Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: The kids heard dirt and quarry rock be pushed over them,
Speaker 2: and they realized that they were being very alive.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stories. In nineteen seventy six, twenty
Speaker 1: six kids were riding on a school bus in Chowchilla, California,
Speaker 1: when they were kidnapped along with their driver by three men.
Speaker 1: The men buried them all underground in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: The kids were terrified as they struggled to stay alive,
Speaker 1: and then a fourteen year old boy took control. It's
Speaker 1: an incredible story of survival. Paul Solid tells me about
Speaker 1: the story at the center of his film Chowchilla. So
Speaker 1: this is I think a hell of a film. I really.
Speaker 1: I was impressed with the way you put it together
Speaker 1: and what a harrowing story. I was two when this happened,
Speaker 1: so I don't remember I remember hearing about it. Tell
Speaker 1: me how this film came to you, because you don't
Speaker 1: look older than I am. I'm probably older than you are,
Speaker 1: So how did you get this film?
Speaker 2: I come from scripton films, actually, and a long time ago.
Speaker 2: I was just doing research when I came upon. I
Speaker 2: was probably looking for, you know, the craziest crimes blah
Speaker 2: blah blah, and I came upon the Chuchulli kidnapping, and
Speaker 2: I was just I was first of all shocked, I
Speaker 2: think that I hadn't heard of it before, and then
Speaker 2: I realized there were a lot of questions that I
Speaker 2: had reading about it that that hadn't been the answer.
Speaker 2: I wanted to know what happened for the kids, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to know more specifics on how it resolved
Speaker 2: on the day, because I mean, the crime itself is
Speaker 2: completely crazy, but also its resolution is really just, you know,
Speaker 2: if you wrote it, you know, as a scripted film,
Speaker 2: you'd say, give me a break, this is no way.
Speaker 2: I can't I can't believe that I happened.
Speaker 1: And you know, importantly, to a documentary like the one
Speaker 1: you made, you had great archive to work with. You
Speaker 1: had the original debriefing of the kids, you know, right
Speaker 1: then in seventy six, you had interviews with a lot
Speaker 1: of them when they were adults. You had present day
Speaker 1: news footage. So it sounded like you had a lot
Speaker 1: to work with. Was there something missing that you would
Speaker 1: have wanted?
Speaker 2: You know, I feel like we got kind of everything
Speaker 2: that there is. The DA's office worked really closely with
Speaker 2: us and provided us basically every piece of evidence that existed,
Speaker 2: so we had the full archive, you know, from Anivesca's
Speaker 2: story standpoint, and then we also had you know, I
Speaker 2: became really you make one of these things, you really
Speaker 2: become close with the subjects. You know, they've become your friends.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I don't know how to make
Speaker 2: one of these things without doing that. Their stories are
Speaker 2: so powerful and they've been through so much, and you're
Speaker 2: sort of in awe of them before you've ever met them,
Speaker 2: and so you know they they worked very hard to
Speaker 2: sort of provide every single piece of personal archival that
Speaker 2: they could. You know, a lot of that stuff I've
Speaker 2: never been seen before, you know. And so part of
Speaker 2: that was original audio recordings, you know, one of which
Speaker 2: was recorded days after the event.
Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible and it's amazing to hear sort of
Speaker 1: one of your heroes, who is Mike Marshall as a
Speaker 1: kid and then as an adult and what happens. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what's powerful about the film is you know,
Speaker 1: you walk away and there's literally someone of high authority
Speaker 1: in California years later who says, well, nobody was physically hurt,
Speaker 1: you know, And then you do a wonderful job of
Speaker 1: just unfurling all of the emotional trauma and physical heart
Speaker 1: that people really go through with these sorts of things
Speaker 1: in childhood trauma and showing the impact. So I think
Speaker 1: that this treatment of this story could have gone very
Speaker 1: differently in somebody else's hands. And I think you did
Speaker 1: a wonderful job of being empathetic and you know, really
Speaker 1: paying attention to the survivors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad that I'm glad that's your sense of it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it is it was a huge
Speaker 2: story at the time, massive the world was watching. So
Speaker 2: it's not that it was underreported. It was reported tremendously.
Speaker 2: And you know, the issue is that what was reported
Speaker 2: was sort of the intrigue in the event itself, and
Speaker 2: then that narrative that became the official narrative sort of
Speaker 2: just ends when everybody comes home. Okay, yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: that's like really not. That's where a lot of those kids'
Speaker 2: stories began. You know. It was like and at the time,
Speaker 2: our understanding of trauma was a very very different. You know,
Speaker 2: those kids were told, those kids' parents were told to
Speaker 2: ignore their nightmares. You know, that's just to not address
Speaker 2: any of the issues they were having and that it
Speaker 2: would go away, you know, and that is not our
Speaker 2: understanding of trauma. Now. In fact, this case shaped, you know,
Speaker 2: the way we understand Cheraldo trauma a lot. You know
Speaker 2: Leonora Terror's book and you know started she interviewed all
Speaker 2: the victims, you know, in the in the months after
Speaker 2: the kidnapping, and then kept in touch with them a
Speaker 2: lot of them for years after. In particular, mic I
Speaker 2: think that work was really important and is still relevant.
Speaker 1: Now, well, let's get going on the story. We are
Speaker 1: in July of nineteen seventy six in Chowchilla, California, which,
Speaker 1: to be honest, I mean, I have heard about the bus,
Speaker 1: chaw Schilla, the bus, the kidnapping, very vaguely. I didn't
Speaker 1: know very much about this story. I did not know
Speaker 1: there was a Chouchilla, California, So you know, this was
Speaker 1: not even the right state when I started watching this
Speaker 1: film in my mind, will you tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about the political environment we're in the United States,
Speaker 1: and certainly what Chouchila was like in the seventies.
Speaker 2: When you look at Chowchila in nineteen seventy six, you
Speaker 2: know you're seeing a very particular slice in America. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a small town. It's a small farm town in
Speaker 2: California Central Valley. It's flat, very flat, dusty, surrounded by
Speaker 2: orchards and dairies. And you know, even though it's the
Speaker 2: mid seventies and your post Watergate and your post Vietnam,
Speaker 2: it's sort of a time capsule of a place. You know,
Speaker 2: the rhythms of life out there are still closer to
Speaker 2: kind of an earlier era. A lot of the families
Speaker 2: there are descendants of dustbel migration. So culturally it's funny.
