The Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping

own clues in our very own category. This is definitely a bucket list thing for both of us, and we're super super excited. So it airs tonight. If you are listening to this live on Tuesday, February eighth, it is the prime time collegiate tournament. So check it out tonight on ABC, our big, big debut on Jeopardy. Uh. Like I said, it was super fun and we're so proud of this. After all these years, we finally got the call we've been waiting for. Check it out tonight, everyone,

All right, on with the show. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here and this is uh stuff. You should know. You know what I've been singing for two days. Wheels on the bus, go rounding round. No, that's pretty good, guests though done. No, No, chow Chilla. I can't get it out of my head. That got Godzilla song. Now, all I'm saying over and over is

chow Chilla. That's a great song. Do you remember who played it? Was that? Like at Your Winner or Johnny Winter? I don't know. I think it's one of the winners. Okay, that's my guess. Okay the long Winters. Definitely not the Long Winters. Okay. Um So, Chuck, we're talking about a piece of Americana true crime history that I had no idea about actually, and um I noted though, because of

the timing and because of the location. I hit up my beloved, uh former hippie aunt who lived in San Francisco at the time I was raising kids and said, do you remember this? She said, oh, yes, I remember this big time. She had kids that were about to be bus riding agents. She was not very u comfortable with this, this whole jam. Yeah, provided discomfort. Yeah, that's one way to put it. So did you even say

with the name of it was? No? Um, it's the chow Chilli school bus kidnapping is what people usually refer to it as, right, And I think this was a listener who sent this in. And I apologize because I'd usually make note of that so I can shout them out, but I did not do so in this case, so I missed. I know, boot this, but yeah, this was in nineteen seventy six and uh still stands according to the sources, I saw as the largest domestic kidnapping in US history. So my aunt says, oh yeah, she She

also said she was not very into it. I was not very comfortable by that. It's very disappointing. Um yeah, the largest mass kidnapping, four ransom. I'm not sure why that's a qualifier, but I don't know, but um yeah, I saw the same thing too that it still stands. Um. And it was like the idea that the most of anything happened to this little town of chow Chilla in the San Joaquin Valley, about a hundred and fifty miles southeast of San Francisco. Um in and of itself is significant.

But it was a really terrible like most of event that happened to this poor little town, as we'll see. All right, So should we just start on July seventy six, Yes, all right, we'll paint a picture for you. You already mentioned where. It was between Fresno and San Francisco, out in a part of California that had some very very small towns at the time. It's hard to imagine anywhere in California having forred people living there, but that was

the case in the mid seventies in Chowchilla. And it was the next to the last day of summer school and a bus was being driven after a because it was summer school, a little fun day trip to a swimming pool, driven by fifty five year old Ed Ray. Yeah, it was a farmer there in chow Chill himself. Apparently

he bailed hey like nobody's business. He was married to a woman named Odessa who was a bank teller at the Bank of America, and he was apparently quite happy being a farmer and then driving kids around on the school bus, because even after this he continued on for another dozen years as the school bus driver. That's right. Uh, he had only dropped off a few kids at this point, and the were nineteen girls and seven boys on board from five to fourteen, and notably, um the fourteen year

old because he will factor in pretty heavily here. His name was Mike Marshall. He wasn't even supposed to be on that bus. He usually got picked up by his mom, but he got busted the night before it with some beer and his mom said, to your punishment, you gotta ride that school bus home tomorrow and after school or

after the trip. Apparently he was like, I don't even know what bus to take because I don't do this, but he knew who Ray was, and so he went to ed Ray and said, hey, man, well you I don't know if this is my bus or not, but you take me home. And ed Ray is ed Ray. So he went short shoreboard. So um, thank goodness, he

said that. Yeah. So after that that third stop, there were twenty six kids and ed Ray on board, and ed Ray was continuing along his route and he turned on to a street called Avenue, and as he turned onto Avenue one, Edray on that there was a white van blocking the road, and apparently he started to go around it and then I guess thought the better of it, and I wanted to stop and see if they needed any help instead, And when he did, he realized very

quickly that he was actually being hijacked. Because when you see a man with a long gun and panty hose on his head, um, you're probably being hijacked, that's right. The first thing he saw was this one guy who said, opened the door, and then he realized there were a couple of other guys, same m O. I think they had shotguns with the panty hose, and they said get in the back. We'll take over the driving from here. If you watched the movie, did you see any of that? No? No,

I haven't yet. We'll get to it. Then there's a there's a Lifetime movie that came out in the nineties. I think looks like it was made in three somehow. That is on YouTube, and I highly recommend scrubbing through it. I wouldn't say watch the whole thing because I don't know if you'll be able to. But Carl Malden, Yeah, play that ed Ray and uh, I don't know if it's true to the story, but he gave them a lot of guff about getting out of that driver's seat in the movie. Yeah, I don't. I'm not sure if

it happened in real life or not. It's a Malden improv if I've ever heard one. Yes, And I'm not getting out of my seat right my feet hurt. So he eventually did though, and they drove Um. They drove that bus followed by the van uh for a bit, and then eventually transferred those kids to that van and another identical van UM. And you know they I think we should point out a few smart things these guys did along the way, because they mainly did dumb things.

