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

explore today's musthave Trends and Innovative Styles at Mrs be's clearance and outlet shop oneof aind finds in
today's musthave Trends explore wall to--all deals Furniture flooring mattresses Home Accents seasonal
favorites and more discover unique new home decor pillows accessories and more there's something perfect for your style
and budget there's new inventory every day add up to 80% off suggested retail discover the style and savings of Mrs
be's clearance and Outlet when it comes to Quality sleep Ashley has you covered with top mattress brands
at winning prices and with special financing options available you can snooze now and pay later plus your
mattress purchase helps give the gift of better sleep to children in need and US
Special Operations forces visit your local Ashley store or shop online today and make every snooze count financing is
subject to credit approval C store or ashley.com for [Music] details [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever
you are whatever you are doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who just this
morning very astutely pointed out that right now at every company in America the IT guy is more important than the
CEO he is the captain welcome welcome welcome I am your captain of the flying garage ship it's good to be seen and
it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a [Music] friend today I am so happy that we are
featuring the very great Sund Drifter by some really good people over at South County Brewing Company garage grade 4
and a half bottle caps out of five sundrifter is a double India Pale ale New England Style with an ABV of 8% and
it's loaded with flavor it's heavy and a little dank like one would expect but balanced out nicely with notes of white
peach white gummy bear white wine and just a little hint of pineapple and I first want to send out a special thanks
to my friend cheers to Patrick R out in Hanover Pennsylvania and a big shout out
to Megan and Millis Massachusetts all right I'm going to give this one my best shot here here Captain cuz we have
Camila [Music] from I can't do it somewhere in Sweden a big shout out to Maggie in Baton Rouge
Louisiana next up we have Jackie and Joe in the UK and last but certainly not least we have Nicole in Jacksonville
Florida everybody that we mentioned went to True Crim garage.com and contributed
to this week's beer fund and for that we give you a big thank you and if you're on the mailing list check your email
because you have a special promo code that's good for this week only as a thank you for being a part of the True
Crime garage Army all right that's enough of the business everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's
talk some true crime [Music] sh [Music] September 8th 1983 dear parent this department is
conducting a criminal investigation involving child molestation Ray Bucky an employee of
Virginia MCM Martin'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
otomy 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 Al loone 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 in the enclosed stamped return envelope as soon as possible we will contact you if circumstances
dictate same 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 12th 1983 Judy Johnson called police reporting that her 2-year-old son who
was attending the MCM Martin preschool was being molested at the school by 25-year-old Ray Bucky ry's mother is
Peggy McMartin Bucky and his grandmother is Virginia McMartin ry'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 I don't think it was as easy as just signing up and getting your kid in the MCM Martin 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 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 MCM Martin 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 Woman 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 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 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 MH
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 B 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 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 uhhuh 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 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 20 50 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 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 does 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 the80s and we're going to see a HBO documentary uh capturing the fredman'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 and 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 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 and and 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 dmer if you see his the first trial he he has those dmer classes
on and so I don't Superman dmer 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 2 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 plad 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 gross 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 died she was found dead at her home on December 19th 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 mhm and they said well we we kind of need you to
come in right 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 bow movements so Judy
believed that the boy had been a 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 like Clark K 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 is just sad it 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 8 Days Later the da the
district attorney said there was insufficient evidence against five of the accused and actually requested a
dismissal of charges yeah so the da 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
counts of molestation and conspiracy [Music] with all of the uncertainty in the world
feeling safe at home has never been more important which is why I want to talk to
you about Simply Safe home security they're longtime friends of our show and for a good reason Simply Safe has made
it easy to finally get comprehensive protection for your home there is no technician or salesperson that needs to
come and disrupt your house you don't need to pay any outrageous monthly fees or sign a 2-year contract just order
online and set it up yourself in under an hour your home is protected 24/7 with emergency dispatch for break-ins fire
and more all for just 50 cents a day and we're not the only fans of Simply Safe US News and world reports named
simplysafe best overall home security of 2020 head to simplysafe decomg garage and you'll get free shipping and a
60-day money back guarantee that's simplys safe.com garage to make sure they know our show sent you from Simply
Safe and all of us here wishing you safety and good [Music] health all right we're back cheers M 18 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 but Lucky 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 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% 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 son Judy Johnson's son not only we're not even talking about a photo lineup that
he couldn't pick Ro Ray Bucky out of he couldn't pick Ray Bucky out of school photos they were showing the child
School photos and like just some of these claims the initial claim like we said Judy Johnson's claimed 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 them up it's 4 and 1/2 to 5 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 SE of the school to see if there would you know digging stuff up to see if there was remains of
animals found which correct 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 mhm 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 they make all these claims public and
then you have key McFarland which was this 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 the Smoking
Gun and then 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 it's like a Smoking
Gun in the other way well eventually Captain Peggy McMartin was released this on 20
$95,000 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 it but for some reason they
were dead set on bringing down Bucky and his family that's where the letter came out
and that 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 MH 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 tried to 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 we're we're already 3 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 and
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 key McFarland which is a social worker
but she was dating on a personality that's a conflict 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 M 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 their rest of their lives and like we've seen time and time
again kids that are abused be can become abusers right it's a cycle ay 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 at at some point these claims that you are giving some Credence to once you realize that it's
