05/03/2026
They don’t just ‘GET OVER IT’ - Children and trauma
July 15, 1976. 4:00 p.m.
Chowchilla, California. A quiet farming town of 5,000 in the San Joaquin Valley.
55-year-old school bus driver Frank Edward "Ed" Ray was transporting 26 Dairyland Elementary School students home from a summer class trip to the Chowchilla Fairgrounds swimming pool.
The children were ages 5 to 14. Ed Ray knew every single one of them. Every family. He'd been driving this route for years.
They called him Edward.
At approximately 4 p.m., a van drove into the bus's path and blocked the road. Ray stopped. Three men with nylon stockings covering their faces exited the van. One pointed a gun at Ray. A second drove the bus. A third followed in the van.
Six-year-old Larry Park looked at the men's eyes through the pantyhose. "Where their eyes were," he later said. "It almost looked hollow." CBS News
The kidnappers drove the school bus to Berenda Slough — a shallow dry riverbed nine miles west of town — where they hid it under bamboo and brush.They had two modified vans waiting nearby. The children were forced to jump from the school bus directly into the vans — so they wouldn't leave footprints in the dirt. Women in Aviation International
Inside the vans, the windows had been painted black and the interiors lined with soundproof wood paneling — makeshift prison cells on wheels. Women in Aviation International
Nine-year-old Jennifer Brown Hyde remembers being herded into the dark. "I felt like I was an animal going to the slaughterhouse." CBS News
The doors slammed shut. And 27 people vanished.
By evening, parents were frantic.
Phone lines to the Chowchilla Police Department jammed with calls from terrified families and national media. Police found the school bus abandoned in the slough — covered with bamboo and brush, empty, doors open. No note. No explanation. No children.
Just a bus.
The kidnappers drove for 11 hours. Their convoluted route ended after nightfall at a rock quarry near Livermore — over 100 miles from Chowchilla. JSTOR
Eleven hours in sweltering, pitch-black vans. No water. No bathroom. No food. The younger children cried. The older ones tried to hold it together.
Then the doors opened. And the kidnappers ordered everyone down a ladder. Into a hole. Womeninexploration
They were inside a moving truck trailer. Buried 12 feet below the surface of the quarry. Fox News
The space measured 8 feet by 16 feet. This Day in Aviation The kidnappers had prepared it with mattresses, candles and flashlights, containers of water, boxes of cereal, peanut butter and bread, makeshift toilets carved into the wheel wells, and two ventilation pipes. Then they climbed out, sealed the hatch with a heavy piece of sheet metal weighted down with two 100-pound industrial batteries, filled the hole with dirt, and left. CBS News
Twenty-six children and one bus driver. Buried alive.
Inside the truck, panic set in. The younger children screamed. The candles burned down. The flashlights died. The air grew thick and stale. The California heat pressed in from all sides.
"It was like a coffin," recalled Lynda Carrejo Labendeira, 10 years old at the time. "A giant coffin for all of us." Womeninexploration
Ed Ray gathered the children around him. "We're going to be okay," he told them. "We're going to get out of here."
But the hours kept passing. The thing that broke 14-year-old Michael Marshall wasn't the dark or the heat. "The thing that made me cry was not being able to say goodbye to my mom," he said. "And remembering the last time I saw her." Fox News
He pushed the feeling down. And started to think.
After 16 hours underground, Ed Ray and two of the older children began stacking mattresses to reach the ceiling hatch — covered with a heavy sheet of metal and two 100-pound industrial batteries. This Day in Aviation
They dug. With their bare hands. Clawing through wood, metal, and packed dirt. Marshall cautiously stuck his head out of the hole first, checking whether the kidnappers were waiting above. They weren't. CBS News
After hours of effort, Ray and Marshall wedged the lid open with a piece of wood, moved the batteries, and dug away the remainder of the debris blocking the entrance. Britannica Kids
Fresh air poured in.
One by one, all 27 of them crawled out into the California night.
