What to Watch Saturday: 48 HOURS interviews survivor of Chowchilla Kidnapping case
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Here’s what’s on TV tonight.
The Hillsdale Adoption Scam (8 p.m., Lifetime)
In this new movie, a couple desperate for a child welcomes a surrogate mother into their lives, only to discover she’s a con artist who’s out to steal their money.
A Winning Team (8 p.m., Hallmark)
In this new movie, a professional soccer player finds herself no longer in the game, so she teams up with a small-town coach to lead her niece’s team to the playoffs.
48 HOURS: The Chowchilla Kidnapping (10 p.m., CBS)
Tonight’s episode remembers the 1976 kidnapping of 26 children, ages 5 through 14, on a school bus on their way home from summer school in the small town of Chowchilla, California. The kidnappers, who held the children and a bus driver at gunpoint, were three young men from wealthy families who had planned to demand a ransom for the children. It’s believed to be the largest kidnapping in U.S. history. The men took the children to a remote rock quarry 100 miles away and buried them alive inside a truck trailer. The children and the bus driver miraculously escaped after 16 hours underground, by digging themselves out.
One of the kidnapped students, Jodi Heffington, was 10 years old at the time. In tonight’s episode, she speaks in detail about her memories from that event in a never-before-seen interview. An interview with Larry Park, who was just 6 years old at the time, is also presented.
The episode recounts not only the kidnapping but the emotional and psychological toll on the children and their families for the rest of their lives.
Programming note: This could start late if NCAA basketball runs over allotted time.
Some programming descriptions are provided by networks.