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foreign [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who just this morning very astutely pointed out that
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right now at every company in America the IT guy is more important than the CEO he is the capital welcome welcome I
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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
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for telling a friend [Music] today I am so happy that we are featuring the very great Sun Drifter by
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some really good people over at South County Brewing Company garage grade four and a half bottle caps out of five
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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
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Hanover Pennsylvania and a big shout out to Megan and Millis Massachusetts all right I'm going to give this one my best
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shot here Captain because we have Camilla from uh I can't do it somewhere in Sweden a big
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shout out to Maggie and Baton Rouge Louisiana next up we have Jackie and Joe in the UK and last certainly not least
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garage Army all right that's enough of the business everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some
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true crime oh foreign [Music] foreign [Music] 1983 dear parent this department is conducting a criminal
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investigation involving child molestation Ray Bucky an employee of Virginia mcmartin's preschool was arrested
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September 7th 1983 by this department the following procedure is obviously an unpleasant one
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but to protect the rights of your children as well as the rights of the accused this inquiry is necessary
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for a complete investigation records indicate that your child has been or is currently a student at the
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preschool we are asking your assistance in continuing this investigation please question your child to see if he
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or she has been a witness to any crime or if he or she has been a victim our investigation indicates that
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possible criminal acts include oral sex fondling of genitals buttocks or chest area
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and sodomy possibly committed under the pretense of taking the child's temperature
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also photos may have been taken of children without their clothing any information from your child
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regarding having ever observed Ray Bucky to leave a classroom alone with a child
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during any nap period or if they have ever observed Ray Bucky tie up a child is important
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please complete the enclosed information form and return it to this department and the enclosed stamped return envelope
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as soon as possible we will contact you if circumstances dictate sane we ask you to please keep this
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investigation strictly confidential because of the nature of the charges and the highly emotional effect it will have
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on our community please do not discuss this investigation with anyone outside your immediate
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family do not contact or discuss the investigation with Raymond Bucky any member of the accused defendant's family
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or employees connected with the McMartin preschool [Music] [Music] on August 12 1983 Judy Johnson called police
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reporting that her two-year-old son who was attending the McMartin preschool was
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being molested at the school by 25 year old Ray Bucky Rey's mother is Peggy McMartin Bucky and his grandmother is
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Virginia McMartin Rey's grandmother is the founder and owner of the preschool the Bucky family
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runs and operates this preschool the detective that caught the case she would start her investigation by
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interviewing a Baker's Dozen this included Johnson's son and 12 parents that Johnson passed along their
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information to the detective okay Captain so this is serious allegations obviously alleged
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despicable acts committed and your victim is very young roughly just two and a half years of age
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the boy's mother is making the report to the police but obviously she was not there when the crimes or alleged crimes
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were committed right this type of Predator is actually more dangerous because if these allegations are true
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these individuals are around children all day long yes many many potential victims at the ready for this this
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offender so the investigation starts off like this first the little boy is unable
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to pick Ray Bucky out of school photos when talking with the police a medical examination of the boy showed
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no signs of sexual abuse and really failed to produce any evidence at all regarding sexual abuse
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but we all know that there is not always signs nor evidence present the other parents interviewed the the
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first 12 basically all said that they had no reason to suspect that anything nefarious was going on at the school at
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all and I'm actually wondering here Captain if some of these parents out of this first 12 if they even knew Ray
