The older children among the group sang songs to offer comfort to the youngest and most frightened, opting for renditions of 'Boogie Nights', 'Love Will Keep Us Together' and 'If You're Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands.'. He then can allow the decision to stand, or send it to a full board for further review. His accomplices, brothers Richard and James Schoenfeld, were freed years ago. His parents, Fred and Harriet. Within two weeks, though, all three men had been captured. I knew it.'. For a grueling 16 hours, the bus driver and one of the oldest students worked tirelessly to free themselves and the other children from the makeshift prison before they ran out of air or the roof of the truck collapsed in on them from the weight of the dirt above. Parole commissioners reportedly decided Woods no longer is a danger to the public. When Frederick Newhall Woods and two other gunmen hijacked the . Frederick and James panicked and fled northward in a car, while Richard decided to return home to confess to committing the mass abduction to his parents. However, he was merely denied entry again, and James went back to Idaho, where he abandoned the car in Coeur d'Alene the next day and purchased a truck that he drove back to Washington. but he didn't tell me until he got mad at me when we broke up., The young woman said that they seldom went out on dates, and that Fred Woods was very thrifty, but in odd ways. He'd buy things he didn't needflashlight batteries, maybebecause they were cheap. Ive had empathy for the victims, which I didnt have then. Woods said. 13:36 GMT 30 Mar 2022. Around 4:00 p.m., as Ray was driving the students home, a white van suddenly pulled in front of the school bus and came to a stop in the middle of the road. "48 Hours: Live to Tell": Twenty-six school children abducted and buried alive in a truck trailer by three young men. Marshall also struggled with addiction for a while as a young adult, but he too is sober now and has a therapy dog named Blue. Frederick, Richard, and James targeted a school bus full of children, all aged 5 to 14, whom they got to stop by pretending that their van broke down in the middle of the road. Woods appeared via video on Friday before the panel where his attorney, Dominique Banos, said his client has not faced any disciplinary actions since 2019. she said, I would have friends. Their marriage, in the Calvary Baptist Church in Redwood City, was unpretentious and the wedding album portrays nothing except a normal American couple. Frederick was paroled in August 2022. Their miraculous escape made national headlines, but their abductors were still on the loose. Jennifer Brown Hyde, another victim of the Chowchilla kidnapping, vividly remembered being ushered into the deep, dark hole at gunpoint: I felt like I was an animal going to the slaughterhouse.. 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. They focused their investigation into the Chowchilla kidnapping on Frederick Newhall Woods IV the quarry owners son. 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. He'd buy a shirt he didn't need.. Victims of the kidnapping, now adults, spoke to CNN in 2015 about their remaining fears relating to the tragic event. They all walked to the security shack at the quarry and told employees what had happened. He dug until he was exhausted and then he kept on digging. An appeals court, however, overturned the decision and the kidnappers were allowed the possibility of parole. The telephone lines to the police station were overloaded with calls from frantic parents demanding answers about their missing children. Frederick Newhall Woods IV and Richard and James Schoenfeld were soon . I fully take responsibility for this heinous act.'. Public DomainEd Ray and the children escaped from the buried moving truck after 16 hours. The kidnappers made each of the children give their names and hand over a piece of clothing, and then climb down a ladder into the van, buried more than 12-feet below the ground. In 1976, Frederick Newhall Woods IV and brothers James and Richard Schoenfeld kidnapped a. Natasha Anderson For Dailymail.Com
CBS Fred Woods and James and Richard Schoenfeld, the men who kidnapped 26 children in 1976. The three men pleaded guilty to kidnapping in July 1977 and received life in prison. By Wayne King Special to The New York Times. As per Woods's wife, he was a loner. There was no quit in him, said Park of Marshall, adding that eventually Marshall broke the surface and brave person that he is, crawled out of the hole first.. He was always swaggering, she said. After nearly 40 years, James gained his freedom in April at the age of 63, after twenty parole hearings. Woods is an unusual prisoner in another way: he is believed to have inherited a massive amount of money from his wealthy parents, claimed in one court filing to be around $100m. But the sing-a-longs came to a sobering halt when the vans came to a stop at a quarry near Livermore, where the captors forced Ray and the children down into a buried trailer stocked with mattresses, a small amount of food and water, and ventilation fans. He liked police, programs; among his favorites were The Rookies, and also Mod Squad, his former wife said. He is an elderly inmate, fast approaching 70, and clearly presents no danger to anyone.. At some point in their early lives, Richard and James became acquainted with Frederick, working on cars and talking about movies with another friend. His trust fund helped settle the civil lawsuit brought by the kidnapping victims. Other family photographs, she said, seemed to reflect what she felt was some isolation. I think he was not hostileyou really couldn't put it as hostile, the youth said. We would have suffocated to death in there, Labendeira said. The company reported gross sales of $1.5 million last year, and the young Mr. Woods is reported to hold stock in the company. When the day was about to come to a close, worried parents contacted the school, which initially assumed that the bus had broken down in the road. 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. July 15-17, 1976: The school bus hijacking. 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. "I was 24 years old," he said, per Fox News. He'd mention the trips they'd taken to Baja, California. Jerry Brown paroled James Schoenfeld in 2015. Following the kidnapping, Woods and his co-conspirators - Richard and James Schoenfeld - each pleaded guilty. of Mutual Victims 27 abducted Status Alive (all released) He wanted to really control. As a youngster, little is known of Fred Woods. Woods - with pantyhose pulled over his head and a gun drawn - was first to board the bus, ordering Ray to 'Shut up and get to the back', as victim Larry Park recalled for CBS. Frederick Newhall Woods, now a bit frail, had been incarcerated 43 years for helping commit one of California's most shocking crimes. The governor can only reverse parole if the inmate was convicted of murder, which Wood was not. Woods also married three times while in prison. A third man followed the bus in the van that had barricaded the road. He agreed, however, that his employer, who paid him $2.50 an hour for parttime work, was suspicious of intruders at the estate behind a closed gate on which no trespassing signs hung. He is the heir to a sizable family fortune and his lawyer, Gary Dubcoff, has repeatedly argued that apart from the commitment offense, [Woods] has no history of violence, whether before prison or in it. Once the decision becomes final, California Gov. The kidnappers forced the children and Ray into vans, according to court records. Ray, the driver, and the children were herded into two vans and driven around for 11 hours. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. When the last of the children was inside, Woods and the Schoenfelds began shoveling dirt over the roof, weighing down the hatch-door by placing two 100-pound industrial batteries on top of it. Woods became eligible for parole in 1982 but was previously denied release 17 times. Frederick Newhall Woods first became eligible for parole in 1982 and has had 18 parole hearings since. One boy shot a lost tourist with a BB gun when their car broke down in front of his house. Inspiring the frightened cohort into action, under the instructions of Ray the group stacked the mattresses inside the truck on top of one another and used wooden slats to dislodge a steel plate on the roof of the van that was covering the hatch through which they'd entered. At a parole hearing held online last week due to Covid-19 safety precautions that featured testimony from multiple survivors, Woods said that he is a changed man. However, Newhall has kept applying for parole 17 times, and his most recent rejection came in October 2019. At the time of his release, his lawyer said to People Magazine, It was long overdue, and I think there is solid evidence that he isnt dangerous, and California has no interest in keeping him in prison. For the victims of the 1976 kidnapping, the possibility of Woods being released from prison is complicated. 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. 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The young man wanted no one near the estate, his former wife said, and once he fired a shotgun over the heads of some youngsters who played in an old caboose on the estate, she said. Governor Gavin Newson then has 30 days to review the panels decision. The old vehicles, collected originally as a hobby by both the young Mr. Woods and by his father, Frederick Nickerson Woods 3d, were in the last two years a business asset. While underground, Ray and one of the elder students were able to dig their way out of the truck. Others knew him casually, for he had few close friends and among the casual acquaintances were schoolmates, neighbors, the young mechanic who helped him restore the old cars he sold as a business venture, some relatives and some family friends. Woods has spent the vast majority of his life in prison, where his disciplinary record reportedly includes citations for running an unauthorised gold mine, a car dealership, and a Christmas tree farm. Two survivors, Larry Park and Rebecca Reynolds Dailey, spoke Friday in favor of Woods's parole. A relative said that the family can trace its ancestry to six Mayflower pilgrims, including John Alden and William Bradford, the Governor of Plymouth. On July 15, 1976, three men captured a school bus in Chowchilla, California, kidnapping 26 children aged five to 14 and their driver. Frederick Newhall Woods was found suitable for parole at a hearing Friday,California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesperson Joe Orlando confirmed to CNN on Tuesday. It surprised me how much [money] he made, but it was a lot, the youth said. We were friends, but we didn't hang around together. 'The sides of the van were bowing in I knew that I was going to die. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Wedging a wooden beam through a small gap between the hole and the metal lid, they were able to move the lid, allowing Ray to reach up and pull down a heavy industrial battery that was used to weigh down the lid. According to James, they initially weren't serious about actually committing such a crime, but as time passed by, they began to consider it. The interior of the moving truck in which Ed Ray and 26 children were buried alive. Although the children and Ray were safe, the perpetrators were still out there. I said we didn't come with any idea of trespassing and he said he had problems with trespassers. Now I fully understand the terror and trauma I caused. Now I fully understand the terror and trauma I caused. Frederick Newhall Woods IV Richard Schoenfeld James Schoenfeld Alias Fred (Frederick) Rick (Richard) Jim (James) Gender Male (all three) Birth Date 1950s [1] Pathology Mass Abductors Modus Operandi Abduction No. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Stopping their white van in the middle of the lonely, rural Avenue 21 in Chowchilla, California, under the pretense that it had broken down, they waited until a school bus they set their sights on, which was driven by 55-year-old Frank Edward "Ed" Ray, stopped to investigate. The next evening, James arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border in Idaho and tried to get in, using a false story, but was denied entry, and he instead went to Spokane, Washington. He was really adamant that I not see my former boyfriend. Here's what you need to know about what happened to Fred Woods and James & Richard Schoenfeld, the 1976 Chowchilla kidnappers who abducted a school bus full of children and buried them alive in a quarry. Anyone can read what you share. In 2012, Richard was granted parole and in 2015, James was granted the same, according to CNN. They were each given 27 life sentences without the possibility of parole. One of the eldest children, Mitchell Marshall, bravely announced to the group that he wasn't going to die without putting up a fight. Now, after nearly a half-century behind bars, he is on the brink of freedom. Alive (all released). The captives were held in a box truck and buried alive in a quarry located in Livermore. 27 abducted They forced Ray and all of the children down a ladder and into a moving truck they had buried 12 feet underground. What is lynching and what is the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Bill? 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. Officials said they . Ray and some of the older boys stacked in a pile a total of fourteen mattresses that were in the van, reaching the hole where they all managed to go through when forced inside. Frederick Newhall Woods, 70, was one of three men who kidnapped 26 children and their bus driver in Chowchilla, a small city in Northern California's Madera County, more than 45 years ago.. The escape took place before the kidnappers had even been able to call in their ransom demands. Stopping over at a drainage slough, half of the passengers were forced into the van, which drove off before a second white van arrived sometime later, taking the remainder of the hostages. 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