Part 2

Author’s note: This is part two in a continuing series of articles on the Chowchilla Kidnapping Case.

The Chowchilla kidnappers were recruited by a coalition of powerful men in politics, in the military, and in business. By kidnapping, and possibly murdering, a whole busload of children under the guise of leftist extremism, they hoped to ignite a firestorm of criticism against populist movements such as the anti-war, anti-CIA, and anti-segregation factions that united together in the convention hall of Madison Square Garden to nominate Jimmy Carter as the Democratic candidate for the presidency. The surprise escape of the kidnap victims forced the conspirators to scrap their plans for defeating the Democrats in November and frantically apply improvised measures to save themselves from exposure and ruin.

After Frank Ray and 26 children emerged from their dungeon at a rock quarry near Livermore, they were taken to the Santa Rita Jail where they were questioned by sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents. The information they provided became the basis for a bulletin that was broadcast on police radio bands at 10:30 pm.

Vehicle No. 1: White van, possibly Dodge, late model, small antenna on top; a partition, possibly plastic, between cab and cargo area behind driver.

Vehicle No 2: Dark color or black van, possibly Dodge, late model, small antenna on top; a partition, possibly plastic, between cab and cargo area behind driver; new commercial license plate with seven digits, last three are 414.

Suspect No. 1: White male adult, 40 years, 6 feet tall, wearing brown shirt and pants, armed with a chrome-plated revolver and a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun

Suspect No. 2: White male adult, 35 to 40 years, 6 feet tall, long brown hair, wearing brown clothes

Suspect No. 3: No information available.

All suspects were wearing nylon hose masks.

It is strange that no description was given for the third suspect, since he was, like the other two, seen up close by the kidnap victims.

At 1:35 am sheriff deputies put Ray and the children on a chartered Greyhound bus to take them back to Chowchilla. Seated among them were two male nurses and four matrons from the sheriff’s department who watched over them and spoke words of comfort when needed. Escorting the bus were several California Highway Patrol cars. Ray spoke very little, except to marvel at the difference between Greyhound’s sleek commercial transport and his own boxy yellow school bus. The children were quiet and sleepy. Jennifer Brown, woke up from a bad dream, screaming “Leave us alone!”

At 3:55 am the bus ground to a halt near the back door of the Chowchilla courthouse. The first one off the bus was Jennifer Brown, dressed in a white oversized prison jumpsuit. She was greeted by a cheering crowd consisting of approximately 200 people. She walked along a brilliantly lighted lane formed by officers who held back the crowd. At the end of the lane and through the back door was the courtroom, where she would be reunited with her parents. More children stepped off the bus, teary-eyed and bewildered by all the clamor around them. A second round of applause greeted Ray as he got off the bus. He looked exhausted and red-eyed from his long ordeal. Some children kept their heads down and eyes averted from the onlookers, as if to discourage them from asking questions. All the children had earlier been instructed not to talk to the press.

Having other ideas was Mike Marshall, the fourteen-year-old son of a rodeo performer. Responding to a reporter’s question who asked if he had been hurt by the kidnappers, he said: “They locked us in a big pit, and we had to dig our way out. Otherwise, they didn’t do that much.” Overhearing these comments, reporters crowded around the boy to find out what else he had to say. “Usually, they were all pretty nice until they got nervous.” One gunman, he explained, hit a boy who accidentally made a sudden move. They put them inside a trailer buried in the ground. “We were really sweating bad, because we didn’t have no air.” He looked for a way to escape, but some of the others feared that there were gunmen outside patrolling the area. “We didn’t know if they were going to be there pointing guns at our heads.” Mike started digging and after much labor, a beam of sunlight shined in. “All I smelled was fresh air, and I was glad.”

School Superintendent Lee Tatum noticed the impromptu press conference and immediately rushed over to break it up. Before he could stop him, Mike dropped a bombshell.

