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A man named Ed Ray is driving a school bus carrying 26 children heading for home on the second to the last day of school when they are stopped by the men who jump from a van that is blocking the road. Ed and the children are driven through the night over 100 miles away to a rock quarry in Livermore California where they are stripped to their underwear and forced to climb down a wooden ladder and into a dark hole.
In town by 6:30pm only a few hours after the school bus, its driver and its 26 passengers have disappeared, the usually sleepy little town of Chowchilla California is wide awake and a flurry of activity. It seems almost everyone in the community as well as many from nearby areas has joined in the search for the 27 missing people. The sheriff's department has a plane searching from the air and on the ground search parties are being formed and people with flashlights, spotlights and headlights are searching everywhere. They search by car, by truck, in jeeps, on foot, on bicycles and motorcycles and even a few on horseback. They are looking for anything and everything that can provide some clue as to what happened to the missing bus and the 27 people on board. Every suspicious vehicle or discarded childs shoe merits a call to authorities. The authorities having only one telephone line going in or outoff the sheriff's office is receiving so many calls the phone lines are completely jammed so most callers received only a recorded message informing them that all circuits were busy and instructing then to try their call again later.
. Another couple hours pass and at last the school bus is located. No one is on board. The bus is quickly searched for any clues, any indication to what happened to the buses passengers but nothing is found. Not one bit of evidence to give any indication of where the 27 missing may be or what has happened to them. It seemed that Ed and the 26 children had vanished into thin air.
. Back at the rock quarry, the last of the children is taken from the van, stripped, their names written on the bag and ordered down the ladder into the dark hole. The final child reaches the bottom of the ladder and like all the children before then, they are comforted to find Ed as well as the rest of the children alive and waiting for them in what appears to be a moving van. After the last child decends, the ladder disappears and the door to the hole is closed and something heavy that sounds metallic is slid on top of it then the sound of two more large items placed on top of the hole and then what is perhaps the most frightening sound of all It's the sound of dirt being thrown onto the container in which they are being held. The 27 captives are all convinced this container will soon become their grave . They are convinced they are being buried alive.
. Upon inspection of their prison they discover that someone has left a small amount of food. They find Wonder Bread, peanut butter, cereal and a few jugs filled with water for them to drink. The supplies are few and everyone knows they will not last long. Holes have been dug in wheel wells to be used as toilets.
The children are again crying, screaming, begging and pleading to be let out but their cries are ignored and after a while there is only silence outside their prison.
. Ed has noticed that the ceiling and sides of the container are already warped from the weight of the dirt which presses in from every side and fears a collapse in the walls or ceiling will occur and cause a complete cave in and that they will suffocate or be squished under the weight of the cave in. He worries, as do many of the children that this will become indeed become their final testing place.
. Bank in town, the FBI has arrived and booked every room in the towns two motels. They have also had 30 telephone lines and operators installed and these too quickly become bombarded with calls, most of which are meet with the recorded message.
. The media has also arrived in the form of news reporters and TV crews and the number of flashbulb lights is enough to rival that of the paparazzi on the red carpet on Academy Award night.
. Back in the trailer, the mood is bleak, the group is depressed and frightened and convinced they will not make it out alive. That the container will indeed become their underground grace. Most of the children are crying, several begging for their parents and most have simply given up any hope of rescue. Have given up any hope of escape. Suddenly the oldest of the children, Michael Marshall, decides he is not going to die without at least trying to escape and with the help of Ed and some of the older children begin dragging mattresses that they have found in the container and stacking then into a pile until at least they are able to reach the top and the hole that they climbed down into and that is also the only way out.
. Michael, Ed and the others are exhausted but they continue to try and move the door and the metal plate which was placed on top of it. They would later learn it was a manhole cover and that two tractor batteries, each weighing 100 lbs had been placed on top of that. At last they are able to move the items and begin the arduous task of trying to dig their way thru twelve feet of dirt.
