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The Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, before we get started, you're very happy to
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1:01
Speaker 1: All right, on with the show. Welcome to Stuff you
1:05
Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and
1:14
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
1:18
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here and this is uh stuff.
1:22
Speaker 1: You should know. You know what I've been singing for
1:26
Speaker 1: two days. Wheels on the bus, go rounding round. No,
1:29
Speaker 1: that's pretty good, guests though done. No, No, chow Chilla.
1:37
Speaker 1: I can't get it out of my head. That got
1:39
Speaker 1: Godzilla song. Now, all I'm saying over and over is
1:41
Speaker 1: chow Chilla. That's a great song. Do you remember who
1:44
Speaker 1: played it? Was that? Like at Your Winner or Johnny Winter?
1:50
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it's one of the winners. Okay,
1:53
Speaker 1: that's my guess. Okay the long Winters. Definitely not the
1:58
Speaker 1: Long Winters. Okay. Um So, Chuck, we're talking about a
2:04
Speaker 1: piece of Americana true crime history that I had no
2:08
Speaker 1: idea about actually, and um I noted though, because of
2:12
Speaker 1: the timing and because of the location. I hit up
2:14
Speaker 1: my beloved, uh former hippie aunt who lived in San
2:19
Speaker 1: Francisco at the time I was raising kids and said,
2:21
Speaker 1: do you remember this? She said, oh, yes, I remember
2:23
Speaker 1: this big time. She had kids that were about to
2:26
Speaker 1: be bus riding agents. She was not very u comfortable
2:29
Speaker 1: with this, this whole jam. Yeah, provided discomfort. Yeah, that's
2:36
Speaker 1: one way to put it. So did you even say
2:39
Speaker 1: with the name of it was? No? Um, it's the
2:42
Speaker 1: chow Chilli school bus kidnapping is what people usually refer
2:45
Speaker 1: to it as, right, And I think this was a
2:49
Speaker 1: listener who sent this in. And I apologize because I'd
2:52
Speaker 1: usually make note of that so I can shout them out,
2:55
Speaker 1: but I did not do so in this case, so
2:58
Speaker 1: I missed. I know, boot this, but yeah, this was
3:02
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six and uh still stands according to
3:07
Speaker 1: the sources, I saw as the largest domestic kidnapping in
3:11
Speaker 1: US history. So my aunt says, oh yeah, she She
3:16
Speaker 1: also said she was not very into it. I was
3:19
Speaker 1: not very comfortable by that. It's very disappointing. Um yeah,
3:23
Speaker 1: the largest mass kidnapping, four ransom. I'm not sure why
3:27
Speaker 1: that's a qualifier, but I don't know, but um yeah,
3:32
Speaker 1: I saw the same thing too that it still stands. Um.
3:35
Speaker 1: And it was like the idea that the most of
3:37
Speaker 1: anything happened to this little town of chow Chilla in
3:41
Speaker 1: the San Joaquin Valley, about a hundred and fifty miles
3:44
Speaker 1: southeast of San Francisco. Um in and of itself is significant.
3:49
Speaker 1: But it was a really terrible like most of event
3:53
Speaker 1: that happened to this poor little town, as we'll see.
3:56
Speaker 1: All right, So should we just start on July seventy six, Yes,
4:01
Speaker 1: all right, we'll paint a picture for you. You already
4:04
Speaker 1: mentioned where. It was between Fresno and San Francisco, out
4:07
Speaker 1: in a part of California that had some very very
4:11
Speaker 1: small towns at the time. It's hard to imagine anywhere
4:13
Speaker 1: in California having forred people living there, but that was
4:17
Speaker 1: the case in the mid seventies in Chowchilla. And it
4:19
Speaker 1: was the next to the last day of summer school
4:23
Speaker 1: and a bus was being driven after a because it
4:27
Speaker 1: was summer school, a little fun day trip to a
4:30
Speaker 1: swimming pool, driven by fifty five year old Ed Ray. Yeah,
4:35
Speaker 1: it was a farmer there in chow Chill himself. Apparently
4:37
Speaker 1: he bailed hey like nobody's business. He was married to
4:41
Speaker 1: a woman named Odessa who was a bank teller at
4:43
Speaker 1: the Bank of America, and he was apparently quite happy
4:46
Speaker 1: being a farmer and then driving kids around on the
4:48
Speaker 1: school bus, because even after this he continued on for
4:51
Speaker 1: another dozen years as the school bus driver. That's right. Uh,
4:55
Speaker 1: he had only dropped off a few kids at this point,
4:59
Speaker 1: and the were nineteen girls and seven boys on board
5:02
Speaker 1: from five to fourteen, and notably, um the fourteen year
5:07
Speaker 1: old because he will factor in pretty heavily here. His
5:10
Speaker 1: name was Mike Marshall. He wasn't even supposed to be
5:13
Speaker 1: on that bus. He usually got picked up by his mom,
5:16
Speaker 1: but he got busted the night before it with some
5:18
Speaker 1: beer and his mom said, to your punishment, you gotta
5:22
Speaker 1: ride that school bus home tomorrow and after school or
5:26
Speaker 1: after the trip. Apparently he was like, I don't even
5:29
Speaker 1: know what bus to take because I don't do this,
5:32
Speaker 1: but he knew who Ray was, and so he went
5:34
Speaker 1: to ed Ray and said, hey, man, well you I
5:36
Speaker 1: don't know if this is my bus or not, but
5:37
Speaker 1: you take me home. And ed Ray is ed Ray.
5:39
Speaker 1: So he went short shoreboard. So um, thank goodness, he
5:43
Speaker 1: said that. Yeah. So after that that third stop, there
5:47
Speaker 1: were twenty six kids and ed Ray on board, and
5:50
Speaker 1: ed Ray was continuing along his route and he turned
5:53
Speaker 1: on to a street called Avenue, and as he turned
5:57
Speaker 1: onto Avenue one, Edray on that there was a white
6:01
Speaker 1: van blocking the road, and apparently he started to go
6:05
Speaker 1: around it and then I guess thought the better of it,
6:07
Speaker 1: and I wanted to stop and see if they needed
6:10
Speaker 1: any help instead, And when he did, he realized very
6:13
Speaker 1: quickly that he was actually being hijacked. Because when you
6:16
Speaker 1: see a man with a long gun and panty hose
6:19
Speaker 1: on his head, um, you're probably being hijacked, that's right.
6:25
Speaker 1: The first thing he saw was this one guy who said,
6:28
Speaker 1: opened the door, and then he realized there were a
6:31
Speaker 1: couple of other guys, same m O. I think they
6:34
Speaker 1: had shotguns with the panty hose, and they said get
6:38
Speaker 1: in the back. We'll take over the driving from here.
6:42
Speaker 1: If you watched the movie, did you see any of that? No? No,
6:46
Speaker 1: I haven't yet. We'll get to it. Then there's a
6:49
Speaker 1: there's a Lifetime movie that came out in the nineties.
6:52
Speaker 1: I think looks like it was made in three somehow.
6:56
Speaker 1: That is on YouTube, and I highly recommend scrubbing through it.
7:01
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say watch the whole thing because I don't
7:04
Speaker 1: know if you'll be able to. But Carl Malden, Yeah,
7:07
Speaker 1: play that ed Ray and uh, I don't know if
7:10
Speaker 1: it's true to the story, but he gave them a
7:13
Speaker 1: lot of guff about getting out of that driver's seat
7:15
Speaker 1: in the movie. Yeah, I don't. I'm not sure if
7:18
Speaker 1: it happened in real life or not. It's a Malden
7:20
Speaker 1: improv if I've ever heard one. Yes, And I'm not
7:25
Speaker 1: getting out of my seat right my feet hurt. So
7:31
Speaker 1: he eventually did though, and they drove Um. They drove
7:34
Speaker 1: that bus followed by the van uh for a bit,
7:38
Speaker 1: and then eventually transferred those kids to that van and
7:41
Speaker 1: another identical van UM. And you know they I think
7:45
Speaker 1: we should point out a few smart things these guys
7:47
Speaker 1: did along the way, because they mainly did dumb things.
