McMartin Pre-School ////// 390 | Forensic Files

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[Music] September 8th 1983 dear parent this department is conducting a criminal investigation involving child
molestation ray Buckey an employee of Virginia McMartins preschool was arrested September 7th 1983 by this
department the following procedure is obviously an unpleasant one but to protect the rights of your children as
well as the rights of the accused this inquiry is necessary for a complete investigation records indicate that your
child has been or is currently a student at the preschool we are asking your assistance in continuing this
investigation please question your child to see if he or she has been a witness to any crime or if he or she has been a
victim our investigation indicates that possible criminal acts include oral sex fondling of genitals buttocks or chest
area and sodomy possibly committed under the pretense of taking the child's temperature also photos may have been
taken of children without their clothing 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 tie up a
child is important please complete the enclosed information form and return it to this department and the enclosed
stamp to return envelope as soon as possible we will contact you if circumstances dictate saying we asked
you to please keep this investigation strictly confidential because of the nature of the charges and
the highly emotional effect that will have on our community please do not discuss this investigation with anyone
outside your immediate family do not contact or discuss the investigation with Raymond Buckey any member of the
accused defendants family or employees connected with the McMartin preschool [Music]
[Music] on August 12 1983 Judy Johnson called police reporting that her two-year-old
son who was attending the McMartin preschool was being molested at the school by 25 year-old Ray Buckey Ray's
mother is Peggy McMartin Buckey and his grandmother is Virginia McMartin Ray's grandmother is the founder and owner of
the preschool the Bucky family runs and operates this preschool the detective that caught the case she would start her
investigation by interviewing a baker's dozen this included Johnson's son and 12
parents that Johnson passed along their information to the detective okay captain so this is serious allegations
obviously alleged despicable acts committed and your victim is very young roughly just two and a half years of age
the boy's mother is making the report to the police but obviously she was not there when the crimes or alleged crimes
were committed right this type of predator is actually more dangerous because if these allegations are true
these individuals are around children all day long yes many many potential victims at the ready for this this
offender so the investigation starts off like this first the little boy is unable
to pick ray Buckey out of school photos when talking with the police a medical examination of the boy showed no signs
of sexual abuse and really failed to produce any evidence at all regarding sexual abuse but we all know that there
is not always signs nor evidence present the other parents interviewed the the first 12 basically all said that they
had no reason to suspect that anything nefarious was going on at the school at all and I'm actually wondering here
captain if some of these parents out of this first 12 if they even knew Ray Buckey or probably didn't know Ray
Buckey or who he was well this was a prestigious preschool a lot of these parents wanted their kids
to be going there I don't think it was as easy as just signing up and getting your kid and the McMartin preschool yeah
and a little side note here regarding Judy Johnson's son she just dropped him off at the school one day like months
and months before these allegations ever came out he he wasn't technically like signed up to go to the school and as you
said you may have had to jump through some hoops to get your child into this school this is Manhattan Beach right so
she just dropped off her kid and they just had to they didn't even they didn't know who the kid was they didn't know
who the parent was why the kid was there they were all they were kind of confused
but the McMartins are pretty from from my understanding look you can look at it one way or the other
either they're despicable horrible people or they got into this business because they really do care about
children well the mother and the founder of the preschool received a lot of different awards actually got a woman um
of the Year award back in the day for her work at this preschool so they didn't like kick the kid out they just
accepted him at the school and put him into the system right and once they figured out who the mom was he just
became a student but his first day at the school from my understanding she just dropped him off and didn't speak to
anybody well so far this investigation is not looking so great we have the boy who cannot pick out the accused from
school photos and we don't have any physical signs of abuse that the medical examiners can find on the boy so we move
on to the next steps right we need some evidence so searches of the school the grounds and of the Buckey family home
are conducted during these searches police collected evidence none of it damning at all mostly this is just
typical household items of note we have a rubber duck a graduation gown and a few pictures that were cut out of a
Playboy magazine despite any real evidence at all police did arrest ray Buckey this was on September 7th
1983 but the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office declined to prosecute due to the lack of evidence and they
wanted more they wanted more evidence collected and Ray Buckey was released later that same day so the next day the