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Bucky or probably didn't know Ray Bucky or who he was well this was a prestigious preschool
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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
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your kid and the McMartin preschool yeah in a little side note here regarding Judy Johnson's son
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she just dropped him off at the school one day like months and months before these allegations ever came out he he
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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
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get your child into this school this is Manhattan Beach right so she just dropped off her kid and they just had to
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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
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were all they were kind of confused but the mcmartins um are pretty from from my understanding look you can
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look at it one way or the other either they're despicable horrible people or they got into this business because they
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really do care about children well the mother and the founder of the preschool received a lot of different Awards
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actually got like women of the Year award back in the day for her work at this preschool so they didn't like kick
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the kid out they just accepted him at the school and put him into the system right and once they figured out who the
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mom was he just became a student but his first day at the school from my understanding she just dropped him off
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and didn't speak to anybody well so far this investigation is not looking so great we have the boy who cannot pick
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out the accused from school photos and we don't have any physical signs of abuse that the medical examiners can
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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
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and of the Bucky family home are conducted during these searches police collected evidence none of it damning at
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all mostly this is just typical household items of note we have a rubber duck a graduation gown and a few
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pictures that were cut out of a Playboy magazine despite any real evidence at all police
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did arrest Ray Bucky this was on September 7th 1983 but the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office declined to
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prosecute due to the lack of evidence and they wanted more they wanted more evidence collected and Ray Bucky was
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released later that same day so the next day the Manhattan Beach police sent the letter that was read by
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our amazing host during the trailer this letter went to 200 parents naming Rey as
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a child molestation suspect the letter is asking for the help of the parents of these children to question
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their kids find out if the children knew of anything going on at the school ask them about fondling about oral sex about
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sodomy the difficult thing here look there's many difficult things going on with this situation the letter doesn't
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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
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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
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untrained parents who are now going to be questioning their children some of these kids are very young like two and a
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half years old they're asking them about things that they at two and a half they
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don't even know about these things they don't know what this stuff is born you have to be careful when you're
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questioning children where you're not leading them or you're not giving them the answers and so like you said these
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parents aren't trained to do so and it's weird to put out this letter because again the initial question of
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the 12 parents I would say is enough because just because there's maybe some smoke or we have an allegation doesn't
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mean there's fire and you you go and raid this individual's home you find nothing right the list of things that
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they find rubber ducky cap and gown what does that have to do with anything well
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the graduation gown will later be later we're going to be told that that graduation gown was like a a satanic
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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
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a graduation gown like oh yeah people have them in their homes It is worn during a ritual when you graduate from
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school right right on October 17th the L.A County DA's office asked the Children's Institute
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International to interview children who attended the McMartin preschool it looks
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like in the end captain that they interviewed about 250 children the interview techniques used were
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highly suggestive and they even encouraged the children to pretend or speculate about supposed events
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it was claimed that 360 children had been abused this is after speaking with the 250.
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there were examinations and the children were photographed some of them were photographed and one child in particular
