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

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true crime oh foreign [Music] foreign [Music] 1983 dear parent this department is conducting a criminal
investigation involving child molestation Ray Bucky an employee of Virginia mcmartin's 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 Bucky to leave a classroom alone with a child
during any nap period or if they have ever observed Ray Bucky tie up a child is important
please complete the enclosed information form and return it to this department and the enclosed stamped return envelope
as soon as possible we will contact you if circumstances dictate sane we ask you to please keep this
investigation strictly confidential because of the nature of the charges and the highly emotional effect it 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 Bucky any member of the accused defendant's 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 Bucky Rey's mother is Peggy McMartin Bucky and his grandmother is
Virginia McMartin Rey'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 Bucky 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
Bucky or probably didn't know Ray Bucky 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 in 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 um 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 like women 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 of the school the grounds
and of the Bucky 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 Bucky 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 Bucky was
released later that same day so the next day the Manhattan Beach police sent the letter that was read by
our amazing host during the trailer this letter went to 200 parents naming Rey 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 ask 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 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 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 born 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 question 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 individual's home you find nothing right the list of things that
they find 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 a satanic
robe like a robe that somebody would wear during rituals or or satanic mass and at the end of the day it's it's just
a graduation gown like oh yeah people have them in their homes It is worn during a ritual when you graduate from
school right right on October 17th the L.A 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 250 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 360 children had been abused this is after speaking with the 250.
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 the the victim number of potentially 360 when
all of the information I could find says they only interviewed about 250 kids so
I 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 it goes back to
who's questioning them and and what level of expertise do they have questioning children and this is the 80s
and we're going to see a HBO documentary uh capturing the freedmens 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 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 Jesse Miss Kelly
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 we have
all these kids now with claims of sexual abuse in in some even bizarre claims and
we're going to get into some of these but keep in mind this all started with only one person coming forward only one
mother came forward well and you have Bucky working in his family's business and he looks like a
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 like a Superman Dahmer baby yeah I don't I don't think that uh 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 18 children over a 10-year period now in
the coming months the number of victims regarding official charges would grow significantly from 18 to 41 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 Bucky remember this is Judy Johnson she dies she was found dead at her home on December 19
1985 at the young age of 44. she died from a liver ailment commonly found in Alcoholics well it's even more
weird than that because she was 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 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 that 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 summarized
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 Bucky not only included fondling abuse and sodomy but she also told police that Ray
Bucky had superpowers and that he could fly that clerk yeah right and again remember her son was not able to pick
Ray Bucky 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 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 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 D.A the district attorney said there was
insufficient evidence against five of the accused and actually requested a dismissal of charges yeah so the D.A was
going to move forward against just two of the accused now the two remaining are Ray Bucky and his mother so Peggy
McMartin Bucky and Ray Bucky remained in custody awaiting trial facing about 100
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[Music] all right we're back Cheers Cheers all right 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 Bucky 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 hot 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 it can't just be Ray Bucky 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 if you don't if you tell on us then we're going to 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 in 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
um 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 percent 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 we have and then you have the the sun
Judy Johnson's son not only we're not even talking about a photo lineup that he couldn't pick Ray Bucky out of he
couldn't pick Ray Bucky 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 claim that
Ray Bucky could fly we know Ray Bucky cannot fly and one of the students said that about
the orgies at the they were having orgies with the with these adults at car washes 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 him 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 Bucky 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 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
but again how are they questioned and then one of the main reporters at the time
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 key McFarlane 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
on the coffin this is the 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 attorney's mouth which obviously they they have an agenda but
they say you can watch these films and you can watch uh 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 Bucky 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 were 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 incorrect 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's some claims we're going to keep
an eye on him but for some reason they were dead set I'm 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 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 happen 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 uh 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 and so there's so much stuff that I think could have been
done initially and also this became this became a story like you said the first accusations 1983 were
were already three four years into this thing these news stations are reporting on
this almost daily oh the media loved this 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 Kim
McFarlane which is a social worker but she was dating on air personality right that's a comp 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 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 because 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 claiming 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 as 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 they'll 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 are