Mike also said that he and a friend heard one of the kidnappers call another kidnapper “Jerry.” [from an AP article]

Mike Marshall after he spoke to the reporters

What happened next cannot be determined from the extant news accounts, but shortly thereafter, the Chowchilla police released an updated bulletin.

At dawn, when the youngsters were carried home by tearful parents, the abductors were still at large. An all-points bulletin was issued for three men, believed traveling in two vans, one white and one medium blue, each with two CB radio antennas. Ray had said one van was white, and the other was black. The APB said one man was identified only as “Jerry McCune.” One of the others was described as 36 years old, with black curly hair, a chipped front tooth and a tattoo on his right forearm. The other was described as 27, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a hairy mole on the right side of his chin. Authorities refused to say any more. Earlier they said the kidnappers kept stocking masks on their heads. And it is not known where the more detailed descriptions came from. [San Bernardino County Sun]

Minute details such as “blue eyes” can be discerned through a thin nylon mask but only from an up close and sustained point of view. None of the captives had the opportunity to make that kind of examination.

Sheriff Ed Bates said the name of Jerry McCune came from a six-year-old girl, who thought she heard one kidnapper call another “Jerry,” and another girl said she knew a “Jerry, Jerry McCune.” A. D. Majors, zone commander for the California Highway Patrol, said:

. . . the name of “Jerry” came into the case after one of the abductors apparently called another by that name or possibly “Gary.” When a small girl asked “Jerry McCune?” (apparently an acquaintance) the abductors seemed disturbed. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Majors said the reaction of the kidnappers to the girl’s question prompted the search for the otherwise unidentified McCune, but he refused to elaborate or say if the girl knew who her kidnapper was. [Sacramento Union]

Nothing further was said regarding the “disturbed reaction” – whether it was surprise, anger, dismay, or nervous anxiety. Nor was anything said about what was in the minds of the captives. They must have realized – if not at that moment, then sometime later – that knowing the identity of one of the gunmen meant that they would never be allowed to go home.

Saturday afternoon in Alameda County, Sheriff Tom Houchins and FBI Agent Charles Bates led one hundred newsmen including ten TV camera crews on a tour of the rock quarry. While standing near the entrance to the buried trailer, Houchins and Bates took questions from reporters.

The officials were questioned several times about a Jerry McCune whose name surfaced during the initial questioning of the children. Houchins said as far as he’s concerned, McCune is not a suspect in the case. “That’s something you’ll have to talk to Madera County about. That’s a name they’re familiar with,” he said. [The Argus, a newspaper serving Fremont, Newark, and Union City]

Madera County Sheriff Ed Bates at the time of the Chowchilla kidnapping.

Eager to find out more about the mysterious McCune, reporters in Madera County went to see Sheriff Bates. They were disappointed when he told them that “McCune apparently had nothing to do with the kidnapping.” [San Francisco Chronicle] He further said, “Whoever did this thing was obviously somewhat familiar with this area. If I knew who they were, I’d be out catching them.” [Modesto Bee]

That same afternoon, Attorney General Edward Levy of the Justice Department in Washington pulled the FBI out of the Chowchilla case. He said there was no proof that the federal government had jurisdiction since the kidnap victims were not taken across state lines nor did the kidnappers demand a ransom. Ed Bates said Levy’s order placed Madera County’s thirty-five deputies and eleven police officers in “a very difficult position. The sudden and unexpected withdrawal in the middle of the investigation left a vacuum difficult to fill and taxes the resources of the county and State of California and hinders our investigation.” The anger expressed by the sheriff was really only for the press. In the Chowchilla case in particular, FBI agents were more useful in an unofficial and clandestine capacity. Ed Bates was himself a special agent for the FBI, working under his cover as sheriff of Madera County. (Bates told reporters he was “an ex-FBI agent.” His double role as sheriff and as a special agent for the FBI is mentioned in a 11/25/1977 New West article by Daniel J. Blackburn, “Somnabulent Squealing.” Bates was well prepared for his role as chief investigator of the kidnapping, having just returned from a session on bizarre crimes at the FBI Academy in Virginia.)

