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[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
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welcome I am your captain of the flying garage ship it's good to be seen as good
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to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend today I am so happy that we are featuring the very great Sun
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drifter by some really good people over at South County Brewing Company garage grade four and a half bottle caps out of
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five Sun drifter is a double India Pale Ale New England style with an ABV of 8% and it's loaded with flavor it's heavy
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and a little dank like one would expect but balanced out nicely with notes of white peach white gummy bear white wine
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and just a little hint of pineapple and I first want to send out a special thanks to my friend
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cheers to Patrick our Alan Hanover Pennsylvania and a big shout out to Megan and Millis Massachusetts alright
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I'm going to give this one my best shot here captain because we have Camilla from
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[Music] I can't do it somewhere in Sweden a big shout out some Maggie and Baton Rouge
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Louisiana next up we have Jackie and Joe in the UK and last but certainly not least we have Nicole in Jacksonville
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Florida everybody that we mentioned went to true-crime garage comm and contributed to this week's beer fund and
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for that we give you a big thing and if you're on the mailing list check your email because you have a special promo
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code that's good for this week only as a thank you for being a part of the true-crime garage army alright that's
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enough of the business everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
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[Music] September 8th 1983 dear parent this department is conducting a criminal investigation involving child
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molestation ray Buckey an employee of Virginia McMartins preschool was arrested September 7th 1983 by this
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department the following procedure is obviously an unpleasant one but to protect the rights of your children as
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well as the rights of the accused this inquiry is necessary for a complete investigation records indicate that your
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child has been or is currently a student at the preschool we are asking your assistance in continuing this
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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
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victim our investigation indicates that possible criminal acts include oral sex fondling of genitals buttocks or chest
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area and sodomy possibly committed under the pretense of taking the child's temperature also photos may have been
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taken of children without their clothing any information from your child regarding having ever observed Ray
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Buckey to leave a classroom alone with a child during any nap period or if they have ever observed Ray Buckey tie up a
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child is important please complete the enclosed information form and return it to this department and the enclosed
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stamp to return envelope as soon as possible we will contact you if circumstances dictate saying we asked
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you to please keep this investigation strictly confidential because of the nature of the charges and
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the highly emotional effect that will have on our community please do not discuss this investigation with anyone
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outside your immediate family do not contact or discuss the investigation with Raymond Buckey any member of the
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accused defendants family or employees connected with the McMartin preschool [Music]
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[Music] on August 12 1983 Judy Johnson called police reporting that her two-year-old
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son who was attending the McMartin preschool was being molested at the school by 25 year-old Ray Buckey Ray's
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mother is Peggy McMartin Buckey and his grandmother is Virginia McMartin Ray's grandmother is the founder and owner of
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the preschool the Bucky family runs and operates this preschool the detective that caught the case she would start her
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investigation by interviewing a baker's dozen this included Johnson's son and 12
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parents that Johnson passed along their information to the detective okay captain so this is serious allegations
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obviously alleged 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 Buckey out of school photos when talking with the police a medical examination of the boy showed no signs
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of sexual abuse and really failed to produce any evidence at all regarding sexual abuse but we all know that there
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is not always signs nor evidence present the other parents interviewed the the first 12 basically all said that they
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had no reason to suspect that anything nefarious was going on at the school at all and I'm actually wondering here
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captain if some of these parents out of this first 12 if they even knew Ray Buckey or probably didn't know Ray
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Buckey or who he was well this was a prestigious preschool a lot of these parents wanted their kids
