Arrests imminent in kidnap hunt

Press, 23 July 1976, Page 1

Arrests imminent in kidnap hunt

NZPA-Reuter Heavily armed policemen have moved on to a plush 100-acre estate in Atherton, near Redwood City, California, in a search of suspects in the kidnapping of a busload of schoolchildren and their driver from Chowchilla.

The estate is owned byFred Newhall Woods iff, owner of the California Rock and Gravel Company, which works the quarry near Livermore where the 27 kidnap victims were imprisoned in a buried trailer-van before they broke out last Friday. Mr Woods’s son, Fred Newhall Woods, was named in several news reports on Wednesday as a possible suspect in the case. In the last two days the search has focused on the wealthy suburbs of San Francisco, and the police were reported to be looking for a group of wealthy, thrill-seeking young men who might be connected with the kidnapping. A highly-placed police source said two other suspects were the sons of a prominent San Francisco area doctor. Sheriff John McDonald, of San Mateo, said: “We have people here that we

are looking for, and we are waiting for warrants for their arrests to arrive.” Reports published on Wednesday said the mysterious abduction might have been the work of a drug-and-gun cult involving members of wealthy families. “It is a cult situation, a thrill thing involving drugs,” said a source quoted in the "Oakland Tribune.” The search intensified in the San Francisco Peninsula area after clothing and

other articles taken from the bus driver by the kidnappers had been found near Saratoga, about 20 miles south of Redwood City. Investigators also discovered that two vans used to transport the kidnap victims from Chowchilla to the Livermore quarry were registered at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Los Gatos. Both Los Gatos and Saratoga are just east of the Santa Cruz Mountains, about 50 miles south of San Francisco.