The nightmare of the children of Chowchilla, kidnapped and buried alive: their executioner freed


Frederick Woods, one of three men convicted of abducting a school bus full of 26 children and their driver in Chowchilla, California in 1976, will soon be released.

Frederick Woods will soon be a free man. Aged 70, this American was heard by a parole board which decided to accept his request. He had appeared eighteen times before this commission and had never previously received authorization to be released, indicates the “Los Angeles Times”. The next date of his release has not been revealed, for security reasons.

Fred Woods marked the history of American news items with two other accomplices, by committing the unimaginable. On July 15, 1976, a school bus with driver, Ed Ray, and 26 children between the ages of 5 and 14 was taken hostage. The little passengers were all from the school in Chowchilla, California, and were crossing a country road in Madera County around 4 p.m. when they ran into their tormentors. They were coming back from a swim at the fairgrounds and had no idea of ​​the tragedy they were about to experience. Forced out of the bus, they were transported for 11 hours in two different vans. Then, once they arrived at the location chosen by the three suspects, they were put into a moving truck, which was buried in a rock quarry in Livermore. Their bus was discovered empty, hidden under bamboo and brush in a ditch. What plunge the families of the students into horror.

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The interior of the van that was used as a prison for the 26 kidnapped Chowchilla school children and their bus driver in Livermore, California

© Jim Palmer/AP/SIPA

For 16 hours, the children lived through hell. Sixteen hours during which the victims, buried alive, did everything to escape, digging in the ground until the young Michael Marshall, 14, and the driver, managed to resurface and contact the emergency services. All were then picked up and driven back, safe and sound, to Chowchilla by a police-escorted bus shortly before dawn on July 17, 1976. The inquest at the time revealed that what became the biggest story abduction from the United States, was partly inspired by the film “Dirty Harry”. The plan of the three suspects was to hold the children captive in the truck turned into an underground bunker in order to demand a ransom of 5 million dollars.

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The arrest of the suspects

After bringing the children to safety, the police returned to the place where they had been buried and discovered that the truck had been placed there as early as November 1975. It was on land owned by Frederick Nickerson Woods , whose son Fred Newhall Woods IV, then 24, was missing. Authorities have issued an alert for him, his accomplices and friends, James Schoenfeld, 24, and his brother Richard Schoenfeld, 22, both sons of a prominent podiatrist.

Rescuers pull out a truck buried in a rock quarry in Livermore, California, in which 26 Chowchilla schoolchildren and their bus driver, Ed Ray, were being held captive.

Rescuers pull out a truck buried in a rock quarry in Livermore, California, in which 26 Chowchilla schoolchildren and their bus driver, Ed Ray, were being held captive.

© James Palmer/AP/SIPA

The youngest of the three turned himself in to Oakland police a few days later. His brother was arrested in Menlo Park when he too was about to surrender. As for Fred Woods, he was arrested on July 29 in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he had already fled. A year after the events, in 1977, the three young men pleaded guilty to kidnapping for the purpose of demanding a ransom and were sentenced to life in prison. In June 2012, however, Richard Schoenfeld was released on parole, as was his brother in August 2015. Only Fredrick Woods was still in prison in San Luis Obispo County.

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The lawyer “delighted”

Dominique Banos, lawyer for Fred Woods, said she was ‘delighted’ with the board’s decision to grant him parole, which she said was the result of ‘demonstrated remorse’ on the part of the convict as well as his participation “to therapy sessions.” “In sum, Mr. Woods has shown a change of character, great maturity, and remorse for the arrogance and bad choices he made nearly 50 years ago,” the lawyer said in a statement. communicated. Madera County District Attorney Sally Moreno was against releasing the prisoner. “It is difficult to express how much I feel – all the pain he has caused these children throughout their lives, which will continue unabated; his persistent inability to conform his behavior to the rules and his lack of rehabilitation; his obvious misunderstanding of the impact of his actions on others, as evidenced by his entire conduct in prison,” she said. She recalled that during his incarceration, he was punished for having broken the rules on several occasions, in particular by setting up trafficking within the prison in 2019 or by bringing in mobile phones.

Fredrick Woods, pictured here in 2015.

Fredrick Woods, pictured here in 2015.

© AP/SIPA

In 2015, several victims confided in CNN about their trauma. Darla Neal, who was 10 at the time, said she suffered from “extreme anxiety” making her life impossible. “I sometimes get overwhelmed to the point that I have to leave work. I tell myself that I should be able to overcome this. But see how lost I am,” she said. “They stole our childhood. Everything was disturbed”, had for his part confided Jodi Heffington-Medrano, also 10 years old at the time of the facts. Jennifer Brown, she had commented to Fox news that she is now “50 years old but still has panic attacks when (she) is in the car with (her) husband”. With CBS, in 2020, she added that she felt during her abduction “like an animal going to the slaughterhouse”. Larry Park, 6, also remembered on CBS the moments of nightmare experienced at the time: “Their eyes looked empty. It was like watching death.” All of them recounted, in their testimonies from the time and their recollections today, that the place where they had been buried had been nicknamed “the hole” by the suspects.



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