SURVIVED: The Chowchilla Kidnapping

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Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today

is one I wasn't all that familiar with, despite its notoriety for being one of the most bizarre

kidnapping cases in U.S. history.
This is the

story of the Chowchillo, California, gets a call from a concerned mother saying that the school bus that was supposed to drop off her son just never arrived. Her son was taking part in this summer session along with many other kids from the town.
And their school day in the summer mostly consisted of them playing and swimming with kids and then being returned in the late afternoon just in time for dinner. But still, it was sometime after four o'clock and the bus was late, which never happened.
And it seems she isn't the only one panicking because more and more calls start coming into police from other concerned parents whose kids haven't been dropped off.

Now listen, my kid doesn't come home on time and I go straight to worst case scenario.

But police aren't in an emotional place.

I mean, their first thoughts lean more towards like mundane scenarios.

Right.

Which makes sense.

Like a flat tire, a mechanical issue.

Maybe there was like a traffic jam or an accident that they are stuck behind or something like that. Precisely.
That's the most logical explanation. So they go out looking for this bus.
But according to the CNN Films documentary, Chowchilla, complicating matters was the fact that this is a summer session, not a regular school year, whatever. So the bus driver, 55-year-old Ed Ray, didn't take the normal bus route.
And that's a problem because of where Chowchilla is located. It is this teeny tiny town about 150 miles southeast of San Francisco.
I mean, literally in the middle of nowhere. There's lots of open farmland and some cattle ranches too.
I mean, according to the Sun-Telegram, the tallest structures were grain silos, if that tells you anything. So there are tons of rural roads, probably not totally dissimilar to some places actually here in Indiana.
Yeah, which makes me think it would almost make it a little easier. Like, there's nothing to hide behind.
I mean, a big yellow school bus would kind of stick out. I mean, as long as the fields weren't like cornfields or fruit trees or something like that.
But yeah, there's cattle pastures you sure could see like far and wide. But they're not seeing anything even resembling a school bus.
And they are searching dozens of back roads. By this point, the parents have also jumped in to help.
They're searching too. And according to a Vox article from Caleb Horton, which we relied on heavily for this episode, people from town were starting this like CB radio posse to communicate with each other and help with the search.
But it doesn't matter who's looking or how many radios they have out there. As the hours tick by with no sign of the bus, the idea that it is just broken down somewhere starts to fade.
Were they considering that Ed, the bus driver, could have driven off with all the kids? You know, I thought about that when I was first researching this. I assume they have to be thinking that.
But there's every indication that Ed was super reliable. I mean, this guy had been driving the school bus for decades.
He's not some— So it wasn't like a summer job for him. He was a school bus driver, capital letters.
He was a known, nice guy, like, throughout the whole town. This wasn't some random stranger.
Not that that means anything. We know that as crime junkies.
But, like, I don't know that anyone was super suspicious of Ed. And the other reason they're not suspecting him, though, is because the bus had also made some stops.
And depending on which source you read, it varies from like three to five. But either way, he's already dropped off a few kids before the bus disappeared.
And when they talk to those kids, none of them say anything was unusual. So I don't think they're suspecting Ed of anything.
Right. Because like if he were going to drive off with a bunch of kids, why let some of them off before then? Like, that wouldn't really make sense.
Well, nothing makes sense. And parents are starting to get anxious.
So how many kids are on the bus? Well, again, we let a couple off, but there's 26 kids still on the bus, all ranging in age from like 5 to 14. So most of their parents are now gathering at the police station waiting for any news.
And it's around this time, just as the sun is setting, that there is some potential good news. A pilot set up to aid in the search spots the bus on the ground in the middle of the desert, about seven miles outside of Chowchilla.
And apparently, the way that this bus was hidden, you couldn't have seen it from the road. That's why no one had come across it yet.
So police rush out to that scene right off Highway 152. And they find that the bus had been driven off the road into a thicket, which helped conceal it.
And I don't think they're thinking of a bus crash here. I mean, they're like, this was done on purpose.
And that makes them nervous about what they're going to find inside, which just ends up being an empty bus. No kids, no bus driver.
There's not even a key in the ignition, and there is nothing to indicate that the bus had some kind of mechanical issue as they might have first thought. According to an article in the Sun-Telegram from around that time, there's also no sign of blood or foul play inside the bus either.
The only apparent evidence police find is another set of tire tracks leading directly to the bus door. Which is kind of like the worst thing to find.
Like, at least before, they knew they were looking for this bus. Now they have this bus and tire tracks leading right up to it? Yeah, so if everyone's been transferred to a new vehicle, they have no idea what they're looking for now.
Or even what direction to look in. According to that Vox article, later that evening, the sheriff gathers the parents at the firehouse where coffee and sandwiches are served.
He explains to them that whoever took their children most likely doesn't want to harm them. They probably just want money.
How does he know that? He doesn't. I mean, I don't know if this is a hunch or maybe just a hope because, I mean, again, now this is their best case scenario.
But they assure the parents that they're going to do everything they can to find their kids and they are pulling out the big guns. The Madera County Sheriff reaches out to the governor of California at the time, Jerry Brown, and tells him that he wants every state agency that has cars and radios.