7:52
Speaker 1: But the kidnappers did make them jump from the school
7:55
Speaker 1: bus to the van so they wouldn't leave footprints. And
8:00
Speaker 1: in these vans, they had all the kids and ed
8:01
Speaker 1: Ray in the vans now two vans, UM, and they
8:04
Speaker 1: had kind of like deck these vans out. Um. It
8:08
Speaker 1: was kind of a shoddy manner of adding plywood partitions
8:13
Speaker 1: to keep the kids from getting out from anybody being
8:15
Speaker 1: able to see. And I think they painted over the windows.
8:18
Speaker 1: And then they drove those kids around for eleven hours
8:23
Speaker 1: in the backs of those vans with no potty breaks,
8:26
Speaker 1: no food, no water, no nothing. They just drove him
8:30
Speaker 1: around for eleven hours in July, the middle of July
8:33
Speaker 1: in the San Joaquin Valley, UM, pretty mercilessly before finally
8:39
Speaker 1: arriving at the destination, which ultimately was only a hundred
8:42
Speaker 1: miles away from where the kids had been kidnapped. I
8:45
Speaker 1: think they just wanted to disorient the kids. Yeah, I
8:48
Speaker 1: think that was kind of smart as well, because they
8:51
Speaker 1: could have been, you know, eleven hours away if they
8:54
Speaker 1: managed to escape or something. One of the girls years
8:57
Speaker 1: later did say that she saw through a crack that
9:00
Speaker 1: they were up there with a c go and drinking
9:01
Speaker 1: sodas and have a good old time, and the kids
9:04
Speaker 1: and ed Ray are back there just suffering. Um, just
9:08
Speaker 1: terrified obviously if what's going on right. That was Jennifer
9:11
Speaker 1: Brown Hyde who said that, and she has not She's
9:14
Speaker 1: not very happy with this whole thing. It's still to
9:16
Speaker 1: this day from what I understand. Yeah, as you can imagine. So, Um, finally,
9:22
Speaker 1: at three thirty am on Friday morning, they were hijacked
9:26
Speaker 1: around after three thirty one thirty pm on Thursday. They
9:30
Speaker 1: finally stopped driving at three thirty in the morning Friday morning, UM,
9:34
Speaker 1: and they arrived at a rock quarry. They're in Livermoore, California.
9:37
Speaker 1: Apparently again it's a hundred miles away from chow Chilla,
9:40
Speaker 1: and um, this is the what the what the kidnapper
9:44
Speaker 1: see as the final destination for these kids until they're
9:48
Speaker 1: ransomed off, until the authorities cough up the money. And
9:52
Speaker 1: what the what they've done is bury a moving van
9:55
Speaker 1: line trailer, so like a huge moving truck, the trailer
9:58
Speaker 1: part of it. They buried it a total of twelve
10:00
Speaker 1: feet underground, um, and have covered it with four feet
10:05
Speaker 1: of dirt. And they've opened a hole, put a ladder
10:09
Speaker 1: in and told the kids get down there and ed
10:11
Speaker 1: Rey too, that's right. And as the kids were going
10:15
Speaker 1: down and this kind of points to the direction of
10:17
Speaker 1: how dumb these guys were and how unprepared they were,
10:21
Speaker 1: even though they it turns out, would have planned this
10:23
Speaker 1: thing for well over a year. They wrote down their
10:26
Speaker 1: names uh, and their phone numbers in contact and parents names,
10:30
Speaker 1: not on a clipboard legal pad, but on the back
10:35
Speaker 1: of a Jack in the box wrapper, right so uh.
10:39
Speaker 1: And then they took apparently some kind of piece of
10:41
Speaker 1: clothing from each kid because the idea was once again
10:45
Speaker 1: is that they have many, many kids that should bring
10:47
Speaker 1: a many many moneys and dollar bills their way exactly,
10:50
Speaker 1: and the fact that their kids means that people do
10:52
Speaker 1: anything to to keep them safe. So these guys figure
10:56
Speaker 1: they've got a pretty good pay day with twenty six
10:58
Speaker 1: kids that they're now holding hostage and a buried moving
11:02
Speaker 1: van trailer um. And in in the trailer, they had
11:05
Speaker 1: done a little more than they had in the van,
11:08
Speaker 1: so they had peanut butter cheerios, some bread down there,
11:11
Speaker 1: some water, but definitely not enough to keep all those
11:15
Speaker 1: people alive for a very long time. They also thought
11:19
Speaker 1: of bathrooms. They made bathrooms in the wheel wells, and
11:23
Speaker 1: they they dropped ventilation tubes with some fans to force
11:27
Speaker 1: air in into the into the van, so there was
11:30
Speaker 1: fresh air down there, um, but not a lot from
11:34
Speaker 1: what I understand. Yeah, that's right. And the one faithful
11:37
Speaker 1: mistake they made was that for their comfort, they included
11:40
Speaker 1: some old box springs and mattresses and stuff with them
11:43
Speaker 1: for them to sit on and lay on, which would
11:46
Speaker 1: end up being they're undoing. Should we take a break?
11:50
Speaker 1: I think we should, because now you've got twenty six
11:52
Speaker 1: kids buried in a buried trailer right now in Livermore California,
11:57
Speaker 1: three thirty in the morning. Not a good thing to happen,
12:00
Speaker 1: that's right. So we'll pick up with what's going on
12:02
Speaker 1: in chow Chilla right after this. Alright, So in chow Chilla,
12:46
Speaker 1: that bus doesn't come back, so obviously everyone freaks out
12:49
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. An entire school bus full of kids and
12:52
Speaker 1: a very trusted h man about town like people. You know,
12:57
Speaker 1: it's a small town. People knew ed Ray and he
12:59
Speaker 1: was a good guy by all accounts. Um, they were
13:02
Speaker 1: all missing. So uh. The very first thing that happens
13:06
Speaker 1: is they locate the school bus, which have been hidden
13:08
Speaker 1: um and some with some bamboo and camouflage. But they
13:12
Speaker 1: did find the bus right away, which, you know, on
13:15
Speaker 1: one hand, that's good because they have a lead. On
13:17
Speaker 1: the other hand, that just sends this thing into the
13:20
Speaker 1: stratosphere as far as panic goes, because where are these kids? Yeah,
13:24
Speaker 1: and I saw also that the bus had basically no
13:26
Speaker 1: clues on it whatsoever. So it's like, we found the bus,
13:29
Speaker 1: but that doesn't help at all. Um, So yeah, I'm
13:32
Speaker 1: sure they were panicked by that. So um. It became
13:36
Speaker 1: pretty clear pretty early on that the child Chilla Sheriff,
13:41
Speaker 1: a guy named ed Gates was going to need some help,
13:44
Speaker 1: so the FBI came to town. Apparently they booked every
13:47
Speaker 1: one of the hotel rooms in the two hotels in town. Um,
13:52
Speaker 1: they brought uh, like all the state law enforcement agencies,
13:56
Speaker 1: like everybody just converged on this town to help out
13:59
Speaker 1: because it made national news, like almost instantaneously. Um. I
14:04
Speaker 1: saw somewhere Chuck that like this is during the bi centennial,
14:07
Speaker 1: and the bi centennial has just been going on and
14:09
Speaker 1: going on and going on, and there was still by
14:11
Speaker 1: centennial stuff going on, and this stopped it, like this kidnapping,
14:15
Speaker 1: news of kidnapping stopped the bi centennial celebration. Dennis Check.
14:19
Speaker 1: It was the end of it, not just for this town,
14:21
Speaker 1: but for the whole country. Oh yeah, I mean this
14:24
Speaker 1: went right up to President Ford at the time and
14:27
Speaker 1: obviously Governor Jerry Brown. So they threw everything they could
14:30
Speaker 1: at it. Um. The media descended upon chow Chilla like
14:35
Speaker 1: super fast, and because it's the media, you start getting
14:38
Speaker 1: these these terrible stories about like well maybe because you know,
14:42
Speaker 1: they've never called Zodiac and this was just six or
14:44
Speaker 1: seven years I think after the final uh what would
14:47
Speaker 1: end up being the final killing. So they said maybe
14:49
Speaker 1: it was a zodiac because they made reference to wiping
14:52
Speaker 1: He made reference to wiping out a school bus at
14:54
Speaker 1: one point. Um, any tip that came in they had
14:58
Speaker 1: to follow. There's a chew on the side of the road,
15:00
Speaker 1: so they have to track down that tip. Um. There
15:03
Speaker 1: was a novel in ninety eight called The Day the
15:05
Speaker 1: Children Vanished where the gang of people abductive bus load
15:10
Speaker 1: of kids just to bring people out of town and
15:12
Speaker 1: distract them while they robbed a bank. Ray's wife worked
15:15
Speaker 1: at the bank, like you said, so they put a
15:17
Speaker 1: bank under surveillance. Uh, so there were you know, it
15:20
Speaker 1: was I don't know if I was to describe it
15:22
Speaker 1: as a panic because the FBI was on the scene
15:25
Speaker 1: in the state, uh, California Bureau and Investigation, So they
15:30
Speaker 1: were doing good work. But there was a frenzy of activity. Yeah,
15:33
Speaker 1: and I think the sheriff had all the help he
15:37
Speaker 1: possibly needed to chase down all these leads and everything.
