed Higgs, who lamented that “it’s beyond frustrating.” Beyond the baffling nature of the incident, the cost of losing so many animals at once has devastated the ranch as each perished heifer was valued at around $5,000 or a staggering $60,000 total. While authorities pledged to continue investigating the case, samples from the downed cattle are beginning to dwindle, which raises the possibility that the mystery may never be solved. “Maybe we don’t find out the cause” of the curious event, Kroll conceded, musing “are there always answers? No.” For her part, Higgs acknowledged this dispiriting scenario, indicating that she “won’t be surprised” if the matter remains punctuated by a maddening question mark.

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Third Teen Death in National Forest Alarms: Two High Schoolers Found Shot on Camping Trip

The tragic deaths of high school students Pandora Kjolsrud and Evan Clark have gripped the community, with their lives cut short in Tonto National Forest, Arizona. Both teenagers were found shot near Mount Ord, north of Mesa, and authorities have confirmed the investigation as a homicide. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office remains tight-lipped on the specifics, yet the gravity of the situation has left an indelible mark.

Arcadia High School students Kjolsrud and Clark were simply on a camping trip when their lives were tragically ended. This incident marks the second and third teenager deaths in the area since February. Earlier, the remains of 14-year-old Emily Pike were discovered, adding another layer of mystery and concern to the sequence of events.

Emily Pike’s disappearance from a group home in January ended with the grim discovery of her dismembered body. The distance of over 70 miles from her last known location to where she was found is chilling. Her case, still under investigation by the FBI and local law enforcement, has yet to see any arrests.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has not linked Pike’s case with the recent deaths of Kjolsrud and Clark. However, the community is on edge, yearning for answers and justice. Families are left to grapple with loss and the haunting questions that accompany such tragedies.

A GoFundMe campaign for Kjolsrud’s family highlights her vibrant spirit and the joy she spread. Her infectious smile left a lasting impact on those who knew her. The fundraiser paints a picture of a young woman who made everyone feel special, a testament to her remarkable character.

Evan Clark, remembered fondly by his mother, wasn’t your typical teenager. His entrepreneurial spirit and sensitivity set him apart. The touching letter he wrote to his mother on Mother’s Day is a poignant reminder of the depth of his love and the promise of a future now lost.

The community’s call for answers is echoed in the voices of those who knew and loved the teenagers. The proximity of this tragedy has left many feeling vulnerable and yearning for closure. The question of what happened that fateful day looms large in the hearts of those affected.

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Two Teenagers Found Shot Dead in Arizona National Forest

Sheriff’s officials in Arizona are investigating the deaths of two high school students found in a national forest outside Phoenix after they failed to return from a Memorial Day camping trip.

Both had died from gunshot wounds, according to KNXV-TV, which cited the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

And both were being mourned by their families and their school community.

Pandora Kjolsrud, 18, was described by her mother in a message to KNXV-TV as “a bright light in this world who loved every single person she met and had an unusual ability to make every person she met feel special and loved. She was a friend to many and a beloved daughter. She lived life in a big way and was always up for an adventure.”

The other teen has been identified by family and friends as 17-year-old Evan Clark.

In an interview with KSAZ-TV, a co-worker of Clark’s called the deaths a “tragedy.”

“You just cherish all the memories and the laughs,” the co-worker said.  “His life was cut very short, and so was Pandora’s. They were very young, and it was just so sudden and a tragedy that you wouldn’t even imagine.”

A classmate of Clark’s told the station “it doesn’t really feel real.”

“I was just in class with him, not even a week ago,” the classmate said.

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Stunning breakthrough in infamous case of eight women who have been missing for 28 years raises hopes that one of Ireland’s biggest mysteries could finally be solved

One of Ireland’s biggest unsolved cases may finally find a resolution after three decades thanks to a new witness.

Between the late eighties and early nineties, eight women went missing from across the Emerald Isle – in what’s became known as Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle.

One of the women, Fiona Pender, was 25 and seven months pregnant when she went missing from her flat in Tullamore in August 1996. 

The cases have baffled police from years, but in a major update the Gardai have upgraded Fiona’s disappearance to murder.

This week they searched a new area of land at Graigue, close to the village of Killeigh, around 8km from Tullamore, County Offaly, in the middle of Ireland. 

