| In the interest of speed and timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain spelling or grammatical errors. |
Parole denied for Chowchilla busnapper
Tuesday June 17, 2003SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (AP) One of the men who kidnapped and buried a busload of school children was denied parole for the 18th time Tuesday.
Richard Allen Schoenfeld, his brother James Schoenfeld, and Frederick Newhall Woods, were sentenced to life in prison for the crime.
Schoenfeld will be eligible for parole again next year, according to Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the Board of Prison Terms.
The men, all scions of wealthy San Francisco Peninsula families, commandeered the bus on July 15, 1976, near Chowchilla in the San Joaquin Valley.
They transferred their hostages to two vans, drove about 100 miles north and put them in a moving van they had buried in a quarry owned by the Woods family in Livermore.
While they were trying to arrange for the ransom, bus driver Ed Ray and some of the older boys dug their way out of the truck and summoned help.
Schoenfeld turned himself in six days after the kidnapping.
The men, who are serving their sentences at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo County, have been repeatedly denied parole.
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