The ballad of the Chowchilla bus kidnapping

[Nevilledog]

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Kaleb Horton
@kalebhorton
Here's the biggest thing I've ever written, a story spanning almost fifty years. It's about California in the 1970s, old highways, and one of those "crimes of the century" you used to hear about. I worked on it a long time and I think it's pretty good.

The ballad of the Chowchilla bus kidnapping
In 1976, a school bus carrying 26 children and their driver disappeared from a small California town. Forty-five years later, we revisit the story.
vox.com
6:42 AM · Jul 23, 2021

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22570738/chowchilla-school-bus-kidnapping

The aerial search is already underway.

There are about 400 reporters, one for every 10 people in the whole town. The Salvation Army has brought a food truck from San Francisco. Pac-Bell has brought 60 press phones and operators. Parents keep an all-night vigil at the police station.

It is the largest kidnapping ever in the United States.

In a rarity for summer in the Central Valley, a thunderstorm is rolling in, and lightning streaks are firing across the sky. It is July 1976.

In recent years, California has become the national shorthand for sensationalism. Two years ago in Berkeley, the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst. Whittier’s own President Richard Nixon has resigned and had to negotiate a pardon from his former vice president. Charles Manson has only been in prison for five years, and the Zodiac Killer is still at large. Fault lines are cracking all over the state, and Californians are bracing for “the big one.”

*snip*

[malaise]

1. Thanks for this

We had a thread about this horrific kidnapping last week or the week before that

[Hugh_Lebowski]

2. I totally remember that ... I was around 10 and it was all over the news ...

Tumultuous times ... there was this, as mentioned Zodiac was at large, and Moscone & Milk, and then Jonestown thing (mostly Californian's there) within not TOO long a period. Couple years seems like ... All happened when I lived in Orinda, CA.

[3Hotdogs]

3. Some shit.

[vanlassie]

4. I will never forget that night, in Fresno.

A few of us were partying, and the storm came up with some very loud thunder overhead, just as we heard about the “missing bus full of school kids.” We were high, of course, so it was extra freaky. How could an entire bus disappear? Years later, I met a woman at work who had been on the bus, along with her sister.