Even luxury cars.
Fred Woods would later say greed played a central role.
The men were not kidnapping children because someone would die without the money.
They wanted millions because they wanted money.
More.
Faster.
The concept was chillingly transactional.
Children were selected because they were considered valuable to adults.
Twenty-six children potentially meant enormous leverage.
From the kidnappers' perspective, the children became financial instruments.
They believed frightened parents and government officials would produce millions.
The boys and girls on the school bus were not chosen because of who they personally were.
They were chosen because they were children.
That may be one of the coldest parts of the entire plan.
A Year and a Half of Preparation
The deeper investigators looked, the more difficult it became to describe the kidnapping as a foolish impulse.
There were too many steps.
The men needed vehicles.
They had to alter the vans so children could not see outside.
They needed masks.
Weapons.
A location.
Access to heavy machinery.
A moving trailer.
A large excavation.
Ventilation.
Food.
Water.
Mattresses.
Bathroom arrangements.
A way to seal the exit.
A ransom strategy.
A plan for communications.
A plan for what could go wrong.
This took time.
Prosecutors later said planning extended for roughly a year and a half.
Imagine what that means.
For months, three young men were moving through normal life while preparing to seize a school bus full of children.
They could stop at almost any point.
During the planning.
While digging the hole.
While modifying vans.
While writing the ransom demand.
While preparing the underground trailer.
While obtaining weapons.
The crime required repeated decisions.
That matters because the bizarre nature of the kidnapping sometimes makes it sound almost like an elaborate prank that went wildly too far.
It was not.
Twenty-seven people were held at gunpoint.
Children believed they were going to die.
The kidnappers created a prison that began physically collapsing around the hostages.
The fact that everyone survived came from the resistance of the victims, not from certainty built into the plan.
The abductors left enough food and air because they expected a ransom negotiation.
That did not guarantee the buried vehicle would remain safe.
The hostages escaped because conditions became so dangerous they decided waiting was no longer acceptable.
The difference between bizarre crime and mass tragedy may have been a fourteen-year-old boy refusing to stop digging.
The Search for Three Men
Once Woods and the Schoenfeld brothers were identified, the investigation became a manhunt.
Arrest warrants were issued.
Richard Schoenfeld eventually surrendered himself.
James Schoenfeld and Fred Woods left California.
But the escape did not last.
James was captured after fleeing through portions of the western United States.
Fred Woods made it into Canada.
There, just across the border in Vancouver, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested him.
The three men who had successfully hidden twenty-seven people from police were unable to hide themselves for long.
Their underground prison had pointed directly back toward access to the quarry.
Their preparation had created evidence.
The detailed nature of the plan that had helped them execute the kidnapping also helped investigators prove who had done it.
For the survivors, seeing the kidnappers' faces was complicated.
During the crime, those faces had been concealed.
Pantyhose.
Masks.
Guns.
Anonymous men.
Now newspapers showed names.
Photographs.
Real people.
The monsters from inside the children's memories were no longer faceless.
They were Fred Woods.
James Schoenfeld.
Richard Schoenfeld.
For some survivors, knowing the men were in custody provided relief.
The kidnappers could not come back.
At least that was what the children were told.
Court
The evidence against the three men was overwhelming.
They eventually pleaded guilty to the core kidnapping and robbery charges involving the twenty-seven hostages.
But another legal question became extremely important.
Bodily harm.
Under the law at the time, findings that the kidnapping caused bodily harm could mean life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
The kidnappers contested those allegations.
That forced some of the children back into court.
They had already survived the roadblock.
The gunmen.
The vans.
The hole.
The darkness.
Now they had to sit in a courtroom and look at the men responsible.
Some were still very young.
Survivors later remembered the defendants staring toward them.
Jodi Heffington recalled breaking down emotionally.
Jennifer Brown remembered wanting to appear strong.
The children testified about physical injuries.
Cuts.
Bruises.
And of course the enormous psychological trauma surrounding everything that had happened.
The court initially concluded that the required bodily-harm standard had been satisfied.
The three men received sentences of life without parole.
For many parents, that sounded like an ending.
The kidnappers would never get out.
Their children would never need to see those men again.
The justice system had closed the door.
But four years later, that changed.
The Decision That Reopened the Wound
An appellate court reviewed the bodily-harm findings.
The issue was technical but emotionally enormous.
The kidnapping had clearly been terrifying.
The children had clearly suffered.
But legally, the appellate court concluded the physical injuries did not meet the standard necessary for the no-parole sentencing enhancement.
The life-without-parole sentences were changed.
The men became eligible for parole.
To the survivors, this did not feel like an abstract legal correction.
It meant the men could eventually walk out of prison.
And more immediately, it meant parole hearings.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Every hearing forced survivors to confront the crime.
Would one kidnapper be released?
Should they attend?
Should they testify?
Would staying silent increase the possibility of parole?
Would attending mean reopening memories they had spent years trying to control?
More than sixty parole hearings involving the three men occurred over the decades, according to CBS's later review.
For some survivors, the legal system created a repeating calendar of trauma.
They could never entirely leave 1976 behind because periodically they were asked to revisit it.
A Town Tried to Celebrate
In the immediate aftermath, Chowchilla wanted a positive ending.
And there was reason to celebrate.
Everyone had survived.
Ed Ray became a hero.
So did the children.
A large community celebration was held.
Thousands attended.
There was a parade.
Food.
Speeches.
President Gerald Ford sent praise for Ray's actions.
A park would eventually bear Ray's name.
The children even received a trip to Disneyland.
Adults hoped happy experiences might overpower the terrible one.
It was a compassionate instinct.
But trauma does not work that simply.
You cannot replace an underground prison with Disneyland and expect the brain to consider the debt paid.
Many children went home physically intact.
Their minds had spent more than a day believing death was possible.
Some believed they would be shot.
Some believed the underground roof would collapse.
Some remembered the smell of the vans.
The guns.
The masked faces.
The hole.
The sound of dirt landing above them.
The darkness.
Those memories did not disappear because everyone survived.
The Children Remembered Everything
The Chowchilla kidnapping later became important not only in criminal history but also in the study of childhood trauma.
Psychiatrist Dr. Lenore Terr studied the children after the kidnapping and again years later.
One striking finding was how clearly many remembered what happened.
They had not simply forgotten because they were young.
According to Terr, the children she interviewed retained detailed memories of the event even years later.
Some developed nightmares.