But the kidnappers did make them jump from the school bus to the van so they wouldn't leave footprints. And in these vans, they had all the kids and ed Ray in the vans now two vans, UM, and they had kind of like deck these vans out. Um. It was kind of a shoddy manner of adding plywood partitions to keep the kids from getting out from anybody being able to see. And I think they painted over the windows.

And then they drove those kids around for eleven hours in the backs of those vans with no potty breaks, no food, no water, no nothing. They just drove him around for eleven hours in July, the middle of July in the San Joaquin Valley, UM, pretty mercilessly before finally arriving at the destination, which ultimately was only a hundred miles away from where the kids had been kidnapped. I

think they just wanted to disorient the kids. Yeah, I think that was kind of smart as well, because they could have been, you know, eleven hours away if they managed to escape or something. One of the girls years later did say that she saw through a crack that they were up there with a c go and drinking sodas and have a good old time, and the kids and ed Ray are back there just suffering. Um, just

terrified obviously if what's going on right. That was Jennifer Brown Hyde who said that, and she has not She's not very happy with this whole thing. It's still to this day from what I understand. Yeah, as you can imagine. So, Um, finally, at three thirty am on Friday morning, they were hijacked around after three thirty one thirty pm on Thursday. They finally stopped driving at three thirty in the morning Friday morning, UM, and they arrived at a rock quarry. They're in Livermoore, California.

Apparently again it's a hundred miles away from chow Chilla, and um, this is the what the what the kidnapper see as the final destination for these kids until they're ransomed off, until the authorities cough up the money. And what the what they've done is bury a moving van line trailer, so like a huge moving truck, the trailer part of it. They buried it a total of twelve feet underground, um, and have covered it with four feet

of dirt. And they've opened a hole, put a ladder in and told the kids get down there and ed Rey too, that's right. And as the kids were going down and this kind of points to the direction of how dumb these guys were and how unprepared they were, even though they it turns out, would have planned this

thing for well over a year. They wrote down their names uh, and their phone numbers in contact and parents names, not on a clipboard legal pad, but on the back of a Jack in the box wrapper, right so uh. And then they took apparently some kind of piece of clothing from each kid because the idea was once again is that they have many, many kids that should bring a many many moneys and dollar bills their way exactly, and the fact that their kids means that people do

anything to to keep them safe. So these guys figure they've got a pretty good pay day with twenty six kids that they're now holding hostage and a buried moving van trailer um. And in in the trailer, they had done a little more than they had in the van, so they had peanut butter cheerios, some bread down there, some water, but definitely not enough to keep all those people alive for a very long time. They also thought

of bathrooms. They made bathrooms in the wheel wells, and they they dropped ventilation tubes with some fans to force air in into the into the van, so there was fresh air down there, um, but not a lot from what I understand. Yeah, that's right. And the one faithful mistake they made was that for their comfort, they included some old box springs and mattresses and stuff with them for them to sit on and lay on, which would end up being they're undoing. Should we take a break?

I think we should, because now you've got twenty six kids buried in a buried trailer right now in Livermore California, three thirty in the morning. Not a good thing to happen, that's right. So we'll pick up with what's going on in chow Chilla right after this. Alright, So in chow Chilla, that bus doesn't come back, so obviously everyone freaks out pretty quickly. An entire school bus full of kids and a very trusted h man about town like people. You know,

it's a small town. People knew ed Ray and he was a good guy by all accounts. Um, they were all missing. So uh. The very first thing that happens is they locate the school bus, which have been hidden um and some with some bamboo and camouflage. But they did find the bus right away, which, you know, on one hand, that's good because they have a lead. On the other hand, that just sends this thing into the

stratosphere as far as panic goes, because where are these kids? Yeah, and I saw also that the bus had basically no clues on it whatsoever. So it's like, we found the bus, but that doesn't help at all. Um, So yeah, I'm sure they were panicked by that. So um. It became pretty clear pretty early on that the child Chilla Sheriff, a guy named ed Gates was going to need some help, so the FBI came to town. Apparently they booked every

one of the hotel rooms in the two hotels in town. Um, they brought uh, like all the state law enforcement agencies, like everybody just converged on this town to help out because it made national news, like almost instantaneously. Um. I saw somewhere Chuck that like this is during the bi centennial, and the bi centennial has just been going on and going on and going on, and there was still by centennial stuff going on, and this stopped it, like this kidnapping,

news of kidnapping stopped the bi centennial celebration. Dennis Check. It was the end of it, not just for this town, but for the whole country. Oh yeah, I mean this went right up to President Ford at the time and obviously Governor Jerry Brown. So they threw everything they could