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to be going there I don't think it was as easy as just signing up and getting your kid and the McMartin preschool yeah
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and a little side note here regarding Judy Johnson's son she just dropped him off at the school one day like months
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and months before these allegations ever came out he he wasn't technically like signed up to go to the school and as you
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said you may have had to jump through some hoops to get your child into this school this is Manhattan Beach right so
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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
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who the parent was why the kid was there they were all they were kind of confused
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but the McMartins are pretty from from my understanding look you can look at it one way or the other
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either they're despicable horrible people or they got into this business because they really do care about
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children well the mother and the founder of the preschool received a lot of different awards actually got a woman um
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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
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accepted him at the school and put him into the system right and once they figured out who the mom was he just
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became a student but his first day at the school from my understanding she just dropped him off and didn't speak to
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anybody well so far this investigation is not looking so great we have the boy who cannot pick out the accused from
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school photos and we don't have any physical signs of abuse that the medical examiners can find on the boy so we move
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on to the next steps right we need some evidence so searches of the school the grounds and of the Buckey family home
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are conducted during these searches police collected evidence none of it damning at all mostly this is just
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typical household items of note we have a rubber duck a graduation gown and a few pictures that were cut out of a
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Playboy magazine despite any real evidence at all police did arrest ray Buckey this was on September 7th
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1983 but the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office declined to prosecute due to the lack of evidence and they
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wanted more they wanted more evidence collected and Ray Buckey was released later that same day so the next day the
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Manhattan Beach police sent a letter that was read by our amazing host during the trailer this letter went to 200
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parents naming Ray as a child molestation suspect the letter is asking for the help of the parents of these
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children to question their kids find out if the children knew of anything going on at the school asked them about
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fondling about oral sex about sodomy the difficult thing here look there's many difficult things going on with this
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situation the letter doesn't seem like a great strategy doesn't seem to be well thought out I get that you are reaching
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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
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top of this you have untrained parents who are now going to be questioning their children some of these kids are
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very young like two and a half years old hmm they're asking them about things that
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they at two-and-a-half they don't even know about these things they don't know what this stuff is but one you have to
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be careful when you're questioning children where you're not leading them or you're not giving them the answers
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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
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initial questioning of the 12 parents I would say is enough because just because
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there's maybe some smoke or we have an allegation doesn't mean there's fire and you you go and raid this individuals
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home you find nothing right the list of things that they find it rubber ducky cap and gown what does that have to do
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with anything well the graduation gown will later be later we're going to be told that that
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graduation gown was like a satanic robe like a robe that somebody would wear during rituals or satanic Mass and at
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the end of the day it's it's just a graduation gown well yeah it's people have them in their
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homes it is worn during a ritual when you graduate from school right on October 17th
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the LA County DA's office asked the Children's Institute International to interview children who attended the
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McMartin preschool it looks like in the end captain that they interviewed about two hundred and fifty children the
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interview techniques used were highly suggestive and they even encouraged the children to pretend or speculate about
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supposed events it was claimed that three hundred and sixty children had been abused this is after speaking with
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the two hundred and fifty there were examinations and the children were photographed some of them were
