SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping

The largest ever kidnapping case in the United States went down in the small town of Chowchilla, CA. Learn all about it today. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:44Josh Clark?

  Back in 1976 in Chowchilla, a little town smack dab in the middle of California, a school bus with 26 children aboard was hijacked, and the kids were held for ransom by men looking to make easy money. But man, was this anything but easy for everyone involved. What makes this case so famous, in addition to, you know, the kidnapping of 26 children on their way home from school, is that the kids and the bus driver were buried alive while the kidnappers waited for the ransom. Why don't you join them by listening to this episode?

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:29Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W., Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's here. And this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  You know what I've been singing for two days?

• 2:41Josh Clark?

  Wheels on the bus go round and round?

• 2:44Speaker 03

  No, that's a pretty good guess, though.

• 2:45Josh Clark?

  What?

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, chow chilla.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  I can't get it out of my head, the Godzilla song. Now, all I'm saying over and over is chow chilla.

• 2:57Josh Clark?

  That's a great song. Do you remember who played it?

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Was that Edgar Winter or Johnny Winter?

• 3:05Josh Clark?

  I don't know.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  I think it was one of the Winters.

• 3:07Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  That's my guess.

• 3:09Josh Clark?

  Okay. The Long Winters?

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Definitely not the Long Winters.

• 3:13Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 3:16Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, we're talking about a piece of Americana true crime history that I had no idea about, actually. And I noted, though, because of the timing and because of the location, I hit up my beloved former hippie aunt who lived in San Francisco at the time and was raising kids and said, "Do you remember this?" She said, "Oh, yes, I remember this big time."

• 3:39Speaker 03

  I bet.

• 3:39Josh Clark?

  She had kids that were about to be bus-riding age, and she was not very comfortable with this whole jam.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. It provided discomfort?

• 3:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:50Josh Clark?

  That's one way to put it.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  So, did you even say what the name of it was?

• 3:55Josh Clark?

  No, it's the Chow Chilla School Bus Kidnapping is what people usually refer to it as.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Right. And I think this was a listener who sent this in, and I apologize because I'd usually make note of that, so I can shout them out, but I did not do so in this case. So I missed, I know, boo this. But yeah, this was in 1976 and still stands, according to the sources I saw, as the largest domestic kidnapping in US history.

• 4:27Josh Clark?

  So my aunt says.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah?

• 4:31Speaker 03

  She also said she was not very into it.

• 4:33Josh Clark?

  Right. I was not very comfortable by that.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  It's very disappointing.

• 4:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the largest mass kidnapping for ransom. I'm not sure why that's a qualifier.

• 4:44Josh Clark?

  But it is.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  But, um, yeah, I saw the same thing too, that it still stands. Um, and it was like the idea that the most of anything happened to this little town of Chowchilla in the San Joaquin Valley, about 150 miles southeast of San Francisco. Um, in and of itself is significant, but it was a really terrible, like, most of event that happened to this poor little town, as we'll see.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  All right. So should we just start on July 15th, 1976?

• 5:14Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  All right. We'll paint a picture for you. Uh, you already mentioned where it was between Fresno and San Francisco. Out in a part of California that had some very, very small towns at the time. It's hard to imagine anywhere in California having 4,600 people living there. But, uh, that was the case in the mid 70s in Chowchilla. And it was the next to the last day of summer school. And a bus was being driven after a, because it was summer school, a little fun day trip to a swimming pool, uh, driven by 55-year-old Ed Ray.

• 5:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was a farmer there in Chowchilla himself. Apparently he baled hay like nobody's business.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  That's what I heard.

• 5:55Josh Clark?

  He was married to a woman named Odessa, who was a bank teller at the Bank of America. And he was apparently quite happy being a farmer and then driving kids around on the school bus. Cause even after this, he continued on for another dozen years as the school bus driver.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  That's right. Uh, he had only dropped off a few kids at this point. And there were 19 girls and seven boys on board from five to 14. And, uh, notably, um, the 14-year-old, because he will factor in pretty heavily here.

• 6:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Uh, his name was Mike Marshall. Uh, he wasn't even supposed to be on that bus. He usually got picked up by his mom, but he got busted the night before with some beer. And his mom said, your punishment, you gotta ride that school bus home.

• 6:38Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Tomorrow. And after school, or after the, the trip, apparently he was like, I don't even know what bus to take. Cause I don't do this, but he knew who Ray was. And so he went to Ed Ray and said, hey, man, will you, uh, I don't know if this is my bus or not, but you take me home. And Ed Ray is Ed Ray. So he went, sure.

• 6:55Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Off the board.

• 6:56Josh Clark?

  So.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  Thank goodness he said that.

• 6:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So after that, that third stop, there were 26 kids and Ed Ray on board and Ed Ray was continuing along his route and he turned onto a street called Avenue 21. And as he turned on to Avenue 21, Ed Ray found that there is a, a white van blocking the road. And apparently he started to go around it and then I guess thought the better of it and wanted to stop and see if they needed any help instead. And when he did, he realized very quickly that he was actually being hijacked because when you see a man with a long gun and pantyhose on his head, um, you're probably being hijacked.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  That's right. Uh, the first thing he saw was this one guy who said, open the door. And then, uh, he realized there were a couple of other guys. Same MO, I think they had shotguns, uh, with the pantyhose and they said, get in the back. Uh, we'll take over the driving from here. Uh, if you've watched the movie, did you see any of that?

• 8:00Josh Clark?

  No, no, I haven't yet.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  We'll get to it. There's a, there's a Lifetime movie that came out in the nineties. Uh, I think 93, it looks like it was made in 83 somehow. That is on YouTube and I, I highly recommend scrubbing through it.

• 8:15Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Uh, I wouldn't say watch the whole thing. Cause I don't know if you'll be able to, but Carl Malden.

