Rotten Mango - #229: The Vanishing School Bus - 26 Kids Went Missing Together

Episode Date: January 15, 2023

When someone goes missing without a trace, it’s enough to make the hair on our arms stand up. One second they are here; the next second, they are gone. When 26 kids vanish into thin air on their school bus… the whole nation loses their minds. Chaos. Parents calling authorities. People running up and down the streets calling the kids names. FBI booked out every single room in every hotel in the town. And finally, a lead. The mayor’s wife received an anonymous phone call. “The children will be found. But there will be others. It’s not over.” Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to this week's mini-sode of Rotten Mango. I'm your host Stephanie Sue. When somebody goes missing without a trace, it's enough to make the hairs on my arm stand up. It just doesn't make sense in a lot of these situations. I don't think that humans, we don't like things, where we can't make sense of it. Which I think is why we resort to coming up with the most bizarre conspiracy theories that we can imagine up because at least knowing something gives us some sort of comfort. True.

But when someone goes missing, no trace, no clue, no lead, just vanish into thin air, one second there in a bar, no trace, no clue, no lead just vanish into thin air, one second there in a bar, the next second they're gone, no CCTV cameras catch them leaving the bar, one second there at an airport, the next second they're caught running away from the airport and never seen again on the face of this planet. One second, they're on the phone with their loved ones telling them that something weird is happening, the phone clicks and they're gone, vanished into thin air. It is enough to drive people mad.

Where did they go? It just doesn't make sense. Well in the small rural town of Chao Chila, California, it was amplified to the 27th degree. Because 27 people vanished into thin air at the same time. Not just any ordinary people either. Elementary school kids. 26 kids and their bus driver gone. The kids were on the school bus waiting for their stop to go home.

Like they did five days a week, but that day they wouldn't even go home. Was the bus gone too? Yeah. Soon, the entire town erupted into pure chaos, like imagine it. Parents are calling the authorities, they're crying in their yards, they're praying in their cars while scanning the roads for their little babies. The authorities are panicking, they want helicopters in the air stat, we've got to find that bright yellow school bus, I mean there's only so many places it could be hiding.

The sheriff's office would eventually locate the bus, but it was completely empty. Not a soul inside. Again, where and how, would 26 kids and an adult disappear off to? It attracted national attention. Every single hotel room and motel room in that town was booked out by the FBI. They descended into town to help solve what was about to be one of the biggest mysteries and one of the biggest kidnapping cases the United States had ever seen. The theories start floating around. Maybe it was terrorists. Maybe it was a local group of prisoners that escaped. No, no.

Who else would want to hurt our kids? Aliens? What's the only thing that makes sense? I mean, how can so many people disappear without a trace? Maybe it's the Zodiac Killer. This is before the Zodiac Killer was caught. Well, the Zodiac Killer was allegedly recently caught, so you get it. New stations without any proof even sinisterly hinted that maybe the bus driver was involved, even though he had no criminal record, had a spotless reputation for 20 plus years of being a bus driver.

Maybe he snapped, they said. Maybe he had sick thoughts all along and we didn't know. Yeah, they were doing the most with their baseless allegations. And then the town went silent. News had spread. The mayor's wife had received an anonymous phone call. The voice on the other line said, the children will be found, but there will be others. It's not over.

And they hung up. 26 elementary school kids, a bus driver, go missing and ride daylight. And why were they all buried alive? As always, full show notes are available at rotinminglepodcast.com, but there was an interesting book on this case called, Why Have They Taken Our Children? By Jack Boe and Jefferson Morgan.

This is a heavily talked about case, but out of all the pages and pages to dig through on this one, I would say that this book is one of the most comprehensive deep dives on this case to date. So with that being said, let's get into it. The kids frickin' loved summer school. At Dairyland Elementary School, that's like such a cute elementary school day. The kids loved summer school. And I know that's on strange because I grew up

hating summer school, having to go to the same cold building every single day during the summer when all you want to do is be out in the sun. Not the Dairyland kids, they loved it. Their school was pretty cool. They had swim days where the kids were allowed to fall in the swimming pool all day, learning the breaststroke, the frog. Like, these are kids that had likely had never been to an ocean before. So they're like, it's swim pool day. That day that they went missing was actually swimming day. So everyone was really excited when they got on that bus. They would have arts and crafts during summer school and they had what they called the wacky Olympics.

I mean, the kids loved it so much that the parents of the students were petitioning to have it extend all the way into the fall year, meaning some of these kids would be at school all year round minus the weekends. That's how much they liked it. So it felt especially cool that 26 children at Darryland Summer School were about to endure the most traumatic incident of their lives. They were about to be kidnapped and buried alive. Frank Edward Ray always went by Ed, those in his nickname, just Ed. People said he was a barrel-chested man. He's a farm boy. He grew up on a farm, still has a farm, but his nephew said

barrel-chested just like the rest of the raise. Barrel chested meaning you don't know where their chest and their stomach starts. And this is kind of pertinent, but they're pretty strong. Like they've got some crazy upper body strength is what he's trying to say. Ed was exactly what you wanted in a bus driver. Okay, sometimes bus drivers are nice. Sometimes they're so scary. I had one bus driver where I was so scared to even get on the bus because I had to pass

her. It has sit down on the bus because I had to pass her. It just sit down on the bus. She was a very scary woman. She just always yelled at us. And we had very strict rules. It was very intense. Ed, Ed was perfect. He had been a bus driver for 23 years.

And that's pretty long. Like he had been a bus driver for so long that he drove some kids of his former passengers. And when he wasn't working, he was on the farm with his wife. The kids would try to call him Mr. Ray and he's like, no, no, no, no, I'm just ed. He would joke around with them and they had almost this mutual respect so whenever Ed did tell the kids to do something, they tried to listen to him. They didn't try to ignore him.

So that hot day in June, Ed is focused. You gotta be focused when you're a school bus driver. Like these are all kids that are trying to get home. Like this is a very important job. So Ed is focused on the next stop. He had just dropped off Suzanne. He had 26 kids left. He's like, okay.

Next stop, Lisa Barlata. That's what he had on his mind. He had no idea the bus was being followed. They would never make it to Lisa's place. In a tiny little road, in the tiny little town, Ed Pulseup. And there's a white dodge van parked almost snack dab in the middle of the road. There is no way Ed could go around it, because the road is pretty small, and he assumed that the driver had probably gotten out to use the restroom, like we're talking farmland.

He glanced around, nobody, he's slowing to a stop, and then in the matter of a few seconds, a man in khaki overalls white gloves, and you know there's like tights the nylon stockings that you wear in your legs? Well, they had pulled it over their head, so instead of really covering their face, it's more like distorting the look of their face, which I think could be scarier. And he's pointing a gun straight at Ed. He demanded that Ed open the door, but curiously, very interestingly, this man said it very politely. He said, would you open the door, please?

What? Open your door, please. Ed did as he was told, and two more men dress similarly jumped into the van. One had a sawd off shotgun in his hand. Jump into the van? Into the bus. Oh. Sorry, they ordered Ed to the back of the bus and told him to keep quiet.

The sad part is, the kids didn't even register at first what was happening. In fact, some of the kids thought it was some sort of joke. Some even laughed that whoever these guys were were wearing pantyhose over their faces. The gunmen ordered all the kids to the back of the bus, and off they went. Two of the gunmen in the bus with the now terrified children and the bus driver. The third man went back into the white van ahead of them, and they both started driving.

So the kids, they're flocking to Ed, asking him in the back of the bus like, what's going on, Ed? Like, what do we do? And he just told them be quiet and do what they say, some of the kids couldn't even grasp the situation some thought it was way too bizarre to even be real other kids they just had a sense that they were gonna die and they started sobbing and these are elementary school like 78910 yeah so the oldest kid was 14 year old Mike Marshall and the youngest kid was Monica Ardry who was only 5 years old.

