On 15th July, 1976 at around 4pm, school bus driver Frank Edward "Ed" Ray was transporting 26 students from the Dairyland Elementary School home from a summer class trip to the Chowchilla fairgrounds swimming pool when a van blocked the road ahead of the bus. Frank stopped the bus and was confronted by 3 armed men with nylon stockings covering their faces. 1 of the men held a gun on Frank while another drove the bus; the 3rd man followed in the van.
The kidnappers hid the bus in the Berenda Slough, a shallow branch of the Chowchilla River, where a second van had been stashed. Both vans had the windows in the back painted black and interiors reinforced with panelling. Frank and the children were herded into the 2 vans at gunpoint and then driven around for 11 hours before eventually being taken to a quarry in Livermore, California. There, in the early morning hours of 16th July, the kidnappers forced the victims to climb down a ladder into a buried moving truck that they had stocked with a small amount of food and water and a number of mattresses.
Bus driver Frank and the older children eventually stacked the mattresses, enabling some of them to reach the opening at the top of the truck, which had been covered with a heavy sheet of metal and further weighed down with 2 100 pound industrial batteries. After hours of effort, Frank and the oldest boy, 14 year old Michael Marshall, managed to wedge the lid open with a piece of wood and move the batteries; they then dug away the remainder of the debris blocking the entrance. 16 hours after they had been forced inside the buried truck, the group emerged and walked to the quarry's guard shack near the Shadow Cliffs Easy Bay Regional Park.
The quarry owner's son, 24 year old Frederick Newhall Woods IV, quickly came under suspicion as one of the people who had keys to the quarry and enough access to have buried the moving truck there; he and 2 of his friends, brothers James and Richard Schoenfeld had previously been convicted of grand theft auto, for which they had been sentenced to probation. A warrant was executed on the estate of Frederick's father, and there police recovered one of the guns used in the kidnapping as well as a draft of a ransom note, but the 3 men had fled. Frederick was caught 2 weeks after the kidnapping in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. James Schoenfeld had been captured earlier the same day in Menlo Park, California, while Richard Schoenfeld had voluntarily turned himself in to authorities 8 days after the kidnapping.
The kidnappers had been unable to call in their intended ransom demand of $5 million because telephone lines to the Chowchilla Police Department were tied up by media calls and families searching for their children. They went to sleep at some point on Friday the 16th and woke up late that night to television news reports informing them that the victims had freed themselves and were safe. James later stated that despite coming from wealthy families, both he and Frederick were deeply in debt: "We needed multiple victims to get multiple millions, and we picked children because children are precious. The state would be willing to pay ransom for them. And they don't fight back. They're vulnerable. They will mind."
Some details of the crime corresponded to details in "The Day the Children Vanished", a story by Hugh Pentecost that was published in Alfred Hitchcock's Daring Detectives. A copy of this book was in the Chowchilla public library, and police theorised that it had inspired the kidnappers.
All 3 perpetrators pleaded guilty to kidnapping for ransom and robbery, but they refused to plead guilty to infliction of bodily harm, as a conviction on that count in conjunction with the kidnapping charge carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. They were tried on the bodily harm charge, found guilty and given the mandatory sentence, but their convictions were overturned by an appellate court which found that physical injuries sustained by the children did not meet the standard for bodily harm under the law. They were re-sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Richard Schoenfeld was released in 2012 and James Schoenfeld was paroled on 7th August, 2015.
In October 2019, Frederick Woods was denied parole for the 19th time; his next parole hearing was set for 2024. Over the years, reasons given for the denials have included his continued minimisation of his crime as well as disciplinary infractions for possession of contraband pornography and cellphones.
In 2016, a worker's compensation lawsuit filed against Frederick also revealed that he had been running several businesses, including a gold mine and a car dealership, from behind bars without notifying prison authorities as required. The heir to 2 wealthy California families, the Newhalls and the Woods, he inherited a trust fund from his parents that was described in one court filing as being worth $100 million. He has married 3 times while in prison and had purchased a mansion about 30 minutes away from the prison.
Frank received a California School Employees Association citation for outstanding community service. Before he died in 2012, he was visited by many of the schoolchildren he had helped save. Every 26th February has been declared Edward Ray Day in Chowchilla.
A study found that the kidnapped children suffered from panic attacks, nightmares involving kidnappings and death, and personality changes. Many developed fears of such things as "cars, the dark, the wind, the kitchen, mice, dogs and hippies", and 1 shot a Japanese tourist with a BB gun when the tourist's car broke down in front of his home. Many of the children continued to report symptoms of trauma at least 25 years after the kidnapping, including substance abuse and depression, and a number have been imprisoned for "doing something controlling to somebody else."
In 2016, the 25 surviving kidnapped children settled a lawsuit they had filed against their kidnappers. The money they received was paid out of Frederick Wood's trust fund, and although the exact settlement amount was not disclosed, 1 survivor stated that they had each received "enough to pay for some serious therapy - but not enough for a house."