Speaker 2: You know, you go to Central Valley in California, and
Speaker 2: California is a big place, and so you're so people
Speaker 2: are sort of surprising when they sort of hear echoes
Speaker 2: of like there's sort of like a you know, an
Speaker 2: Oklahoma and even down to the accent, you know, culturally
Speaker 2: religious religious views. There are a lot of churches, and
Speaker 2: so it really is it's like you feel that you
Speaker 2: know that these are people who left places like Oklahoma
Speaker 2: and Texas and Missouri during depression and there really is
Speaker 2: a bedrock of sort of self reliance and church centered
Speaker 2: community that it really does feel like you know that
Speaker 2: it does. You can feel that it goes back to
Speaker 2: that era. As far as what's happening, you know, in
Speaker 2: the seventies, I mean a lot, you know, a lot
Speaker 2: is happening. Economically. The country is in you know, a
Speaker 2: really bad place, all the oil shocks and stackflation and
Speaker 2: all that stuff. California is going through all kinds of
Speaker 2: stuff with agriculture, water issues, you know, all kinds of
Speaker 2: changing labor conditions. But Churchill as a town, it really
Speaker 2: is a sort of little time capsule. You know, kids
Speaker 2: are they're growing up like kids used to grow up.
Speaker 2: They're riding their bikes, you know, they're catching frogs. You know,
Speaker 2: it's sort of idyllic in a way. You know, nobody
Speaker 2: locked their doors, you know, it really was. It was
Speaker 2: a very hard working town. Everybody worked their asses off
Speaker 2: and that they still do. It was not a place
Speaker 2: where you would have expected this to happen. And it
Speaker 2: was also it's a working class place. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not a place that you would expect a ransom quim
Speaker 2: to happen because these people don't have any money.
Speaker 1: There were people who had money in Chowchilla, but even
Speaker 1: what they were making money off it wasn't finance. It
Speaker 1: was you know, working class companies, right, I mean, what
Speaker 1: were Give me some examples of some of the wealthier
Speaker 1: folks in that area how they got their wealth.
Speaker 2: Chechell is really not a wealthy place. People are farmers,
Speaker 2: you know, people are working farms. You know, that's really
Speaker 2: what's going on. They're working farms, and they're you know,
Speaker 2: they work in a restaurant, they work in a bar.
Speaker 2: It's not a place that has wealthy inhabitants.
Speaker 1: Let's see on that day, I mean, set us up,
Speaker 1: how does this whole thing start to begin with.
Speaker 2: So one July day in nineteen seventy six, in this
Speaker 2: little idyllic central valley town, hard working town. Everyone is working,
Speaker 2: you know, so the kids need something to do during
Speaker 2: the day. So there's a summer program and it's like
Speaker 2: camp the kids life. They love to go there. It's
Speaker 2: mostly mostly kids under the age of ten, and there's
Speaker 2: bus takes them to school, takes them from the school
Speaker 2: to the local pool, takes them back to the school,
Speaker 2: then takes them home. And so this is their last
Speaker 2: day of the summer program for the summer. They were
Speaker 2: sad that it was ending, and they had even come
Speaker 2: up with a petition to extend it. It was sort
Speaker 2: of you know, of course wasn't going to work, but
Speaker 2: it was a sweet sort of you know, endeavor that
Speaker 2: these kids had put together. And so on the way home,
Speaker 2: they were taking the bus a guy named Ed Ray
Speaker 2: who was a longtime school employee and bus driver there.
Speaker 2: Everyone knew him. He was, you know, a strapping you know,
Speaker 2: I think mid fifties at the time, farmer, tough they
Speaker 2: kind of got, you know, like a big tough farmer,
Speaker 2: you know, bucks his own hay, but also and the
Speaker 2: kids loved him. He was could be stern, but you
Speaker 2: know he really was just, you know, adored. He was
Speaker 2: driving these kids home and he dropped one of them off.
Speaker 2: And shortly thereafter, almost immediately thereafter, amidst these orchards, these
Speaker 2: sort of flat orchards where they're growing almond trees, they
Speaker 2: saw a white van in the middle of the street.
Speaker 2: And you know, in a place like Chowchilla, if you
Speaker 2: see a van, you know, a car stop, you assume
Speaker 2: they're in trouble, and you do what people in small
Speaker 2: towns do, They try to help. So ed Ray stopped
Speaker 2: the bus and immediately a man came running out of
Speaker 2: the orchard with a sawn off shotgun and a pistol
Speaker 2: and said open the door. He had a mask, he
Speaker 2: couldn't see his face, wearing the stocking over his face.
Speaker 2: And then two other men similarly dressed jumpsuits, stockings over
Speaker 2: their faces, also carrying a shotgun, one with a pistol.
Speaker 2: Two So these two more men, they ed, what could
Speaker 2: he do. He opened the bus doors. They came on
Speaker 2: the bus, they pointed a gun at the kids. They
Speaker 2: set everybody to the back of the bus. They told
Speaker 2: ad to get to the back of the bus and
Speaker 2: they took the bus. And so they follow this white
Speaker 2: van up the road and they drive then the van
Speaker 2: and the bus both down a little incline into what
Speaker 2: they call a slough. Now, if you're not from Chuchilla,
Speaker 2: you know, or a similar place, most people don't know
Speaker 2: what the hell of slou is, as slugh is like
Speaker 2: a sort of a high reeded area and this is
Speaker 2: you know, the sort of like a tall like sort
Speaker 2: of bamboo like, you know, an area that and this,
Speaker 2: you know, The point was it couldn't be seen from
Speaker 2: the road. And so they come into a little clearing
Speaker 2: in this slough and they order the kids to at
Speaker 2: gunpoint to get off the bus and to step directly
Speaker 2: onto the white van. Half the kids, so the kids
Speaker 2: on the right side got into the white van. And
Speaker 2: now there are twenty six kids on this bus, most
Speaker 2: of them under the age of ten. There was one
Speaker 2: fourteen year old on the bus. His name is Mike Marshall.
Speaker 2: He does not ride the bus home usually, and he's
Speaker 2: only actually riding the bus that day because he is
Speaker 2: he's gotten in trouble with his mom. And so she said,
Speaker 2: you know what, Mike, you're going to ride the bus
Speaker 2: home with the other kids. He is. He is not
Speaker 2: in the summer program for the same reason as the
Speaker 2: other kids. Mike is in the summer program because he
Speaker 2: and the principal do not get along. Mike is new
Speaker 2: in town and right away he's gotten into it with
Speaker 2: the principal and they just they both want to have
Speaker 2: the it to see the end of each other. And
Speaker 2: so Mike is in school to accelerate his junior high
Speaker 2: experience and get the hell out of there. It's a
Speaker 2: little tiny school, Dairyland Elementary, tiny tiny school and out
Speaker 2: in the middle of these orchards, totally secluded. So they
Speaker 2: offload these kids onto these two vans. These vans have
Speaker 2: been modified. They have wood paneling that isolates the back
Speaker 2: from the front, and you know, you can't open the
Speaker 2: doors from inside. You can't see out. There are no windows,
Speaker 2: there's no air circulating. By the way, it's July in
Speaker 2: Central Valley, California, which is hot as hell, and they
Speaker 2: slam the doors and these kids are in the dark
Speaker 2: in the heat, and they start to drive. These kids
Speaker 2: are in these vans for eleven hours. These are little kids.