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and I'm using air quotes here was photographed by an expert who says that there was some kind of scarring that
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happened on the child which she stated was caused by anal penetration later research demonstrated that the
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methods of questioning used on these children were as said extremely suggestive and leading to false
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accusations and others believe that the questioning itself may have even led to false memory syndrome
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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
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all of the information I could find says they only interviewed about 250 kids so
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I I'm kind of guessing here captain that a lot of those 250 would have had to be
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victims themselves but may have also witnessed something maybe their stories included witnessing acts on others that
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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
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that's very difficult to get over here is when you're interviewing this many children
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and it's been said that not one of these children had made any claims of abuse before these interviews right but after
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the these interviews are conducted you got hundreds of them saying that they were abused well again it goes back to
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who's questioning them and and what level of expertise do they have questioning children and this is the 80s
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and we're going to see a HBO documentary uh capturing the freedmens where they go
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into depth of how how not to question kids and how you can get kids to say certain things and and this will
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actually be put into practice after the 80s and after this trial obviously well in one very basic thing of child
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psychology that that we know is when a child's being interviewed especially a very
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young child is being questioned by an adult regardless of who that adult is most of
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the time the child will see the adult as some type of authority and if I were to hold up a stop sign
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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
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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
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sentence again ask the same question again the child then assumes that they have given the wrong answer right and so
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they they want to please The Authority they will search for a new answer and it's a lot like the Jesse Miss Kelly
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interview really I mean they just keep asking him the same questions over and over again he keeps changing his answers
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until until they move on and then he's like oh cool I got the right answer we we have
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all these kids now with claims of sexual abuse in in some even bizarre claims and
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we're going to get into some of these but keep in mind this all started with only one person coming forward only one
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mother came forward well and you have Bucky working in his family's business and he looks like a
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a mix between I'd say Christopher Reeves and Jeffrey Dahmer if you see his the first trial he has
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those Dahmer glasses on and so like a Superman Dahmer baby yeah I don't I don't think that uh helps him much
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well in early 1984 Social Services suspended the school's license and the school was shut down
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about two months later seven preschool employees four of which are from the McMartin family
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they are indicted on 115 charges of child molestation all seven of the accused were jailed
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all seven pled innocent to all charges they were charged with sexually abusing 18 children over a 10-year period now in
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the coming months the number of victims regarding official charges would grow significantly from 18 to 41 child
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victims these 41 young victims will need to testify or issue statements for the preliminary hearings the first child
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witness states that he and some of the other students played what he called naked games and he was touched
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inappropriately in bad spots by some of the defendants the other thing that we will start
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hearing much more about during this time is that the defendants used death threats to silence the children
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on June 6th this was the start of an 18-month preliminary hearing of the alleged 41 child victims only 13 of them
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would take the stand but then in a stunning turn of events the mother who made the first
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accusations against Ray Bucky remember this is Judy Johnson she dies she was found dead at her home on December 19
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1985 at the young age of 44. she died from a liver ailment commonly found in Alcoholics well it's even more
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weird than that because she was actually supposed to testify the day that they found her because she
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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
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need you to come in it's important for the jury to hear your testimony and then they find her
