A school bus is hijacked in Chowchilla, California - July 15th, 1976

On this day in 1976, three men kidnapped a school bus driver and 26 children in Chowchilla, California.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio, Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that uncovers a little bit more about history
every day. I'm Gay Bluesier, and today we're reflecting on

(00:20):
the largest mass kidnapping in US history, including the desperate
acts that brought all the victims home again. The day
was July seventy six. Three men kidnapped a school bus
driver and twenty six children in Chowchilla, California. The abduction

(00:44):
occurred on a quiet road in Madera County as students
were being driven home from summer school. The bus was
discovered later that evening, completely empty and hidden by brush
in a drainage ditch nine miles west of town. As
for the ab ducked s fifty five year old bus
driver Ed Ray and the children, who were between the

(01:05):
ages of five and fourteen, they were transported one hundred
miles north to a rock quarry in Livermore, just outside
of San Francisco. They're a large moving truck had been
prepared for them. Buried twelve feet underground, the victims were
forced inside the eight foot by sixteen foot trailer, which

(01:26):
was then covered with hundreds of pounds of dirt and
plywood buried alive, Ed and the children were left to
wait as their captors went to call in their ransom demands.
Luckily for the victims, though things didn't go according to plan.
July marked the second to last day of dairy Land

(01:46):
Elementary Summer school program, which was really more like a
summer day camp. Kids had spent the day playing, making crafts,
and swimming at the community pool. Some of them were
still in their bathing suits drip wet as they boarded
the bus that late afternoon. Their driver, Frank Edward Ray
better known as Ed, had been a part time school

(02:09):
bus driver for more than two decades. He began his
familiar route that day as usual, but as he drove
down Avenue twenty one, he noticed a white van parked
in the middle of the road with its hood open.
There wasn't enough room for Ed to drive around it,
and before he could even try, a man wearing pantyhose
as a mask appeared at the bus doors. He brandished

(02:32):
a pistol and ordered Ed to let him in. The
bus driver complied, and the man and the panty hose
climbed aboard the bus and was quickly joined by two
other men in masks. Ed was taken to the back
and one of the kidnappers took his place at the wheel.
After driving for about fifteen minutes, the bus made a
sharp turn into a dry river bed. The kidnappers then

(02:56):
concealed it there beneath bamboo and tree brush, and then
herded Ed and the frightened children into two separate box vans.
The van's back windows had been painted over so that
no one could see in or out, and the kidnappers
also installed wood paneling to act as makeshift jail cells.
Once inside, the victims were driven around for nearly twelve

(03:20):
hours without access to food, water, air conditioning, or toilets.
One of the kids, a nine year old girl named
Jennifer brown Hide, later recalled the ordeal, saying quote, I
felt like I was an animal going to the slaughterhouse.
When the vans finally stopped, their destination turned out to

(03:40):
be not a slaughter house but a rock quarry. The victims,
nineteen girls, seven boys, and bus driver Ed Ray, were
taken out of the vans one at a time and
led to an enormous hole in the ground. At the
bottom was a large tractor trailer from an old moving truck.
The hatch on top was open, and each victim was

(04:01):
forced to enter it by descending a ladder. Once ed
and the kids were all inside, the kidnappers pulled up
the ladder and placed a steal plate over the opening.
They weighed down the plate with heavy tractor batteries and
then covered it all up with plywood and dirt. With
their work complete, the three kidnappers drove away. It was

(04:23):
about three thirty in the morning when they left, and
they wanted to call in their ransom demand before calling
it a night. In the meantime, their entombed victims tried
to make sense of their increasingly grim situation. They were
told nothing about the kidnappers plans, but the underground prison
seemed to suggest they weren't meant to die there. For

(04:44):
one thing, the kidnappers had fashioned toilets for them and
the wheel wells of the trailer. There was also a
small supply of provisions, bread, water, peanut butter, and a
few boxes of cereal. Most importantly, there were two ventilation
hypes that provided fresh air from the surface, and several
electric fans to keep it circulating. With no way out,

(05:07):
and no clue how long they'd be in there. Ed
did his best to keep the children calm as they
settled in to do the only thing they could wait. Meanwhile,
back at their hideout, the kidnappers were ready to place
their big call to the chow Chilla Police Department. The
plan was to demand a five million dollar ransom in

(05:27):
exchange for the safe return of Ed and the missing kids.
But here's the thing. The kidnappers were never able to
deliver their demand. While they've been busy burying dozens of
people alive, the small town of chow Chilla had worked
itself into a proper panic. Worried parents flooded the police
department with phone calls, eventually jamming up the entire local

(05:50):
phone system. So when the kidnappers finally tried to call
in their demands multiple times, they were never able to
get through. Exhausted and annoy wid, the kidnappers decided to
take a nice long nap and then try again when
they woke up. After all, it's not like their victims
were going anywhere, or at least that's what they thought.

(06:12):
Back in the Livermore Quarry, conditions underground had gradually worsened
as the hours ticked by. Several electric fans had been
installed to keep the air circulating, but by the afternoon
of July six, nearly all of them it stopped working.
The occupants were out of food as well, and the
makeshift toilets they've been given we're on the verge of overflowing.