Speaker 2: In one van is the only adult ed ray along
Speaker 2: with half the kids, and in the other van is Mike.
Speaker 2: Mike Marshall, the fourteen year old, and he's with the
Speaker 2: other half the kids. The kids are terrified, you know,
Speaker 2: like as you know, any group of adults would be terrified,
Speaker 2: these are little kids. Driving for eleven hours. You know,
Speaker 2: there's no way to use the bathroom, so these kids
Speaker 2: are soiling themselves and it's horrible. You know. At one
Speaker 2: point they stop for gas and they can smell the
Speaker 2: gas and they you know, they bang on the on
Speaker 2: the wall, but no one hears them. And you know, finally,
Speaker 2: after eleven hours, they stop. The doors are opened and
Speaker 2: one kid is dragged out, and then they're they're slam
Speaker 2: shut and this happens again and again and again until
Speaker 2: all the kids are dragged off. And what was happening
Speaker 2: one at a time. The kidnappers were taking the kids out,
Speaker 2: and they had constructed some sort of a tent which
Speaker 2: later was discovered to be a military surplus issue tent,
Speaker 2: you know, and they have work lights glaring at them.
Speaker 2: These kids don't know what the hell is going on.
Speaker 2: They march them across this space. They take an item
Speaker 2: of clothing from each of them and they take their
Speaker 2: name down, you know, this is sort of proof of life,
Speaker 2: clothing or possession. And then they mark them further across
Speaker 2: the space to where a ladder is sticking out of
Speaker 2: a hole in the ground, and one by one, at gunpoint,
Speaker 2: they have these kids climb down the ladder. They don't
Speaker 2: know where the other kids are, they don't know what
Speaker 2: the hell is going.
Speaker 1: On on the bus ride, you know. And when they're
Speaker 1: getting the kids out, are these three men, the kidnappers
Speaker 1: who have the pantyhose masks on? Do they say anything
Speaker 1: at all? Are they reacting to each other or to
Speaker 1: the kids or to ed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an important detail. So in the midst of
Speaker 2: this kidnappening, you know, just to understand some kind of
Speaker 2: have some sense of what's happening, you know, would have
Speaker 2: made all the difference. And as you learn about trauma,
Speaker 2: like having some sense of what's happening to you is
Speaker 2: like just absolutely critical thing. These guys did not tell
Speaker 2: the kids anything. They didn't tell them what they were doing.
Speaker 2: They didn't say they were going to be okay, they
Speaker 2: didn't say this is a you know, kidnapping for ransom.
Speaker 2: They just took them and you know, for little kids
Speaker 2: looking at these men, they looked like monsters. I mean,
Speaker 2: they really did, like their recollections of them were, you know,
Speaker 2: and you can see that, you know how some of
Speaker 2: the recollections in the film are affected by their upbringing.
Speaker 2: You know, one of our subjects, guy Larry Park, you know,
Speaker 2: his family very involved in the church. He's still very
Speaker 2: involved in the church. And it's a little boy. His
Speaker 2: frame of reference was demons, and these men looked like
Speaker 2: demons to Larry. Their faces were blurred. They just Another
Speaker 2: little girl who was very very little asked one of
Speaker 2: them if if he was the Easter Bunny because he
Speaker 2: had the end of the panteose hanging off of his
Speaker 2: head of like years, So you know, it's really it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, that's an important detail. They did not
Speaker 2: tell them anything.
Speaker 1: Did they talk to each other. Did the kids say
Speaker 1: that that the were they communicating the kidnappers? No? Wow,
Speaker 1: this was planned really well. So they're loading these kids
Speaker 1: down underground, is that right, one at a time down
Speaker 1: this ladder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that the kids come down this ladder and
Speaker 2: they emerge into a narrow chamber that's about twenty eight
Speaker 2: feet long and about six feet high, six to eight
Speaker 2: feet high. They don't know what it is. If the
Speaker 2: walls are lined with like a thick gauge hog wire,
Speaker 2: like a gritted makes it look a little bit like
Speaker 2: a cage, like chicken wire, but thicker. The walls are
Speaker 2: crimson painted, Crimson would be on that. There are no bathrooms.
Speaker 2: The only bathrooms are holes cut in the floor. There
Speaker 2: is hardly any food and water. There's some few jugs
Speaker 2: of water, a couple five yallon jugs. There's a little
Speaker 2: bit of there's like, you know, some cheerios, jar peanut butter,
Speaker 2: some bread like it was not we're talking about twenty
Speaker 2: six kids and an adult, right, So if they were
Speaker 2: in a twenty eight foot one chamber, if they were
Speaker 2: lying side by side, there is no room. So this
Speaker 2: is a tiny little place. And then the kidnappers came
Speaker 2: to the top. They shined a light down, They threw
Speaker 2: down a flashlight and one set of extra batteries, and
Speaker 2: then they slammed a very very heavy metal door. And
Speaker 2: then after that the kids heard a sound, and the
Speaker 2: sound was dirt and quarry rock being pushed over them,
Speaker 2: and they realized that they were being buried alive.
Speaker 1: And this is six feet down, right? Is that how
Speaker 1: long the ladder was?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're a little bit more than six feet down.
Speaker 2: I mean the thing itself is you basically have like
Speaker 2: six feet to the entrance to the chamber and then
Speaker 2: you have an additional you know, eight feet down to
Speaker 2: the floor of the chamber. So they are underground and
Speaker 2: they're buried alive.
Speaker 1: And they couldn't tell where they were. Were they in
Speaker 1: the desert or the mountains or anything like that.
Speaker 2: They had no idea And what is Ed?
Speaker 1: I know that he does interviews later on, but do
Speaker 1: we remember what Ed was sort of thinking or what
Speaker 1: his thought precess was at this point. He's the only
Speaker 1: adult with a fourteen year old basically as his sidekick,
Speaker 1: and that's it.
Speaker 2: So, you know, Ed Ray like, no one would end
Speaker 2: be this guy this position. This is a terrible position.
Speaker 2: You know. He loves these kids and all these kids
Speaker 2: are his charges. They're in his care and Ed is
Speaker 2: more aware than any of the kids that this is
Speaker 2: not likely to go well and it is weighing on
Speaker 2: him tremendously, so he does his best to calm them down.
Speaker 2: The kids work together with him to distribute some of
Speaker 2: the rations make sure that people have a little bit
Speaker 2: of food, a little bit of water. The older kids,
Speaker 2: especially the girls, very very helpful and taking care of
Speaker 2: the younger ones and trying to calm everybody down ed.
Speaker 2: At a certain point, got everyone to take a nap.