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dead at her house and there were some people that were suspicious of her death in regards to the charges against this
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again air quotes child sex ring that thought oh it's it's awfully convenient that she died just before being able to
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testify yeah so this next part this is straight from the Wikipedia page on the case because they had this summarized
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just so perfectly that I wanted to include it the page says some of the accusations were described as bizarre
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you can say that again and we're going to get into that some of the accusations included Satanic ritual abuse so some of
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the kids said not only were they sexually abused but they witnessed flying witches some of the kids said
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they traveled in a hot air balloon and some were taken through tunnels that were located beneath the school
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in one photo lineup one child identified actor Chuck Norris as one of the abusers
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there were claims that a rabbit a goat and a baby were all sacrificed in front of the children
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there were claims of orgies at car washes and at airports and of children being flushed down toilets to secret
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rooms where they would be abused then cleaned up and presented back to their parents at the end of the school day
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some child interviewees talked of a game called naked movie star AKA Chuck Norris
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and suggested that they were forcibly photographed nude Judy Johnson who as we said passes away even her initial
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allegations were quite bizarre she came forward because her little boy was having painful bowel movements so
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Judy believed that the boy had been abused and sodomized her son said that he was not but her
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claims and allegations against Ray Bucky not only included fondling abuse and sodomy but she also told police that Ray
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Bucky had superpowers and that he could fly that clerk yeah right and again remember her son was not able to pick
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Ray Bucky out from school photos it it would eventually come out that Judy Johnson was once diagnosed with and
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hospitalized for acute paranoid schizophrenia this this is what's really sad here you know when we when we review
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these stories Captain there's always like this smaller sad story hidden Within These larger stories
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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
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needed a lot of help and I think that she she didn't recognize because of things she was
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suffering from I don't think she recognized that she needed help and she didn't get it she didn't get the help
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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
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judge ordered all seven defendants to a superior court trial on 135 counts of molestation and conspiracy
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but very quickly that would change because just eight days later the D.A the district attorney said there was
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insufficient evidence against five of the accused and actually requested a dismissal of charges yeah so the D.A was
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going to move forward against just two of the accused now the two remaining are Ray Bucky and his mother so Peggy
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McMartin Bucky and Ray Bucky remained in custody awaiting trial facing about 100
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counts of molestation and conspiracy foreign [Music] with all of the uncertainty in the world
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[Music] all right we're back Cheers Cheers all right so so far let me see if I'm
00:25:37
following this correctly we have these initial allegations it's coming from a mother that we we know has some mental
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issues definitely has a drinking problem There's real no proof found the child can't even pick
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Ray Bucky out of a lineup and this would be the person that they're claiming abused him
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and then they send out this letter this letter goes out to hundreds of parents like we both said they're not qualified
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to question their children we get crazy claims these underground tunnels hot air balloons
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and because of these claims and because of these allegations a lot of them were saying well yeah these other kids were
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there while this was going on so therefore since it can't just be Ray Bucky that's
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involved it has to be these other teachers and these other administrators at the preschool have to know what's
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going on there's also other claims that they're threatening them with guns they're killing
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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
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and then it becomes this whole while this is not only just a sex ring but this is also a child in pornography
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they're taking pictures they're filming things and it's all satanic the claims by the children are just bizarre now
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keep in mind some of them are very young some of them were current students at the preschool
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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