And the governor's office is basically like, listen, whatever you need, you got it.

So as dawn breaks the next day, the search efforts ramp back up in full force.

Four airplanes and a helicopter take to the sky while searchers head out on horseback and police officers go door to door, leaving no stone unturned. The California National Guard even comes in, as does the FBI, who would take over the town's only two motels.
And as this gets made public, hundreds of tips start coming in and speculation runs wild in the small town about who could have done something like this. And when I say wild, I'm not just talking local names getting thrown around.
I mean, theories run the gamut. Everything from the Zodiac Killer to UFOs took the bus.
Oh my goodness. And then press is just pouring into town, a town that you could drive through the heart of in less than a minute.

I mean, all these people were coming desperate to tell the story of the largest kidnapping in the history of the United States. And I'm not kidding.
That Vox article claims that for every one person in town, there were 10 reporters. Now, that could be an exaggeration, but you get the point.
There was so much press, though, that it even got the attention of President Gerald Ford, who asked that the FBI personally brief him on the investigation. So now you have an entire nation, including its president, glued to their TVs following this story.
But again, throughout day two, there is no sign of the kids or the bus driver, Ed. And even more baffling to authorities, there is still no contact from the kidnappers, who by all appearances seem to have carefully planned every single detail of this kidnapping.
So if their plan wasn't to demand a ransom, then what was it? No one had any clue what to expect next. And they sure didn't expect

the answers to what happened to be found around 100 miles away in a rock quarry of all places.

But that's exactly what happened next. It's all about speed, value.
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It's around 8 p.m. when an employee of the California Rock and Gravel Company notices what he thinks are trespassers on the property.
He goes and checks out the situation, but these are not the type of trespassers he expected. For one thing, they're just children, most of whom are dirty.
And for another, they have a man with them. And just because this guy works at a quarry doesn't mean he's living under a rock, because he suddenly puts two and two together, realizing that these are the missing children from Chowchilla that he has seen on the news.
Now, how or why they got here, he has no idea, but he rushes off to call the police.

When they arrive, they find the kids actually calm and in relatively good shape. According to a 48 Hours episode from 2020, each child is photographed and then the group is taken to a local jail where they can get some food, some new clothes and medical attention.
And it's here that the police also begin to question Ed and the children about what the heck happened to them. And the story they tell is terrifying.
According to Ed and the kids, the group's bus was hijacked by three men wearing pantyhose over their faces and carrying guns. The men had parked a white van in the middle of the road, forcing the bus to stop.
And then two of the men got on board of the bus and then forced everyone to the back. And then one of them drove the bus to that thicket in the desert where it was eventually found, while that third man followed behind them in the white van.
Now, all Ed and the kids could tell them is that these guys were white men and they had some vague descriptions of possible ages, but like they couldn't tell much because of the pantyhose that they had over their face the whole time. I don't know why, but I didn't expect this to be three people.
Me neither. And I think it's because I don't know how three people got together and thought kidnapping a bunch of kids was a good idea without any one of them being like, maybe no.

Hey, let's like stop for a second and think this through.

