Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
60 – California Witch Killers & The 1976 Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping
0 Playsin 1 hour
This week, Jeff and Sam dive into two shocking cases. Sam shares the haunting story of Jennifer Carson, whose father was one-half of the infamous San Francisco Witch Killers, and how she’s come to terms with his terrifying legacy. Jeff covers the 1976 Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping, the largest mass kidnapping in American history, where 26 children and their bus driver were buried alive in a moving van.
Visit us on Linktree to connect with our Instagram or email us at jeffandsamshow@gmail.com.
Sam’s sources:
- Peacock Documentary: I Lived with a Killer, Season 1, Episode 8 – The San Francisco Witch Killers
- Martinis & Murder Podcast – Episode 17: San Francisco Witch Killers
- People Magazine – Daughter of Serial Killer Speaks Out
Jeff’s sources:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Show Promotion
00:00:00
Jeff Rogers
Hello, Sam. Hi, Jeffrey.
00:00:24
Jeff Rogers
Hello. Hi. You were going to say something? Nope. Welcome to the Jeff and Sam show. I'm Jeff. And I'm Sam. Hey. e And you can listen to the show or recommend the show on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and iHeartRadio.
00:00:39
Jeff Rogers
Follow, rate, and review us. Hit a little star, you know, however many you want to give us. I like five. It's just a nice even number, that five. mean, I'll take four.
00:00:50
Jeff Rogers
I'll take four. fine. But prefer five. Anyway, it does something to the algorithm. They tell us. And it they tell us bumps us up a little further. And we like that.
00:01:02
Jeff Rogers
We do. You can find us on Instagram at the Jeff and Sam show. We have a webpage, a website, jeffandsamshow.com. um Is that all the stuff? gma Gmail. The jeffandsamshow at gmail.com.
00:01:15
Jeff Rogers
It's all in the show notes,
Vacation Plans and Show Format
00:01:17
Jeff Rogers
as are the sources that we use for every story. and an intro to us. We tell a story to each other every week.
00:01:27
Jeff Rogers
Neither of us know the story that the other one will tell. So it's always like a fun surprise or a horrifying yeah yeah horrifying surprise. more like It's one of the other. And we are here for you every, every, every Thursday period point blank.
00:01:41
Jeff Rogers
And in August, Samantha goes away. So we're going to have shows for you that are not quite going to be like, you know, we're making them now so we can put them out then. But we're also going to do some reruns in August as well.
00:01:57
Jeff Rogers
I need to interrupt you. Because you said Samantha goes away. And it sounds like you're murdering me. I don't know. Like, I'm just going to disappear. Samantha goes away.
00:02:07
Jeff Rogers
Vanished by this one. No, she's going on vacation. So she's leaving me. feel the way about it. I guess you felt a way about it when I went to Oregon.
00:02:18
Jeff Rogers
did. But then we'll be back better than ever. We will indeed. But we're in the time that you're gone, gone we're going to... That was some Southern that came out right there. Did you hear that? In the time that you're gone... Everyone else heard it too. In the time that you're gone, we're going to have some of the past shows that we've done some of our favorite stories. We're going to share them with you again.
00:02:37
Jeff Rogers
Just that you don't have to spend a week without our... lovely voices southern accents what's new with you
00:02:47
Jeff Rogers
i packed oh my god i looked at the the calendar on my way home from work a couple days ago so what was i've spent the past couple weeks like glancing at the calendar just reminding myself oh you got plenty of time you're fine you've got plenty of time and then i looked at the calendar on
00:03:08
Jeff Rogers
Sunday morning after I left work my stomach dropped and I went, Oh my God, I have 10 days. don't remember you saying that to me. Came out of nowhere.
00:03:19
Jeff Rogers
So i made a schedule and yesterday as much as I did not want to, I got fully packed, which I realized today because I'm going to hot places.
00:03:31
Jeff Rogers
put all of my shorts
Reading Habits and Recommendations
00:03:33
Jeff Rogers
in my suitcase. So, um and then, I have somehow managed to find time to still read and finished one trilogy.
00:03:45
Jeff Rogers
and What is the trilogy you finished? It was and first in a set of... like You know how i read those books that are multiverses almost? yeah So it was one of those.
00:04:00
Jeff Rogers
is...
00:04:01
Jeff Rogers
it is sam Sam and I share so much in common, but books are typically not a thing that we have in common. We definitely do not.
00:04:14
Jeff Rogers
However, you and Ashley indeed have those in common. I don't know what the, whatever it's called, um but it's by Leigh Bardugo and it's the Shadow and Bone series.
00:04:31
Jeff Rogers
And I started the six of crows and then I also started another series and I read that book in no time. Cause it was that good. My sister was like, wait a second, you read a 600 page book in like nine hours. i was like, yeah, that's insane.
00:04:48
Jeff Rogers
it was so good. So lady of darkness was, is the new one, but I had to stop myself so that I could read that while I'm on vacation because I specifically put those on my Kindle.
00:04:59
Jeff Rogers
so I could read on vacation and then i got so bored at work on Sunday I was like might as well read a book and I didn't have any real books with me just had my kindle so I was like and then it was done the only time I've ever read that much of a book in one sitting was ah covenant of water when Ashley and I were reading this book together for our little book club right She was doing audible, which is great.
00:05:24
Jeff Rogers
Do audible. Wonderful. She does it. It's so fast. Like she does it at two times the speed and she comprehends it. She comprehends it so well.
00:05:35
Jeff Rogers
She says she doesn't do it at two times the speed, but she does it at two times the speed. Maybe it's a thing with Ashley's because my sister does that same thing. Yeah. Oh, anyway, and that's fine.
00:05:45
Jeff Rogers
But I'm trying to keep up with it because I have the 900-page book in my hands. I'm trying to keep up with it. so there was a day when i read, it was like 30 chapters of this book in one sitting.
00:05:59
Jeff Rogers
i couldn't function for the rest the day. eyes bleeding? I couldn't speak to people. like, no speaking. I couldn't function. what was that sound maybe anyway it was worth it though worth it oh my god that was such a good book it was such a great alligator is my favorite part oh ashley
Preparation for Story Segment
00:06:20
Jeff Rogers
ashley ashley the one i just read actually is a head full of ghosts you're done with it now yes and oh what a good book
00:06:30
Jeff Rogers
What a creepy, creepy book. I mean, it sounds like it from what I read in the... It's this... um I don't know how much I can share without giving it away. Don't, don't. head full of ghosts. It's very creepy. It's by Paul Tremblay.
00:06:44
Jeff Rogers
Oh, man.
Coping with Trauma: A Survival Story
00:06:46
Jeff Rogers
Creep factor. Very much creepy. I love that for you. I also like the facial expression you're making right now. And then, okay, I'm in the middle of watching We Were Liars.
00:07:00
Jeff Rogers
What do you think about it? It is, i think it's on Prime, right? It is Young and the Restless meets Dawson's Creek.
00:07:13
Jeff Rogers
ah I can see that 100%. Isn't that quite the combo? I'm not entitled. I own an island. You think I'm entitled because I own an island? Fuck off. Fuck he Okay, I just want everyone to know that I have been hounding him about this because I just wanted to get to the final episode.
00:07:31
Jeff Rogers
It's only eight episodes. I'm six in. And first of all, he thought he was five in a couple times ago, and I asked him. And then he came back and he was like, I'm only on episode three. And I was like, shit. Yeah, that was a killer.