at it. Um. The media descended upon chow Chilla like super fast, and because it's the media, you start getting these these terrible stories about like well maybe because you know, they've never called Zodiac and this was just six or seven years I think after the final uh what would end up being the final killing. So they said maybe it was a zodiac because they made reference to wiping He made reference to wiping out a school bus at one point. Um, any tip that came in they had

to follow. There's a chew on the side of the road, so they have to track down that tip. Um. There was a novel in ninety eight called The Day the Children Vanished where the gang of people abductive bus load of kids just to bring people out of town and distract them while they robbed a bank. Ray's wife worked at the bank, like you said, so they put a

bank under surveillance. Uh, so there were you know, it was I don't know if I was to describe it as a panic because the FBI was on the scene in the state, uh, California Bureau and Investigation, So they were doing good work. But there was a frenzy of activity. Yeah, and I think the sheriff had all the help he possibly needed to chase down all these leads and everything. But from what I saw, there was just not much to go on. There were there They were just dead

ends left and right. Um, and so like there was there was a just an enormous amount of panic and terror in the town. Families started converging on the firehouse, the local firehouse. For some reason, I'm not sure why, but it became like the meeting place for anybody concerned about the fate of the kids. And um, this is

where news would first be broken. And I think the media probably hung around there too, so um, you can only begin to imagine how anxious the parents were, and then the town and then apparently the whole country was

was anxious as well. Um. And so it was really kind of surprising when all of a sudden, um, at about uh, I think about eight pm the next night, Saturday night, so the kids have been gone for almost uh thet about thirty hours, thirty two hours something like that at this point, thirty two hours of terror, when all of a sudden, at that quarry, some people are working and a man and a bunch of kids run over and it turns out to be the kidnapping victims

who just present themselves to a security guard at the at the quarry in Livermore, who gets on the phone and says, we found them. That's right, amazing, and you would think, well, pretty sensational story, but it was very short span of time and all the kids were fined, so why is it really a story. It's a story because as we'll see, the trauma that they suffered emotionally, and um, how it went down in who these people were, who kidnapped them. But before we get to those dumb dumbs, Um,

let's talk about the escape. Uh, they were down there about twelve hours and running out of food and water. Um, the roof. You know, they had a lot of weight on this moving van roof and those things aren't super strong, so this thing was, you know, kind of dented in and it seemed like it might cave in, and they were worried that they just couldn't stay there. Basically, and this is where the story I mean, I guess we'll

cover both points of view, Um, the immediate history and aftermath. Uh, ed Ray saved the day because he was the only adult there, so obviously he was the one that broke those kids out of there. Um. Years later, you know, we mentioned Mike Marshall, the fourth teen year old that wasn't supposed to be on that bus, and he was far and away the oldest kid there and the most capable to help. Years later, after a while of this story of ed Ray, he finally came out and said, oh,

you know, Ed Ray is a good guy. I want to disparage him, but like it was my idea and I was the one that really led the charge to escape, and he was a big mess, kind of crying in his hands that they were doomed and dead, and he got on board and helped me. But it was really me. And the reason I kind of believe that after reading all the accounts is it took many years for him to kind of come out with this, and it felt

like he even felt bad for saying so. So I think that Mike Marshall in fact did lead the charge to escape. Well. His his account was corroborated by another guy named Larry Park who wrote a book called The chow Chillas School Bus Kidnapping Cole and Why Me. And I don't know if he corroborated in that or in an interview you later on, but um, he was there and he said that that's true, that that's how it

went down. On the other perspective, the fact that like when Ed Ray like live the rest of his life, he stayed in chow Chilla. Most of those people kids who've been kidnapped with them stayed in Chowchilla. When he was dying, those same kids as adults now came and visited him at his his bedside and say goodbye. Um, there's plenty of opportunity for you know, a little town to start talking, you know, whispers and that kind of thing, and that doesn't seem to have happened. He seems to

have died considered a hero as well. So my take on a Chuck is that he may have been a gloom and doom about their prospects to begin with. And maybe it really was um Mike Marshall who said, no, we need to we need to try to get out of here. But even Mike Marshall said after a while, once Mike Marshall started to try, Ed Ray joined in and started helping, and that they might not have been able to Yeah, they might not have been able to get out had a grown man not in helping them.

Like push against this, totally agree. I think we're I think we park our cars in the same garage here. Yeah, look at them. Uh so here's how they got out.

They took those mattresses and stacked them up, and they took apart one of the kind of smashed one of the box springs which are framed in wood, and they started using that wood as like a sort of makeshift crowbar to try and what these guys kidnappers have done as they put um sort of sort of iron plate I've seen manhole, but it was some kind of heavy metal plate over the thing, along with two industrial tractor batteries which are super heavy, and then dirt, so there's

ended up being several hundred pounds kind of weighing this thing down, uh, this escape hatch. But they were able after hours and hours to finally kind of use that wood to pry open just enough to where they see starlight and dirt leaking in, and with the help of Ed Ray and and his you know, manly man strength, they were able to climb out of there. Mike Marshall was so Mike Marshall climbed out and then from that moment on and so apparently also Edray was really worried.