Yeah.

Anyways, they say that there was this second van.

This one was a green one that was already parked out there waiting for them.

And then Ed and the kids were then transferred from the bus to the two vans, and then they drove. But Ed and the kids couldn't see where they were being driven to because all the windows were covered, blocking out the view and the light.
The kids bounced around in the back of these vans without any idea where they were going or who these men were that were taking them there. I mean, it's got to be such a surreal experience.
One minute you're literally on your way home to mom and dad or your parents, and then the next they have no idea what their future holds or how long they're going to be trapped inside this hot van because hour after hour passes and they are still driving. Britt, they do this for 11 hours.
I mean, are they just driving in circles? Where are they going? I don't know, because we know that they only end up 100 miles away. It shouldn't take 11 hours.
Right. So I don't know if these guys were just waiting for it to get dark.
Maybe they were trying to disorient them. Maybe this wasn't like as well planned after all, and they just didn't know what to do with them.
But without a why, you have to imagine what a scary 11 hours this was for these kids who, again, some of them were five. I mean, younger than May.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Like, that is so little.
I know. And the older kids said they were trying to comfort the younger kids.
Some of them started singing songs to calm their nerves. and like what is so horrible too is Ed said, what he told police is that as they just kept driving, they wouldn't even stop for bathroom breaks for these little kids.
So they were having to, I mean, literally go to the bathroom where they sat. This isn't just a kidnapping.
This is almost like a form of torture. Totally.
And it just gets worse. According to the Sun Telegram, the vans eventually did stop around 3.30 in the morning.
Ed and the kids told police that when the van doors opened, they were parked in like this covered area. Picture like a giant tent that the vans kind of backed into, which makes it more difficult for them to have any sense of where they were at.
Ed gets pulled out of the van first, and then they pointed to a hole in the ground with a ladder and ordered Ed to take a flashlight that he was given and then climb down into the hole. Then the kids are pulled out of the van next, and one by one, they're asked to give their names, their ages, and then those are written on the back of this fast food bag that they had.

And then like Ed,

these kids are ordered one by one down into the hole.

Is this like a dirt hole?

Like a mass grave is what I'm imagining?

Or is it like a bunker?

Like what is it?

It's more bunker.

So what it turns out is the kidnappers had actually buried a moving trailer underground

and then cut a hole in the top of that. And then inside, they had some mattresses, some water, some snacks, and then they'd cut two holes so that the kids could use the bathroom.
Now, they did have some ventilation holes that ran outside to the top, but even with those, much like the van that they'd been transported in, it was so stinking hot. So once they had everyone in there, the kidnappers removed the ladder, sealed the hole shut, and then covered it with several feet of dirt, essentially burying them alive.
It sounds like they wanted them to stay alive. Like they have accommodations is a very generous term, but there's mattresses, there's ventilation.

Right. The goal wasn't truly to, it seems, like kill them right away.
It's just to like hide them. Yes, but I don't even know that they did a great job at that.
Like I don't, they've never done this before is the sense that I get because you'll learn that like the conditions, they would not have lasted long down there. According to Ed and the kids, all they could do when they were down in this hole

was sleep and cry and try to find ways to keep cool.

But as the hours went by,

the conditions started getting worse.

There was this fan that was down there

trying to help with the ventilation,

but that stopped working.

And then what little food and water they did have

was gone pretty quickly.

