The Chowchilla School Bus Hijacking Remembered

By Bill Paul | Editor & Publisher

CHOWCHILLA, Calif. - The most infamous incident of school bus hijacking occurred more than a quarter century ago in Chowchilla, Calif. It was a crime that riveted the nation, indeed captured world attention.

Chowchilla is a small farming community, a mere dot on the map in California's agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley. It is located on State Highway 99, about 135 miles southeast of Sacramento and 90 miles west of Yosemite.

There, at 4:15 p.m. on the afternoon of July 15, 1976, three young men commandeered a Dairyland Elementary school bus with 26 children onboard. The bus was returning from a swim outing at the county fairgrounds.

The children, 19 girls and seven boys ages 6 to 14, and their driver Ed Ray, then 55, were driven around for 11 hours in two white cargo vans before being herded into a tractor-trailer moving van. The van had been buried in a rock quarry near Livermore, California, about 100 miles north, in November 1975. The kidnappers demanded $5 million ransom to pay off some debts and start a business.

The school bus was later found covered with brush in a drainage ditch several miles west of town. The cargo vans were later found in East San Jose.

Confined to a space measuring 8 feet x 16 feet, Ray and two of the older boys eventually pried a steel plate of the entrance to the trailer, broke open a wood board, and clawed their way to freedom out of their would-be tomb. They summoned help and all the students were quickly freed.

After their escape, the victims were examined by doctors at the nearby Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center. They were pronounced in good condition except for a few bumps and bruises. No psychological evaluations of any of the survivors were conducted at the time.

They were returned back to their homes the morning of July 17, 1976. They'd been missing for 30 hours and had been entombed for 16 hours.

Fortunately for the captives the kidnappers provided a four-inch dryer hose leading above ground providing fresh air. Years later driver Ray, now retired and still living in Chowchilla, said if the batteries powering the ventilation fan had run out of power, "We could have died."

Investigators traced the moving van to the 100-acre Portola Valley estate of the quarry owner. There they discovered a $5 million ransom note.

The son of the quarry owner, Fred Newhall Woods IV, 24, was missing. Authorities issued an all-points bulletin for Woods and two friends, Richard Schoenfield, 22, and his older brother James, 24. The trio were scions of wealthy San Francisco Peninsula families.

Within two weeks all three kidnappers were apprehended. Richard Schoenfield turned himself in. His older brother James was arrested a week later in Menlo Park and Fred Woods, also 24, was captured the same day in Vancouver, British Columbia.

All three pled guilty in a judge-only trial to 27 counts of kidnapping for ransom without inflicting physical injury. All three were from wealthy families in the area. On December 15, 1977, a Superior Court judge sentenced the trio to life in prison where they continue to serve to this day. Richard and James Schoenfield are incarcerated at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, California and Frederick N. Woods is serving his sentence in the Soledad Prison also in California. Each has been denied parole more than a dozen times; Richard Schoenfield was recently denied parole for the 19th time.

A 1993 ABC docudrama, "They've taken Our Children: The Chowchilla Kidnapping Story," was made of the event and the kidnappers have tried to profit from the film, but to no avail. The California Supreme Court rejected a hearing for Woods who sued for libel. He claimed that his role in the kidnapping was distorted in the television movie. Woods had appealed lower-court rulings dismissing his suit.

The Chowchilla incident has particular meaning to John Green, California's state director of pupil transportation. More than anyone involved in pupil transportation in the 21st century, in large measure due to Chowchilla, Green is the individual who alerted the pupil transportation community to the possibility that terrorists could target school buses in the U.S. In the intervening years, and to this day, the incident weighs on his mind.

"I was a young Santa Clara County Sheriffs Deputy working in the next valley over from the Chowchilla area," he recalled in a recent e-mail correspondence, adding that he was not specifically assigned to investigate the kidnapping because it occurred in a different county and jurisdiction.

Never-the-less, he continued, "Working in law enforcement at that time all of California's law enforcement community particularly in Northern California were actively looking for the two white vans with the children. We were stopping any white van - you didn't need to even look suspicious it just had to be a white van - and searching the area for any evidence.

"The two vans used in the kidnapping were actually hidden just several yards off the highway inside a rented warehouse in East San Jose. This was on one of the beats I worked and I must have driven past that warehouse a hundred times during the event," he said.

"The kidnappers had driven through our area after leaving the children buried in the gravel pit, parked the vans in the rented warehouse and then drove west across the valley into Saratoga up Highway 9 to Skyline Blvd. and then north to their homes.

"We also found part of the school bus driver's wallet discarded off of Highway 9 in (our jurisdiction) in the Saratoga area after the children were rescued," he said.

The kidnapping led mental health experts to more closely monitor the well being of victims of childhood traumas. Many of the youngsters who survived the Chowchilla ordeal continue to this day to experience post traumatic stress disorders. A granite monument dedicated to the victims is located in the Chowchilla Government Center.

But it is not the only remaining legacy of the Chowchilla incident.

"I know that the school bus community and law enforcement felt at that time that this was a particularly heinous crime which had parents and children fearful," said Green. "As it is today this event brought home the fact that the world contained people who would not hesitate to harm our children. It also brought home the reality that if it could happen in Chowchilla, California it could happen anywhere."