How have I never heard this story before? It seems like the sort of thing that would have become a national schoolyard boogeyman/urban myth even decades later (and maybe it is locally where it happened)
My main takeaway was this:
At the time people didn’t really understand childhood trauma, mental health, PTSD
Basically the thinking was “it was only a couple days, the kids weren’t hurt. Kids are resilient, buy them some ice cream, take them to Disney Land and they’ll be fine”
And that’s exactly what happened (the ice cream and DisneyLand)
Being fine didn’t happen, those kids were seriously messed up and became messed up adults
Ok, way back then we didn’t know better.
We absolutely knew better decades later when these monsters were paroled. How in the hell did that happen!?
These guys should never have breathed air as free men again