And more alarming was that the moving trailer had started to cave in. Oh my God.
So Ed and some of the older kids started to look for a way out. I mean, it took hours, but they eventually got the metal cover to the hole open.
Then a secondary wooden cover that they broke through, and that allowed the dirt above to seep in until fresh air and light could finally be seen, and that's what they followed. Were they concerned that the kidnappers might be just waiting up there for them? I mean, I'm sure they were.
I know Ed for sure was. But he knew that these kids were his responsibility.
I mean, he had gotten them this far by doing what the kidnappers told them to do, but they were out of options right now. I mean, he knew if they stayed where they were, they would have almost likely suffocated to death.
So maybe they are out there, but like, what are your other options? So when the group emerged from the hole some 16 hours after first being put in there, they had no idea where they were. But luckily, the kidnappers weren't like up there waiting for them.
In that documentary, Chowchilla, they said that they apparently saw a building off in the distance and Ed led everyone to that building. And that's where they ran into that rock quarry employee who then called police.
So after hours of questions, the police finally have all the details of this kidnapping. They had hoped to stake out where Ed and the kids had been held and wait for the kidnappers when they had returned.
But when news of the children being found is leaked, that whole element of surprise is lost. So the kidnappers, like the rest of the nation, would soon know that the Chowchilla children were safe.
Around 4 a.m., which would now make it Saturday the 17th and roughly 36 hours since this nightmare began, a Greyhound bus pulls up behind the Chowchilla police station. Hundreds of people are waiting and cheering for the bus's arrival, including a mob of reporters and TV news crews.
Parents are eager to reclaim their children and hold them in their arms. And Ed is the last to step off the bus to what must feel like a hero's welcome.
I mean, he's this lone adult who somehow held this group together, but he didn't do it alone. Every single one of these kids played a part in the group's survival, whether it was emotional or even physical support.
Specifically, a 14-year-old at the time, Michael Marshall, was a huge help in digging them out. So truly, they are all heroes.
And now, 26 children would get the chance to sleep in their own beds again with their families. And not just in the homes with their families.
Like, I can't even imagine I would be, like, gripping Josie in bed at night, like, in her bed with her. Uh, same.
May would never leave my sight. Now, while the children in Ed are safe, police still have their work cut out for them.
They have three kidnappers on the loose with little information known about them. So later that day, Governor Brown issues a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the kidnappers.
Police also bring the children back to be fingerprinted so that they can exclude them from any prints that they found on the bus or that moving trailer. Although there's no mention in the research of the kidnappers' prints ever being found, so I don't know if they wore gloves or what.
Yeah, I say they might have worn gloves. They're digging this giant hole in the middle of the desert.
Did any of the kids or Ed say, you know, they wore gloves or saw anything like that? No, I mean, I would think that if they took time to cover their faces, they would take time to put gloves on, but I actually don't know for sure. Either way, I know that police really begin to focus on that rock quarry where not only Ed and the children were found, but also where the moving trailer was buried.
Because what they start realizing is that not just anyone could have come onto the rock quarry's property undetected and bury a large trailer like that. I mean, it's huge.
Right. Like, hey, don't mind us.
We're just digging this giant hole and putting a large trailer into it, cutting a hole in the top. Nothing to see here, folks.

Yeah, it was like an active place. Like it wasn't abandoned.
People,

I mean, people were going to be there and see something. And sure enough, someone did notice.

Security guards at the quarry tell police that in the months leading up to the abduction, they had witnessed three young men digging at the quarry. They'd actually pulled them aside

at least one point and talked to them. But the young men told them that they were just

Thank you. They had witnessed three young men digging at the quarry.
They'd actually pulled them aside at least one point and talked to them, but the young men told them that they were just digging some dirt. Which, like, yes, we can see that.
Thanks, boys. It doesn't seem like the security guards told them to stop, or maybe they didn't ask more questions, or what.
I honestly don't feel like they thought they could, because it turns out one of those three young men wasn't just anybody. He was the boss's son.
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24-year-old Fred Woods had worked at his father's rock quarry four or five years before the kidnapping. He had keys to the place, which gave him 24-7 access.
Police discover that Fred had been arrested two years earlier and charged with grand theft auto along with two of his friends, 24-year-old James Schoenfeld and then his younger brother, 22-year-old Richard Schoenfeld. So we have suspects one, two, and three here.
But what puzzled police is that these three guys came from wealthy families on the San Francisco Peninsula. We already know Fred's dad owns the rock quarry.
And the Chowchilla documentary talks about how Fred was part of the Newell family that had amassed this fortune going back to the California gold rush days. I mean, there were towns named after them.
And James and Richard were the sons of well-known podiatrists. So if these were the kidnappers, to say that their background was unusual is the understatement of all understatements.
Maybe that's why there isn't a ransom demand. I mean, they don't need the money, it sounds like.
Well, maybe, but then the question everyone has is, like, what the F was all this for? Right. The motive was still unknown to police.
And whatever it was, the one thing they didn't have wrong early on was that this was a well-planned crime. Now, it's a little unclear how they get to this next part, but I have seen in some sources that Ed was put under hypnosis.
And under hypnosis, he was able to give police partial license plate numbers for a van or the vans that were used in the kidnapping. And so whether it was that or something else, they're eventually able to look those vans up.
And according to Merced Sun Star, they discover that those vans were bought in November of 1975, which was the year before the kidnapping. And they also discover that the buried trailer, which obviously they would have had access to, had come from Palo Alto Transfer and Storage Company.