It is understood Gardaí received new information deemed credible enough to warrant the latest search and the upgrading of the investigation. 

The search of a remote area of bogland started on Tuesday as gardaí hoped for a breakthrough in the nearly 30-year investigation.

However it quickly moved to a second location on Wednesday and continued well into the night. 

The force told The Irish Independent: ‘Gardaí investigating the disappearance and murder of Fiona Pender in August 1996 have today, Wednesday 28th May 2025, commenced another search operation on open ground at a location in Co. Laois.   

Fiona was last seen leaving home by her boyfriend John Thomson. 

In 2008 a small cross bearing her name was found along the The Slieve Bloom Way, but her body has never been recovered.

She was just one of a string of disappearances that haunted Ireland in the 1990s commonly referred to as the Vanishing Triangle, none of the women have ever been found so investigators have very little evidence to link the disappearances. 

In a major update on the case, police have upgraded Fiona’s disappearance to murder and have decided to search a new area of land at Graigue, close to the village of Killeigh, around 8 km from Tullamore, Co Offaly.

 ‘This area of land will be searched and subject to excavation, technical and forensic examinations.

‘This search forms part of a sustained investigation carried out by Gardaí in Laois/ Offaly Garda Division over the last 28-years to establish Fiona’s whereabouts and to investigate the circumstances in which Fiona disappeared.’

Gardaí have since concluded the search operation in Co Offaly, however the results are not being released for operational reasons. 

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Treasure Hunter Claims to Have Found Legendary Lost Nazi Gold Train

An anonymous treasure hunter claims to have found the location of the legendary ‘Nazi gold train’ said to have been filled with riches from World War II and hidden in Poland. The subject of countless searches in the past, the apocryphal cache of pilfered priceless pieces is thought to have been buried in the Polish city of Wałbrzych. Talk of the treasure has been rekindled this week after a local media outlet revealed that community officials received a mysterious missive earlier this year wherein a man asserted that he found three WWI railroad cars hidden in a sizeable tunnel in a forested area of the city.

Sharing details on the letter, Wałbrzych spokeswoman Kamila Świerczyńska described the man’s claims as “substantive and concrete.” She also noted that the missive included several attachments with maps, geodetic data, and a witness account from a resident who lived in the area when the train was allegedly hidden. While the treasure hunter asked that his name be withheld from the public, Świerczyńska noted that city officials met with the man, who explained how he determined the location of the lost gold train by “analyzing various sources and documents.”

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Mystery surrounds spate of disappearances on Caribbean island

People on the island of Antigua are disappearing without a trace and nobody has been able to figure out why.The tiny Caribbean island, which covers an area of just over 100 square miles and has a population of 83,191, is at the center of a peculiar mystery involving the unexplained disappearances of multiple people, including nine within just the last two years alone.

One of those who vanished was 74-year-old Hyacinth Gage who had left home to attend a routine hospital appointment six years ago and was never seen again.

An extensive search of the island ultimately yielded no sign of her.

The case is just one of many on Antigua which now has a disproportionate number of mystery disappearances compared to other islands in the region.

“Other islands find bodies eventually,” said Gage’s daughter Patricia.”My mind goes all over the place wondering what happened. People suggest organ trafficking. I’ve even thought of gang activity. Is it something they’re required to do as an initiation?”

While local authorities maintain that they are investigating the phenomenon, no defitinive explanation has been forthcoming and multiple people still remain missing.

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Michael G. Seidel — The Face of FBI Corruption

Let’s talk about the man who buries the truth for a living — not in some dark alley, but in broad daylight behind a badge, a clearance, and a stack of sealed affidavits.

Michael G. Seidel, Section Chief of RIDS (Records Management Division, FBI), is not a bureaucrat. He is the regime’s professional liar, the FBI’s high priest of concealment, and the living proof that corruption doesn’t hide — it gets promoted.

He doesn’t serve the law. He smothers it. One FOIA denial, one redacted page, one perjured affidavit at a time.

I. The Architect of Institutional Obfuscation

Michael G. Seidel is not an anomaly. He is the rot at the core of the DOJ and FBI — a man who turned federal authority into a shield for the corrupt and a weapon against the truth. Legalese is his camouflage. Misleading courts is his sport. Burying evidence is his career.
Seth Rich’s case? Seidel didn’t just mishandle it — he buried it under 20,000+ unreleased pages. This isn’t red tape. This is regime protection.