00:07:43
Jeff Rogers
Yeah, so it is. It's a hard show to watch because it's just drama, you know? And I don't typically like But it's not like normal people drama.
00:07:56
Jeff Rogers
It is entitled people drama. It is like watching a show about the Kennedys on what were Kenny Blankport. I don't know where they lived. No, that was in Maine. Where did the Kennedys live?
00:08:09
Jeff Rogers
Somewhere in Massachusetts. Yeah. Hyannisport. Yeah. It is like you're watching a show about the Kennedys, young and hyena sport. But you have to just get to the final episode. I will. I'm going to get there. lately Your whole everything just kind of changes.
00:08:24
Jeff Rogers
I'm going to get there. There's that underlying secret that we have no idea what it is. And it presents itself in such a way that like you can jump to all sorts of conclusions.
00:08:35
Jeff Rogers
So I was trying to figure it out the whole time. and then I was just blindsided. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that was what made me really like it was because it caught me completely off guard until that final episode. And then I started going, maybe.
00:08:52
Jeff Rogers
Maybe. And then was exactly as interesting as I thought. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. um I have a movie recommendation for you. Another one? You don't have to watch it since you've watched Happy Valley. Okay, wait. Let me get to my notebook.
00:09:10
Jeff Rogers
This one is dark. It is so dark. Okay. And so bizarre. It's called Red Rooms. What's it on? It's on Prime. Okay.
00:09:23
Jeff Rogers
It's a psychological thriller centered around Kellyanne. She's a tech savvy model. She's very much a loner. And there's a, she attends this court case every day.
00:09:37
Jeff Rogers
So she goes to court to watch this trial every day. and the And I guess kent is Montreal is where it's from. So it's Canadian movie and it's in French. Okay. She goes to court every day to watch the trial of this possibly a monster.
00:09:54
Jeff Rogers
And the way they do it there, I guess, is they put the person on trial in a glass booth. Like the one in Happy Valley. He does not... give a fuck what's going on around him. He sits in that glass booth. He looks at his nails and the things that he's accused of and on trial for are horrific and they happen in red rooms, which is on the dark web.
00:10:19
Jeff Rogers
And her fascination with this is baffling.
00:10:27
Jeff Rogers
It's very dark. um It's in French. They don't show any of that the really bad shit that happens in the red rooms. They don't show that. Okay. So they leave out the that stuff, which is good because I didn't want to see that. Okay.
00:10:41
Jeff Rogers
But you're you're wondering the whole time, what the fuck is this person doing going to this trial every single day? Because the family's there. The families of the victims are there. The jurors are there. So what's her connection?
00:10:53
Jeff Rogers
What is her connection? Was she affected by this man? And it's a movie? Yeah. Okay. Solid, solid movie. Okay. Really fascinating. And it's in French.
00:11:06
Jeff Rogers
I speak French so well. There you All right. Should we flip a coin? We should. First, what are you drinking? huh Ollipop watermelon lime. o this, first of all, I love this can. I'm doing an Ollipop strawberry vanilla. Okay. And it just looks so like. Refreshing summertime.
00:11:24
Jeff Rogers
my I'm kind of, I just had watermelon before we recorded. like and watermelons. I'm having watermelon lime soda. Yep, yep, yep, yep.
00:11:38
Jeff Rogers
Cheers, quiz. Yours looks like abdo. Yeah, it does. Yours looks like hematuria.
00:11:45
Jeff Rogers
Yeah. Mm-mm. Oh, that's good. That's good. Summer tummy. Okay. Tell me when to stop.
00:12:00
Jeff Rogers
Stop.
00:12:03
Jeff Rogers
Oh, I think we did this one recently. I'll take another one. Who cares? I'm to get us a bag to put those in so you can like shake the bag. That's what I did first.
00:12:12
Jeff Rogers
Yeah, we're going to go back. But we need a bigger bag. we need a bigger bag. Okay. This one is Canada. Oh, Canada. Oh, Canada.
00:12:23
Jeff Rogers
There's a big old moose on the back and the queen on one side. Obviously, you're the queen. That's very kind.
00:12:31
Jeff Rogers
She caught it. Oh, my God. She caught it. I want you guys to know that my anxiety skyrockets whenever I put that coin up. My heart rate starts just jumping and I just... Yours does. Mine does too. Okay, I think I'm going to be pelted with a coin.
00:12:48
Jeff Rogers
you think it's going to hit me in the face. But it hasn't so far. It has gone across into the bathroom through the kitchen before. All right. What was it?
00:13:00
Jeff Rogers
It was the moose. Um...
00:13:03
Jeff Rogers
So I'm not reading my really horrible one right now. Okay. So in some ways, this is kind of a survival story. So I think you'll like that aspect of it. I just perked up. Did you see that? kid your eyes oh liny um it's ah It's a story about coping and and moving beyond trauma okay that was experienced. okay Oh, my God.
00:13:26
Jeff Rogers
So is mine. All right. Huh. James Carson met Lynn in college. They got married in 1970 and then lived in Phoenix, Arizona. The couple had one daughter named Jennifer, and they were the perfect match.
00:13:41
Jeff Rogers
They finished each other's sentences. They loved all the same music. They were happy. He was highly intelligent, but he was a stay-at-home dad and worked odd jobs. Jen recalled that her father seemed to have become lost over the years because he wasn't being challenged or living up to his intellectual abilities.
00:14:01
Jeff Rogers
This possibly led to a depression. Initially, Jen remembered him as a hands-on father. He was kind, incredibly nurturing, and did simple things to show his love for her.
00:14:13
Jeff Rogers
He was always there. Then something changed. He began exhibiting behavioral and basic character changes. It's like he was becoming a different person. He began losing his temper more often, yelling, making odd statements and anger and saying things like, oh man, I could really just kill that person.
00:14:33
Jeff Rogers
it was as if he was now just full of rage. What started out as recreational drug habit carried over from his hippie days turned into a near constant need.
00:14:46
Jeff Rogers
As his drug use increased, so did his violence. He began became more chaotic. He started talking about mortar murder and overthrowing the government. He even told a story that as a teenager, he had killed somebody with his mind.
00:15:01
Jeff Rogers
Ooh. James and Lynn started fighting more often. Sometimes it turned physical. One of these fights resulted in Lynn taking Jennifer and fleeing after he had thrown a glass that shattered and ended up cutting Jennifer.
00:15:15
Jeff Rogers
The two divorced and shared custody of their child. What year was this? Mid-1970s. Okay. okay So they're not on Reddit going down rabbit holes, turning into yeah crazy... Okay.
00:15:31
Jeff Rogers
No Reddit. Okay. After the divorce from Lynn, James was invited to a party at the home of Susan Barnes. She was a wealthy, attractive divorcee. At the party, the two hit it off.
00:15:43
Jeff Rogers
He was drawn to her eccentricity and energy. After the party, he never left. They became a couple and then married. Susan decided that he should be called Michael.
00:15:56
Jeff Rogers
She claimed that it was his true name from God. named after the archangel who kicked Satan out of heaven. She claimed to be a psychic, and he ate it up.
00:16:08
Jeff Rogers
According to Jennifer, when James was a child, he suffered from some sort of sickness that ended up with him laid up in bed for extended periods of time. During this illness, his relationship with his mother intensified.
00:16:20
Jeff Rogers
It's believed that he developed and an obsessive connection to females in his life as he grew up. Their beliefs and whims became his own. He would follow them in every way.