making the claims you ruined so many people's lives yeah I mean they shut down the
mcmartin's 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 Bucky 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
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 you're still in the trial process right well but that look
it's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty so if he's innocent until proven guilty he should be out uh yeah
they waved 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 reduced during the trial both the defendants did take the stand this is pretty much the two
biggest parts or 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 anything having naked pictures taken of of the kids at all one of the big things in this in this trial is when
they had they had three doctors that were taking evidence you know they were they're 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 ah 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
saying 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 three months and 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 Bucky of all 52 counts yeah 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 Bucky was guilty as
well 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 love a good old jailhouse snitch they should be they
should not be legal 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 taking known
jailhouse snitches and putting them in there and then obviously having them snitch 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 stand one time one day he has to come back the next day
but he did he never showed up so they arrested him so the first day they got his jailhouse snitch and they
got him all dressed up and they got him in a suit and they got him playing the game right and 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 Rey 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 sheriffs
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 [Music] the the thing here though captain we have Ray Bucky who is actually going
to be retried later this time on just six counts but this trial resulted in a hung jury the prosecution but hold on
this is two years roughly two years after the the first trial what I have here is that the second
trial lasted from May 7 1990 to July 27 1990. yeah 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 Bucky dismissed in the end
Ray Bucky 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 15
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 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 our archaeologist to do some digs Indiana Jones and uh 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 right so
um 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 you could 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 jump the fence one day and and put a pentagram on something right uh and I'm I'm not trying to make
excuses it's just I I don't buy any of that stuff I don't look well you're you're spot on because there were people
that were like spray painting graffiti on the school and on the grounds after these charges were brought forward
no and my thing is these Tunnels for example forget the hot air balloon 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 well 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 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 you if they were to question if they would have sent out a note to 200 and some uh parents and said look
there 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 what I mean
I I think you would have gotten that back anyways because the age of the kid you're talking about an age range of
three to five six uh this is prime time for for kids to make up stories I know that one of the doctors that they've
used the way that she is documented cases and child abuse that that has become she's really 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 uh anything that she did in this trial that we didn't get a 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 uh I'm
I'm not certain you you could be spot on with that I I don't know the details here's my thing it's like again I I
don't want to fault 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 could you explain all the the abuse marks or the scar tissues or
whatever these medical professionals are saying and I understand that it's it was
early in the study of all this but is it possible that there was was some things
that were going on well that's 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 that you could have a child who was abused just by somebody else that 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 and 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 that 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 a 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 you 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 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 all together 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
Bucky 25 year old Ray Bucky 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 Bucky
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 I still
stand by that and that's where you wonder if we have 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 biased 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 Bucky 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 the 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 in a
1990 article by David Shaw who was a Pulitzer prize-winning media critic for the LA Times whose deeply reported
series were often tough on his own newspaper but in regards to the media's coverage
of the McMartin trials he posed a very simple question where was the skepticism in the media citing
Pac journalism and hysteria that marked the early coverage of the McMartin case from the article which is just a
fantastic read anyone can find it just Google McMartin trial LA Times Shaw 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 Pac 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 to re-watch
it 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 prime time 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
Bucky 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 well claims of fantasy really and
hot air balloons and secret tunnels and and 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
end 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 shot childhoods ruined Ray Bucky who spends
over five years in jail five years of his life his life was gone after this there is no
going back right you know he had to leave change 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 Rey when he was on Stan and the second trial was
why do you like kids so much and his reply was because they're honest [Music] foreign
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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. The full archive of True Crime Garage is available on the Stitcher listening app - for FREE. Our show “Off the Record” is only on Stitcher Premium. For a FREE month of listening go to http://stitcherpremium.com/truecrimegarage and use promo code GARAGE

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Brief Summary

The McMartin preschool trial reveals flawed investigations and bizarre allegations of child molestation, leading to acquittals and lasting community impact.

Key points

The McMartin Preschool Investigation. A criminal investigation into child molestation at a preschool leads to shocking allegations.
Bizarre Allegations Unfold. Accusations include satanic rituals and bizarre claims from children.
Judy Johnson's Accusations. Judy Johnson reports her son was molested, sparking a controversial investigation.
Claims of Abuse and Fantastical Allegations. Initial claims included bizarre accusations like flying children and satanic rituals.
The McMartin Trial's Length and Cost. The McMartin trial lasted seven years and cost $15 million, resulting in zero convictions.
The Smoking Gun. The discovery of a secret room and tunnel raises serious allegations of abuse.

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