Speaker 2: But there's nothing they can do. You know, they have
Speaker 2: one light in this chamber. It's a flashlight, and they're
Speaker 2: trying to conserve the batteries. They don't they don't know
Speaker 2: what's going on. They have no idea. Food is rapidly
Speaker 2: going away. And the structure itself is very shody. So
Speaker 2: there's already a support beam holding up the center of it,
Speaker 2: as if when they were initially burying this thing it
Speaker 2: started to cave in and they needed to reinforce it.
Speaker 2: So if someone bumps into that thing, who knows if
Speaker 2: the roof is going to go. There is very little
Speaker 2: air coming in. There are two little vents you're talking about,
Speaker 2: like a dryer tube. Ultimately they found it. It was like
Speaker 2: it just a little dryer tube that was pushing air
Speaker 2: and it wasn't much. And so you know, this is
Speaker 2: just a nightmare gone to another nightmare.
Speaker 1: And this is July. Central California was there an estimate
Speaker 1: on what the temperatures could get to where they were
Speaker 1: six feet or more underground during this time.
Speaker 2: So when you're underground, it's not as bad as it
Speaker 2: was when they were in the vans. When they were
Speaker 2: in the vans, it's likely that those vans are one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifteen degrees inside, you know, maybe more because
Speaker 2: there's no ventilation, you know, and you're talking about blistering
Speaker 2: sun heating these vans for hours and hours and hours,
Speaker 2: no air conditioning at all, no ventilation at all. So
Speaker 2: those that van, those van rids, these kids were dehydrated,
Speaker 2: they were you know, they had soiled their clothes, they
Speaker 2: were horrified, and that's before they went in the chamber.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that, I know you said before,
Speaker 1: is a lack of information, the not knowing you're going
Speaker 1: through something terrible now. But even if it's a false promise,
Speaker 1: we'll come back, don't worry. Given that hope, that hope
Speaker 1: is what's important. Do you think that the kidnappers thought
Speaker 1: that through, like we're just not going to give them
Speaker 1: any information, the intention is to terrify these kids, or
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they give them any kind of false hope?
Speaker 2: No, They certainly didn't consider that. I mean you just
Speaker 2: look at the rations they left. Yeah, you look at
Speaker 2: you know, what was down there for the kids, like
Speaker 2: there were some mattresses, old mattresses, and some box springs,
Speaker 2: a couple of blankets. I think they were not thinking
Speaker 2: about that, I mean their children, Yeah, little children like. No,
Speaker 2: there was no consideration given. So what would happen to
Speaker 2: those kids? No, it wasn't part of the equation. It
Speaker 2: wasn't part of their concern at all.
Speaker 1: Anybody have any health issues. I mean, I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: ed first, if he's in his fifties, but any of
Speaker 1: the other kids' asthma, anything that was particularly would make
Speaker 1: them really susceptible to these conditions.
Speaker 2: You know, they got lucky, you know that no one
Speaker 2: had a terrible asthma attack, and definitely kids were having
Speaker 2: trouble breathing. Some of the kids have held their pee
Speaker 2: for so long that they ended up having terrible infections
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, and that stuff was reported ultimately,
Speaker 2: you know, in the escape attempt which is forthcoming. Ed
Speaker 2: Ray ended up having some burns from battery acid, but
Speaker 2: not terrible, and of course Mike Marshall ended up just
Speaker 2: entirely exhausted.
Speaker 1: How many hours is it in this underground compartment before
Speaker 1: there is a thought of how do we get out
Speaker 1: of here? Is there a chance we could get out
Speaker 1: of here?
Speaker 2: So the initial thought, you know, is someone is going
Speaker 2: to help us, and that is what Edray is telling them.
Speaker 2: Someone's gonna come. They're looking for us, someone is gonna come.
Speaker 2: He tries to maintain that hope, both for the kids
Speaker 2: and for himself. But there's a certain point where the hope,
Speaker 2: you know, starts to fade. They're running out of food,
Speaker 2: they're running out of water. At a certain point, the
Speaker 2: batteries that are connected to the air supply that's pushing
Speaker 2: fresh air in they die, and so the air is
Speaker 2: starting to go bad. Your kids, of course, are progressively
Speaker 2: more exhausted and terrified, and you know, everyone needs to eat,
Speaker 2: everyone needs to drink. And then, to make matters worse,
Speaker 2: there's a point at which the ceiling starts to collapse,
Speaker 2: you know, like suddenly, you know, they hear something buckle
Speaker 2: and they think that the ceiling is catering in on them.
Speaker 2: You know, there's sort of a cascade of dirt and rock,
Speaker 2: and eventually it doesn't fully fall in it stabilizes, but
Speaker 2: they're then in a position where they're like, it's only
Speaker 2: a matter of time, you know, before this thing caves
Speaker 2: in on our hands. And so at that point what
Speaker 2: starts to happen is Mike Marshall, who's the older kid,
Speaker 2: he's fourteen years old, who is the son of Bob Marshall.
Speaker 2: Bob Marshall is a world champion steer wrestler, which is
Speaker 2: like basically the baddest ass of all rodeo sports. I mean,
Speaker 2: Bob is he's the world champion, and so you know,
Speaker 2: that doesn't make him rich. That makes him a very
Speaker 2: hard working rodeo guy. And his son, Mike, you know,
Speaker 2: who is like an adolescent kid, is an aspiring rodeo kid,
Speaker 2: you know, and he rides his ass off. It's all
Speaker 2: he wants to do is be like his dad. And
Speaker 2: so he has all the qualities of a kid who
Speaker 2: grew up in the rodeo. He's tough, he's scrappy, he's
Speaker 2: incredible hard, incredibly hard worker. He also has all of
Speaker 2: the sort of spirit of a cowboy. He's been raised
Speaker 2: as a cowboy, and that means a number of different things.
Speaker 2: So it means he's brave as hell. It means he's
Speaker 2: physically courageous. It means he is physically capable. But it
Speaker 2: also means he has honor and that he respects his elders.
Speaker 2: And so he has really spent this whole time, you know,
Speaker 2: just following dad's lead. But there's a point at which
Speaker 2: he starts to realize that if they don't do something,
Speaker 2: they're gonna die, and ed ray, you know, God bless him.
Speaker 2: He at a certain point quietly sort of falls apart
Speaker 2: in the darkness and is quietly crying and praying and
Speaker 2: doing all the things that a normal human being would
Speaker 2: do in that situation. You know, the man is not
Speaker 2: a coward, you know, he's a He's a tough, brave
Speaker 2: guy in a terrible situation. It just so happens that
Speaker 2: Mike again, Mike never wrote the bus like, he never
Speaker 2: rode the bus along. He wrote it to school, he
Speaker 2: never wrote it home. It just so happens he was
Speaker 2: riding that day and he almost missed the bus. He
Speaker 2: was he was actually in the in the back when
Speaker 2: the buses were leaving, making out with the teacher's daughter,
Speaker 2: and she encouraged him, like she was like, you're gonna
Speaker 2: miss the bus and he and he sort of like,
Speaker 2: you know, like red faced and blissful and said, oh okay,
Speaker 2: and brand for the bus and the last guy on.