Manhattan Beach police sent a letter that was read by our amazing host during the trailer this letter went to 200
parents naming Ray as a child molestation suspect the letter is asking for the help of the parents of these
children to question their kids find out if the children knew of anything going on at the school asked them about
fondling about oral sex about sodomy the difficult thing here look there's many difficult things going on with this
situation the letter doesn't seem like a great strategy doesn't seem to be well thought out I get that you are reaching
out to a lot of people to the masses all at once it seems a little well it just seems like a dumb idea to me but then on
top of this you have untrained parents who are now going to be questioning their children some of these kids are
very young like two and a half years old hmm they're asking them about things that
they at two-and-a-half they don't even know about these things they don't know what this stuff is but one you have to
be careful when you're questioning children where you're not leading them or you're not giving them the answers
and so like you said these parents aren't trained to do so and it's weird to put out this letter because again the
initial questioning of the 12 parents I would say is enough because just because
there's maybe some smoke or we have an allegation doesn't mean there's fire and you you go and raid this individuals
home you find nothing right the list of things that they find it rubber ducky cap and gown what does that have to do
with anything well the graduation gown will later be later we're going to be told that that
graduation gown was like a satanic robe like a robe that somebody would wear during rituals or satanic Mass and at
the end of the day it's it's just a graduation gown well yeah it's people have them in their
homes it is worn during a ritual when you graduate from school right on October 17th
the LA County DA's office asked the Children's Institute International to interview children who attended the
McMartin preschool it looks like in the end captain that they interviewed about two hundred and fifty children the
interview techniques used were highly suggestive and they even encouraged the children to pretend or speculate about
supposed events it was claimed that three hundred and sixty children had been abused this is after speaking with
the two hundred and fifty there were examinations and the children were photographed some of them were
photographed and one child in particular and I'm using air quotes here was photographed by an expert who says that
there was some kind of scarring that happened on the child which she stated was caused by anal penetration later
research demonstrated that the methods of questioning used on these children were as said extremely suggestive and
leading to false accusations and others believe that the questioning itself may have even led to false memory syndrome
now I'm a little confused as to why we see a number so high you know that the victim number of potentially three
hundred and sixty when all of the information I could find says they only interviewed about 250 kids so I'm I'm
kind of guessing here captain that a lot of those 250 would have had to be victims themselves but may have also
witnessed something maybe their stories included witnessing acts on others that were not interviewed right I don't know
it doesn't it doesn't seem to track it doesn't really check out but one thing that's very difficult to get
over here is when you're interviewing this many children and it's been said that not one of these children had made
any claims of abuse before these interviews right but after the these interviews are conducted you got
hundreds of them saying that they were abused well again and goes back to who's questioning them and what level of
expertise do they have questioning and children and this is their 80s and we're gonna see HBO documentary capturing the
Friedman's where they go into depth of how how not to question kids and how you can get kids to say certain things and
and this will actually be put into practice after the 80s and after this trial obviously well in one very basic
thing of child psychology that that we know is when a child's being interviewed especially a very young child is being
questioned by an adult regardless of who that adult is most of the time the child
will see the adult as some type of Authority and if I were to hold up a stop sign and I'm talking to a little
kid like three-year-old kid and I say I point to the stop sign I say what color is this and if the child says red and I
say I don't even have to say no I just say what color is this if I say the same sentence again ask the same question
again the child then assumes that they have given the wrong answer right and so they they want to please the authority
they will search for a new answer and it's a lot like the Jessie Misskelley interview really I mean they just keep
asking him the same questions over and over again he keeps changing his answers until until they move on and then he's
like oh cool I got the right answer we have all these kids now with claims of sexual abuse and in some even bizarre
claims and we're gonna get into some of these but keep in mind this all started with only one
person coming forward only one mother came forward well I do have Bucky working in his family's business and he
looks like a mix between I'd say Christopher Reeves and Jeffrey Dahmer if you see his the first trial he has those
Dahmer glasses on and so I think a Superman Dahmer baby yeah I don't I don't think that helps him much well in
early 1984 social services suspended the school's license and the school was shut
