Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping

Transcript

SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping · Stuff You Should Know

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