48 Hours - Remembering the Chowchilla Kidnapping

Episode Date: March 19, 2023

Twenty-six school children were abducted by three men and buried alive in a trailer. Inside their daring escape. "48 Hours" contributor David Begnaud reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. I'm not sure if darkness like that before. It was just pitch black, like the dark was touching me, engulfing me, like I was actually inhaling the darkness. Chowchilla in 1976 was a cow town. Chula in 1976 was a cow town.

You could drive through the heart of town in about 30 seconds. Very close-knit community. Everybody looked out for each other. People didn't lock their doors. There was nothing to fear. I didn't know what fear was. I still have a hard time grasping the way that my life changed on July 15th. Just another average summer day, very hot, going to summer school, and that day we got

to go to the town swimming pool. Got back on the bus, ready to go home. The bus driver was Ed Ray. He was a strong, quiet man. Everybody liked Edward and respected him. The buses had the windows down, the hot summer breeze, the kids were laughing and singing. Happy and just glad to be going home. What I remember was we were traveling, he just left off two kids.

All of a sudden he said, what the heck is this? And then I can remember the bus stopping at a stop sign. Edward went to go around a white van that was parked in the road. And then this man came up with a stocking over his head with a gun and said, open the door. The first man came on the bus and he had a gun. Ed Ray said, what's going on? And he said, shut up and move to the back. I remember telling him that if he didn't get me home on time, my dad would be on him like stink on skunk. You know, I wasn't afraid

of anything. I didn't know I needed to be. And then another man came on the bus and he had a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. The shotgun filled me with terror. The masked men had pantyhose pulled over their face. It was a very distorted look. Where their eyes were, it almost looked hollow. It was like looking at death. One of the kidnappers got into the driver's seat, and the bus started moving again.

I started to think, I wonder where they're taking us. Twenty-six schoolchildren and their bus driver have vanished. Anguished parents, President Ford, hundreds of searching police are asking the question, where are the children? As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. The scary cult classic was set in a Chicago housing project. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror.

Candyman. Candyman? Now, we all know chanting a name won't make a killer magically appear. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. We're going to talk to the people who were there, and we're also going to uncover the larger story. My architect was shocked when he saw how this was created. Literally shocked. And we'll look at what the story tells us about injustice in America. If you really believed in tough on crime, then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill our women. Listen

to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, early and ad-free, with a 48-hour plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing the best idea yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bolder risk-takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye?

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You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. It's just The best idea yet. Just outside Chowchilla, on July 15, 1976, the frightening journey began. We started driving down the road. I was wondering how it was going to feel to die. I was too scared to move. I was too scared to move.

Twenty-six terrified children, some as young as five, were staring down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. Three masked men had hijacked the Dairyland Elementary school bus. One had the shotgun, one drove the bus, and one followed behind in the white van they'd used to block the road. It's a hard thing to explain because I'd never been around guns. You only seen bad guys in the movies with stockings on, you know, so I knew it wasn't good. Edward kept telling us kids just to be quiet, sit down, do what they say. Edward was speaking in a harsh tone, and that normally was not the Edward that we knew and loved. Eventually, the bus.

And then, as I looked out one of the side windows, I saw that there was another van that was parked there. They parked the bus, and there was a green van down there waiting for us. Even at the age of nine, little Jennifer Brown seemed to know the horror of that day should be documented. She later made this recording with her mom. And there was two guys standing from the bus door to the van door with guns, with pantyhose over their heads so we wouldn't run out.

And see, they pulled the van right up to the bus door. The kidnappers herded the stunned children from the bus into those two vans. We had to jump from the bus to the van so they wouldn't see any feet prints. When it was my turn to get on the van, he stopped me. He held a shotgun to my stomach. I said, I was doing what you said. And I had to stand there with this gun in my gut until the one van drove away and they backed the second van up.