down about two months later seven preschool employees four of which are from the McMartin family they are
indicted on 115 charges of child molestation all seven of the accused were jailed all seven pled innocent to
all charges they were charged with sexually abusing a teen chick over a 10-year period now in the coming months
the number of victims regarding official charges would grow significantly from eighteen to forty one child victims
these 41 young victims will need to testify or issue statements for the preliminary hearings the first child
witness states that he and some of the other students played what he called naked games and he was touched
inappropriately in bad spots by some of the defendants the other thing that we will start hearing much more about
during this time is that the defendants used death threats to silence the children on June 6th this was the start
of an 18-month preliminary hearing of the alleged 41 child victims only 13 of them would take the stand but then in a
stunning turn of events the mother who made the first accusations against Ray Buckey remember this is Judy Johnson she
dies she was found dead at her home on December 19 1985 at the young age of 44 died from a liver ailment commonly found
in alcoholics well it's even more weird than that because she's actually supposed to testify the day that they
found her because she actually called the judge and said hey I don't I don't want to I don't want to testify hmm and
they said well we kind of need you to come in it's important for the jury to hear your testimony and then they find
her dead at her house and there were some people that were suspicious of her death in regards to the charges against
this again air quotes child sex ring they thought oh it's it's awfully convenient that she died just before
being able to testify yeah so this next part this is straight from the Wikipedia
page on the case because they had this summarize just so perfectly that I wanted to include it the page says some
of the accusations were described as bizarre you can say that again and we're going to get into that some of the
accusations included satanic ritual abuse so some of the kids said not only were they sexually abused but they
witnessed flying witches some of the kids said they traveled in a hot-air balloon
and some were taken through tunnels that were located beneath the school in one photo lineup one child identified actor
Chuck Norris as one of the abusers there were claims that a rabbit a goat and a baby were all sacrificed in front of the
children there were claims of orgies at car washes and at airports and of children being flushed down toilets to
secret rooms where they would be abused then cleaned up and presented back to their parents at the end of the school
day some child interviewees talked of a game called naked movie star aka Chuck Norris and suggested that they
were forcibly photographed nude Judy Johnson who as we said passes away even her initial allegations were quite
bizarre she came forward because her little boy was having painful bowel movements so
judy believed that the boy had been abused and sodomized her son said that he was not but her claims and
allegations against ray Buckey not only included fondling abuse and sodomy but she also told police that ray Buckey had
superpowers and that he could fly hmm that clerk okay yeah right and again remember her son was not able
to pick ray Buckey out from school photos it it would eventually come out that judy johnson was once diagnosed
with and hospitalized for acute paranoid schizophrenia this this is what's really
sad here you know when we when we review these stories captain there's always like this smaller sad story hidden
within these larger stories the tragic life of judy johnson is just it's just sad it it breaks my heart this to me
appears to be a woman that needed a lot of help and i think that she she didn't recognize because of things she was
suffering from i don't think she recognized that she needed help and she didn't get it she didn't get the help
that she needed and I think that that ultimately led to her passing away at such a young age
in January of 1986 a judge ordered all seven defendants to a Superior Court trial on 135 counts of molestation and
conspiracy but very quickly that would change because just eight days later the DA the district attorney said there was
insufficient evidence against five of the accused and actually requested a dismissal of charges no so the DA was
going to move forward against just two of the accused now the two remaining are Ray Buckey and his mother so Peggy
McMartin Buckey and Ray Buckey remained in custody awaiting trial facing about 100 counts of molestation and conspiracy
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[Music] all right we're back cheers meme 18 cheers alright so so far let me see if I'm following this
correctly we have these initial allegations it's coming from a mother that we we know has some mental issues
definitely has a drinking problem there's real no proof found the child can't even pick ray Buckey out of a
lineup and this would be the person that they're claiming abused him and then they send out this letter this letter
goes out to hundreds of parents like we both said they're not qualified to question their children we get crazy
claims these underground tunnels high air balloons and because of these claims and because of these allegations a lot
of them were saying well yeah these other kids were there while this was going on so therefore since they can't
just be ray Buckey that's involved it has to be these other teachers and these other administrators at the preschool
have to know what's going on there's also other claims that they're threatening them with guns they're
