Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
School bus & locked in a rground, 26 kids dug their e ordeal ruined their lives
was my hero then and he is now. I see him as Batman, breaking through the earth. Dirt showered into the van and then there was a blast of sunlight and I could feel air rushing into the van and the dust blew up.
“It looked like a billion shooting stars going towards the sun. At that moment, I knew we were going to be OK. I looked at Andrea and she looked at me with tears of relief in her eyes.”
After 16 hours of being buried alive, Ray and the children made it above ground. Incredibly, they literally caught the kidnappers napping and, as the men slept, the kids quietly escaped to the quarry’s guard station near the Shadow Cliffs East Bay National Park, where the authorities were called.
At some stage, the gang woke up and fled before police arrived on the scene. They discovered the trailer was registered to the quarry owner’s son, Frederick Woods. They also found a draft ransom note. The escape had taken place before the kidnappers could even call it in. The police department’s phone lines were so overloaded with calls from the media and family members looking for their children that the gang were unable to get through.
Traumatised by events, Ed Ray could not recall any details to help the authorities capture the kidnappers. So he underwent hypnosis and was able to remember the number plate of one of the kidnappers’ vans which took them to the quarry.
Around two weeks later, Woods was arrested after fleeing to Vancouver, British Columbia. His accomplices, brothers Richard and James Schoenfeld, surrendered after just a few days in hiding. All three received life sentences after pleading guilty to 27 counts of kidnapping.
However, almost all the children have been haunted in one way or another by the ordeal ever since.
Larry says: “Andrea told our dad Rodney about what happened and she was worried that all she had done was pray. Our dad said, God gives each of us a task and her task was to pray while I dug, so it was all good and proper.”
Heartbreakingly, Larry admits that the kidnapping has badly affected his relationship with his sister.
He says: “She hasn’t hugged me since 1976. The effect on my family and me was immense. Every single night as a kid I would have nightmares about fighting zombies. Gory, bloody and terrifying. If the room was dark, I would see the faces of the zombies above my bed. So I always slept with the light on.”
And, as he grew up, Larry turned to drugs to numb the memories of what had happened.
He says: “I was addicted to drugs for more than 20 years because of what happened. We all found ways to hide the pain – and my way was drugs.
“By the time I was 21, I was doing methamphetamines, cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, PCP and smoking pot.
“I was not only doing drugs, I was dealing drugs to support my habit. So I have spent a lifetime going in and out of jails and mental institutions.” A decade ago Larry finally decided to turn his situation around.
He explains: “I woke up one morning and realised that all the pain, the hatred and the bitterness that I was holding on to wasn’t punishing the kidnappers any more than they had already been punished. Instead, it was killing me.”
Larry has now been clean for nine years and has written a book about his traumatic experience.
Incredibly, he also met the kidnappers face-to-face – including Richard Schoenfeld after he was paroled in 2012 and brother James who was freed in 2015 – saying it finally allowed him to be at peace.
Larry, who has a degree in Christian counselling, says: “This story for me is one of redemption and forgiveness. I’m not one who has held on to this over the years and is still bitter.
“I have visited each of the kidnappers. I have forgiven each of them and I have asked them for forgiveness for the years I spent hating them.
“I realised that I needed to change something in my life, and I turned to Christianity.
“I figured that if that didn’t work, I would try something else but, luckily, it did work. There was a lot of pain and a lot of tears.
“If I was going to be set free from the prison of my life, I had to help these men get set free from the prison of their lives.”
However, this approach has worsened the rift with Andrea. Larry says: “She has dealt with this completely differently to me. She refuses to forgive. She hasn’t spoken to me in four years now because of her struggle with what happened.
“She just can’t see where I’m coming from.”
This week, 43 years on from the Chowchilla kidnappings, Woods made another bid for freedom.
However, on Tuesday, the 67-year-old was denied parole for the 17th time. And he was told that he will be kept behind bars for at least another five years due to poor behaviour.
The move has been welcomed by most of the victims. But Larry believes that his one-time captor should be given a second chance.
He says: “I have mixed feelings about Fred and his parole hearing.
“I would love to go and advocate for his parole. But I am not prepared to do that while he is prepared to get himself into trouble in prison.
“He was running a business out of the prison selling Christmas trees, of all things.
“If he can go for a length of time without getting into trouble, I would definitely go in and advocate for his parole.
“I did advocate for the other guys’ parole and I am glad they are free.”