It felt like forever. I thought he was going to shoot me. I actually did. Jennifer, Larry, and the rest of the children followed Jody into the second van along with the bus driver, Ed Ray. Then the kidnappers closed the doors. It was pitch dark. The vans had been converted into makeshift jail cells by installing

wood paneling and even painting the windows. No one could see in or out. The kidnappers sped off with the children, caged in those mobile prisons. And I felt like I was an animal going to the slaughterhouse. Around that time, Jennifer's mom, Joan Brown, came home from work. The house was empty. The children were not there. No peanut butter on the counter, no chairs out there. Well, they just weren't there. As one hour turned to two,

worried parents began helping the police retrace the school bus's route, crisscrossing dozens of rural roads. Where were those children? 26 of them and a bus driver. Nowhere. And then, just before sunset, a police pilot spotted the big bus about seven miles outside Chowchilla, hidden in the dry riverbed. You would only see it from the air. Madera County Sheriff Ed Bates rushed to the scene. We found tire impressions in the sand.

That led straight to the front door of the bus. Obviously, someone had backed their vehicle up to the doors of the bus. Sheriff Bates was convinced. I called the governor. I said, I need some help down here. The children of Chowchilla had become the victims of a brazen and bizarre mass kidnapping. I had the parents all assembled there in the fire station. Well, you could just look at their faces and the anxiety and the fear was there. I told them I called the FBI.

All of a sudden, I had 30 FBI agents there. I told them I called the FBI. All of a sudden, I had 30 FBI agents there. As Sheriff Bates continued to widen the investigation, the children continued to suffer inside the sweltering, pitch-black vans. We'd bang on

where the driver's panel would be, like, let us out, let us out, and they would just say, shut up. And we drove what seemed like for hours upon hours upon hours. And I remember that I kept falling asleep and coming back awake. I would dream about being... S***. I would dream about being up in the forest

where my family would go camping. We all tried to comfort each other. And a few of my little friends that are five and six that came over and started laying on me and crying. And I told them, be brave because everything's going to be all right. Then the van started to slow down. The kids could feel it. Then the van started to slow down. The kids could feel it, pulling off the road, lurching from side to side on rough terrain,

before coming to a stop after nearly 12 unbearable hours. They opened up the door and they took Ed Ray out first. They shut the doors back. And we're like, where's Edward now? What are they doing? And I remember they would just grab the first kid that was inside the door. And they just kept doing that. They opened the door and they grabbed somebody else. They would open up the door. They take the next kid out and they close the doors. But when they open the doors, you don't see them. I thought they were basically killing us each one at a time. I kept scooting to the back of the van and I thought maybe if I just hide in the corner, they won't come for me.

But they did. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn.

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Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informants Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery desert, at the beach, in the side of a mountain. I had no idea where we were. I didn't even know if we were in California. After almost 12 hours in darkness, 10-year-old Jody Heffington was the last to be taken out of the first van. Being the last one, you don't know what's going to happen because you don't see nobody else. What happened to them?

If you didn't kill them, where are they at? They had flashlights kind of like shining in their faces and then one shining on your face. And they said, what's your name? And I actually, I have a little bit of a smart ass in me. And I said, Puddin' Tane, ask me again, I'll tell you the same. I was pissed and I was scared at the same time.

They said, if you don't tell us your name, you're never gonna see your mom and dad again. Do you understand? And they took all my belongings. And then they said, you're gonna go down in this hole right here. they took all my belongings and then they said you're gonna go down in this hole right here the hole led to an old truck trailer buried underground

ed ray and the children from the first van were there there was a table set up in the back it It was surrounded with jugs of drinking water. On some of the mattresses, they had some cereal, a loaf of bread, and some peanut butter. In the wheel wells, they had cut holes in them for toilets. We could hear fans, so we knew that there was some sort of ventilation. 14-year-old Michael Marshall was still in the other van with some of the youngest children. The kids got a hold of me or were holding on to me and scared out of their, you know, we're all just scared out of our wits. As they did before, the kidnappers removed the children one by one.