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physically not possible I mean just science alone tells us some of these things 100 percent did not happen
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you would think that these experts would take this a little step further and say
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well our technique that we're using to question these kids is coming up with some some pretty weird stuff here maybe
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it's all weird stuff maybe it's all made up we we have and then you have the the sun
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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
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couldn't pick Ray Bucky out of school photos they were showing the child's School photos and
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like just some of these claims the initial claim like we said Judy Johnson's claim that
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Ray Bucky could fly we know Ray Bucky cannot fly and one of the students said that about
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the orgies at the they were having orgies with the with these adults at car washes and airports yet there's no
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witnesses to any of this stuff one of the kids says that they flew him and several other kids flew with the
00:28:36
owner from California to Florida on a plane that had no windows that it left from
00:28:43
the airport and then at the end of the day he and the kids were there when their
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parents came to pick him up it's four and a half to five hours just to fly one way California to Florida
00:28:55
right and then to fly back it's impossible that that the child would be there I mean there was mention of a
00:29:01
devil house where Lions lived we also have situations where some of these kids are saying things like an
00:29:10
elephant was killed at the school in front of children that Ray Bucky held up rabbits and cut
00:29:17
off their ears and told them that if they told their parents that's what he would do to their parents yeah and they
00:29:24
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
00:29:32
found correct that there were none there was some claims where some of the kids talked about being taken off of the
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school and going to houses the weird thing is some of those houses actually existed
00:29:48
but again how are they questioned and then one of the main reporters at the time
00:29:55
that kept reporting about this on air which that's another thing we have all these claims and because it made good TV
00:30:04
that make all these claims public and then you have key McFarlane which was this a social worker that would
00:30:11
interview the children using puppets and they had tons of footage of this and everybody thought this was the nail
00:30:21
on the coffin this is the Smoking Gun and the defense attorneys said okay we want to see it and the prosecution did
00:30:29
not want them to see this and from defense attorney's mouth which obviously they they have an agenda but
00:30:36
they say you can watch these films and you can watch uh these interviews and it proves that nothing happened
00:30:45
right right that's like a Smoking Gun in the other way well eventually Captain Peggy
00:30:51
McMartin was released this on 295 thousand dollars bail but Ray Bucky was denied bail
00:31:01
remember this whole thing started back in 1983 in our timeline now we are at January of 1986 but it won't be until
00:31:10
April 20th of 1987 that the court begins jury selection so you have the right to
00:31:18
a speedy trial but you just might not get one what you see here is a process that
00:31:24
drags on and on and the longer it goes the more the case just keeps falling apart right
00:31:30
we see the reduction in victims then we see the reduction of charges and perpetrators by October of 1988 now five
00:31:41
years into this process we are down to just two accused and now there are just 65 charges left and only 11 victims
00:31:51
what I think you have here Captain is what you were getting at with those videotapes I think when the prosecutors
00:31:58
are looking at these videotapes and watching them they're going well we can't put this kid on the stand he's
00:32:04
he's making claims that are scientifically incorrect that cannot happen right they are picking and
00:32:12
choosing which victims to believe right but this is this is where it gets tough for
00:32:19
me because the initial investigation I think at that point you go well there's some claims we're going to keep
00:32:27
an eye on him but for some reason they were dead set I'm bringing down Bucky and his family
00:32:35
that's where the letter came out and then and again before you even go to trial before you charge anybody take
00:32:43
these hundreds of claims and like you said if somebody's saying well we went down the yellow brick road and ran into
00:32:51
the Scarecrow and the The Lion and the Tin Man that maybe that didn't happen and we should
00:32:59
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
00:33:08
pile of that possibly could happen and so again you want to ruin these individuals lives
00:33:14
by making these claims against teachers that worked in this preschool could you imagine being a teacher and you've done
00:33:21
nothing but try to help kids and and nurture kids and you're in this profession because
00:33:29
you love kids and now you're being accused of satanic uh worships and satanic sacrifice in the in the sense of
00:33:41
molesting these kids and you're lumped into this pile with zero evidence zero eyewitnesses some of the like you
00:33:51
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
00:34:01
done initially and also this became this became a story like you said the first accusations 1983 were
00:34:13
were already three four years into this thing these news stations are reporting on
00:34:19
this almost daily oh the media loved this story because they loved the the Fantastical
00:34:26
accusations how bizarre these accusations were they loved it in the really the these seven people especially
00:34:34
the McMartin family they were really being tried in the court of public opinion by the media right what they did was you
00:34:43
know we have these preliminary hearings going on they didn't allow any cameras in the courtroom because we had children
00:34:49
who were taking the stand child victims right they didn't know the media does not know the name of the child but they
00:34:57
can hear they're listening in on closed circuit TV and then they're running to the to the
00:35:04