Speaker 2: So he'd really like, if you believe in any sort
Speaker 2: of you know, wow, if you believe in anything, divine intervention,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to believe. Yeah, and Mike believes that
Speaker 2: he was meant to be on that boss. And Mike says,
Speaker 2: we have to do something. And the other kids, and
Speaker 2: there are other kids that are saying that too. There's
Speaker 2: some older kids. One kid, Jeff Brown, he was he
Speaker 2: was ten, but he was he was he was bigger
Speaker 2: for his age, and he was a you know, he
Speaker 2: was another scrappy, intelligent young kid. They determined that they
Speaker 2: needed to do something, whether whether you know Ed would
Speaker 2: help or not. And Ed had tried the hatch earlier
Speaker 2: and there was a lot of weight on it, so
Speaker 2: Mike gave it another try. They stacked up some mattresses
Speaker 2: so he could get a little bit more leverage, and
Speaker 2: he pushed on this thing and pushed on this thing,
Speaker 2: on this hatch, and indeed there was a lot of
Speaker 2: weight on it. But at a certain point he's straining
Speaker 2: as hard as he can. The kids that are watching,
Speaker 2: and they're all gathered around cheering him on. The kids
Speaker 2: say it moved, it moved, and so Mike makes another
Speaker 2: appeal to Ad. He says, Ed, we've got to try this.
Speaker 2: You know, it moved. The thing moved, and d reluctantly
Speaker 2: agreed to help him. You know, remember Ed is a big,
Speaker 2: strong adult farmer, and so he and Mike worked together
Speaker 2: to try to lift this thing up. So Ed got
Speaker 2: this thing up. It was incredibly heavy, this hatch. He
Speaker 2: raised it enough for Mike to reach his hand up
Speaker 2: and to feel around on top of it. He could
Speaker 2: feel that there was weight on top of it, something
Speaker 2: very very heavy up there. And they realized the only
Speaker 2: way they were going to get this thing open is
Speaker 2: if Mike reached his arm through and pulled off the
Speaker 2: weight somehow. Now, if Ed had dropped this thing later,
Speaker 2: when you do the math, what it was was there
Speaker 2: were two tractor batteries, and tractor batteries aren't like car batteries,
Speaker 2: you know, they weighed like one hundred hundred pounds each,
Speaker 2: hundred fifty pounds each. And then in addition to the hatch,
Speaker 2: which was one hundred pounds, you know, you're talking about
Speaker 2: four hundred pounds of weight. So ed Ray is pushing
Speaker 2: this this four underd panns up and Mike has this
Speaker 2: little fourteen year old arm in there trying to get
Speaker 2: these things off. And they both knew full well that
Speaker 2: if ed dropped the thing, Mike would lose his arm. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but they managed to get this thing out. They managed
Speaker 2: to get the these batteries off. They dropped down and oh,
Speaker 2: my god, you know, maybe this is it. But when
Speaker 2: they looked up there, they realized that the ladder. They
Speaker 2: had pulled up the ladder when the kidnappers left, but
Speaker 2: they they realized when they looked up there, the surface
Speaker 2: was further blocked. They had constructed the kidnappers constructed a
Speaker 2: like a four x four foot wooden box that went
Speaker 2: over the hatch and so. And at that point whatever
Speaker 2: hope he had, I think was gone. He sort of
Speaker 2: retreated into the shadows again, but Mike worked with the
Speaker 2: rest of the kids, got up there. They broke a
Speaker 2: box spring. Mike got a piece of up box spring,
Speaker 2: crawled up into the box and started to dig and
Speaker 2: to smash at the box. They couldn't smash it. It
Speaker 2: was plywood. If you've ever worked with plywood, it's pretty
Speaker 2: strong stuff.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: Mike was smashing and smashing and trying to, you know,
Speaker 2: kick a hole in it. You know, at one point,
Speaker 2: you know, another kid try to help him, and you know,
Speaker 2: down below the other kids were holding lights and cheering
Speaker 2: him on. And finally, what Mike realized was that there
Speaker 2: was at the base of the hatch, the wall, at
Speaker 2: the base of this box, where the box met the
Speaker 2: top of the chamber, there was he could see a
Speaker 2: line of dirt. And so he started to dig dirt
Speaker 2: out of that line, out of that little tiny little crack,
Speaker 2: and pull it into the box and push it down
Speaker 2: the box into the rest of the chamber. And his
Speaker 2: thinking was that if he could pull enough of it out,
Speaker 2: maybe enough of that dirt would fall, he could create
Speaker 2: a little hole on the side of the box and
Speaker 2: eventually me get a little bit of a weight, a
Speaker 2: little bit of weight off the top of this box.
Speaker 2: And so he done and doug and dug. No one
Speaker 2: knows how long he dug, but it was hours. It
Speaker 2: was so long that he started to lose equilibrium. He
Speaker 2: didn't know whether he was digging up or down. He
Speaker 2: started to hallucinate. At one point he had a really
Speaker 2: specific hallucination, you know, of a stairway and a hall
Speaker 2: away and coming up into you know, these kidnappers chamber.
Speaker 2: That didn't happen. You know. He was just completely exhausted.
Speaker 2: But after many, many, many hours of digging, and at
Speaker 2: one point Mike passed out and was revived by the
Speaker 2: kids with some of the lasts of their water they
Speaker 2: poured on him to help wake him up. They give
Speaker 2: last some of the last their water, and you know,
Speaker 2: with that same cowboy spirit, he went back up and
Speaker 2: he kept digging again, and finally he managed to get
Speaker 2: that weight off the roof, a little bit of weight
Speaker 2: off the side of the roof of the box, and
Speaker 2: break a piece of it, and then break another piece
Speaker 2: and another piece. And as he broke these pieces off
Speaker 2: the roof, sand would start to pour through quarry dirt,
Speaker 2: quarry rocks, and and he broke a bigger piece and
Speaker 2: a bigger piece, and finally this beam of light came through.
Speaker 2: And in the film, one of our subjects, one of
Speaker 2: the survivors, Larry, who was this little boy at the time,
Speaker 2: described seeing that light, you know, and again his interpretation
Speaker 2: was as a sort of a divine light, but there
Speaker 2: was some trepidation.
Speaker 1: Right, people are still thinking the kidnappers are up there.
Speaker 1: There was one thing I'd love for you to describe.