false and 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 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 the they shut
down the MCM Martin's family business and the MCM Martin 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 $1.5 million Bond and after he has been in jail for
about 5 years he's been in jail for 5 years yes he's being charged with something but can you think of can you
imagine being in jail for 5 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 till
proven guilty he should be out I yeah they waved for no no release for Bucky because of the
supposed death threats against possible Witnesses right but see 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 of 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 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 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 SC 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 uh 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 examiner saying hey look there's some signs there's not 100% 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 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 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 seem to be convinced that Ray Bucky was guilty as
well well and 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 and well you also had one of your least
favorite things in this case a jail house 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 Rey 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 Ry I know I don't know much about it
because I didn't look into that angle because it was discredited yeah so 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 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 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 sheriffs on each side of him as he's testifying yeah
now it didn't go well for the prosecution but these jail house 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 mhm
mhm 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 I roughly two years after the the first trial what I have here is that the
second trial lasted from May 7th 1990 to July 27th 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 5 years without ever being convicted of
committing any crime at all yeah there should be a lawsuit there in the end two the trial lasted 7 years and
cost 15 million 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 a AR 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 invest tigation 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 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 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 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 we put in
this secret room if you find that secret room in 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 th 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 cuz 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 would have questioned 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 Ry murder somebody you know what I mean mhm I I think you would have
got that back anyways because the age of the kid you're talking about a age range
of three to five six this is prime time for for kids to make up stories mhm 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 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 convi conviction to
modernday practice and I I'm I'm unclear on that cuz I thought it was this was examined
and 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 spoton with that I I don't know the details here's my thing is like again I I don't
want to full detectives or police or the prosecution for wanting to get a child molester that is the scum of 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 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 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 juror's words where the one jur
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 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 allegation
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 well
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 they're dropping
charges against we went from seven accused down to two right and 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 bow 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 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 adult 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 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 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 pullitzer prizewinning 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 pack 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 MCM Martin at times exposed basic flaws in the way the Contemporary news
organizations functioned pack journalism laziness superficiality cozy relationships with
prosecutors a comp comptitive 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 rewatch it CU
I actually watched it when I was much younger was 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
and indictment actually won a couple of awards it 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 you know claims of fantasy
really and hot air balloons and secret tunnels and and these devil worshipping games I I do not want 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 CH childhood's
ruin Ray Bucky who spends over five years in jail five years of his life taken away from him his his life was
gone after this there is no going back right you know he had to leave Chang 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 Ry 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
the time to protect your home with Simply Safe there's no technician no salesperson that needs to come to your
home just order online and set it up yourself you don't need to pay any outrageous monthly fees or sign up for
for a 2-year contract your home is protected 24/7 with emergency dispatch all for just 50 cents a day head to
simplysafe docomo and get free shipping and a 60-day money back guarantee at simplysafe
docomo protect you protect your family at simplys safe.com garage and here's a little recommended reading this week we
are recommending Star Spangled Scandal sex murder and the trial that changed America one day an anonymous note sets
into motion a tragic course of events that culminates in a shocking murder this true story sparked a national
debate on Madness honor virtue Fidelity and the rule of law check out Star Spangled Scandal and as always for
everything True Crime Check out true Crim garage.com yeah and we know everybody's world is upside down so we
want to thank you for joining us again in the garage and until next week be good be kind and don't
[Music] litter this show is sponsored by better help do you look forward to the holidays maybe
you struggle with seasonal Blues this time of year can be a lot and it's natural to feel some sadness or even
anxiety about it but adding something new and positive to your life can counteract some of those feelings
therapy can be a bright spot something to look forward to to make you feel grounded and to give you you the tools
to manage everything going on if you're thinking of starting therapy give better
help a try it's entirely online designed to be convenient flexible and suited to
your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist
at any time for no additional charge find your bright spot this season with betterhelp visit betterhelp.com garage
today to get 10% off your first month that's better help hp. / garage

McMartin Pre-School ////// 390

Part 1 of 1 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com (http://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 (http://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

Beer Fund: https://truecrimegarage.com/home

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com (https://pcm.adswizz.com) for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brief Summary

The McMartin preschool trial involved false allegations of child molestation, leading to acquittals and significant community impact.

Key points

Investigation Begins. A criminal investigation into child molestation begins with Ray Bucky's arrest.
Judy Johnson's Tragic Story. Judy Johnson, the mother who made initial accusations, dies before testifying.
Bizarre Allegations. Accusations against Ray Bucky include bizarre claims of satanic rituals and abuse.
Simply Safe Home Security. Simply Safe offers easy, comprehensive protection for your home without outrageous fees.
The McMartin Trial Overview. The McMartin preschool trial lasted 7 years and cost $15 million, resulting in zero convictions.
Peggy McMartin Bucky's Struggles. Peggy McMartin Bucky shares the devastating impact of the allegations on her life.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is serious allegations, obviously despicable acts committed.

The gravity of the accusations against Ray Bucky is highlighted.

8:08WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

More from True Crime Garage TV

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.