But most of the kids were 5 to 10 years old. So you're talking about some very, very young kids. Ed Ray, the driver with stunned, I mean he was so scared he had no idea what was going on. He had heard of car jackings, but nobody jacks a school bus. Filled with children, they even drove by Ed's close friends farm and Ed is like desperately looking out the window hoping his buddy Clarence is gonna look up from his farm work and see that Ed's not the one driving the bus and he's gonna know

something is off right? And Ed is watching as the farm gets closer and closer and he's looking out the window with pleading eyes. I mean what is he gonna do? He can't even throw himself out the window. And they drive and Clarence is too busy to look up. They drove for about a mile and then it was announced that the ride was about to get bumpy. They were going off the road into the woods. They drove over this thick vegetation, just heads bumping around, bodies being slammed into each other,

then the bus get into a stop in front of two vans, a white van and a green van. First, the white van pulled up to the very back of the school bus, so both trunks were facing each other. They opened the back doors of the white van, opened the back door of the school bus, and they ordered the kids to hop from the school bus to the white van without even touching the ground. They said, we don't want to leave any footprints.

So once the white bus was filled with half the kids, the green bus took its spot, and all the kids hopped on and ed was in the green bus, or the green van. Now the van, they had done some work on it. The drivers, the driver's side and the passenger side. So the very front of the van were partitioned off by this plywood.

So once you get into the back of the van, there's really no seats. It's just carpeting and you're sitting on the ground. There's zero windows and the minute that those backdoor slam shut, complete and utter darkness. And for hours, the van started driving. The kids had nobody had any idea where they were headed. Nobody told them. And as time passed, the kids started having these nervous breakdowns. One of them started sobbing. They're gonna take us somewhere and we're never gonna see our moms and dads again. Some kids sobbed for hours on hours and then passed out in pure exhaustion. Other kids, they tried to sing songs to keep saying, like, if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.

Ed remembered one kid who told him, Ed, I have to go to the bathroom. And he just looked at him and sound really told him, well, you just have to go then. I don't want to have to go in my pants. You just have to. Another kid pleaded, are we gonna stop for dinner?

Ed tried to be calm and he told them, I don't know, sweetie. But soon enough, the back of the van started to fill with the stench of urine, gasoline, and there was no ventilation, so the whole place is just getting so hot, so sticky, this is June in Northern California. It's gonna be quite odd. Some kids started throwing up for motion sickness, other kids threw up because the smell got so suffocating. The children started losing concept of time in space, so some of the kids, they claimed that they thought they were going up and down these crazy hills and taking these sharp

turns, and other kids were arguing, no, there's a relatively straight road the whole time. The kids who had been awake the entire time argued that the ride was six hours long. The kids who fell asleep argued that it probably lasted an hour. In reality, they were on an 11 hour road trip from hell. But it was nothing compared to what was about to happen next. They had no idea how long it had been, where they were, what time it was, all they knew was that the kidnappers were opening up the doors. They asked for Ed to be near the door first, they wanted him out.

The doors opened and Ed hoped, maybe there's going to be near the door first. They wanted him out. The door is open and Ed hoped Maybe there's gonna be sunlight. At least some stars in the sky. Maybe some fresh air Right when he stepped out he looked up and saw a green enclosure It's almost like someone had taken the green plasticgy tarp and put it next to some sticks and made like this Don't so that the vans could drive in and nobody could see them from above Is it kind of like a greenhouse situation? Like a little cover, sheet cover, the top? Yes, but it's like completely opaque. You can't see through it. Yeah, yeah. And there's walls, so they can't even see where they are. And from there, two armed men are staring

at him through their weird masks. I guess if he can't even call it that. What's your name? Masks, I guess if you can't even call it that. What's your name? Ed Ray. How old are you? 55. They made him strip down to nothing but his underwear. He felt very uncomfortable knowing that the children would have to witness him like that.

So he's trying to plead with the kidnappers, you know, I have grandkids, I wanna see them again, but they didn't respond. And Ed was thrown into this hole in the ground with a ladder leading down and to almost this underground bunker? I wouldn't even call it a bunker. I would really call it a giant coffin, really.

It was a giant trailer, like imagine a U-Haul trailer without the front part of the car buried underground. How is it very deep? Yeah, and the only way in is there was a hole drilled into the middle and you have to go down a ladder. OK. It was very scary. So Ed looked at the kidnappers.

You know, he looked at the two vans full of children that he was supposed to protect. And he could do nothing but go down the hole. Then one by one, the kids were pulled out of the van, told to strip down into either their bathing suits because it was swim day or their underwear. Everything else was taken from them. They were routinely asked, what's your name and how old are you? Just to give you some context to how young these kids are, Linda was a ten-year-old that was a part of the group and she said that

she thought the kidnappers were kind of cute. She said that she was annoyed that they had taken her purse because it had her boyfriend's picture in it. I mean, I think that just shows us kids retain their childish innocence even in situations like, and for some reason that makes it more heartbreaking. Five-year-old Monica Argery, the youngest of the victims, she couldn't even pronounce her own name yet. That's how young she was. And each name that was given, the kidnappers would write down on an old Jack in the Box bag, like one of those paper bags that fast foods give you.

One by one, the kids went down the hole and they were shocked. They were two flashlights to illuminate this base, but it was like they were snite-mar. It's a full-grown adult's worst nightmare. Inside the ground, someone had buried a giant trailer, and there was metal wires on all the sides, because the walls, the ceilings, everything was caving in from the pressure and weight of the soil. At any moment, the trailer could crumble and they would be squished to death buried alive. The air was thick and hot. There were two holes, additional from the entrance and exit hole, so there were two smaller holes that had these giant tubes in and out of it. That was for ventilation, but that was it. There was no escape, and all 27 of them had effectively

been buried inside of a giant coffin for God knows what. And the whole they had just come down from had a steel plate that was slid on top, and then they could hear things being placed on top of that steel plate. So they were stuck underground. Nobody told them why they had no idea who or even what was going on. They didn't even know if this was going to be the worst to come or if there was something more in store for them. The kids start crying, bawling their eyes out, and Ed tries to be strong for them, but he said that they were plenty of times that he lost his composure and just started crying. It felt like they were just literally waiting for the roof to collapse. They had limited, very limited food that the kidnappers had left, and it was all gone in an hour after feeding 26 starving children,

and they only had five gallon jugs of water on the inside. The era was so stale and hot, the lack of oxygen was having kids pass out or becoming delirious, some start fading away. Every hour that passed, felt excruciatingly slow, and then boom, everyone glanced up. The batteries and one of the flashlight had burned burned out and now they only had a tiny light That was growing weaker and weaker and soon they were gonna be plunged into complete darkness

This is when Ed the driver and the oldest kid Mike they're like, yeah, no We're not gonna die like this Mike is 14, but he's a gutsy kid His dad was a champion road rodeo rider You know, like those bulls and stuff and he's like, I didn't I didn't raise no quitter So after 12 hours of being in the bunker So this is 24 hours since the bus had been hijacked. They drove for 11 hours And they've been in this bunker for 12 plus hours And it's actually been close to like 30 or 40 hours that Ed hadn't slept because before his bus shift

He had worked on the farm so this guy has been awake for a hot minute And they decide that they're gonna come up with a plan to get out There were 14 mattresses inside the little bunker 14 they were gonna stack each of them on top of each other Do you know how hard that is? Do you know how hard it is to even move one mattress on top of a bed frame? And you have a bunch of 5-year-olds? It was mainly Mike, Ed, and a few 10-year-old boys that were helping in this endeavor. They're gonna try to stack all the mattresses, get to the top of the roof,

and then Ed would try to push the steel plate off and they would try to climb up the hole. They had no idea that the steel plate had 200 pounds of weight stacked on top of it. So they started moving the mattress. It was rough. They had no idea that the steel plate had 200 pounds of weight stacked on top of it. So they started moving the mattress. It was rough. Like, can you imagine in this type of heat? It took them forever. They had a constantly stop to pour water over their head so they didn't pass out. It felt like any second they were going to faint. Kids were already passing out without doing any strenuous activity. But these, this handful of people, they really push through. Ed got to the steel plate and this took hours. He vitally got to the top. He starts pushing his hand through the gap of the steel plate in the roof. So it's not like an outfitted

door. It's like someone literally dug a hole and then found a big steel plate and just plopped it on top. So they didn't plop it on perfectly and on one side of the little hole, there was a little gap. So he starts, you know, pushing his fingers through. He manages to move a piece of lumber to widen the crack at the edge of the hole. Now that there's more space between the steel plate and the little cracky, shevenous hand, slowly but surely, Ed and Mike inch the steel plate to the side. It's not completely out of the way, but it's to the side. And then they see that there's two tractor batteries that are stacked on top.