II. The Seth Rich Lie: Perjury in a Suit and Tie

In Ty Clevenger’s FOIA suit, the FBI — through Seidel — claimed they had “no records” on Seth Rich. No laptop. No emails. Nothing. Reality? They were sitting on a motherlode.

When exposed, Seidel didn’t admit to the lie. He pivoted. Suddenly, Rich’s laptop wasn’t a “record.” It was “just evidence” — somehow exempt from FOIA.

This wasn’t a legal interpretation. This was coordinated federal gaslighting.

III. The Redaction Game: How the Truth Dies in Black Ink

Even when forced to release documents, Seidel didn’t comply — he slow-walked, stonewalled, and blacked out critical information. Judges raised their eyebrows. Still, no sanctions. No accountability.

This is not incompetence. It’s policy. A deliberate playbook to protect the Bureau at the cost of justice.

IV. Weaponized Paperwork: FOIA as a Blunt Instrument

Every affidavit Seidel signs is a bureaucratic smoke grenade — engineered not to inform but to obscure. FOIA, under his watch, is no longer a transparency tool. It’s a regime-controlled narrative management system.

His filings aren’t honest attempts to comply with the law. They’re sabotage operations, paper bullets fired at the truth.

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Eerie Cases of Children Who Mysteriously Vanished off the Face of the Earth

Although many people throughout history have vanished without a trace, the cases surrounded by the most tragedy are when the victims are children. Among the cases of children who have seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth, there are those that stand out as particularly bizarre and tragic, surrounded by odd details and circumstances that propel them beyond mere missing persons to firmly lodge themselves into the realm of the odd. Indeed, there is a disturbing tendency for some of the stranger vanishings to be those of children, and in many of these cases, we find mysteries and puzzles that go deep. Here we will look at some of the weirder cases of children who have vanished under odd, often sinister circumstances that only further serve to envelope them in shadows and the specter of the strange.

A bizarre vanishing related by missing persons researcher David Paulides, author of the Missing 411 series of books concerning people who have disappeared under bizarre circumstances, happened in the summer of 1938, when 4-year-old Alfred Beilhartz was on a fishing and camping trip with his family at Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. As the boy and his parents were taking a hike along a river, little Alfred suddenly disappeared without explanation. One moment he had been there walking in a line behind them, and the next the parents had turned around to find he was gone without a trace. There had been no shout or sign of distress, and all calls to him went unanswered. He had seemingly just ceased to exist.

Although the parents claimed that the boy had gone nowhere near the water, authorities were nevertheless convinced that he had fallen into the river, and immediately went about blocking off the river so that it could be thoroughly searched and so that his body would not float too far away. A 6-mile stretch of the river where Alfred had vanished was searched and dredged for 5 full days without turning up any sign of the boy, and when bloodhounds were brought in they oddly tracked his scent to around 500 feet uphill from where his parents had been when he had disappeared, which was odd considering he had supposedly gone missing as he was walking behind them. Also strange was that, allegedly, the bloodhounds followed the trail for some time before reaching a fork and suddenly stopping and simply lying down, an odd behavior for trained scent dogs to display, and also strange because it seemed that the trail had just abruptly stopped to vanish just as surely as the boy had.

Even more bizarre than this was an odd report that came in from some hikers in the area in the early stages of the search, the very day after Alfred had vanished. The hikers, who were a couple, had been on Old Fall River Road about 6 miles away over rugged terrain and around 3,000 feet higher from where Alfred had disappeared, and at the time had had no idea that there was a missing boy in the area, yet they reported seeing a rather worrying sight. They claimed that they had seen a young boy perched up upon a high ridge in an area ominously called “The Devil’s Nest,” near the top of Mt. Chaplin. The hikers reported that the boy had been forlornly sitting alone up there and had then suddenly moved out of sight, which the hikers mysteriously allegedly said looked as if he were being “jerked back.” At the time, they could not figure out how such a young boy would be out there in the remote wilderness by himself or how he could have possibly climbed up onto that formidably high ridge. According to the hikers, as soon as they had gotten home and seen the news, they had realized that the boy they had seen was the missing Alfred Beilhartz.

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