• 8:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Played Ed Ray. And, uh, I don't know if it's true to the story, but he gave them a lot of guff about getting out of that driver's seat in the movie.

• 8:31Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 8:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm not sure if that happened in real life or not.

• 8:34Josh Clark?

  It's a Malden improv, if I've ever heard one.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Yes. And I'm not getting out of my seat.

• 8:41Josh Clark?

  Right. My feet hurt.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  So, uh, he eventually did though, and they drove, um, they drove that bus followed by the van, uh, for a bit, and then eventually transferred those kids to that van and another identical van. Um, and you know, they, I think we should point out a few smart things these guys did along the way, cause they mainly did dumb things. Uh, but the kidnappers did make them jump from the school bus to the van. So they wouldn't leave footprints.

• 9:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And in these vans, they had all the kids and Ed Ray in the vans now, two vans. And they had kind of like decked these vans out. It was kind of a shoddy manner of adding plywood partitions to keep the kids from getting out, from anybody being able to see, and I think they painted over the windows. And then they drove those kids around for 11 hours in the backs of those vans with no potty breaks, no food, no water, no nothing. They just drove them around for 11 hours in July, the middle of July, in the San Joaquin Valley, pretty mercilessly before finally arriving at the destination, which ultimately

• 9:56Josh Clark?

  was only 100 miles away from where the kids had been kidnapped. I think they just wanted to disorient the kids.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that was kind of smart as well, because they could have been, you know, 11 hours away if they managed to escape or something.

• 10:10Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  One of the girls years later did say that she saw through a crack that they were up there with the AC going, drinking sodas and have a good old time. And the kids and Ed Ray are back there just suffering, just terrified, obviously, of what's going on.

• 10:25Josh Clark?

  Right, that was Jennifer Brown Hyde who said that, and she has not, she's not very happy with this whole thing, still to this day, from what I understand.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, as you could imagine.

• 10:35Josh Clark?

  So finally, at 3:30 AM on Friday morning, they were hijacked around after 3:30 on 3:30 PM on Thursday. They finally stopped driving at 3:30 in the morning, Friday morning, and they arrive at a rock quarry. They're in Livermore, California, apparently, again, it's 100 miles away from Chowchilla. And this is the, what the kidnappers see as the final destination for these kids until they're ransomed off, until the authorities cough up the money. And what they've done is bury a moving van line trailer, so like a huge moving truck, the trailer part of it, they buried it a total of 12 feet underground and have covered it with four feet of dirt.

• 11:21Josh Clark?

  And they've opened a hole, put a ladder in, and told the kids, get down there, and Ed Ray too.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  That's right. And as the kids were going down, and this is kind of points to the direction of how dumb these guys were and how unprepared they were, even though they, it turns out, would have planned this thing for well over a year. They wrote down their names and their phone numbers and contact and parents' names, not on a clipboard, legal pad, but on the back of a Jack in the Box wrapper.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  So, and then they took apparently some kind of piece of clothing from each kid, because the idea was, once again, is that they have many, many kids that should bring many, many monies and dollar bills their way.

• 12:04Josh Clark?

  Exactly. And the fact that they're kids means that people do anything to keep them safe. So, these guys figure they've got a pretty good payday with 26 kids that they're now holding hostage in a buried moving van trailer. And in the trailer, they had done a little more than they had in the van. So, they had peanut butter, Cheerios, some bread down there, some water, but definitely not enough to keep all those people alive for a very long time. They'd also thought of bathrooms. They made bathrooms in the wheel wells. And they dropped ventilation tubes with some fans to force air into the van. So, there was fresh air down there, but not a lot, from what I understand.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. And the one fateful mistake they made was that, for their comfort, they included some old box springs and mattresses and stuff for them to sit on and lay on, which would end up being their undoing. Should we take a break?

• 13:04Josh Clark?

  I think we should, because now you've got 26 kids buried in a buried trailer right now in Livermore, California, at 3:30 in the morning. Not a good thing to happen.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  That's right. So, we'll pick up with what's going on in Chowchilla, right after this.

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• 17:13Speaker 02

  All right, so in Chowchilla, that bus doesn't come back. So obviously, everyone freaks out pretty quickly.

• 17:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  An entire school bus full of kids, and a very trusted man about town. Like, people knew, you know, it's a small town. People knew Ed Ray. And he was a good guy, by all accounts. They were all missing. So the very first thing that happens is they locate the school bus, which had been hidden with some bamboo and camouflage. But they did find the bus right away, which...

• 17:44Speaker 03

  You know, on one hand, that's good because they have a lead. On the other hand, that just sends this thing into the stratosphere as far as panic goes.

• 17:51Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Because where are these kids?

• 17:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I saw also that the bus had basically no clues on it whatsoever. So it's like, we found the bus, but that doesn't help at all. So yeah, I'm sure they were panicked by that. So it became pretty clear pretty early on that the Chau Chilla sheriff, a guy named Ed Gates, was going to need some help. So the FBI came to town. Apparently, they booked every one of the hotel rooms in the two hotels in town. They brought like all the state law enforcement agencies, like everybody just converged on this town to help out because it made national news like almost instantaneously. I saw somewhere Chuck that like this is during the bicentennial

• 18:37Josh Clark?

  and the bicentennial just been going on and going on and going on. And there was still bicentennial stuff going on and this stopped it. Like this kidnapping, news of this kidnapping stopped the bicentennial celebration dead in its tracks. It was the end of it, not just for this town, but for the whole country.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I mean, this went right up to President Ford at the time and obviously Governor Jerry Brown. So they threw everything they could at it. The media descended upon Chau Chilla like super fast. And because it's the media, you start getting these these terrible stories about like, well, maybe because, you know, they'd never caught Zodiac and this was just six or seven years, I think, after the final, what would end up being the final killing. So they said, maybe it was a Zodiac because they made reference to wiping, he made reference to wiping out a school bus at one point.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  Any tip that came in, they had to follow. There's a shoe on the side of the road. So they have to track down that tip. There was a novel in 1958 called The Day The Children Vanished, where the the gang of people abducted a busload of kids just to bring people out of town and distract them while they robbed a bank.

