Chowchilla school bus kidnapper up for parole. How district attorney plans to fight it
Madera County District Attorney Sally Moreno on Thursday said she would move to have a full parole board overturn the parole of Chowchilla school bus kidnapper Frederick Woods.
A panel of two commissioners on March 29 ordered the 70-year-old Woods’ parole for the July 1976 kidnapping of 26 children and bus driver Frank Edward “Ed” Ray.
Woods, then 24, and brothers Richard and James Schoenfeld were convicted of abducting the children from Dairyland Union Elementary School in Madera County and holding them hostage in a buried moving van in Livermore. The three were originally sentenced in Alameda County to life without the possibility of parole, but the sentences were overturned. The Schoenfelds have since been paroled.
Only the full parole board can overrule the order paroling Woods, said Moreno, and Gov. Gavin Newsom must first ask the panel for an “en banc” review of the decision. Moreno’s office will ask Newsom to do so.
As a first step, the Madera DA is requesting a transcript of the hearing, which she expects to have by Monday.
“We don’t agree with the parole,” said Moreno.
In response to Moreno’s move for the hearing, Dominique Banos, an attorney for Woods, said:
“Mr. Woods was 24 years old when he committed the senseless crime. Now, 46 years later, at the age of 70, Mr. Woods has shown his substantial growth, maturity, and understanding of the pain and suffering he caused to all those harmed by the crime. He has earned his grant of parole and if Madera DA Sally Moreno had shown up to the hearing she would have seen this for herself.”
Banos called the DA’s actions a “publicity grab due to her being up for re-election.”
Moreno countered that she had a representative attending the hearing, Jill Klinge, “one of the “foremost experts” of parole law in the state. She noted that Banos did not reach out to her personally or provide her a copy of the attorney’s remarks.
“My representative didn’t see what Mr. Woods’ attorney saw, (at the hearing) apparently,” said Moreno.
Moreno is running unopposed for reelection.
The Madera DA’s intervention in the decision drew praise from kidnap victim Lynda Carrejo Labendeira, who was 10 years old when the crime took place.
“How long is long enough for kidnappers to serve prison time for kidnapping and burying alive a busload of children?” Carrejo Labendeira asked. “How long is long enough if it was your child?”
Carrejo Labendeira was one of six family members buried in the quarry, including her sisters, Irene, 12; Julia, 8; Stella, 6; and cousins, Robert, 10; and Andres, 8.
About 4 p.m. on July 15, 1976, Ray was driving the bus when three men wearing stockings over their heads and carrying handguns boarded it. The trio hid the abandoned bus in a bamboo thicket and loaded Ray and the children – ages 5 to 14 – into two vans.
After 11 hours of driving, the men loaded the captives into the moving van buried in the quarry. The captives spent 16 hours underground before Ray and two of the older boys stacked mattresses and pushed their way out of the van. Ray and the 26 children escaped without any physical injuries. The moving van was registered to Woods, son of the quarry owner.
Woods has been denied parole 17 times previously. Authorities noted that, unlike the other kidnappers, he had not been a model prisoner. He was caught with pornography in 2002-03 and contraband cell phones in 2013 and 2014.
Said Carrejo Labendeira:
“Their guns were loaded. They preplanned this kidnapping for over one and one-half years. People swat flies, they don’t kidnap and bury alive children without consequences.”
“Kidnapping law is especially important because of the rise in numbers of human trafficking.”
She added that had not the captives, including her cousin Robert, taken action to break out of the buried van, “We would have suffocated.”
This story was originally published April 21, 2022 at 4:33 PM with the headline "Chowchilla school bus kidnapper up for parole. How district attorney plans to fight it."