I guess Mike Marshall was too, but it was not a deterrent for him. But they were worried that there was at least one or more of the kidnappers hanging around with a gun, so there was a good chance in their minds that they were going to poke through and just be shot on site, so they were worried about that, and luckily, when Mike Marshall poked his head up, he saw that there was no one around. There's nobody

guarding it. They it turned out that they had long since left UM and that so Mike Marshall had Edray start handing kids up to him, and they got all the kids out and then ed Ray out and Mike Marshall ran into the woods to hide so in case the kidnappers were still around, they just hadn't seen them yet, and those kids were intercepted by him, at least Mike Marshall would be able to run away through the woods

and get help UM. But it turned out the kidnappers weren't there and and somebody luckily was still working at the quarry I believe, including a security guard when ed Ray and the kids ran up and presented themselves, so that's how, and then I guess the guy got on the phone and within moments of that happening, the news made it back to chow Chilla that they had all been found safe and they were all alive and generally unharmed,

and UM ed Ray was basically automatically hailed as a hero. Uh. Carl Marl Karl Maldon was certainly portrayed as the hero in the Lifetime movie. They said, do you have anything you'd like to say, and he said just that my feet hurt. And you know, we again want to point out this was uh, thirty six hours from beginning to end. But these kids were I didn't know what was going on above ground. They were hot, they were you know, stripping down to their underwear. Carl Maldon was in his

underwear even in the movie. Uh. They were running out of food and water. So as a five to fourteen year old, I mean, Ed Ray was in hysterics. You're you think you're gonna die down there. So it may not have been you know, kidnapping that lasted days and weeks, but that doesn't minimize the trauma that these kids suffered down there, completely not knowing what was going on above ground, and and daring to escape, not knowing if they were all of a sudden that van was going to come

speeding down the road. After like, it took a while until they felt safe, I think, and then on top of that, Chuck you'd said it kind of earlier, but I think it really bears repeating. They were really worried that the roof of this thing was going to cave in. Four ft of dirt on top of a moving van roof that had been in the in the perpetrator's defense

had been reinforced with lumber, but not very well. Um, that's a lot of weight hanging pushing down on this And if you see pictures of what the thing looked like from inside, I could see how they would have been very nervous that the thing was going to cave in on them and crush them. Oh yeah, like the pictures of it afterwards, that roof was in the process

of caving in. Yeah, there was very nerve wracking. Of course, if that would have happened, the dirt probably would have caved in and gotten some of them dirty, and then they could crawl out, I hope, so hopefully that's how Who knows, But you know, like I said, they didn't know what was going on down there, No, they didn't. So but now they're free, they're they're they're safe, um, and the authorities go get them, the the FBI, the sheriff everybody's um interviewing them this is ours is more

hours for the parents back in child Chilla having to wait. Uh. And then there was a a greyhound bus that went and got them and brought them back. It was pretty sweet. There was a lot of donations going on, like apparently Pacific Bell donated not just new phones, but new phone lines because there were so many calls being made by the authorities and by the press, which will factor in a second. Um, they the greyhound bus lines donated that bus ride, which is worth mentioning. Um, I guess the

FBI donated their time. Who knows now they get bad. But there was a okay, there was a lot of um there's just like a lot of banding together to support this town as they were going through this, and I just thought it was cool. There was a greyhound bus that rolled up with everybody inside and they got off and they're like, I'm never getting on one of those again. Well they did kind of wonder. I was like, maybe we should send like a few are not even Vans'

send twelve cars, no buses, no vans. Mm hmm, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying. We're just and of course the kids got good at Disneyland. That was a big one. You gonna heroes welcome, They got a parade, they got to go to Disneyland, and it was as soon as the town went from the saddest place on Earth to the happiest place on Earth in the span of thirty six hours. Yeah, they had a huge feast. I saw that um ed ray one

of vacation. Uh, that he appeared on Hollywood Squares, which is that's peaks, that's peak exposure in the mid and Chuck. There's one other little fact that we have to say about this that Robert Goulay recorded a song called the Ballad of Chow Chill Ray. It's so obscure it is not on YouTube. Some either cursed or blessed soul put it on SoundCloud. Yeah, you can find there's a cover version on YouTube from another person, but I recommend the SoundCloud Gooley version. It is uh. It is a product

of the nineteen seventies in every way. It's unlistenable. I made it through most of it. Did you make it through all of it? I made it through most of it, then skipped to the end. It was something else because it's sort of like disco, but It's also that very seventies thing when they wrote these story songs like about the kids jumping off of the to touch a Hatchie bridge or whatever. Not touch ATCHI what was it? Billy Joe McAllister like they wrote these songs in the seventies,

he is weird sort of folk story song. Yeah, but not. I mean a ballad can be like a love song, and these were like folk stories. I thought a ballad went it was like told the story. Maybe, but I think the ballads as love songs, sure, but a love story like the Air Supply wrote ballads, they didn't write songs about folky rose jumping off of bridges. You know they should have Well, I don't know. There's really nothing Air Supply could have done to have improved their game.

