284: School Bus Driver & 26 Children Held For Ransom Underground: The 1976 Chowchilla Kidnapping
In the summer of 1976, a man named Ed Ray drove a bus full of Dairyland Elementary School students home from a school-sponsored summer trip to the Chowchilla Fairgrounds swimming pool. The hot, California weather and the glow of the early evening had the entire group in good spirits. They couldn’t have known that evil was afoot and within 12 hours the entire bus full of children, and Ed himself, would be abducted and buried alive in a rock quarry 100 miles from their home. Now, 18 years after that terrifying day, we look back on the case and examine the harrowing aftermath of the largest kidnappings in US history.