The kidnappers had provided water and food.
That suggested they intended to keep the hostages alive.
But no one underground knew the plan.
No one knew how much ransom would be demanded.
No one knew whether the kidnappers trusted police.
No one knew whether they would eventually decide twenty-seven witnesses were too dangerous to release.
And no one knew whether the buried trailer would remain structurally stable long enough for any negotiation to happen.
Ray and some of the older children investigated the interior.
Could they break through a wall?
Could they move the exit?
Could they find another opening?
They tried pushing against the cover above.
It would not move.
Too much weight.
The kidnappers had anticipated that.
Eventually Ray decided they needed to conserve energy.
Rest.
Wait.
Maybe the abductors would return.
Maybe authorities would negotiate.
Maybe the situation would somehow resolve itself.
For a while, there was little else to do.
So twenty-six children and one adult waited underground.
In darkness.
Above Ground, America Was Looking for Them
While the children waited, the story spread.
An entire school bus of children had been kidnapped.
The scale was extraordinary.
This was not one missing child.
It was not two.
Twenty-six.
Along with the driver.
Police had recovered the bus but no victims.
The absence of a ransom demand made the situation even more confusing.
Kidnapping for ransom usually requires communication.
The kidnappers have to tell someone what they want.
But the phones in Chowchilla were overwhelmed.
Reporters were calling.
Concerned citizens were calling.
Authorities were receiving information.
The case attracted national attention.
According to later accounts from prosecutors and investigators, the kidnappers actually attempted to contact the Chowchilla Police Department with their ransom demand.
They could not get through.
The lines were too busy.
This became one of the strangest failures in the entire criminal plan.
The men had spent more than a year designing the kidnapping.
They had prepared vehicles.
Masks.
Weapons.
A hidden underground prison.
A draft ransom note.
They had apparently planned to demand as much as five million dollars.
They had calculated how to control dozens of children.
They had anticipated many possible problems.
But they had not anticipated that one of the biggest kidnappings in American history would generate so many telephone calls that they could not reach the police department.
Unable to deliver the demand immediately, the kidnappers reportedly decided to sleep.
The children remained underground.
The kidnappers went to take a nap.
By the time they woke up, their plan had already fallen apart.
The Underground Clock
There was no clock that mattered inside the buried van.
No sunlight.
No sunset.
No sunrise.
For children, time became almost impossible to measure.
Minutes could feel like hours.
Sleep did not clearly divide day from night.
They could not know how long their parents had been waiting.
Eventually the limited supplies began disappearing.
Food was consumed.
Water diminished.
The ventilation system was not providing the confidence it had earlier.
Some survivors remembered the fans stopping.
The air became more oppressive.
Then another problem appeared.
The structure began changing.
One child was moving or kicking pieces associated with supports inside the trailer.
The weight above was already enormous.
The roof started bending.
Seams began separating.
Dust fell inside.
Walls bowed.
The vehicle that had functioned as a prison was threatening to become a tomb.
This was the point when waiting stopped making sense.
The kidnappers had created a prison that was supposed to keep the hostages alive long enough for a ransom negotiation.
But underground, nobody knew a ransom call had failed.
They only knew the physical situation was getting worse.
Survivors later remembered a collective realization.
If they might die anyway, they might as well die trying to get out.
That decision changed the entire case.
Find the Exit
The only obvious path was the same opening through which they had entered.
But it was far above the trailer floor.
The ladder was gone.
And the heavy cover above it had been weighted.
They needed height.
Inside the trailer were mattresses.
The same mattresses the kidnappers had provided for captives to lie on could now become construction material.
The children and Ray began stacking them beneath the exit.
One mattress.
Another.
Another.
They created a platform.
Then bodies became part of the structure.
Children stood on shoulders.
Older children supported younger ones.
Ray helped.
Jodi Heffington later remembered that because she was relatively tall and strong, people stood on her shoulders when they were not standing on Ray.
The group was transforming twenty-seven trapped individuals into one escape machine.
Someone would climb.
Push.
Become exhausted.
Another person would try.
The cover refused to move.
The kidnappers had anticipated pressure from below.
Above the cover were heavy batteries and dirt.
There was also a wooden box-like structure around the escape route.
The children could not see any of that.
They only knew they were pushing against something that felt immovable.
Michael Marshall climbed.
Fourteen years old.
He pushed upward.
Other children encouraged him.
Again.
Harder.
Nothing.
Then suddenly someone noticed movement.
The cover had shifted.
Not much.
But enough.
It moved.
That tiny movement was the first physical proof that escape was possible.
Half a Foot
Moving the cover did not open the world.
There was still the structure above it.
There was still dirt.
There were still batteries.
The opening was extremely narrow.
According to Michael Marshall's later account, Ed Ray helped squeeze him upward through a gap only around several inches wide.
Michael entered the wooden space above the trailer.
Now the work changed.
He was no longer simply pushing.
He had to dig.
He struck the wood.
He worked at the material blocking the way.
He dug.
He pounded.
He kept going.
Below him, twenty-six people waited.
Every handful of dirt mattered.
The danger was not over even if he reached the surface.
For all Michael knew, the three kidnappers could be sitting outside with shotguns.
The captives did not know the men had left.
They did not know the kidnappers were asleep.
They did not know police were searching elsewhere.
They had to escape without knowing what waited above.
Michael kept digging.
Eventually something changed.
A beam of daylight entered the darkness.
One survivor later described the dust particles catching the light like tiny stars.
Then came air.
Fresh outside air.
After hour after hour underground, that airflow meant freedom might actually exist above them.
Michael climbed farther.
He pushed his head out.
Looked around.
No gunmen.
No masked men.
Only the quarry landscape.
He had become the first person to see the outside world since the kidnappers sealed them underground.
He told the others it appeared clear.
Now they had to get twenty-six more people out.