They were pretty much sound great. Yeah. One of the best concerts I ever saw in my life was Air Supply in Jacksonville, Florida. It's amazing. It was um, it was amazing. I said it before I'll say again. It was like the fabric of reality was coming apart at the themes and we were right right there to witness it. It was so cool. I didn't know you took ecstasy at that. I didn't. That was what's what's so significant about it. We were totally sober. Yeah, what was it about?

Was it just songs from your childhood or something? No, it was, I mean, yes, that was part of it. Was great to hear all those songs and see them live. It was the chemistry between the two dudes. Um, they still got it after all these years. Is really neat to see. Um. And but what really kind of made it unreal was it was almost had the same feeling

as like a really energetic tent revival. Like people were wandering down the aisles, like like you could tell they were moving not necessarily of their own will, they were being drawn towards the stage. It was. It was bizarre. It was so cool to see people were just out of their minds at this Air Supply show. And and like we're I don't think any of them were on next to see either. I think like everybody was like people were with their moms or with their kids or

or it was just a neat, neat show. I'll never forget it ever. Amazing. So go see Air Supply and I'm sure they're playing a third rate casino near you. Probably they definitely do the work, for sure. They supply you with more than air. Though it sounds like dude and the the guy's voice still is a d as good as it was in the seventies, which is probably. I was watching some bids the other day, live VIDs

of them recently. It's a good thing to do. Sit around, but definitely check out the song on SoundCloud and listen to as much of it as you can. You won't make it all the way through the Ballad of chowd Chiller Ray. It's so bad. Now I understand why Elvis would shoot the TV whenever Robert Goolay came on. It was because of that, because that's is that why I shot the TVs? Yeah, for some apparently no one knows why. But whenever Robert Boley would come on, he would shoot

his TV. Sometimes he gets really mad and shoot his toaster or his oven or whatever, but he would shoot the TV. That's pretty good, alright. So these kidnappers, getting back to the story of the Chowchilla school bus kidnapping, these guys were three real low rent scumbags who were didn't have opinion to their name, and we're desperate for cash, right In some ways, kind of. But if they were also all three rich kids, if you can put those two things together, there were three rich white kids. One

specifically literal trust fund kid. Uh, he was the ringleader. We're talking about fred Woods James Schoenfeld, who were twenty four, and then james younger brother, Richard, who was twenty two. But fred Woods, Frederick new Hollwoods the fourth was the ringleader. And uh, the I guess you could call it the brains if there was a brain behind us. But he came from a long line of California money. His Uh.

One of his ancestors was Henry Mayo knew All, who came in the eighteen fifties to California, part of Santa Clarita's New All, California named for him. They made a ton of money in real estate speculation and railroads and then eventually oil and ranching and had a uh several hundred million dollar family fortune. Yeah. I read that they made about three d and fifty million a year in

the seventies a year, just that family doing nothing. And by the time this guy, fred Woods the fourth came along, there were generations of this family that had never worked a day in their life. So it's not like his parents struck it rich and they remember their roots like their roots were just gob smacking lee. Wealth is wealthy. That's what they're That's what they knew. And apparently Fred was not particularly paid attention to by his parents and

it had some effects on him. And I saw also he had trouble um living up to his father's expectations for him. Um but do nothing blue blood yea Um, but that his his dad's approval meant a lot to him. That's a terrible position for any any person to be in. And I feel for him in that respect. And I also think from from what I saw, there was a New York Times article about him while I believe he was still at large where he said that he's described

as a loser in the headline. The New York Times calls him a loser, at least says other people call him a loser in their headline. He was that kind of person, and again it was the seventies, but he was also that kind of person. He's just a he was. He was the product of wealthy, neglectful parents from what I can tell, and also an education system that seems to have failed him at least in the grammar portion. Yeah, we'll get to that. Uh. He was didn't have a

lot of friends. He never really had a ton of girlfriends. Um he which is ironic because he ended up being married four times, which we'll get to. Uh. He lived in a converted apartment in an outbuilding on the nearly eighty acre estate uh in uh Portla Valley, where his grandmother lived and his parents lived. Even though they were traveling by themselves usually. Uh. He got a job at that rock quarry. Your first indication that they may not have had the smartest plan because his dad owned it. Uh.