killing animals in front of these kids saying hey if you don't if you tell on us then we're gonna kill your family and
and then it becomes this whole while this is not only just a sex ring but this is also a child pornography they're
taking pictures they're filming things and it's all satanic the claims by the children are just bizarre now keep in
mind some of them are very young some of them were current students at the preschool they but but it goes to show
you that if some of these claims that are so fantastical if they can't if they are physically not possible I mean just
science alone tells us some of these things 100% did not happen you would think that these experts would take this
a little step further and say well our technique that we're using to question these
kids is coming up with some some pretty weird stuff here maybe it's all weird stuff maybe it's
all made up we have and then you have the the Sun Judy Johnson's Sun not only we're not even talking about a photo
lineup that he couldn't pick rope ray Buckey Adam he couldn't pick ray Buckey out of school photos they were showing
the child's school photos and like just some of these claims the initial claim like we said
Judy Johnson's claimed that Ray Buckey could fly we know ray Buckey cannot fly and one of the students said that about
the orgies at the they were having orgies with the way that these adults at carwashes and airports yet there's no
witnesses to any of this stuff one of the kids says that they flew him and several other kids flew with the owner
from California to Florida on a plane that had no windows that it left from the airport and then at the end of the
day he and the kids were there when their parents came to pick them up it's four and a half to five hours just to
fly one way California to Florida right and then to fly back it's impossible that that the child would be there I
mean there was mention of a devil house where lions lived we also have situations where some of these kids are
saying things like an elephant was killed at the school in front of children that Ray Buckey held up rabbits
and cut off their ears and told them that if they told their parents that's what he would do to their parents yeah
and they they did a search of the school to see if there would you know digging stuff up to see if there was remains of
animals found would correct that there were none there was some claims where some of the kids talked about being
taken off of the school and going to houses the weird thing is some of those houses actually existed mm-hmm but again
how are they questioned and then one of the main reporters at the I'm that kept reporting about this on
air which that's another thing we have all these claims and because it made good TV that make all these claims
public and then you have ki McFarland which was this a social worker that would interview the children using
puppets and they had tons of footage of this and everybody thought this was the nail in the coffin this is a smoking gun
and the defense attorneys said okay we want to see it and the prosecution did not want them to see this and from
defense attorneys mouth which obviously they they have agenda but they say you can watch these films and you can watch
these interviews and it proves that nothing happened right right that's like a smoking gun in the
other way well eventually captain Peggy McMartin was released this on 295 thousand dollars bail but Ray Buckey was
denied bail remember this whole thing started back in 1983 in our timeline now we are at January of 1986 but it won't
be until April 20th of 1987 that the court begins jury selection so you have the right to a speedy trial but you just
might not get one what you see here is a process that drags on and on and the longer it goes the more the case just
keeps falling apart right we see the reduction in victims then we see the reduction of charges and perpetrators by
October of 1988 now five years into this process we are down to just two accused
and now there are just 65 charges left and only 11 victims what I think you have here captain is what you are
getting at with those videotapes I think when the prosecutors are looking at these videotapes and watching them
they're going well we can't put this kid on the stand he's he's making claims that are
scientifically correct that cannot happen right they are picking and choosing which victims
to believe right but this is this is where it gets tough for me because the initial investigation I think at that
point you go well there are some claims we're going to keep a eye on it but for some reason they were dead set on
bringing down Bucky and his family that's where the letter came out and then and again before you even go to
trial before you charge anybody take these hundreds of claims and like you said if somebody's saying well we went
down the yellow brick road and ran into the Scarecrow and the the lion and the Tin Man
that maybe that didn't happen and we should push that one aside mm-hm and ones that are credible or we can back up
with some kind of evidence now we push that in the pile of that possibly could have happened and so again you want to
ruin these individuals lives by making these claims against teachers that worked in this preschool could you
imagine being a teacher and you've done nothing but try to help kids and and nurture kids and you're in this
profession because you love kids and now you're being accused of satanic worships
and satanic sacrifice in the in the sense of molesting these kids and you're lumped into this pile with zero evidence
zero eyewitnesses some of the like you said some of the accusers can't even name who attacked them hmm
and so there's so much stuff that I think could have been done initially and also this became us this became a story