Can they connect any of these vehicles to Fred or the brothers? So there's some conflicting information on this. At least one source says that whoever purchased the trailer never transferred the purchase into their name.
And then another claimed that Fred bought the trailer directly. So a little unclear.
However, the one thing they discover is that the moving trailer was registered under the alias Mark Hall with a bogus San Jose address. And then they discover that Mark Hall also registered, get this, a pair of vans.
Huh. Wonder who Mark Hall is.
Yeah. So it sounds like police were pretty confident that Fred was Mark Hall.
So that puts him in possession of three of the vehicles used in this kidnapping. Two of them transferred the kids and the other one became this underground prison.
And he was seen digging a big hole where the moving trailer was found. Bingo.
So it's not a huge surprise then that on July 21st, a search warrant is executed at the estate of Fred's father. And it's going to take a minute to fully execute this search, because when I say estate, I mean estate.
We're talking 100 acres with 15 buildings on it, per an article in the Fresno Bee by Jim Boren and Larry Carroll. Fred actually lived in an apartment above the garage, although nobody seemed to know where Fred actually was at the time.
So it looks like he had already skipped town at that point. Now, when they search his little apartment, they find several pieces of evidence.
On Fred's desk, there was an envelope containing the kidnapping plan. Then a fast food bag with all the children's names and ages were also found.
So like if any of the car stuff was questionable before, this pretty much seals the deal. And the next day, police put out an APB for Fred and the two brothers.
The whereabouts of James were unknown at the time, but Richard had actually stuck around, hunkering down at his parents' home. And as their names surface, he even talks to the press on the phone.
Oh, what does he say? Well, he talks to them a little bit about prior arrests that the three had, which he equates to petty theft when they stripped an old car of parts. Like, it was something that Fred wanted.
Okay, but weren't they arrested for a grand theft auto? Yeah, but that's what, like, this is what he's talking it up to. Like, we just wanted the, I don't know.
But he also talks about how he doesn't think Fred would be involved in a kidnapping. Okay, what bizarro world is this guy living in? I mean, he's a suspect, too.
Yeah, I mean, this wouldn't be the first time a dumb criminal says even dumber things as the net starts to kind of close in on him. And it was closing in fast.
Now, Fred's father tells police that he tried to get his son interested in the family business, but that he was more interested in refurbishing and selling old cars. He actually had a business kind of doing that with one of the other suspects, James.
And so that leads police to search a garage in San Jose, less than an hour southeast of the estate. And this garage is one that Fred had rented about six months earlier to apparently work on cars.
And at this garage, they find two vans, presumed to be the ones used in the kidnapping. And they even fly Ed, the bus driver, from Chowchilla to San Jose to ID the vans.
And they also find a shotgun and several mattresses that matched the mattresses found inside the trailer. And then police find another crucial piece of evidence back at the estate.
They find a draft note making it clear what the motive was all along. Money.
But they never asked for any money. Britt, the irony of this is unreal.
Apparently, they kept trying to ask for money, but they could never call in their demands because the phone lines were so busy because of the horrible thing that they had done. They kidnapped too many children to ask for the money that they wanted.
Like the lines are busy. Yeah, they caused their own chaos and they couldn't get through to make their own ransom demands.
I believe this is called karma, Ashley. I know.
I know. So how much money were they going to ask for? Well, the note that they found says two and a half million, but later it would be revealed that they had actually planned on asking for five million, at least in that 48 Hours episode, that's what they said.
So fast forward just a little bit. Richard ends up turning himself in, but the police still have two kidnappers out there.
And while there are sightings as far away as Tennessee, none are leading them to Fred or James. More reporting from the Sacramento Bee claims that on the night of July 28, the police get a tip from someone who knew James and had seen him driving a green 1950s carryall, like think early days SUV.
And this one had Idaho plates, but he was in an area known as Menlo Park, which is not too far from his home. So they put out an APB, and around 6.30 in the next morning, police spot the vehicle in the same area that they had gotten that tip from.
So they follow him for about a mile, and realizing he's being followed, James eventually pulls over just a few blocks from his home and surrenders. So that only left Fred on the run now.
But police were closing in on him too. They receive a tip that Fred is sending letters to friends from Canada.
And it sounds like one of those friends might have even tipped off the FBI who notified the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. So they stake out a Vancouver post office that the letters were sent from.
And then just six hours after James was arrested, they have Fred in custody too. When they finally have all three of them together is when the full picture comes into focus.
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That's GoodRx.com slash crimejunkie. James would tell authorities that despite coming from wealthy families, he and Fred were actually in a lot of debt.
Specifically, they were in debt to their parents for loans that they gave them. Sounds like their car business wasn't doing so hot.
And that Vox article also talks about how getting the ransom money would give them freedom and, they think, respect. But clearly, like, nobody was supposed to know how they got the money if they wanted the respect.
Yeah, they just stumbled into five million dollars. Got it.
Yeah. And they also wanted to do what a lot of young people their age wanted to do.
They just wanted to buy cool shit. Now, James says the kidnapping wasn't their first plan to make money.
They had planned to make a movie to, like, make a little cash. They even wrote this script.
No surprise, the script involved kidnapping. And while the movie idea didn't work out, they hoped a real estate investment that they got into would work out.
But that also was a bust. So they kind of revisited this idea of a kidnapping.
But instead of doing it in a movie, they're like, well, what if we just do it this time for real? And the reason they got here is they had learned that California had a surplus of money in the budget for that year. According to the Chowchilla documentary, they thought that if they kidnapped a school bus, that the state would pay for the ransom out of that surplus.
So they started planning and plotting. I mean, we know the trailer was purchased in November of 75.
So this plan was at least in the works for, I mean, roughly eight months. This feels like a prime example of like work smarter, not harder.
Like if they had put honestly all this time, but just a fraction of this time and effort into getting normal jobs, upstanding jobs, jobs and stop, they could have saved a lot of people a lot of pain and trauma and still made money. Not to mention they wouldn't have gotten locked up in prison.
Yeah. Well, according to that Vox article, the kidnappers tell police that once news broke that Ed and the children had escaped, they made plans to just get out of Dodge.
Although Richard opted to stay behind. So Fred and James drove to Reno to layalo for a little while before making their way to Canada.
Fred was the first to go. He, I think, used a fake passport to fly into Vancouver.
And then James planned to drive over the border, but he was turned around when guns were found in his car. So he sold the guns, then returned to the border, and was again denied because there were still some guns in his car.
How many guns does this guy have? Apparently enough that he can't even find them all. I don't know.
So once he was unable to get into Canada, it sounds like he was out of options. And at that point, he decided just go back home.
And I mean, you know what happens from there. So when the men are finally brought to court, the people of Chowchilla are so