They walked toward the sound of heavy machinery and found themselves surrounded by men in hard hats. Fox News "I remember Edward saying, 'We're from Chowchilla, and we're lost,'" Jennifer Brown Hyde recalled. Fox News
Alameda County Sheriff's Deputies took them to Santa Rita Jail — the nearest facility with medical staff. Doctors examined them. Gave them food and water. Physically, they were mostly okay — a few bruises, some minor urinary tract problems from holding it in for so long. JSTOR
When 6-year-old Larry Park was finally reunited with his father, he said: "I finally felt safe again." Women in Aviation International
The nation celebrated. Headlines declared the children had "bounced back." One mental health professional predicted only one of the 26 would be emotionally affected.
He was profoundly wrong.
Dr. Lenore Terr, a psychiatrist, arrived in Chowchilla months later. What she found was groundbreaking. Every single child carried lasting psychological scars: nightmares, anxiety, paranoia, depression, fear of cars, the dark, small spaces. Many suffered symptoms for more than 25 years after the kidnapping. Her research transformed the field of childhood trauma psychiatry — proving once and for all that children do not simply "bounce back."
The Chowchilla kidnapping remains one of the most important case studies in the history of childhood trauma research.
The kidnappers were caught within two weeks.
The quarry owner's son, 24-year-old Frederick Newhall Woods IV, quickly came under suspicion — he was one of the few people with keys to the quarry and the access needed to have buried the moving truck there. Britannica Kids The trio — Woods, 24-year-old James Schoenfeld, and 22-year-old Richard Schoenfeld — were arrested. This Day in Aviation All from wealthy San Francisco Bay Area families.
Their plan had been to demand $5 million in ransom — equivalent to nearly $24 million today. But they never got to make the call. The children escaped before the kidnappers could reach the phone. The three pled guilty and were sentenced to life in prison. An appellate court later reduced the sentences to allow for parole eligibility. Richard Schoenfeld was paroled in June 2012. James Schoenfeld was released in August 2015. Frederick Woods was approved for parole in March 2022. This Day in Aviation
All three are free.
Ed Ray never wanted to be called a hero.
He was embarrassed by the attention. He said he was just doing his job. Before he died on May 17, 2012, many of the children he had helped save visited him. He was 91 years old. In 2015, Chowchilla renamed its largest park the Edward Ray Park, and declared February 26 — his birthday — as Edward Ray Day. This Day in Aviation
But the children always knew the full story.
"But Edward was not the only hero," Jennifer Brown Hyde said. Park was blunter: "I was telling people, 'Mike Marshall dug us out. It was Mike that dug us out.' But nobody was listening." Womeninexploration
Michael Marshall — 14 years old, the boy who had pried open the earth and pulled 26 people into the light — was overlooked. Photos from the Ed Ray Day celebration show a forlorn teenager in the crowd, clearly depressed, wondering why he felt so bad when everyone had gotten out alive. Womeninexploration By 19, he was blackout drunk every night. He's been to rehab at least seven times. JSTOR
"Before the kidnapping, I could see so much light ahead of me," he said. "After the kidnapping, I couldn't see anything."
The others carry their own weight.
Jodi Heffington stayed in Chowchilla her whole life. She opened a hair salon. She raised a son. "I think it made me not a good daughter, not a good sister, not a good aunt and especially not a good mother," she said. Women in Aviation International
Larry Park became a pastor. He found forgiveness — for the kidnappers, for the town, for himself. It took decades.
One survivor shot a Japanese tourist's car with a BB gun when it broke down in front of his house — triggered simply by seeing a stranger's vehicle on the road.
uly 15, 1976.
Twenty-six children got on a bus to go home from swimming. They disappeared for nearly 30 hours. They were buried alive 12 feet underground. And they dug themselves out with their bare hands.
All 27 survived. But many continued to report symptoms of trauma at least 25 years later. JSTOR
The kidnappers served their time and went home.
The victims are still serving theirs.