00:16:31
Jeff Rogers
This was fueled by Susan's entire vibe. She told him that in their past lives, they had been lovers throughout the ages.
00:16:43
Jeff Rogers
In additional to excessive marijuana use, they started sharing a love of psychedelic drugs, including peyote. Although Lynn frequently received disturbing phone calls and letters from James, when she reached out to family and even the police, nobody believed her.
00:16:59
Jeff Rogers
They just thought she's ah she's an ex-wife, she must be angry, she's making this up, that kind of stuff. Lovely, right? By this time, he had adopted the name Michael, and Susan became Susan with a Z.
00:17:17
Jeff Rogers
Susan. Susan. um Because of their shared custody agreement, Jennifer was to spend weekends with James and his new wife.
00:17:28
Jeff Rogers
At four years old, Jennifer made her first trip to stay with him at Susan's home. Susan with a Z, not Susan with an S. Uh-huh. She said that there was never furniture or food in the home.
00:17:41
Jeff Rogers
The house was filled with plants of all types, and she remembered feeling like she was walking into a haunted forest when she visited. As a young girl, she even described Susan resembling an evil queen from Disney.
00:17:57
Jeff Rogers
She described her visits as horrific. At such a young age, she was forced to take care of herself because both adults were normally passed out or too high to notice that she was even there. There were times when Susan would hold her head under the bathwater until she couldn't breathe.
00:18:12
Jeff Rogers
She frequently told the young child that she deserved to die. God, that's horrible. Upon returning to Lynn, young Jennifer told her about the things she experienced and repeated things that she that had been said by both James and Susan.
00:18:27
Jeff Rogers
Initially, Lynn thought that she was mistaken or maybe confusing the words and what she was saying. And then after one visit, Jennifer complained about pain in her back.
00:18:38
Jeff Rogers
Lynn lifted her shirt and saw deep, gouged nail marks running down Jennifer's back. Jen told her that Susan had called her a demon and tried to scratch her.
00:18:50
Jeff Rogers
After this visit and Lynn's horrible realization, she received a call from James saying that he and Susan intended to come pick up Jennifer and they were leaving the country for a little while. Without hesitating, Lynn packed up Jennifer and fled Arizona.
00:19:04
Jeff Rogers
They went to Southern California
Transformation and Radicalization
00:19:06
Jeff Rogers
and spent years hiding from the delusional and psychotic couple. They moved frequently and sometimes struggled to find places to live. Lynn didn't tell young Jennifer much, but she said that they wouldn't be seeing her daddy for a while.
00:19:20
Jeff Rogers
As she grew up, Jennifer was taught by Lynn to lie about why her father wasn't around, and then they just never talked about him. James and Susan, now Michael and Susan, went overseas and came back changed.
00:19:37
Jeff Rogers
kind of Is it Susan with a T now? i don't know. No, it's still just the Susan with a Z? Yeah. I mean, come on. She completely changed his name. She couldn't thought anything original. It is like the Liza Minnelli song.
00:19:48
Jeff Rogers
Sorry. I'm going to gay it up right here a little bit. Did you catch that? Yes. Susan with a Z, not Susan with an S, because Susan with a Z goes nuts. I'm sorry. um I'll contain it. containing don't you ever sorry don't you ever um so the newly changed couple michael and susan that damn song is in my head and came back changed they both exhibited increasing radical thoughts and behaviors and showed obvious signs of religious fanaticism it'll get you yeah it'll get you he attempted to contact jen but he didn't know where they were so he wrote letters to relatives and
00:20:28
Jeff Rogers
The couple changed their last name to Bear. Like, argh. Ooh. Yeah. Because he had always thought of bears as his spiritual totem. They declared themselves Muslim and embarked on a religious quest fueled by drugs.
00:20:44
Jeff Rogers
They created and preached their own religion that was kind of a warped combination of islam and mysticism uh they embraced jihad as religious warriors became vegetarian and radical environmentalists so they're like oh weird drugged hippie twisted people who are using religion and now they're fanatics yeah they made a living selling pot and hitchhiked up and down the coast to find people who shared their values
00:21:15
Jeff Rogers
In 1980, they moved to San Francisco and settled into a neighborhood that had a large hippie culture, and they seemed to blend right in. While they were living there, they met 23-year-old Karen Barnes.
00:21:28
Jeff Rogers
She had moved to San Francisco as a hippie, artistic, boho kind of chick. She became friends with Susan and Michael. They made her their acolyte in their religion.
00:21:41
Jeff Rogers
Her friends all warned her that these guys were not Boy, if this not cultish, I don't know what it is. Right? Come on, girl. I get it. just But no, you know. Yeah. She got sucked in, though. She just ate it all up.
00:21:54
Jeff Rogers
Run, honey. She moved into the house with them and she was living in a basement apartment and they shared the home just for a brief period of time. And then soon after moving in Michael started becoming attracted to her and their relationship kind of started changing.
00:22:09
Jeff Rogers
Susan was not oblivious to this. She became jealous. At one point, and I mean, Susan just doesn't seem the kind of person that you want to make jealous, right? No, she changed it to a Z. She did. That's crazy. That's kind of fanatical right there. That's crazy. You know she's got the crazy ass when she becomes Susan.
00:22:25
Jeff Rogers
The Z, yeah. So at some point, Karen did tell her friends and even her mother that she was genuinely frightened of them now. Unfortunately, before Karen had a chance to leave, the couple...
00:22:42
Jeff Rogers
Susan told Michael that she knew, knew, didn't think, knew that Karen was obviously a witch and was causing her psychic abilities to fade.
00:22:53
Jeff Rogers
Because as a psychic, she's more prone to the magical whims of the world. yeah So Michael thought that he had to protect her. So he agreed to kill her.
00:23:05
Jeff Rogers
Oh my God. On March 6, 1981, Susan cornered Karen in their shared kitchen and then Michael attacked her, hitting her on the head with a frying pan.
00:23:17
Jeff Rogers
But then he hesitated for a moment and Susan stepped right up. She grabbed a kitchen knife and began stabbing her. Michael took the knife from her and continued stabbing her, i guess shaken out of his momentary, maybe moral dilemma that he was experiencing.
00:23:33
Jeff Rogers
She had 13 stab wounds to her face and throat. Then they left her body on the kitchen floor and took off. They believed that this was a holy act because they had just rid the world of a witch.
00:23:46
Jeff Rogers
So was fine. But they had to go and find more. So on March 7th, the next day, the police found Karen's body. The only information that they had was that she had lived there with a couple named Michael and Susan Bear.
00:23:58
Jeff Rogers
But then they had no other leads to go on. And Michael and Susan were nowhere. So over the next year, the killer duo traveled up and down the coast again. in May 1982, the... pair were working on a pot farm in northern california michael was placed in a security position so we would walk around carrying a firearm oh that's great uh-huh that's exactly what he needs exactly they quickly began to creep out the other workers they called them bizarre and off-putting which yeah a colleague also working on the farm quickly ended up on the wrong side of susan
00:24:34
Jeff Rogers
Clark Stevens became the next target after a difference in opinion over pot plants. They didn't agree on the fertilizer or something. Oh my God. And then Susan told Michael that he was verbally aggressive and felt that he was obviously disrespecting her.
00:24:50
Jeff Rogers
So Clark had to be a witch and he had to die. Michael jumped right in. He took the gun that the farm supplied him with and shot Clark in the head.
