By Dan Weikel, Los Angeles Times –
LOS ANGELES — One of three men who kidnapped a busload of schoolchildren from Chowchilla, Calif., in 1976 has been released from custody after serving more than 35 years in state prison, authorities said Thursday.
Richard Allen Schoenfeld was released on parole to an undisclosed location late Wednesday, state prison officials said. He will be monitored 24 hours a day with a global positioning system device.
An appeals court ordered Schoenfeld’s release this year because, it said, the parole board had unfairly set his release date for 2021 even though it had found that he was no longer a threat to society. He had been denied parole 16 other times.
Schoenfeld and two other men kidnapped 26 students and an adult bus driver on July 15, 1976. After the school bus was hidden in a drainage slough, the captives were imprisoned inside a moving van that was buried in a quarry in Livermore.
With the help of the bus driver, the children escaped through a hole in the van’s roof when their kidnappers took a nap before calling in their ransom demands.