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photographed and one child in particular and I'm using air quotes here was photographed by an expert who says that
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there was some kind of scarring that happened on the child which she stated was caused by anal penetration later
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research demonstrated that the methods of questioning used on these children were as said extremely suggestive and
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leading to false 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 that the victim number of potentially three
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hundred and sixty when all of the information I could find says they only interviewed about 250 kids so I'm I'm
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kind of guessing here captain that a lot of those 250 would have had to be victims themselves but may have also
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witnessed something maybe their stories included witnessing acts on others that were not interviewed right I don't know
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it doesn't it doesn't seem to track it doesn't really check out but one thing that's very difficult to get
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over here is when you're interviewing this many children and it's been said that not one of these children had made
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any claims of abuse before these interviews right but after the these interviews are conducted you got
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hundreds of them saying that they were abused well again and goes back to who's questioning them and what level of
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expertise do they have questioning and children and this is their 80s and we're gonna see HBO documentary capturing the
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Friedman's where they go into depth of how how not to question kids and how you can get kids to say certain things and
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and this will actually be put into practice after the 80s and after this trial obviously well in one very basic
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thing of child psychology that that we know is when a child's being interviewed especially a very young child is being
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questioned by an adult regardless of who that adult is most of the time the child
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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
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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
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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
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again the child then assumes that they have given the wrong answer right and so they they want to please the authority
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they will search for a new answer and it's a lot like the Jessie Misskelley interview really I mean they just keep
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asking him the same questions over and over again he keeps changing his answers until until they move on and then he's
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like oh cool I got the right answer we have all these kids now with claims of sexual abuse and in some even bizarre
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claims and we're gonna get into some of these but keep in mind this all started with only one
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person coming forward only one mother came forward well I do have Bucky working in his family's business and he
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looks like a mix between I'd say Christopher Reeves and Jeffrey Dahmer if you see his the first trial he has those
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Dahmer glasses on and so I think a Superman Dahmer baby yeah I don't I don't think that helps him much well in
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early 1984 social services suspended the school's license and the school was shut
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down about two months later seven preschool employees four of which are from the McMartin family they are
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indicted on 115 charges of child molestation all seven of the accused were jailed all seven pled innocent to
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all charges they were charged with sexually abusing a teen chick over a 10-year period now in the coming months
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the number of victims regarding official charges would grow significantly from eighteen to forty one child victims
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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 hearing much more about
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during this time is that the defendants used death threats to silence the children on June 6th this was the start
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of an 18-month preliminary hearing of the alleged 41 child victims only 13 of them would take the stand but then in a
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stunning turn of events the mother who made the first accusations against Ray Buckey remember this is Judy Johnson she
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dies she was found dead at her home on December 19 1985 at the young age of 44 died from a liver ailment commonly found
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in alcoholics well it's even more weird than that because she's actually supposed to testify the day that they
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found her because she actually called the judge and said hey I don't I don't want to I don't want to testify hmm and
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they said well we kind of need you to come in it's important for the jury to hear your testimony and then they find
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her dead at her house and there were some people that were suspicious of her death in regards to the charges against
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this again air quotes child sex ring they thought oh it's it's awfully convenient that she died just before
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being able to testify yeah so this next part this is straight from the Wikipedia