• 19:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Ray's wife worked at the bank, like you said, so they put a bank under surveillance. So there were, you know, it was, I don't know if I would describe it as a panic because the FBI was on the scene in the state California Bureau of Investigation. So they were doing good work, but there was a frenzy of activity.

• 20:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I, I think the sheriff had all the help he possibly needed to chase down all these leads and everything, but from what I saw, there was just not much to go on. There were, they were just dead ends left and right. And so like, there was, there was a, just an enormous amount of panic and terror in the town. Families started converging on the firehouse, the local firehouse, for some reason, I'm not sure why, but it became like the, the meeting place for anybody concerned about the fate of the kids. And this is where news would first be broken, and I think the media probably hung around there too. So you can only begin to imagine how anxious the parents were, and then the town, and

• 20:45Josh Clark?

  then apparently the whole country was, was anxious as well. And so it was really kind of surprising when all of a sudden, at about, I think about 8:00 PM, the next night, Saturday night, so the kids had been gone for almost, uh, the...

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Carry the one.

• 21:05Josh Clark?

  About 30 hours, 32 hours, something like that at this point?

• 21:09Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 21:10Josh Clark?

  32 hours of terror, when all of a sudden, at that quarry, some people are working, and a man and a bunch of kids run over, and it turns out to be the kidnapping victims, who just present themselves to a security guard at the, at the quarry in Livermore, who gets on the phone and says, "We found them."

• 21:29Speaker 03

  That's right. Amazing. And you would think, "Well, pretty sensational story," but it was a very short span of time, and all the kids were fine, so why is it really a story? It's a story because, as we'll see, the trauma that they suffered emotionally, and how it went down, and who these people were who kidnapped them. But, before we get to those dum-dums, let's talk about the escape. They were down there about 12 hours, and running out of food and water. The roof, you know, they had a lot of weight on this moving van roof, and those things aren't super strong. So this thing was, you know, kind of dented in, and it seemed like it might cave in. And they were worried, that they just couldn't stay there, basically. And this is where the story...

• 22:13Speaker 03

  I mean, I guess we'll cover both points of view. The immediate history and aftermath. Ed Ray saved the day because he was the only adult there. So obviously, he was the one that broke those kids out of there. Years later, you know, we mentioned Mike Marshall, the 14 year old that wasn't supposed to be on that bus. And he was far and away the oldest kid there and the most capable to help. Years later, after a while of the story of Ed Ray, he finally came out and said, oh, you know, Ed Ray's a good guy. I don't want to disparage him, but like, it was my idea and I was the one that really led the charge to escape. And he was a big mess, kind of crying in his hands that they were doomed and dead.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  And he got on board and helped me, but it was really me. And the reason I kind of believe that after reading all the accounts is it took many years for him to kind of come out with this. And it felt like he even felt bad for saying so. So I think that Mike Marshall, in fact, did lead the charge to escape.

• 23:17Josh Clark?

  Well, his, his account was corroborated by another guy named Larry Park, who wrote a book called The Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapping, Why Me? And I don't know if he corroborated in that or in an interview later on, but he was there and he said that that's true, that that's how it went down. On the other perspective, the fact that like when Ed Ray, like lived the rest of his life, he stayed in Chowchilla. Most of those people, kids who've been kidnapped with him stayed in Chowchilla. When he was dying, those same kids as adults now came and visited him at his bedside, say goodbye. There's plenty of opportunity for, you know, little town to start talking, you know, whispers and that kind of thing. And that doesn't seem to have happened.

• 24:02Josh Clark?

  He seems to have died, considered a hero as well. So my take on it, Chuck, is that he may have been a gloom and doom about their prospects to begin with. And maybe it really was Mike Marshall who said, no, we need to, we need to try to get out of here. But even Mike Marshall said, after a while, once Mike Marshall started to try, Ed Ray joined in and started helping and that they might not have been able. Yeah, they might not have been able to get out had a grown man not been helping them like push against this.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Totally agree. I think we're, I think we park our cars in the same garage here.

• 24:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, look at them. They're both heroes.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  So here's how they got out. They took those mattresses and stacked them up. And they took apart one of they kind of smashed one of the box springs, uh, which are framed in wood. And they started using that wood as like a sort of makeshift crowbar to try and what these guys kidnappers had done is they put um, some sort of iron plate. I've seen manhole, but it was some kind of heavy metal plate.

• 25:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  Over the thing, uh, along with two industrial tractor batteries, which are super heavy. And then dirt. So there's ended up being several hundred pounds kind of weighing this thing down. Uh, this escape hatch, but they were able after hours and hours to finally kind of use that wood to pry open just enough to where they see starlight and dirt leaking in. And with the help of Ed Ray and in his, you know, manly man strength, they were able to climb out of there. Mike Marshall was.

• 25:31Josh Clark?

  So Mike Marshall climbed out and then from that moment on. And so apparently also Ed Ray was really worried. And I guess Mike Marshall was too, but it was not a deterrent for him. But they were worried that there was at least one or more of the kidnappers hanging around with a gun.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Oh, they didn't know what was going on there.

• 25:48Josh Clark?

  So there was a good chance to in their minds that they were going to poke through and just be shot on sight.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 25:54Josh Clark?

  So they were worried about that. Uh, and luckily when Mike Marshall poked his head up, he saw that there was no one around. There's nobody guarding it. They'd it turned out that they had long since left. And that so Mike Marshall had Ed Ray start handing kids up to him. And they got all the kids out and then Ed Ray out and Mike Marshall ran into the woods to hide. So in case the kidnappers were still around, they just hadn't seen them yet. And those kids were intercepted by him. At least Mike Marshall would be able to run away through the woods and get help.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Very smart.

