ony, but the charges were later reduced to petty theft and finally to auto tampering, a misdemeanor. Once the decision becomes final, California Gov. On the early hours of July 16, news of Ray and the children's disappearances became nationwide, and reporters flocked to Chowchilla to cover the story. Park told CBS' 48 Hours in 2019 that he sat in the darkness 'wondering how it was going to feel to die'. Escape was further cut off by a metal lid that covered the top of the truck and was weighed down with two 100-pound industrial batteries. "I was 24 years old," he said, per Fox News. So, where are they now? One of the three boarded the bus, masked, armed with a shotgun, and carrying nylon stocking, boarded the bus when Ray opened the door, having already noticed his items and hoping to engage in a peaceful negotiation. The captives were held in a box truck and buried alive in a quarry located in Livermore. Once it did, they boarded the bus, wearing masks and armed with shotguns. Two men boarded the bus wearing pantyhose over their heads and carrying sawed-off shotguns. The state would be willing to pay ransom for them. But Woods and his attorney, Dominique Banos, emphasized that he had a discipline-free record since his last parole hearing in October 2019. He said he was afraid people would make fun of him., One other incident struck his former wife as unusual. The group was loaded into the two vans and driven around for 11 hours, during which time the hungry, petrified children soiled themselves and clung onto each other in fear. As for Mr. Woods's rely tionship with his former wife, the girlfriend said he talked of only one happy time with her. On July 15, 1976, a group of 26 children attending summer classes at Dairyland Elementary School were returning from a trip to a local swimming pool when their bus, driven by Frank Edward Ray, was blocked on the road by three armed men and two white vans at 4.00pm. Police soon realized that only someone with unlimited access to the quarry would have been able to bury the truck and bring in 27 prisoners in the middle of the night without being seen. I believe you have served enough time for the crime you committed, said Larry Park. Once the trial ended, Chowchilla fell out of the media spotlight, save for the visit by reporters on the anniversary of the mass abduction. 'I believe you have served enough time for the crime you committed,' Park said Friday, before adding: 'I'm concerned about the addiction you may have about money.'. Richard Schoenfeld was paroled in 2012 after serving 36 years, and James Schoenfeld was paroled in 2015. After driving a short distance, the men brought the school bus to a stop in a dry riverbed surrounded by bamboo and tall brush, where another van was waiting. They were good kids., See the article in its original context from. His father. Abduction First, jammed phone lines meant that the kidnappers couldnt communicate their ransom demand. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. He said it was really beautiful, and you could really be out there solitary, I mean, alone. Finally, on July 25, 1977, the three pleaded guilty to 27 counts of kidnapping for ransom without inflicting injury. While behind bars, he continues to run his businesses and grows richer by the day. Under immediate suspicion was Frederick Newhall Woods IV, the 24-year-old son of the quarry's millionaire owner. Fred Woods and James and Richard Schoenfeld, the men who kidnapped 26 children in 1976. The kidnapping was intended . Now Frederick Newhall Woods IV, the "mastermind" of the trio, could be paroled next month and walk out of state prison as a multimillionaire. Ive had empathy for the victims, which I didnt have then. Woods said. They forced Ray and all of the children down a ladder and into a moving truck they had buried 12 feet underground. Public DomainEd Ray and the children escaped from the buried moving truck after 16 hours. Yet here I am, a mess.'. If we had anyone at our house that he invited, it was always his family or relatives, she said. He just said she just left him, no discussion, no nothing.. Woods masterminded the kidnapping plot after being inspired by the 1971 Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry. Woods had also inherited a trust fund reportedly worth $100 million, as he came from two very wealthy families, and he bought a mansion a short distance away from the prison. He was left with relatives every year for at least a month or two all his life when his parents traveled. Frederick Newhall Woods IV, son of the quarry owner, 25 years old, 6 foot, 145 pounds, brown hair and blue eyes; . Their miraculous escape made national headlines, but their abductors were still on the loose. It would really surprise me if he had anything to do with this thing. He also had other guns she said. They were each given 27 life sentences without the possibility of parole. He was really adamant that I not see my former boyfriend. According to James, they initially weren't serious about actually committing such a crime, but as time passed by, they began to consider it. On August 7, 2015, James was paroled. The 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping is brought back to memory in CBS 48 Hours. On July 15, 1976, a school bus driver and 26 children aged between 5 and 14 were kidnapped by three armed men. When they were married, Mr. Wood was a salesman at a paint store, but lost the job. Woods and the Schoenfelds planned their crime for more than a year and, in 1976, all pleaded guilty