No one had claimed responsibility.
Police had no idea whether the kidnappers were nearby or hundreds of miles away.
The national media began learning about the disappearance.
The small agricultural town was suddenly at the center of a massive search.
But while police searched roads, airports and possible escape routes, the children were still moving.
The kidnappers were driving them farther away.
Nearly Twelve Hours in Darkness
The journey inside the vans became its own form of captivity.
The children could not see outside.
They could feel the movement.
Turns.
Stops.
Acceleration.
Rough road.
Then smooth road again.
They had no reliable sense of direction.
They could not know whether they were heading north, south, toward the mountains or toward another state.
There were no bathroom stops.
The younger children became sick.
The vans grew filthy.
The heat, smell and darkness made the hours worse.
Some children cried.
Some slept briefly and woke again.
Some tried to comfort one another.
Older children attempted to protect younger ones.
According to survivor accounts, they sometimes sang songs together.
Not because singing made the situation normal.
Because there was almost nothing else they could control.
Outside, the kidnappers knew where they were going.
Inside, the children knew nothing.
That uncertainty was part of the terror.
Had their parents called police?
Were police looking for them?
Were the kidnappers going to release them?
Were they going to be killed?
The children had no answers.
One survivor later remembered feeling like an animal being transported toward slaughter.
Another remembered thinking about death.
This is important because popular retellings of Chowchilla often move quickly from the hijacking to the underground truck.
But the hostages had already endured nearly half a day of fear before they ever reached the quarry.
For approximately eleven to twelve hours, children as young as five were transported inside closed vans without knowing their destination.
Back in Chowchilla, families were experiencing the opposite uncertainty.
They knew where the children should have been.
But not where they actually were.
Police had the bus.
They had tire tracks.
They had evidence of a transfer.
They did not have the vans.
The kidnappers had managed to move twenty-seven people away from the search area.
Eventually, the vans slowed.
The ride became rougher.
The children could feel the vehicles moving over uneven terrain.
Then they stopped.
It was sometime during the early morning hours.
The kidnappers had reached a rock quarry near Livermore.
About one hundred miles from Chowchilla.
The hostages did not know that.
To them, there was only darkness.
Then the doors opened.
One Child at a Time
The kidnappers began removing people individually.
Ed Ray was taken first.
Then the doors closed.
Silence.
A few moments later they opened again.
Another person was taken.
Then closed again.
To the children remaining inside, this created a terrifying possibility.
Maybe the people being removed were being killed.
They could not see where anyone was going.
They could not hear them after they disappeared.
The kidnappers would open the door.
Take someone.
Close it.
Wait.
Return.
Take another.
Jodi Heffington later described wondering what had happened to everyone who had gone before her.
Jennifer Brown remembered trying to move toward the back of the van, almost hoping she could make herself invisible.
Eventually there was no place left to hide.
The kidnappers questioned the children.
Name.
Information.
Personal belongings.
They collected items that could potentially be used as proof that the children were really being held.
The abductors were preparing for a ransom demand.
Then the hostages were shown where they were going.
A hole.
A ladder descending into the earth.
At the bottom was the interior of an old moving trailer.
It had been buried underground.
The children climbed down.
Inside were crude preparations.
Dirty mattresses.
Containers of drinking water.
Some food.
Bread.
Peanut butter.
Cereal.
Makeshift toilet holes around wheel-well areas.
There were ventilation tubes.
The structure had clearly been prepared before the kidnapping.
This was not a place the kidnappers happened to find that night.
Someone had designed it as a prison.
One by one, more children appeared at the bottom of the ladder.
For those already inside, every familiar face was relief.
Someone else was alive.
Then another.
Then another.
The group was being reunited.
Fourteen-year-old Michael Marshall remained in one of the vans with some of the youngest children.
Five-year-old Monica Ardery clung to him.
They did not know where everyone else had gone.
Eventually the kidnappers returned.
Michael did not want to hand Monica to them.
He had no idea whether the people taken before him were alive.
But when the doors opened again, Michael decided to go ahead of her.
He separated her hands from his and tried to reassure her.
Then he was taken toward the hole.
He climbed onto the ladder.
And as he descended, voices came from below.
The other children recognized him.
They were alive.
Michael realized the group had not been killed one by one.
Soon Monica came down too.
For one brief moment, all twenty-seven hostages were together.
That relief did not last.
The kidnappers removed the ladder.
A roll of toilet paper was thrown down.
They told the hostages they would return.
Then the opening above them was covered.
A heavy lid or manhole-type cover closed over the exit.
The light disappeared.
And then they heard something coming from above.
Material hitting the roof.
Dirt.
The kidnappers were burying them.
Buried Alive
There is a fundamental difference between being locked in a room and being sealed underground.
A locked room still belongs to the normal world.
There are walls.
A hallway somewhere beyond them.
Perhaps a window.
A door.
Another human being might walk past.
The children in Chowchilla understood something much more terrifying.
The world was now above them.
The kidnappers had placed a barrier over their only obvious exit.
Then they covered the underground trailer.
The hostages could hear the weight being added.
Dirt.
Heavy objects.
The roof above them carried more and more pressure.
The moving van had been buried about twelve feet underground.
Heavy tractor batteries and other material helped weigh down the exit.
A wooden structure had been placed around the opening.
The kidnappers apparently believed this would keep twenty-seven people trapped until the ransom was paid.
Inside, the children screamed.
One reportedly fainted.
Ed Ray tried to calm them.
He was the adult they knew.
The person who had been responsible for them before the attack.
But Ray was frightened too.
He later acknowledged believing the roof might collapse.
The trailer had been converted into a crude underground bunker.
But it was still a vehicle body being forced to support earth and heavy material.
The children could hear it respond to the pressure.
Metal does not remain silent when it bends.
The kidnappers left.
For the first time since the hijacking, there were no armed men physically beside the children.
That should have brought relief.
Instead, it created a new fear.
What if they never came back?