angry that the police have to put snipers on the roof to protect the men. And one night while the three kidnappers sit in a local jail, the windows are actually shot out in some kind of effort to send them a message.
And there was lots of talk around town about how some old-fashioned western justice was in order. But legal justice would finally start to come in July of 77 when all three men pled guilty to 27 counts each of kidnapping for ransom without inflicting bodily injury.
But they refused to plead guilty to five counts of kidnapping with bodily harm because that included an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole. So they would have to eventually go to trial for those charges.
And those started in the fall. They waived their right to a jury trial, which meant that things would be left up to the judge.
So I guess I'm a little confused. Why are they pleading not guilty on some of the charges? Again, I think it's just because of the sentence that came with them.
And that was the one for the charge with the bodily harm. Like, they're deciding they would rather fight that.
And their defense attorney strategy is one you're going to hate, Britt, because they're basically arguing that the victims, so 26 children and Ed, were totally unharmed by the kidnapping. They're like, yes, we did the kidnapping, but we're not willing to say that they were harmed in the kidnapping.
The same kids that were basically tortured and traumatized because they were buried alive during the kidnapping. Buried alive.
They weren't harmed. That's what they're saying.
That's what they're trying to say. They certainly weren't off on a field trip to Chuck E.
Cheese. Yeah.
Yeah. But they're basically like, well, none of them lost an arm, so they're not harmed.
That's the argument. And I've

heard some clever defense arguments in my day, but honestly, this one kind of takes the cake.