to kidnapping. I said we didn't come with any idea of trespassing and he said he had problems with trespassers. Three years later, his brother followed suit. Marshall cautiously stuck his head out of the dirt to make sure their abductors werent nearby, then he and Ray helped the other 25 children out of the truck. Ray and the children, who were then ages 5 to 14, were eventually able to claw their way out of the trailer 28 hours later and ran to nearby workers, who called police. The shotgun thing concerns accounts that Mr. Woods on one or two occasions fired over the heads of teenagers who attempted to enter the long drive up the hill at 800 Los Tancos Road where the Woods estate is situated. It was later observed that elements of the abduction seem similar to a scenario depicted inThe Day the Children Vanished, a story written by Hugh Pentecost that was published in the 1969 fiction anthologyAlfred Hitchcock's Daring Detectives; since there was a copy of the book in the Chowchilla library, it was assumed that the Pentecost story was the inspiration for the mass abduction. Under hypnosis, Ray was also able to remember one of the license plates of the vans that had taken them to the quarry, which was tied to Woods and both of his accomplices. a 1938 graduate of Stanford University and a native of Massachusetts, is owner of the California Rock and Gravel Company, and of the gravel quarry where the bus and children were buried. The escape took place before the kidnappers had even been able to call in their ransom demands. Victims of the kidnapping, now adults, spoke to CNN in 2015 about their remaining fears relating to the tragic event. They were eventually able to slide the metal cover and the batteries out of the way but then Marshall saw there was a wooden box placed atop the exit as well. One of the three drove the bus, another watched Ray and the children, and the third followed behind in their van. Gavin Newsom approves his parole. Born sometime in the 1952 and 1954, respectively, Frederick, James, and Richard all came from privileged backgrounds, having lived in wealthy neighborhoods in the San Francisco area. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. James Schoenfeld once told parole officials that he envied friends who had 'his-and-hers Ferraris.' The state would be willing to pay ransom for them. Lynda Carrejo Labendeira, who was 10 years old at the time, told the Associated Press in 2015 that the battery-operated blowers that circulated the air in the bunker began to fail. CBS reported that in previous parole hearings he was evasive, unable or unwilling to follow prison rules and fail[ed] to acknowledge the severity of his crime. Then they were taken to the quarry in Livermore, California. In response, James drove back to the Bay Area, unsure of what to do, while Frederick wrote a letter to a friend, but the friend turned the letter in to the FBI. Theirs was a union of shared insecurity, according to the young woman who remarried after her divorce from Mr. Woods in 1972, after only a year of marriage. Frederick Newhall Woods IV, 24, and brothers James Schoenfeld, 24, and Richard Schoenfeld, 22, held them captive in box truck in a rock quarry up north near Livermore. He immediately forced Ray to get up from his seat and moved him to the back of the bus while the other two jumped out of their van and boarded the bus as well, taking control of the schoolchildren riding inside. Parole commissioners reportedly decided Woods no longer is a danger to the public. But he was lonely, and it was lonely living with him.. No. From these accounts, it appears that Mr. Woods was shy, but occasionally bold and venturesome, blushingly, almost embarrassingly friendly and selfeffacing, yet capable of sharp hostility toward those he felt encroached on what was his. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and he had everything, and saved everything, said his former wife, 24yearold Songel Padgett, whose oneyear marriage to Mr. Woods ended in divorce in early 1972. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, said his former wife, whose name is now Padgett and who is now living in Georgia. If he did a good job, he'd brag about it to his father, but when he lost his job as A salesman, he didn't want to tell it to his father or me, his former wife recalled. The three suspects were arrested two weeks after the kidnapping and were initially sentenced to life in prison without parole. Multiple survivors support Woods parole, while others oppose it. 01:30 GMT 30 Mar 2022 The three eventually formulated a scheme to hijack a school bus, hide all of the passengers somewhere safe, demand a $5 million ransom from the state of California, retrieve the money, and then release the hostages unharmed, all within twenty-four hours. I fully take responsibility for this heinous act." HORROR SLAYING James was the second one to get paroled in 2015. It was back in July 1976, when three young men from. While the frightened children and the bus driver were entombed for hours, the roof began to collapse from the weight of the dirt, according to court records. 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Meet Rafael Prez, The Crooked LAPD Officer Who Stole Pounds Of Cocaine And Inspired 'Training Day', 7 Creepy Cold Cases Where The Killer And Victim Still Remain Unknown, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch, Bill Young/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. 