48 Hours Airs Interview with Chowchilla Kidnapping Survivors

March 17, 2023

Workmen inspect the van at a rock quarry in Livermore, California, on July 20, 1976. The van contained 26 Chowchilla schoolchildren and their bus driver until they were able to free themselves. (AP Photo/James Palmer)

CBS News’ segment 48 hours aired Remembering the Chowchilla Kidnapping on March 18.

The segment, which aired on CBS and is streamed on Paramount+, follows the story of the infamous 1976 school bus kidnapping, in which three masked gunmen abducted 26 children and school bus driver Ed Ray. They were buried alive in a rock quarry and in an old moving truck, spending more than 16 hours in the dark before they were able to escape.

Last summer, the last of the three men convicted of the kidnapping, Frederick Wood, was paroled from prison. Wood, then 24, and his two friends James and Richard Schoenfeld, were arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

The 48 Hours segment consisted of an interview with survivors, including Jodi Heffington, who relayed her lifelong trauma she dealt with before dying in 2021.

“How that day affected me has affected me every day in some way or another,” Heffington tells 48 HOURS, CBS News stated via a press release. “I think it made me not a good daughter, not a good sister, not a good aunt, and especially not a good mother … I try to be those things. But it seems like, it just took something from me that I can’t ever get back. And I can’t tear it down … no matter how hard I try and no matter what I do.”