The last Chowchilla bus kidnapper still incarcerated will be released from the California Men’s Colony after 17 previous parole rejections.
Frederick Newhall Woods IV was 24 when he and two brothers, James and Richard Schoenfeld, held up a school bus in Chowchilla, Calif., on July 15, 1976. Twenty-six children and their bus driver, Ed Ray, were returning from an outing at a community pool when they stopped on the road, thinking the three men were experiencing car trouble. Instead, Woods and the Schoenfeld brothers forced their way onto the bus at gunpoint and ordered everyone onto two vans with blacked-out windows. They were driven to a rock quarry in Livermore, today Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area, and lowered into a truck that was buried underground.
“It was awfully hot and we kept putting water on our heads to cool off,” Ray told Merced Sun-Star in 1976. “We had a hard time trying to keep the children from crying. I had to beg them not to scream.”
After 16 hours of toiling, Ray and some of the older children were able to wedge the weighted-down entrance open and crawl out to safety.
Police quickly zeroed in on the family of the quarry’s millionaire owner, who lived on a 100-acre property in Portola Valley. On a search of the estate, police learned Woods, the quarry owner’s son, had left for Canada. He was arrested there; the Schoenfelds, the sons of an affluent Atherton doctor, were arrested in California. Once in custody, they explained they’d hoped to ransom the children for $5 million (close to $25 million, adjusted for inflation).
“We needed multiple victims to get multiple millions, and we picked children because children are precious,” James Schoenfeld explained at a 2015 parole hearing. “The state would be willing to pay ransom for them. And they don’t fight back. They’re vulnerable.”
All three men pleaded guilty to kidnapping for ransom and robbery and received life sentences. Richard’s parole was approved in 2012 and James in 2015, leaving Woods, now 70, the last one in prison.
On his 18th try for parole, however, Woods was approved in March. He is being released over the objections of some of the kidnap survivors and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who could not overturn Woods’ parole approval because the crime did not involve a murder. Newsom could only ask the parole board to review the case again; their decision held.
Despite spending almost his entire adult life in prison, Woods is allegedly in fine financial shape. In 2019, CBS News reported Woods ran a Christmas tree farm in Creston, the Little Bear Creek gold mine near Lake Tahoe and a used car business in Tehachapi from prison. At that time, he also reportedly owned owned a mansion with Pacific Ocean views. Newsom claimed in his request for the parole board to review the decision that Woods “continued to engage in financial related-misconduct in prison” with his businesses.
“His mind is still evil and he is out to get what he wants,” Jennifer Brown Hyde, who was 9 when she was kidnapped, told the parole board. “I want him to serve life in prison, just as I served a lifetime of dealing with the PTSD due to his sense of entitlement.”
Madera County District Attorney Sally Moreno told the Associated Press on Wednesday that “justice has been mocked in Madera County.”