26 Schoolchildren and a Bus Driver Were Kidnapped, Buried Alive—and Somehow Escaped

On the afternoon of July 15, 1976, one of the largest mass kidnappings in U.S. history took place when three men waylaid a school bus in Chowchilla, Calif., and abducted 26 children and their driver. Their victims were buried alive approximately 12 feet underground in a rock quarry.

The kidnappers spent more than a year planning the crime. One later said they chose to target children because they believed the state would pay a $5 million ransom to save them.

Before any ransom demand was made, the children and driver managed to dig their way out. The three kidnappers were soon arrested and convicted, but the ordeal affected the victims for decades.

July 15 had been a fun-filled, next-to-last day of summer school in the small farming community of Chowchilla. Kids had gone swimming and were still celebrating the country's bicentennial. At around 4 p.m., seven boys and 19 girls, ages 5 to 14, were heading home on a school bus.

The driver, 55-year-old Ed Ray, stopped because a van was blocking the road, which gave three men with guns the opportunity to take control. The children and driver were loaded into two vans, then driven for more than 11 hours. Paneling and painted windows prevented the captives from seeing where they were going.

After 3 a.m. the next day, the vans stopped. One by one, the kidnappers noted their victims' names, took a personal item from each captive and forced them to climb into a hole in the ground. After the last child had descended, the kidnappers pulled up the ladder, closed the opening and buried the group alive.

Parents sounded the alarm when their children didn't come home on July 15. An aerial search found the bus, which had been abandoned in a dry riverbed and hidden under foliage, but there were no clues indicating where the children could be. The FBI and National Guard came to help.

Meanwhile, the kids and Ray were trapped in a buried moving van. The kidnappers had installed two ventilation pipes, and their victims found mattresses, makeshift toilets and some food and water inside. But after several hours, the situation worsened when the roof began to cave in.

Later there was disagreement about who led the escape, but ultimately the children and Ray piled up mattresses and worked to get through a hatch in the roof of the van. To do so, they had to dislodge a manhole cover and two heavy batteries their abductors had placed over the opening. Next, the captives confronted a wooden box the kidnappers had built above the van's roof. Michael Marshall, then 14, spent hours striking the box before breaking through to the surface.

At around 8 p.m. on July 16, after 16 hours underground, the group climbed out of their underground prison. They soon encountered personnel at the rock quarry where they'd been buried. Authorities arrived, and the children were assessed by doctors before they were taken back to Chowchilla.

The group had been buried at a rock quarry in Livermore, Calif., about 100 miles north of Chowchilla. Police learned that 24-year-old Fred Newhall Woods IV, son of the quarry's owner, had been spotted months earlier digging a large hole there. A search of the wealthy family's estate uncovered plans for the kidnapping and a draft of a ransom note.

Police issued arrest warrants for Woods and two of his friends, James and Richard Schoenfeld, brothers who were then 24 and 22 and also from a well-to-do family. Richard turned himself in on July 23, 1976. James was arrested on July 29 in Menlo Park, Calif. That same day, Woods was taken into custody in Canada.

Woods was seen by prosecutors as the mastermind of the plot. Despite their affluent backgrounds, he and James wanted money to settle debts. Authorities also learned why no ransom request was made: Phone lines in Chowchilla were overwhelmed as news spread about the children's disappearance, so the kidnappers couldn't get through. They'd taken a nap and missed their victims' escape.

In 1977, the three pleaded guilty to 27 counts of kidnapping for ransom. They originally received life sentences with no possibility of parole, but after an appellate overturned the original verdict, each man was resentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Richard was paroled in June 2012. In August 2015, James was released. Woods, who had access to a family trust fund and was disciplined for running businesses while behind bars, was granted parole in August 2022.

Soon after their escape, the children were treated to a trip to Disneyland, but they didn't receive any immediate psychological support. The common belief at the time was that the kids would quickly recover.

In November 1976, child psychiatrist Dr. Lenore Terr visited Chowchilla. She conducted a multiyear field study with the young survivors to research childhood trauma. Terr later told CBS News, "Every Chowchilla kid I interviewed suffered from PTSD symptoms for years after the kidnapping and burial alive."

These symptoms showed up in different ways. Many children had nightmares. A year and a half after the abduction, one teenage boy shot a tourist outside his house with a BB gun; the tourist's car had broken down, a reminder of the ruse the kidnappers had used.

Ray, the one adult victim, still had trouble sleeping in 1986, according to his wife, but after the kidnapping he spent another decade driving school buses. He died in 2012 at the age of 91.

Even after the young victims became adults themselves, the ordeal haunted them. Some wouldn't let their own children on buses. One woman admitted she couldn't sleep without a nightlight for decades.

Terr has stated the Chowchilla kids should now be recognized as heroes. Her research with them helped experts better understand the effects of childhood trauma and informed support for children who survived traumatic events like the Oklahoma City bombing and school shootings.