One of three men who kidnapped a busload of Chowchilla school children and their driver and buried them in a Livermore quarry more than 35 years ago has been released from prison.
Richard Schoenfeld was released on parole Wednesday to an undisclosed location, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Luis Patino said in an email.
Schoenfeld, his brother James Schoenfeld and a friend, Frederick Woods, were convicted of the July 15, 1976, crime, in which they buried all 27 victims alive inside a van at a Livermore construction sight while planning to demand a $5 million ransom.
All 27 victims survived.
Schoenfeld was scheduled to be paroled in November 2021, based on the open-ended nature of Schoenfeld's life sentence. With no definitive end date, the parole board calculated the parole date by taking into account all of Schoenfeld's victims, Patino said in an email last week.
But Schoenfeld argued for an immediate release, and in March the First District Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in his favor. The state Supreme Court declined earlier this month to review the case, clearing the way for Schoenfeld's release.
Richard Schoenfeld had been in prison since Feb. 17, 1978. He'll be monitored 24 hours a day with a GPS monitoring device, Patino said.
Calls to Scott Handleman and Gary Dubcoff, attorneys for Schoenfeld, were not immediately returned, nor was a call to Alameda County
Deputy District Attorney Jill Klinge, who has attended past parole hearings for all three kidnappers.Richard and James Schoenfield and Wood were in their early- to mid-20s when they took over the bus carrying kids from Dairyland Union School in Chowchilla, a small farm community about 35 miles northwest of Fresno in Madera County. They camouflaged the bus, left it in a creekbed, then drove the children and bus driver, Ed Ray, to the California Rock and Gravel Quarry in Livermore, where they put them in a van buried in a cave.
Ray and the children escaped by piling mattresses on top of each other and escaping through an opening in the van roof.
Schoenfield and his two conspirators pleaded guilty in Alameda County Superior Court in 1977. James Schoenfeld and Woods haven't been found suitable for parole. They have parole hearings scheduled for later this year.
Rick Hurd covers breaking news. Contact him at 925-945-4780 and follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/3rdERH.