15:39
Speaker 1: But from what I saw, there was just not much
15:42
Speaker 1: to go on. There were there They were just dead
15:45
Speaker 1: ends left and right. Um, and so like there was
15:49
Speaker 1: there was a just an enormous amount of panic and
15:52
Speaker 1: terror in the town. Families started converging on the firehouse,
15:56
Speaker 1: the local firehouse. For some reason, I'm not sure why,
15:58
Speaker 1: but it became like the meeting place for anybody concerned
16:02
Speaker 1: about the fate of the kids. And um, this is
16:05
Speaker 1: where news would first be broken. And I think the
16:08
Speaker 1: media probably hung around there too, so um, you can
16:11
Speaker 1: only begin to imagine how anxious the parents were, and
16:14
Speaker 1: then the town and then apparently the whole country was
16:17
Speaker 1: was anxious as well. Um. And so it was really
16:20
Speaker 1: kind of surprising when all of a sudden, um, at
16:24
Speaker 1: about uh, I think about eight pm the next night,
16:27
Speaker 1: Saturday night, so the kids have been gone for almost
16:32
Speaker 1: uh thet about thirty hours, thirty two hours something like
16:38
Speaker 1: that at this point, thirty two hours of terror, when
16:42
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, at that quarry, some people are
16:44
Speaker 1: working and a man and a bunch of kids run
16:47
Speaker 1: over and it turns out to be the kidnapping victims
16:50
Speaker 1: who just present themselves to a security guard at the
16:54
Speaker 1: at the quarry in Livermore, who gets on the phone
16:56
Speaker 1: and says, we found them. That's right, amazing, and you
17:01
Speaker 1: would think, well, pretty sensational story, but it was very
17:06
Speaker 1: short span of time and all the kids were fined,
17:07
Speaker 1: so why is it really a story. It's a story
17:10
Speaker 1: because as we'll see, the trauma that they suffered emotionally,
17:13
Speaker 1: and um, how it went down in who these people were,
17:16
Speaker 1: who kidnapped them. But before we get to those dumb dumbs, Um,
17:21
Speaker 1: let's talk about the escape. Uh, they were down there
17:24
Speaker 1: about twelve hours and running out of food and water. Um,
17:28
Speaker 1: the roof. You know, they had a lot of weight
17:30
Speaker 1: on this moving van roof and those things aren't super strong,
17:33
Speaker 1: so this thing was, you know, kind of dented in
17:36
Speaker 1: and it seemed like it might cave in, and they
17:38
Speaker 1: were worried that they just couldn't stay there. Basically, and
17:41
Speaker 1: this is where the story I mean, I guess we'll
17:44
Speaker 1: cover both points of view, Um, the immediate history and aftermath. Uh,
17:50
Speaker 1: ed Ray saved the day because he was the only
17:52
Speaker 1: adult there, so obviously he was the one that broke
17:55
Speaker 1: those kids out of there. Um. Years later, you know,
17:58
Speaker 1: we mentioned Mike Marshall, the fourth teen year old that
18:00
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to be on that bus, and he was
18:03
Speaker 1: far and away the oldest kid there and the most
18:05
Speaker 1: capable to help. Years later, after a while of this
18:09
Speaker 1: story of ed Ray, he finally came out and said, oh,
18:13
Speaker 1: you know, Ed Ray is a good guy. I want
18:15
Speaker 1: to disparage him, but like it was my idea and
18:18
Speaker 1: I was the one that really led the charge to escape,
18:21
Speaker 1: and he was a big mess, kind of crying in
18:24
Speaker 1: his hands that they were doomed and dead, and he
18:28
Speaker 1: got on board and helped me. But it was really me.
18:32
Speaker 1: And the reason I kind of believe that after reading
18:34
Speaker 1: all the accounts is it took many years for him
18:36
Speaker 1: to kind of come out with this, and it felt
18:39
Speaker 1: like he even felt bad for saying so. So I
18:43
Speaker 1: think that Mike Marshall in fact did lead the charge
18:46
Speaker 1: to escape. Well. His his account was corroborated by another
18:50
Speaker 1: guy named Larry Park who wrote a book called The
18:53
Speaker 1: chow Chillas School Bus Kidnapping Cole and Why Me. And
18:57
Speaker 1: I don't know if he corroborated in that or in
18:59
Speaker 1: an interview you later on, but um, he was there
19:02
Speaker 1: and he said that that's true, that that's how it
19:04
Speaker 1: went down. On the other perspective, the fact that like
19:08
Speaker 1: when Ed Ray like live the rest of his life,
19:12
Speaker 1: he stayed in chow Chilla. Most of those people kids
19:14
Speaker 1: who've been kidnapped with them stayed in Chowchilla. When he
19:18
Speaker 1: was dying, those same kids as adults now came and
19:21
Speaker 1: visited him at his his bedside and say goodbye. Um,
19:25
Speaker 1: there's plenty of opportunity for you know, a little town
19:28
Speaker 1: to start talking, you know, whispers and that kind of thing,
19:31
Speaker 1: and that doesn't seem to have happened. He seems to
19:33
Speaker 1: have died considered a hero as well. So my take
19:37
Speaker 1: on a Chuck is that he may have been a
19:41
Speaker 1: gloom and doom about their prospects to begin with. And
19:44
Speaker 1: maybe it really was um Mike Marshall who said, no,
19:47
Speaker 1: we need to we need to try to get out
19:48
Speaker 1: of here. But even Mike Marshall said after a while,
19:51
Speaker 1: once Mike Marshall started to try, Ed Ray joined in
19:54
Speaker 1: and started helping, and that they might not have been
19:56
Speaker 1: able to Yeah, they might not have been able to
19:58
Speaker 1: get out had a grown man not in helping them.
20:00
Speaker 1: Like push against this, totally agree. I think we're I
20:03
Speaker 1: think we park our cars in the same garage here. Yeah,
20:06
Speaker 1: look at them. Uh so here's how they got out.
20:11
Speaker 1: They took those mattresses and stacked them up, and they
20:13
Speaker 1: took apart one of the kind of smashed one of
20:16
Speaker 1: the box springs which are framed in wood, and they
20:21
Speaker 1: started using that wood as like a sort of makeshift
20:23
Speaker 1: crowbar to try and what these guys kidnappers have done
20:26
Speaker 1: as they put um sort of sort of iron plate
20:29
Speaker 1: I've seen manhole, but it was some kind of heavy
20:31
Speaker 1: metal plate over the thing, along with two industrial tractor
20:36
Speaker 1: batteries which are super heavy, and then dirt, so there's
20:40
Speaker 1: ended up being several hundred pounds kind of weighing this
20:42
Speaker 1: thing down, uh, this escape hatch. But they were able
20:46
Speaker 1: after hours and hours to finally kind of use that
20:48
Speaker 1: wood to pry open just enough to where they see
20:52
Speaker 1: starlight and dirt leaking in, and with the help of
20:55
Speaker 1: Ed Ray and and his you know, manly man strength,
20:58
Speaker 1: they were able to climb out of there. Mike Marshall
21:01
Speaker 1: was so Mike Marshall climbed out and then from that
21:04
Speaker 1: moment on and so apparently also Edray was really worried.
