Buried Alive: The Harrowing Kidnapping and Incredible Escape of A California Bus Driver and His 26 Students
In July 1976, three armed men kidnapped a school bus with 26 children and their bus driver. Thanks to the bravery and ingenuity of the captives, they were able to free themselves and turn the tables
In the 1970s, Chowchilla was a small rural farming town in California. This was an agricultural-based economy, and the people lived simpler, slower lives. In Chowchilla, the children roamed freely in their rural community, playing outdoors and pedaling up and down quiet streets.
However, a sensational crime would shatter their confidence and sense of security.
Kidnapping
Ed Ray was a friendly and well-liked school bus driver who took children from Dairyland Elementary School to their homes.
Ed followed the same bus route every day to ensure his 26 children, ages between five and fourteen, arrived home safely at the expected time. For the children, riding on the bus after school was a daily routine.
July 15th, 1976, the children had spent the day at the local fairgrounds swimming pool, and were on their way home. Ed, as he'd done countless times throughout the summer, started his route, which took them through a rural part of town filled with nothing but corn stalks and fields.
It was on this stretch of road that a van suddenly pulled in front of the bus's path, blocking the road and forcing it to stop.
The bus was then stormed by three armed men, who were later identified as Frederick Woods and brothers James and Richard Schoenfeld. The trio concealed their faces with pantyhose masks and carried weapons.
Within moments, Ed was removed from the bus at gunpoint and was replaced by one of the brothers. With the hijacking complete, the van followed behind the bus as the kidnappers drove roughly ten miles, using dirt roads to avoid exposure.
They then removed Ed and the children and placed them in separate vans equipped with soundproof walls, which amounted to little more than knapsacks filled with insulation attached to the van ceiling and wood-paneled walls. The kidnappers then pulled the bus into a thicket and continued on with their plan.
For the next 12 hours, the kidnappers took painstaking steps to stay off main roads as they drove roughly 100 miles to the California Rock & Gravel quarry in Livermore, California. Early on the morning of July 16th, the children and Ed Ray were forced to climb down a ladder into what appeared to be nothing but a dirt hole. To their astonishment, the ladder opened into a hidden semi-trailer.
Buried Alive
What would be later identified as a stolen Palo Alto Transfer Storage Company tractor-trailer was twenty-five feet long and buried an estimated twelve feet into the ground. The inside of the trailer was filled with used bed mattresses.
Near the rear of the trailer, over the tire wells, the kidnappers built two wooden toilets for their captives. They ran two six-inch-diameter ventilation pipes from the ceiling to the surface. There was little food and only three five-gallon jugs of water.
The scene inside the buried trailer was harrowing. Packed in scorching heat, darkness, and near death due to the slowly collapsing ceiling. Ed Ray and the children were trapped.
The roof of the trailer was held up by a makeshift support made of lumber. Needless to say, it was not sturdy enough to hold the two roughly one-hundred-pound industrial batteries used to secure the roof hatch and the 12 feet of dirt and sand.
Slowly, the lumber brace began to give way, and the roof sunk into the trailer. Fearing death by asphyxiation, Ed Ray, with the help of some of the older children, especially 14-year-old Michael Marshall, made a plan to get out of that underground prison.
Escape
They stacked the mattresses on top of each other until they could reach the hatch in the roof. Taking turns, they were able to inch the hatch door that held the two industrial batteries enough until the batteries crashed through the open hatch into the trailer floor.
Once cleared, the opened hatch revealed a reinforced wooden box surrounding the opening with what they would come to find out was dirt on top.
For the next four hours, Ed and Marshall hand-dug upward through the dirt until they finally broke free, revealing what six-year-old Larry Park would call "The most glorious ray of sunlight that I had ever seen."
Once all the children were safely removed from the trailer, Ed guided the group to a nearby quarry guard station, where they contacted the authorities, and by the morning of July 17th, Ed Ray and all the children had been safely rescued.
Identification of Suspects
Local and state police responded quickly. Public pressure to solve the crime was enormous; this was, after all, a sensational kidnapping that had garnered national attention.
The investigators quickly collected evidence at the scene of the crime, and soon, tips from all over the state flooded into the police department. Eventually, the names James and Richard Schoenfeld and Frederick Woods came to their attention.
Woods, a member of a well-known Californian gold rush family, was the son of Frederick Nickerson Woods III, the owner of the California Rock & Gravel Company, where the trailer was buried.
The Schoenfeld brothers were the sons of wealthy doctors.
Capture and Conviction
Within a matter of weeks, all three suspects were arrested. Woods was apprehended in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and James and Richard Schoenfeld surrendered to authorities. The trio had planned to ask for a $5 million dollar ransom, but the heroic escape of Ed and the children had thwarted their plans.
The three men were put on trial in 1977. With the testimony of Ed Ray and the children, the case was a slam dunk. The kidnappers were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Later, an appellate court overturned the convictions, and the trio were resentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
Over the years, the convicted kidnappers filed several parole applications. Such legal challenges were front and center in the public eye and widely covered by the media.
Eventually, parole hearings were approved for all three men. The hearings for the Schoenfeld brothers were rancorous. Most public and media reactions were strongly opposed to the freeing of the defendants, with a great number (including many of the victims) speaking out against their release.
Richard Schoenfeld was paroled in 2012 over the objections of victims' advocates, and James Schoenfeld later won release in 2015. Frederick Woods was eventually released in 2022. With each release, the victims, as well as members of the community, responded with shock, concern, and outrage.
Since their release, the three kidnappers appear to have kept fairly low profiles. The former prisoners were given some restrictions that affected their lifestyles. However, Woods inherited a trust fund worth tens of millions of dollars from his wealthy family and, at one time, owned several expensive homes and several businesses.
Aftermath
Over the years, many of the children were offered psychological help and counseling. The families of the children received a financial settlement and some success from various civil lawsuits against their kidnappers on behalf of them as victims.
The trauma endured by the children has had a significant impact on their lives, leaving many with nightmares, panic attacks, and fears of certain triggers associated with the kidnapping and burial. Several of them would develop substance abuse problems and other mental health-related issues.
The Chowchilla kidnapping led to the implementation of stringent safety measures for school bus transportation in America. These included improved background checks for bus drivers, the addition of radios on buses, and tighter protocols regarding the reporting of suspicious activity.
The abduction also had a wider impact on public policy in terms of child protection and emergency responses. It illustrated the importance of more synchronized crisis responses among local, state, and federal agencies.
Closing Thoughts
The 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping stands as one of the most high-profile and consequential crimes in American history. It laid bare lapses in school transportation security, spurred major policy modifications, and left a permanent scar on the minds of its victims.
Yet the bravery of Ed Ray and the children who escaped from the buried van is incredible and inspiring. It is a living testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Sources:
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (n.d.). Famous cases & criminals: Chowchilla kidnapping. FBI. Retrieved from https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/chowchilla-kidnapping
Los Angeles Times. (2015, April 2). 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping: Timeline of events. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/
New York Times. (2015, April 2). Chowchilla kidnappers granted parole after nearly 40 years. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/
Gilmore, J. E. (2003). Stolen away: The true story of the Chowchilla kidnapping. E-book.
Goff, L. G. (2001). The kidnapping of the school bus driver and 26 children. E-book.
This is a remarkable story and they were fortunate to make it out alive. They risked their lives trying to get out, and successfully manage to make it out. The change from life sentences without parole to the possibility of a parole is an interesting one, and perhaps worth exploring in more detail. Does it reflect changing views about rehabilitation? Does it come at a time when prisons are overcrowded ? What is going on with prison reform?