A committee of two commissioners with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on Friday recommended the conditional release of Frederick Newholt Woods, one of three men who hijacked a school bus with 26 children in Chouchila, California on July 15, 1976. Friday’s hearing was Wood’s 18th attempt for parole. Woods and two other gunmen, Richard and James Sonfeld, stopped bus driver Ed Ray as he was taking the children home from Dairyland Elementary School, about 150 miles southeast of San Francisco. The kidnappers forced the children and Ray into trucks, according to court records. After about 12 hours on the road, the team was taken to a ventilated shelter containing mattresses and snacks on a property owned by Woods’s father, prosecutors said. While the frightened children and the bus driver were buried for hours, the roof began to collapse from the weight of the dirt, according to court records. Frederick Newhall Woods played a role in the abduction of 26 children from a school bus in Chowchilla, California in 1976.AP Photo / California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Lynda Carrejo Labendeira, who was 10 at the time, told the Associated Press in 2015 that battery-powered blowers that circulated air in the shelter began to fail. “We would not live much longer. “We would have died of suffocation in there,” Labendeira said. Prosecutors said Woods and his accomplices plotted the abduction as the “crime of the century” and demanded a $ 5 million ransom from the State Board of Education. Investigators excavate the ventilated shelter used to house 26 abducted children along with bus driver Ed Ray Jr. at a rock quarry near Livermore, California on July 17, 1976. Officers remove a truck buried in a 26-year-old quarry. and their bus The driver was taken prisoner in Livermore, California on July 20, 1976.AP Ray and the children, who were then 5 to 14 years old, finally managed to get out of the trailer 28 hours later and ran to nearby workers, who called the police. The three suspects were arrested two weeks after the abduction and initially sentenced to life without parole. An appeals court, however, overturned the decision and allowed the kidnappers to be released on parole. Woods appeared on video Friday before the commission, where his lawyer, Dominique Banos, said his client had not faced disciplinary action since 2019. Authorities recover one of the trucks used to abduct 26 students in Livermore, California in 1976.AP Photo / Jim Palmer During the hearing, Woods apologized to the victims. “I had empathy for the victims, which I did not have then.” said Woods. “I have changed my character since then. . I was 24 years old. I now fully understand the horror and trauma I caused. “I take full responsibility for this heinous act.” The commission’s decision will now be reviewed by the California Legal Board of Parole Hearing. If no action is taken, Woods’s conditional release will be granted within 120 days of Friday’s hearing. Bus driver Ed Ray Jr. was praised for helping 26 children escape from a ventilated shelter. AP Two abducted students walk with their families to Chouchila, California on July 17, 1976. AP Concerned parents wait inside the Chouchila Police Department after the abduction children were pulled from the shelter on July 17, 1976.AP Gov. Gavin Newson then has 30 days to consider the commission’s decision. The governor can overturn parole only if the detainee is convicted of murder, which was not Wood. Two victims who took part in Friday’s hearing said they had agreed that Woods should be released on parole, according to NBC. “I think you have spent a lot of time on the crime you committed,” said Larry Park. Richard Schoenfeld was released on parole in 2012 and James Schoenfeld was released in 2015.