The departure of FBI agents left the routine tasks of fingerprinting, palm printing, conducting interviews, and writing reports to the overworked police officers and deputies of Madera County. Among the children interviewed was ten-year-old Jeffrey Brown, who drew a sketch showing the interior layout of the buried trailer. His nine-year-old sister Jennifer drew a map showing the spot where the kidnappers seized the bus in relation to the dry creek bed where they put it. [San Francisco Examiner, July 21]

Observing their “artistic talent,” Sheriff Bates figured they might be good at remembering and describing facial features behind nylon masks. The Brown siblings were then introduced to a sketch artist from Alameda County, Deputy Sheriff Richard Krimm. Another version of how this collaboration came about comes from a 1978 book by Jack Baugh and Jefferson Morgan entitled Who Have Taken Our Children?

Krimm arrived at the Chowchilla substation about 3:00 pm and found Sheriff Bates. After talking with several Madera County deputies and FBI agents who had interviewed the children, Krimm decided the best eyewitnesses among the children were Jeff and Jennifer Brown, both of whom believed they could recall the features of the man who drove the school bus and the one who had driven the van they were in.

Portraits of only two suspects were drawn, since there remained unanswered questions regarding the third. The matter was settled Saturday evening when Alameda County authorities removed McCune’s name from the list of suspects. [Fresno Bee]. Sketches of the other two men appeared in the next morning newspapers.

The Sacramento Union observed that the man on the left has “short, dark hair, thick eyebrows, puffy eyelids, and pimples.” He also has an elongated chin. He was the leader of the trio that boarded the bus. Jeffrey described him in an interview for the San Francisco Examiner, published on July 21: “He was tall, kind of blocky. He was broad-shouldered, eyes far apart and baggy. The guy looked like he was real solid, and he had yellow pimples on his face. His chin was kind of square. He had light brown hair. He had kind of a pug nose that’s wide – sort of flattened out as though broken. He had a short gun. It looked like a sawed-off shotgun.”

The man on the right wore a black dress hat and dark-rimmed glasses over his mask. He was the one who commandeered the bus and drove it to the dry creek bed. Jeffrey said that he was “a scrawny little fellow with a pillow stuffed in his shirt to make him look fat.” [Sacramento Union]. He had more to say about him for the San Francisco Examiner: “Then another guy came on. He put on white gloves and drove the bus. They all wore white gloves. This one looked like he didn’t want to do it. Like he had second thoughts, like he didn’t want to kidnap us. He had a straw dress hat on and black thick framed glasses. He had a round chin and looked kind of skinny, scrawny. He had black hair.”

No mention was made regarding age, height, and weight. These omissions were not accidental. According to the San Francisco Examiner: An Alameda County sheriff’s department spokesman said that no effort was being made to identify either of the portraits with any one of the three suspects. “We don’t want to pin down either of the portraits on any of the suspects, in order to give a broader scope to possible identification.”

Still missing was a composite of the third man. Ordinary methods of collecting and comparing statements from the children failed to yield the desired result. What was needed was a hypnotist. From Blackburn’s article:

Attention thus shifted to the adult driver, whose memory was faulty from trauma. Ed Bates, sheriff of Madera County and special agent for the FBI, knew exactly what to prescribe for this mental lapse. Picking up the telephone, he dialed Dr. William S. Kroger, a 72-year-old Beverly Hills psychiatrist and hypnotist, soliciting his assistance. Convinced that hypnotism would help refresh his memory, Ray willingly cooperated.

From Baugh’s book:

He [Krimm] completed his composites that evening, made thirty copies for Bates and his men, and called Santa Rita for permission to come home. Over the phone Krimm received an unusual assignment. He was to be at the Rodeway Inn in Fresno by 10:00 am the next morning. The FBI was going to put Frank Ray under hypnosis, during which Krimm would try to put together composite drawings.