00:25:02
Jeff Rogers
They dragged his body out to a field, covered him in accelerant, burnt it, and then hid the charred remains in manure. And then they were off again. I'm vaguely familiar with this story.
00:25:14
Jeff Rogers
i don't know how or... It lives in the recesses of your dark, dark, dark mind. There's a lot that lives in there, but maybe... So next thing you know, they're hitchhiking.
00:25:25
Jeff Rogers
um They see a group of cop cars kind of flying by with lights and sirens on. um And the police were driving by for absolutely no reason ah related to them or to Clark. Nobody knew that Clark was dead yet, right?
00:25:41
Jeff Rogers
So all of a sudden, the Bears, because they're... cracked out on whatever drugs they're on, start freaking out. They're acting erratically right there on the side road. And as the cops are driving by, one of them's like, what is weird I was doing?
00:25:53
Jeff Rogers
So he pulls over to make sure that they're all right. And as he starts veering towards them, they freak out. They flee. One of them drops their bag on the ground and they take off into the woods. All right. You have one job to not look guilty in front of a cop. You had one job.
00:26:06
Jeff Rogers
And they did. But here's where, yet again, things just just mistakes were made. Okay. So as they're fleeing, the couple become separated, but they had a plan to meet up at a predetermined safe house.
00:26:20
Jeff Rogers
So the the cops are like, where did these weirdos go? They pick up the bag. Inside, they find ah gun, a bunch of fake IDs, and a manifesto called A Cry for War.
00:26:33
Jeff Rogers
The manifesto, like most, was full of shit. It was just absurd ramblings, delusional plans. they They had very, very detailed pay plans of targeted bombings, political assassinations, and then constant talk of this impending nuclear war that was coming.
00:26:54
Jeff Rogers
But it also included a name of a list of witches. and detailed plans for how they would kill them. The list included names like Johnny Carson, governor of California at the time, Jerry Brown, and Ronald Reagan.
00:27:08
Jeff Rogers
Clearly witches, all of them. So they took that manifesto and they were like, whoa, not for us. They handed it over to the federal authorities. They kept thinking about like small time, whatever.
Capture and Trial
00:27:21
Jeff Rogers
Two weeks after killing Clark, ah the police were called out to the farm because a dog had been running around with the skull. So people called the police.
00:27:32
Jeff Rogers
The other workers told the authorities about this man and woman named Susan and Michael. Understandably, the background checks gave nothing. They didn't exist. These names, they weren't legally changed or anything like that.
00:27:44
Jeff Rogers
So Michael's still on his way to meet up with Susan. He's hitchhiking down near l LA at this point. A car drove past him and one of those people in the car recognized him because they had worked on the pot farm.
00:27:58
Jeff Rogers
They call police and they're like, hey, here's this dude that is wanted in connection with the death, right? Somehow wires got crossed so the officer who responded wasn't looking at this man as a suspect in this dead body.
00:28:13
Jeff Rogers
He thought, hey, that guy kind of looks like a suspect in a sexual assault. So he picked him up on suspicion of the sexual assault, not murder. As he was being transported to the police station, Michael had enough forethought to hide his gun in the police cruiser.
00:28:29
Jeff Rogers
During questioning, he told authorities that his name was Richard Arada. The police, and he he was polite, the police kind of started to believe him. They took his picture and showed it to the victim of a sexual assault. She said, no that's not the guy. So they released him.
00:28:46
Jeff Rogers
He reunited with Susan about 100 miles away from there. The police found the gun in the car shortly after that. They took a closer look into the man that they had picked up, and when they ran that name, Richard Arada,
00:28:57
Jeff Rogers
it popped from another county where an ID had been found in a backpack on the side of the road. That was one of the fakes. They shared the photo with the police from that county and they confirmed that that was a weirdo that chucked and run on the side of the road.
00:29:13
Jeff Rogers
So the police who had questioned him about the sexual assault decided to take more information from that interview that they had had and kind of piece together who he really was. um He had a bunch of mindless ramblings while he was talking to them, but he did happen to mention Susan's name and then also that Susan's ex-husband lived in Scottsdale, Arizona.
00:29:33
Jeff Rogers
So they reach out to him and he says, no, her name is Susan. With an S. With an S. And her new husband is James Carson. A few weeks later, in 1982, a group of Secret Service agents showed up at the home where Jennifer and Lynn were living.
00:29:49
Jeff Rogers
They questioned her about James, and her worst fears had been confirmed. By January 1983, they were still on the run and hitchhiking. No money, no home, nothing but their fucked up religious crusade.
00:30:04
Jeff Rogers
About 300 miles into their little jaunt, they were picked up by a man named John Hellyer. After being in the truck for just a few minutes, Susan began claiming that John was touching her in a sexually suggestive manner and told Michael that he was a very powerful witch and had to be terminated.
00:30:24
Jeff Rogers
They got into like a scuffle inside the car while John's driving. So John pulls out his gun that he keeps in there, but Michael wrestled it from him. Hellier slammed on the brakes to stop and then tried to flee.
00:30:36
Jeff Rogers
But with Susan screaming at Michael, kill him, kill him, kill him. Michael shot him in the head in broad daylight on the side of the road in front of passing motorists. They tore off in his truck.
00:30:47
Jeff Rogers
People quickly arrived, the police quickly arrived because it was in a town. They drove over 100 miles an hour as the police chased them. Then Susan crashed into a ditch.
00:30:59
Jeff Rogers
As the police got up to them and approached the wrecked vehicle, Susan was giddy. She was laughing and bragging about her getaway driving and how successful it was. Until you hit the ditch. Really? i mean, i don't think that's successful. You can't do better than that. Yeah.
00:31:13
Jeff Rogers
Yeah. So they were taken into custody. And then while they were waiting in jail for the case to progress, Michael felt that he and Susan weren't getting enough attention. He believed that they should have been famous. They were doing this miracle work for the world, right? Ridding them of witches and just superior.
00:31:33
Jeff Rogers
So he wrote a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle. you know who else wrote to the Chronicle? The Zodiac Killer. Oh. Real original Michael. Yeah.
00:31:44
Jeff Rogers
In it, he rambled on and on and then asked, how many people do we have to kill to get attention?
00:31:51
Jeff Rogers
That's what it's about. Then they said, we can just tell our stories to the authorities, but we need a press conference to do it. yeah So they arranged a press conference. If they could get these idiots, these psychos to admit to everything, give them what they want.
00:32:08
Jeff Rogers
So they spent five hours rambling about their philosophy, their religion, and then killing witches. They were smiling throughout, holding hands. Although the couple was suspected in at least 12 other homicides, they admitted on this press during this press conference to only the three in California.
00:32:28
Jeff Rogers
over Susan was overheard before they stepped onto the stage in front of the microphones. Susan said to Michael, no, no, Michael. and We're only going to tell them about the ones in California.
00:32:40
Jeff Rogers
So we don't know how many people they actually killed. We still don't because they haven't admitted to others. The trial began in 1984 and it was dubbed the San Francisco witch trial. And it was a media circus, obviously. Witches, right?
00:32:54
Jeff Rogers
They were callous, delusional, and then they were making out like animals at the defendant's table. That's grossest people ever. they're just These are the grossest people ever. And you know, there's somebody out there somewhere who lost their daughter or their son that has no idea that it was these slime balls.
00:33:10
Jeff Rogers
You know what I mean? and again, kind of I don't know, hiding behind this religious mantra. Fucking grossest people ever. So, and yeah, and they're just shoving in their faces. They're sitting at the table. They're making out. I mean, there's media and family members and just in the court and they're just acting like animals. so So they were both found guilty on all three murders.
