Looking back at a 'Nightmare'
Fox News Investigative Unit revisits kidnapping of 26 children and bus driver in new podcast 'Nightmare in Chowchilla.'
Last Friday, after serving more than 40 years behind bars, a 70-year-old California man, who kidnapped 26 schoolchildren in 1976, was recommended for parole. Fred Woods, who was denied parole 17 times, was imprisoned along with two other men for kidnapping and burying alive a busload of children and their bus driver.
The crime occurred in Chowchilla, California and is regarded as one of the largest kidnappings for ransom in U.S. history. Now several of the survivors are speaking out about the likelihood of Woods going free.
CALIFORNIA MAN WHO KIDNAPPED 26 CHILDREN, BURIED THEM ALIVE IS RECOMMENDED FOR PAROLE
"He caused a lot of trauma, that is true," says Larry Park, who was just 6 years old at the time. "But at the end of the day, I would much rather hug him and love on him, than hate him, because the hatred was killing me."
"Looking at the positive side of it, as I always try to do, maybe now it will all go away, and they won’t have to bring it up all the time, and we can just move on," said Mike Marshall who at 14 was the oldest child on the school bus.
"I don’t like it, but I never really felt like they were going to spend the rest of their life in prison anyway," he added.
The crime still torments Marshall and other survivors more than 45 years later.
This is a Nov. 9, 2015, photo released by the California Department of Corrections, showing Fredrick Woods. (California Department of Corrections via AP) (AP)
Whenever a tornado warning forces Jennifer Brown Hyde to seek shelter in a crawlspace underneath her family's Tennessee home, the event triggers the traumatic memory. Hyde was also one of the schoolchildren kidnapped and then buried alive for 16 hours.
"We joke and say that's actually my wine cellar – that's how my husband gets me to go in it," Hyde said of the underground shelter at her home, noting she cannot be in a confined space for more than an hour without suffering from debilitating anxiety.
"I remember thinking, ‘I'm gonna die in here,’" Hyde told the Fox News Investigative Unit in its new podcast, "Nightmare in Chowchilla: The School Bus Kidnapping," available now on Foxnewspodcasts.com and other popular podcast players.
The 54-year-old Hyde, who was 9 years old at the time, said she experienced nightmares about her captors for years.
'NIGHTMARE IN CHOWCHILLA': SURVIVORS OF THE 1976 SCHOOL BUS KIDNAPPING REUNITE AFTER 45 YEARS
"The earliest recollection I have of them just soon after the kidnapping was that the kidnappers would line us all up, put an apple on our head and shoot and miss the apple and shoot me in the head," said Hyde. "I would see my own funeral."
The children and their bus driver managed to dig themselves out and escape. But the terror of the kidnapping – which lasted nearly 30 hours – changed their lives forever.
"The screaming to this day is burned into the audio files of my memory," said Park in the podcast. "The screaming and the crying. I've told people before, I can't wait until I get Alzheimer's so that some of this stuff goes away."
"I was just trying to figure out what the heck was going on, because if I could figure out what was going on, then I could maybe figure out a way to get around it," said Marshall.
"And then you hear the dirt and rock and the shovel hitting the top of the trailer and—we're being buried alive," Marshall told Fox News. "My thought process was if we're gonna stay down here and kick the bucket, we might as well kick it trying to get out."
The unlikely captors, brothers James and Richard Schoenfeld and Fred Woods, were directionless young men from affluent families in the Bay Area of San Francisco. They planned the kidnappings for more than 18 months in the hopes of getting easy money. But the trio never had their $5 million ransom demand met because all phone lines to the sheriff’s department were busy with frantic calls from parents and the media.
Survivor Jennifer Brown Hyde pictured at age 9 standing near a granite monument in Chowchilla, Calif. dedicated to the 26 schoolchildren and bus driver Ed Ray. (Handout courtesy of Jennifer Brown Hyde )
Richard Schoenfeld turned himself in eight days after the children escaped, while his brother James and Fred Woods fled the area before they were eventually arrested. The men were sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1978, but that sentence was overturned a few years later. Richard Schoenfeld was granted parole and released from prison in 2012. His brother’s release followed in 2015. Ringleader Fred Woods was recently recommended for parole earlier this month after being denied 17 times.
In "Nightmare in Chowchilla," hosted by senior correspondent Claudia Cowan, find out who the real hero is from the kidnapping, hear an exclusive statement from one of the captors and listen in on the conversation between two survivors who were reunited for the first time in 45 years.
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Cowan traveled throughout California to get firsthand accounts from the people who lived through the ordeal, including several of the survivors and their parents, the sheriff who feverishly looked for the abductors, a TV news producer who covered the story, and a prosecutor who worked on the case.
"Nightmare in Chowchilla: The School Bus Kidnapping" is available on Foxnewspodcasts.com and can be downloaded here.