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page on the case because they had this summarize just so perfectly that I wanted to include it the page says some
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of the accusations were described as bizarre you can say that again and we're going to get into that some of the
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accusations included satanic ritual abuse so some of the kids said not only were they sexually abused but they
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witnessed flying witches some of the kids said they traveled in a hot-air balloon
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and some were taken through tunnels that were located beneath the school in one photo lineup one child identified actor
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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
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children there were claims of orgies at car washes and at airports and of children being flushed down toilets to
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secret rooms where they would be abused then cleaned up and presented back to their parents at the end of the school
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day some child interviewees talked of a game called naked movie star aka Chuck Norris and suggested that they
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were forcibly photographed nude Judy Johnson who as we said passes away even her initial allegations were quite
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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 claims and
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allegations against ray Buckey not only included fondling abuse and sodomy but she also told police that ray Buckey had
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superpowers and that he could fly hmm that clerk okay yeah right and again remember her son was not able
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to pick ray Buckey out from school photos it it would eventually come out that judy johnson was once diagnosed
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with and hospitalized for acute paranoid schizophrenia this this is what's really
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sad here you know when we when we review these stories captain there's always like this smaller sad story hidden
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within these larger stories the tragic life of judy johnson is just it's just sad it it breaks my heart this to me
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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
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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 passing away at such a young age
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in January of 1986 a judge ordered all seven defendants to a Superior Court trial on 135 counts of molestation and
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conspiracy but very quickly that would change because just eight days later the DA the district attorney said there was
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insufficient evidence against five of the accused and actually requested a dismissal of charges no so the DA was
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going to move forward against just two of the accused now the two remaining are Ray Buckey and his mother so Peggy
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McMartin Buckey and Ray Buckey remained in custody awaiting trial facing about 100 counts of molestation and conspiracy
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[Music] all right we're back cheers meme 18 cheers alright so so far let me see if I'm following this
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correctly we have these initial allegations it's coming from a mother that we we know has some mental issues
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definitely has a drinking problem there's real no proof found the child can't even pick ray Buckey out of a
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lineup and this would be the person that they're claiming abused him and then they send out this letter this letter
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goes out to hundreds of parents like we both said they're not qualified to question their children we get crazy
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claims these underground tunnels high air balloons and because of these claims and because of these allegations a lot
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of them were saying well yeah these other kids were there while this was going on so therefore since they can't
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just be ray Buckey that's involved it has to be these other teachers and these other administrators at the preschool
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have to know what's going on there's also other claims that they're threatening them with guns they're
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killing animals in front of these kids saying hey if you don't if you tell on us then we're gonna kill your family and
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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 pornography they're
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taking pictures they're filming things and it's all satanic the claims by the children are just bizarre now keep in
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mind some of them are very young some of them were current students at the preschool they but but it goes to show
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you that if some of these claims that are so fantastical if they can't if they are physically not possible I mean just
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science alone tells us some of these things 100% did not happen you would think that these experts would take this
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a little step further and say well our technique that we're using to question these
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kids is coming up with some some pretty weird stuff here maybe it's all weird stuff maybe it's
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all made up we have and then you have the the Sun Judy Johnson's Sun not only we're not even talking about a photo
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lineup that he couldn't pick rope ray Buckey Adam he couldn't pick ray Buckey out of school photos they were showing