21:08
Speaker 1: I guess Mike Marshall was too, but it was not
21:10
Speaker 1: a deterrent for him. But they were worried that there
21:12
Speaker 1: was at least one or more of the kidnappers hanging
21:16
Speaker 1: around with a gun, so there was a good chance
21:20
Speaker 1: in their minds that they were going to poke through
21:22
Speaker 1: and just be shot on site, so they were worried
21:25
Speaker 1: about that, and luckily, when Mike Marshall poked his head up,
21:28
Speaker 1: he saw that there was no one around. There's nobody
21:29
Speaker 1: guarding it. They it turned out that they had long
21:32
Speaker 1: since left UM and that so Mike Marshall had Edray
21:37
Speaker 1: start handing kids up to him, and they got all
21:40
Speaker 1: the kids out and then ed Ray out and Mike
21:42
Speaker 1: Marshall ran into the woods to hide so in case
21:45
Speaker 1: the kidnappers were still around, they just hadn't seen them yet,
21:48
Speaker 1: and those kids were intercepted by him, at least Mike
21:50
Speaker 1: Marshall would be able to run away through the woods
21:53
Speaker 1: and get help UM. But it turned out the kidnappers
21:56
Speaker 1: weren't there and and somebody luckily was still working at
21:59
Speaker 1: the quarry I believe, including a security guard when ed
22:02
Speaker 1: Ray and the kids ran up and presented themselves, so
22:06
Speaker 1: that's how, and then I guess the guy got on
22:08
Speaker 1: the phone and within moments of that happening, the news
22:12
Speaker 1: made it back to chow Chilla that they had all
22:14
Speaker 1: been found safe and they were all alive and generally unharmed,
22:18
Speaker 1: and UM ed Ray was basically automatically hailed as a hero. Uh.
22:24
Speaker 1: Carl Marl Karl Maldon was certainly portrayed as the hero
22:28
Speaker 1: in the Lifetime movie. They said, do you have anything
22:30
Speaker 1: you'd like to say, and he said just that my
22:32
Speaker 1: feet hurt. And you know, we again want to point
22:35
Speaker 1: out this was uh, thirty six hours from beginning to end.
22:40
Speaker 1: But these kids were I didn't know what was going
22:44
Speaker 1: on above ground. They were hot, they were you know,
22:48
Speaker 1: stripping down to their underwear. Carl Maldon was in his
22:51
Speaker 1: underwear even in the movie. Uh. They were running out
22:54
Speaker 1: of food and water. So as a five to fourteen
22:58
Speaker 1: year old, I mean, Ed Ray was in hysterics. You're
23:02
Speaker 1: you think you're gonna die down there. So it may
23:04
Speaker 1: not have been you know, kidnapping that lasted days and weeks,
23:07
Speaker 1: but that doesn't minimize the trauma that these kids suffered
23:11
Speaker 1: down there, completely not knowing what was going on above ground,
23:15
Speaker 1: and and daring to escape, not knowing if they were
23:17
Speaker 1: all of a sudden that van was going to come
23:19
Speaker 1: speeding down the road. After like, it took a while
23:22
Speaker 1: until they felt safe, I think, and then on top
23:24
Speaker 1: of that, Chuck you'd said it kind of earlier, but
23:26
Speaker 1: I think it really bears repeating. They were really worried
23:30
Speaker 1: that the roof of this thing was going to cave in.
23:33
Speaker 1: Four ft of dirt on top of a moving van
23:36
Speaker 1: roof that had been in the in the perpetrator's defense
23:39
Speaker 1: had been reinforced with lumber, but not very well. Um,
23:43
Speaker 1: that's a lot of weight hanging pushing down on this
23:46
Speaker 1: And if you see pictures of what the thing looked
23:48
Speaker 1: like from inside, I could see how they would have
23:51
Speaker 1: been very nervous that the thing was going to cave
23:53
Speaker 1: in on them and crush them. Oh yeah, like the
23:55
Speaker 1: pictures of it afterwards, that roof was in the process
23:59
Speaker 1: of caving in. Yeah, there was very nerve wracking. Of course,
24:04
Speaker 1: if that would have happened, the dirt probably would have
24:07
Speaker 1: caved in and gotten some of them dirty, and then
24:09
Speaker 1: they could crawl out, I hope, so hopefully that's how
24:11
Speaker 1: Who knows, But you know, like I said, they didn't
24:13
Speaker 1: know what was going on down there, No, they didn't.
24:15
Speaker 1: So but now they're free, they're they're they're safe, um,
24:19
Speaker 1: and the authorities go get them, the the FBI, the
24:22
Speaker 1: sheriff everybody's um interviewing them this is ours is more
24:26
Speaker 1: hours for the parents back in child Chilla having to wait. Uh.
24:29
Speaker 1: And then there was a a greyhound bus that went
24:33
Speaker 1: and got them and brought them back. It was pretty sweet.
24:35
Speaker 1: There was a lot of donations going on, like apparently
24:38
Speaker 1: Pacific Bell donated not just new phones, but new phone
24:41
Speaker 1: lines because there were so many calls being made by
24:44
Speaker 1: the authorities and by the press, which will factor in
24:47
Speaker 1: a second. Um, they the greyhound bus lines donated that
24:51
Speaker 1: bus ride, which is worth mentioning. Um, I guess the
24:55
Speaker 1: FBI donated their time. Who knows now they get bad.
25:00
Speaker 1: But there was a okay, there was a lot of
25:02
Speaker 1: um there's just like a lot of banding together to
25:05
Speaker 1: support this town as they were going through this, and
25:08
Speaker 1: I just thought it was cool. There was a greyhound
25:10
Speaker 1: bus that rolled up with everybody inside and they got
25:12
Speaker 1: off and they're like, I'm never getting on one of
25:14
Speaker 1: those again. Well they did kind of wonder. I was like,
25:18
Speaker 1: maybe we should send like a few are not even Vans'
25:21
Speaker 1: send twelve cars, no buses, no vans. Mm hmm, that's
25:27
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying.
25:29
Speaker 1: We're just and of course the kids got good at Disneyland.
25:35
Speaker 1: That was a big one. You gonna heroes welcome, They
25:37
Speaker 1: got a parade, they got to go to Disneyland, and
25:40
Speaker 1: it was as soon as the town went from the
25:44
Speaker 1: saddest place on Earth to the happiest place on Earth
25:46
Speaker 1: in the span of thirty six hours. Yeah, they had
25:48
Speaker 1: a huge feast. I saw that um ed ray one
25:51
Speaker 1: of vacation. Uh, that he appeared on Hollywood Squares, which
25:56
Speaker 1: is that's peaks, that's peak exposure in the mid and Chuck.
26:03
Speaker 1: There's one other little fact that we have to say
26:05
Speaker 1: about this that Robert Goulay recorded a song called the
26:09
Speaker 1: Ballad of Chow Chill Ray. It's so obscure it is
26:13
Speaker 1: not on YouTube. Some either cursed or blessed soul put
26:18
Speaker 1: it on SoundCloud. Yeah, you can find there's a cover
26:21
Speaker 1: version on YouTube from another person, but I recommend the
26:26
Speaker 1: SoundCloud Gooley version. It is uh. It is a product
26:31
Speaker 1: of the nineteen seventies in every way. It's unlistenable. I
26:36
Speaker 1: made it through most of it. Did you make it
26:38
Speaker 1: through all of it? I made it through most of it,
26:41
Speaker 1: then skipped to the end. It was something else because
26:44
Speaker 1: it's sort of like disco, but It's also that very
26:47
Speaker 1: seventies thing when they wrote these story songs like about
26:52
Speaker 1: the kids jumping off of the to touch a Hatchie
26:55
Speaker 1: bridge or whatever. Not touch ATCHI what was it? Billy
26:58
Speaker 1: Joe McAllister like they wrote these songs in the seventies,
27:02
Speaker 1: he is weird sort of folk story song. Yeah, but not.
27:08
Speaker 1: I mean a ballad can be like a love song,
27:09
Speaker 1: and these were like folk stories. I thought a ballad
27:12
Speaker 1: went it was like told the story. Maybe, but I
27:16
Speaker 1: think the ballads as love songs, sure, but a love
27:19
Speaker 1: story like the Air Supply wrote ballads, they didn't write
27:24
Speaker 1: songs about folky rose jumping off of bridges. You know
27:28
Speaker 1: they should have Well, I don't know. There's really nothing
27:32
Speaker 1: Air Supply could have done to have improved their game.