Press they're running to the camera with each one of these crazy Fantastical accusations and like I said Kim
00:35:12
McFarlane which is a social worker but she was dating on air personality right that's a comp who's covering the trial
00:35:20
right that's a conflict of interest right there and I try to take a step back and think
00:35:26
if I'm a detective and I hear these claims the initial claim well I want to get this bastard right I
00:35:35
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
00:35:44
messed up for the rest of their lives and like we've seen time and time again kids that are abused because can become
00:35:51
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
00:36:00
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
00:36:07
it's enough that it's like you said it creates this vicious cycle so this is something
00:36:13
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
00:36:22
once you keep running into brick walls and just like the tunnels I mean you start digging up you start trying to
00:36:29
find before they dug up anything the rooms that these kids kept on claiming oh that's the room and we went into a
00:36:37
tunnel well there are initial checks that they could do to find out there's no tunnel here right
00:36:44
so as at some point these claims that you are giving some Credence to once you realize that it's false and
00:36:56
it's okay and you can go okay well we messed up because we questioned these kids wrong
00:37:02
but you know what these kids will forget about that they'll the kids will forget
00:37:06
about making false claims pretty quickly once this all goes away but in the process you ruin the school
00:37:15
that everybody said was a prestigious preschool to go to winning Awards protecting children
00:37:23
safe environment and because some initial claims and you didn't even do a background check on the people that are
00:37:29
making the claims you ruined so many people's lives yeah I mean they shut down the
00:37:35
mcmartin's family business and the McMartin family lost everything during the course of all this thing they spent
00:37:44
all their money on their defense in February of 1989 Ray Bucky is finally released from jail this on one and a
00:37:53
half million dollars Bond and after he has been in jail for about five years he's been in jail for five years
00:38:02
he's being charged with something but can you think of can you imagine being in jail for five years and you've
00:38:08
actually not been convicted of anything yet you're you're still in the trial process right well but that look
00:38:15
it's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty so if he's innocent until proven guilty he should be out uh yeah
00:38:23
they waved for no no release for Bucky because of the supposed death threats against possible Witnesses right
00:38:33
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
00:38:42
see the prosecution isn't very happy with their case because this thing just keeps getting
00:38:47
reduced and reduced and reduced during the trial both the defendants did take the stand this is pretty much the two
00:38:54
biggest parts or or highlights if you will of the trial a lot of times defendants don't take the
00:39:01
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
00:39:10
is watching both defendants of course strongly denied ever abusing any students or any child ever at all right
00:39:18
during the trial some of the children's testimony stated that the naked movie star game was actually a rhyming taunt
00:39:26
used to tease other children this was something that the kids made up and then it turned into this whole weird sex ring
00:39:33
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
00:39:41
star you know how kids come up with dumb little Rhymes to say and so this had actually nothing to do
00:39:49
with anything having naked pictures taken of of the kids at all one of the big things in this in this trial is when
00:39:57
they had they had three doctors that were taking evidence you know they were they're examining these kids they're
00:40:04
taking photos they're documenting everything because they wanted to be able to say look these are the claims
00:40:10
I'm making and these are the reasons I'm making these claims and a lot of them talked about well
00:40:16
because of this abuse that you can see on the genitals and on different areas that you could see scars or scar tissue
00:40:25
and and they had all three which was a great move by the defense team separately they said okay can you point
00:40:32
out the area and they had all three experts and all three of them pointed out different areas
00:40:39
yeah so none of them matched at all when I initially heard some of these claims ah the parents questioning
00:40:48
we know that that's probably not right we know they're not qualified to question their their kids but once these
00:40:55
kids are medically examined then I put a little more weight into that because we have medical examiners
00:41:02
saying hey look there's some signs there's not a hundred percent proof evidence but but there are definitely
00:41:09
some signs and so I put some weight into that on November 2nd 1989 the jurors began deliberations
00:41:18
for what would be three months and 16 days later that the jury ended their long deciding period and the
00:41:26
long-awaited verdict was in the jury acquitted both Peggy McMartin and Ray Bucky of all 52 counts yeah yeah but we
00:41:37
are not done yet because some of the jurors at a press conference following the trial stated that they believed the
00:41:44
children had in fact been molested but the evidence did not allow them to State who had committed the abuse
00:41:52
Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and much of the media seemed to be convinced that Ray Bucky was guilty as
00:41:59
well and hold on that that's going back to what I was saying about the medical examiners when you have a doctor
00:42:07
forget all this Hocus Pocus [ __ ] in these tunnels and these naked movie star games and all that stuff when you have a
00:42:15
doctor telling you that there's some evidence there it's like okay well again what the jury is saying is Well there's
00:42:24
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
00:42:31
a jailhouse snitch who comes for you I know how much you love a good old jailhouse snitch they should be they
00:42:38
should not be legal yeah he comes forward and says you know in jail Ray told me he confessed to me that he did
00:42:46
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
00:42:55
know much about it because I didn't look into that angle because it was discredited
00:43:01
yes well what here's here's the story so at the time California was getting in big trouble
00:43:09
because they were taking individuals that they weren't able to get anything out of and they were taking known