Michael and the youngest, five-year-old Monica Artery, were the last ones left in the van. It was just me and her. Not knowing what had happened to the other children, or if they were even alive, Michael says he couldn't bear to hand Monica over to the kidnappers. So when they opened the doors again, he went first. I had to take her hands from mine and rip them apart, say, be okay, and go with them and leave her. That was hard. As soon as I

got on that ladder and took a step down and I heard the rest of the kids say it's Mike, it's Mikey, Michael and I realized that everybody was alive. And to his relief not long after Monica came climbing down that ladder. They were all together again. We're okay. We're okay. We're okay. So right now, so far, we're all right.

But the sense of relief was short-lived. Before I knew it, the ladder was gone. They threw a rolled toilet paper down and said, we'll be back for you. And that was it. The kidnappers then covered the opening with a manhole cover. I remember it just went dark. And you just hear the material getting thrown on us. We were being buried alive. Buried 12 feet underground.

I just remember looking up at that hole. I wanted to stay close. I wanted to be like right there because that was the way out. Ed Ray and Mike Marshall they looked at every corner, every wall for an escape route. Got underneath the manhole cover, pushed up on it.

They couldn't move it. So Ed Ray determined that it was time for everyone to get some rest. The minutes and hours ticked by. It would be silent, and then somebody would bust out crying and the whole would just erupt, everybody crying. The thing that made me cry was not being able to say goodbye to my mom. And I'm remembering the last time that I saw her and wishing I could have told her goodbye. Throughout much of this day,

parents and other family of the missing children came to the command post set up in downtown Chowchilla to try desperately to fathom some reason out of this day, parents and other family of the missing children came to the command post set up in downtown Chowchilla to try desperately to fathom some reason out of this madness. Carol Marshall's 14-year-old son Mike was another on the bus. Any chance at all this could be some kind of terrible hoax or joke that someone is playing? I imagine there's a chance. I hope that's all it is. It is believed to be the largest kidnapping in U.S. history. So far, there's been no word from any abductors.

They had been in the hole for almost 12 hours, and the conditions were deteriorating. We had eaten the food. The fans on the ventilator stopped. My little brain started to grasp the concept of we may really not go home. There was this one boy and he kept kicking blocks out from underneath the four by four pillars. And so the roof of the van was starting to cave in. The seams were breaking. Dust was flowing through. The sides of the van were bowing in. Children just screaming and crying.

We thought, if we're going to die, we're going to die trying to get out of here. See more photos from the case at 48hours.com. As a young kid, you don't have a lot of sense of time. There was no sunlight, so you couldn't tell if it was day or night. We were out of food. We were out of water. The roof was caving in.

It just was a desperate situation. Everybody got the mattresses and stacked them up as high as we could go. Right underneath the manhole cover. People started standing on each other's shoulders. I was a very tall girl and very strong, so they stood on my shoulders when they didn't stand on Edwards. They took turns pushing up on the manhole cover. I'm giving it everything I got, and all the kids are cheering me on, you know. Go on, Mike, you can do it, you can do it.

Then all of a sudden they said, it moved, it moved. But they were far from being free. The kidnappers had put truck batteries and dirt on top of the manhole cover and had constructed a wooden box around it. Once the manhole cover was moved, that box was just big enough for Michael to stand in. It would squeeze me into a half-foot hole. Like Jennifer, Michael Marshall made a recording about his experience.

I hit on top of it. I hit on down above the box. I started hitting and pounding and hitting and pounding. He dug until he was exhausted, and then he kept on digging. There was no quit in him. You're going to let us know when we got out there, just because we're standing there with shotguns in our head and stuff. We were pretty scared. I was pretty scared.

Then suddenly this ray of sunlight This ray of sunlight came down into the opening. It was catching the dust. And the dust particles looked like a bunch of shooting stars. There was this airflow that came out of the van. And I knew we were free. I need a minute. The air and the light, there was beaming coming through. Mike Marshall, actually, brave person that he is, crawled out of the hole first. And I stuck my head out and there was nobody, I didn't see anybody.