(06:34):
The entire trailers stank of urine and vomit, and in
the midday heat of a California summer, the temperature inside
rose to at least a hundred degrees. The chances of
anyone making it out alive were slim, and looking slimmer
by the minute. It was around that time that one
of the oldest captive children, fourteen year old Michael Marshall,

(06:56):
began to plan their escape. Bus driver Ed had counseled
against trying to find a way out, for fear that
their kidnappers would be waiting on the surface, ready to
gun down anyone who tried to run away. However, that
valid concern held less sway as their captivity stretched on,
prompting Marshall to take matters into his own hands. Together

(07:19):
with a friend, he was able to pry up the
mattresses that lined the floor of the trailer and then
stacked them near the upper hatch. Marshall climbed to the
top of the pile, armed with a wooden slat taken
from one of the box springs. He shoved it into
the crack between the trailer and the steel plate that
covered the opening, and started trying to pry up the plate.

(07:39):
He soon created enough space that he could grip it
with his hands. With the help of his friend and Ed,
Marshall pushed the plate up and down until he was
able to dislodge the tractor batteries, plywood, and dirt that
held it in place. It took hours of effort, but
eventually they made their way to the surface, emerging from
the trailer at about seven thirty pm on July six.

(08:03):
It had been twenty seven hours since their initial abduction
in sixteen hours since they had been buried underground. Thankfully,
none of the kidnappers had bothered to guard the quarry
as Ed had feared. The rest of the kids were
able to scramble up the mattress pile, and together they
made their way to the quarry office, where a stunned
employee helped them contact the police. They were all taken

(08:26):
to the Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center, a nearby jail, where
they were fed and examined by a medical team. When
they were given the all clear, the twenty six children
and their bus driver were escorted back to chow Chilla,
arriving just before dawn on July se By that time,
news of their escape had broken, sending the kidnappers deeper

(08:48):
into hiding. A national man hunt ensued, and within two
weeks all three of them were apprehended. The supposed mastermind
of the crime was twenty four year old Frederick Hall Woods,
the son of the owner of the Rock Quarry in Livermore.
His accomplices were twenty four year old James Schonfeld and

(09:09):
his younger brother, Richard. It was revealed that all three
men came from wealthy families in San Francisco, but it
failed to achieve financial success on their own. At one point,
the men had talked about making their fortunes in Hollywood
and even started working on a screenplay about a gang
that pulls the perfect crime. Apparently, they had so much

(09:31):
faith in the idea that they decided to scrap the
movie and just commit the crime themselves. In November of nine,
they took the first step by burying a moving truck
in Wood's father's quarry. They then spent the next half
a year planning how to intercept a school bus, transport
and house their victims, and arranged the ransom. It turned

(09:54):
out they could have used a bit more planning for
that last part. If you're wondering why the men show
is a school bus for their target, James Schoenfeld later
explained that it was simply because they figured kids would
put up less of a fight. Each of the three
kidnappers was ultimately given twenty seven sentences of seven years

(10:14):
to life in prison with no chance of parole. However,
in nineteen eighty an appeals court determined that since the
men had not caused any serious bodily harm to their victims,
they should be entitled to the possibility of parole. Thirty
six years after the kidnapping, Richard Schoenfeld was granted parole

(10:34):
in twelve. Three years later, his older brother James was
paroled as well. Frederick new Hall Woods remained in prison,
perhaps because the whole kidnapping scheme had been his idea.
In Woods was denied parole for the seventeenth time, but
in late March of two, Fred Woods, now in his

(10:57):
early seventies, was recommended for release by two parole commissioners.
As of the time of recording, no date has been
set for Wood's release, and the case could still be
subject to review, but there's a strong chance that he'll
be set free before the end of the year, and
Woods himself seems to like his chances. He's already dipped

(11:17):
into his considerable family trust to buy himself a mansion
just half an hour from where he's serving his sentence. Meanwhile,
the young children Woods and the shown Felds tormented are
now in their late forties and early fifties. Many of
them suffer from intense anxiety, as well as claustrophobia and
chronic nightmares. Jennifer Brown, Hid, the nine year old who

(11:41):
felt she was being led to slaughter, spoke out recently
about this lasting trauma and how it's now affected her
own kids. She said, quote, it's not normal for someone
who's almost fifty years old to be afraid of the dark.
And if you have a very overprotective parent, which would
be myself, your children also don't get to lead a

(12:02):
normal life, get on a bus, go on a field trip,
stay the night with a friend, and that's been very difficult.
It's been a life of hard work, trying to be normal. Today,
there's a granite monument dedicated to the victims of the kidnapping.
It stands near the chow Chilla Police Department, the place
where Jennifer and the others were reunited with their families.

(12:24):
Not far away, the city's largest park now bears the
name of Edward Ray, the man who protected the kids
in his charge and later provided investigators with vital clues
about the kidnappers. These are fitting tributes to the innocence
lost on that day in nineteen seventy six, but many
believe that a better sign of respect would be to

(12:45):
carry out the full sentence for at least one of
the men responsible for their trauma. Fred Woods, has expressed
remorse for his actions and claims to be a different
better man than he was all those years ago. That
might be enough in the eyes of the law to
secure Wood's release, but it's not in the eyes of

(13:05):
one of his victims, Linda Carrejo Lavendara. When she heard
the news of fred Wood's parole, she posed a very
difficult question. If your child was kidnapped and buried alive?
How long is long enough? I'm Gay Bluesier and hopefully

(13:26):
you now know a little more about history today than
you did yesterday. You can learn even more about history
by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t
d i HC Show, and if you have any comments
or suggestions, feel free to send them my way at
this day at I heart media dot com. Thanks to

(13:48):
Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks to you
for listening. I'll see you back here again soon for
another day in history. Class s