Chowchilla kidnapper granted parole at 20th hearing

James Schoenfeld, one of three men who kidnapped a busload of Chowchilla schoolchildren and their bus driver almost 40 years ago, was granted parole Wednesday in San Luis Obispo, where he is imprisoned at the California Men’s Colony.

This was the 20th time that the state Board of Parole Hearings has considered parole for the 63-year-old Schoenfeld since his conviction in 1977.

Details of the decision were not immediately available, but California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Bill Sessa said the ruling will now go through an internal review that could take up to four months before a recommended parole date is sent to Gov. Jerry Brown. Wednesday’s hearing was conducted by a two-member panel including one parole commissioner and a deputy commissioner.

Schoenfeld was 24 years old when he, his younger brother Richard Schoenfeld, and their friend Frederick Woods stopped school bus driver Ed Ray and 26 children on July 15, 1976. The three, all from wealthy Bay Area families, wore masks and carried guns as they stopped the bus, boarded it and drove to a bamboo thicket at the edge of the Berenda Slough near Chowchilla before herding their captives into a pair of vans. They then drove the vans to a quarry near Livermore and moved Ray and the children — who were ages 5 to 14 — through a hole into a buried trailer stocked with mattresses, food and water and equipped with fans and ventilation.

The kidnappers planned to ask for a $5 million ransom for their hostages. But before they could make their demand, Ray and the children managed to dig their way through the dirt-plugged hole to freedom about 16 hours after they were imprisoned.

Richard Schoenfeld surrendered to authorities about a week after the kidnapping and implicated his older brother and Woods, who were arrested a week later — James Schoenfeld in Menlo Park, Woods in Canada. After lengthy legal wrangling and a change of court venue from Madera County to Alameda County, all three men eventually pleaded guilty to kidnapping for ransom and were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. An appeals court later reduced their sentences to life with the potential for parole.

At least two of the kidnapping victims, Lynda Carrejo Lavendeira and Jodi Heffington-Medrano, attended Wednesday’s hearing, as well as senior prosecutor Sally Moreno from the Madera County District Attorney’s Office and representatives of the Alameda County District Attorney, to argue against parole for James Schoenfeld.

Madera County District Attorney David Linn said he was disappointed, but not necessarily surprised, by the decision to grant parole.

“We’re very much opposed to releasing him,” Linn said Wednesday. “We sent our senior prosecutor there to argue in person, rather than a letter, because we felt it is important enough for the people of Chowchilla to make sure he stay in prison for as long as possible.”

Linn added that he’s met with several survivors from the kidnapping, “and they’re still traumatically affected.” That’s one of the main points he asked Moreno to make to the parole board.

But a statewide movement toward reducing prison overcrowding apparently made Schoenfeld’s parole more likely than in prior years, Linn said. “The word has been on the street within government circles for the past couple of months that they were going to go ahead and grant it,” he said. “Considering what’s been happening throughout the whole California prison system, I’m not surprised.”

Linn said there is not much that his office can do now except to support the kidnapping survivors. “I did everything I could to resist it. Even his current attorneys wanted to meet with me and I refused to do that,” he said. “What I want to do now is reach out to the victims, let them know we’re here for them.”

Schoenfeld was last denied parole in a March 2013 hearing in San Luis Obispo. Richard Schoenfeld was paroled in 2012. Woods remains in prison after he was denied parole for the 14th time in 2012.

This story will be updated.

This story was originally published April 1, 2015 at 5:20 PM with the headline "Chowchilla kidnapper granted parole at 20th hearing."