27:35
Speaker 1: They were pretty much sound great. Yeah. One of the
27:37
Speaker 1: best concerts I ever saw in my life was Air
27:39
Speaker 1: Supply in Jacksonville, Florida. It's amazing. It was um, it
27:45
Speaker 1: was amazing. I said it before I'll say again. It
27:48
Speaker 1: was like the fabric of reality was coming apart at
27:52
Speaker 1: the themes and we were right right there to witness it.
27:56
Speaker 1: It was so cool. I didn't know you took ecstasy
27:59
Speaker 1: at that. I didn't. That was what's what's so significant
28:02
Speaker 1: about it. We were totally sober. Yeah, what was it about?
28:08
Speaker 1: Was it just songs from your childhood or something? No,
28:11
Speaker 1: it was, I mean, yes, that was part of it.
28:13
Speaker 1: Was great to hear all those songs and see them live.
28:15
Speaker 1: It was the chemistry between the two dudes. Um, they
28:19
Speaker 1: still got it after all these years. Is really neat
28:22
Speaker 1: to see. Um. And but what really kind of made
28:26
Speaker 1: it unreal was it was almost had the same feeling
28:30
Speaker 1: as like a really energetic tent revival. Like people were
28:35
Speaker 1: wandering down the aisles, like like you could tell they
28:39
Speaker 1: were moving not necessarily of their own will, they were
28:43
Speaker 1: being drawn towards the stage. It was. It was bizarre.
28:46
Speaker 1: It was so cool to see people were just out
28:50
Speaker 1: of their minds at this Air Supply show. And and
28:52
Speaker 1: like we're I don't think any of them were on
28:54
Speaker 1: next to see either. I think like everybody was like
28:57
Speaker 1: people were with their moms or with their kids or
29:00
Speaker 1: or it was just a neat, neat show. I'll never
29:02
Speaker 1: forget it ever. Amazing. So go see Air Supply and
29:06
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're playing a third rate casino near you.
29:09
Speaker 1: Probably they definitely do the work, for sure. They supply
29:13
Speaker 1: you with more than air. Though it sounds like dude
29:15
Speaker 1: and the the guy's voice still is a d as
29:19
Speaker 1: good as it was in the seventies, which is probably.
29:22
Speaker 1: I was watching some bids the other day, live VIDs
29:24
Speaker 1: of them recently. It's a good thing to do. Sit around,
29:28
Speaker 1: but definitely check out the song on SoundCloud and listen
29:32
Speaker 1: to as much of it as you can. You won't
29:35
Speaker 1: make it all the way through the Ballad of chowd
29:37
Speaker 1: Chiller Ray. It's so bad. Now I understand why Elvis
29:39
Speaker 1: would shoot the TV whenever Robert Goolay came on. It
29:42
Speaker 1: was because of that, because that's is that why I
29:47
Speaker 1: shot the TVs? Yeah, for some apparently no one knows why.
29:51
Speaker 1: But whenever Robert Boley would come on, he would shoot
29:53
Speaker 1: his TV. Sometimes he gets really mad and shoot his
29:56
Speaker 1: toaster or his oven or whatever, but he would shoot
29:59
Speaker 1: the TV. That's pretty good, alright. So these kidnappers, getting
30:04
Speaker 1: back to the story of the Chowchilla school bus kidnapping,
30:08
Speaker 1: these guys were three real low rent scumbags who were
30:14
Speaker 1: didn't have opinion to their name, and we're desperate for cash,
30:17
Speaker 1: right In some ways, kind of. But if they were
30:22
Speaker 1: also all three rich kids, if you can put those
30:25
Speaker 1: two things together, there were three rich white kids. One
30:30
Speaker 1: specifically literal trust fund kid. Uh, he was the ringleader.
30:35
Speaker 1: We're talking about fred Woods James Schoenfeld, who were twenty four,
30:40
Speaker 1: and then james younger brother, Richard, who was twenty two.
30:43
Speaker 1: But fred Woods, Frederick new Hollwoods the fourth was the ringleader.
30:49
Speaker 1: And uh, the I guess you could call it the
30:52
Speaker 1: brains if there was a brain behind us. But he
30:55
Speaker 1: came from a long line of California money. His Uh.
31:00
Speaker 1: One of his ancestors was Henry Mayo knew All, who
31:03
Speaker 1: came in the eighteen fifties to California, part of Santa
31:06
Speaker 1: Clarita's New All, California named for him. They made a
31:10
Speaker 1: ton of money in real estate speculation and railroads and
31:14
Speaker 1: then eventually oil and ranching and had a uh several
31:20
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar family fortune. Yeah. I read that they
31:24
Speaker 1: made about three d and fifty million a year in
31:28
Speaker 1: the seventies a year, just that family doing nothing. And
31:32
Speaker 1: by the time this guy, fred Woods the fourth came along,
31:37
Speaker 1: there were generations of this family that had never worked
31:40
Speaker 1: a day in their life. So it's not like his
31:43
Speaker 1: parents struck it rich and they remember their roots like
31:45
Speaker 1: their roots were just gob smacking lee. Wealth is wealthy.
31:50
Speaker 1: That's what they're That's what they knew. And apparently Fred
31:54
Speaker 1: was not particularly paid attention to by his parents and
31:57
Speaker 1: it had some effects on him. And I saw also
32:00
Speaker 1: he had trouble um living up to his father's expectations
32:04
Speaker 1: for him. Um but do nothing blue blood yea Um,
32:08
Speaker 1: but that his his dad's approval meant a lot to him.
32:14
Speaker 1: That's a terrible position for any any person to be in.
32:17
Speaker 1: And I feel for him in that respect. And I
32:20
Speaker 1: also think from from what I saw, there was a
32:23
Speaker 1: New York Times article about him while I believe he
32:25
Speaker 1: was still at large where he said that he's described
32:29
Speaker 1: as a loser in the headline. The New York Times
32:33
Speaker 1: calls him a loser, at least says other people call
32:35
Speaker 1: him a loser in their headline. He was that kind
32:39
Speaker 1: of person, and again it was the seventies, but he
32:41
Speaker 1: was also that kind of person. He's just a he was.
32:44
Speaker 1: He was the product of wealthy, neglectful parents from what
32:48
Speaker 1: I can tell, and also an education system that seems
32:51
Speaker 1: to have failed him at least in the grammar portion. Yeah,
32:56
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. Uh. He was didn't have a
33:00
Speaker 1: lot of friends. He never really had a ton of girlfriends.
33:03
Speaker 1: Um he which is ironic because he ended up being
33:06
Speaker 1: married four times, which we'll get to. Uh. He lived
33:08
Speaker 1: in a converted apartment in an outbuilding on the nearly
33:12
Speaker 1: eighty acre estate uh in uh Portla Valley, where his
33:17
Speaker 1: grandmother lived and his parents lived. Even though they were
33:20
Speaker 1: traveling by themselves usually. Uh. He got a job at
33:23
Speaker 1: that rock quarry. Your first indication that they may not
33:27
Speaker 1: have had the smartest plan because his dad owned it. Uh.
33:31
Speaker 1: And he was into cars. He collected cars with his
33:33
Speaker 1: money the um the ringleader did. He had dozens and
33:37
Speaker 1: dozens of cars. His buddy James, who helped him. He
33:40
Speaker 1: was rich to not that kind of rich, but his parents.
33:44
Speaker 1: His dad was a pediatrist, so they had doctor money.