These are giant batteries that fuel tractors, which is like heavy machinery. Very dangerous actually, because they can be gassed. But they're also a hundred pounds each. So Ed managed to grab it from the top and slowly slide it down. Do you know how much upper body strength that is? I can't even imagine. He slid it, so he removed it from on top of the steel plate. Slid it down the tiny hole, maintaining composure, not dropping it on anyone. And then put it to his chest, lowered it

onto the top of the mattress, then he brought it down from the stack of what, 14 mattresses, and then moved it all the way to the end so none of the kids would get hurt if Acid started dripping from it. He did this twice. And once they moved that steel plate at the end, you're like, wow, they're free, they're not. Someone had basically boarded up that hole on top with like a cardboard cover. Like, it not cardboard, but plywood.

You know that plywood that you can get at home depot? It's like that shredded wood. So it's not necessarily the hardest piece of wood, but it's pretty intense. Well, it's worried about what? On top of all of this, they had put a bunch of like a big slab of plywood because they don't want any of the soil to get through.

And then they put soil on top of the plywood. What? Yeah, so for the whole, they put the steel plate, the two tracks are batteries, a piece of giant piece of plywood, and then they stacked more soil on top so that the ground would be level.

The whole way the steel plate is, there's a little bit of soil around it, but it's mainly at the top of the trailer. But the trailer is buried. Oh. So they need to put soil on top, otherwise you're like, hey, what is this random circular hole?

And why am I looking down and I see a steel plate in the ground? Got it, got it. Right, so there's a bunch of, you know, there's plywood and now there's a bunch of soil. So they have to get through the plywood. They can't move the plywood because there's soil on top of the plywood, it's not gonna budge. Like there's no leeway on this one.

This is what's holding the weight of the soil. So basically, Ed starts clawing at the plywood, clawing at the dirt, tearing his fingernails and hands, trying to rip off pieces of the plywood, and he's sweating profusely. The more that he's getting through with the plywood, there's the dust from the plywood itself, there's the dust from the soil that's sleeping through. I mean, his eyes were burning, his lungs were on fire, and when he couldn't do it anymore, his fingers were bleeding, his lungs are throbbing, he tumbled down and poured water of his face.

And 14-year-old Mike and 10-year-old Robert Gonzalez kept working. And when they were too tired, eight-year-old John Esterbrook would come help. These kids are honestly so brave, like I don't even know what to say. At one point Ed said that he just wanted to sob there and lay there and he was so simply drained. He had no more adrenaline left in his body and he just, he couldn't do it. But he was like, I gotta go up there and I gotta give it one last chance. And there he ripped the plywood about two square inches. And from there the soil came pouring in and Ed and the kids, they would dig through the soil up top until it came pouring in and then they would dig and pour it in and then dig and they dug through the plywood and the soil and they finally saw a small tiny little hole where the light was coming through.

Ed looked at the kids and told them, shh, he had no idea where the kidnappers were. They didn't know if one of them was just waiting there sitting there, right? He said he didn't see anyone, just some trees and a few old trucks. So they started digging faster and feverishly and then finally, Robert was the first kid that climbed out of the hole.

He starts scraping dirt away from with his hands, widening the hole more and more, and then finally, they were free. Now, there's still wire mesh around the hole, like it's not covering the hole, but there's some around. And Ed didn't want the kids to get hurt as he's pushing them up the hole. So we used his bare hands to widen the wires apart,

and yeah, his hands were splirting blood. He didn't care. He had a responsibility to protect these kids. He had to get these kids home. That's what he had been doing for 20 plus years. He jumped down the home, Ed, and he started lifting the kids up one by one. Mike would catch the kids from top, pass them to Robert Gonzalez, and one by one the kids breathed fresh air again. Ed was the last one out, and he was sweating, drenched and dirt and blood,

and he looked around adjusting his eyes, but he had one more pressing problem. He had no idea where the hell they were. So he whipped his head around looking from side to side. All he could see in the very far distance was a dirt road and he told the kids, come on kids, we're all gonna go together, okay? Around 8.15 p.m., a quarry worker spotted Ed Ray. A quarry is like an open mind, technically. And 26 kids covered in dirt in their underwear approach them and I'd call out, we're from Chao Chila, we've been buried. The workers knew because for the past 24 hours plus, the whole world had basically stopped

to look for them. But it wouldn't be over because for these 27 people, it would never be over. To pull off the biggest kidnapping in the United States, it would take a team, a team of organized criminals who knew what they were doing, like an organization, if you will. You have to be evil enough, motivated enough, and probably smart enough, right? This team was far from the dream team. It's almost like an intro to a bad joke, an old money rich kid, an in-sell in the making, and a horse boy walk into a bar, what happens?

What? Yeah, even afterwards, the detectives are like, this was the dumbest kidnapping plan we had ever seen in our lives. Let's start with a Frederick Newhall Woods IV. Whenever I hear a name like that, I'm like, is that person rich? Because they sound kind of rich? It is such a fancy sounding name, and in this case, my assumption was completely right. Frederick Newhall Woods IV was a rich kid growing up in San

Francisco. He genuinely was old, old money. His great-grandfather had built his wealth during the gold rush and heavily invested in land and eventually railroads. The family used all that money to found the New Hall Land and Farming Company in the late 1800s. It's a public company and I guess to really simplify their business model, they own hundreds of thousands of acres of land and they most likely bought it for pennies on the dollar. Then they rent out that land to farmers. At one point, they were bringing in like half a billion dollars in revenue in a single fiscal year. Wow. It's a public company. They're still around. What if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as putting on your favorite podcast?

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Aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this? No. Who's going to catch us? What a police! It was the height of the crack era, and instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're going to want some drug dealers and I know how to do it really well.

This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat? 100% I saved my soul just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey originals documentary podcast series available now in the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows. I'm not a big guy, man, but I love being that dirty mother f***er. So without even learning how to harvest a single crop, which don't quote me on that, It's been a dirty mother f***er.

So without even learning how to harvest a single crop, which don't quote me on that, like maybe they're farmers now, okay? They have different divisions since then, but they're raking in millions upon millions, upon millions every single year. Like real estate money is as old money aesthetic as you can get. And all the kids, they worked hard to make sure that they would fulfill our Pinterest

old money aesthetic dreams. All the new hot kids learned tennis, took horseback riding lessons, got their first cars when they turned 16, and they even enrolled in the most prestigious colleges that their parents had already picked for them, donated to, and probably they themselves have already graduated from. Yeah, legacy students. So Fred's dad, for example, went to Stanford, and Fred's dad, who has the same name, Frederick Newhall Woods III, he was a bit more humble than his Newhall counterparts. The guy just wanted to live in a cottage. You're like, wow, a cottage. It was going to be a cottage style home mansion in the middle of his 70-something acres of land that he owned, smack dab in the middle of his 70-something acres of land that he owned smack dab in the middle of prominent wealthy affluent Bay area neighborhood in Northern California, but like

regular people dreams, you know, that's what he just wanted to live a regular life. He was a humble guy. Fred's mom was at the same pedigree. She was the daughter of a respectable family from Palo Alto and an honor student from Berkeley. So the couple would actually go on to have two kids. So Fred the fourth, obviously, but also Fred had a little sister that nobody knew existed. When Fred was six years old, his parents introduced another child, but she was cognitively impaired to the point where she would never develop as the mental age of five. I don't want to say that her parents were almost ashamed to talk about her, but I'm going to say it because that's very much the energy that I'm picking up on.