And I could see we were in the hills. He said the coast is clear. And so we started taking the little ones and putting them up there and Mike grabbed them. That part was kind of scary too because we're out now. We don't know who's out here. It was approximately 8 p.m. on July 16th. They had been in the hole for nearly 16 hours. We all just scurried like a bunch of little mice. 16 hours. We all just scurried like a bunch of little mice. We saw conveyor belts, excavators.

It looked like the Flintstones. And all these men with hard hats came to us and looked at us like, who are you? The kidnappers had buried them in a rock quarry in Livermore, California, 100 miles away from Chowchilla. When police arrived, as evidence, they took photos of every child. An Alameda County jail bus came and it was like, yeah, they put us back on a bus. Then they transported them to the closest place that could hold them, the Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center, a local jail. I remember going in in the bus and you could see the prison wire.

And you thought, well, they're taking us into jail. They took us into what looked like classrooms. They brought us apples and soda. They had these peveralls, and all us little kids got into them, and we had to roll the pants up about 10 feet. And then we rolled the arms up, and we were all sitting there. Some of them didn't roll our arms up, and we sat there flapping our arms. We said, hey, we can fly.

Over the next few hours, Ed, Ray, and the children were examined by doctors. They were also questioned by police. Each one of us was interrogated by ourselves to tell our story. How do you describe somebody that has pantyhose over their face? After four hours of questioning, they were finally allowed to go home. They put us on a greyhound, escorted us back to Chowchilla. It was time for Mom and Dad. I just wanted my Mom and Dad.

It was 4 a.m. when the bus arrived at last. It had been almost 36 hours since their traumatic ordeal began. The scene was like a mob scene. News cameras and TV lights. Everybody started saying, are you all right, Jennifer, and all this stuff. And I said, yeah, I'm fine. Then whenever we got into this room,

I found my mom and my dad. We pulled up to church and I was asleep. So when I got off the bus, everybody started taking pictures of me and said, I'm like, how you did in Wolf's Pit, like... They just let us off the bus with all these people,

and you didn't know where your parents were? This man carried me off the bus, and he put me in my mom's arms. And I said, hi mom, and fell asleep on her shoulder. I felt, I felt like I was finally safe. Nothing was ever the same. Nothing was ever the same. Nothing was ever the same after that. We had no idea what our kids had been through.

None whatsoever. How does it feel to be a big movie star? I don't know. I've never been a movie star before. For nine-year-old Jennifer Brown, the experience has allowed her to still see the world with compassion. Why do you suppose that they would do something like that? I don't know. They didn't have enough love. She had horrible nightmares. She would run screaming into our bedroom, and she wasn't even awake.

And she would tell us later that she dreamt that they were lined up and shot. One night, I was dreaming that I was falling down this hole hole and I was trying to get out I started screaming for my mom mom came in and all I could do was cry And all she could do was hold me Today, in this rock quarry, they unearthed the truck that was prisoned and very nearly a tomb for 26 children and their school bus driver. Unearthing the who and why of all this is much harder. In the days following the kids' escape, investigators searched the rock quarry

and the van that had been their underground tomb, hoping they would find clues that would lead them to the kidnappers. They looked to see who would have keys to the quarry. In order to have access to bury this moving container undetected, you would have to have access. Assistant District Attorney Jill Klinge. Fred Woods had keys to that quarry. 24-year-old Frederick Newhall Woods, the son of the owner of the quarry, immediately became a person of interest. They looked at the ledger, surveillance tapes, and started to put it all together at that point.

Security guards told investigators they had seen three young men digging a large hole in the quarry months before the kidnapping. One of them, they said, was Fred Woods. And Woods had a record. Two years earlier, he had been charged with grand theft auto. Arrested with him were two of his friends, James Schoenfeld, Fred's partner in a used car business, and James' younger brother, Richard.