And he was into cars. He collected cars with his money the um the ringleader did. He had dozens and dozens of cars. His buddy James, who helped him. He was rich to not that kind of rich, but his parents. His dad was a pediatrist, so they had doctor money. So they were doing pretty well as well. Uh. And they got into various businesses together. They had a used car business together. They never did super well, it seemed like, in any of their business ventures, because it seemed like

they weren't super smart. Right. Another good descriptor is that Fred in particular loved his cars and he loved to shoot the windows out of his cars with his guns, which he also loved. Yeah, they had a lot of guns between them as well. I mean it's sort of what you think. There are these rich kids who weren't paid attention to that could do whatever they wanted and

ended up getting into trouble. He he had. Fred had designs on being a film producer, and part of the concept for this kidnapping was the school bus kidnapping in the movie Dirty Harry, and he said, hey, this would make a great movie too, which we'll get to sort

of the bow tie on that later on. But he and James ended up losing some money, about thirty grand on a housing deal, and depending on the reports you read, some people say they were desperate for money, but if you talk to James, he said, I wanted to buy a Ferrari with it because my neighbors had Ferraris and it was to keep up with the Jones just situation. Yeah,

that's exactly right. You know, Fred was born into it, and I think took money largely for granted, but um James and and Richard, but James in particular really kind of felt new to the area and didn't fit in

because they didn't have as much money. I think there their dad was punching above his weight class socioeconomically in the area that they moved to, and his son's kind of suffered for it because they fell out of place because they just they just did not have anywhere near the kind of wealth that their their peers had where they where they now lived. And that seems to have gotten to James, and that was his big motivation. I

never saw fred Wood's motivation, did you. I mean, I think part of it had to do with that thirty grand in debt, but I think part of it, dude, as he was a board rich kid in some ways like that may have been the reason. So yeah, I also yeah, and UM also I have the impression that UM, that that James and Rick Shonfeld were um a lot

more moral than fred Wood was. Apparently in his journal, James wrote at the time that he was worried he was becoming immoral as they were like really planning this um, and he and his brother were both Eagle Scouts, so I guess they It is fair to say that they kind of fell under the influence of fred Woods, UM, who had no qualms about this whole thing. He convinced

them to give up their qualms as well. Yeah. I think the last time I'll say the word smart thing that they did was when they were initially hatching the idea, they said, we saw in the news California State of California has a five billion dollar budget surplus, and we're not gonna get money kidnapping a kid or even twenty six kids um from their parents for their parents to pay ransom. But if they were on a school bus,

then it's the responsibility of the state of California. And they've got all this dough so five million bucks is chump changed to them. So we get them on a school bus, then they're liable and that's how we're going to get the most money. Yeah. And so the calculation that they made was that there was nobody was going to get hurt. They knew that they weren't going to physically hurt those kids. They knew that California had a

budget surplus. But even more than that, um that that their insurance company, the States whoever ensured the state, would end up actually paying that five million dollars, and that they were just basically taking five million dollars from the state that the state didn't really need uh, and that nobody was going to get hurt, and then that calculation it really kind of reveals like how much they did um lose any kind of morality, which is they did

they utterly failed to take into account, like the psychological and emotional damage they were going to inflict on these kids and their parents and the town in general. You know. Yeah, And I think that's one of the things that because that they I think even in the end they saw it as like not the biggest deal because no one was hurt and it was really quick. But like when I saw an eventually spoiler we'll go ahead and say that the two brothers were eventually paroled, and we'll get

to all that. But you know, the the news teams in were like following this guy around in a parking lot asking him questions and he's just trying to avoid it. And one of them was like, you do realize that trauma these kids have still suffered into adulthood, and he just went, uh, you know, I've heard, so I've heard, and then just like quickly ran away. So even to this day, they're trying to get them to realize that there was a real impact and and and the end

result was trauma and PTSD. Yeah, and the reason it did and it had the impact him part of the problem for child Chill apparently, chaud Chill. It was just transformed immediately. Like you know when when if you're the victim of a crime, you you wonder like why why me? Especially a random crime. And this is a random crime

perpetrated on a whole town like chad Chill. It was a possible town among a number of towns in the area that those three traveled to and staked out and just kind of tried to figure out what the best the best victim would be for this crime. And they just settled on chow Chilla. They had no grudges against chow Chilla, they had no ties with chow Chilla. What the problem was. They didn't care about the people of chow Chilla, or how they felt about their children, or

what they were going to do to them. It was just a random They chose them, basically randomly. And chow Chilla is the kind of um rural farming town where people don't talk about their feelings. I think I get the impression that they still think that that's weak it shows a sign of weakness. And so I don't really have the impression that the town has ever really processed

this and that they've tried to forget. And then there's a lot of problems among the victims who are now and they're like fifties, um, that that have never really been resolved or worked out because the town just tried to carry on as if it never happened basically from the get go. Oh yeah, I mean some of them got had very hard luck stories getting into drugs, eventually getting better, uh and going through rehab and treatment and writing books about it. Others say they don't trust people.

