'Nightmare in Chowchilla': Notorious 1976 school bus kidnapping revisited

Whenever a tornado warning forces Jennifer Brown Hyde to seek shelter in a crawl space underneath her family’s Tennessee home, the event triggers a traumatic memory from her past.

Hyde was one of several school children buried alive for 16 hours in 1976 during the largest kidnapping for ransom scheme in U.S. history – a crime that still torments Hyde and other survivors more than 45 years later.

“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.

On July 15, 1976, three masked gunmen stormed a school bus in the small farming town of Chowchilla, Calif., kidnapping 26 children and their bus driver. The men drove them to a dry river bed where they hid the bus and forced their hostages into two windowless vans. The children, ages 5 to 14, were then driven 100 miles away to a rock quarry in Livermore, where they were buried alive in a truck trailer 12 feet underground for some 16 hours.  

“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 your favorite podcast player.

The 54-year-old Hyde, who was 9 years old at the time, said she experienced nightmares about her captors for 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.

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    Many of survivors of the Chowchilla kidnapping gather at the Ed Ray Day celebration on August 22, 1976. Ray, the school bus driver, is pictured back row center next to Michael Marshall.  (Handout courtesy of Jennifer Brown Hyde)

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    In this July 17, 1976 file photo, members of the Alameda County Crime Lab and FBI work around the opening to the van where 26 Chowchilla school children and their bus driver were held captive at a rock quarry near Livermore, Calif. (AP File)

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    Alameda County Sheriff Tom Houchins, left, holds composites of two suspects in the kidnapping of 26 Chowchilla school children as Madera County Sheriff Ed Bates describes the men during a news conference. (AP)

  • Chowchilla truck Image 4 of 14

    In this July 20, 1976 file photo, officials remove a truck buried at a rock quarry in Livermore, Calif., in which 26 Chowchilla school children and their bus driver, Ed Ray were held captive. (AP Photo/James Palmer, file)

  • Van in ground Image 5 of 14

    Officials begin to dig out the truck trailer in the Livermore, Calif. rock quarry, in which 26 Chowchilla schoolchildren and their bus driver, Ed Ray were held captive.  (ALAMEDA COUNTY D.A.’S OFFICE)

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    Officials at the Livermore, Calif. rock quarry, in which 26 Chowchilla schoolchildren and their bus driver, Ed Ray were held captive.  (ALAMEDA COUNTY D.A.’S OFFICE)

  • Chowchilla van prison Image 7 of 14

    California officials allow photographers to take pictures of the inside of this van in Livermore, Calif., on July 24, 1976.  The van was used as a prison for the 26 Chowchilla school children and their bus driver. (AP Photo/Jim Palmer) (AP Photo/Jim Palmer)

  • Chowchilla vans Image 8 of 14

    A transport driver secures one of three vans recovered by Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputies from a warehouse in San Jose, Calif., July 24, 1976. Authorities believe the three vans were used to transport 26 Chowchilla school children and their bus driver Ed Ray, to a rock quarry near Livermore, California. (AP Photo)

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    Families of the 26 children who were abducted from their school bus along with the bus driver await word of their fate outside police headquarters in Chowchilla, July 16, 1976. (AP Photo/Jim Palmer)

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    Chowchilla kidnappers Richard Schoenfeld, James Schoenfeld and Fred Woods  (ALAMEDA COUNTY D.A.’S OFFICE)

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    Fred Woods, James Schoenfeld, Richard Schoenfeld pictured in custody (ALAMEDA COUNTY D.A.’S OFFICE)

  • Ed Ray Image 12 of 14

    Ed Ray, the California school bus driver who was hailed as a hero in the Chowchilla kidnapping. (ALAMEDA COUNTY D.A.’S OFFICE)

  • Fred Woods Image 13 of 14

    Chowchilla kidnapping ringleader Fred Woods  (ALAMEDA COUNTY D.A.’S OFFICE)

  • Jennifer Brown Hyde Image 14 of 14

    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 )

“The screaming to this day is burned into the audio files of my memory,” said survivor Larry Park, who was just 6 years old in 1976. “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.”

At 14 years old at the time, Mike Marshall was the oldest child kidnapped.

“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.

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 remains behind bars and is eligible for parole in 2024.

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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.

Cowan travels 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.
 

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