No crime is good, but when the victims of the offense are children, it is especially horrifying. This blog post is about one such case. In 1976, three men abducted a school bus carrying 26 children in Chowchilla, California, and buried them in an underground bunker. They all escaped through the ingenuity of the bus driver and a student.
The Chowchilla Kidnapping
On Thursday, June 15, 1976, Frank Edward “Ed” Ray sat behind the wheel of a school bus. His passengers were 26 children from the Dairyland Elementary School in Chowchilla, California. They had enjoyed a day of swimming at the Chowchilla Fairgrounds swimming pool and were on their way home.
At approximately 4:00 p.m., a van suddenly appeared and blocked the bus’s path. When Ray stopped, three men wearing nylon stockings over their faces emerged from the vehicle and hijacked the bus. One man drove the bus while a second kept a gun pointed at Ray. The third man followed in the van.
The abductors drove to Berenda Slough, a remote, shallow branch of the Chowchilla River about ten miles from Chowchilla. There, they hid the school bus and retrieved another they had secreted nearby before forcing Ray and the children into the vans. They had modified both vans by painting over the rear windows with black paint and adding improvised soundproofing. Once their captives were in the vans, the kidnappers drove to the California Rock & Gravel quarry in Livermore, California, about 110 miles from the Chowchilla fairgrounds.
The Chowchilla Children Escape
The two vans arrived at the quarry early in the morning of June 16. The kidnappers forced their victims at gunpoint to climb down a ladder into an underground bunker. As they descended, one of the abductors wrote down the name and age of each child, using a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger wrapper as a notepad.
To construct the bunker, the kidnappers had buried a truck trailer, equipping it with ventilation and a crude latrine for a toilet. They included several mattresses and a small amount of food. Once everyone was inside, they removed the ladder, covered the opening with weighted sheet metal, and buried it.
After some time had passed, Ed Ray and the older children stacked the mattresses, allowing them to reach the hatch. Ray lifted the hatch, and one of the children, 14-year-old Michael Marshall, wedged a piece of wood into the opening. This allowed him to move the sheet metal and its weights. He could then dig away the dirt and debris that covered the opening. Sixteen hours after their ordeal began, the children and their bus driver climbed out of their underground prison and walked to the quarry’s guard shack.
The Chowchilla Kidnappers Caught
The kidnappers planned to phone a demand for $5 million to the Chowchilla Police Department. However, they failed to consider the number of calls the police would have to field from frantic families and the media. Unable to get through, they decided to nap. They awoke to television stations trumpeting reports of the children’s escape. Their window of opportunity had slammed shut.
Investigators had been active during this time. The FBI began looking at Frederick Newhall Woods IV, 24, whose father owned California Rock & Gravel. Woods had the keys and unlimited access to the quarry. Furthermore, he and brothers Richard and James Schoenfeld (22 and 24, respectively) had previous convictions for car theft, for which they received probation.
The FBI obtained a search warrant for the Woods family estate in Portola Valley. In young Woods’ room, they discovered a trove of incriminating information. They found journals, a draft of the ransom demand, maps, notes, plans, receipts for the vans and the trailer, false identification, one of the guns used in the kidnapping, and the hamburger wrapper on which were written the names and ages of each kidnapped child.
The FBI issued arrest warrants for Woods and the Schoenfelds. Richard Schoenfeld surrendered to authorities eight days after the kidnapping. Two weeks later, police in Menlo Park arrested James Schoenfeld. That same day, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested Fred Woods in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The Chowchilla Kidnappers Face Justice
All three men pleaded guilty to kidnapping for ransom and robbery but refused to plead to infliction of bodily harm. A conviction for the latter offense, along with kidnapping, would mean an automatic sentence of life without parole.
Authorities tried Woods and the Schoenfelds on the bodily harm charge. All three were convicted and received the mandatory sentence of life without parole. However, an appeals court overturned those convictions because the injuries the children sustained did not meet the law’s standard of bodily harm. They were resentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
Epilogue
Ed Ray received a citation for outstanding community service. Many of the schoolchildren he helped save would visit him before his death at age 91 on May 17, 2012. In 2015, Chowchilla renamed the Sports & Leisure Park the Edward Ray Park and declared his birthdate, February 26, as “Edward Ray Day.”
Richard Schoenfeld was released in 2012. His brother, James, was paroled in 2015. Fred Woods remained in prison for several more years. His minimization of the crime and frequent disciplinary infractions caused the parole board to deny several requests. However, he was finally released on August 17, 2022, at age 70.
The abducted children suffered panic attacks, nightmares, and personality changes for years, sometimes decades, after the kidnapping. The effects of the incident on the Chowchilla children helped guide changes in the treatment of young trauma victims.
You can read more about the Chowchilla kidnapping in Hugh Pentecost’s 2016 book, The Day the Children Vanished.
Kidnapping survivor Larry Park, who was six at the time, has penned a poignant memoir, The Chowchilla Kidnapping: Why Me? In it, he reveals the devastation from the incident that has haunted him ever since.
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