True Crime Conversations · Mamamia Podcasts

Inside The Kidnapping Where 26 Kids Were Buried Alive

·35 min·2 clips

Mike Marshall, 14, pushed the manhole cover for hours until a shaft of sunlight reached the group underground.

1. True Crime Conversations focuses on the 1976 Chowchilla school-bus kidnapping and the 26 children plus driver Frank Edward Ray who were taken on the ride home from summer school. 2. Host Claire Murphy speaks with Fox News Channel senior correspondent Claudia Cowan, who hosts the podcast Nightmare in Chowchilla and reported from Chowchilla, California. 3. The episode asks how a daytime kidnapping in a small Central Valley town became a buried-vans case, a ransom chase, and a survival story. 4. On July 15, 1976, a white van blocked the bus on Treeline Avenue 21 and a masked man with a sawn-off double-barrel shotgun ordered Ed Ray to move to the back. 5. Cowan says the children were transferred from the bus to blacked-out vans with removed seats, plywood over the windows, and no water, food, or bathrooms. 6. She describes the ride as more than 11 hours long, with Jennifer remembering the smell of gasoline when the vans stopped to refuel. 7. The kidnappers then drove to a Livermore rock quarry owned by Fred Woods' father, where the children and Ed Ray were made to climb down a ladder into a buried moving van. 8. Cowan says the buried van had flashlights, cereal, water jugs, mattresses, and makeshift toilets carved into the wheel well, showing planning for the abduction. 9. She also notes that the food and water disappeared quickly because the children had not eaten since lunch and were frightened and exhausted. 10. Back in Chowchilla, the bus was found in a slough, and a small blue or green paint mark on it briefly helped police identify a dark-colored vehicle. 11. Sheriff Ed Bates, wearing a cowboy hat, holster, and boots, relied on relationships and gut instinct rather than cell phones or GPS. 12. A real-estate woman saw suspicious men around dark vans and wrote down a license plate, which helped investigators trace the kidnappers' vehicles. 13. The kidnappers tried calling police for a $5 million ransom, but media attention and overloaded phone lines kept their calls from getting through. 14. Cowan says they went home and took a nap, and Mike Marshall and Ed Ray later carried out the escape from the underground tomb. 15. Mike Marshall was 14, came from a rodeo family, and was on the bus because his mother told him to take the bus home from summer school. 16. Larry Park says that without Mike Marshall on that bus, he would not be alive, and Cowan emphasizes that Mike pushed the manhole cover aside inch by inch until sunlight came through. 17. The interview style is conversational and reportorial, with Claire Murphy asking detailed follow-up questions and Claudia Cowan answering in story-driven, scene-by-scene detail. 18. The tone moves between horror, procedural investigation, and survivor reflection, with recurring references to fear, faith, and recovery. 19. Listeners interested in true crime history and survivor accounts. 20. Listeners wanting a light or spoiler-free topic should skip it.

As heard by us

A steady survivor-centered account of Chowchilla's bus kidnapping, where one teenager's courage carries real weight.

A summer-school bus carrying 26 children and driver Ed becomes the center of a kidnapping survival story shaped by fear, endurance, and one unexpected passenger.

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Why you'd press play

Press play when you want the Chowchilla school-bus kidnapping reconstructed around the children and driver forced underground after a white van blocked their way home.

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