The Chowchilla Kidnapping

Jack Irwin was a 71-year-old Korean War veteran who lived a quiet, isolated life in a cabin on Mount Baldy, California. In 1999, he befriended Marcia Johnson and Judy Gellert, a couple interested in buying his cabin. The women quickly became close to Jack, eventually moved in wit ...  Show more

18-year-old Amish teenager Samuel Hochstetler was accused of killing 28-year-old Rosanna Kinsinger in an Amish community near Rutland, Ohio. Rosanna was found dead in her trailer on March 13, 2025, after being last seen the previous day. Her death was ruled positional asphyxia, a ...  Show more

Three school bus hijackers. Twenty-six kidnapped children. A buried moving truck. In this episode, we dive into the unbelievable 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping and the daring escape that shocked the nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 

In the summer of 1976, three masked gunmen hijack a school bus full of children in rural Chowchilla, California. The twenty-six kids and their bus driver are driven to a quarry and buried alive. Back in town, no one has any idea where the children went, who took them, or why. The ...  Show more

On a warm summer day in 1976, 26 children went missing from the town of Chowchilla, California, setting off one of the most bizarre kidnapping cases in U.S. history.

The largest ever kidnapping case in the United States went down in the small town of Chowchilla, CA. Learn all about it today.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.