33:48
Speaker 1: So they were doing pretty well as well. Uh. And
33:50
Speaker 1: they got into various businesses together. They had a used
33:52
Speaker 1: car business together. They never did super well, it seemed like,
33:56
Speaker 1: in any of their business ventures, because it seemed like
33:58
Speaker 1: they weren't super smart. Right. Another good descriptor is that
34:03
Speaker 1: Fred in particular loved his cars and he loved to
34:06
Speaker 1: shoot the windows out of his cars with his guns,
34:09
Speaker 1: which he also loved. Yeah, they had a lot of
34:11
Speaker 1: guns between them as well. I mean it's sort of
34:14
Speaker 1: what you think. There are these rich kids who weren't
34:16
Speaker 1: paid attention to that could do whatever they wanted and
34:20
Speaker 1: ended up getting into trouble. He he had. Fred had
34:23
Speaker 1: designs on being a film producer, and part of the
34:27
Speaker 1: concept for this kidnapping was the school bus kidnapping in
34:31
Speaker 1: the movie Dirty Harry, and he said, hey, this would
34:34
Speaker 1: make a great movie too, which we'll get to sort
34:37
Speaker 1: of the bow tie on that later on. But he
34:40
Speaker 1: and James ended up losing some money, about thirty grand
34:43
Speaker 1: on a housing deal, and depending on the reports you read,
34:47
Speaker 1: some people say they were desperate for money, but if
34:50
Speaker 1: you talk to James, he said, I wanted to buy
34:52
Speaker 1: a Ferrari with it because my neighbors had Ferraris and
34:56
Speaker 1: it was to keep up with the Jones just situation. Yeah,
34:58
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. You know, Fred was born into it,
35:01
Speaker 1: and I think took money largely for granted, but um
35:04
Speaker 1: James and and Richard, but James in particular really kind
35:08
Speaker 1: of felt new to the area and didn't fit in
35:10
Speaker 1: because they didn't have as much money. I think there
35:12
Speaker 1: their dad was punching above his weight class socioeconomically in
35:17
Speaker 1: the area that they moved to, and his son's kind
35:20
Speaker 1: of suffered for it because they fell out of place
35:22
Speaker 1: because they just they just did not have anywhere near
35:25
Speaker 1: the kind of wealth that their their peers had where
35:28
Speaker 1: they where they now lived. And that seems to have
35:30
Speaker 1: gotten to James, and that was his big motivation. I
35:33
Speaker 1: never saw fred Wood's motivation, did you. I mean, I
35:36
Speaker 1: think part of it had to do with that thirty
35:38
Speaker 1: grand in debt, but I think part of it, dude,
35:41
Speaker 1: as he was a board rich kid in some ways
35:44
Speaker 1: like that may have been the reason. So yeah, I
35:48
Speaker 1: also yeah, and UM also I have the impression that UM,
35:52
Speaker 1: that that James and Rick Shonfeld were um a lot
35:57
Speaker 1: more moral than fred Wood was. Apparently in his journal,
36:01
Speaker 1: James wrote at the time that he was worried he
36:04
Speaker 1: was becoming immoral as they were like really planning this um,
36:08
Speaker 1: and he and his brother were both Eagle Scouts, so
36:11
Speaker 1: I guess they It is fair to say that they
36:13
Speaker 1: kind of fell under the influence of fred Woods, UM,
36:18
Speaker 1: who had no qualms about this whole thing. He convinced
36:21
Speaker 1: them to give up their qualms as well. Yeah. I
36:24
Speaker 1: think the last time I'll say the word smart thing
36:26
Speaker 1: that they did was when they were initially hatching the idea,
36:31
Speaker 1: they said, we saw in the news California State of
36:34
Speaker 1: California has a five billion dollar budget surplus, and we're
36:40
Speaker 1: not gonna get money kidnapping a kid or even twenty
36:43
Speaker 1: six kids um from their parents for their parents to
36:48
Speaker 1: pay ransom. But if they were on a school bus,
36:51
Speaker 1: then it's the responsibility of the state of California. And
36:54
Speaker 1: they've got all this dough so five million bucks is
36:57
Speaker 1: chump changed to them. So we get them on a
37:00
Speaker 1: school bus, then they're liable and that's how we're going
37:03
Speaker 1: to get the most money. Yeah. And so the calculation
37:06
Speaker 1: that they made was that there was nobody was going
37:08
Speaker 1: to get hurt. They knew that they weren't going to
37:10
Speaker 1: physically hurt those kids. They knew that California had a
37:14
Speaker 1: budget surplus. But even more than that, um that that
37:18
Speaker 1: their insurance company, the States whoever ensured the state, would
37:22
Speaker 1: end up actually paying that five million dollars, and that
37:25
Speaker 1: they were just basically taking five million dollars from the
37:28
Speaker 1: state that the state didn't really need uh, and that
37:31
Speaker 1: nobody was going to get hurt, and then that calculation
37:34
Speaker 1: it really kind of reveals like how much they did
37:37
Speaker 1: um lose any kind of morality, which is they did
37:41
Speaker 1: they utterly failed to take into account, like the psychological
37:45
Speaker 1: and emotional damage they were going to inflict on these
37:47
Speaker 1: kids and their parents and the town in general. You know. Yeah,
37:53
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the things that because
37:56
Speaker 1: that they I think even in the end they saw
37:58
Speaker 1: it as like not the biggest deal because no one
38:01
Speaker 1: was hurt and it was really quick. But like when
38:04
Speaker 1: I saw an eventually spoiler we'll go ahead and say
38:07
Speaker 1: that the two brothers were eventually paroled, and we'll get
38:10
Speaker 1: to all that. But you know, the the news teams
38:13
Speaker 1: in were like following this guy around in a parking
38:16
Speaker 1: lot asking him questions and he's just trying to avoid it.
38:20
Speaker 1: And one of them was like, you do realize that
38:22
Speaker 1: trauma these kids have still suffered into adulthood, and he
38:26
Speaker 1: just went, uh, you know, I've heard, so I've heard,
38:29
Speaker 1: and then just like quickly ran away. So even to
38:31
Speaker 1: this day, they're trying to get them to realize that
38:35
Speaker 1: there was a real impact and and and the end
38:39
Speaker 1: result was trauma and PTSD. Yeah, and the reason it
38:42
Speaker 1: did and it had the impact him part of the
38:44
Speaker 1: problem for child Chill apparently, chaud Chill. It was just
38:46
Speaker 1: transformed immediately. Like you know when when if you're the
38:50
Speaker 1: victim of a crime, you you wonder like why why me?
38:53
Speaker 1: Especially a random crime. And this is a random crime
38:56
Speaker 1: perpetrated on a whole town like chad Chill. It was
39:00
Speaker 1: a possible town among a number of towns in the
39:04
Speaker 1: area that those three traveled to and staked out and
39:08
Speaker 1: just kind of tried to figure out what the best
39:10
Speaker 1: the best victim would be for this crime. And they
39:13
Speaker 1: just settled on chow Chilla. They had no grudges against
39:16
Speaker 1: chow Chilla, they had no ties with chow Chilla. What
39:18
Speaker 1: the problem was. They didn't care about the people of
39:21
Speaker 1: chow Chilla, or how they felt about their children, or
39:23
Speaker 1: what they were going to do to them. It was
39:25
Speaker 1: just a random They chose them, basically randomly. And chow
39:30
Speaker 1: Chilla is the kind of um rural farming town where
39:35
Speaker 1: people don't talk about their feelings. I think I get
39:38
Speaker 1: the impression that they still think that that's weak it
39:41
Speaker 1: shows a sign of weakness. And so I don't really
39:44
Speaker 1: have the impression that the town has ever really processed
39:48
Speaker 1: this and that they've tried to forget. And then there's
39:51
Speaker 1: a lot of problems among the victims who are now
39:54
Speaker 1: and they're like fifties, um, that that have never really
39:58
Speaker 1: been resolved or worked out because the town just tried
40:01
Speaker 1: to carry on as if it never happened basically from
40:04
Speaker 1: the get go. Oh yeah, I mean some of them
40:08
Speaker 1: got had very hard luck stories getting into drugs, eventually
40:12
Speaker 1: getting better, uh and going through rehab and treatment and
40:15
Speaker 1: writing books about it. Others say they don't trust people.
40:18
Speaker 1: They suffered nightmares for years, some continue to Others have
40:22
Speaker 1: said that they don't even really remember much of what happened.
40:25
Speaker 1: I imagine if you're five years old, um, you're not
40:28
Speaker 1: going to remember as much as a twelve year old obviously,
40:31
Speaker 1: so depending on your age group, you may have suffered
40:33
Speaker 1: some more obvious lasting damage. But they were all damaged. Um.