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the child's school photos and like just some of these claims the initial claim like we said
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Judy Johnson's claimed that Ray Buckey could fly we know ray Buckey cannot fly and one of the students said that about
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the orgies at the they were having orgies with the way that these adults at carwashes 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 owner
00:28:36
from California to Florida on a plane that had no windows that it left from the airport and then at the end of the
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day he and the kids were there when their parents came to pick them up it's four and a half to five hours just to
00:28:52
fly one way California to Florida right and then to fly back it's impossible that that the child would be there I
00:28:59
mean there was mention of a devil house where lions lived we also have situations where some of these kids are
00:29:09
saying things like an elephant was killed at the school in front of children that Ray Buckey held up rabbits
00:29:16
and cut off their ears and told them that if they told their parents that's what he would do to their parents yeah
00:29:23
and they they did a search of the school to see if there would you know digging stuff up to see if there was remains of
00:29:31
animals found would correct that there were none there was some claims where some of the kids talked about being
00:29:40
taken off of the school and going to houses the weird thing is some of those houses actually existed mm-hmm but again
00:29:50
how are they questioned and then one of the main reporters at the I'm that kept reporting about this on
00:29:57
air which that's another thing we have all these claims and because it made good TV that make all these claims
00:30:05
public and then you have ki McFarland which was this a social worker that would interview the children using
00:30:12
puppets and they had tons of footage of this and everybody thought this was the nail in the coffin this is a smoking gun
00:30:22
and the defense attorneys said okay we want to see it and the prosecution did not want them to see this and from
00:30:31
defense attorneys mouth which obviously they they have agenda but they say you can watch these films and you can watch
00:30:39
these interviews and it proves that nothing happened right right that's like a smoking gun in the
00:30:48
other way well eventually captain Peggy McMartin was released this on 295 thousand dollars bail but Ray Buckey was
00:30:59
denied bail remember this whole thing started back in 1983 in our timeline now we are at January of 1986 but it won't
00:31:09
be until April 20th of 1987 that the court begins jury selection so you have the right to a speedy trial but you just
00:31:19
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
00:31:28
keeps falling apart right we see the reduction in victims then we see the reduction of charges and perpetrators by
00:31:38
October of 1988 now five years into this process we are down to just two accused
00:31:44
and now there are just 65 charges left and only 11 victims what I think you have here captain is what you are
00:31:54
getting at with those videotapes I think when the prosecutors are looking at these videotapes and watching them
00:32:00
they're going well we can't put this kid on the stand he's he's making claims that are
00:32:06
scientifically correct that cannot happen right they are picking and choosing which victims
00:32:13
to believe right but this is this is where it gets tough for me because the initial investigation I think at that
00:32:23
point you go well there are some claims we're going to keep a eye on it but for some reason they were dead set on
00:32:30
bringing down Bucky and his family that's where the letter came out and then and again before you even go to
00:32:40
trial before you charge anybody take these hundreds of claims and like you said if somebody's saying well we went
00:32:48
down the yellow brick road and ran into the Scarecrow and the the lion and the Tin Man
00:32:54
that maybe that didn't happen and we should push that one aside mm-hm and ones that are credible or we can back up
00:33:04
with some kind of evidence now we push that in the pile of that possibly could have happened and so again you want to
00:33:12
ruin these individuals lives by making these claims against teachers that worked in this preschool could you
00:33:18
imagine being a teacher and you've done nothing but try to help kids and and nurture kids and you're in this
00:33:28
profession because you love kids and now you're being accused of satanic worships
00:33:37
and satanic sacrifice in the in the sense of molesting these kids and you're lumped into this pile with zero evidence
00:33:48
zero eyewitnesses some of the like you said some of the accusers can't even name who attacked them hmm
00:33:57
and so there's so much stuff that I think could have been done initially and also this became us this became a story
00:34:07
like you said the first accusations 1983 were worried three four years into this
00:34:15
thing these news stations are reporting on this almost daily all the media loved
00:34:21
story because they loved the the fantastical accusations how bizarre these accusations were they loved it in
00:34:30
the really the these seven people especially the McMartin family they were really being tried in the court of
00:34:38
public opinion by the media right what they did was you know we have these preliminary hearings
00:34:44
going on they didn't allow any cameras in the courtroom because we had children who were taking the stand child victims
00:34:52
right they didn't know the media does not know the name of the child but they can hear they're listening in on
00:34:59
closed-circuit TV and then they're running to the to the press they're running to the camera with each one of
00:35:07
these crazy fantastical accusations and like I said he McFarland which is a social worker but she was dating on-air
00:35:17
personality well that's a common who's covering the trial right that's a conflict of interest right there and I
00:35:24
try to take a step back and think if I'm a detective and I hear these claims the
00:35:29
initial claim well I want to get this bastard right I want to get it I don't want anybody to hurt any child
00:35:38
I don't want anybody to rape a child and to have them be messed up for the rest of their lives and like we've seen time
00:35:47
and time again kids that are abused can become abusers right it's a cycle a cycle of abuse right and it's not a I
00:35:56
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