00:43:16
jailhouse snitches and putting them in there and then obviously having them snitch on
00:43:24
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
00:43:32
claiming for years I'm innocent not telling the authorities anything not cracking at all but somehow they put
00:43:43
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
00:43:51
so funny the guy shows up he's he's on stand one time one day he has to come back the next day
00:44:00
but he did he never showed up so they arrested him so the first day they got his jailhouse snitch and they
00:44:08
got him all dressed up and they got him in a suit and they got him playing the game right and combed hair and
00:44:15
everything doesn't show up the next day and they find him they have to arrest him so now
00:44:22
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
00:44:31
covered in tattoos and he his hair's not done and by the way there's two sheriffs
00:44:38
on each side of him as he's testifying yeah now it didn't go well for the prosecution but these jailhouse snitches
00:44:48
is it's stupid there's so many of them that have been false that it's like they should just be
00:44:56
it should be illegal [Music] the the thing here though captain we have Ray Bucky who is actually going
00:45:06
to be retried later this time on just six counts but this trial resulted in a hung jury the prosecution but hold on
00:45:16
this is two years roughly two years after the the first trial what I have here is that the second
00:45:26
trial lasted from May 7 1990 to July 27 1990. yeah this resulted in a hung jury the prosecution then gave up trying to
00:45:36
obtain any type of conviction in the case the case was closed with all charges against Ray Bucky dismissed in the end
00:45:45
Ray Bucky was jailed for five years without ever being convicted of committing any crime at all yeah there
00:45:54
should be a lawsuit there in the end too the trial lasted seven years and cost 15
00:46:01
million dollars at the time it was and this still may be the case today it was the longest and most expensive criminal
00:46:10
case in the history of the United States legal system and as said it was a trial
00:46:16
that ultimately resulted in a grand total of zero convictions and we said the McMartin preschool was closed but
00:46:26
the building itself was actually dismantled and guess what there were no tunnels under the school the secret
00:46:32
tunnels under the school were much of the alleged abuse supposedly took place they didn't even exist well they did
00:46:40
bring in our archaeologist to do some digs Indiana Jones and uh he he claims he found tunnels but a bunch of the
00:46:51
reporters that followed him his investigation was yeah he found tunnels once he dug the tunnels right so
00:46:59
um they found like Building Material down there but it was determined that it's believed that that building
00:47:06
material was pretty much just trash from where they constructed the school itself
00:47:10
well he also claimed that he found a plate that had a pentagram on it again I that could have been placed
00:47:18
there you could think about it this way if you're some teenager that lived in the area and you know what they're
00:47:24
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
00:47:32
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
00:47:39
that were like spray painting graffiti on the school and on the grounds after these charges were brought forward
00:47:45
no and my thing is these Tunnels for example forget the hot air balloon forget all that stuff
00:47:53
when these kids talk about these tunnels or these secret rooms don't you think the police and the
00:47:59
detectives and the the prosecutors want to find that right and they would have found that if there was a tunnel just a
00:48:07
simple tunnel they would have found that and to me you find that well there's your Smoking Gun because for a kid to
00:48:16
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
00:48:24
that tunnel and you have hundreds of parents that let their kids go there that never heard
00:48:29
about this room or the secret spot to me that's would be a Smoking Gun but this this whole scenario
00:48:40
is strange because you know we have to take allegations of sexual assault rape anything like that we have to take it
00:48:49
very serious yes and so on some level I go I can't fault these detectives because they wanted to
00:48:58
find something but they did it in such a way that I think you would have found anything if
00:49:04
if you if they were to question if they would have sent out a note to 200 and some uh parents and said look
00:49:13
there there was a murder that took place and we're trying to see if any of your kids saw it
00:49:19
I think would get back a percentage of kids that were like oh yeah I saw Ray murder somebody you know what I mean
00:49:28
I I think you would have gotten that back anyways because the age of the kid you're talking about an age range of
00:49:36
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
00:49:46
used the way that she is documented cases and child abuse that that has become she's really helped
00:49:57
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
00:50:04
wrong why would we adapt uh anything that she did in this trial that we didn't get a conviction to modern day
00:50:12
practice and I and I'm on I'm unclear on that because I thought it was this was examined in
00:50:21
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
00:50:30
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
00:50:38
don't want to fault detectives or police or the prosecution for wanting to get a
00:50:43
child molester that is the scum and the Earth I want them all to die all to burn in
00:50:50
hell right but when you have a physician saying they examine these patients and maybe they're
00:50:59
wrong on a percentage of the patients how could you explain all the the abuse marks or the scar tissues or
00:51:09
whatever these medical professionals are saying and I understand that it's it was
00:51:14
early in the study of all this but is it possible that there was was some things
00:51:21
that were going on well that's maybe not in the preschool but maybe at somebody's house that's
00:51:28
what I'm saying that's what that's where you take the jurors words where the one
00:51:33
juror said hey it's it's my opinion that maybe one or two of these kids were in fact molested but the evidence
00:51:42
doesn't tell us who who was the perpetrator of that Beyond A Reasonable Doubt so as you said it could
00:51:51
have been that you could have a child who was abused just by somebody else that has
00:51:58
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
00:52:04