They suffered nightmares for years, some continue to Others have said that they don't even really remember much of what happened. I imagine if you're five years old, um, you're not going to remember as much as a twelve year old obviously, so depending on your age group, you may have suffered some more obvious lasting damage. But they were all damaged. Um. The way these guys got caught is well, I guess

let's tell a little bit of that story. During the investigation, one thing they found in him and we'll put this in the dumb column on the property of where where Fred lived. They found a plan written out that said at the top in ye, I think it kidnapping. Plan didn't even capitalize the peak. Yeah, they wrote it out in pin and they had a lot of ideas. They wanted to buy an X ray machine. I think they did to to uh two X ray in case the

ransom money was bugged. They had a larger plan. They had one plan about them the state dropping the money from a plane in the Santa Cruz Mountains at a specific drop site indicated by a series of lights. But they also had this larger plan of putting dummies in a plane with parachutes, and it was sort of all over the map, this plan over the course of a year and a half. Yeah, there was this really reveals I think a lot about them as well. That on that plan sheet it said one of the line items

was burned the plan. Yeah, they just didn't get around to that. They left a ransom note. Yeah, and they had a lot of like scratch out and misspellings, and apparently it referred to Fred by name in the ransom notes that they were planned to give to the authorities. Like really they were trying to throw the authorities. They were trying to sniff the authorities off the case, I guess by posing or presenting themselves as a Satanic group. And they said that their their name was Beal's abub

but they misspelled beals abub um. They spelled b E A L s A b u b um, which is just offensive to anybody who knows how to spell that word. Um. It's just like if you misspell things in your ransom note, like you're not going to do very well for yourself. Most likely, that's right. Uh. In the aftermath of the kidnapping, from when they buried the kids too, when they left, the plan was called the Chowchilla Police Department, demand your

five million dollar ransom. But the child Chilla phone system was very small, and there were obviously when he kidnapped twenty six kids and the media is descending, every phone line was busy. They literally could not get through with their ransom demand. The kids escaped before they even got through with a ransom demand. I think you said. The donation from the phone company. They literally had to go in and install like dozens of phone lines just so

that FBI could operate effectively. Yeah, so they never what did these guys do. Right afterwards, when they couldn't get through, they decided they needed to scram that the jig was up and they needed part ways, and they did. Fred um Woods was wildey enough to have come up with a passport um with the name Ralph Snyder, and he traveled successfully to British Columbia, I think Vancouver under that fake passport. But then when he was there, he started

writing to people. He had a friend who was I think in film school and said, hey, you should turn this into a whole um, like a whole whole movie. He said, he just k right, just give me some of them the box office, I guess. But he said, but be fair, he said, be fair, but he spelled he spelled the F A R E. Yeah, So, um, that's that's I'm sorry, it's just annoying me to no ends. Yeah, but um. But then he signed the letter or sent it as Ralph Snyder. He sent it as his his alias.

So the cops, the FBI tracked him like within days to um Vancouver and got the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to arrest him. I wonder he knew the guy though in film school. I wonder if this guy was like, who is this, It's Ralph Snyder or if he put in parentheses, that's my alias. This is friend. Don't tell the FBI, but he misspelled FBI. So Rick, the younger Schoenfeld, for his part, almost immediately confessed. Uh, he got home after the three of them met up and then split up.

I went home and told his dad what he did. His dad because they had money again as a pediatrists got him a lawyer too sweet. And so that's why we don't know exactly. That's one reason we don't know exactly what happened in those first like, you know, hours afterwards, because the lawyer kind of kept that all quiet. Although it did see a news report that said they took naps. I don't know if that's true or not, but I did see that. It sounds right. It holds up if

you put it up against everything else. And keep in mind once again, they took these kids to a quarry that fred Wood's dad owned and where Fred Woods worked, and the quarry security guards said when they were interviewed, said, well, yeah, last week Fred and two other guys dug a big hole out there. Uh you know a few months before this happened. Um, like h I don't know, like a a moving van size hole, right, but the hole's gone now, so who cares exactly? Um? So Rick turned himself in. Uh,

Fred got caught. James made attempts to cross the border into Canada himself, but apparently the Canadian authorities considered him a way too nervous, be way too vague about what he planned to do in Canada, and see in possession of way too many guns to be led in the country, and apparently tried two or three times using his own name to get in and finally gave up and turned around.

And I guess he had decided he was going to turn himself into authorities, but because of an all points bulletin on his license plate, he was picked up before he could turn himself in. Right, So they're all collected less than two weeks after it happened. Yes, all right, Well let's take our last break and then we will kind of quickly go over the sentencing and what happened

afterward right after this, all right, So they were collected. Yeah, they were collected, and of course had their day in court and the big um, the big thing that happened in court was was whether or not these guys um committed bodily harm on these children, because if you committed bodily harm, then you have a sentence of life without a possible sentence a life without parole. If there was no bodily harm, then you could have life with parole. Uh.