• 26:25Josh Clark?

  But it turned out the kidnappers weren't there and somebody luckily was still working at the quarry. I believe including a security guard when Ed Ray and the kids ran up and presented themselves. So that's how, uh, and then I guess the guy got on the phone and, uh, within moments of that happening, the news made it back to Chowchilla that they'd all been found safe and they were all alive and generally unharmed. And, um, Ed Ray was basically automatically hailed as a hero.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Uh, Carl Malden, uh, Carl Malden was certainly portrayed as the hero.

• 26:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  In the Lifetime movie.

• 26:59Josh Clark?

  They said, do you have anything you'd like to say? And he said, just that my feet hurt.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  And you know, we again want to point out, this was 36 hours from beginning to end. But these kids were, didn't know what was going on above ground. They were hot, they were, you know, stripping down to their underwear. Carl Malden was in his underwear even in the movie.

• 27:22Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  They were running out of food and water. So as a five to 14 year old, I mean, Ed Ray was in hysterics. You're, you think you're gonna die down there. So it may not have been, you know, a kidnapping that lasted days and weeks, but that doesn't minimize the trauma that these kids suffered down there, completely not knowing what was going on above ground and daring to escape, not knowing if they were, all of a sudden that van was gonna come speeding down the road after like, it took a while until they felt safe, I think.

• 27:53Josh Clark?

  And then on top of that Chuck, you'd said it kinda earlier, but I think it really bears repeating, they were really worried that the roof of this thing was going to cave in. Four feet of dirt on top of a moving van roof that had been, in the perpetrator's defense, had been reinforced with lumber, but not very well. That's a lot of weight hanging, pushing down on this. And if you see pictures of what the thing looked like from inside, I could see how they would have been very nervous that the thing was gonna cave in on them and crush them.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, like the pictures of it afterward, that roof was in the process of caving in.

• 28:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It was very nerve wracking.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Of course, if that would have happened, the dirt probably would have caved in and gotten some of them dirty and then they could crawl out.

• 28:39Josh Clark?

  I hope so, hopefully that's how it would have happened.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Who knows, but you know, like I said, they didn't know what was going on down there.

• 28:44Josh Clark?

  No, they didn't. So, but now they're free, they're, they're, they're safe. And the authorities go get them, the FBI, the sheriff, everybody's interviewing them. This is hours, this is more hours for the parents back in Chowchilla having to wait. And then there was a Greyhound bus that went and got them and brought them back. It was pretty sweet. There was a lot of donations going on, like apparently Pacific Bell donated not just new phones, but new phone lines, because there were so many calls being made by the authorities and by the press, which we'll factor in in a second. They, the Greyhound bus lines donated that bus ride, which is worth mentioning. I guess the FBI donated their time. Who knows?

• 29:29Speaker 03

  No, they get paid.

• 29:30Josh Clark?

  But there was a, okay, there was a lot of, um, there's just like a lot of banding together to support this town as they were going through this. And I just thought it was cool. There's a Greyhound bus that rolled up with everybody inside and they got off and they're like, I'm never getting on one of those again.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Well, I did kind of wonder, I was like, maybe we should send like a few, or not even vans, send 12 cars. No buses, no vans.

• 29:56Josh Clark?

  That's a good.

• 29:56Speaker 03

  You know what I'm saying?

• 29:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying. Or just make them walk the 100 miles.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  And of course, the kids got to go to Disneyland.

• 30:04Josh Clark?

  That was a big one.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  They got a hero's welcome. They got a parade. They got to go to Disneyland and it was, as soon as the town went from the saddest place on earth to the happiest place on earth in the span of 36 hours.

• 30:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they had a huge feast. I saw that, um, Ed Ray won a vacation, uh, that he appeared on Hollywood Squares, which was, that's peaks, that's peak exposure in the mid 70s.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  76? Sure.

• 30:31Josh Clark?

  And Chuck, there's one other little fact that we have to say about this, that Robert Goulet recorded a song called The Ballad of Chowchilla Ray. It's so obscure, it is not on YouTube. Some either cursed or blessed soul put it on SoundCloud.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can find, there's a cover version on YouTube.

• 30:52Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  From another person.

• 30:54Josh Clark?

  I couldn't find it.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  But I recommend the SoundCloud Goulet version. It is, uh, it is a product of the 1970s in every way.

• 31:03Josh Clark?

  It's unlistenable.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  I made it through most of it.

• 31:06Josh Clark?

  But did you make it through all of it?

• 31:10Speaker 03

  I made it through most of it, then I skipped to the end.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  It was something else, because it's sort of like disco, but it's also that very 70s thing when they wrote these story songs, like about the, the kid, uh, jumping off of the Tatcha Hachi Bridge or whatever, not Tatcha Hachi, what was it? Billy Joe McAllister. Like, they wrote these songs in the 70s, these weird sort of folk story songs.

• 31:34Josh Clark?

  A ballad?

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, but not, I mean, a ballad can be like a love song. These were like folk stories.

• 31:41Josh Clark?

  I thought a ballad meant it was like told a story.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  Maybe, but I think of ballads as love songs generally.

• 31:48Josh Clark?

  But a love story.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Like the Air Supply wrote ballads, they didn't write songs about folk heroes jumping off of bridges, you know, they should have.

• 31:58Josh Clark?

  Sure. Well, I don't know, there's really nothing Air Supply could have done to have improved their game. They were pretty much.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  They still sound great.

• 32:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah. One of the best concerts I ever saw in my life was Air Supply in Jacksonville, Florida.

• 32:12Speaker 03

  It's amazing.

• 32:13Josh Clark?