13:36 GMT 30 Mar 2022. He was wealthy and lavished money on the things he wanted, his possessions, but stingy in all else. The portrait that emerges from interviews with Mrs. Padgett and others who knew 24yearold Fred Woods, most of them casually because he had very few friends, is one of a longersome say a loserwho got along poorly with people, and who perhaps as a result, cloaked himself in his possessions, carrying with him as a high school student not pictures of girls but pictures of his automobiles. If were going to die, were going to die trying to get out of here, she remembered Ray and Marshall saying. Frederick Newhall Woods IV and Richard and James Schoenfeld were soon . One evening coming home from work [from his father's rock quarry], he went by the field to count the horses, because one was stolen the week before. It was an atrocious crime, but hes not dangerous now, and so the law entitles him to his freedom., Both Richard and James have been contrite in their parole hearings, acknowledging the severe nature of their crimes. Mass Abductors We were just incompatible, she said. Now I fully understand the terror and trauma I caused. However, according to CBS News, their families appealed the conviction and in 1980, a panel of judges ruled that the kidnappers would eventually be eligible for parole instead of spending life in prison without said eligibility. The guilty plea was controversial, with the prosecution arguing that bodily harm was indeed inflicted upon the hostages, but only psychologically. Birth Date Other family photographs, she said, seemed to reflect what she felt was some isolation. He dug until he was exhausted, and then he kept on digging. Dogdog.. Woods, Wealthy Kidnap Suspect, Described as a Loner and a Loser, https://www.nytimes.com/1976/07/26/archives/woods-wealthy-kidnap-suspect-described-as-a-loner-and-a-loser.html. After nearly 40 years, James gained his freedom in April at the age of 63, after twenty parole hearings. However, once this was proven to be wrong, local police and the county sheriff was called in to investigate, determining that the bus disappeared after successfully making its first three stops. The young woman, who asked not to be identified, lives with her parents in a welltodo section of a town near Portola Valley. PLEASE NOTE ORDERS MAY TAKE LONGER TO SHIP AT THIS TIME. We drove, up in an old fire (truck and he got on us for tres passingyou know, in this old fire truck. Frederick Newhall Woods was born 24 years ago, the son of Harriet Wright and Frederick Nickerson Woods 3d. A 70-year-old man convicted of hijacking a school bus full of children and holding them and their driver for $5 million ransom in 1976 has been approved for parole. These include two people who, arguably, knew him besta woman whose yearlong marriage to him ended in divorce, and a young woman who was his girlfriend after his marriage. In October 2019, Woods was denied parole for the 17th time. Theyre vulnerable. You can check out his prison record here. She concluded, about three years later, that they were traumatized by the ordeal, resulting in panic attacks, nightmares of abductions that led to their deaths, and personality changes. A local NBC affiliate reported at the time of James parole that he would join Richard in caring for their elderly mother at her home in Mountain View, California. At the time of the hostages' captivity, Frederick, Richard, and James had previously tried to call in their ransom, but without success due to, ironically, the flooding calls from reporters, law enforcement agencies, and tipsters. Many of the children continued to report symptoms of trauma for at least twenty-five years after the hijacking, including substance abuse and depression. As a youngster, little is known of Fred Woods. Finally, 16 hours after the children had been buried alive, a ray of light streamed through the dirt and into the dark truck. A school bus carrying 26 students mysteriously vanished on the way back from a summer field trip, and three wealthy young men were the top suspects. Miraculously, the driver and children managed to dig themselves out and escape relatively unharmed and the kidnappers were eventually caught. Mrs. Padgett said she had lived with Fred Woods for some time before she learned that he had a younger sister, Wendy, who was retarded and kept in an institution. When five members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police placed him under arrest, he remarked, I'm really sorry I'm going to miss this on the news tonight., When he was taken to his cheap hotel to pick up his single suitcase of belongings, he reintroduced himself to the desk clerk. Frederick Woods pictured in 2021 (AP) After 17 unsuccessful attempts, a California man who kidnapped 26 children on a school bus in 1976 has been recommended for parole. 1950s[1] To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. The authorities here confirmed that a search of the Woods estate had turned up a draft of a $5million ransom note that authorities said may have been written by young Woods. Twenty of the children feared of being abducted again, and twenty-one were afraid of "cars, the dark, the wind, the kitchen, mice, dogs, and hippies". Madera County prosecutors said Woods' disciplinary infractions in prison showed he had not yet learned to follow the rules. Who kidnapped 26 children aged between 5 and 14 were kidnapped by three armed men occasionally the digitization process transcription. Run his businesses and grows richer by the day to die trying to get paroled in.. 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