Most people didn't even know that they had a second child. They thought that Fred was the only child. Now if you walked into the old money multi-millionaires humble a boat, you would see a tiny little photo in the corner of the living room and you're like, wait, who's that? That looks like a family portrait. Who's that girl I've never seen? And Fred would just be like, a family friend, forget it. The whole family practically acted like she didn't exist. So eventually the family would keep that estate, but they would move into a modest mansion in San Francisco. And Fred's

parents didn't really participate much in the family business. They don't really have great relationships with other members of the New Hall Empire, which very interesting, but these old-money families are so big. There's like so many people involved. So the fact that there's like whole ass companies and these family members are like, we don't really know them that well, it's kind of crazy. They didn't even care to get more and more shares of the family company, like they did not care for the games of succession.

Interestingly enough, Fred was spoiled. You know, he didn't need to want anything, but he was not essentially summering in Lake Como and doing winters in the Alps. Like he would imagine he would. His parents were though. His parents loved to travel, and it seemed very routine that they would constantly leave Fred behind. It doesn't seem like they're negligent parents, but Fred definitely was lacking some love and affection.

But they weren't mean. When he was younger, it didn't seem like he cared for money that much. Even in high school, he went to this super posh, prestigious high school where almost every single student there was a member of some sort of dynastic rich family who had unimaginable, financial and political strength.

Like they all tended to have a certain aura to them, a certain energy. They were preppy, they didn't curse, they were kind of snotty, you know, they're very academia vibes, but not Fred. Fred liked a curse and he was socially awkward. He really didn't have any friends, other than a kid named James Schoenfield. Now, James often went by the name Jim. Jim was an in-sell in the makin'. He came from a family who did pretty well for themselves. Jim's dad was in podiatry. It took a really long time for Jim's dad to claw his way up from

the middle class to the upper class. It took him like decades. But when he finally made it, geographically it wasn't a farm move. He just like moved to the next neighborhood over and he's like, okay, I'm in the upper class now. Great. Yeah, the land of the privilege. Jim had two other siblings, an older brother, and a little brother named Rick. Okay, Jim and Rick are like best buds. The two of them, they grew up together, raising horses and training their hunting dog. They were both smart, academically,

maybe not in any other sense of that word. They got great grades, Rick even graduated high school in just three years. Both of them tried to go to college mainly because their father is like, hey I'm a doctor, you should be a doctor. But nothing really stuck. So Jim and Rick, they didn't drink, they didn't smoke, they didn't do drugs. But there's some evidence that Rick would smoke pot here and there. But that was it. For fun, they would play chess, play card games. They also love to log everything, like they both journaled. So, voraciously, like that's all they did is sit there and journal.

Rick even had a cipher so that nobody could understand what he wrote, unless they had the code to his cipher, so everything was written in code. There was nothing nefarious in that diary, though, just sexually frustrating, insecure desires for financial stability and success. Just very normal things. Jim was a little bit more outgoing than Rick. Rick's only friends were his two horses, Stella, and Han Cho. So you've got Fred the Rich Kid, Rick the Horse Kid, and now Jim the Insell Kid.

So Jim wrote in his diary about how he was fascinated and intimidated by women all at the same time. He said that he longed to find the perfect love, but he also felt super insecure that a woman would never love him. He said that he would watch pageants like Miss America. And he thought these women are just so so beautiful. And then he would wonder, what would they ever see in a man like me? What would they want to see in their ideal type of man? It's honestly a little sad, okay?

Up until this point I feel sympathetic, and then then it gets weird. He would have these diary entries about how he needed the perfect wife, and he listed strict moral, physical, and intellectual criteria for the perfect wife. And just when you're like, okay dude, like what do you have going for yourself? The next century, he would write about his own shortcomings that prevented him from being a perfect husband. So it's very confusing. He also wrote that he wanted to move to Asia where he felt it was easier to get a wife. That's great. I'm just gonna leave that one there. Do with it what you will, but I feel uncomfortable. He claimed it was because he was six feet tall. And leading into a stereotype he believed, he believed he would be taller than most of the Asian men in Asia.

So he would have the upper hand in dating. That's what he said. It's a weird friendship duo, if you ask me. Fred the rich old money kid and Jim the in-sell. Okay, technically it's a trio, but it was more like Fred and Jim or BFFs and Rick the brother, the horse guy. He's just kind of there. Jim was a smart kid at least, academically, I guess.

But they were both into cars. Like, that's what they were bonding over. They just had a passion for cars. And it wasn't just, oh, I like cars and driving around. And then because I'm like a high schooler, I'm a teenager, and driving is so cool, they actually like the machinery. So they like to go buy junk cars and fix them up. So Fred and Jim, the unlikely duo, are created

an income Sunjelle Fay. Sunjelle Fay is Fred's high school girlfriend. They start dating senior year and there was just something different about her. Fred had never opened up to anyone before, but she wasn't like his classmates. She was a runaway from home and she was with the foster family.

I mean, this is like a K drama in the making. Rich kid meets troubled runaway who doesn't come from money. And Fred liked the fact that she was raw. She understood him on a deep level. She would never judge him. And they bonded over the fact that she always felt rejected by her parents too. For very different reasons from Fred.

So at just 19 years old, Fred is ready for the next step. He's like, I want to commit to you for the rest of my freaking life. Let's get married. They get Fred is ready for the next step. He's like, I want to commit to you for the rest of my freaking life. Let's get married. They get married, move into a small apartment. Fred gets a job at a paint store and he freaking hates it. He hates everything about it. He hates his job, his marriage, his apartment. You know, his wife isn't happy either.

She would later say, it was really dumb. You know, I was alone, he took me in. It was a mistake. I didn't love him. I was just grateful. Fred realized we're a horrible mistake he had made and he starts taking that out on his wife. He felt paranoid.

He keeps sinking. Oh my God. This girl married me for my money, for my family wealth, which side note, Fred's shares in the company seem to have grown over time. And the value of those shares have grown exponentially as well. So it's speculated that at one point when he was arrested, he had an inheritance somewhere around the ballpark

of $100 million. What? Yeah, but it's been like on and off disputed, but it seems to be reported in court documents that it was nearly $100 million. Wow. Which is insane. But around the time that he was married to his wife, his inheritance, money he couldn't

even access at this point, mind you, wears around 300,000. Which yes, that's insane. Like who starts with that type of inheritance? But maybe you're not going to have the world's best sugar daddy with that. But Fred was so anxious. He constantly accused his wife of wanting his money and he was so confused. Later, he unexpectedly inherited more shares of the company, stretching his inheritance to nearly $3 million.

And he was over the freaking moon and devastated at the same time. He felt like the woman that he slept next to in bed every single night was out to get him. Was out to get his money. His wife was so freaking fed up she got a damn job. Okay, the arrangement was that he was going to work and she was going to take care of the house and stuff, but nope, she got a cleaning job just to shut him up. Like just to be like, I am not here for your stupid money.

Fred would never get over it. And after a year, he would file for divorce. He couldn't do it anymore. He held his breath thinking she was going to try and rob him for everything that he had. But she only took a thousand dollars that her in-laws had given her specifically as a wedding gift. And I was like, she just walked away. Fred moved back in with his parents and you would think after everything that Sanjal went through. She would despise this weird man who accused her of being a gold digger and broke up with her for it.

She didn't. She was interviewed for the book and she just said, ah, he was a very strange different type of man. Fred would later lie to future girlfriends, claiming that he got a divorce because he was infertile and his wife at the time really wanted kids, which is not true. And his wife allegedly kept pressuring Fred to do some sort of bizarre test to probe around and make him fertile again and he refused. Okay, this sounds like the beginning of some sort of pathological liar type of situation, but it's actually one of the only rare examples of Fred lying. So maybe he was just embarrassed to say why he really got a divorce.

