Chowchilla

Marooned

Aaron Habel & Jack Luna

History, True Crime

4.9 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Chowchilla, California. A summer school trip to the pool was meant to be a great time for 26 kids and their bus driver. And it was, until three spoiled young men tried to take a shortcut to success using some firearms and a buried moving van.

>>Please tell your friends and family about Marooned. Find us on tiktok and instagram by searching: @visitmarooned | Thank you, Jack & Aaron.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A large group of children piling into a bus and heading out for a school trip is an unusual event.
0:14.0	Attendance will be noted, a headcount or a roll call to keep every child accounted for.
0:19.0	Dairyland Elementary School in Chowchilla, California, had arranged such a charter for students
0:25.3	in the summer of 1976 to get a chance to go swimming.
0:29.6	The sunny faces of Monica, Lisa, Jennifer, Jeffrey, Lisa B, Stella, Julia, Linda, Irene, Darla, Johnny, Andres, Roberto, Jody, Sherry, Jody M, Mike, Larry, Andrea, Becky, Judy, Barbara, Angela, Michelle, Cindy, and Laura.
0:49.3	26 kids total would bounce past their bus driver, known to the kids, as Ed, and take their seats.
0:57.0	Ed would get them to the pool that morning and returned to collect them at around 3.30 p.m.
1:03.0	The worn-out group of kids would be a little quieter on the ride home, subdued, even.
1:09.0	Like I said, such a day should not be unusual, and it certainly shouldn't be one
1:13.3	that ended infamously. A parent of a child that goes for a bus trip has some anxiety about the
1:19.5	possibility of an accident. But after this day, they now have to consider the frightening event,
1:26.4	known as the Chowchilla bus kidnapping. Welcome to Maroon.
1:30.3	Stories of the Catastrophically Lost. I'm Jack Luna. This is Aaron Hable. Thursday, July 15th,
1:38.1	1976, 55-year-old school bus driver Frank Edward Ray was taking 26 Dairyland Elementary School students home.
1:46.8	Like Jack already mentioned, the children had been on a summer class trip to the Chowchilla
1:51.7	Fairground swimming pool. The boys and girls ranged in age from 5 to 14 years old. At approximately
1:58.2	4 p.m., a van drove into the bus's path and blocked the road.
2:03.6	Ray slowed down to go around it, but then stopped when he saw three men with nylon stockings
2:09.0	covering their faces, exiting the van, and they hijacked the bus.
2:13.6	Ray saw a sawed off shotgun and a handgun and didn't want the bus shot at, so he froze.
2:19.8	Two men boarded the bus, with one holding a gun on Ray, and ordered him towards the back of the bus while the other got behind the wheel.
2:27.4	The third man got back into the white van.
	...

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