00:36:03
that you'd be abused and then you become an abuser but it's enough that it's like
00:36:09
you said it creates this vicious cycle so this is something as a detective as a parent as as anybody that you would go
00:36:18
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
00:36:25
the tunnels I mean you start digging up you start trying to find before they dug
00:36:31
up anything the rooms that these kids kept on climbing 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 so at some point
00:36:46
these claims that you are giving some credence to once you realize that it's false and it's okay and you can go okay
00:36:58
well we messed up because we questioned these kids wrong but you know what these
00:37:03
kids will forget about that them the kids will forget about making false claims pretty quickly once this all goes
00:37:11
away but in the process you ruin the school that everybody said was a prestigious preschool to go to winning
00:37:19
awards protecting children safe environment and because some initial claims and you didn't even do a
00:37:28
background check on the people that I'm making the claims you ruined so many people's lives yeah I mean the they shut
00:37:35
down the McMartins family business and the McMartin family lost everything during the course of all this thing they
00:37:43
spent all their money on their defense in February of 1989 ray Buckey is finally released from jail this on one
00:37:53
and a half million dollars bond and after he has been in jail for about five years
00:37:59
he's been in jail for five years yes he's being charged with something but can you think of can you imagine being
00:38:06
in jail for five years and you've actually not been convicted of anything yet you're still in the trial process
00:38:11
right well by that look it's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty so if he's innocent till proven guilty he
00:38:20
should be out yeah they waived for no no release for Bucky because of the supposed death threats against possible
00:38:30
witnesses right but see here here we are 1989 once again all the charges are again reduced this time down to 52
00:38:39
counts so you can even see the prosecution isn't very happy with their case because this thing just keeps
00:38:47
getting reduced and reduced and during the trial both the defendants did take the stand this is pretty much the
00:38:54
two biggest parts or highlights if you will of the trial a lot of times defendants don't take the stand so this
00:39:02
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
00:39:10
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
00:39:25
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 with me the
00:39:50
having naked pictures taken of the kids at all one of the big things in this and
00:39:55
this trials when they had they had three doctors that were taking evidence you know they were there examining these
00:40:03
kids they're taking photos they're documenting everything because they wanted to be able to say look these are
00:40:09
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
00:40:17
this abuse that you can see on the genitals and on different areas that you could see scars or scar tissue and and
00:40:25
they had all three which was a great move by the defense team separately they said okay can you point out the area and
00:40:34
they had all three experts and all three of them pointed out different areas yeah
00:40:39
so none of them matched at all when I initially heard some of these claims the parents questioning we know that that's
00:40:49
probably not right we know they're not qualified to question their their kids but once these kids are medically
00:40:56
examined then I put a little more weight into that because we have medical examiners
00:41:02
Hey look there's some signs there's not a hundred percent proof evidence but but
00:41:08
there are definitely some signs and so I put some weight into that on November 2nd 1989 the jurors began deliberations
00:41:17
for what would be 3 months in 16 days later that the jury ended their long deciding period and the long awaited
00:41:27
verdict was in the jury acquitted both Peggy McMartin and Ray Buckey of all 52 counts yeah but we are not done yet
00:41:37
because some of the jurors at a press conference following the trial stated that they believed the children had in
00:41:45
fact been molested but the evidence did not allow them to state who had committed the abuse beyond a reasonable
00:41:53
doubt and much of the media seemed to be convinced that ray Buckey was guilty as
00:41:59
well yeah and I and hold on that that's going back to what I was saying about the medical examiners when you have a
00:42:06
doctor forget all this hocus-pocus [ __ ] in these tunnels and these naked movie star games and all that
00:42:13
stuff when you have a doctor telling you that there's some evidence there it's like okay well again what the jury is
00:42:22
saying is well there's some evidence there we just don't know who did it yeah well you also had one of your least
00:42:29
favorite things in this case a jailhouse snitch who comes for you I know how much
00:42:35
you loved it a good old jailhouse snitch they Sevilla they should not be illegal
00:42:39
yeah he comes forward and says you know in jail ray told me he confessed to me that he did abuse some of these these
00:42:48
children yeah did you know how long this individual was in the cell with Ray I know I don't know much about it because
00:42:56
I didn't look into that angle because it was discredited yes well what here's here's the story so at the time
00:43:07
California was getting in big trouble because they were taking individuals that they weren't able to get anything
00:43:14
out of and they were taken No own jailhouse snitches and putted them in there and then obviously having them
00:43:22
run each on trial so what they do is they put this individual in the cell less than 48 hours so you're having a
00:43:32
guy that's claiming for years I'm innocent not telling the authorities anything not
00:43:40
cracking at all but somehow they put this guy in they put him in the cell with him under 48 hours full confession
00:43:49
singing like a bird well here's what's so funny the guy shows up he's he's on Stan one time one day he has to come
00:43:58
back the next day but he didn't he never showed up so they arrested him so the first day they got this jailhouse snitch
00:44:07
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
00:44:15
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
00:44:24
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
00:44:33
hair's not done and by the way there's two sheriff's on each side of him as he's testifying yeah now it didn't go
00:44:44
