How did Jodi Heffington die?

How did Jodi Heffington die? We discuss the Chowchilla bus kidnapping and what happened to Jodi Heffington, who was on the bus.

The disturbing case of the Chowchilla Bus kidnapping occurred on July 15th, 1976, in California. The driver of a school bus and the twenty-six students on board were kidnapped by three armed men who would take control of the bus.

The kidnappers wore stockings over their faces as they entered the bus and were armed with guns, including a shotgun. The bus driver, who was called Ed Ray, and the children, were then forced into two blacked-out vans and driven to a quarry.

At the quarry, the group was forced to climb down a ladder into another container truck that had been buried in the ground. The kidnappers would use the hostages they had taken to demand a ransom of five million dollars.

After an ordeal that would last for over twenty-four hours, the victims of the kidnapping would all be found and rescued, and two weeks later, after a massive manhunt by the authorities and the FBI, the three men responsible for the crime would be arrested and jailed.

One of the children on the bus was Jodi Heffington, and she would tell of the ordeal in an episode of the CBS documentary show 48 H0urs.

Sadly, Chowchilla kidnapping survivor Jodi Heffington has died, and this article asks the question, how did Jodi Heffington die?

Who is Jodi Heffington?

Jodi was one of the twenty-six students on board the school bus that was taken hostage and would be a Chowchilla kidnapping survivor. Jodi was only ten years old at the time of the attack and would describe what happened on that day in interviews.

Jodi would become a mother to one son and would campaign against the parole of the men who committed the crime.

What happened to Jodi Heffington?

Later in life, Jodi would join the United Methodist Church and would help in raising pigs on the family farm for shows. Jodi also studied and eventually became a Cosmetologist.

Jodi would have one son, Mathew.

Jodi spent the final years of her life fighting against the release of the Chowchilla kidnappers — Fred Woods and Richard and James Schoenfeld. She would attend nearly all parole hearings for criminals and often testify against their parole.