Gov. Newsom opposed to parole of man who kidnapped 26 young school children in Central Valley

What is perhaps the most harrowing moment in the history of public education in California – the 1975 kidnapping of 26 students ages 5 to 14 aboard a school bus in the City of Chowchilla in Madera County – is back in the news and drawing the attention of Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

The children, who with their bus driver, were buried alive for more than a day  as the kidnappers demanded $5 million, all survived.

But the case is being revisited because the last of the three men involved in the kidnapping, Frederick Woods, has been granted parole, a move the governor is asking the state Parole Board to reconsider. Woods and two brothers, James, and Richard Schoenfeld, were convicted and sentenced to life terms in state prison. But in  1980 a panel of appellate judges that included the governor’s late father, Judge William Newsom, reduced the sentences to give the trio chances at parole.

An appeals court ordered Richard Schoenfeld released in 2012, and then-Gov. Jerry Brown paroled James Schoenfeld in 2015. Frederick Woods, after 17 previous attempts, was granted parole Tuesday. Woods attorney, Dominique Banos, said Wednesday that the parole board recognized that Woods “has shown a change in character for the good,” the AP reported.

The governor is opposed to his release. The AP reported  Newsom said Woods “continued to engage in financial related-misconduct in prison,” using a contraband cellphone to offer advice on running a Christmas tree farm, a gold mining business and a car dealership. The governor can’t block Woods’ release because Woods was not convicted of murder. The governor can only urge the parole board to take a closer look.

Woods’ behavior “continues to demonstrate that he is about the money,” Madera County District Attorney Sally Moreno said in opposing his parole.

Moreno said after the decision that she was angry and frustrated “because justice has been mocked in Madera County,” and she fears for the state of society “if you can kidnap a busload of school children, abandon them buried alive and still get out of prison after committing that crime and spending your time in prison flouting the law.”

The crime is considered the largest mass kidnapping in the nation’s history. The three men buried the children and their bus driver in an old moving van east of San Francisco with little ventilation, light, water, food or bathroom supplies. The victims were able to dig their way out more than a day later.

Lynda Carrejo Labendeira, a victim who was 10 at the time, told the parole board how the children struggled to escape as a flashlight and candles flickered out while “the makeshift, dungeonous coffin was caving in,” the AP. reported.

“I don’t get to choose the random flashbacks every time I see a van similar to the one that we were transported in,” she told the board, according to the AP “Insomnia keeps me up all hours of the night. “I don’t sleep so that I don’t have to have any nightmares at all.”