well for the prosecution but these jailhouse snitches is it's stupid there's so many of them that have
00:44:52
been false that it's like they should just be it should be illegal mm-hmm the the thing here though captain we have
00:45:04
Ray Buckey who is actually going to be retried later this time on just six counts but this trial resulted in a hung
00:45:13
jury the prosecution behold on this is two years and roughly two years after the first trial what I have here is that
00:45:25
the second trial lasted from May 7 1992 July 2 seven 1990 you know this resulted in a
00:45:33
hung jury the prosecution then gave up trying to obtain any type of conviction in the case the case was closed with all
00:45:42
charges against Ray Buckey dismissed in the end ray Buckey was jailed for five years without ever being convicted of
00:45:50
committing any crime at all yeah there should be a lawsuit there in the end too the trial lasted seven years and
00:46:00
cost fifteen million dollars at the time it was and this still may be the case today it was the longest and most
00:46:09
expensive criminal case in the history of the United States legal system and as said it was a trial that ultimately
00:46:17
resulted in a grand total of zero convictions and and we said the McMartin preschool was closed but the building
00:46:26
itself was actually dismantled and guess what there were no tunnels under the school the secret tunnels under the
00:46:33
school were much of the alleged abuse supposedly took place they didn't even exist well they did bring in ARCA
00:46:42
archaeologists to do some digs Indiana Jones and he he claims he found tunnels but a bunch of the reporters that
00:46:51
followed him his investigation was yeah he found tunnels once he dug the tunnels
00:46:57
all right so they found like building material down there but it was determined that it's believed that that
00:47:05
building material was pretty much just trash from where they constructed the school itself well he also claimed that
00:47:12
he found a plate that had a pentagram on it again.i that could have been placed there hey think about it this way if
00:47:20
you're some teenager that lived in the area and you know what they're looking for and you jumped the fence one day and
00:47:26
and put a pentagram on something right yeah and I'm I'm not trying to make excuses it's just I don't buy any of
00:47:34
that stuff I don't look well you're spot-on because there were people that were like spray-painting graffiti on the
00:47:41
school and on the grounds after the charges were brought forward no and my thing is these tunnels for example
00:47:49
forget the hot air baloon forget all that stuff when these kids talk about these tunnels or these secret rooms
00:47:56
don't you think the police and the detectives and the the prosecutors want to find that right and they would have
00:48:04
found that if there was a tunnel just a simple tunnel they would have found that
00:48:08
and to me you find that look there's your smoking gun because for a kid to say oh yeah we were
00:48:17
we were molested in this tunnel and were put in this secret room if you find that
00:48:23
secret room and that tunnel and you have hundreds of parents that let their kids
00:48:28
go there that never heard about this room or the secret spot to me that's the would be a smoking gun but this this
00:48:38
whole scenario is strange because you know we have to take allegations of sexual assault rape anything like that
00:48:48
we have to take it very serious yes and so on some level I go I can't fault these detectives because they wanted to
00:48:57
find something but they did it in such a way that I think you would have found anything if if they would have
00:49:05
questioned if they would have sent out a note to two hundred and some parents and
00:49:12
said look there were there was a murder that took place and we're trying to see if any of your kids saw it I think would
00:49:20
get back a percentage of kids that were like oh yeah I saw ray murder somebody you know I mean I think you would have
00:49:30
got that back anyways because the age of the kid you're talking about an age range of three to five six this is prime
00:49:40
time for for kids to make up stories mmm I know that one of the doctors that they've used the way that she has
00:49:48
documented cases and child abuse that that has become she's helped create some of the standards on
00:49:58
how we document this stuff so I'm not saying that she was right but if she was so wrong why would we adapt anything
00:50:07
that she did in this trial that we didn't get a curve it conviction to modern day practice and I and I'm on I'm
00:50:15
unclear on that because I thought it was this was examined in and it was decided
00:50:23
to change the way that we do it not because this worked well but because it went so badly
00:50:29
I'm not certain you you could be spot-on with that I don't know the details here's my thing is like again I I don't
00:50:38
want to fall detectives or police or the prosecution for wanting to get a child molester that is the scum and the earth
00:50:46
I want them all to die all to burn in hell right but when you have a physician saying they examine these patients and
00:50:58
maybe they're wrong on a percentage of the patients how can you explain all the abuse marks or the scar tissues or
00:51:08
whatever these medical professionals are saying I understand that as it was early
00:51:14
in the study of all this but is it possible that there was was some things that we're going on well then maybe not
00:51:25
in the preschool but maybe at somebody's house that's what I'm saying that's what
00:51:29
that's where you take the jurors words where the one juror said hey it's it's my opinion that maybe one or two of
00:51:39
these kids were in fact molested but the evidence doesn't tell us who who was the
00:51:45
perpetrator of that beyond a reasonable doubt so as you said it could have been you could have a child who was abused
00:51:54
just by somebody else it has nothing to do with the school at all in fact and I didn't want to get
00:52:00
into this because I don't know how true it is one of the accusers later the the mother changed the story
00:52:10
of the abuser was her boyfriend why not somebody at the school and I don't want to get into that too much because I
00:52:17
don't know if that resulted in a conviction or what but you go back to the initial allegations and you did have
00:52:25
some good people along the way and and here's here's the thing did I want to point out I do believe that a lot of
00:52:31
these people who were ultimately wrong and had bad judgment that being the lot of the District Attorney's Office and a
00:52:40
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
00:52:47