Speaker 1: You have a psychologist talking about the hallucinations and delusions
Speaker 1: that especially with kids, can go through when they're deprived
Speaker 1: of everything and they're frightened about I think it was
Speaker 1: the girl who was one of them could clearly see
Speaker 1: the kidnappers sleeping and sleeping bags on top of this chamber.
Speaker 1: Can you talk just a little bit about that before
Speaker 1: they're released and why they would be scared to get
Speaker 1: out of that chamber to begin with?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, any thanks for bringing that up. That's important
Speaker 2: stuff too. So you've got to remember, these kids are
Speaker 2: down there for sixteen hours. You know, what are they
Speaker 2: doing down there and in the dark, and what you
Speaker 2: hear from them in their recollections are various copa mechanisms
Speaker 2: that they're so. In the one case, one of our subjects, Larry,
Speaker 2: who was five years old at the time, he was
Speaker 2: sort of transporting himself to safer places. He was imagining
Speaker 2: being camping with his family and those the two spaces
Speaker 2: sort of merged for him in a way. That's like
Speaker 2: almost sort of hallucinatory, you know, and he could almost
Speaker 2: you know, smell you know, the campground, the fire burning,
Speaker 2: and because that's that was Larry's happy, safe place with
Speaker 2: his family. And you know, by the way, Larry's family
Speaker 2: was also camping at the time. The rest of his
Speaker 2: family was camping when this happened. Another little girl, who
Speaker 2: was even younger than Larry, imagined that she could see
Speaker 2: through what was the ceiling for her, you know, and
Speaker 2: then sort of up through the floor and could see
Speaker 2: kidnappers lying in what she imagined in her four year
Speaker 2: old mind kidnappers hideout would look like, which is three
Speaker 2: kidnappers weren't pajamas lying in bed with their guns, like
Speaker 2: lying in three beds above them. This, of course wasn't true.
Speaker 2: They appers were nowhere near there at the time. You know,
Speaker 2: they had they had left. What the mind does, and
Speaker 2: particularly the mind of a child does to try to
Speaker 2: sort of make sense of this stuff. You don't really
Speaker 2: understood any of that at the time. The part I
Speaker 2: left out was this ed Ray was really concerned that
Speaker 2: those kidnappers were still up there, and he had no
Speaker 2: reason not to be, you know. That was the conservative
Speaker 2: adult choice. They had guns. They pointed them at us,
Speaker 2: you know, they had They had made Ed Ray take
Speaker 2: off his h his clothes, and they left him in
Speaker 2: his box or shorts, you know, whether to humiliate him
Speaker 2: or or what. You know. But Ed's concern was that
Speaker 2: they weren't there and he didn't want them to get killed.
Speaker 2: And everyone respected that and understood that, and Mike understood that.
Speaker 2: But there was a point at which Mike knew, look,
Speaker 2: we're gonna die. We have to do something. So that's
Speaker 2: when Mike sort of began to step in and take
Speaker 2: over in that regard. So but even when when they
Speaker 2: had gotten through, there is still this trepidation, a renewed
Speaker 2: trepidation about who's up there. Are they going to poke
Speaker 2: their head up and get shot. There's no reason to
Speaker 2: think that that's not going to happen, you know. They
Speaker 2: just know they have no other choice. And so Mike,
Speaker 2: when he gets this thing open, he pokes his head
Speaker 2: up through this hole into what is at that point
Speaker 2: fading daylight, but still much brighter than anything he'd seen
Speaker 2: for a long time. So his eyes are adjusting and
Speaker 2: they're no kidnappers. He sees no kidnappers. He sees, in fact,
Speaker 2: nothing except dirt and you know, cory, sand and trees.
Speaker 2: He doesn't know where the hell he is. And so
Speaker 2: one by one Ed hands up the kids to Mike,
Speaker 2: you know that they're all on the surface, and Ed,
Speaker 2: you know, takes over once again and shepherds them through
Speaker 2: this space to who knows where. They don't know where
Speaker 2: they are, they don't know where the kidnappers are. There.
Speaker 2: They're being super quiet. Mike is actually is not in
Speaker 2: the movie, but he can't put everything in the movie.
Speaker 2: But Mike was actually laying back and trying to keep
Speaker 2: an eye out and going from sort of scrub to scrub,
Speaker 2: you know, in cover, to try it see if you
Speaker 2: could see anybody. But what happened was they crested a
Speaker 2: little hill and they saw a quarry, like an active
Speaker 2: working quarry, and then they saw a worker like at
Speaker 2: first they see this figure and they say, oh my god,
Speaker 2: it's one of them, and then they realize it's a
Speaker 2: quarry worker. And he says, the whole world has been
Speaker 2: looking for you, because it's been everywhere. You know. What
Speaker 2: we don't know is what's going above ground this whole time.
Speaker 1: This is a total what sixteen hours. Is that right?
Speaker 2: Well, you've got eleven hours in the vans and then
Speaker 2: you've got sixteen underground. And so by this point, one
Speaker 2: of the many things that kidnappers didn't consider was that
Speaker 2: if you kidnap twenty six children, there will be a massive,
Speaker 2: massive outrage and huge news story. And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: It was all over the wires. It was, you know,
Speaker 2: chac Chila was flooded with press from everywhere. You know,
Speaker 2: there's one story of a reporter getting out of a
Speaker 2: cab from Los Angeles, you know, paying in canrash like
Speaker 2: you know, that's a long cab ride, and you know,
Speaker 2: it was covered, it was covered internationally. It was a massive,
Speaker 2: massive story. And so on the kidnappers side, they went
Speaker 2: to call on this ransom and they couldn't get through.
Speaker 2: And you would have thought that they would have been
Speaker 2: industrious enough to find another way to make a ransom request,
Speaker 2: but they either were not or chose not to. And
Speaker 2: you know, the kidnapping side is a whole nother story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the kids and Ed get to safety and I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know, the authorities debrief them and the first
Speaker 1: questions are where besides are you okay, and how are you?
Speaker 1: It's you know, how do we figure out who these
Speaker 1: people are?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Who kidnapped you? Because they're out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the striking things
Speaker 2: is that these kids who were kidnapped, you know, their
Speaker 2: bus was kidnapped or then loaded onto a bus and
Speaker 2: driven to the only place nearby where they can question them,
Speaker 2: and it's a jail. These kids are driven to a
Speaker 2: jail and they are you know, everyone is very kind
Speaker 2: to them. You know, these were you know, hardworking police
Speaker 2: and detective and investigators and you know, you know they're
Speaker 2: doing their jobs, but it's it's a sort of a
Speaker 2: crazy irony. You know that they're loaded back onto a
Speaker 2: bus and driven in this place, and you know, they're
Speaker 2: clothes are soiled, and so they're given adult prison jumpsuits.