Besides, it's not like he had to recite this lie too many times. Fred did not have a string of girls waiting to date him. People who knew him when he was younger said that he had a real goofy look about him. Which I don't think they were saying it to be nice, okay? He wasn't particularly attractive. That's what they said. Even in his early 20s, he had signs of male pattern baldness. Would you try to cover up with a cowboy hat? He was six feet tall, weighed less than 150 pounds. He only ever wore long sleeve shirts and jeans, even in the summer heat. Oddly, he never stank, though.

Never smelled sweaty. He had a really intense standard for personal hygiene. He shared at least once a day, if not more. That was one of the qualities that attracted Irene Buzowski to Fred. You're like, that he doesn't smell? Yeah, what? Yeah, kind of. Irene just liked the fact that he was quiet.

She thought he was introspective, attentive. She never saw him drink or smoke, you know, or even lose his temper. All he did was restore old cars with his high school bud, gym, show, and field. And yes, the business was up and down, but Fred also drove a shuttle bus for a big company. He later drove an ambulance. Whenever business slowed down, he seemed hard working. Irene like that, and she said she had never met anyone like him. It was interesting, he really liked to drive, truly.

He's not one of those guys that you guys want to see, oh, so he can go 0-60, he just genuinely like driving quietly for hours on hours, on hours without saying a single word, like that was his thing. Another moment that Irene remembered that really solidified for her. Like this is the one for me, was when they went to Vegas. And Fred was playing with the slot machines. He was using a couple of nickels here and there.

And Irene was like, hey, let's just bet on a race for Schitzengiggles wearing Vegas. And he kept telling her, no, it's not worth gambling on. And he looked at her and he's very seriously said, nothing is worth gambling on. Irene really liked that, you he's very seriously said, nothing is worth gambling on. I really really like that, you know, because you know, I'm sure she had a lot of friends who had a lot of heartbreak from husbands who were gamblers,

wasted away all their money and the casinos. This, this is refreshing. The two of them were even talking about moving in together. Fred would share his dream with her, his vision for the future. They would sit there and talk, and you would talk about how we wanted to live in a big mansion one day, and how we just needed to work hard and pay for it. Yeah, sounds like everything we all did, January 1st, making goals, setting resolutions for

the future. Irene didn't think that he would kidnap 26 kids to get a mansion, but here he was. It's unclear what exactly motivated Fred and the show-in-field brothers to kidnap 26 children, but it's speculated that it did indeed start with a mansion. At this time, all three of them were in abysmal financial situations. Like, it's not like they were in debt, it's not like they had these loan sharks breathing down their neck. They lived with their parents, their basic needs seemed to be taken care of. They just wanted more freedom and respect.

They wanted more financial power in their lives. And coming from families with privileged backgrounds, financial power is power. And they know that. And part of that power is owning a mansion. Specifically, a mansion called Rangstorf House. It's an old Victorian mansion in Mountain View. It was built in 1887 and

it's been vacant since 1972. Fred's dream was to buy this mansion. He could only afford to buy the mansion, not the lot. So you have to buy the mansion and move it off the property, which is so expensive. Where you want? Yeah. so sometimes you can just buy the house on top of the lot. You know what? And then move it to a cheaper lot and renovate it. Yeah, that was his plan. He was gonna move that mansion to a cheaper lot, renovated, and then run multiple businesses, future empires,

future conglomerates, multinational companies that have IPO'd out of that mansion. It's like they wanted to buy a giant office space, a headquarters before they even knew what business they wanted to be in, or before even trying to run a business of their own. They said the mansion would be HQ for various businesses, their car business, where they take old junk cars,

fix them up and sell it, but also a new film business. They were gonna become screenwriters and producers. You know, they were gonna produce Oscar-winning pictures. Oh, and then they were gonna start a real estate firm. Because, you know, Fred's family was in real estate. Why don't they just turn one wing of the mansion into a hospital at this point? Because I don't even think that they have any experience

in any of these fields. They're like, you know what? That sounds like some fancy businesses I wanna do it. It's the feeling when I get when someone is like, yeah. So, I'm gonna build a massive empire But first I'm gonna need a penthouse in New York City I feel like this is not the order, not the order But in these three guys minds this was a business plan that was bulletproof

It would stand the test of time. It would be on Shark Tank and nobody would turn it down It just made sense. Ironically the mansion and the land was owned by Newhall Land and Farming Company. Yes, a Fred Newhall. It was owned by his family business. What? Yes, the mansion. But Fred told the brothers, he didn't wanna buy the house

through family connections or nepotism. I don't think Fred is as respectable as he sounds. I think his parents either might have been pissed if they found out that he was trying to buy a mansion because they're like, that's a dumb idea. Or maybe he wasn't in good standing with the family. Or maybe he was embarrassed to ask the family for a lending hand. I'm not sure I don't think it's this whole. I don't want to be a nepotism baby. I don't think it's like that at all. Fred called the owner an executive new hall and he said that he was interested in the property. He never identified himself as a member of the new hall family. Even though he probably would have gotten a steep discount had he said that he was interested in the property. He never identified himself as a member of the New Hall family,

even though he probably would have gotten a steep discount hat he'd done that. Regardless, the company was willing to sell the mansion for pretty cheap. They were just gonna tear it down. They just wanted the land anyway. So Fred and Jim needed to come up with nearly $200,000 to buy the mansion.

This is calculated for inflation. That's a lot of money. They didn't have that kind of money. Fred felt crushed. You know, he wanted this mansion. It wasn't even just about the mansion. It was for what the mansion represented. His new goal, his new direction in life. Fred is like the type of personality that can't start something unless he feels like it's the perfect start, which I mean, I can kind of sympathize with that to a degree, but come on. Now, you don't need a mansion. Besides, that is when a very casual conversation starts popping up over and over again.

Any time the three of them would hang out, they would sit there zoning out asking each other, and wouldn't it life be so much easier if we could get our hands on a couple million dollars? Said everyone, like, what? They would all gay go and be like, yeah, yeah, I would,'t it? Then the next time, you know, it would be funny. What? If we can't nap someone for ransom, but we don't hurt anyone though. Real funny. No, of course, not nobody would ever get hurt. It's not like we would actually even do it, but

let's say we did it. How do we get away with it? And while they would eat lunch, they would talk about the best way to get reins of money. It's not clear when the plan went from casual banter to straight-up plotting, but it did. And Fred was the assumed leader of the group. He had the clearest goal, the biggest motivation, at least at the start. Jim liked the idea of it, but he didn't particularly have this vision at the end that he was just so desperate for. All he knew was that he wanted to be something.

Be someone. He would even talk about how if he had money, he would give back to the community, which is ironic because he's basically plotting to take away from the community first. And Rick is just there. Side note, it's often said that Fred and Jim started stealing cars and committing grand theft auto because they were desperate for money and disgustingly money hungry, which I'm not arguing to it, but they just also had a stroke of bad luck. I don't want to say it's bad luck, but it's not as nefarious as people make it seem to

be. So essentially, Jim and Fred were out in this rural area. They see this wrecked car on the side of the road. Like a big chunk of the cars completely rusted over. It looked like it had been sitting there for at least a few months If not years so they pull over Bingo there's a little part in the engine called like a carburetor Which is essential to a lot of these older cars?

Well don't mind if we do that exact moment of sheriff deputy pulls up and says what are boys doing? Just looking over this rack. What's that you weren't planning on stealing it now? Where are you boys doing? Just looking over this wreck. What's that? You weren't playing it on stealing it now, were you? Oh come on, the car is abandoned. Look at it. It even has bullet holes in it and everything. Where are you boys from? The Bay Area. Long way from home, aren't ya? Fred explained that his parents had a quarry here, which is like an open pit mine that you can excavate rock, sand, and gravel from, but it was like a hundred miles away.