of the accusers later the the mother changed the story of the abuser was her boyfriend and not
00:52:14
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
00:52:19
conviction or what but you go back to the initial allegations and you did have some good people along
00:52:26
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
00:52:33
ultimately wrong and had bad judgment that being the a lot of the District Attorney's office
00:52:39
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
00:52:46
were doing good work that they were helping a bad situation I think their intentions were good when you had 13
00:52:53
kids take the stand right there yeah and there were some real heroes along the way I mean you have a judge who is
00:53:02
saying hey let's reduce these charges because this this case is getting weird it doesn't make it's not making sense
00:53:08
you do have a prosecution team who is reducing charges who are letting accused go they're dropping charges
00:53:18
against we went from seven accused down to two right and we did have you know a detective that came out and told the
00:53:26
prosecuting team the DA's office says before you bring any official charges you need to take a look at this and you
00:53:33
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
00:53:39
allegations all together right of Judy Johnson contacting the police and saying hey my son is having some painful bowel
00:53:48
movements therefore he was sodomized well when you dig a Little Deeper you figure out that she not only accused Ray
00:53:57
Bucky 25 year old Ray Bucky of the preschool of as being one of the abusers but she also accused her estranged
00:54:04
husband as having sexually abused the boy right initially the boy says there was never any sexual abuse at all this
00:54:13
is the same woman that would go on to tell the detectives that she saw Ray Bucky
00:54:18
flying and that her ex-husband also raped a dog this this poor woman was mentally ill
00:54:27
and needed a lot of help and she was very paranoid and I think she I think she was afraid
00:54:35
of things that weren't actually happening but well back to the point of the 13 kids that testified some of those
00:54:44
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
00:54:51
two of them that as adults came forward and said I made the whole thing up because of the direction of the doctors
00:54:58
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
00:55:10
stand by that and that's where you wonder if we have that false memory syndrome that we were talking about
00:55:17
earlier as quoted in the San Francisco Examiner who like several other Publications had
00:55:23
some great coverage on the case and the examiner was much less biased than most of the papers at the time but the quotes
00:55:32
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
00:55:41
through hell and now we've lost everything and that couldn't be more that statement
00:55:46
could not be more true one of the jurors was quoted as saying I believe the children believed what they were saying
00:55:54
was true I could not tell if the children were telling what actually happened to them or if they were
00:56:00
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
00:56:09
1990 article by David Shaw who was a Pulitzer prize-winning media critic for the LA Times whose deeply reported
00:56:18
series were often tough on his own newspaper but in regards to the media's coverage
00:56:25
of the McMartin trials he posed a very simple question where was the skepticism in the media citing
00:56:32
Pac journalism and hysteria that marked the early coverage of the McMartin case from the article which is just a
00:56:41
fantastic read anyone can find it just Google McMartin trial LA Times Shaw wrote media feeding frenzies have become
00:56:49
almost commonplace in recent years but in McMartin the media seemed especially zealous in part in large part because of
00:56:58
the Monstrous bizarre and seemingly incredible nature of the original accusations
00:57:04
more than most big stories McMartin at times exposed basic flaws in the way the Contemporary news organizations
00:57:13
functioned Pac journalism laziness superficiality cozy relationships with prosecutors a
00:57:22
competitive Zeal that sends reporters off in a frantic search to be the first with the latest shocking allegation
00:57:31
responsible journalism be damned a tradition that often discourages reporters from Raising key questions if
00:57:40
they aren't first brought up by the principles in the story now Captain I watched I had to re-watch
00:57:48
it because I actually watched it when I was much younger was the HBO movie indictment the McMartin trial with James
00:57:57
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
00:58:06
producers an indictment actually won a couple of awards that won two prime time Emmys and two Golden Globes and
00:58:13
according to Wikipedia the film is cited as a watershed in the shift of ideas about Satanic ritual abuse recasting Ray
00:58:23
Bucky as a victim of hysterical conspiracy rather than a child abuser well again in this case to me
00:58:33
it still leaves questions as much as we go a lot of these claims were well claims of fantasy really and
00:58:44
hot air balloons and secret tunnels and and these devil worshiping games I I do not want to dismiss or especially
00:58:54
the 13 victims that testified and then the victims that still claim this abuse happened to them
00:59:02
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
00:59:10
end like okay we get this initial claim and then we send out letters to hundreds
00:59:14
of people what do you think you're going to get back at the end of the day you have this
00:59:19
good school that was closed you have teachers that their career was ruined you have kids that
00:59:27
possibly have false memories a whole family that went bankrupt shot childhoods ruined Ray Bucky who spends
00:59:35
over five years in jail five years of his life his life was gone after this there is no
00:59:43
going back right you know he had to leave change his name he got married as a son
00:59:50
I just want to leave you with this one thing and I believe this was in the second
00:59:57
trial I just want to leave you with this one thing because there's so many questions here
01:00:05
the first question that was asked by the prosecution to Rey when he was on Stan and the second trial was
01:00:13
why do you like kids so much and his reply was because they're honest [Music] foreign
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everything True Crime Check out True Crime garage.com yeah and we know everybody's world is upside down so we
01:01:46
want to thank you for joining us again in the garage and until next week be good be kind and don't let it
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[Music] foreign