All three were from wealthy families who lived in San Francisco's nicest suburbs. They escaped with a fine and probation. They're young, they're wealthy. I think it added a component of fascination to the story because it was so unlikely that three men such as these would commit such an atrocious crime. Investigators executed a warrant to search Fred Woods' father's estate. For the last two days, the Woods estate has looked like an armed camp,

dozens of officers looking for anything. What they found there was a treasure trove of evidence. We were able to recover one of the guns that was used during this kidnapping. This crime was planned out for a year and a half in intricate detail. You actually have a document labeled plan, and it sets out the way they were going to commit the kidnapping, and then they, on the right-hand side, put how they would compensate or deal with what could go wrong. They also recovered the draft of a ransom note. The draft of the ransom note says $2.5 million,

but in actuality, they were going to ask for $5 million from the state of California. But the kidnappers were never able to deliver their demand. When they tried to call the Chowchilla Police Department, because of the number of calls that were coming in worldwide, the phone lines were jammed. They couldn't get through, so they took a nap. And by the time they woke up, they saw on the news that the kids had been found. So they were never able to request their answer. And so the search is on nationwide for these three men...

Arrest warrants were issued. Richard Schoenfeld turned himself in. Fred Woods and James Schoenfeld fled California, but not for long. James Schoenfeld fled California, but not for long. James Schoenfeld was captured at dawn today. Police say he ran hard all over the western United States, but he did not run well. Frederick Woods was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police this afternoon, just across the Washington state border in Vancouver.

I remember being physically ill when I actually saw him. After that, you kind of did have a sense of, you can breathe. They're behind bars. So what drove these young men, seemingly well-off, to kidnap young children for money? James Schoenfeld eventually said despite their parents' wealth, he and Fred Woods were in serious debt. He would later tell the parole board, we needed multiple victims to get multiple millions, and we picked children because children are precious. The state would be willing to pay ransom for them, and they don't fight back. I think that the two Schoenfelds did it just on pure persuasion by Fred Woods. Fred Woods,

in my own personal opinion, and I have a master's degree, I think he was a sociopath. Some might call him a psychopath. With the overwhelming evidence against them, Woods and the Schoenfelds pleaded guilty to 27 counts of kidnapping for ransom and robbery. pleaded guilty to 27 counts of kidnapping for ransom and robbery. But they refused to plead guilty to eight counts of bodily harm. Those charges would send them to prison for life without the possibility of parole. So 16 months after their abduction, Jennifer, Michael, Jody, and some of the other children face the kidnappers in court. You're in this little box and they're there looking at you, just glaring at you and staring you down. They testified that in addition to the emotional trauma, they had suffered physical wounds like cuts and bruises.

And I looked over at them and I just broke down. That was the first time I cried. So they allowed my father to come sit by me, and that made me feel a lot safer. The kidnappers were sitting to my left at a table. I remember giving my dad my gum because I told him I was going to spit my gum at him. You say they would give you this funny look. What did that make you feel? Scared. I did my testimony. I answered my questions, and I left that courtroom with my head held high,

and there was no way that I was going to let them see me cry. A California judge today imposed mandatory life prison sentences without parole on those three young men who kidnapped 26 Chochillas. I remember thinking, they're going to go to jail. They're not going to do this to anybody else. That's all that I need to know. With the kidnapper sentenced to prison for the rest of their lives, the survivors thought their nightmare was finally over. Bye. But it was finally over. But it was just beginning. Bye, Jennifer! Bye!

See more photos from the case at 48hours.com. Just five weeks after being buried alive, the gutsy children of Chowchilla and their bus driver, Ed Ray, were hailed as heroes. There was even a trip to Disneyland. Everyone thought that was great because the good memories of Disneyland would overshadow the bad memories of the kidnapping. But it wasn't that simple. In a way, you try to be normal. But when you've gone through something that's so traumatic, it's hard to go back and be a normal kid again.

