The 1976 Chowchilla
kidnapping was the abduction of a school bus driver and 26 children, ages 5
to 14, in Chowchilla, California, United
States, on July 15, 1976. The kidnappers held their captives in a box truck
buried in a quarry in Livermore,
California, intending to demand a ransom for their return. After about 16
hours underground, the driver and children dug themselves out and escaped, all
surviving. The quarry owner's son and two of his friends were convicted of the
crime, each receiving a sentence of life with the possibility of parole. By
2022, all three had been paroled.
Kidnapping
At around 4 p.m. PDT on Thursday, July 15, 1976, school bus
driver Frank Edward "Ed" Ray was driving 26 students of Dairyland Elementary School home from a
summer class trip to the Chowchilla
Fairgrounds swimming pool when a van blocked the road ahead of the bus. Ray
stopped the bus and was confronted by three armed men with nylon stockings
covering their faces. One of the men held a gun to Ray while another drove the
bus; the third man followed in the van.
The kidnappers hid the bus in the Berenda Slough, a shallow branch of the Chowchilla River, where a second van had been parked. Both vans'
back windows were painted black; their interiors were reinforced with paneling.
Ray and the children were forced into the two vans at gunpoint and then driven
around for 11 hours before being taken to a quarry (37°39′48″N 121°48′29″W) in
Livermore. There, in the early morning of July 16, the kidnappers forced the
victims to climb down a ladder into a buried moving truck that they had stocked
with a small amount of food and water and some mattresses.
Ray and the older children later stacked the mattresses so
that some of them could reach the opening at the top of the truck, which had
been covered with a heavy sheet of metal and weighed down with two 100-pound
(45-kilogram) industrial batteries. After hours of effort, Ray and the oldest
boy, 14-year-old Michael Marshall,
wedged the lid open with a piece of wood and moved the batteries; they then dug
away the remainder of the debris blocking the entrance. Sixteen hours after
they had entered the truck, the group emerged and walked to the quarry's guard
shack, near Shadow Cliffs Regional Park.
Arrests and
convictions
The quarry owner's son, 24-year-old Frederick Newhall Woods IV, quickly came under suspicion as one of
the people who had keys to the quarry and enough access to have buried the
moving truck there. He and two of his friends, brothers James and Richard Schoenfeld (aged 24 and 22 respectively), had
previously been convicted of motor vehicle theft, for which they had been
sentenced to probation. A warrant was executed on the estate of Woods' father,
and there police recovered one of the guns used in the kidnapping as well as a
draft of a ransom note, but the three men had fled. Woods was caught two weeks
after the kidnapping in Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada. James
Schoenfeld had been captured earlier the same day in Menlo Park,
California, while Richard Schoenfeld
had voluntarily turned himself into authorities eight days after the
kidnapping.
The kidnappers had been unable to call in their intended
ransom demand of $5 million (equivalent to $25.7 million in 2022) because
telephone lines to the Chowchilla Police
Department were tied up by media calls and families searching for their
children. They went to sleep at some point on July 16 and woke late that night
to television news reports informing them that the victims had freed themselves
and were safe.
James Schoenfeld
later stated that despite coming from wealthy families, both he and Woods were
deeply in debt: "We needed multiple
victims to get multiple millions, and we picked children because children are
precious. The state would be willing to pay ransom for them. And they don't
fight back. They're vulnerable. They will mind."
All three perpetrators pleaded guilty to kidnapping for
ransom and robbery, but they refused to plead guilty to the infliction of bodily
harm, as a conviction on that count in conjunction with the kidnapping charge
carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of
parole. They were tried on the bodily harm charge, found guilty and given the
mandatory sentence, but their convictions were overturned by an appellate court
which found that physical injuries sustained by the children (mostly cuts and
bruises) did not meet the standard for bodily harm under the law. They were
re-sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Richard Schoenfeld was released in 2012, and James Schoenfeld was paroled on August 7, 2015.
In October 2019, Woods was denied parole for the 19th time.
Over the years, reasons given for the denials have included the continued
minimization of his crime as well as disciplinary infractions for possession of
contraband pornography and cellphones.
In 2016, a worker's compensation lawsuit filed against Woods
also revealed that he had been running several businesses, including a gold
mine and a car dealership, from behind bars without notifying prison
authorities as required. The heir to two wealthy California families, the Newhalls and the Woods, he inherited a trust fund from his parents that was
described in one court filing as being worth $100 million (equivalent to $122
million in 2022), although Woods' lawyer disputed that amount. He has married
three times while in prison and has purchased a mansion about 30 minutes away
from the prison.
In March 2022, a panel of two commissioners recommended
Woods for parole. The recommendation required the approval of the full parole
board, the board's legal division, and California's governor. California Governor Gavin Newsom asked
the parole board to reconsider its decision but the decision was affirmed. On
August 17, 2022, it was reported that Woods' parole had been granted and he was
to be released from prison.
Aftermath
Frank Edward "Ed" Ray (February 26,
1921 – May 17, 2012) received a California
School Employees Association citation for outstanding community service.
Before he died in 2012, he was visited by many of the schoolchildren he had
helped save. In 2015, the Sports &
Leisure Park in Chowchilla was renamed Edward Ray Park, and every February 26 was declared "Edward Ray Day" in
Chowchilla.
A study found that the kidnapped children suffered from
panic attacks, nightmares involving kidnappings and death, and personality
changes. Many developed fears of such things as "cars, the dark, the wind, the kitchen, mice, dogs, and
hippies", and one shot a Japanese tourist with a BB gun when the
tourist's car broke down in front of his home. Many of the children continued
to report symptoms of trauma at least 25 years after the kidnapping, including
substance abuse and depression, and a number have been imprisoned for "doing something controlling to
somebody else." What was learned from the after-effects suffered by
the kidnapped children has guided the treatment of young victims of trauma
since the kidnapping.
In 2016, the 25 surviving kidnapped children settled a
lawsuit they had filed against their kidnappers. The money they received was
paid out of Frederick Woods' trust fund, and although the exact settlement
amount was not disclosed, one survivor stated that they had each received "enough to pay for some serious therapy
— but not enough for a house."
Abductors
Frederick Newhall
Woods IV (aged 24 during the kidnapping) was repeatedly denied parole until
August 2022 when, at the age of 70, he was granted full parole.
James Schoenfeld
(aged 24 during the kidnapping) was paroled in 2015 at age 63.
Richard Schoenfeld
(aged 22 during the kidnapping) was paroled in 2012 at age 57.
In popular culture
A two-hour made-for-television movie about the event aired
on the ABC Network on March 1, 1993, titled, They've
Taken Our Children: The Chowchilla Kidnapping. It starred Karl Malden as bus driver Ed Ray, and Julie Harris as his wife.
The Chowchilla kidnappings were featured on episode 7 of
season 2 of the program House of Horrors:
Kidnapped, which airs on the American cable network Investigation Discovery. The episode, "Buried Alive", first aired on April 21, 2015, and was
told from the point of view of Michael
Marshall, who at age 14 was the oldest of the children on the bus.
Also in 2015, an episode of Inside Edition reunited some of the kidnapped women to tell their
stories of the kidnappings. The bus from the kidnappings, which is now stored
in a Chowchilla farm warehouse, was also seen in the episode.
In 2019, the television news magazine 48 Hours investigated the story in the episode "Live to Tell: The Chowchilla Kidnapping".
In 2023, the television news magazine 48 Hours aired "Remembering
the Chowchilla Kidnapping (Season 36 Episode 20)" on March 18, 2023.
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