Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping Plaque - Chowchilla, CA
Posted by: 
saopaulo1
N 37° 07.359 W 120° 15.539
10S E 743518 N 4111995
A plaque commemorating the safe return of a busload of children who were hijacked and kidnapped in 1976. The monument is by the police station.
Waymark Code: WM750Y
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 09/02/2009
Views: 5
The plaque reads: "With heartfelt thanks, the people of Chowchilla commemorate the safe return of 26 schoolchildren and their bus driver who were abducted July 15, 1976 and who escaped unharmed 30 hours later."
From Wikipedia: "Chowchilla was launched into national headlines on July 15, 1976 when an entire school bus of children was kidnapped. Twenty-six children and the adult bus driver were taken from the bus, which the kidnappers eventually concealed under brush in a wash, and driven around in two vans for 11 hours before being forced, one by one, to climb into a hole in the ground which contained a moving van which had been buried in a quarry in Livermore, California. By stacking the 14 mattresses that were in the van on top of each other part-time bus driver Ed Ray, a local farmer, and some of the older children were able to reach the opening at the top of the truck that they originally entered through, but was now covered with a metal lid and weighed down. They were eventually able to wedge the lid open by propping it up with a stick and then Ray was able to move what held the lid down which turned out to be two 100 pound industrial batteries. Ray and the boys were able to remove the rest of the debris blocking them from the ground's surface. After 16 hours underground they emerged in the middle of the night and walked to a nearby guard shack at the entrance to the quarry. The guard alerted the authorities and all the victims were pronounced to be in good condition and returned home to find that mass media had descended on the town. Ray was able to remember the license plate of one van while under hypnosis and this led to the capture of the kidnappers as they attempted to flee to Canada. A rough draft of a ransom note was found at the house of the owner of the quarry; the owner's son, Frederick Woods, and two friends, Richard and James Schoenfeld, were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. The ordeal was dramatized in the 1993 ABC-TV movie They've Taken Our Children: The Chowchilla Kidnapping (shown in the UK as Vanished Without a Trace) starring Karl Malden, which is sometimes shown on the Biography Channel. Interviews with many of the children, now adults, including Mike and bus driver Ray were broadcast on MSNBC Dark Heart Iron Hand.
After the children were recovered, it was observed that some circumstances of the abduction corresponded to details in "The Day the Children Vanished", a story written by Hugh Pentecost that had been published in the 1969 fiction anthology Alfred Hitchcock's Daring Detectives. A copy of this book was in the Chowchilla public library; police theorized that this was the source of the real-life kidnappers' inspiration.
After being denied parole 20 times, one of the three kidnappers, Richard Schoenfeld, was deemed suitable for parole by the California Board on Parole Hearings on October 30, 2008. However Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger can modify the board's decision.
James Schoenfeld has been denied parole 16 times. Frederick Woods was denied parole for the 12th time on January 5, 2009 and will be eligibile again in 3 years." (
visit link)