like you said the first accusations 1983 were worried three four years into this
thing these news stations are reporting on this almost daily all the media loved
story because they loved the the fantastical accusations how bizarre these accusations were they loved it in
the really the these seven people especially the McMartin family they were really being tried in the court of
public opinion by the media right what they did was you know we have these preliminary hearings
going on they didn't allow any cameras in the courtroom because we had children who were taking the stand child victims
right they didn't know the media does not know the name of the child but they can hear they're listening in on
closed-circuit TV and then they're running to the to the press they're running to the camera with each one of
these crazy fantastical accusations and like I said he McFarland which is a social worker but she was dating on-air
personality well that's a common who's covering the trial right that's a conflict of interest right there and I
try to take a step back and think if I'm a detective and I hear these claims the
initial claim well I want to get this bastard right I want to get it I don't want anybody to hurt any child
I don't want anybody to rape a child and to have them be messed up for the rest of their lives and like we've seen time
and time again kids that are abused can become abusers right it's a cycle a cycle of abuse right and it's not a I
think way back in the day I said it was a high percentage it's not a high percentage it's not a high percentage
that you'd be abused and then you become an abuser but it's enough that it's like
you said it creates this vicious cycle so this is something as a detective as a parent as as anybody that you would go
we need to stop this we need to get to the bottom of this but once you keep running into brick walls and just like
the tunnels I mean you start digging up you start trying to find before they dug
up anything the rooms that these kids kept on climbing oh that's the room and we went into a
tunnel well there are initial checks that they could do to find out there's no tunnel here right so at some point
these claims that you are giving some credence to once you realize that it's false and it's okay and you can go okay
well we messed up because we questioned these kids wrong but you know what these
kids will forget about that them the kids will forget about making false claims pretty quickly once this all goes
away but in the process you ruin the school that everybody said was a prestigious preschool to go to winning
awards protecting children safe environment and because some initial claims and you didn't even do a
background check on the people that I'm making the claims you ruined so many people's lives yeah I mean the they shut
down the McMartins family business and the McMartin family lost everything during the course of all this thing they
spent all their money on their defense in February of 1989 ray Buckey is finally released from jail this on one
and a half million dollars bond and after he has been in jail for about five years
he's been in jail for five years yes he's being charged with something but can you think of can you imagine being
in jail for five years and you've actually not been convicted of anything yet you're still in the trial process
right well by that look it's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty so if he's innocent till proven guilty he
should be out yeah they waived for no no release for Bucky because of the supposed death threats against possible
witnesses right but see here here we are 1989 once again all the charges are again reduced this time down to 52
counts so you can even see the prosecution isn't very happy with their case because this thing just keeps
getting reduced and reduced and during the trial both the defendants did take the stand this is pretty much the
two biggest parts or highlights if you will of the trial a lot of times defendants don't take the stand so this
was this was of interest to the media and both of them in what is a trial that that truly all of America is watching
both defendants of course strongly denied ever abusing any students or any child ever at all right
during the trial some of the children's testimony stated that the naked movie star game was actually a rhyming taunt
used to tease other children this was something that the kids made up and then it turned into this whole weird sex ring
thing they're saying the kids said this rhyming taunt went like this what you say is what you are you're a naked movie
star you know how kids come up with dumb little rhymes to say and so this had actually nothing to do with me the
having naked pictures taken of the kids at all one of the big things in this and
this trials when they had they had three doctors that were taking evidence you know they were there examining these
kids they're taking photos they're documenting everything because they wanted to be able to say look these are
the claims I'm making and these are the reasons I'm making these claims and a lot of them talked about well because of
this abuse that you can see on the genitals and on different areas that you could see scars or scar tissue and and
they had all three which was a great move by the defense team separately they said okay can you point out the area and
they had all three experts and all three of them pointed out different areas yeah
so none of them matched at all when I initially heard some of these claims the parents questioning we know that that's
probably not right we know they're not qualified to question their their kids but once these kids are medically