40:38
Speaker 1: The way these guys got caught is well, I guess
40:44
Speaker 1: let's tell a little bit of that story. During the investigation,
40:47
Speaker 1: one thing they found in him and we'll put this
40:49
Speaker 1: in the dumb column on the property of where where
40:53
Speaker 1: Fred lived. They found a plan written out that said
40:58
Speaker 1: at the top in ye, I think it kidnapping. Plan
41:05
Speaker 1: didn't even capitalize the peak. Yeah, they wrote it out
41:08
Speaker 1: in pin and they had a lot of ideas. They
41:11
Speaker 1: wanted to buy an X ray machine. I think they
41:12
Speaker 1: did to to uh two X ray in case the
41:17
Speaker 1: ransom money was bugged. They had a larger plan. They
41:21
Speaker 1: had one plan about them the state dropping the money
41:24
Speaker 1: from a plane in the Santa Cruz Mountains at a
41:28
Speaker 1: specific drop site indicated by a series of lights. But
41:31
Speaker 1: they also had this larger plan of putting dummies in
41:35
Speaker 1: a plane with parachutes, and it was sort of all
41:39
Speaker 1: over the map, this plan over the course of a
41:41
Speaker 1: year and a half. Yeah, there was this really reveals
41:44
Speaker 1: I think a lot about them as well. That on
41:46
Speaker 1: that plan sheet it said one of the line items
41:50
Speaker 1: was burned the plan. Yeah, they just didn't get around
41:54
Speaker 1: to that. They left a ransom note. Yeah, and they
41:58
Speaker 1: had a lot of like scratch out and misspellings, and
42:02
Speaker 1: apparently it referred to Fred by name in the ransom
42:05
Speaker 1: notes that they were planned to give to the authorities.
42:08
Speaker 1: Like really they were trying to throw the authorities. They
42:12
Speaker 1: were trying to sniff the authorities off the case, I
42:14
Speaker 1: guess by posing or presenting themselves as a Satanic group.
42:19
Speaker 1: And they said that their their name was Beal's abub
42:23
Speaker 1: but they misspelled beals abub um. They spelled b E
42:27
Speaker 1: A L s A b u b um, which is
42:32
Speaker 1: just offensive to anybody who knows how to spell that word. Um.
42:36
Speaker 1: It's just like if you misspell things in your ransom note,
42:41
Speaker 1: like you're not going to do very well for yourself.
42:44
Speaker 1: Most likely, that's right. Uh. In the aftermath of the kidnapping,
42:49
Speaker 1: from when they buried the kids too, when they left,
42:52
Speaker 1: the plan was called the Chowchilla Police Department, demand your
42:56
Speaker 1: five million dollar ransom. But the child Chilla phone system
43:01
Speaker 1: was very small, and there were obviously when he kidnapped
43:05
Speaker 1: twenty six kids and the media is descending, every phone
43:08
Speaker 1: line was busy. They literally could not get through with
43:10
Speaker 1: their ransom demand. The kids escaped before they even got
43:16
Speaker 1: through with a ransom demand. I think you said. The
43:19
Speaker 1: donation from the phone company. They literally had to go
43:21
Speaker 1: in and install like dozens of phone lines just so
43:25
Speaker 1: that FBI could operate effectively. Yeah, so they never what
43:29
Speaker 1: did these guys do. Right afterwards, when they couldn't get through,
43:33
Speaker 1: they decided they needed to scram that the jig was
43:36
Speaker 1: up and they needed part ways, and they did. Fred
43:40
Speaker 1: um Woods was wildey enough to have come up with
43:45
Speaker 1: a passport um with the name Ralph Snyder, and he
43:49
Speaker 1: traveled successfully to British Columbia, I think Vancouver under that
43:53
Speaker 1: fake passport. But then when he was there, he started
43:56
Speaker 1: writing to people. He had a friend who was I
44:00
Speaker 1: think in film school and said, hey, you should turn
44:02
Speaker 1: this into a whole um, like a whole whole movie.
44:07
Speaker 1: He said, he just k right, just give me some
44:09
Speaker 1: of them the box office, I guess. But he said,
44:13
Speaker 1: but be fair, he said, be fair, but he spelled
44:16
Speaker 1: he spelled the F A R E. Yeah, So, um,
44:20
Speaker 1: that's that's I'm sorry, it's just annoying me to no ends. Yeah,
44:25
Speaker 1: but um. But then he signed the letter or sent
44:28
Speaker 1: it as Ralph Snyder. He sent it as his his alias.
44:31
Speaker 1: So the cops, the FBI tracked him like within days
44:36
Speaker 1: to um Vancouver and got the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
44:40
Speaker 1: to arrest him. I wonder he knew the guy though
44:43
Speaker 1: in film school. I wonder if this guy was like,
44:45
Speaker 1: who is this, It's Ralph Snyder or if he put
44:48
Speaker 1: in parentheses, that's my alias. This is friend. Don't tell
44:53
Speaker 1: the FBI, but he misspelled FBI. So Rick, the younger Schoenfeld,
45:02
Speaker 1: for his part, almost immediately confessed. Uh, he got home
45:07
Speaker 1: after the three of them met up and then split up.
45:10
Speaker 1: I went home and told his dad what he did.
45:13
Speaker 1: His dad because they had money again as a pediatrists
45:16
Speaker 1: got him a lawyer too sweet. And so that's why
45:18
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly. That's one reason we don't know
45:20
Speaker 1: exactly what happened in those first like, you know, hours afterwards,
45:25
Speaker 1: because the lawyer kind of kept that all quiet. Although
45:27
Speaker 1: it did see a news report that said they took naps.
45:31
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true or not, but I
45:32
Speaker 1: did see that. It sounds right. It holds up if
45:35
Speaker 1: you put it up against everything else. And keep in
45:38
Speaker 1: mind once again, they took these kids to a quarry
45:43
Speaker 1: that fred Wood's dad owned and where Fred Woods worked,
45:46
Speaker 1: and the quarry security guards said when they were interviewed, said, well, yeah,
45:51
Speaker 1: last week Fred and two other guys dug a big
45:54
Speaker 1: hole out there. Uh you know a few months before
45:57
Speaker 1: this happened. Um, like h I don't know, like a
46:00
Speaker 1: a moving van size hole, right, but the hole's gone now,
46:04
Speaker 1: so who cares exactly? Um? So Rick turned himself in. Uh,
46:10
Speaker 1: Fred got caught. James made attempts to cross the border
46:14
Speaker 1: into Canada himself, but apparently the Canadian authorities considered him
46:19
Speaker 1: a way too nervous, be way too vague about what
46:23
Speaker 1: he planned to do in Canada, and see in possession
46:26
Speaker 1: of way too many guns to be led in the country,
46:30
Speaker 1: and apparently tried two or three times using his own
46:32
Speaker 1: name to get in and finally gave up and turned around.
46:36
Speaker 1: And I guess he had decided he was going to
46:37
Speaker 1: turn himself into authorities, but because of an all points
46:40
Speaker 1: bulletin on his license plate, he was picked up before
46:44
Speaker 1: he could turn himself in. Right, So they're all collected
46:49
Speaker 1: less than two weeks after it happened. Yes, all right,
46:52
Speaker 1: Well let's take our last break and then we will
46:55
Speaker 1: kind of quickly go over the sentencing and what happened
46:58
Speaker 1: afterward right after this, all right, So they were collected. Yeah,
47:41
Speaker 1: they were collected, and of course had their day in
47:43
Speaker 1: court and the big um, the big thing that happened
47:46
Speaker 1: in court was was whether or not these guys um
47:50
Speaker 1: committed bodily harm on these children, because if you committed
47:54
Speaker 1: bodily harm, then you have a sentence of life without
47:58
Speaker 1: a possible sentence a life without parole. If there was
48:01
Speaker 1: no bodily harm, then you could have life with parole. Uh.
48:06
Speaker 1: They ruled that they did suffer bodily harm. So Uh,
48:10
Speaker 1: they had stomach trouble, they had nosebleeds, some of the
48:13
Speaker 1: kids fainted, Uh, and that that counted. But in and
48:16
Speaker 1: appeals court reverse that ruling said that is not bodily harm,
48:21
Speaker 1: and that made them eligible for parole. Uh. And since then,
48:25
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, the two showing Fell brothers have
48:29
Speaker 1: been released in I think like long after. Some observers
48:38
Speaker 1: who were involved in the case, I can think that
48:40
Speaker 1: they should have been paroled, like especially Richard shown felt
48:44
Speaker 1: he was twenty two at the time. He was basically there.
