More than four decades have passed since the schoolchildren and the bus driver, Edward Ray, were abducted and buried alive for 16 hours. Three young men planned the kidnap of students, ages 5 to 14, along with their bus driver, for a ransom demand of $5 million.
The three masked gunmen – Frederick Newhall Woods IV, 24, and brothers James Schoenfeld, 24, and Richard Schoenfeld, 22 – drove 27 people to a dry river bed, where they hid the bus and forced their hostages into two windowless vans. The children were then driven 100 miles away to a rock quarry in Livermore, where they were buried alive in a truck trailer 12 feet underground.
Today, Park is a pastor, a Christian counselor and a local handyman. He credits a large part of his active recovery to his Christianity and to his ability to forgive the three men who kidnapped him. "You can forgive, but you don't have to forget. I got a spot in my heart to forgive, but I got a spot in my heart that’s ready to come undone, too," Marshall said. "I really looked up to Larry being able to forgive them. That takes strength – it does and connection with God."