00:33:32
Jeff Rogers
They were sentenced to three separate 25 to life sentences, which totaled 75 to life in prison. At the time, it was decided that they would not pursue any other charges because they were already serving life terms and there was no intention to ever release them.
00:33:46
Jeff Rogers
So we're golden, right? So Lynn had been smart enough and strong enough to take Jennifer and leave the situation that she saw becoming toxic and dangerous. The two struggled for many years simply because Lynn constantly feared being found by Susan and Michael. She had no idea what would have happened to them.
00:34:03
Jeff Rogers
So she pushed through the hardships and she did everything she could to keep her daughter safe. Unfortunately, she could not shield her from the truth after the arrests and trials. Lynn did tell Jennifer that James had been very sick and had hurt people.
00:34:17
Jeff Rogers
At nine years old, Jen understood that this meant that he had killed people. She remembered reading articles about what he had done to some of the victims, and she became distraught. She was so young that she was having trouble understanding how the man who had braided her hair and loved her so much had turned into this man.
00:34:36
Jeff Rogers
As a result, she spent many years in fear of all adults and the damage that they could do. Because if my dad can do this, then anyone's capable. She
Legacy and Healing
00:34:45
Jeff Rogers
went into ah like very dark place.
00:34:48
Jeff Rogers
She also worried that she had monster genes and she didn't know what she was capable of. She struggled with many years of depression and suicidality that were worsened by letters. Can you just, I'm sorry, yeah imagine having that as a parent thinking, is there something in me that could be like that?
00:35:09
Jeff Rogers
That would be horrifying. Yeah. Especially because, you know, they're
00:35:13
Jeff Rogers
They do think about genetics when they think about psychopaths, right? They do think about the genetic components about what it takes to do certain things to other people, you know? So you have to think about it. Well, I have their... Well, I mean, you know, not all psychopaths do horrible things to people.
00:35:34
Jeff Rogers
Right? Psychopaths? I think of psychopaths as... I don't think of like mentally unstable people as psychopaths like that.
00:35:45
Jeff Rogers
I reserve that term primarily for people who commit atrocities. Not someone that's having like a psychotic break. No, no. I don't. like A lot of CEOs are psychopaths.
00:35:57
Jeff Rogers
They run a business. Maybe. i don't know. Psychopaths or sociopaths?
00:36:03
Jeff Rogers
Okay. Anyway, so over the years, Michael continued to attempt to contact Jen. He sent chaotic letters that had ramblings and then disjointed letters to family members again.
00:36:15
Jeff Rogers
And those family members... I guess we're thinking that it was for the best that she saw these letters and maybe had a relationship with her father. i don't know what they were thinking. Cause I think that's dumb. Like this man is a serial killer and he's crazy. So don't give the kid his letters, but they did.
00:36:31
Jeff Rogers
ah It made things worse. Obviously. um He acted like nothing was wrong in them. he he talked about how excited he was to see her. ah He couldn't wait to be reunited. All this kind of stuff. Like he didn't kill people. And,
00:36:46
Jeff Rogers
she specifically talked about seeing in the articles like some of the things that he had done to victims and she was like as a kid i didn't know what two words were and one of them was a b word and one of them was a d word and it was bludgeoned and decapitated so as she's growing up she's starting to learn what this stuff is and really realizing How horrible he is. um So she started trying to compartmentalize.
00:37:15
Jeff Rogers
She had a separate section in her mind for both of these men. You know, she separated them. She had James Carson, the father, who loved her and was nice. And then he was just gone.
00:37:27
Jeff Rogers
He no longer existed. He was not the same man as Michael Bear, who was the serial killer, not her father. So in her early 20s, Jennifer continued to struggle with nightmares about her father that was starting to interrupt her work. She needed some sort of closure, she said, so she decided to visit him in prison.
00:37:44
Jeff Rogers
She had no idea what it would truly be like. She thought it was going be something like a on the TV shows with the... sitting on the other side of glass wall on a phone call. And, you know, so she had prepared for that, but she arrived and it was in an open cafeteria.
00:37:58
Jeff Rogers
She had to sit across the table from him. So she's kind of shaken up by that thought that she would have a barrier wasn't there. So she went there with the intent to say goodbye forever, but he thought that she was rekindling their relationship.
00:38:13
Jeff Rogers
When he realized her intent, she said that she saw unbridled rage in his eyes. See, that's thing. Yeah.
00:38:23
Jeff Rogers
in twenty fourteen due to reforms in the california prison system the couple would be eligible for parole every five years yeah ah thing yeah neither killer ever expressed any signs of guilt or remorse with the help of her father her stepfather who married lyne in nineteen eighty-four Jennifer was able to work through her severe trauma.
00:38:45
Jeff Rogers
She called him the knight on the white horse and an incredible man. He got her into therapy and activities to keep her occupied and social. He created a loving, supportive, full life for her and invested in her well-being.
00:38:59
Jeff Rogers
She earned a doctoral degree and became a trauma expert and counselor in schools. ah That's amazing. She works with children suffering from emotional disabilities and struggling with behavioral challenges.
00:39:10
Jeff Rogers
She's on the board of the American Association for Suicidology. She focuses a large part of her life on advocacy for children of prisoners, families of prisoners, and victims of violent crimes.
00:39:23
Jeff Rogers
She felt the guilt and the pain that her father and stepmother never expressed or felt for what they had done. She decided to do everything she could to atone for their sins. She was determined to make something good happen and put goodness back out into the world.
00:39:38
Jeff Rogers
So she feels some sort of contentment and peace in the fact that she has been able to find some small bit of good after having such a horrific, traumatizing experience.
00:39:49
Jeff Rogers
She says, quote, not only can you survive after adversity trauma and battles with mental illness and so on you can help you can get help and then you can thrive I think the other part of my story that I always like to share is that our children are resilient.
00:40:06
Jeff Rogers
If we can invest time and love and connecting the child to the help they need, our children can overcome early trauma and recovery is possible. She's made appearances
1976 Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping
00:40:17
Jeff Rogers
to share her story of trauma and recovery, and she spreads hope and allows people to see that they can heal.
00:40:23
Jeff Rogers
Wow. Good for her. What an amazing woman. Yeah. she really I mean, she really is. And, you know there's documentaries and obviously articles and stuff.
00:40:33
Jeff Rogers
but Yeah. The Witch Killers of San Francisco. Yeah. I know where I've heard that from. That's a crazy story. It's wild. It's gross. And the thing is, is like because they were convicted in California, the other crimes that they were linked to, no one ever pursued those. Yeah.
00:40:53
Jeff Rogers
So technically, I guess they could still be tried for those murders. Oh, they should be. They should be. Because like I said, somebody out there. And other states might have a death penalty. There's an unsolved murder out there.
00:41:06
Jeff Rogers
yeah With their names all over it. Susan with a Z. Not Susan with an S. Stupid. Crazy. um Okay. Mine's, we're going to a left turn.
00:41:17
Jeff Rogers
Okay. But a little bit because i'm going to touch on a topic that you just touched on. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. One sunny afternoon in July of 1976, a bus, a school bus vanished on the ride home after a school outing in Chowchilla, California.
00:41:36
Jeff Rogers
hi Why? Why? A close-knit farming town of 5,000. They called it a cow town. Like, everybody knew each other. Small town. It's in the San Joaquin Valley. When the police found the school bus abandoned in a ditch a few hours later, they realized that something was amiss.