48:47
Speaker 1: I saw it described as along for the ride. Um again,
48:51
Speaker 1: an eagle scout. He probably became an eagle scout three
48:54
Speaker 1: or four years before this happened. Um. And he uh
48:59
Speaker 1: he spent um thirty nine years in prison. Yeah, I
49:07
Speaker 1: guess so when or he got out in twelve Yeah, okay, Yeah,
49:11
Speaker 1: So Uh yeah, about thirty seven years in prison of
49:16
Speaker 1: his life from age twenty two. He spent the next
49:18
Speaker 1: thirty seven years in prison for basically hanging out with
49:21
Speaker 1: his brother and his brother's goofy friend doing something really stupid. Um.
49:26
Speaker 1: And a lot of other people said, yeah, and if
49:28
Speaker 1: you're gonna let Richard schoon Felt out, you should really
49:31
Speaker 1: probably take another look at James Schoenfeldt too, because yeah,
49:33
Speaker 1: he was more involved than his brother, Um, but he
49:37
Speaker 1: was still no Fred Woods. And then you get to
49:40
Speaker 1: Fred Woods and people say, yeah, he probably just he
49:43
Speaker 1: doesn't really deserve to be paroles. Yeah, I mean the
49:47
Speaker 1: other two were model prisoners. Uh. And they also had uh,
49:51
Speaker 1: I mean people that were active. I don't know if
49:55
Speaker 1: it was a prosecutor or investigator. I think the investigator
49:58
Speaker 1: for the case. Eventually he advocated for parole. Uh. Yeah,
50:03
Speaker 1: So you know, some of the townspeople felt betrayed by that,
50:06
Speaker 1: but they did get out. Fred Woods was not a
50:08
Speaker 1: model prisoner. He was still as shady as ever. You know,
50:12
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to to run businesses from prison, but
50:15
Speaker 1: he ran a gold mine. He ran a used car business,
50:18
Speaker 1: he ran a Christmas tree farm. Uh. He got married
50:21
Speaker 1: a few times. The reason he was finally outed was
50:24
Speaker 1: he was running the Christmas Tree Farm and Michael Bianci,
50:29
Speaker 1: he was managing that business, got injured on the job
50:32
Speaker 1: and Wood said, I'm not gonna help pay for the surgery.
50:35
Speaker 1: So bank he said, all right, and he filed a
50:37
Speaker 1: state workers comp claim and they got on the investigation
50:41
Speaker 1: and found out that Woods was behind the operation. So
50:44
Speaker 1: he's not when it comes time for parole. That doesn't
50:48
Speaker 1: look good. No, And I guess he's been denied parole
50:51
Speaker 1: seventeen times so far, and he's up next in and
50:56
Speaker 1: a lot of people think he might not, he might
50:59
Speaker 1: never be ruled. Actually, well, he bought a mansion in Nipomo, California,
51:06
Speaker 1: thirty miles from the prison that no one lives at.
51:10
Speaker 1: Uh He did have a civil lawsuit in twenty sixteen
51:13
Speaker 1: where he had to pay out money to the victims
51:16
Speaker 1: that was described as uh quote enough to pay for
51:19
Speaker 1: some serious therapy, but not enough to buy a house.
51:23
Speaker 1: Which is significant too, because they did rule. An appeals
51:26
Speaker 1: court ruled the night that they didn't inflict bodily harm.
51:31
Speaker 1: But I wonder if that same appeals court would come
51:33
Speaker 1: to the to that conclusion. In one based on interviews
51:38
Speaker 1: with some of the people who were abducted, like like
51:41
Speaker 1: Jennifer Brown High who I mentioned earlier, who's not I
51:45
Speaker 1: think emotional harm would play in these days, and there
51:48
Speaker 1: was definitely emotional harm inflicted. You talked about Larry Park
51:51
Speaker 1: who was addicted to methane crack before he finally found
51:55
Speaker 1: forgiveness and actually went and met all with all three
51:58
Speaker 1: of the perpetrators and shook their hands and told him
52:01
Speaker 1: he forgave him and apparently changed his own life like that,
52:04
Speaker 1: If you haven't listened to and said, hey, I can
52:06
Speaker 1: make you a heck of a deal on a used van. Yeah, no,
52:09
Speaker 1: Fred Woard took his watch when he shook his hand.
52:13
Speaker 1: Well I was, I was kidding, but he Uh. My
52:15
Speaker 1: final little factoid is that that used Carlat had those
52:19
Speaker 1: two vans and he held onto those because he thought
52:22
Speaker 1: they would be worth a lot of money as the
52:23
Speaker 1: kidnap vans. Yeah, which they might be worth an extra
52:27
Speaker 1: few hundred bucks. I could see that, but I don't
52:29
Speaker 1: know if that that if that's the crown jewel of
52:33
Speaker 1: your inventory on Nick Cage bought him right, uh, And
52:38
Speaker 1: then you can go watch that movie from lifetime. UH
52:42
Speaker 1: called They've taken our children if you want to see
52:45
Speaker 1: Karl Malden in his underwear. Apparently, bad movie, bad song.
52:49
Speaker 1: I read also that Chowchilla residents do not care for
52:51
Speaker 1: that movie Chuck because it was shot in Kansas, and
52:55
Speaker 1: anyone who knows anything about the San Joaquin Valley knows
52:58
Speaker 1: that Kansas is a poor stand in for the at
53:00
Speaker 1: So they're a little turned off by that movie from
53:02
Speaker 1: what I understand. And then last thing I want to
53:05
Speaker 1: shout out um Caleb Horton, who wrote an article on
53:11
Speaker 1: Vox very in depth one called the Ballad of the
53:13
Speaker 1: chow chillip Bus Kidnapping is pretty good. Oh that's a
53:16
Speaker 1: good one. Yeah, it is all right, all right, the article,
53:22
Speaker 1: not the song. No, no, okay, it's an article, an
53:26
Speaker 1: article I got. Okay, Well, since we had we worked
53:29
Speaker 1: out them misunderstanding everybody. That means it's time for listener mail.
53:35
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this. Uh, let me see. How about
53:40
Speaker 1: racist ticketing. In our episode on jaywalking, we talked about
53:45
Speaker 1: people of uh and the black and Hispanic communities are
53:48
Speaker 1: ticketed more for jaywalking. And this is from Valerie Mates
53:53
Speaker 1: in ann Arbor, Michigan. Hey guys, you mentioned that black
53:56
Speaker 1: and Hispanic drivers are issued more traffic tickets and white
53:58
Speaker 1: drivers his entry issue In Chicago when they installed traffic cameras,
54:03
Speaker 1: they found that the cameras, despite being raced neutral, still
54:06
Speaker 1: gave more tickets to black and Hispanic drivers, so of
54:09
Speaker 1: course they wanted to study that. The experts found that
54:12
Speaker 1: more affluent neighborhoods are built with more features that would
54:16
Speaker 1: naturally slow down traffic, more sidewalks, more stop signs, more crosswalks,
54:21
Speaker 1: while poorer neighborhoods had few of those fewer of those things,
54:24
Speaker 1: and the result would cars would be naturally would tend
54:27
Speaker 1: to drive faster in poorer neighborhoods. Since black and Hispanic
54:31
Speaker 1: drivers are more likely to live and be driving in
54:34
Speaker 1: less wealthy neighborhoods in Chicago, they were more likely to
54:37
Speaker 1: be speeding and caught by traffic cameras, or so says
54:41
Speaker 1: the evidence. At least, it's not just prejudice on the
54:45
Speaker 1: part of police officers that causes this discrepancy, is actually
54:49
Speaker 1: a difference in how the neighborhoods are built systematically. I
54:52
Speaker 1: thought it was really interesting, uh and I agree. Thanks
54:56
Speaker 1: for sending that In who was it again? Valerie, Mates
54:59
Speaker 1: of an Ar Thanks a lot, Valerie. That's a great
55:01
Speaker 1: one if you've got a great one like Valerie does.
55:04
Speaker 1: We love little brainbusters like that. Um so you can
55:08
Speaker 1: wrap them up, spank them on the bottom, and send
55:10
Speaker 1: them off via email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
55:14
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55:19
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55:26
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