So it was kind of a lie, regardless. The officer didn't care. He arrested all of them. The parents hired really good attorneys, and the charges were dropped to tampering with an automobile from Grand Theft Auto, which would have been a felony. They got $125 fine in a year of unsupervised probation. I think that this incident though probably made them feel more hopeless, though, more desperate to do something about their situation, and they start talking more seriously about their kidnapping ransom plot. If it had to involve children, apparently that's the only way they saw it. Nothing else made sense.

Jim would later explain, 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 the kids won't fight back. They're vulnerable. But which group of children? Where do you find a group of kids you can easily kidnap? It would take them a year to work out their full plan

and set it into motion. All the while, Jim is taking detailed logs of the process in his diary. Okay, so let's talk about our plan, shall we? You know how in those movies, they pay all those dramatic montages where the leader of the high-screw is explaining everyone's role and everybody's very clever jobs in this masterful plan like money highest on Netflix?

Yeah, this would not be that. This would have very sinister but also very confusing music in the background because I genuinely do not know how any of them thought that this was a good plan. So let's talk about their genius master plan. Their plan was to kidnap a school bus, hijack it with the kids and the bus driver inside, probably on their way back from school. So the afternoon buses. They would then drive the bus to a random rural area, dump it, and at that dumpstite, they

would have two vans waiting. Well, originally the plan was three. They were going to put all the homesteaders into those two separate vans waiting. Well, originally the plan was three. They were gonna put all the homesteaders into those two separate vans, and from there they were gonna drive to Fred's parents' quarry, the one that I told you about. But you can't just dump a bunch of people in a quarry

and think you'll be fine. What if they run, what if they're detected? So now, someone in the group have the brilliant idea. Berry the vans. Berry them. Dig a hole, bury them. Basically, and tomb the victims underground. They're like, hmm, that won't work.

We Barry the Vans, they're gonna suffocate to death. But also, how do you do all of that with a bunch of people inside? You really think that at that point, where they're being buried alive, these kids are not gonna fight back? So their new genius plan was to prep at a head of time. They were gonna dig a giant hole.

Barry a moving truck. Like a giant U-Haul truck. So just the trailer, not the actual wheels in the vehicle and Barry the children and a giant coffin essentially what could go wrong? They rented bulldozers to dig the hole. Fred is starting to spend a ton of money to kidnap the kids by the way He's digging into his savings for this one. I guess to him it was a justifiable return on investment He bought a heavily used truck trailer for $4,000. He bought those three vans that they needed to transport the people.

That was an additional $22,000. And he would have to pay $2,000 a month to store all of this in a warehouse. That is a lot of money, but Fred thought he was being smart, he was making business moves. So back to the hole, they start digging, digging. It was a lot of work. They can only work on the weekends because the query is closed. So during the week, there's employees everywhere, which side note, none of the query workers really came really cared when they saw bulldozers and stuff because this is a query, right? So the three dug out a giant, giant hole.

The trailer itself was about eight feet wide, 16 feet long. So it was a pretty big hole. Then they buried it. Side note, they bought big hole. Then they buried it. Side note, they bought two trucks for this, but it speculated that they couldn't fit the two trailers into the hole. They bought two trailers, I meant. So they only did one. Anyway, they buried an entire trailer,

just imagine, a U-haul trailer inside of the ground now, in a hole. That's how big it is. They got to work making the accommodations for the children. Two holes near the real wheel wells, that would be their toilets. There were no actual toilets just holes for them to use. Then they cut three big holes at the top of the trailer. The biggest one was to get everyone in and out of the hole. The other two were part of a makeshift ventilation system so that the air was flowing in and out, so nobody suffocated slowly to death. They bought these giant tubes to act as the air shafts

and even bought a battery operated power exhaust to push the air out and through the trailer. They started experimenting by throwing heavy soil on top of the trailer to bury it, but you could see that the walls, particularly the ceiling of the trailer, started caving in because of the pressure. So they went back in there and reinforced the interior walls of the truck with some lumber they found, but it wasn't great Basically just like metal wires to reinforce it truly at any moment The walls could have caved in killing everyone They buried the entire trailer leaving just an accessible steel plates plate trap over the door and that was it

It was set the whole the giant torture coffin was put into place and they start hammering out the nitty gritty parts of their plan. Let's talk about the ransom and why they chose to do this. They said it had to be kids and had to happen when the kids were at school. It couldn't be a bunch of kids at the zoo or the water park. The government would be seen as responsible for America's children when the kids were at school. So that way, the government would feel pressure to pay the ransom. Because who else has that kind of money? They want $5 million, which is a really random number, but Jim later said, he straight up said, I wasn't going to commit any crime risk my life or my reputation for anything

less than a million. So, Bain robbery wasn't going to work. A drug deal wouldn't work, and the state pays us ransom. We're happy forever. All of our troubles are solved and we let the victims go. Everybody's happy. The only people really capable in wanting to pay that type of ransom would be the government, especially the state of California.

Apparently, at this time, there was a $5 billion surplus in the California state treasury. Jim would later say, I just kept thinking, you know, the state's got more than it needs, they're not going to miss 5 million. So I thought, their way to get this money, is there some way that I can get a lot of money to solve all my problems, and the only thing that I could think of is kidnapping. You know, people will do anything for children in schools. So they're thinking, the government is responsible for the schools, but a random children's birthday party is not going to cut it.

So that's all great and dandy and theory, but it's like dreaming of winning the lottery. There are dangerous things about ransom money. First is, well, besides the ethical and the moral standing, obviously. First is the problem of getting the money and not getting caught. How do you have a designated drop-off site and not expect to be busted later when you grab the cash? So after a long debate, the three settled on this genius plan. They were inspired by luggage commercials.

So they would demand all the money be split into two suitcases. Then the cash would be on a small airplane flying over a pre-determined route, and the three stole these giant flashing hazard lights. They would find a secretive spot between point A and point B that the pilot is on, flash the pilot, and whoever the pilot was would see the lights flash and had to drop it immediately. Drop the suitcases of cash. That makes no sense, and the cop will be right there. Yeah, and even if the plane is going to drop it right when it sees the light, is it like a mile away from you? Yeah. In the woods, like where...

Yeah. from you in the woods like where yeah so um technically law enforcement would have no idea where on this route the flashing lights would be was their idea therefore they would never find the ransom drops but until it was too late they're like what could possibly go wrong they genuinely thought that this was ingenious then another stroke of genius hit them they're like wait guys five million dollars in cash is a lot. We got to make sure we have all the money. We're going to bring one of those printing calculators that they use at the accounting offices. Do you know I'm talking about the calculators that print receipts? You do like 3 plus 3 equals 6 and then you press enter and it prints it

out on paper. Okay. Just so they can count the cash faster. If I'd like that's good, that's good. Okay, let me buy one. Then another issue came up to the group. Wait guys, what if they put in fake money? They sat around rubbing their heads together. Okay, okay, we'll tell them that we want used bills only. Okay, that's all said. Wait, what if they put some sort of tracking device in there? They thought long and hard, and they came up with another easy solution. Da, just buy an X-ray machine. They bought an X-ray machine so that they could x-ray the suitcases before they leave with it to make sure that there was no bugging device. I'm not kidding you. This is how a five-year-old after watching one James Bond movie puts together the greatest heist of all time.

They bought a used X-ray machine for $3,000. I mean the fact that they are spending close to $50,000 for this, with the Vans, the Bulldozer, the trailer, the additional supplies, it is a lot! $5,000 for this, with the Vans, the Bulldozer, the trailer, the additional supplies. It is a lot! Jim even had to go to the library to learn how to use the X-ray machine, but they were set. Okay, look, I know IQ doesn't mean anything, but I couldn't find a verifiable source on what these guys IQs was, and I'm just so interested to know. But I think collectively, the three of them put together wouldn't amount to much. That's the thing about this bizarre group.