examined then I put a little more weight into that because we have medical examiners
Hey look there's some signs there's not a hundred percent proof evidence but but
there are definitely some signs and so I put some weight into that on November 2nd 1989 the jurors began deliberations
for what would be 3 months in 16 days later that the jury ended their long deciding period and the long awaited
verdict was in the jury acquitted both Peggy McMartin and Ray Buckey of all 52 counts yeah but we are not done yet
because some of the jurors at a press conference following the trial stated that they believed the children had in
fact been molested but the evidence did not allow them to state who had committed the abuse beyond a reasonable
doubt and much of the media seemed to be convinced that ray Buckey was guilty as
well yeah and I and hold on that that's going back to what I was saying about the medical examiners when you have a
doctor forget all this hocus-pocus [ __ ] in these tunnels and these naked movie star games and all that
stuff when you have a doctor telling you that there's some evidence there it's like okay well again what the jury is
saying is well there's some evidence there we just don't know who did it yeah well you also had one of your least
favorite things in this case a jailhouse snitch who comes for you I know how much
you loved it a good old jailhouse snitch they Sevilla they should not be illegal
yeah he comes forward and says you know in jail ray told me he confessed to me that he did abuse some of these these
children yeah did you know how long this individual was in the cell with Ray I know I don't know much about it because
I didn't look into that angle because it was discredited yes well what here's here's the story so at the time
California was getting in big trouble because they were taking individuals that they weren't able to get anything
out of and they were taken No own jailhouse snitches and putted them in there and then obviously having them
run each on trial so what they do is they put this individual in the cell less than 48 hours so you're having a
guy that's claiming for years I'm innocent not telling the authorities anything not
cracking at all but somehow they put this guy in they put him in the cell with him under 48 hours full confession
singing like a bird well here's what's so funny the guy shows up he's he's on Stan one time one day he has to come
back the next day but he didn't he never showed up so they arrested him so the first day they got this jailhouse snitch
and they got him all dressed up and they got him in a suit and they got him playing the game right combed hair and
everything doesn't show up the next day and they find him they have to arrest him so now it's the second day of him
talking about how he got a confession out of Ray and he doesn't have a suit on and he's covered in tattoos and he his
hair's not done and by the way there's two sheriff's on each side of him as he's testifying yeah now it didn't go
well for the prosecution but these jailhouse snitches is it's stupid there's so many of them that have
been false that it's like they should just be it should be illegal mm-hmm the the thing here though captain we have
Ray Buckey who is actually going to be retried later this time on just six counts but this trial resulted in a hung
jury the prosecution behold on this is two years and roughly two years after the first trial what I have here is that
the second trial lasted from May 7 1992 July 2 seven 1990 you know this resulted in a
hung jury the prosecution then gave up trying to obtain any type of conviction in the case the case was closed with all
charges against Ray Buckey dismissed in the end ray Buckey was jailed for five years without ever being convicted of
committing any crime at all yeah there should be a lawsuit there in the end too the trial lasted seven years and
cost fifteen million dollars at the time it was and this still may be the case today it was the longest and most
expensive criminal case in the history of the United States legal system and as said it was a trial that ultimately
resulted in a grand total of zero convictions and and we said the McMartin preschool was closed but the building
itself was actually dismantled and guess what there were no tunnels under the school the secret tunnels under the
school were much of the alleged abuse supposedly took place they didn't even exist well they did bring in ARCA
archaeologists to do some digs Indiana Jones and he he claims he found tunnels but a bunch of the reporters that
followed him his investigation was yeah he found tunnels once he dug the tunnels
all right so they found like building material down there but it was determined that it's believed that that
building material was pretty much just trash from where they constructed the school itself well he also claimed that
he found a plate that had a pentagram on it again.i that could have been placed there hey think about it this way if
you're some teenager that lived in the area and you know what they're looking for and you jumped the fence one day and
and put a pentagram on something right yeah and I'm I'm not trying to make excuses it's just I don't buy any of
that stuff I don't look well you're spot-on because there were people that were like spray-painting graffiti on the
school and on the grounds after the charges were brought forward no and my thing is these tunnels for example
forget the hot air baloon forget all that stuff when these kids talk about these tunnels or these secret rooms
don't you think the police and the detectives and the the prosecutors want to find that right and they would have
found that if there was a tunnel just a simple tunnel they would have found that