  It was, it was amazing. I said it before and I'll say it again. It was like the fabric of reality was coming apart at the seams and we were right, right there to witness it. It was so cool.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  I didn't know you took ecstasy at that show. That's amazing.

• 32:30Josh Clark?

  I didn't. That was, that's what's so significant about it. We were totally sober.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. What was it about? Was it just songs from your childhood or something?

• 32:40Josh Clark?

  No, it was, I mean, yes, that was part of it. It was great to hear all those songs and see them live. It was the chemistry between the two dudes. They still got it after all these years is really neat to see. And, but what really kind of made it unreal was it was, it almost had the same feeling as like a really energetic tent revival. Like people were, were wandering down the aisles. Like, like you could tell they were moving, not necessarily of their own will. They were being drawn toward the stage. It was, it was bizarre. It was so cool to see. People were just out of their minds at this Air Supply show and, and like we're, I don't think any of them were on ecstasy

• 33:24Josh Clark?

  either. I think like everybody was like, people were with their moms or with their kids or it was just a neat, neat show. I'll never forget it ever.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  Amazing. So go see Air Supply. I'm sure they're playing a third rate casino near you.

• 33:39Josh Clark?

  Probably. They, they definitely do the work for sure.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  They supply you with more than air though, it sounds like.

• 33:44Josh Clark?

  Dude, and the, um, the, the guy's voice still is a hundred percent as good as it was in the seventies, which is pretty significant.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  I was watching some vids the other day, live vids of them recently. It's a good thing to do, sit around, but definitely check out the song on SoundCloud.

• 34:01Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 03

  And listen to as much of it as you can.

• 34:04Josh Clark?

  You won't make it all the way through. The Ballad of Chow Chilla Ray. It's so bad. Now I understand why Elvis would shoot the TV whenever Robert Goulet came on. It was because of that, because of that song.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  Robert Goulet. Is that why he shot the TVs?

• 34:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for some, apparently no one knows why, but whenever Robert Gueye would come on, he would shoot his TV. Sometimes he'd get really mad and shoot his toaster, or his oven, or whatever.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 34:28Josh Clark?

  But he would shoot the TV.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  That's pretty good. All right. So, these kidnappers, getting back to the story of the Chowchilla school bus kidnapping, these guys were three real low-rent scumbags who were, didn't have a penny to their name, and were desperate for cash, right?

• 34:48Josh Clark?

  In some ways, kind of, but if, they were also all three rich kids, if you can put those two things together.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  They were three rich, white kids, one specifically.

• 35:00Josh Clark?

  Uber rich.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  A literal trust fund kid.

• 35:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 03

  He was the ringleader. We're talking about Fred Woods, James Schoenfeld, who were 24, and then James's younger brother, Richard, who was 22. But Fred Woods, Frederick Newhall Woods the Fourth, was the ringleader. And the, I guess you could call it the brains, if there was a brain behind this. But he came from a long line of California money. His, one of his ancestors was Henry Mayo Newall, who came in the 1850s to California. Part of Santa Clarita is Newall, California, named for him. They made a ton of money in real estate speculation, and railroads, and then eventually oil, and ranching, and had

• 35:47Speaker 03

  a several hundred million dollar family fortune.

• 35:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I read that they made-

• 35:54Speaker 03

  In the 70s.

• 35:55Josh Clark?

  About 350 million a year, in the 70s. A year. Just that family doing nothing. And by the time this guy, Fred Woods the Fourth, came along, there were generations of this family that had never worked a day in their life. So it's not like his parents struck it rich and they remembered their roots. Like, their roots were just gobsmackingly wealth, is wealthy, that's what they're, that's what they knew. And apparently Fred was not particularly paid attention to by his parents, and it had some effects on him. And I saw also that he had trouble living up to his father's expectations for him.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  A but do nothing blue blood?

• 36:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but that his his dad's approval meant a lot to him.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:43Josh Clark?

  That's a terrible position for any, any person to be in. And I feel for him in that respect. And I also think from, from what I saw, there's a New York Times article about him while I believe he was still at large. Where he said that he's described as a loser in the headline.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:02Josh Clark?

  The New York Times calls him a loser, at least as other people call them a loser in their headline. Uh, he was that kind of person. And again, it was the seventies, but he was also that kind of person. He's just a, he was, he was the product of wealthy neglectful parents, from what I can tell, and also an education system that seems to have failed him, at least in the grammar portion.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. We'll get to that. Uh, he was, didn't have a lot of friends. He never really had a ton of girlfriends. Um, he, which is ironic because he ended up being married four times, which we'll get to. Uh, he lived in a converted apartment in a outbuilding on the nearly 80 acre estate in, um, Portala Valley where his grandmother lived and his parents lived, even though they were traveling by themselves usually. Uh, he got a job at that rock quarry. Your first indication that they may not have had the smartest plan.

• 37:58Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  Because his dad owned it. Uh, and he was into cars. He collected cars with his money, the, the, um, the ringleader did. He had dozens and dozens of cars. His buddy, James, who helped him, uh, he was rich too, not that kind of rich, but his, uh, parent, uh, his dad was a podiatrist. So they had doctor money, so they were doing pretty well as well. Uh, and they got into various businesses together. They had a used car business together. They never did super well, it seemed like in any of their business ventures, because it seemed like they weren't super smart.

• 38:29Josh Clark?

  Right. Another good descriptor is that Fred, in particular, loved his cars and he loved to shoot the windows out of his cars with his guns, which he also loved.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, they had a lot of guns between them as well. I mean, it's sort of what you think. There were these rich kids who weren't paid attention to, that could do whatever they wanted, and ended up getting into trouble. He had, Fred had designs on being a film producer, and part of the concept for this kidnapping was the school bus kidnapping in the movie Dirty Harry.

