New Image of Ex-McMartin D.A. Emerges

At first, the young prosecutor lambasting the district attorney’s office’s handling of the McMartin Pre-School molestation case came across as outspoken and courageous. A screenwriter envisioned him as the hero of a movie, a crime fighter compelled by conscience to speak out against injustice.

But a different picture emerged during former Deputy Dist. Atty. Glenn Stevens’ four days on the witness stand, ending Wednesday as he testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution.

Prosecutors, including his former boss, portrayed him as a “chameleon,” coloring the truth to suit his purposes, an opportunist motivated more by the prospects of money and fame than the ethics of his profession.

And defense attorneys, who had called him as their key witness in the pretrial hearing, reacted angrily when he denied on the witness stand the allegations that he had made in private meetings with them about the conduct of the prosecution.

“I perceive that I have become a very big issue in this case,” Stevens testified.

After completing his testimony, Stevens smiled into television cameras, defended his actions and reiterated his belief in “the innocence of the McMartin Seven,” including the remaining two defendants, Ray Buckey and Peggy McMartin Buckey. Charges against five other teachers at the Manhattan Beach nursery school were dropped last year.

“If I had not gone to the Manns,” he said, referring to Abby and Myra Mann, screenwriters to whom he has sold rights to his story, “nobody would have ever known that documents were withheld from the defense.”

The Manns gave tapes of their interviews with him to defense lawyers and to the attorney general’s office.

The documents Stevens referred to are two sets of notes made by a district attorney’s investigator and by Judy Johnson, the mother whose 1983 police complaint triggered the massive case. Although they detail bizarre allegations made by Johnson or her child in February, 1984, one took two years to get to the defense and the second was never turned over.

What happened to them is still unclear, but Stevens said notations on file copies of the documents “indicate that these two were intentionally withheld.”

The person who could explain the meaning of the notations, Manhattan Beach Police Detective Jane Hoag, recently underwent surgery and cannot testify for several weeks.

Johnson died last month of a liver ailment.

Stevens insists that his office not only suppressed information suggestive of Johnson’s mental imbalance but also failed to investigate whether she was already troubled when she made the first report of child molestation.

“If she was, it casts very strong suspicion on everything she said,” he told reporters.

He said that her allegations sparked sensationalistic press reports, led police to send letters to McMartin parents asking them to question their children about acts of molestation and sent rumors flying throughout the South Bay.

Hundreds of McMartin parents then took their children to Children’s Institute International, a Los Angeles child-abuse center whose evaluations were heavily relied on by the district attorney’s office in its hurry to put its case together.

Stevens’ allegations that evidence was kept secret are central to a defense motion to dismiss charges against the Buckeys on grounds of “outrageous governmental conduct.”

However, under cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Harry Sondheim, Stevens testified that he is unaware of any other evidence intentionally withheld by the prosecution and that he had never said he saw reports in the hands of prosecutors that were not given over as required by law.

Defense attorney Daniel Davis said his notes of a meeting with Stevens reveal “a serious conflict” with the prosecutor’s subsequent testimony and that he feels his own honesty has been impugned by the discrepancy.

Stevens conceded that he had failed to relay the contents of several phone calls he had received from Johnson. In addition, he said he was aware that co-prosecutor Lael Rubin had delayed passing along similar information to the defense. Both instances involved Johnson’s fanciful accusations against multiple molesters.

Stevens, now a private attorney, resigned from the district attorney’s office last year after being told he was going to be fired for lying to his superiors about being the source of newspaper articles about the crumbling case in 1985. The State Bar is investigating his actions in helping the defense in a case that he had prosecuted.

At the hearing before Superior Court Judge William Pounders, prosecutors sought to show through office memos and tape-recorded statements by Stevens that:

- He did not admit to being the source of news leaks until confronted by his colleagues;

- He was planning to make money from the case from the earliest stages of the preliminary hearing;

- He and the Manns discussed generating controversy about the case and agreed that acquittal of the remaining two defendants would enhance the success of their movie venture.

“We drink to an acquittal,” Stevens said in one tape-recorded conversation. “And we’re all absolutely just sitting on top of the world.”

He testified that he had warned the Manns, “I can’t be made to look like I have any pecuniary interest in this case,” and advised: “You want this thing to generate a lot of controversy. That’s when it becomes sexy.”

But defense attorneys said that despite inconsistencies in Stevens’ statements inside and outside the courtroom, they had achieved their main purpose: to obtain testimony that prosecutors had sat on information that would have aided the defendants.

If Pounders finds that evidence was deliberately suppressed, he could dismiss some or all of the charges. The evidence in question all pertains to Johnson, whose son is named in one of the 101 counts of child molestation and conspiracy.

The hearing will resume Monday with arguments over the defense contention that the evidence against the Buckeys is no different from that against the five former defendants. The final issue to be argued before trial is a defense request for a change of venue.