The next morning, the sheriff and his deputies took Ray to the Rodeway Inn in Fresno (about 40 miles southeast of Chowchilla).

From Baugh’s book:

At 9:30 am Rich Krimm, the Identikit technician, pulled into the parking lot at the Rodeway Inn in Fresno. In room 1805 he met FBI agents Dick Burris and Dick Douce, who arrived earlier with Dr. William S. Kroger, a psychiatrist from Beverly Hills. While Krimm waited in another room, Dr. Kroger put Ray into a hypnotic trance at 10:45.

The bus driver was an easy subject and quickly reached a state of hyperamnesia, the accentuation of subconscious recall. The doctor turned him over to Burris and Douce for questioning. They took him through the events leading up to the abduction, but he could remember nothing he had not already told the investigators. He was able to furnish one complete license number and part of another 1C71414 and 13531. It confused the agents that Ray insisted the first number was on the dark-green van, not the white one.

Shortly before noon, Dr. Kroger began to bring Ray back to consciousness. “With each hour and day that passes you will become more calm and objective in your recollection,” the psychiatrist commanded. “You will be able to report additional details clearly and concisely to the authorities. You will call the sheriff as you remember these things.”

Ray returned to normal. He blinked.

“How do you feel?” Dr. Kroger asked.

“Better than I have since it happened,” Ray said.

The Madera lawmen then took Ray back to Chowchilla. A news photographer caught the stern look on Ray’s face. It seems to express dissatisfaction with what transpired in Fresno.

Bates told reporters that a doctor from Los Angeles hypnotized Ray for about 20 to 30 minutes, during which time he was extremely agitated, sobbing and crying as he lived again his experience. Bates said, “We didn’t want to keep him under too long because this was an emotional thing that happened.” When asked why Ray had been selected for hypnosis but not any of the children, Bates said, “because Ray had made a deliberate effort to notice details during the ordeal.” [quote from a UPI article] Among the things witnessed by Ray was a face he could never forget. He was inside the buried trailer and looked up at a man herding the children one by one down a ladder into the trailer. Although the man was wearing a nylon stocking, the features of his face were still visible. He said, “I never saw their faces because they had masks on, but there’s one man I think I could identify, because I stared at him for a long time.” [Washington Post]

Kroger, Douce, and Burris sat down with Krimm to talk about their failure to get a composite of the third suspect. Things went awry when Ray persisted in describing a man different from the one that they had in mind. As quoted in the Los Angeles Times, July 21, 1976, Kroger said that “Ray’s under-hypnosis descriptions were ‘at variance’ with initial descriptions of the three men in stocking masks.”

Disappointing as this was, Kroger was not concerned. He expected something to occur within a few days that would correct the problem.

From Baugh’s book:

They decided it would be more useful to wait a few days to put together the composite drawings, until the post-hypnotic suggestion Dr. Kroger had planted in Ray’s subconscious took hold and his memory of the physical descriptions of his kidnappers was sharper.

William S Kroger in 1965

Unknown to the bus driver, the hypnotist from Los Angeles was a key figure in the infamous supersecret mind control program codenamed MK-Ultra (first exposed by Jack Anderson in a column dated March 4, 1976). Kroger appears as “Marshall Burger” in Donald Bain’s book The Control of Candy Jones, published in June 1976. Teaming up with another doctor named “Gilbert Jenkins” (another pseudonym), they used drugs, hypnosis, and torture to split the personality of a beautiful model named Candy Jones. Candy was sweet, sensible, and decent, but her alter ego, named Arlene, was angry, bitter, and cruel. She/they became a courier for the CIA, delivering secret messages. Before Candy died in 1990, she revealed to author and researcher Martin Cannon that “Marshall Burger” was Dr. William S. Kroger.