• 39:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  And he said, hey, this would make a great movie, too, which we'll get to sort of the bowtie on that later on. But he and James ended up losing some money, about 30 grand on a housing deal. And depending on the reports you read, some people say they were desperate for money. But if you talk to James, he said, I wanted to buy a Ferrari with it.

• 39:22Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Because my neighbors had Ferraris, and it was to keep up with the Jones situation.

• 39:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, Fred was born into it, and I think took money largely for granted. But James and Richard, but James in particular, really kind of felt new to the area and didn't fit in because they didn't have as much money. I think their dad was punching above his weight class socio-economically in the area that they moved to. And his sons kind of suffered for it because they felt out of place because they just, they just did not have anywhere near the kind of wealth that their peers had where they now lived. And that seems to have gotten to James, and that was his big motivation. I never saw Fred Wood's motivation, did you?

• 40:06Speaker 03

  I mean, I think part of it had to do with that 30 grand in debt. But I think part of it, dude, is he was a bored, rich kid in some ways.

• 40:14Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Like, that may have been the reason.

• 40:16Josh Clark?

  So, yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  And dumb.

• 40:18Josh Clark?

  I also, yeah, and dumb. Also, I have the impression that James and Rick Schoenfeld were a lot more moral than Fred Wood was.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:29Josh Clark?

  Apparently, in his journal, James wrote at the time that he was worried he was becoming immoral, as they were like really planning this. And he and his brother were both Eagle Scouts. So I guess it is fair to say that they kind of fell under the influence of Fred Woods, who had no qualms about this whole thing. He convinced them to give up their qualms as well.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the last time I'll say the word smart thing that they did was when they were initially hatching the idea, they said, we saw on the news, California, state of California has a $5 billion budget surplus. And we're not going to get money kidnapping a kid or even 26 kids from their parents, for their parents to pay ransom. But if they were on a school bus, then it's the responsibility of the state of California. And they've got all this dough, so 5 million bucks is chump change to them.

• 41:28Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  So if we get them on a school bus, then they're liable, and that's how we're going to get the most money.

• 41:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and so the calculation that they made was that there was, nobody was going to get hurt. They knew that they weren't going to physically hurt those kids.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:42Josh Clark?

  They knew that California had a budget surplus, but even more than that, that their insurance company, the state, whoever insured the state, would end up actually paying that $5 million, and that they were just basically taking $5 million from the state that the state didn't really need, and that nobody was going to get hurt. And then that calculation, it really kind of reveals like how much they did lose any kind of morality, which is, they did, they utterly failed to take into account like the psychological and emotional damage they were going to inflict on these kids and their parents, and the town in general, you know?

• 42:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that, because I think, I think even in the end, they saw it as like not the biggest deal.

• 42:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Because no one was hurt, and it was really quick. But like when I saw, and eventually spoiler, we'll go ahead and say that the two brothers were eventually paroled, and we'll get to all that, but you know, the, the news teams in 2015 were like following this guy around in a parking lot, asking him questions, and he's just trying to avoid it. And one of them was like, you do realize the trauma these kids have still suffered into adulthood? And he just went, you know, I've heard, so I've heard, and then just like quickly ran away. So even to this day, they're trying to get them to realize that there was a real impact in, in. And the end result was trauma and PTSD.

• 43:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and the reason it did and it had the impact and part of the problem for Chowchilla, apparently Chowchilla was just transformed immediately. Like, you know, when, when, if you're the victim of a crime, you, you wonder like, why, why me? Especially a random crime. And this is a random crime perpetrated on a whole town.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:28Josh Clark?

  Like Chowchilla was a possible town among a number of towns in the area that those three traveled to and staked out and just kind of tried to figure out what the best, the best victim would be for this crime and they just settled on Chowchilla. They had no grudges against Chowchilla, they had no ties to Chowchilla. But the problem was they didn't care about the people of Chowchilla or how they felt about their children or what they were going to do to them. It was just a random, they chose them basically randomly. And Chowchilla is the kind of rural farming town where people don't talk about their feelings. I think I get the impression that they still think that that's weak. It shows a sign of weakness.

• 44:12Josh Clark?

  And so I don't really have the impression that the town has ever really processed this and that they've tried to forget. And then there's a lot of problems among the victims who are now in their like 50s

• 44:26Josh Clark?

  that, that have never really been resolved or worked out because the town just tried to carry on as if it never happened, basically from the get go.

• 44:36Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, I mean, some of them got, had very hard luck stories, getting into drugs, eventually getting better and going through rehab and treatment and writing books about it. Others say they don't trust people, they suffered nightmares for years, some continue to. Others have said that they don't even really remember much of what happened. I imagine if you're five years old, you're not going to remember as much as a 12 year old, obviously.

• 45:00Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 45:00Speaker 03

  So depending on your age group, you may have suffered some more obvious lasting damage. But they were all damaged. The way these guys got caught is, well, I guess let's tell a little bit of that story. During the investigation, one thing they found in, and we'll put this in the dumb column, on the property of where, where Fred lived, they found a plan written out that said at the top, "Plan."

• 45:32Josh Clark?

  Yep, I think in all lowercase.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  Kidnapping plan.

• 45:35Josh Clark?

  Didn't even capitalize the P.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, they wrote it out in pen and they had a lot of ideas. They wanted to buy an X-ray machine.

• 45:42Josh Clark?

  I think they did.

• 45:43Speaker 03

  To, to, uh, to X-ray in case the ransom money was bugged. They had a larger plan. They had one plan about them, the state dropping the money from a plane in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

• 45:56Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  Uh, at a specific drop site indicated by a series of lights. Uh, but they also had this larger plan of putting dummies in a plane with parachutes. And it was sort of all over the map, this plan over the course of a year and a half.

• 46:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there, there was, this really reveals, I think, a lot about them as well. That on that plan sheet, it said, one of the line items was burn the plan.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:22Josh Clark?