00:41:53
Jeff Rogers
The bus driver and all 26 children on the bus were gone. This is the story of the 1976 Chowchilla bus kidnapping, the largest mass kidnapping in American history.
00:42:08
Jeff Rogers
Have you heard this one? i have. It's horrible. but No, read it. Okay. Okay. I mean, I just, for me, it's always kids.
00:42:19
Jeff Rogers
You know, like, yeah yeah they took a whole school bus. 26 kids and Ed, the bus driver. Ed. Ed. So it's almost the last day of summer school and the bus driver, Ed, was taking the kiddos home.
00:42:31
Jeff Rogers
They were ages 5 to 14 and they halt all had been out swimming that day. It was sort of like a field trip at the end of summer school. Now the kids loved Ed. he was one of those really cool bus drivers.
00:42:44
Jeff Rogers
Protective, you know? All the kids are on the bus and they're having they're driving from down an old country road and Ed saw a white van sort of blocking the road. With the hood up on the van, like the van was broken down on the side of the road.
00:42:57
Jeff Rogers
Again, Ed's a great person, so, i mean, they were blocking the road, but yeah, he stops, he opens up the door, and says, do you guys need any help? As soon as Ed asked if anybody needed any help, the three men carrying the guns, also with pantyhose, over their heads quickly got onto to the school bus.
00:43:16
Jeff Rogers
They yelled at Ed to go to the back of the bus. Ed immediately went to the back of the bus and the kids were freaking out, but Ed was back there now and he was trying to calm them down and he was telling them just do what the men say.
00:43:30
Jeff Rogers
But the kids all noticed that Ed was being really assertive. You know, do what the kids say now. Like, stop freaking out. Yeah. Monica, who was only five at the time, looked at the men with the pantyhose on their heads and like the legs of the pantyhose hanging down the side and asked one of them, are you a bunny man? no Yeah.
00:43:53
Jeff Rogers
So while one man was pointing a gun at the students in Ed, the other man was driving the van. And he was driving through ah filled It was like a bamboo field, not on a road.
00:44:04
Jeff Rogers
So imagine that you're on the school bus and you're going really fast through this field. The ride was really, really bumpy and the kids were being thrown all around. And when the school bus stopped, there was a dark green van waiting in addition to the first white van that caused Ed to stop the bus.
00:44:21
Jeff Rogers
Like the third kidnapper drove the white van to the second spot. The men backed the bus up to the van and made the kids and Ed jump from the bus into the vans, half in one van and half in the other van.
00:44:35
Jeff Rogers
No footprints. The men drove with the kids in the back of the van for 12 hours. There was no stopping for bathroom breaks until and all the windows in both of the vans had been painted black.
00:44:48
Jeff Rogers
All the while, Ed is trying to calm the kids down because he's technically responsible for the kids. Back in Chowchilla, people are freaking out. The police have been called. The FBI have been notified.
00:45:00
Jeff Rogers
Even like President Ford at the time was questioning where did this van go. The governor of California was questioning it. They eventually used police helicopters, and they find the van abandoned.
00:45:15
Jeff Rogers
There were tire tracks, but no footprints. So the police knew that the kids and Ed went from the bus into another vehicle. it was just so random, though. Back on the bus on this 12-hour journey, kids were peeing themselves. They were vomiting. They were scared to death.
00:45:30
Jeff Rogers
Michael, who is the oldest kid, he stepped up. He started behaving like the adult are the adult because he's amazing. Just amazing.
00:45:41
Jeff Rogers
He got the kids to start singing songs. They were singing songs like Boogie Nights, and If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands, but they changed the words of that song to If You're Sad and You Know It, Clap Your Hands.
00:45:54
Jeff Rogers
At the end of the long ride, the kidnappers started driving the van off-road again, so the kids were being thrown around in the back of the van. And they had no clue. like Where were they? They didn't know if they were on the ocean. They didn't know if they were in the mountains. They had no reference point for where they had been taken over the last 12 hours.
00:46:12
Jeff Rogers
When the van stopped, the kids opened the doors, the the drivers opened the doors and immediately pulled Ed from the van and then they closed the doors. So like what happened to Ed? Was he shot? This is what the kids were thinking.
00:46:23
Jeff Rogers
Had he been shot? one One at a time, the kidnappers would open the door to the van and take one kid at a time over and over. And the kids in the van, like I said, had no idea what was happening. As far as each of them knew,
00:46:40
Jeff Rogers
They were being killed one at a time. But Michael, who was holding on to Monica, Monica was the youngest, Michael the 14-year-old, eventually they became separated. like They had to pull their hands apart because Monica was so scared. And he also wanted to know what the hell was going on.
00:47:01
Jeff Rogers
So the kidnappers had buried a truck trailer and converted it into a bunker equipped with ventilation and a pit toilet. and stocked it with several mattresses, a small amount of food, and a small amount of water.
00:47:14
Jeff Rogers
As the victims climbed from the van into the bunker, the kidnappers were with the name and age of each child on a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger wrapper. Once the victims were inside, the kidnappers removed the ladder, covered the hatch with a heavy piece of sheet metal, and weighed it down with two 100-pound industrial batteries and buried the opening.
00:47:35
Jeff Rogers
Ed and the kids even heard dirt and rocks being thrown on the ground above them. So they knew what was happening. They knew that they were essentially being buried alive. Correjo, who was 10 years old, said that they all thought that they were going to die.
00:47:52
Jeff Rogers
and so she said a prayer. She's 10. She said that she promised God that if she survived this, she would be the best little girl for her entire life. So there Ed and the 26 kids sat for a total of 16 hours in pitch black with only holes to go to the bathroom.
00:48:13
Jeff Rogers
It smelled like urine. It smelled like vomit. There was enough food for the kids to eat just one tiny meal. michael and the fourteen Michael, the 14-year-old, said it would be silent and then one kid would start crying and that would like... Trigger.
00:48:28
Jeff Rogers
Chain reaction. Yeah, chain reaction. All the kids would start crying. They did have a ventilation system in that space, but the batteries died, so the ventilation system failed. And the roof eventually began to cave under all of the weight.
00:48:43
Jeff Rogers
The kids could hear bowing and a piece of pieces of dirt and rocks were starting to fall into the container that they were in. But the older kids and Ed had the sort of attitude to think if they were going to die, they would die trying to get the fuck out of there.
00:49:00
Jeff Rogers
So Ed, Michael, and some of the bigger boys started stacking the mattresses under the bowed part. Michael was trying to push the top over to the side, but it really wasn't moving.
00:49:11
Jeff Rogers
But then all the other kids started cheering him on. these These kids tried for hours to get the cover to move. They're sweating, they're exhausted, and they're determined, and it was just way too hard.
00:49:22
Jeff Rogers
But then, all of a sudden, one of the kids says, it's moving. I see it. So they all start working together to move the cover over. Once they get the cover moved over, they see a wooden box above the entrance to the container.
00:49:37
Jeff Rogers
The wooden box sort of prevented the dirt from the cover that covered the space from coming down into the container. So Michael crawled up into the wooden box to see if he could see anything.
00:49:48
Jeff Rogers
So he realized that it was just dirt. So Michael and Ed began digging their way through dirt for about an hour. This is now hour like 17 of being down below. 12 feet below the earth. And still having just the sheer will yeah to keep going.