Speaker 2: So there are these images in the film of these
Speaker 2: little kids wearing these white prison jumpsuits that are rolled up,
Speaker 2: you know, in their little legs and arms. It's like
Speaker 2: it's just heartbreaking, but they were happy to be alive,
Speaker 2: and I think the trauma that was to come, it
Speaker 2: really was. They didn't they were really quite understood at
Speaker 2: the time, and so they were questioned and then it
Speaker 2: became about who did this. They were questioned by the
Speaker 2: police and the FBI, and then they were put on
Speaker 2: another bus and driven back to jud Chua, where they
Speaker 2: were reunited with their parents. Wow, so there's a you know,
Speaker 2: nationwide manhunt. They're trying to figure out who the hell
Speaker 2: did this, and eventually they put the pieces together and
Speaker 2: discover that the people who are responsible are not you know,
Speaker 2: there were all kinds of theories about who this could
Speaker 2: have been. You know, it's nineteen seventy six, right, so
Speaker 2: you had skyjackings at the time, you had you know,
Speaker 2: judges getting kidnapped. It was crazy. Nineteen seventy six was
Speaker 2: a crazy time, and so a lot of motives respect
Speaker 2: and people thought it might be the Moonies. There was
Speaker 2: you know, really no one knew what the hell was
Speaker 2: going on. Some people thought they just were abducted, like
Speaker 2: by aliens. So it's really every every conceivable because they
Speaker 2: really ditches of ash and so what was what they
Speaker 2: discovered was the wasn't any set of mass or criminals.
Speaker 2: It was three young men in their twenties, and they
Speaker 2: were not the young man that anyone would have supposed
Speaker 2: that they would be. They were in fact, wealthy kids
Speaker 2: from the Portola Valley. It was a very nice area
Speaker 2: of California, very nice. Two of them were brothers who
Speaker 2: were the sons of a local doctor, and the other
Speaker 2: one was a guy named Fred Woods. And Fred Woods
Speaker 2: was from a family that was incredibly wealthy. They were
Speaker 2: an old money family. They had one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand acres of rancho. They basically built the San Francisco Railroad. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that's it's like as old as old money can be.
Speaker 2: And in fact, Fred had you know, many, many, many, many,
Speaker 2: many tens of millions of dollar inheritance that he would
Speaker 2: have gotten had he just waited. But he had a
Speaker 2: strange relationship with his father about money, and he wanted
Speaker 2: to do his own thing, and he was you know,
Speaker 2: the film gets into all this stuff, you know, much
Speaker 2: much more deeply. But I think these were not people
Speaker 2: who needed the money. They were people who wanted the
Speaker 2: money and who wanted an adventure. They wanted a caper,
Speaker 2: they wanted to do something in the case of the
Speaker 2: brothers that was sort of bold and adventurous and challenging,
Speaker 2: which sort of that component of it is almost relatable.
Speaker 2: But then you go but didn't you think about the
Speaker 2: kids that we were going to get nap? Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that didn't occur to you in your you know, in
Speaker 2: your adventure, in your venture narrative you concocted.
Speaker 1: But you know, the way they constructed that chamber, which
Speaker 1: was a ended up being a moving truck, is that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah? They eventually discovered that the chamber that had been
Speaker 2: constructed was in fact built from the back of an
Speaker 2: old style moving van.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And like the toilets were in the wheel wells, they
Speaker 2: drilled out the wheel wells.
Speaker 1: To me, the way they constructed this and you know,
Speaker 1: they've got the cage on top, and they've got these
Speaker 1: truck batteries and they pulled up the ladder, it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to me like these three guys intended to come back.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just seemed like they were trying to
Speaker 1: make this permanent and this is you know, they're going
Speaker 1: to ask for a ransom. I don't know, it just
Speaker 1: seemed odd like they weren't going to give provisions anymore.
Speaker 1: What do you think they were thinking?
Speaker 2: I mean, I do think they were going to come back.
Speaker 2: I think that there was you know, a ransom crime.
Speaker 2: In fact, they had. It was just a sort of
Speaker 2: half baked, insane, bizarrely complicated. You know. The film goes
Speaker 2: into some details of what their intended plan was. That
Speaker 2: you know, involved like a fully blacked out Cadillac, you know,
Speaker 2: throwing dummies out of airplanes. Like it's a crazy, crazy,
Speaker 2: wackadoo plan, and that didn't actually ultimately make a lick
Speaker 2: of sense or have any chance of working. You know,
Speaker 2: as complicated as it was, it was ultimately like relatively idiotic.
Speaker 2: One of the sort of starting points for that plan
Speaker 2: was one of them had read an article that said
Speaker 2: that California had a five million dollar budgets or plus
Speaker 2: that year. They had decided like, well, you know what
Speaker 2: if we take a city vehicle like a school bus,
Speaker 2: we can then leverage state of California.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's just insane, yeah, and ridiculous, you know, like they're
Speaker 2: like they're just gonna get a bag of five million
Speaker 2: bucks and drop it somewhere. But w was the idea.
Speaker 2: They claimed to have been intending to return with more provisions.
Speaker 2: I don't think they thought it was gonna last quite
Speaker 2: so long. The brothers were impressionable early twenties guys that
Speaker 2: were I think largely under the influence of fred Woods,
Speaker 2: who was I think in many ways the ringleader for
Speaker 2: the operation, even though one of the brothers was really
Speaker 2: more logistically inclined. But fred Woods. I think it's pretty
Speaker 2: clear fred Wood's you know, as a sociopath, you know,
Speaker 2: based on how he was over the years in prison.
Speaker 2: I mean, the movie goes into it more, you know,
Speaker 2: his behavior after the fact, but yeah, he really sort
Speaker 2: of really eliminates any question about you know, his character.
Speaker 1: And this where they buried these kids and ed was
Speaker 1: on fred Woods's father's property. It was a quarry, right.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, So ultimately what they discovered is that
Speaker 2: the property that they have buried these kids in is
Speaker 2: owned by fred Wood's father. He owns the quarry, among
Speaker 2: you know, a whole lot of other things.
Speaker 1: So we get enough to charge them, Police charge them,
Speaker 1: and then they go on trial. Is there any doubt
Speaker 1: that they're going to be convicted? And I have to
Speaker 1: assume that the kid's families are all there waiting to
Speaker 1: see what happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a little bit slow, but this obviously
Speaker 2: was a big case on big trial, and so it
Speaker 2: moved relative quickly through court system and what their defense
Speaker 2: was was that there was no bodily harm. Every kid
Speaker 2: in there was severely traumatized, every single one of them.
Speaker 2: Their lives were really really fucked up by what happened
Speaker 2: to them. But the defense attorney made this argument, and
Speaker 2: ultimately they ended up doing quite a bit of time,
Speaker 2: but they did all eventually get parole. The last one,
Speaker 2: Fred Woods, was in there a good deal longer other
Speaker 2: than the brothers, and he is now free.
