Frederick Woods: Man who buried 26 children ALIVE in 1976 gets parole at 70
CHOWCHILLA, CALIFORNIA: The infamous 1976 ransom kidnapping of 26 schoolchildren and their bus driver still sends a shiver down the spine. Back in 1976, brothers Richard and James Schoenfeld, and Frederick Newhall Woods hijacked a school bus full of California children for an attempted $5 million ransom. Woods, the last of three men convicted of hijacking is now getting parole at the age of 70. The crime was reportedly inspired by Clint Eastwood's film 'Dirty Harry' in which a serial killer executes the same crime, basically laying the blueprint for these three criminals.
Woods, who was involved in 'The largest mass kidnapping in US history', as deemed by one of the prosecutors back then, was released by the state's parole board. California Gov Gavin Newsom even asked the board to reconsider this decision but was not given any heat. As far as his accomplices are considered, Richard Schoenfeld was granted parole and released from prison in June 2012, and his older brother James was released from prison three years later. On Wednesday, officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Frederick Woods was granted parole. The prosecutors considered Woods to be the mastermind behind this kidnapping that left more than two dozen children traumatized.
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On July 15, 1976, these convicts hailing from wealthy San Francisco Bay Area families kidnapped 26 children from Dairyland Elementary School and their bus driver near Chowchilla. Larry Park, who was only 7 years old at the time of the kidnapping told ABC30 that he was still traumatized by the kidnapping. He said, "There's hardly a day that goes by that I don't think about that incident." He further explained that this incident left him with schizophrenia and addiction. However, he has chosen to forgive the culprits. He continued, "It is possible to forgive and it is possible to find peace."
Frederick Woods is out on parole
Even though Woods is out on parole at the age of 70, Madera County District Attorney Sally Moreno apparently fought to keep him behind bars. Moreno said, "Has he demonstrated that he has been rehabilitated? And he hasn't. As recently as 2019, he was disciplined for running businesses out of jail or prison. Kidnapping was all about the money. When they arrested him he was busy selling the rights to the movie to some agent out of Hollywood. He has always been about money. And these kids got in between him and money and whatever he had to do to get the money he would have done to those kids, including burying them alive."
Despite the regular attempts to keep Woods in prison, the decision to let him out was made final. His parole was reviewed this week and will soon be released from California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo. During his parole hearing in March, Woods accepted that he needed money in order to be accepted by his parents and was "immature and selfish at the time" as per Daily Mail. He said, "I didn't need the money. I wanted the money." Dominique Banos, his attorney, said on Wednesday that the parole board recognized "a change in character for the good" and that Woods "remains a low risk, and once released from prison he poses no danger or threat to the community."