"They Were Good Kids"

The family, one neighbor said, was "Norman Rockwell normal," and another praised the two lanky, blond sons who were always helpful: "When a neighbor's fence needed mending, they mended it. When someone's chain saw broke, they fixed it. If someone went on vacation, Jim and Rick looked after their property. When the yard needed work, the brothers did the gardening."

But last week the two Schoenfeld boys--James, 24, and Richard, 22--were behind bars in California, along with their pal, Frederick Newhall ("Chip") Woods, 24. All three were accused of taking part in the startling kidnaping on July 15 of 26 children and a bus driver in the town of Chowchilla (pop. 4,550) who were going home after a session of summer school.

Rick had surrendered peacefully to authorities after the announcement that he was one of the suspects in the case.

Jim tried to escape. Twice he attempted to enter Canada, but was turned away by border officials, who were suspicious of the arsenal of guns and ammunition he was carrying in the back of his white 1963 Chrysler. Schoenfeld began selling his guns, using his own driver's license for identification, and the FBI got on his trail. At dawn last Thursday he was captured as he turned off Highway 101 near Menlo Park, Calif., about one mile from his home in Atherton.

Chip Woods was more elusive. Two days after the kidnaping, he flew into Vancouver, Canada, with a passport identifying him as "Ralph Lester Snider"--the name, it turned out, of a six-year-old child from Santa Clara county who was killed in an auto accident in 1960. Somehow the FBI learned that Woods was going to pick up a package at the general delivery window in a Vancouver post office on July 29. When he arrived, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were waiting.

The suspect is a descendant of the Newhalls, an old and wealthy California family. Both his grandmother, Frances Newhall Woods, and his father, Frederick Nickerson Woods III, hold stock in the family-founded Newhall Land and Farming Co., which has large investments in agriculture, cattle, oil, gas and land. Despite his background, Chip Woods has succeeded in very little so far in his young life; he could not even hold a job as a paint salesman. His wife divorced him in 1972 on the first anniversary of their marriage. About all that he seemed to be good at--and interested in--was cars, any kind of cars. In his wallet, Woods carried pictures of cars, not people. His family's 100-acre ranch is littered with 100 or more vehicles in various states of repair that he was working on, and he liked to bomb around in a renovated, shiny, scarlet hearse.

Woods' passion for cars was shared by Jim Schoenfeld, whose father is a well-to-do podiatrist. Schoenfeld and Woods owned a fleet of ancient cars, trucks and motorcycles. Occasionally, Rick Schoenfeld would help fix up the derelicts.

Eight months ago, a guard had found Woods and some other men digging a big hole in a gravel pit that was owned by the suspect's father. The kidnap victims were held in the body of a trailer truck half-buried in the pit, and the guard remembered the previous incident and tipped the police about Woods. Police now believe that Woods not only bought the van in which the children and driver were held but that he also purchased the two Navy surplus panel trucks used to carry them to the site.

Authorities reportedly were looking for two more suspects, and indeed it seemed unlikely that the three young men could have thought of pulling off such a grandiose scheme on their own. Investigators searching Woods' home turned up the draft of a ransom note demanding $5 million, the money to be packed into suitcases and dropped by parachute from an airplane upon a designated spot in Santa Cruz county.

Affluent Families. But just why Woods and the Schoenfeld brothers --members of affluent families--would become involved in kidnaping remained a mystery. The only time that the three got into trouble before was one joyriding night in 1974, they were fined $125 each and put on probation. "We had no reason to expect to see them again," says District Attorney Warren Haas. "They were good kids." Now, charged with 27 counts of kidnaping, they could get life in prison--without parole.

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