One day earlier, in the San Joaquin Valley town of Chowchilla, three armed men kidnapped 26 schoolchildren ages 5 to 14 and their bus driver. The victims were ordered into a moving van and buried alive in a Livermore rock quarry. Sixteen hours later the bewildered and bedraggled victims escaped their would-be tomb and made their way to safety – thanks, Baugh said, to the efforts of the several oldest teen boys.

Baugh was chief of the criminal division for Alameda County Sheriff’s Department. When he got a call saying the children had been located in his county, he was thrust into leading the investigation and finding who had done this and why.

The search led Baugh’s large team of detectives, criminologists and FBI agents to Canada, six U.S. states, and many California locales, including Sonora and Columbia.

After an exhaustive two-week investigation, the details of a sensationally evil crime emerged: Baugh determined that three young, underachieving, bored young men from wealthy San Francisco Bay Area families perpetrated the kidnap-for-ransom scheme.

The kidnappers, Fred Woods and brothers James and Richard Schoenfeld, never had time to ask for the $5 million they wanted. The victims escaped before any ransom demands were made.

The crime’s seeds were planted when the trio played a what-if game about kidnapping a bunch of kids. Then, for a year, they expanded and planned out the unlikely scheme until there was nothing left but to carry it out.

“It was just a crazy idea – just a wild idea,” James Schoenfeld told investigators after his arrest, “and I never thought we’d do anything.”

All three men were convicted and are serving life sentences at California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. Now in their 50s, their every appeal for parole has been denied.

The case, which made international headlines, “was without a doubt the biggest case of my career,” said Baugh. “All I had to do was ask, and I was given anything I needed to get the job done.”

The biggest break came when detectives linked the moving van to Fred Woods, whose father owned the quarry where the van and victims were buried. This led to a search of the Woods’ family estate in affluent Portola Valley, where investigators found Woods’ handwritten notes outlining “The Plan.” Then, nine days after the kidnapping, Rick Schoenfeld surrendered to police and detectives searched his family’s estate. There, detectives found another notebook full of kidnapping plans, and linked the Schoenfeld brothers to Woods.

Although none of the Tuolumne County connections to the kidnapping ever panned out, they were exciting to residents.

Before many of the details of the crime emerged, an inmate at the Tuolumne County Jail told Sheriff’s Detective Jim McGettigan he knew a man who had plotted to kidnap a busload of schoolchildren and bury them in a cave. Baugh’s detectives spent several hours interviewing the inmate, then more time trying to corroborate his story. It turned out to be just another false lead in a string of many, Baugh said.

Detectives also searched a cabin on 380 acres near Columbia owned by Fred Woods’ father. They were looking for Woods or any evidence connecting him to the kidnapping, and reporters along for the late-night search were warned of “possible gunplay.” But the spread, off Old Oak Ranch Road, was empty. While detectives were searching the property, it turned out, Woods was hiding out in Canada.

Baugh, now 72 and his body slowed by Parkinson’s disease, reflected on the Chowchilla case as he sat inside the same cabin he and Marcia were headed toward some 32 years ago.

Back in the 1970s, Jack and Marcia were living in Castro Valley raising their blended family of five children. The family had enjoyed weekend trips to a Crystal Falls cabin owned by Marcia’s boss, a Bay Area doctor. “We had so much fun skiing at Dodge Ridge and waterskiing on the lakes that we decided to build a home for ourselves,” said Marcia.

The Baughs kept their “honeymoon” cabin even after building a larger home in Ridgewood Estates. Several months ago, when Jack’s disease progressed and the Ridgewood home became too much to keep up, Jack and Marcia moved back to the cabin.

“We’re back where it all began for us,” Marcia said as she unloaded boxes of kitchen supplies.

After the kidnappers were sentenced, Jack collaborated with Jefferson Morgan, a newspaper reporter for The Oakland Tribune to write a book about the Chowchilla kidnapping. It was called “Why Have They Taken Our Children.” The book is likely the most accurate account of the crime and its outcome because of Jack’s intense and direct involvement in the case.

Jack Baugh’s literary agent thought the book would be a New York Times bestseller because of the notoriety of the kidnapping and details only the lead detective knew, but it achieved only moderate success. “Two years later it was old news and there were already lots of books about it,” Jack said. “We thought we’d get a Rolls Royce but all we got was an Oldsmobile.”

In 1993, a made-for-TV movie based on Jack’s book had Karl Malden playing the bus driver. “I thought Gene Hackman should have played Jack,” Marcia said.            As it turned out, Jack Baugh’s character did not even appear in the movie.

In 1978, shortly after the Chowchilla kidnapping trial concluded and appeals were heard, Jack retired from the Alameda Sheriff’s Department. The Baughs wanted to live full-time in Tuolumne County, and Jack was slated to teach a criminal justice course at Columbia College until Proposition 13 cut the program.

Instead, he went to work for Operating Engineers, a labor-relations union representing government workers in Tuolumne, Calaveras and Stanislaus counties. He eventually became vice president of the organization. Jack and Marcia divided their time between Crystal Falls and Castro Valley until moving to Tuolumne County permanently in 1998.

Parkinson’s disease, diagnosed 10 years ago, wracks Jack’s body but not with the tremors that afflict many. He has the opposite symptoms. His joints are stuck.

“It’s like wearing magnetic boots while trying to walk on the deck of a battle ship,” he said. “It stinks.”

Baugh started his law enforcement career at age 21 working up the ranks from deputy, sergeant, lieutenant, captain and finally chief. His name and reputation are golden inside the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, in part due to how quickly and effectively he solved the Chowchilla kidnapping case and brought the bad guys to justice. Even after 32 years Baugh can drive by the Highway 580 exit leading to the quarry where the victims were buried, and recall almost every detail of the case and his role in solving it.

In particular, he remembers the sick feeling he got when he first saw the buried van and realized how desperate a situation the terrified victims faced. Those children, so close in age to his own, had come far too close to dying.

Baugh also remembers some of the frustrations. The press was unrelenting and at times got in the way. Reporters monitoring police scanners arrived at the Woods’ estate the day detectives searched it. Jack had to tell his investigative team to use telephones rather than police radios to keep the press away. Marcia and the children only saw Jack on the evening news during those frenetic two weeks.

After the case was over, Baugh never heard from the victims or their families, and he has never contacted the kidnappers.

“I did what I was supposed to do, lock up the bad guys,” he said. “It was a good case, and I’m proud of the work we did. I was a cop and I did my job.”

How they escaped

The 27 victims were placed in their makeshift prison – an old moving van, 8 feet wide, 25 feet long, 12 feet high – through a circular hole cut in the top. The kidnappers used 2-by-4s to prop up the van’s top so it wouldn’t be crushed by dirt, then covered the hole with a metal plate. They placed two large batteries on the plate to power fans to bring in fresh air, and dumped dirt over area so the van’s presence was undetectable. After about 12 hours, bus driver Ed Ray and one of the older teens, Mike Marshall, used one of the 2-by-4s to dislodge the metal plate and the heavy batteries. Using wooden slats pulled from mattresses inside the van, they were able to prop the heavy metal plate up and crawl up and out. Once on top, they helped others out, each helping to claw away more dirt until all were able to escape.

© 2009, Friends and Neighbors Magazine