McMartin Preschool Trials: 1987-90

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McMartin Preschool Trials: 1987-90

Defendants: First trial: Raymond Buckey and Peggy Buckey; second trial: Raymond Buckey
Crimes Charged: Child abuse and conspiracy
Chief Defense Lawyers: Raymond Buckey: Daniel G. Davis; Peggy Buckey: Dean R. Gits
Chief Prosecutors: First trial: Roger Gunson, Ira Reiner, and Lael Rubin; second trial: Joseph Martinez
Judges: First trial: William R. Pounders; second trial: Stanley M. Weisberg
Place: Los Angeles, California
Dates of Trials: First trial: July 13, 1987-January 18, 1990; second trial: May 7-July 27, 1990
Verdicts: First trial: Ray Buckey: Acquittal on 39 of 52, hung jury on 13 counts including conspiracy; Peggy Buckey: Acquittal; second trial: Ray Buckey: Hung jury

SIGNIFICANCE: The longest and most expensive criminal trial in U.S. history, the McMartin preschool trials lasted six years from preliminary hearings to acquittal and cost the state of California some $15 million. The case disrupted and adversely affected the lives of hundreds of children, who became convinced they were abused during bizarre rituals. The number of copy-cat prosecutions it engendered cannot be measured, but countless subsequent accusations of sexual and sadistic abuse of children became stereotypical as gullible adults made unfounded hysterical charges. The result has been distrust of the testimony of preadolescent witnesses whose memories of preschool years have been stirred, if not steered, by determined adults.

In 1983, the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, was a longestablished school where toddler applicants often waited six months to get in. It was co-owned by its 76-year-old founder, Virginia McMartin, and her daughter, Peggy Buckey.

On the morning of May 12, 1983, McMartin teachers discovered an unknown two-and-a-half-year-old boy at the door. They found him "pre-verbal" and cared for him, assuming that a parent would pick him up later.

In the school yard was a menagerie of brightly painted wooden animals, including rocking horses, a dinosaur, octopus, camel, giraffe, and ducks big enough to sit on. One of the children's favorite activities was crawling through wooden boxes that zigzagged for 18 feet as aboveground "tunnels."

The boy's mother, 40-year-old Judy Johnson, came for him in the afternoon. She told Peggy Buckey she had no money as she had separated from her husband two months earlier. Mrs. Buckey enrolled the new student.

Mother Calls in the Police

Exactly three months later, on August 12, Judy Johnson called the Manhattan Beach Police Department. She said her two-and-a-half-year-old, Billy, had been molested by Ray Buckey, Peggy Buckey's 25-year-old son, a part-time aide at the school. At Johnson's suggestion, the police interviewed a dozen parents of children enrolled at the school. None thought their children had been sexually abused. Additionally, Billy Johnson could not identify Ray from photographs. Nor did medical examinations of the boy reveal any signs of abuse. Searching Ray Buckey's home, the police confiscated ordinary household items—including pictures from Playboy magazine—and subsequently arrested him on September 7, 1983. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, however, found insufficient evidence for a prosecution.

Shortly thereafter, Manhattan Beach Police Chief Harry L. Kuhlmeyer wrote to 200 parents of current or former McMartin students, telling them of Buckey's arrest and asking them to question their children regarding whether Buckey had engaged them in "oral sex, fondling of genitals, buttocks or chest area, and sodomy." The letter, enclosing a reply form, suggested that "photos may have been taken of the children without clothing," and concluded that "any information from your child regarding having ever observed Ray Buckey to leave a classroom alone with a child during any nap period, or if they have ever observed Ray Buckey to tie up a child, is important."

Parents Demand Action

A television station immediately reported that McMartin Preschool might be connected to sex industries and child pornography rings. Overnight, gossip became panic. Parents demanded action by the district attorney. The D.A.'s child-abuse unit brought in Kee McFarlane of the Children's Institute International (CII), an agency that dealt with abused children.

McFarlane's CII staff videotaped interviews with hundreds of current and former McMartin students. Frightened parents were shown parts of the videotapes and urged to support their children's disclosures.

By March 1984, the CII reported that there was evidence that 360 children had been abused. Astrid Heger, a doctor for the organization, had medically examined 150 of the children and concluded that 120 had been molested. With the town beside itself with anxiety and outrage, enrollment at McMartin Preschool plunged and, after 28 years of community service, it closed on January 13, 1984. Three months later, on February 3—at the start of television's "sweeps" month, during which stations battle for viewers and advertising dollars—KABC reporter Wayne Satz announced that some 60 children "had been keeping a grotesque secret of being sexually abused and made to appear in pornographic films while in the preschool's care—and of having been forced to witness the mutilation and killing of animals to scare the kids into staying silent."

On March 22, 1984, a grand jury indicted Ray Buckey, his mother, grandmother, sister, and three other women on 115 counts of child sexual abuse. Buckey and his mother were held without bail.

Rewarded for "Right" Answers

An 18-month preliminary hearing began on June 6. The chief prosecution witness, Dr. Roland C. Summit, a mental health expert on child sexual abuse, congratulated the media for bringing the issue to the public's attention, theorizing that the publicity had protected countless children from sexual assault. He also defended the interview technique in which McFarlane and her associates rewarded the children for "right" answers.