  They just didn't get around to that. They left instead.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's, I think, too.

• 46:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they had a lot of like, scratch outs and misspellings. And apparently it referred to Fred by name in the ransom note that they were planning to give to the authorities. Like, really dumb stuff. They were trying to throw the authorities, they were trying to sniff the authorities off the case, I guess. By posing or presenting themselves as a satanic group. And they said that their, their name was Beelsabub, but they misspelled Beelsabub.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:55Josh Clark?

  Um, they spelled it B E A L S A B U B, um, which is just offensive to anybody who knows how to spell that word. Um, it's just like, if you misspell things in your ransom note, like, you're not going to do very well for yourself, most likely.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  That's right. Uh, in the aftermath of the kidnapping, from when they buried the kids to when they left, the plan was, call the Chowchilla Police Department, demand your $5 million ransom.

• 47:27Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  But the Chowchilla phone system was very small. And there were, obviously, when you kidnapped 26 kids and the media is descending, every phone line was busy. They literally could not get through with their ransom demand. The kids escaped before they even got through with a ransom demand.

• 47:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  Uh, I think you said the donation from the phone company, they literally had to go in and install like dozens of phone lines just so the FBI could operate effectively.

• 47:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they never.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  So what did these guys do right afterward when they couldn't get through?

• 48:03Josh Clark?

  They decided they needed to scram, that the jig was up and they needed to part ways and they did. Fred Woods was wily enough to have come up with a passport with the name Ralph Snyder. And he traveled successfully to British Columbia, I think Vancouver, under that fake passport. But then when he was there, he started writing to people. He had a friend who was, I think, in film school and said, "Hey, you should turn this into a whole, like a whole, a whole movie."

• 48:36Speaker 03

  This kidnapping that I did?

• 48:38Josh Clark?

  Right. "Just give me some of the, the box office, I guess." But he said, "But be fair."

• 48:43Speaker 03

  He wanted a piece.

• 48:44Josh Clark?

  He said, "Be fair," but he spelled, he spelled it F A R E.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:49Josh Clark?

  So that's, I'm sorry, this is just annoying me to no end, the misspellings.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  The misspellings.

• 48:55Josh Clark?

  But, but then he signed the letter, sent it as Ralph Snyder. He sent it as his alias. So the cops, the FBI tracked him, like, within days to Vancouver and got the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to arrest him.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  I wonder, he knew the guy, though, in film school. I wonder if this guy was like, "Who is this?"

• 49:16Josh Clark?

  It was Ralph Snyder.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  Or if he put in parentheses, "That's my alias. This is Fred."

• 49:23Josh Clark?

  "Don't tell the FBI." But he misspelled FBI.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  So Rick, the younger Schoenfeld, for his part, almost immediately confessed. He got home after the three of them met up and then split up, went home and told his dad what he did. His dad, because they had money, again, as a podiatrist, got him a lawyer, toot sweet. And so that's why we don't know exactly, that's one reason we don't know exactly what happened in those first, like, you know, hours afterward, is because the lawyer kind of kept that all quiet, although I did see a news report that said they, they took naps. I don't know if that's true or not, but I did see that.

• 50:03Josh Clark?

  It sounds right. It holds up if you put it up against everything else.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  And keep in mind, once again, they took these kids to a quarry that Fred Wood's dad owned and where Fred Woods worked. And the quarry security guard said, when they were interviewed, said, "Well, yeah, last week Fred and two other guys dug a big hole out there, you know, a few months before this happened, like a, oh, I don't know, like a moving van-sized hole."

• 50:31Josh Clark?

  Right. But the hole's gone now, so who cares?

• 50:34Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 50:36Josh Clark?

  So Rick turned himself in, Fred got caught, James made attempts to cross the border into Canada himself, but apparently the Canadian authorities considered him, A, way too nervous, B, way too vague about what he planned to do in Canada, and C, in possession of way too many guns to be let in the country. And apparently, he tried two or three times, using his own name to get in, and finally gave up and turned around. And I guess he had decided he was going to turn himself into authorities, but because of an all-points bulletin on his license plate, he was picked up before he could turn himself in.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  Right. So they were all collected less than two weeks after it happened?

• 51:20Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 51:21Speaker 03

  All right, well, let's take our last break, and then we will kind of quickly go over the sentencing and what happened afterward, right after this.

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• 52:15Josh Clark?

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• 54:21Speaker 03

  All right, so-

• 54:22Josh Clark?

  They were collected.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were collected and of course had their day in court. And the big, um, the big thing that happened in court was, was whether or not these guys, um, committed bodily harm on these children.

• 54:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  Because if you committed bodily harm, then you have a sentence of life without, a possible sentence of life without parole. If there was no bodily harm, then you could have life with parole.

• 54:47Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  Uh, they ruled that they did suffer bodily harm. So, uh, they had stomach trouble, they had nosebleeds, some of the kids fainted, uh, and that, that counted. But in 1980, an appeals court, uh, reversed that ruling, said that is not bodily harm, and that made them eligible for parole. Uh, and since then, uh, like I said earlier, the two Schoenfeld brothers have been released, uh, in, I think, 2012 and 2015.

• 55:16Josh Clark?

  Right. Uh, like, long after, some observers who were involved in the case can think that they should have been paroled, like especially Richard Schoenfeld. He was 22 at the time. He was basically there, I saw it described as along for the ride. Um, again, an Eagle Scout. He probably became an Eagle Scout three, four years before this happened. Um, and he, uh, he, he spent, um, 39 years in prison? Yeah.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  I guess so, 2015 is when, or, uh, he got out in 2012, yeah.

• 55:53Josh Clark?