And this kind of proves why I would make a horrible defense attorney.

Same. Now, several victims have to testify to the level of harm that they were subjected to,

having to relive their trauma all over again. And because of this, I mean, their stories clearly had an impact on the judge.
He felt that the terror they endured constituted harm, like we all would probably agree. And he sentenced all three kidnappers to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But that sentence is short-lived because according to a CNN article by Holly Yan, an appeals panel overturns the men's original sentences and rules that they should have the chance of parole. On what grounds? Well, they, this panel's agreeing with the original defense attorney, I guess, that while the crimes were horrible, terrible, all those things, that technically under the law, it was not considered bodily harm.
Basically, they were claiming that the mental trauma didn't count. And because of this ruling, I think you know what happens next.
In 2012, Richard Schoenfeld is granted parole and released. And then a few years later in 2015, Richard's brother James is released from prison on parole as well.
But Fred Woods actually gets denied parole when it's discovered that he was using cell phones in prison to run outside businesses like a gold mine and a Christmas tree farm. What? Yeah, I know.
But eventually, like the other two, Fred was granted parole in, actually pretty recently, 2022, after several prominent people began to campaign for his release. Some of them thought he had paid his debt.
Others seemed to chalk the whole thing up to just them being the youth at the time. Did any of these guys apologize for what they did? Well, I mean, we know Fred had read an apology at his parole hearing, but how apologetic he was, I think, is up for debate.
Because in that Chowchilla documentary, they talk about how Fred still owned the two vans that he used in the kidnapping because he thought they were going to increase in value due to their connection with the case. So, what, he's planning on selling them? Who is buying vans that were used in the kidnapping of 26 kids? Nobody I want to be friends with.
And you won't believe this, but court documents suggested that his trust, Fred's trust, was worth, wait for this, over $100 million. What? Yeah.
So this dude is like loaded and he's saving a memento from the crime he committed because he thinks it'd be worth something someday. A crime he committed to get $5 million? You can't be that freaking sorry.
I mean, please tell me the survivors got some of that money. They did.
According to a CBS News article by George Osterkamp, the trust settled a suit with survivors in 2016. Now, regarding the settlement, one survivor was quoted as saying that it was enough to pay for some serious therapy, but not enough to buy a house.
And I think that quote points out something lost in all of this. You see, in the aftermath of their kidnapping, the children of Chowchilla were given parades and even a trip to Disneyland.
But what happened to them wasn't something that Minnie and Mickey could fix. Many of them are still struggling.
And when we hear the word survivor, I think we sometimes forget that there's another side to that story. It's not just surviving the event.
It's also about surviving the trauma in the days and weeks and years that come after. But from what I've read and seen of the Chowchilla victims, they are strong and resilient, continuing to fight no matter what life might throw at them, much like they did on that summer day in 1976.
So if you're interested in supporting victims and families

who have experienced severe trauma like those in Chowchilla,

then I encourage you to check out the Jace Foundation.

It's a great organization founded by J.C. Dugard,

whose story we've covered in a previous episode.

J.C. also helped co-found the Polyvagal Equine Institute,

another incredible organization that focuses on growth and healing

through interacting, connecting, and learning from horses and human bonds.

And this year, actually, AudioChuck's support

will allow them to further their online resources

that can be utilized by survivors

who are seeking out animal-assisted therapy programs.

So we'll have ways that you can lend your support

linked right in the show notes.

You can find all the source material for this episode on our website,

crimejunkiepodcast.com.

You can also follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast.

We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production.

So, what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?

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