00:50:09
Jeff Rogers
And they saw sunlight. As a kid. But then they finally saw sunlight. And they were all so happy. So one by one, each of the kids was hoisted up out of the ground.
00:50:21
Jeff Rogers
And they were, once they were out, they kind of all had the realization that, wait, we're the kidnappers. Like, is this another trap? Have they been waiting on us to and to escape and watching us the whole time?
00:50:33
Jeff Rogers
And also, like, where the hell are we? Yeah. yeah Because they just came up out of the earth and they're in a completely different part of the state. But once they all escaped, they saw a man who was working on the rock quarry that they were on.
00:50:47
Jeff Rogers
He looks over and sees all 26 of the students and Ed coming up out of the ground and coming toward him. He takes one look at them and said, the world has been looking for you.
00:51:02
Jeff Rogers
The man who worked there called the police. The police came. The rock quarry was about 100 miles from Chowchilla. So I don't know, like, one thing that confuses me is they drove for 12 hours.
00:51:14
Jeff Rogers
It could have just been... Yeah, they were doing something to throw people off or to throw the kids off. The police took Ed and all of the kids to the one safe place, which just so happened to be the jail.
00:51:26
Jeff Rogers
It was really just for their safety that they took them there. They were photographed, they were assessed by doctors, and they were interviewed. Ed and the 26 kids were, for the most part, not really physically injured.
00:51:39
Jeff Rogers
So they were pretty much um unharmed. They were even given like water and apples at the police station. Excuse me. All their families were notified and then reunited.
00:51:52
Jeff Rogers
Many of the kids, well, all the kids were driven be a Greyhound back to Chowchilla where they would meet their families at the Chowchilla Police Department. Larry, who was six years old at the time when his mom picked him up and held him, he looked at her and he said, hi, mom.
00:52:09
Jeff Rogers
And he put his head on her shoulder and fell fast asleep. None of the kids could say anything about what the men looked like because of the pantyhose. and When the cops went back to the rock quarry to comb through the place, they quickly figured out that the only single person who could have access to this place was the son of the owner, and that son's name was Fred Woods.
00:52:29
Jeff Rogers
Fred immediately became the main suspect. Then, under hypnosis, Ed, the bus driver, was able to give the license plate number. Two years prior to this, Fred and his two friends, James and Richard Schoenfeld, had been arrested for grand theft auto.
00:52:45
Jeff Rogers
So they were kind of in the system already. And investigators dug up the van and learned that it had been buried in the quarry qua since November of 75. So seven months prior to that.
00:52:58
Jeff Rogers
The 100-acre Portola Valley Estate... of the query owner, Frederick Nickerson Woods, was searched. His son, Fred, was missing, though.
00:53:09
Jeff Rogers
Authorities issued an all-points bulletin for young Fred Woods and his two friends, James and his brother, Richard, sons of though they were sons of a very wealthy podiatrist.
00:53:21
Jeff Rogers
Officials said that they discovered a rough draft of a $2.5 million ransom note on the Woods estate. And even though the rough draft of the ransom letter said $2.5 million, they were actually going to ask the state of California for $5 million dollars in exchange for the hostages.
00:53:38
Jeff Rogers
And what's crazy is that these young men came from wealth. Yeah. Their families are loaded. But Fred was in debt. And he's the one that orchestrated all this. i just – I don't ever think about – kidnappers making rough drafts i guess i'd never that never really crossed there was a plan there was not only a rough draft of the letter the ransom letter there was like a detailed list of what they were going to do and to the side of that a detailed list of the problems that they will encounter and what they will do about the problems they would encounter oh they thought this through they really thought it through they've been planning for about a year
00:54:17
Jeff Rogers
They actually called the police department to ask for the ransom, but so many people were calling the police department that the three men couldn't get through to the operator. So they decided to take a fucking nap while they left the kids buried in the ground in a container.
00:54:35
Jeff Rogers
They took a nap because they couldn't get through. Well, might as well. When they woke up from their nap, they saw on the news that the kids had escaped. So it was too late for the ransom. On July 23rd, 1976, Richard Schoenfeld, accompanied by his attorney and father, surrendered surrendered voluntarily in Oakland and was held in lieu of $1 million bill.
00:54:56
Jeff Rogers
On July 29th, Woods was captured in Vancouver, British Columbia, by the Royal canadian Canadian Mountain Police. They're the ones that captured him. Way to go, Mounties. And James Schoenfeld was arrested in Menlo Park while reportedly preparing to surrender.
00:55:13
Jeff Rogers
On November 5th, a Madera County judge ordered that the trial be moved from Madera County, and on November 10th, it was assigned to Alameda County. In 1977, on the 25th of July, Woods and the Schoenfelds pled guilty to 27 counts of kidnapping for ransom, and the prosecution dropped like 18 counts of robbery.
00:55:35
Jeff Rogers
Then on December 15th, 1977, Superior Court judge found the trio guilty of three counts of kidnapping with bodily harm, which usually carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
00:55:49
Jeff Rogers
The trio was then sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, a couple of years later, their lawyers appealed this, and the kidnappers won because the court stated that the injuries that the kids had sustained during all this did not meet the law's requirements of bodily harm.
00:56:07
Jeff Rogers
So now they had a life sentence or life sentences with the possibility of parole. And by 2022, all three kidnappers had been paroled. Richard Schoenfeld was paroled and pardoned in June of 2012. His brother James was released in August of 2015.
00:56:24
Jeff Rogers
Frederick Woods was recommended for parole on March 25, 2022. He was a horrible prisoner. He would sneak shit in and... Well, they're all entitled.
00:56:35
Jeff Rogers
Yeah. the wreck Yeah, good point. The recommendation required the approval of the full parole board, the board's legal division, and the California governor. On August 17, 2022, Wood's parole was granted. He was released from prison.
00:56:51
Jeff Rogers
Soon after the rescue and the trial, the Chowchilla kidnapping was international news, and it was a sensation, with many headlines claiming that children had, quote, bounced back.
00:57:01
Jeff Rogers
Few thought to take a look at what the kidnapping had done to the children's mental health. There was little consideration for how its effects might follow them into adult adulthood. After all, the field of child trauma psychiatry was still in its infancy.
00:57:17
Jeff Rogers
Most experts believe that kids were endlessly resilient and that they just, quote, get over traumatic events. A diagnosis for post-traumatic stress disorder, even for war veterans, didn't yet exist.
00:57:31
Jeff Rogers
Dr. Spencer Eth, the chief of mental health at a Miami hospital who was not involved with the Chowchilla case, said, there was a wish that the children would recover, forget about the event, and go on with their lives as though it never happened.
00:57:45
Jeff Rogers
And in the aftermath of the Chowchilla kidnapping, Los Angeles organization took the kids to Disneyland in an effort to help them recover. The local school offered little in the way of therapy or counseling.
00:57:56
Jeff Rogers
Wasn't a thing back then, you know? yeah One mental health professional predicted that only one of the 26 kids would be emotionally affected by the kidnappings. But after Dr. Lenore Ter arrived in Chowchilla in November, she found that the prediction was dead wrong.
00:58:13
Jeff Rogers
Parents were terrified because five months after the injury, they could still hear their kids screaming in their sleep. But like, where, did they just pull that prediction out of their ass? like It sounds like it. It's like one in 26. Just one in 26.
00:58:26
Jeff Rogers
No parent wanted to admit that his kid or her kid was one in 26, was the one in 26. By the time Dr. Tarek got there, 100% of the kids were having problems.