. They are past exhaustion and the supplies of food and water are almost depleted as is their energy and hope but Michael continues to rally the group and they continue to dig through the dirt and at last, they can see the sky and feel fresh air. Their enthusiasm is renewed and they quickly dig further until at last there is enough room for them to crawl out of the hole which they hurriedly do. They are frightened that they may crawl out only to discover the kidnappers waiting for them with guns pointed at their heads and will again be buried underground to await death. But as one by one the children climb out of their prison, some of the children climbing onto shoulders of the other children in order to be able to reach the top they grow ever more hopeful. Once the last of the children is safely out of the hole they quietly begin walking , not knowing where they were walking to and fearing the kidnappers could be lurking behind every turn. At last, at about 3:30 am they arrive back at the rock quarry where workers believing they are trespassers, literally sound the alarm. Ed immediately steps forward and informs the workers that they are the 27 people missing from Chowchilla. Ed is given coveralls and a Pepsi and police are called. After more than 36 how, 16 of which was spent buried underground believing they were going to die, Ed and the 26 children are finally free.
Back in town, news that they children have been found, are all alive and presumedly well spreads quickly. Hundreds of people gather outside of the police station and fire departments to eagerly await their return.
Back in Livermore, Ed and the 26 children again find themselves on a bus. This time it's a Greyhound and the group is taken to the only facility large enough to accommodate a group of that size... a local jail. It's there that Ed and the children aree given food and drinks, new clothes and seen by a doctor then again loaded back into the greyhound for the last leg of their journey. This time towards home Traveling throughout the night at 4:00 am the Greyhound finally arrived in Chowchilla pulling into an alley behind the police station where Ed and the childreN are reunited with loved ones.
. It's unknown exactly everything the kidnappers do after learning that Ed and the children had escaped. We do know that at one point the three men were in contact by phone and agreed to meet at a desolate warehouse in a remote area where they stashed the vans they had used in the kidnapping. Then two of the kidnappers who would later be identified as Frederick Newhall Woods age 24 and James Schoenfeld also agree 24 would leave town heading for Reno, Nevada where they would hide out before continuing onto their final destination, the Canadian Border.
. The third man, later identified as Richard Schoenfeld, age 22 and James s younger brother would go home where he quickly confessed to his father. His father immediately hired a high priced lawyer for his son. It seems that all the of the men had parents who were still living and financially very well off. The men themselves were more than comfortable financially.
. Richard was the first to turn himself in with the help of his lawyer who negotiated his surrender and the other two men were taken into custody within the next two weeks.
. While the trio were still on the run and being sought by authorities, after learning from a security guard who worked at the rock quarry that the three men had been seen digging in the quarry several months before the kidnapping, police obtained a warrant granting ten permission to search the quarry as well as the home of the man who owned the quarry. This man was the father of Fred Woods, one of the kidnappers.
. As they searched the quarry, workers unearthed the trailer that Ed and the children had been kept prisoner in. The roof of the container was collapsed. Had Ed and the children been inside when it did, the workers would have been unearthing the remains of 27 bodies instead of only the trailer.
. At the home of Woods' Father, they discovered a treasure trove of evidence including a notebook on which someone had written, The Plan," and which laid out the way the kidnappers intended to carry out their plan and what to do if things went wrong. They also discovered the bag with the names of the 27 hostages queen on it. There was even the script which the kidnappers intended to use in order to make their call in which they were to demand 5 million dollars for the safe return of Ed and the children. They never made that random demand because in a strange and ironic twist of date each attempt to contact authorities was meet instead with a recorded message telling then that all circuits were busy and to try their call again later.
. At trial the three kidnappers all would plead guilty to kidnapping and each of the men sentenced to 27 life sentences without the possibility of parole. An works court cutting that because the cringe did not involve violence that tree men deserved a chance at parole and so in 2012, Richard Schoenfeld became the first of the three granted parole. His brother would follow the years later. Fred Woods was recently granted parole but it's currently still behind bars as the decision to grant parole is reviewed. If it's decided that the decision to grant will stand Fred Woods himself will also be a free man in less than three months time.
. In a statement by Ed Ray, the driver of the school bus the night of their escape, Ed said he has learned one very important lesson... Never stop the bus.
By Sagisteen Vanderhoff-Reporter for AV Street Beats
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