Sometimes it's like life is an act. You try to be good for everybody else, so they don't worry, but they worry anyway, so I advise everybody else not to do it that way. The survivors struggled to move forward. But just four years after the kidnappings, a critical turning point. The kidnappers' lawyers appealed the finding of bodily harm. Prosecutor Jill Klingy.

And the appellate court overturned it. And while acknowledging the horrific nature of the crime, stated that the injuries suffered did not rise to the level of bodily harm under the law. So Fred Woods and the Schoenfeld brothers were resentenced to life with the possibility of parole. They would get a parole hearing every one or two years. I felt like I had been betrayed by the justice system. Just six years after the kidnappings, the parade of parole hearings began. I had been betrayed by the justice system.

Just six years after the kidnappings, the parade of parole hearings began. Every time one of the kidnappers came up for parole, it triggered all their fears and trauma. The hearings took place inside the prison. They sit in the same room, and it's not a large room with the kidnapper. The first time, I was terrified. For all three kidnappers, there had been more than 60 parole hearings to date. Jody Heffington went to nearly all of them. It just seems like every three years I go, and I go three times every time.

It's excruciating, and the aftermath is never good. Jody and the other survivors watched helplessly as Richard Schoenfeld was the first to be granted parole in June 2012, 36 years after the kidnappings. Three years later, James Schoenfeld was paroled too. As far as I know, they have not been in any kind of trouble. The same could not be said for Fred Woods. He repeatedly broke prison rules. He was caught with pornography and cell phones. Hello, my name is Jody Medrano. I was Jody Heffington.

I was Jody Heffington. In 2018, 48 Hours was at Fred Woods' 15th parole hearing and recorded audio of Jody's testimony. To listen to him talk about his poor childhood, I don't know if I want to laugh, cry, cuss him, or what, because where did my childhood go? Like I told him, Mr. Woods, you're not a kidnapper, you're a thief. You're a thief of lives.

Not just the kids that were in the bus. But they stole our family's lives and what we all had before that. After that hearing, Woods was again denied parole. It was 28 hours of terror that will always be with Michael, Jennifer, Jody, and Larry, all who have managed to find ways to get on with living. Healing continues if you allow it. Larry Park, who spent his 20s and 30s abusing drugs, now owns a handyman business and volunteers as a pastor at a local church. His nightmares have finally stopped, and he is sober. I have nine years sober.

His sobriety was motivated by an epiphany about the kidnappers. My resentment for them was killing me. One night, I was laying in bed, and I said, God, help me to forgive them. Larry met the men, shook their hands, and did forgive them. Here he is with Richard Schoenfeld. It changed my life. Something washed over me,

It changed my life. Something washed over me. And there was peace like I had never known. And I knew that day that I would be okay. Jennifer Brown-Hyde, a wife, mother, and executive assistant, says it took her decades before she could even sleep without a nightlight. And I've had family and church family and coworkers that have piece by piece helped put me back together. And I want people to know that that little girl

that was kidnapped and buried alive has managed to live a wonderful life. Michael Marshall had lost his way after the kidnapping. I went to bed at 18, drunk and hungover and blacked out, and woke up about 48, you know, with a hangover. Blurry. He is sober and has found happiness as a father and a long-distance trucker.

He tries not to think about those kidnappers. What they put my mom and dad through is something I cannot forgive. Jody Heffington never left the Chowchilla area. She opened her own hair salon and raised a son. But she struggled to find peace of mind. How that day affected me has affected me every day in some way or another. I think it made me not a good daughter, not a good sister, not a good aunt, and especially not a good mother and probably not a good friend. I tried to be those things, but it seems like it just took something from me that I can't ever get back.

And I can't tear it down, no matter how hard I try and no matter what I do. A young mother found dead in her car. Where's the gun, sir? It's right here in her hand. It appears she took her own life, but could she have shot herself twice? It just seems like something out of a movie instead of real life. 48 Hours, Saturday on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com.