00:58:37
Jeff Rogers
Over the next year, ta would meet with a small group of parents of the 23 child survivors who had remained in Chowchilla, interviewing each of them for at least an hour, often that would go for two or three hours.
00:58:50
Jeff Rogers
Every child she talked to carried mental scars from the kidnappings. They manifested differently. For some, their self-esteem plummeted, while others became paranoid and anxious at seeing strange vans.
00:59:01
Jeff Rogers
In fact, 18 months after the kidnapping, one of the older boys shot a BB gun at a driver of an unknown car parked near his house. It was an unwitting tourist whose car had broken down.
00:59:13
Jeff Rogers
Night terrors were common among the children as well. At the time, the Chowchilla parents were told not to enter their kids' rooms doing so, experts thought so experts thought would reward the behavior of having nightmares.
00:59:27
Jeff Rogers
Sorry, that's not funny. At a four-year follow-up, Tara observed that every child still exhibited post-traumatic effects, such as a deep sense of embarrassment or continued nightmares. Each one suffered from a fear of common, mundane objects, though several had begun to overcome them.
00:59:44
Jeff Rogers
when do When we get to be adults, childhood trauma doesn't go away, Dr. Tehr said. In fact, some of it does get worse. She went on to follow the Chowchilla children for five years, publishing landmark research that was among the first to focus on the experience of children who experience trauma.
01:00:04
Jeff Rogers
Her research with the Chowchilla victims became seminal in the field of childhood childhood psychiatry, showing that children were not immune to trauma as previously thought. Much like with adults, Ter described how the consequences of kids' trauma could linger, with implications reaching far into adulthood.
01:00:24
Jeff Rogers
As for the students, Larry said his resentment for the kidnappers was killing him, so he decided that he wanted to meet them and forgive them. He also has, at the time that it was recorded, the 48 hours that I watched, he was sober for nine years, and hope he still is.
01:00:43
Jeff Rogers
Jennifer, the little feisty girl that was kidnapped, managed to live, she wanted everybody to know a quote, wonderful life. Michael, the 14-year-old boy, said that he went to bed at 18 drunk and hungover and woke up at 48 with the hangover.
01:01:02
Jeff Rogers
He's been sober ever since he's turned 48. He's a long-distance truck driver, and he's also very close with his kids, and he prefers not to even think of this anymore. Jodi, she was also very feisty. She stayed in Chowchilla and she really struggled.
01:01:17
Jeff Rogers
She said how that day affected everybody in her family, not just her. But she said it made her, in her words, quote, not a good daughter, not a good aunt, not a good sister, and especially not a good mother, and probably not a good friend.
01:01:34
Jeff Rogers
She tried, but something... in her like she couldn't get it back no matter how hard she tried was like a wall that she could not tear down In 2021, she passed away 55 years old, just 14 months before Fred Woods went before the parole board and was released on parole.
01:01:56
Jeff Rogers
As for Ed Ray, the bus driver, he received a California School Employees Association citation for outstanding community service. Before he died on May 17th in 2012, he was visited by many of the school children he had helped save.
01:02:13
Jeff Rogers
In 2015, Chowchilla renamed the Sports and Leisure Park as the Ed Ray Park and declared every February 26th Ray's birthday the Edward Ray Day.
01:02:24
Jeff Rogers
Today, the bus kidnapping event is still remembered with ah really strong emotion. But a granite monument dedicated to the victims is located adjacent to the Chowchilla Police Department to mark where the victims were reunited with their families.
01:02:39
Jeff Rogers
And that is the story of the 1976 Chowchilla bus kidnapping, which happens to be the largest kidnapping in mass history.
01:02:49
Jeff Rogers
Largest mass kidnapping in U.S. history, sorry. Oh, you know what's funny is I think I heard it the correct way. and just put the words in a different word. um That it's just, I think that we hit on this with almost every story, like horrible story that we tell.
01:03:07
Jeff Rogers
um But it's the far reaching implications from these horrors. You know, it's it's not just you who's affected, it's the victim and then their family, their extended family, their friends, their partners, like,
01:03:24
Jeff Rogers
It's wild. It's just not people. It's nothing happens in ah vacuum, right? Like there's just a whole world that gets hit by it.
01:03:35
Jeff Rogers
And when you watch the 48 hours interviews that they did with some of the victims, it's like five of the then kids, they're now being interviewed. They were torn up by this. They were so torn up by this. and Like she said, she wasn't a good she wasn't allowed to be a good mom, a good friend, a good whatever yeah because of the victims. feel like there's that there's a potentially ah group of people out there who would take the standpoint of, well, I mean, they were only kidnapped for like a day and they got away and you know no one was tortured or killed. So did they really, like should they be feeling all of this?
01:04:16
Jeff Rogers
And to somebody that says that, like, let's, if you're, don't know, let's say 40 years old, let's take the equivalent of that trauma to that five-year-old and give you the equivalent version of that just to test you out. Yeah. like okay Do you know what I mean?
01:04:34
Jeff Rogers
You're five. You've been kidnapped. The other kids are saying you might die. They don't know where the other kids are going. They might be shot. I mean, and obviously... How would you do as it as a middle-aged?
01:04:45
Jeff Rogers
As a 40-year-old with the equivalent trauma to that of a five-year-old. Yeah. It's a crazy story, though. It is. But they were all relatively physically unharmed, but mentally... Fucked.
01:04:59
Jeff Rogers
Fucked, yeah. All because three rich boys wanted more money. It's insane. It's insane. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm glad that they all got out of that immediate situation. yeah would have been and one of the little kids, I don't remember her name, but they, of course, they all had to go to the trials and testify. And then they all had to go to every parole hearing.
01:05:24
Jeff Rogers
Every time they all had to go, it was in threes. Oh, they're all three up for parole this year. We all have to go back, relive the trauma. That's something that maybe you should, should that change? i don't know.
01:05:35
Jeff Rogers
But, well, i mean, we, we've talked about it a few times now is that re victimization because they're having to defend that they were victimized by these monsters. And it's every single time, every time.
01:05:48
Jeff Rogers
Yeah. And then on the times that the parole is granted, they have to be told, yeah, you were a victim, but like, not that bad. So these guys can go free now. And but then one of them she was so cute and she went and testified at the trial like in 76 or 77, whenever the trial was, she was smacking on her bubble gum.
01:06:09
Jeff Rogers
And she also had kind of a southern accent or some kind of funny accent. It was but to me, it sounded southern, but she was like, daddy. Hold my bubble gum. I'm afraid I'm going to throw it at one of them.
01:06:21
Jeff Rogers
It was the best. You probably thought, throw it at them. Right? throw it out I hope you get stuck in your hair. ah hu Okay, that was a good show. We're done. If you liked what you heard, rate us, review us, give us a couple stars.
01:06:36
Jeff Rogers
Please. And we will see you next time. All right. Alan, you're overqualified, underpaid master publisher extraordinaire. Ashley, we've talked about you a lot today.
01:06:49
Jeff Rogers
Our ultimate and epically unmatched hype queen. Even though you read two times or you listen two times faster than I can read. Whatever. Kelsey, our incomparable Swagger merch creator. Thank you again for all of the things.
01:07:01
Jeff Rogers
Amazing. And Daniel. Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. We hope you're well and thriving because you are our friendly neighborhood supporter from the beginning.
01:07:11
Jeff Rogers
Yes. And together they're our first and forever fans. Bye, everybody.