Kroger knew how to erase memories as well as restore them. As quoted in the Los Angeles Times, July 21, Kroger said “A person under hypnosis can disremember as well as remember.”

The following comes from Kroger’s 1963 book Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (cited by Martin Cannon in his article “The Controllers”)

“. . . a good subject can be hypnotized to deliver secret information. The memory of this message could be covered by an artificially induced amnesia. In the event that he should be captured, he naturally could not remember that he had ever been given the message . . . however, since he had been given a post-hypnotic suggestion, the message would be subject to recall.”

FBI agent Richard Douce was himself an expert in hypnosis, assigned to the behavior sciences division in Los Angeles. He was a co-author with Kroger of an article called “Forensic Uses of Hypnosis” in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. Douce and Kroger were successful in solving some of the biggest crimes around the country, using hypnosis on 53 witnesses in 23 cases. Getting the correct license plate from Frank Ray was considered a major accomplishment for Kroger and Douce, proving the value of forensic hypnosis. Admittedly, the pair flubbed when they extracted a false confession of murder from 17-year-old Tina Crume on August 29, 1976. (Crume was accused of stabbing to death a 15-year-old girl. The body was discovered on July 8 in Clear Creek, a popular swimming area south of Redding, California.)

The other FBI agent who accompanied Kroger was Richard Burris, head of the FBI’s San Fernando Valley station. In June 1968 Burris tried to bully RFK assassination witness Sandra Serrano into changing her testimony regarding the polka-dot dress girl.

What Kroger was trying to do was to erase Ray’s memory of the man seen above the entry hole of the trailer and substitute in its place the image of someone else’s face – someone who could take the blame for the kidnapping. Guided by questions from Douce and Burris, Ray was expected to describe the latter’s face. At a signal from Kroger, Krimm would emerge from another room and begin rendering Ray’s words into a portrait while he was in a trance. Perhaps because of the intensity of the emotions suffered by the driver, Kroger could not extend the trance long enough for Krimm to complete, or even start, his work. However, the post-hypnotic suggestion planted in Ray’s mind was expected to take effect within a few days, at which time Krimm could come back for a second try.

As it turned out, Krimm got what he needed from another witness. From Jack Baugh’s book:

Krimm drove back to the Chowchilla substation, where Sheriff Bates told him he wanted a composite drawing made from the descriptions provided by a woman who said she had seen two men, one about thirty and the other about fifty-five, loitering the day before the kidnapping at the pool where the children were swimming. The witness, Beverly Hansen, came to the substation and worked with Krimm for nearly an hour on the two drawings. Before leaving for Santa Rita, Krimm picked up all the fingerprints and physical evidence collected by Angus and the FBI agents and locked them in the trunk of his patrol car.

Baugh made an error when he said the incident occurred on Wednesday, or “the day before the kidnapping.” The swimming party was on Thursday, the same day as the kidnapping.

Beverly Hansen, a school teacher at Dairyland Elementary, supervised the field trip to the county swimming pool.

Beverly Hansen in 1974

It is possible that she was the unnamed “Chowchilla school teacher” who saw a suspicious van on Wednesday.

There was a statewide dragnet for the missing children in general and two vans in particular. Tips on the vans came from a Chowchilla school teacher who remembered seeing one lurking on Wednesday. [Sacramento Bee, July 26]

The dragnet occurred on Saturday after the return of the children and their driver. Prior to that time, sightings of a mysterious white van were not treated seriously.

Residents in the area say they have been seeing a “mysterious” white van in the area in recent weeks. Authorities believe it may have been a mobile health unit working in the area. Madera County health officials said this morning they do have an ivory or cream-colored van for child health visibility programs which has toured the area. [Merced Sun-Star, July 16]

Sheriff Bates earlier had discounted a report that a single white van was seen recently in the area near the bus route might be involved. He said that vehicle had turned out to be a “dental van” assigned to the region, which is heavily populated with farm families including migrant workers. One of the three children who got off the bus before the disappearance said there was a white van traveling in front of the bus. Bates said the dental vans travel all around the area to farm labor camps, and he said it probably was one of these vans that was in front of the bus. [Des Moine Register, July 17]

Nancy Tripp, an eleven-year-old, was the one who saw the white van traveling in front or the bus. From Jack Baugh’s book:

Nancy watched as the bus ground off toward Road 16 a half mile away. She later said she noticd a white van pass the bus but thought nothing or it.