Because of the children's interviews, the formal charges against the codefendants came to include:

conspiracy to make the preschool the headquarters of an extensive kiddieporn/prostitution ring producing millions of child-sex pictures;
drugging children and forcing them into satanic rituals and sex games;
exposing the children to encounters with lions, rabbits, turtles, a sexuallyabusive elephant, flying witches, space mutants, and bodies (including babies) in mortuaries and graveyards;
taking children via trapdoors through underground tunnels to adjacent garages, thence by train, airplane, and hot-air balloon to secret rituals; and
killing and cutting up animals and threatening to do the same to children's parents "if you tell."

(Years later, in a 1993 broadcast interview, Summit admitted he hadn't viewed any of the 400 videotaped interviews and hadn't read any of the transcripts.)

In March 1985, nearly 50 parents dug up the vacant lot beside the Mc-Martin school in search of an underground room and animal remains. After finding nothing, the district attorney's office hired an archaeological firm to excavate. The dig discovered trash dating back 60 to 100 years, but no tunnels or rooms. The FBI and Interpol conducted a worldwide search for evidence of a kiddie-porn/prostitution ring but found no photographs or films to corroborate the children's stories.

On January 17, 1986, District Attorney Ira Reiner dropped charges against five of the defendants. Having reviewed 100,000 pages of testimony, he said his predecessor had based the case on "incredibly weak" evidence. Yet he found other "strong and compelling" evidence against Ray Buckey and his mother, who were kept in jail. He announced 79 child-abuse counts against Ray, 20 against his mother, and one conspiracy count against both.

Paranoid Schizophrenic

In December 1986, Judy Johnson died of alcohol poisoning. Only then was it revealed that she had been a paranoid schizophrenic. In January 1997, defense attorneys learned that for 10 months prosecutor Lael Rubin and her assistants had not divulged that Johnson had accused the defendants of being witches, and had insisted to investigators that her son had been forced to drink blood from the chopped-open head of a baby and had been molested by a member of the Los Angeles Board of Education. Johnson's bizarre complaints continued from her first report of sexual abuse against her son in May 1983 to March 6, 1985, when it took the help of police to have her committed to a hospital for psychiatric examination. In the end, neither jury in either trial was told of Johnson's emotional problems.

The first trial began on July 13, 1987. Prosecution witnesses included children who testified to playing "naked movie star" games and seeing cats mutilated, as well as a professional "jailhouse snitch" and career criminal put in Ray Buckey's cell to obtain "corroborative" testimony. To show that Buckey was a pedophile, the prosecution provided evidence that he read Playboy and hadn't had any underwear on when he was arrested.

In the circus atmosphere of the courtroom, some child prosecution witnesses refused to testify, causing the judge to dismiss some of the charges. In fact, while the prosecution had assembled charges involving 41 children, it eventually concentrated on only 13—and by February 1989 only 5 had testified. One, a boy now aged 11, said he once saw Ray Buckey kill a horse; however, as defense attorney Dean Gits pressed for details, repeatedly replied, "I don't know."

Bail after Five Years

In February 1989, Ray Buckey's friends raised $1.5 million in bail money—enough to free him after five years' imprisonment. His mother had earlier spent two years in jail before being released on $495,000 bail on January 23, 1986.

Both defendants testified on their own behalf. Peggy Buckey denied that she ever sexually assaulted any student. Ray Buckey repeatedly denied sodomizing the children, playing naked games with them, killing animals before them, or taking pornographic pictures. Typical of the trial's slow pace was a several-weeks-long debate over how a car wash operates—all because one of the charges against Ray was for molesting children in a car wash.

Acquittals and Deadlocks

The jury deliberated from November 2, 1989, to January 18, 1990. Finally, it acquitted Ray Buckey and his mother on 52 counts of molesting young children, but deadlocked on the single count of conspiracy against both and on 12 molestation charges against Ray.

District Attorney Reiner announced he would retry Ray Buckey alone, reducing the charges to five. With Judge Stanley M. Weisberg presiding and newly elected District Attorney Joseph Martinez prosecuting, the new trial began on May 7, 1990. After three months of hearing many of the first trial's witnesses, the jury deliberated from July 9 to July 27, then reported it was "hopelessly and irreversibly" deadlocked. Dismissing all the charges, the judge declared a mistrial.

However, the story took an unexpectedly bizarre turn. In April 1990, as the school building was being demolished, several parents of former McMartin students hired an archaeologist to find evidence of subterranean rooms or tunnels. After the close of the second trial, archaeologist Dr. E. Gary Stickel reported finding a pattern of tunnels. He said they had been constructed after the structure was built in 1966, and were subsequently repacked with soil and artifacts. "The discoveries," he concluded, "stand in stark contrast to the skeptical position that the children only imagined what they described as activities underground."

On August 6, 1990, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Gadbois, Jr., dismissed a $1 million civil suit filed by Peggy Buckey against Los Angeles County. The judge said he understood how Buckey felt but that "being very, very upset does not constitute a cause of action."

—Bernard Ryan, Jr.