They ruled that they did suffer bodily harm. So Uh, they had stomach trouble, they had nosebleeds, some of the kids fainted, Uh, and that that counted. But in and appeals court reverse that ruling said that is not bodily harm, and that made them eligible for parole. Uh. And since then, like I said earlier, the two showing Fell brothers have

been released in I think like long after. Some observers who were involved in the case, I can think that they should have been paroled, like especially Richard shown felt he was twenty two at the time. He was basically there. I saw it described as along for the ride. Um again, an eagle scout. He probably became an eagle scout three or four years before this happened. Um. And he uh

he spent um thirty nine years in prison. Yeah, I guess so when or he got out in twelve Yeah, okay, Yeah, So Uh yeah, about thirty seven years in prison of his life from age twenty two. He spent the next thirty seven years in prison for basically hanging out with

his brother and his brother's goofy friend doing something really stupid. Um. And a lot of other people said, yeah, and if you're gonna let Richard schoon Felt out, you should really probably take another look at James Schoenfeldt too, because yeah, he was more involved than his brother, Um, but he was still no Fred Woods. And then you get to Fred Woods and people say, yeah, he probably just he doesn't really deserve to be paroles. Yeah, I mean the

other two were model prisoners. Uh. And they also had uh, I mean people that were active. I don't know if it was a prosecutor or investigator. I think the investigator for the case. Eventually he advocated for parole. Uh. Yeah, So you know, some of the townspeople felt betrayed by that, but they did get out. Fred Woods was not a model prisoner. He was still as shady as ever. You know, you're not supposed to to run businesses from prison, but he ran a gold mine. He ran a used car business,

he ran a Christmas tree farm. Uh. He got married a few times. The reason he was finally outed was he was running the Christmas Tree Farm and Michael Bianci, he was managing that business, got injured on the job and Wood said, I'm not gonna help pay for the surgery. So bank he said, all right, and he filed a state workers comp claim and they got on the investigation and found out that Woods was behind the operation. So he's not when it comes time for parole. That doesn't

look good. No, And I guess he's been denied parole seventeen times so far, and he's up next in and a lot of people think he might not, he might never be ruled. Actually, well, he bought a mansion in Nipomo, California, thirty miles from the prison that no one lives at. Uh He did have a civil lawsuit in twenty sixteen where he had to pay out money to the victims that was described as uh quote enough to pay for some serious therapy, but not enough to buy a house.

Which is significant too, because they did rule. An appeals court ruled the night that they didn't inflict bodily harm. But I wonder if that same appeals court would come to the to that conclusion. In one based on interviews with some of the people who were abducted, like like Jennifer Brown High who I mentioned earlier, who's not I think emotional harm would play in these days, and there

was definitely emotional harm inflicted. You talked about Larry Park who was addicted to methane crack before he finally found forgiveness and actually went and met all with all three of the perpetrators and shook their hands and told him he forgave him and apparently changed his own life like that, If you haven't listened to and said, hey, I can make you a heck of a deal on a used van. Yeah, no, Fred Woard took his watch when he shook his hand.

Well I was, I was kidding, but he Uh. My final little factoid is that that used Carlat had those two vans and he held onto those because he thought they would be worth a lot of money as the kidnap vans. Yeah, which they might be worth an extra few hundred bucks. I could see that, but I don't know if that that if that's the crown jewel of your inventory on Nick Cage bought him right, uh, And then you can go watch that movie from lifetime. UH called They've taken our children if you want to see

Karl Malden in his underwear. Apparently, bad movie, bad song. I read also that Chowchilla residents do not care for that movie Chuck because it was shot in Kansas, and anyone who knows anything about the San Joaquin Valley knows that Kansas is a poor stand in for the at So they're a little turned off by that movie from what I understand. And then last thing I want to shout out um Caleb Horton, who wrote an article on Vox very in depth one called the Ballad of the

chow chillip Bus Kidnapping is pretty good. Oh that's a good one. Yeah, it is all right, all right, the article, not the song. No, no, okay, it's an article, an article I got. Okay, Well, since we had we worked out them misunderstanding everybody. That means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. Uh, let me see. How about racist ticketing. In our episode on jaywalking, we talked about people of uh and the black and Hispanic communities are

ticketed more for jaywalking. And this is from Valerie Mates in ann Arbor, Michigan. Hey guys, you mentioned that black and Hispanic drivers are issued more traffic tickets and white drivers his entry issue In Chicago when they installed traffic cameras, they found that the cameras, despite being raced neutral, still gave more tickets to black and Hispanic drivers, so of

course they wanted to study that. The experts found that more affluent neighborhoods are built with more features that would naturally slow down traffic, more sidewalks, more stop signs, more crosswalks, while poorer neighborhoods had few of those fewer of those things, and the result would cars would be naturally would tend

to drive faster in poorer neighborhoods. Since black and Hispanic drivers are more likely to live and be driving in less wealthy neighborhoods in Chicago, they were more likely to be speeding and caught by traffic cameras, or so says the evidence. At least, it's not just prejudice on the part of police officers that causes this discrepancy, is actually a difference in how the neighborhoods are built systematically. I thought it was really interesting, uh and I agree. Thanks

for sending that In who was it again? Valerie, Mates of an Ar Thanks a lot, Valerie. That's a great one if you've got a great one like Valerie does. We love little brainbusters like that. Um so you can wrap them up, spank them on the bottom, and send them off via email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.