Hansen had another face-to-face encounter with three, possibly four, abductors on a day different than Thursday.

Sheriff’s deputies in Alameda County, where the victims dug their way to freedom from a buried van last Friday, said they provided other California and Nevada law enforcement agencies with better descriptions of the three – and possibly four – abductors based on information from Chowchilla school teacher Beverly Hansen. Bates said Ms. Hansen apparently saw the suspects in Chowchilla Tuesday or Thursday – and added that her description might be the best yet, since none of the men was wearing a stocking mask as they had been when seen by bus driver Frank E. Ray and the children. [Sacramento Bee, July 20]

Hansen must have seen the three men on Tuesday, since she saw only two men on Thursday. Descriptions of the three men were published in various newspapers on July 19.

Suspect No. 1: 50 years old, 6 feet 2, with a medium to heavy build, gray hair, and a tattooed eagle on his right arm. He was wearing cowboy boots, light tan corduroy pants, a tan shirt, and a light brown belt with horse heads on buckle.

Suspect No. 2: 45 years old, skinny, 5 feet 6, with sideburns, a one-inch scar on his right cheek, and a slanted chipped front tooth. He was wearing blue jeans or brown pants, a checked blue shirt, blue tennis shoes, a white hat, and glasses with dark heavy rims.

Suspect No. 3: 23 to 27 years old, with blue eyes, brown collar-length hair, 5 foot 7, of light complexion, very thin build, with a moustache and goatee, a possible French accent, a mole on right side of his chin, a blue and green tattoo with circle on his right wrist and an opposite arm tattoo that says “Jerry.” He wore blue or red corduroy pants, a white T-shirt, cowboy boots, and a silver watch with an expansion band.

Blue eyes, brown hair, and the mole on the right side of the chin are highly specific details that point to Hansen as the unnamed source for the earlier APB released Saturday morning. It is reiterated below for easy reference:

Suspect No. 1: 36 years old, curly black hair, a tattoo on his right arm, and a chipped front tooth

Suspect No. 2: 27 years old, blue eyes, brown hair, and a mole on the right side of his chin

Suspect No. 3: Jerry McCune

Unfortunately, the police erroneously ascribed the bolded features to Suspect No. 2, when they should have applied them to the man with the tattoo “Jerry.” Like the six-year-old girl, Hansen was probably among a significant number of people in the community who knew McCune personally and had enough face-to-face contact with him to describe such minor details as the kind of watch he wore or the color of his eyes.

Composites and descriptions of the two men loitering near the swimming pool were released Monday morning. The man featured below was 30 years old, 6 foot 2, 170 pounds, dark brown hair, dark eyes.

The man with a moustache and wearing a hat and glasses was 55 years old, 5 foot 10 inches, 210 pounds. He was older and shorter than the 50-year-old, 6-foot-2 man seen on Tuesday.

Because the kidnap victims came out of a California Rock and Gravel quarry, investigators naturally focused their attention on anyone connected with it. On July 21, Lt. Gene Saper announced that the Alameda County sheriff’s office was seeking Fred Newhall Woods, the son of the company owner, for questioning. He was among several sons of prominent San Francisco families who were considered to be suspects in the case. The following day a picture of Woods appeared in the newspapers. The elongated chin shows resemblance to one of the Brown sibling composites. The flattened nose might have been a distortion created by the nylon mask..

Also sought for questioning was James Schoenfeld, a friend of Fred Woods. His picture shows resemblance to the composite of the young man loitering near the swimming pool.

