Chowchilla school bus kidnapper gets initial approval for parole

[Eugene]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Chowchilla school bus kidnapper gets initial approval for parole

By LAUREN RAAB
APRIL 1, 2015 7:05 PM

James Schoenfeld, one of three men who kidnapped a busload of schoolchildren from Chowchilla, Calif., in 1976, received initial approval for parole Wednesday, state corrections officials said.

Schoenfeld, his brother and another man forced 26 children and the bus driver to climb into a moving van that had been buried in a rock quarry 100 miles away, and planned to demand $5 million in ransom.

The captives managed to escape after being entombed at the quarry for 16 hours.

Wednesday's development “only begins a six-month process to determine whether or not he will go free,” said Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

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Read more: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-chowchilla-james-schoenfeld-parole-20150401-story.html

[Lochloosa]

1. Uhhh...no. They fucked up 24 lives.

After-effects

Three years after the kidnapping, a study of 23 of the children by Dr. Lenore C. Terr of UC San Francisco concluded that they had been traumatized by the ordeal, resulting in panic attacks, nightmares of kidnappings leading to their deaths, and personality changes. Twenty of the children were afraid of being kidnapped again, and 21 were afraid of such things as "cars, the dark, the wind, the kitchen, mice, dogs and hippies."[8] Eighteen months after the kidnapping, one of the older male victims shot a Japanese tourist with a BB gun when the tourist's car broke down in front of his home in what Dr. Terr described as "a dangerously inappropriate episode of (his need for) heroism."[9] Many of the children continued to report symptoms of trauma at least 25 years after the kidnapping, including substance abuse and depression. According to Dr. Terr, a number have spent time in prison for "doing something controlling to somebody else."[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Chowchilla_kidnapping