Chowchilla bus kidnapping survivor Jodi Heffington’s lifelong fight to keep her captors behind bars

Produced by Chris Young Ritzen, George Osterkamp, Mead Stone and Gary Winter

In August 2022, after 46 years, the last of three men convicted of kidnapping 26 children and their bus driver was paroled from a prison in California. 

It was one of the largest kidnappings in U.S. history. A school bus with 26 children was stopped by three armed gunmen as they headed home from the Dairyland Elementary School in the small California town of Chowchilla.

The men were wearing pantyhose over their faces.

“And then this man came up with a stocking over his head with a gun and said, “Open the door,'” said survivor Jodi Heffington, who was 10 at the time. Heffington relived the ordeal publicly for the first time in an interview with “48 Hours,” and shared…