SACRAMENTO, Calif.—The last of three men convicted of hijacking a school bus full of California children for an attempted $5 million ransom in 1976—in what a prosecutor called “the largest mass kidnapping in U.S. history”—is being released by the state’s parole board.
Gov. Gavin Newsom asked the board to reconsider its decision to parole Frederick Woods, 70, on Tuesday. Two board members recommended his release in March when previous panels had denied him parole 17 times. But the board affirmed that decision.
Woods and his two accomplices, brothers Richard and James Schoenfeld, were from wealthy San Francisco Bay Area families when they kidnapped 26 children and their bus driver near Chowchilla. The town is about 125 miles southeast of San Francisco….