All three men owned guns. And yes, I've seen rumors online and whispers about how Fred liked to shoot at people because he was pure evil. But genuinely, I don't think that was the case. People who knew the family said that he would just wave the gun around when people trespassed onto his property because he was a little bit scared of trespassers.

But overall, he had like never shot a gun in his life, really. He had no experience with guns. He had never shot anything, they all had zero experience with guns. They had zero history of violence, at least not that we know of. From all accounts, these guys were just kind of weird but ultimately very chill people. No drug or alcohol use, no violence or abuse towards women or animals, no particular evidence of psychological lying, but I don't know. Maybe it's because they were young.

Maybe this is the start of their psychopathic traits coming out. If they hadn't been caught, would they have become serial killers or murderers at one point? I don't know. I've seen a lot of online articles try and paint these guys as like these super scary kids in their childhood, and I feel like if that were the case, it would be easier to digest this case. Because you're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. But again, most people who knew the family said that they were so normal. The show-in-failed brothers were almost so normal to the point of being dull.

And I don't know, that feels...scary. I do think that they had to have been evil, though, because the fact that they were going to traumatize two dozen kids and scar them for life did not even register in their heads. They genuinely talked about this plot as if they were just going to kindly borrow a bunch of kids, bury them in a bunker for a day or two, and then be $5 million richer. To show you how dumb and how careless they were, they were excited to provide the kids with some food while they were in the trailer. They wanted the kids to have snacks and be pleased.

So what did they get? The food supply was. Two loaves of sliced bread, a jar of peanut butter, a box of Cheerios, a couple bags of potato chips, and a few five gallon containers of water. For 26 children and an adult, I repeat, two loaves of sliced bread, a jar of peanut butter, a box of cereal, and a few bags of potato chips, and a few five gallon containers of water. That's it!

And then they stalked the bunker with 14 mattresses and small bed sheets, which looked more like old draper material. Then cue the confusing high-smontage of questionable dumb preparation. The guys felt like they needed protection too, so they sat there using scrap material to sew together a homemade bulletproof vest. I don't know what scraps they used. I don't know if they followed some sort of guide, but I do know that after they were arrested one of the guys asked the cops, do you want to test it out? And the cops said, no, we don't. And he said, no, I didn't mean like you put it on

I meant like you could put it up again something and something interested. He genuinely wanted to see if his bullet proof fest worked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you're also like, what about afterwards? What about after they get the ransom money? Well, that was easy. They were going to get the money, go into hiding in a pre-rented getaway house that they were paying rent on already in Nevada, a safe house, if you will, they were going to lie low and keep tabs on the investigation. If for a while, the police had no leads, they would stay there and then come out and buy the mansion with the money. Then the rest

of the millions of dollars they would leave on the side for the next seven years. Why seven years? That's how long it takes for the statute of limitations of kidnapping to run out in California. You're like, wow, there's a statute of limitations in California and kidnapping? No, no, there is not. I don't know how they got this information or where they got this information. It was false news. Fred even had a if shit hits the fan backup plan. This is like plan D. Okay, when he's already exhausted all of his other genius plans, he really hoped it would never get to this, but Fred had bought the birth certificate of a guy named Ralph Snyder who died 10 years ago. But had he lived, he would have been the same age as Fred.

So Fred went and used that birth certificate to get a driver's license and a power support. And you know, things were easier then. Fred decided as a police knew it was him, he was gonna leave the country and go to Canada. Jim and Rick were gonna do the same thing, but they couldn't find new identities. Like, this is mind-boggling I tell you. Just wait till you hear about the actual original plan of the kidnapping. The original plan involved a plane,

three vans, and a school bus, an x-ray machine, floodlights, and bulletproof vests and chloroform. They were gonna hijack the school bus on the afternoon ride, drive it to their vans, and you're like, yeah, that sounds like everything that happened, where does the plane come in? To put it simply, the kidnappers would fly to the ransom money spot where they had put in. So where they did the flashing

lights, they were going to fly there. After they did the flashing lights, one person was going to fly a plane to that spot where the money was dropped. They were going to put the money bags into the plane. Then they were gonna take off in the middle of wherever this was. Then they were gonna keep flying, put the plane on autopilot, and Fred, who's the only one in the plane, was gonna jump out with a parachute and the suitcases full of money. But then, there were also gonna be mannequins with suitcases attached to their arms, that they would push out of the plane with parachutes.

So the cops would have no idea which one was the real Fred, and the plane would continue to fly on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed. Like you're looking at crazy homicide charges if you do that. If you do that and the plane crashes into a family and kills them let alone I don't know a building of people. No, he's like inspired by DB Cooper or something. Yeah, but the thing is none of them had ever flown a plane. And how are they even gonna get a plane? Yeah, they were gonna steal a six passenger plane and they had prerequisites for that type of plane.

They said it was gonna be a six passenger plane with a highwaying and autopilot And I'm like are they planning on returning the plane if it doesn't have autopilot like how how Well that plan was dropped because none of them literally none of them had any experience flying any planes And then in Jim's notebook He has his own little set of to-do list and he made sure to write it down so that he would forget none of it And the first priority on this to do this was burn this book. He failed the very first task on the entire list because later it would end up in the hands of the investigators.

He also was I'm thinking to throw off the investigators by throwing on different political stickers on the bumpers of the vans after kidnapping. So the green and white vans, originally they were gonna have like vote for this person and then later they were gonna slap on vote for Reagan. Why? Because the authorities would be like, oh no, that can't be the car we're looking for

because we're looking for a Republican. And that's a Democrat. Or we're looking for a Democrat. That's a Republican. He also wrote a list of warnings to himself such as police have infrared to see at night. They also have heat-seeking vision, assume aerial photographs during all phases.

Don't forget, last will and bankruptcy proceedings don't spend money for seven years. If caught, keep mouth shut. He even wrote, and I quote, observe new laws giving young criminal shorter sentences. Tear gas, question mark? Police might use it. He also wrote concentrate on succeeding. Like, what does that sound like some sort of alpha male chad resolution? There is also one note that he just wrote 2 plus 2 plus 2 plus 2 equals 8. I mean, he's not wrong.

And he also wrote that if they come across any sort of bugging device, they were going to microwave it to melt the plastic. And then the next page in his diary, he talked about how he went to go see the movie, the exorcist. And he started feeling paranoid that he was losing his grip on sanity and that he was going to be possessed by an evil spirit. Yes. And he also ran to about how he could save the world with the money that he would get from the heist. I'm serious. He's talking about how to give back to the community after he kidnaps 27 people from the community and then demands the community pay up for their lives. And now he's like, how do I make the world a better place?

I don't know. Maybe don't commit crimes. Like their minds, I tell you, their minds, out of this world. And then in the next century, Jim was angry about the fact that he always let Fred push him around. So it's like this whole thing, right? And the reason that Jim ultimately went through with this plot was because he fell in love with a woman named Eileen Kelti. They went on a few dates. I don't know if they were serious. I don't know. But if Jim

was ever asked if he had a girlfriend, he'd be like, yes, her name is Eileen. I don't know if Eileen never felt the same way. Jim also wrote in his diary about how he thought about being a teacher one day. Now let's get to the kidnapping. Why these kids specifically? They didn't want to do high schoolers or middle schoolers because they were too old. They were more likely to fight back. The three of these guys, they lived closer to San Francisco but they thought we can't hijack a bus in the middle of San Francisco. That would be dumb. So they chose a random town in the middle of nowhere that was somewhat close to the query. Now side note, remember how they drove for 11 hours. You look how is that somewhat close? Well, actually it's not so the distance between

Dairyland Elementary School and the query was about 90 miles. So it's a two-hour drive potentially less because we're talking rural area But the kidnappers would drive around non-stop to throw off the hostages. They turned a two-hour drive into an 11-hour drive. And on that hot day in June, they pulled the trigger and committed the biggest kidnapping in US history. But we both know how this ends. They escaped. And I know there are so many questions like, where the hell were the kidnappers?