  Okay, yeah, so, uh, yeah, about 37 years in prison of, of his life. From age 22, he spent the next 37 years in prison for basically hanging out with his brother and his brother's goofy friend, doing something really stupid. Um, and a lot of other people said, "Yeah, and if you're gonna let Richard Schoenfeld out, you should really probably take another look at James Schoenfeld too." Because, yeah, he was more involved than his brother, um, but he was still no Fred Woods. And then you get to Fred Woods and people say, "Yeah, he probably just, he doesn't really deserve to be paroled."

• 56:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the other two were model prisoners and they also had, I mean, people that were active, I don't know if it was a prosecutor or investigator, I think the investigator for the case eventually advocated for parole.

• 56:43Josh Clark?

  Both did.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, you know, some of the townspeople felt betrayed by that, but they did get out. Fred Woods was not a model prisoner. He was still as shady as ever. You know, you're not supposed to to run businesses from prison, but he ran a gold mine, he ran a used car business, he ran a Christmas tree farm, he got married a few times. The reason he was finally outed was he was running the Christmas tree farm and Michael Bianchi, who was managing that business, got injured on the job and Woods said, I'm not going to help pay for the surgery. So Bianchi said, all right, and he filed a state workers comp claim and they got on the investigation and found out that Woods was behind the operation. So he's not,

• 57:28Speaker 03

  when it comes time for parole, that doesn't look good.

• 57:31Josh Clark?

  No, and I guess he's been denied parole 17 times so far.

• 57:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 57:36Josh Clark?

  And he's up next in 2024. And a lot of people think he might not, he might never be paroled, actually.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Well, he bought a mansion in Nipomo, California, 30 miles from the prison, that no one lives at. He did have a civil lawsuit in 2016 where he had to pay out money to the victims that was described as, quote, enough to pay for some serious therapy, but not enough to buy a house.

• 58:04Josh Clark?

  Which is significant, too, because they did rule, an appeals court ruled in 1980 that they didn't inflict bodily harm. But I wonder if that same appeals court would come to the, to that conclusion in 2021, based on interviews with some of the, the people who were abducted, like

• 58:23Speaker 03

  Oh, no way.

• 58:24Josh Clark?

  Like Jennifer Brown Hyde, who I mentioned earlier, who's not

• 58:27Speaker 03

  I think emotional harm would play in these days.

• 58:29Josh Clark?

  Right. And there was definitely emotional harm inflicted. You talked about Larry Park, who was addicted to meth and crack before he finally found forgiveness and actually went and met with all three of the perpetrators and shook their hands and told them he forgave them and apparently changed his own life like that. If you haven't listened

• 58:47Speaker 03

  Fred Ward said, hey, I could make you a heck of a deal on a used van.

• 58:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no, Fred Ward took his watch when he shook his hand.

• 58:55Speaker 03

  Well, I was kidding, but he, my final little factoid is that that used car lot had those two vans and he held on to those because he thought they would be worth a lot of money as the kidnapped vans.

• 59:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which they might be worth an extra few hundred bucks. I could see that, but I don't know if that's the crown jewel of your inventory. I don't know.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Nick Cage bought them.

• 59:18Josh Clark?

  Right. And then you can go watch that movie from Lifetime in 1993 called They've Taken Our Children, if you want to see Carl Malden in his underwear, apparently.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  Man, bad movie, bad song.

• 59:31Josh Clark?

  I read also that Chowchilla residents do not care for that movie, Chuck, because it was shot in Kansas. And anyone who knows anything about the San Joaquin Valley knows that Kansas is a poor stand-in for that. So they're a little turned off by that movie, from what I understand.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 59:46Josh Clark?

  And then last thing, I want to shout out Caleb Horton, who wrote an article on Vox, very in-depth one, called "The Ballot of the Chowchilla Bus Kidnappings." It's pretty good.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a good one?

• 59:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:00:02Josh Clark?

  All right. The article, not the song. No, no.

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 1:00:07Josh Clark?

  It's an article. An article. I got you. Okay. Well, since we had, we worked out the misunderstanding, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail.

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  I'm gonna call this, let me see, how about racist ticketing? In our episode on jaywalking, we talked about people of the Black and Hispanic communities are ticketed more for jaywalking. And this is from Valerie Mates in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "Hey, guys, you mentioned that Black and Hispanic drivers are issued more traffic tickets than white drivers. This interesting issue, in Chicago, when they installed traffic cameras, they found that the cameras, despite being race neutral, still gave more tickets to Black and Hispanic drivers." So, of course, they wanted to study that. "The experts found that more affluent neighborhoods are built with more features that would naturally slow

• 1:00:59Speaker 03

  down traffic. More sidewalks, more stop signs, more crosswalks, while poorer neighborhoods had fewer of those things. And the result would, cars would be naturally, would tend to drive faster in poorer neighborhoods. Since Black and Hispanic drivers are more likely to live and be driving in less wealthy neighborhoods, in Chicago, they were more likely to be speeding and caught by traffic cameras." Or so says the Evidence, at least.

• 1:01:25Josh Clark?

  Crazy.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  It's not just prejudice on the part of police officers that causes this discrepancy. It's actually a difference in how the neighborhoods are built systematically. But it was really interesting. Uh, and I agree.

• 1:01:37Josh Clark?

  Indeed.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  Thanks for sending that in.

• 1:01:39Josh Clark?

  Who was it again?

• 1:01:40Speaker 03

  Valerie Mates of Ann Arbor.

• 1:01:42Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Valerie. That's a great one. Uh, if you've got a great one like Valerie does, we love little brain busters like that. Um, so you can wrap them up, spank them on the bottom and send them off via email to [email protected].

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 1:02:16Josh Clark?

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• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  My fresh detector.

• 1:03:50Speaker 05

  Uh, your what?

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 1:03:53Speaker 05

  What is it detecting?

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  Fresh produce, fresh meat.

• 1:03:57Speaker 05

  OK, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Apparently, we celebrate.

• 1:04:05Speaker 06

  At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.