McMartin Jury Challenged to Find ‘the Bad Guys’ in Case

A defense lawyer Tuesday challenged jurors in the McMartin Pre-School molestation trial to figure out who are “the bad guys; the enemy” in the convoluted case.

“I’m not going to name him. That’s your job to find out,” Dean Gits, who represents Peggy McMartin Buckey, said in his opening statement Tuesday.

The long-awaited trial of Buckey, 60, and her son, Raymond, 29, began Monday, nearly four years after the first arrest was made, and is expected to last at least a year. They are charged with 99 counts of molestation and a combined count of conspiracy involving 14 children who attended the school run by Peggy Buckey’s mother, Virginia McMartin.

Gits said his client, other teachers at the Manhattan Beach nursery school, the children, their parents, police and the child abuse center involved in the case are all victims.

He said there is also “another victim,” the same as “the enemy.”

“And when you get to know the enemy, you will have solved this case,” the lawyer said.

‘Warm and Kind Heart’

The McMartin school was not a hotbed of molestation, as the prosecution claims, but a loving preschool for more than 20 years under Peggy Buckey’s direction, Gits said.

“You will come to know Mrs. Buckey. You will find out she is not a perfect person. Some will say she talks too much, that she’s nosy. But under all of it, you will see a warm and kind heart. You will come to know that Mrs. Buckey does not molest children . . . does not deceive parents . . . does not slaughter animals.”

Using large charts, Gits told the seven-man, five-woman jury that nearly two years of investigation costing $1 million and involving five agencies and interviews with 695 families turned up no evidence against his client.

He noted that investigators searched through thousands of pornographic movies and photographs, ran laboratory tests on items removed from the school for traces of semen or blood, hired an archeological firm to dig for evidence of buried animals and used an electromagnetic conductivity instrument to detect possible hidden passageways and tunnels beneath the school.

The absence of any evidence corroborating the children’s accounts of sexual abuse, satanic rituals, pornographic photography and animal mutilations is “really affirmative defense evidence,” Gits said.

He noted that the case began with a single report, in the fall of 1983, that a 2 1/2-year-old at the school had been molested by “Mr. Ray.” That allegation mushroomed as the child’s mother and a police detective talked to parents of other children enrolled at the school.

“Peggy’s name was not mentioned” during the early months of the investigation, and she became a suspect only after interviewers at Children’s Institute International “got their mitts on” the children, he said.

Charges Dropped

Gits said myriad psychological processes led to the children’s eventually implicating not only Raymond Buckey, but his mother and five other teachers as well. Charges against the other five were dropped last year by the district attorney’s office.

The lawyer said the 14 children who testified at the preliminary hearing had been “shaped and coached,” “pressured” by both adults and peers, “contaminated” by what they had heard and caught up in pretend games that confused fact and fiction.

Earlier in the day, the defense lost a bid to show jurors parts of videotapes of initial interviews with the children and of their testimony at the 18-month preliminary hearing.

Superior Court Judge William Pounders said the opening statement was not the appropriate time to show such material and might give jurors a “distorted” view of the evidence to come.

Because of the judge’s prior commitments, court was recessed until Monday, when defense attorney Daniel Davis, who represents Raymond Buckey, will present his opening statement.