Speaker 1: So you know, and there were some powerful people who
Speaker 1: were advocating for these three guys thirty forty years later
Speaker 1: to get out. But also I was surprised that there
Speaker 1: was at least one of the survivors who thought they
Speaker 1: should be out too. But I think the insinuation was
Speaker 1: maybe that was a payoff or no.
Speaker 2: There are allegations that seem at the very least very likely.
Speaker 2: What we know is that one of the key investigators
Speaker 2: on the case from almost years ago, a guy named
Speaker 2: Dale four, was years later hired by Fred Woods, who remember,
Speaker 2: has a tremendous amount of money. He eventually gets that
Speaker 2: inheritance when he's in prison.
Speaker 1: It's like one hundred million, right, Yeah, he.
Speaker 2: Got a lot of money, and so you know, he
Speaker 2: can kind of do what he wants with that money.
Speaker 2: He hires Dale four, who was an investigator on the case,
Speaker 2: so the kids remember fondly and Dale four allegedly started
Speaker 2: to approach survivors to try to influence the way that
Speaker 2: the parole hearings would go, and eventually Fred Woods has
Speaker 2: a relationship with one of the survivors. You know, it
Speaker 2: seems like their likely was money exchanged. It's all pretty
Speaker 2: horrible and sortid, and I think pretty on brand for
Speaker 2: a guy who would come up with this crime in
Speaker 2: the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you do go into detail about Fred in
Speaker 1: prison versus the other two brothers. You know that Fred
Speaker 1: was very manipulative and use the system. And I have
Speaker 1: not how was he able to access that money while
Speaker 1: he was in prison? Is there not a law that
Speaker 1: precludes that from happening.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't speak to I can't speak to
Speaker 2: the lawn. What I can tell you is, you know,
Speaker 2: you can get a cell phone in prison pretty easily.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you know Fred had cell phones. Again and
Speaker 2: again he had cell phones, and he was running businesses,
Speaker 2: a lot of businesses. He was trying to you know,
Speaker 2: he had a gold mine that he was getting going.
Speaker 2: He was buying and selling a lot of cars. In fact,
Speaker 2: at one point he bought back the kidnapping bands because
Speaker 2: he thought they would be valuable. Yeah, it's just so dark.
Speaker 1: So where are the three kidnappers now? Do we have
Speaker 1: any idea? Did they just vanish?
Speaker 2: They're free, living their lives. I don't think that the
Speaker 2: survivors are scared that they're gonna that these guys are
Speaker 2: going to get them again. But I do think that
Speaker 2: many of them fell very strongly that they shouldn't and released.
Speaker 2: That was that's my own impression. Those guys are pretty
Speaker 2: old now, It wasn't my impression of the survivors actually
Speaker 2: felt like they were going to get them. But I mean,
Speaker 2: in particular Fred Woods, the way he behaved in prison,
Speaker 2: Like you know, it's just just no indication of this
Speaker 2: guy's character has changed at all.
Speaker 1: Right, I guess if we endier on sort of the
Speaker 1: long lasting ramifications of what happened with them. I remember
Speaker 1: the story of the woman who said she lives in
Speaker 1: a tornado ridden state and she has to you know,
Speaker 1: they needed a tornado shelter, but they couldn't put an underground,
Speaker 1: which is understandable because of everything she went through and
Speaker 1: how difficult things like that are. And there was another
Speaker 1: person who talked about being triggered by men just in
Speaker 1: general in some ways. You know. So while they might
Speaker 1: not be scared that, you know, these guys are going
Speaker 1: to come after them, necessarily that specter's there and it
Speaker 1: doesn't go away, and so there are all of these
Speaker 1: you know, shades coming at them. So can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the point is not that
Speaker 2: they're afraid that these guys are going to come after
Speaker 2: and the point is that these guys never left them.
Speaker 2: Everyone I talked to described in one way or another
Speaker 2: sort of leaving part of themselves down there and spending
Speaker 2: the rest of their lives fighting trying to find some
Speaker 2: way to make it to get it back. And they
Speaker 2: tried all different things, you know, all these different all
Speaker 2: these kids went through all kinds of different shit. You know,
Speaker 2: like there was a there was you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of there was alcoholism, there was substance abuse. You know,
Speaker 2: some people were committing crimes themselves. Mike Marshall tells very
Speaker 2: candidly in the movie what he went through, and it's
Speaker 2: a lot. Thank god, you know, some of them have
Speaker 2: been able to build lives for themselves, you know, And
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the most one of the
Speaker 2: most powerful things to me about about what happened is
Speaker 2: that in a way, it's sort of simultaneously a story
Speaker 2: about the fragility of the human spirit and how vulnerable
Speaker 2: we are, especially as children. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 2: there's still this sort of incredible resilience, you know, and
Speaker 2: this this will to push forward, you know, to see
Speaker 2: how the survivors of this thing, despite everything they've been through,
Speaker 2: and it is a lot, have managed to make lives
Speaker 2: for themselves, and also to understand that they are that
Speaker 2: they really are still affected by the kid appen of
Speaker 2: this day. That is just hugely powerful, you know, And
Speaker 2: I think ultimately it's a story about how how precious
Speaker 2: childhood is, you know, and how we should do everything
Speaker 2: we possibly can to protect it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: When I came to this, it was a lot you know,
Speaker 2: many years ago. When I first came to the story,
Speaker 2: it drew me in from this sort of spectacle of
Speaker 2: the true crime itself, and the deeper I got into
Speaker 2: it and older I got, you know, I got married,
Speaker 2: I had a kid, you know like and I made
Speaker 2: this movie as a new father, you know, and so
Speaker 2: it had a very different resonance, you know, for me
Speaker 2: than it did when it started. The absurdity and craziness,
Speaker 2: you know, of the crime itself, it's not lost on me,
Speaker 2: you know. It's it's like out of a Coen Brothers movie.
Speaker 2: It's nuts. It's just completely nuts, and so are the characters.
Speaker 2: You can never understand it. But when you've done everything
Speaker 2: you can to try to try to put yourself in
Speaker 2: this position and to live in there with them and Toga,
Speaker 2: I don't understand how they're living now, you know, you
Speaker 2: realize that, you know, this movie is about a lot
Speaker 2: more than just a crime.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Sinners, All About the
Speaker 1: Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and
Speaker 1: Don't Forget There are twelve seasons of my historical true
Speaker 1: crime podcast, Tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed,
Speaker 1: scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already.
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer
Speaker 1: is Alexis M. Morosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 1: This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is
Speaker 1: our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hartstark,
Speaker 1: Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram
Speaker 1: and Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: tenfold more and if you know of a historical crime
Speaker 1: that could use some attention from the crew at tenfold
Speaker 1: more Wicked, email us at info at tenfoldmore wicked dot com.
Speaker 1: We'll also take your suggestions for true crime authors for
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