work that they were helping a bad situation I think their intentions were good when he had 13 kids take the stand
00:52:54
right there yeah and there were some real heroes along the way I mean you have a judge who is saying hey let's
00:53:03
reduce these charges because this this case is getting weird it doesn't make it's not making sense you do have a
00:53:09
prosecution team who is reducing charges who are letting accused go they're dropping charges against it we went from
00:53:19
seven accused down to two right and we did have you know a detective that came out and told the prosecuting team the
00:53:27
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
00:53:34
that because this stuff is starting to not check out and what I mean by that is the first allegations altogether right
00:53:41
of Judy Johnson contacting the police and saying hey my son is having some painful bowel movements therefore he was
00:53:49
sodomized well when you dig a little deeper you figure out that she not only accused ray Buckey twenty five-year-old
00:53:58
ray Buckey of the preschool of as being one of the abusers but she also accused her estranged husband as having sexually
00:54:06
abused the boy right initially the boy says there was never any sexual abuse at all this is the same
00:54:13
woman that would go on to tell the detectives that she saw ray Buckey flying and that her ex-husband also
00:54:21
raped a dog this this poor woman was mentally ill and needed a lot of help and she was
00:54:30
very paranoid and I think she I think she was afraid of things that weren't actually happening but well back to the
00:54:39
point of the 13 kids that testified some of those have came forward now and said
00:54:46
hey I don't think any of that stuff happened that I testified to yeah I saw at least two of them that as adults came
00:54:53
forward and said I made the whole thing up because of the direction of the doctors and my parents right but we have
00:55:00
other victims that have stated that no what I said then was true and and I still stand by that and that's where you
00:55:12
wonder if we had that false memory syndrome that we were talking about earlier as quoted in the San Francisco
00:55:20
Examiner who like several other publications had some great coverage on the case and the examiner was much less
00:55:27
bias than most of the papers at the time but the quotes that I wanted to read are
00:55:34
first from the first one is from Peggy McMartin Buckey one of the accused she said I've gone through hell and now
00:55:42
we've lost everything and that couldn't be more that statement could not be more
00:55:46
true one of the jurors was quoted as saying I believe that children believed what they were saying was true I could
00:55:55
not tell if the children were telling what actually happened to them or if they were repeating what their parents
00:56:01
told them and we talked a bit about the bias of the media well the LA Times in a
00:56:08
1990 article by David Shaw who was a Pulitzer prize-winning media critic for the LA Times who's deeply reported
00:56:18
series were often tough on his own newspaper but in regards through the media's coverage of the McMartin trials
00:56:26
he posed a very simple question where was the skepticism in the media citing pack journalism and hysteria that marked
00:56:35
the early coverage of the mokou Martin case from the article which is just a fantastic read anyone can find it
00:56:42
just Google McMartin trial LA Times shawl wrote media feeding frenzies have become almost commonplace in recent
00:56:50
years but in McMartin the media seemed especially zealous in part in large part because of the monstrous bizarre and
00:56:59
seemingly incredible nature of the original accusations more than most big stories McMartin at times exposed basic
00:57:09
flaws in the way the contemporary news organizations functioned pack journalism laziness superficiality
00:57:18
cozy relationships with prosecutors a competitive zeal that sends reporters off in a frantic search to be the first
00:57:27
with the latest shocking allegation responsible journalism be damned a tradition that often discourages
00:57:36
reporters from raising key questions if they aren't first brought up by the principles in the story now captain I
00:57:45
watched I had a rewatching because I actually watched it when I was much younger was the HBO movie indictment the
00:57:54
McMartin trial with James Wood the great James Woods so this came out in 1995 and
00:58:02
it also has one of my favorites Oliver Stone was one of the producers an indictment actually won a couple of
00:58:09
awards that won two Primetime Emmys and two Golden Globes and according to Wikipedia the film is cited as a
00:58:17
watershed in the shift of ideas about satanic ritual abuse recasting ray Buckey as a victim of hysterical
00:58:26
conspiracy rather than a child abuser well again in this case to me it still leaves questions as much as we go a lot
00:58:37
of these claims were claims of fantasy really and hot-air balloons and secret tunnels and in these devil-worshiping
00:58:50
games I I do not want to dismiss or especially the 13 victims that testified and then
00:58:57
the victims that still claim this abuse happened to them I don't want to dismiss
00:59:03
that but it's it's one of those cases where it's like you can't believe it on either in like okay we get this initial
00:59:12
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
00:59:18
the day you have this 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 sigh childhoods ruined ray Buckey who spends
00:59:35
over five years in jail five years of his life don't know him his life was gone after this there is no going back
00:59:44
right you know he had to leave changed his name he got married as a son I just want to leave you with this one thing
00:59:52
and I believe this was in the second trial I just want to leave you with this one thing because there's so many
01:00:03
questions here the first question that was asked by the prosecution to Ray when he was on stand and the second trial was
01:00:12
why do you like kids so much and his reply was because they're honest [Music] all the uncertainty in the world now is
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01:01:23
anonymous note sets into motion a tragic course of events that culminates in a shocking murder this true story sparked
01:01:30
a national debate on madness honor virtue fidelity and the rule of law check out star-spangled scandal and as
01:01:38
always for everything true crime check out true crime garage com yeah and we know everybody's world is upside-down so
01:01:45
we want to thank you for joining us again in the garage and then till next week be good be kind and don't live
01:01:54
[Music] [Applause]