and to me you find that look there's your smoking gun because for a kid to say oh yeah we were
we were molested in this tunnel and were put in this secret room if you find that
secret room and that tunnel and you have hundreds of parents that let their kids
go there that never heard about this room or the secret spot to me that's the would be a smoking gun but this this
whole scenario is strange because you know we have to take allegations of sexual assault rape anything like that
we have to take it very serious yes and so on some level I go I can't fault these detectives because they wanted to
find something but they did it in such a way that I think you would have found anything if if they would have
questioned if they would have sent out a note to two hundred and some parents and
said look there were there was a murder that took place and we're trying to see if any of your kids saw it I think would
get back a percentage of kids that were like oh yeah I saw ray murder somebody you know I mean I think you would have
got that back anyways because the age of the kid you're talking about an age range of three to five six this is prime
time for for kids to make up stories mmm I know that one of the doctors that they've used the way that she has
documented cases and child abuse that that has become she's helped create some of the standards on
how we document this stuff so I'm not saying that she was right but if she was so wrong why would we adapt anything
that she did in this trial that we didn't get a curve it conviction to modern day practice and I and I'm on I'm
unclear on that because I thought it was this was examined in and it was decided
to change the way that we do it not because this worked well but because it went so badly
I'm not certain you you could be spot-on with that I don't know the details here's my thing is like again I I don't
want to fall detectives or police or the prosecution for wanting to get a child molester that is the scum and the earth
I want them all to die all to burn in hell right but when you have a physician saying they examine these patients and
maybe they're wrong on a percentage of the patients how can you explain all the abuse marks or the scar tissues or
whatever these medical professionals are saying I understand that as it was early
in the study of all this but is it possible that there was was some things that we're going on well then maybe not
in the preschool but maybe at somebody's house that's what I'm saying that's what
that's where you take the jurors words where the one juror said hey it's it's my opinion that maybe one or two of
these kids were in fact molested but the evidence doesn't tell us who who was the
perpetrator of that beyond a reasonable doubt so as you said it could have been you could have a child who was abused
just by somebody else it has nothing to do with the school at all in fact and I didn't want to get
into this because I don't know how true it is one of the accusers later the the mother changed the story
of the abuser was her boyfriend why not somebody at the school and I don't want to get into that too much because I
don't know if that resulted in a conviction or what but you go back to the initial allegations and you did have
some good people along the way and and here's here's the thing did I want to point out I do believe that a lot of
these people who were ultimately wrong and had bad judgment that being the lot of the District Attorney's Office and a
lot of the detectives and the judge and so on and so forth I do believe that a lot of them thought they were doing good
work that they were helping a bad situation I think their intentions were good when he had 13 kids take the stand
right there yeah and there were some real heroes along the way I mean you have a judge who is saying hey let's
reduce these charges because this this case is getting weird it doesn't make it's not making sense you do have a
prosecution team who is reducing charges who are letting accused go they're dropping charges against it we went from
seven accused down to two right and we did have you know a detective that came out and told the prosecuting team the
DA's office says before you bring any official charges you need to take a look at this and you need to take a look at
that because this stuff is starting to not check out and what I mean by that is the first allegations altogether right
of Judy Johnson contacting the police and saying hey my son is having some painful bowel movements therefore he was
sodomized well when you dig a little deeper you figure out that she not only accused ray Buckey twenty five-year-old
ray Buckey of the preschool of as being one of the abusers but she also accused her estranged husband as having sexually
abused the boy right initially the boy says there was never any sexual abuse at all this is the same
woman that would go on to tell the detectives that she saw ray Buckey flying and that her ex-husband also
raped a dog this this poor woman was mentally ill and needed a lot of help and she was
very paranoid and I think she I think she was afraid of things that weren't actually happening but well back to the
point of the 13 kids that testified some of those have came forward now and said
hey I don't think any of that stuff happened that I testified to yeah I saw at least two of them that as adults came
forward and said I made the whole thing up because of the direction of the doctors and my parents right but we have
other victims that have stated that no what I said then was true and and I still stand by that and that's where you
wonder if we had that false memory syndrome that we were talking about earlier as quoted in the San Francisco
Examiner who like several other publications had some great coverage on the case and the examiner was much less