Also wanted for questioning was James’s brother Richard Schoenfeld. Pictures of all three men is below.

From left to right, Fred Woods, James Schoenfeld, Richard Scheonfeld

On July 22, an all-points bulletin provided descriptions of the three suspects.

(1) Frederick Newhall Woods IV, son of the quarry owner, 25 years old, 6 foot, 145 pounds, brown hair and blue eyes;

(2) James Schoenfeld, son of a podiatrist in Atherton, 25 years old, 6 foot, 170 pounds, red hair and blue eyes;

(3) Richard Schoenfeld, 22 years old, 5 foot 11 inches, 150 pounds, blonde hair and blue eyes.

According to AP reporter Mike Dunston on July 26, “The victims’ descriptions of their abductors appeared quite different from the descriptions of the Schoenfeld brothers and Woods in an all-points bulletin issued Thursday night.” Not one of the three men had gray hair, eyeglasses, tattoos, scar on right cheek, chipped tooth, hairy mole, or went by the name of “Jerry.” Neither were they as short as 5 foot 6 or 7, nor were they in their forties or fifties. Asked why this was so, Bates said cryptically, “Some of that can be explained but can’t be revealed.”

Radio commentator Mae Brussell was not satisfied with cryptic responses. She called up law enforcement officials and demanded explanations. They tried to brush her off with superficially plausible answers or evasive non-sequiturs. An assistant to the Alameda County Sheriff said the children were too young to give credible descriptions of people.

“What about the bus driver?”

“Oh, the bus driver? He has no concept of what was involved, or who was involved.” [Dialogue: Conspiracy, August 2, 1976 at 34:30 mark]

On July 23, Richard Schoenfeld surrendered to authorities in Oakland. What he told them is unknown but the following day, rumors of a “mastermind’ behind the plot began to surface. An anonymous investigator told the San Francisco Examiner “We’re definitely pursuing the possibility that there are others in this case. These others might be the brains behind the whole thing.” [San Francisco Examiner, July 25]

From the Oakland Tribune “Kidnap Probers Seek Mastermind’ July 25

Two more persons – one described as an older mastermind – are believed involved in the Chowchilla kidnapping case along with the three young San Mateo County men already named as suspects in the crime. A source close to the investigation told The Tribune Saturday there is “a possibility that an older male was involved in the kidnapping, and there are some good leads to back it up.” Another source revealed that investigators believe still a fifth suspect was part of the gang.

James Schoenfeld attempted to escape to Canada but was thwarted twice. He was arrested on July 29 while driving a van in Menlo Park, not far from his parents’ home in Atherton. Fred Woods was arrested the same day by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver when he went to the post office seeking a package addressed to “Ralph Snider.” In his possession was a driver’s license and a birth certificate showing his name was “Ralph Snider.”

In summary, Hansen saw at least five suspicious characters. Only two of them were seen by the children and their driver: Jerry McCune and the 45-year-old man who wore hat and glasses and had a chipped tooth and a one-inch scar on his right cheek. Whether or not she saw Fred Woods, the leader of the trio who boarded the bus, is unknown. Neither the older man Hansen saw on Tuesday nor the older man seen on Thursday were evidently seen by any of the kidnap victims.

In any deep state conspiracy, local police and the FBI are expected to facilitate the escape of the perpetrators, round up the patsies, and feed the press a pre-approved cover story. The escape of the victims caught them off guard and forced them to use desperate measures to keep the lid on a scandal that would have rocked the nation to its foundations. With the bright glare of the news media shining on their every move, they abandoned their plans for capturing the designated fall guys and sought among the lower echelon conspirators a few sacrificial lambs to throw to the wolves. By these means, they managed to protect the remaining conspirators, including the mastermind. His identity eventually surfaced two years later in connection with the JFK assassination. In a future article, it will be shown that this man was a professional killer for the CIA.