I’m a Liar, Buckey Informant Admits

An informant who testified that the chief defendant in the McMartin Pre-School molestation trial admitted molesting children told jurors Tuesday that he has no credibility as a witness.

Under cross-examination, jail-house informant George Freeman admitted committing perjury while testifying in three separate trials, including two murder cases.

“You don’t have any credibility in your mind, do you?” attorney Danny Davis, who represents chief defendant Raymond Buckey, asked Freeman.

“No, I don’t,” the witness responded.

“You’re a liar, a perjurer, aren’t you?” Davis asked.

Freeman replied that he was.

Freeman testified that he had committed perjury in a murder case stemming from the 1979 Soledad Prison riots out of fear for his life, in the preliminary hearing of the McMartin case and in a 1984 Los Angeles murder case when he testified that he had told the truth in the Soledad case.

A five-time convicted felon and key prosecution witness, Freeman testified two weeks ago that, while incarcerated with Buckey in Los Angeles County Jail in March, 1984, the former teacher told him that he molested numerous children at the Virginia McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach.

Davis has long branded Freeman a liar who made up Buckey’s alleged confessions to gain favor with authorities.

Buckey and his mother, teacher Peggy McMartin Buckey, 60, are on trial in Los Angeles Superior Court on one count of conspiracy and 99 counts of molestation for allegedly sexually assaulting 14 students at the now-closed preschool from 1978 to 1983.

The McMartin case was the largest molestation case in U.S. history until five other defendants and hundreds of charges were dropped in 1986 because of insufficient evidence.

Judge William Pounders last week threatened to declare a mistrial if Freeman invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination and refused to testify about his past perjuries, thereby depriving the defense the right to cross-examine him. But a mistrial was averted at the last minute when the judge granted Freeman immunity from prosecution for perjury.

Freeman suffered an attack of bronchitis last Wednesday, then failed to appear in court to resume testifying Thursday, telling prosecutors he was afraid because of a threatening telephone call he had received.

He was arrested at his sister’s home Friday, jailed in lieu of $1-million bail and resumed testifying Tuesday, revealing for the first time details about the threatening call.

“He (the caller) just said he was a lawyer,” Freeman testified shortly after another judge refused to lower his bail. “He said I shouldn’t come to court because there was the possibility I may wind up dead.

“He (the caller) said I should shut my mouth” about a 1979 Los Angeles murder for which Freeman was once charged. “I was kind of upset,” Freeman said. “I don’t like threats.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin said last week that Freeman told her that the threatening caller said that if Freeman testified further in the McMartin case, he would be asked questions about the unsolved strangulation of a woman named Ester Rappuhn in 1979 and might have to identify her killer.

Freeman was once charged with murdering Rappuhn, whose body was found near Griffith Park in Los Angeles, but the charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. Freeman claims that he knows who the true killer is, but is afraid to reveal the identity.

Earlier Tuesday, Davis filed a new motion seeking a mistrial on grounds that it was improper for the defendants to have been ordered to stand trial based in part on the perjured testimony of Freeman at the preliminary hearing.

Pounders told Davis that the motion would be heard at a later time, but seemed to indicate that he would not grant it.