bias than most of the papers at the time but the quotes that I wanted to read are
first from the first one is from Peggy McMartin Buckey one of the accused she said I've gone through hell and now
we've lost everything and that couldn't be more that statement could not be more
true one of the jurors was quoted as saying I believe that children believed what they were saying was true I could
not tell if the children were telling what actually happened to them or if they were repeating what their parents
told them and we talked a bit about the bias of the media well the LA Times in a
1990 article by David Shaw who was a Pulitzer prize-winning media critic for the LA Times who's deeply reported
series were often tough on his own newspaper but in regards through the media's coverage of the McMartin trials
he posed a very simple question where was the skepticism in the media citing pack journalism and hysteria that marked
the early coverage of the mokou Martin case from the article which is just a fantastic read anyone can find it
just Google McMartin trial LA Times shawl wrote media feeding frenzies have become almost commonplace in recent
years but in McMartin the media seemed especially zealous in part in large part because of the monstrous bizarre and
seemingly incredible nature of the original accusations more than most big stories McMartin at times exposed basic
flaws in the way the contemporary news organizations functioned pack journalism laziness superficiality
cozy relationships with prosecutors a competitive zeal that sends reporters off in a frantic search to be the first
with the latest shocking allegation responsible journalism be damned a tradition that often discourages
reporters from raising key questions if they aren't first brought up by the principles in the story now captain I
watched I had a rewatching because I actually watched it when I was much younger was the HBO movie indictment the
McMartin trial with James Wood the great James Woods so this came out in 1995 and
it also has one of my favorites Oliver Stone was one of the producers an indictment actually won a couple of
awards that won two Primetime Emmys and two Golden Globes and according to Wikipedia the film is cited as a
watershed in the shift of ideas about satanic ritual abuse recasting ray Buckey as a victim of hysterical
conspiracy rather than a child abuser well again in this case to me it still leaves questions as much as we go a lot
of these claims were claims of fantasy really and hot-air balloons and secret tunnels and in these devil-worshiping
games I I do not want to dismiss or especially the 13 victims that testified and then
the victims that still claim this abuse happened to them I don't want to dismiss
that but it's it's one of those cases where it's like you can't believe it on either in like okay we get this initial
claim and then we send out letters to hundreds of people what do you think you're going to get back at the end of
the day you have this good school that was closed you have teachers that their career was ruined you have kids that
possibly have false memories a whole family that went bankrupt sigh childhoods ruined ray Buckey who spends
over five years in jail five years of his life don't know him his life was gone after this there is no going back
right you know he had to leave changed his name he got married as a son I just want to leave you with this one thing
and I believe this was in the second trial I just want to leave you with this one thing because there's so many
questions here the first question that was asked by the prosecution to Ray when he was on stand and the second trial was
why do you like kids so much and his reply was because they're honest [Music] all the uncertainty in the world now is
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[Music] [Applause]

Source: https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-v99tr-d9393b

McMartin Pre-School ////// 390 Part 1 of 1 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com The McMartin molestation and conspiracy case is one of the most shocking cases in U.S. history. It all started when Judy Johnson reported that her young son was molested at the school by 25 year old Ray Buckey. Join us as we discuss this disturbing case and the unbelievable trial. Beer of the Week - Sundrifter by South County Brewing Company Garage Grade - 4 and a half Bottle Caps out of 5 Thank you to this week’s sponsor SimpliSafe. SimpliSafe is the right way to protect your home 24/7 for break-ins, fire and more! www.SimpliSafe.com/Garage - Get FREE shipping and a 60-day money back guarantee.

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Brief Summary

The McMartin preschool case involved false child molestation claims leading to years of trials and no convictions.

Key points

The Importance of IT. A light-hearted comment about workplace hierarchy.
The Start of a Disturbing Investigation. A letter to parents reveals a criminal investigation involving child molestation.
Bizarre Allegations. Accusations against Ray Buckey include bizarre claims of satanic rituals and abuse.
Judy Johnson's Tragic Life. The mother who initiated the allegations against Ray Buckey dies unexpectedly.
Charges Against the Accused. Seven defendants face numerous charges of child molestation, but evidence is lacking.
The Bizarre Allegations. Claims of underground tunnels and satanic rituals emerge, raising questions about their validity.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This investigation is necessary for a complete investigation.

A serious reminder of the gravity of the situation.

4:01WatchApr 14, 2020

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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