Not a single one of them was standing guard after abaring their victims alive. The kidnappers just left. They realized that they were exhausted. They had just driven around all night so they went home to take a nap. And when they woke, they attempted to call the Chao Chila police to demand their $5 million ransom, which with inflation is about $25 million now. They even had a fully drafted ransom note, but here's the problem. The Chao Chila police was flooded with calls, blowing up with tips as the investigation

with feverishly underway. Fred couldn't even get an officer on the line, not even one. And even if he had, would they believe him, would they take him seriously? They weren't even able to make a ransom demand before the Haas Studios escaped. The kids were taken back to the police station, and a lot of them were already showing signs of PTSD, a lot of them were wedding themselves. Some of them had interesting reactions like one kid was like, am I going to be on the news? He's just six years old. And then when news broke that the hostages had freed themselves, she really starts hitting the fan with this group. Rick starts calling up his girlfriend and is like, what do I do? He decides he's going to tell his dad what happened.

And his dad is incredulous. Is like, are you insane? You're going to get the gas chamber. Rick's dad promised to get him an attorney, but he never did for an entire week. They just moped around the house together. But Rick's dad is also the other brother's dad. Yeah. So two brother's dad.

Yeah. And he's like, God, what do I do? What do I do? Rick felt like it was all his fault. Fred had wanted to put more weight on the steel plate door But Rick was the one that told him, you know, 200 pounds is enough and then Rick would later argue that he actually Subconsciously wanted them to escape. That's why he did that. I don't believe you for a second Anyway, Fred and Jim were at the safe house, but they decided that they needed to leave like they needed to flee the country They they just couldn't do it.

They would fly to Canada and meet up in Vancouver. Now, this is another ridiculous thing. You're like, how are they gonna meet up in Vancouver? Do they have each other's numbers? Like, what's gonna happen? Vancouver is a huge city. Their plan was to go around to the pharmacies and laundry mats.

They would paint a red X in front of the sidewalk. Now, you would go back at the end of the day and check all the red X's that you had put in front of all the pharmacies and laundry mats. Now, if the other party was going to paint a red X, but they see that a red X is already there, they would paint it over with green paint, a green X. And they would wait around for the first person to check back on all their red X's. Now, like like wait a minute My red X turned green which means Fred or you there? I am so confused What is this yeah, I'm so confused you want me to be explained? Sure, yeah, it's like you go to every CVS and you paint a red X at the front and then at the end of the day

You have a list of let's say 20 CVSs that you went to and you have to go back and check on those red Xs Yeah, now I am going to every CVS I am there and painting red Xs But if I get to a CVS oh there's already a red X that means you've been there Yeah, so then I will get green paint and paint over your red X with green Uh-huh, and then I wait around that CVS because you're supposed to be checking all that your red X's. Wait how long? We don't know. Days, weeks, years, like.

Till 2023. I mean, I'm not saying it's a plan that makes sense. I'm saying this was their plan. Okay. So Fred was going to fly to Canada because he had a fake idea in passport. Jim was going to drive into Canada. Jim was really annoyed because Fred insisted Jim bring all the guns, which is insane to me because a lot of the times they'll check your car when you cross the border. The first time that Jim tried to cross the Canadian

border, they didn't let him in. They're like, you're not even making sense. Why are you visiting? This put Jim on edge. Since he was traveling with guns, he decided that was already a good luck thing that they didn't search my car. If they did, I would have been screwed. So he went back to Spokane, Washington. He sold his guns legally with his name, Redflog. Then he went back to the border and tried to get back in. And this time they were like, okay, we'll let you in, but we're going to search your car. And when they searched his car, they found two extra guns in the glove compartment that Jim didn't know was there. Fred had put them there. Thankfully, they didn't arrest him. Not thankfully for us, but I guess for Jim.

They didn't arrest him. They slapped him with a $75 fine and sent him away. Meanwhile, Fred is chilling in Vancouver. The clerk that checked him into the hotel under a false name said that his impression of Fred was that he was just a big grinning idiot. And that's the vibe. Just looked very dumb.

Had a stupid grin on his face all the time. Either way. Fred made it to Vancouver. He was busy trying to call his girlfriend Irene. He told his dad what he did and started writing letters to him asking him for forgiveness. He also claimed he would never make the same mistake again. Not sure which mistake he's referring to,

the kidnapping people or the letting them escape. Part. He also told his mom to sell the X-ray machine that he bought for all of this. He also wrote to Irene all these lovely, dovey letters about how much he loved her, but then he tried to have sex with the 19-year-old. He also wrote a letter to his friend named David, who was a screenwriter in Hollywood, and Fred told him that his crime would make a really good movie of the week. He said, and I quote, if you make it into a film, I want a percentage of it. And my ending is not that exciting, though. So you might have to kill some people or something in the end of the movie.

Meanwhile, Rick is at home with Dad getting more and more anxious, and he decides he's going to turn himself in. He even turns in Jim's diary to the evidence. Look, for the police. Yeah, the one that's like burned this book. He didn't burn it. It was turned into the police. A day after, Jim found out that Rick had turned himself in and he too was wanted along with Fred and their bails were set at a million dollars each. So Jim, he couldn't make it into Canada, he turned himself in. Now, Fred was the only one that stayed in Canada, but he was arrested the day after. And Jim wrote about the FBI. He said that he was very proud of the FBI

because they do what they have to do and they seem to be staying within the law and not disregarding people's rights, like the KGB. So loaded statement. So yeah, none of them really tried to hide their involvement. All three of them were in prison, awaiting trial. They would all eventually plead guilty to ransom in robbery and kidnapping. Richard Schoenfield was paroled in 2012. Jim Schoenfield in

August of 2015. And Fred was denied parole for the 19th time in 2019. Mainly due to the fact that Fred was running like a porn and contraband empire in prison. He was a business man, so not great behavior. Also, he was like running a car dealership out of prison. He was a businessman, so not great behavior. Also, he was like running a car dealership out of prison. I don't know how that works. He also inherited his family inheritance that was close to $115 million, described in a court filing, but Fred's lawyer would later dispute it. We have no idea how much he got. I think that there is a reason they wanted to dispute that number because the victims of this tragedy did sue Fred. Now, Fred got married three more times in prison. He was ultimately perolled in 2022 so not too long

to go and he bought a nice house. So he's living his best life. He is 71 years old today. The kidnappers are living their best lives and the victims are not. After the initial crimes the victims got about a thousand dollars adjusted for inflation. Ed took a few months off work and then he was back to driving buses which just imagined the PTSD. And But it's all okay because that and the kids were sent on a free trip to Disneyland. Spoiler alert, no, it was not okay. The victim suffered panic attacks, nightmares involving kidnappings, death, personality changes, a lot of them resorted to substance abuse and depression. In 2016, they filed a lawsuit against their kidnappers

and they were awarded an undisclosed settlement using Fred's trust fund. Even immediately after the kidnapping, they were traumatized. They had to be interviewed, given their account of events. The kids say they were so traumatized. Like, everywhere they go, they feel like they're running out of oxygen.

We don't know how much the victim's got. It was enough to pay for some serious therapy, but not enough for a house. It's what one of the victims said. Everyone in that small town was traumatized. A town's person said, the town is so small, there's not a single person in this town who didn't know somebody on that bus.

It affected every single person. The amount of unity and pulling together was beautiful. Churches who had differences came together, but things changed after. After that, you didn't see kids on the street, and if you did, parents were grasping at them for your life. It's like a storm that the town had to weather. It's been years and years, and none of them would ever be the same.

Ed Ray, the bus driver, died in 2012 at the age of 91, and in the weeks before his death, almost everybody who was buried in the van with him came to his bedside to say goodbye. And his birthday is a local holiday now. There is a deep connection of trauma and survival between every single person that was buried alive. I mean, it's just heartbreaking to think the level of damage three evil idiots can do to an entire community of people, and that is so terrifying. That is the story of one of the biggest kidnappings in US history. What are your thoughts on this? I just don't even understand. Please stay safe, and I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode.

Bye!