McMartin ‘88: Long, Expensive Case Puts Family on the Stand

The first Buckey family member to testify in the McMartin molestation trial has left in jurors’ minds either “a sense of what that family is and the love they have for each other,” according to the defense, or an impression of “an unbelieveable, arrogant witness who lied,” in the prosecution’s view.

Peggy Ann Buckey, 32, whose mother and brother are charged with 65 counts of molestation and conspiracy involving 11 children, was the 12th and most important witness called so far in the trial’s defense phase, which began in October and is expected to last six months.

Her mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 62, and brother, Raymond Buckey, 30, are expected to take the stand in their own defense later.

Some Charges Dropped

Before stepping down after more than a month on the witness stand, Peggy Ann Buckey, who worked sporadically at her grandmother’s Manhattan Beach preschool for several years, testified that she never molested a child or witnessed any such acts by her brother or mother. Peggy Ann Buckey was originally charged with 14 counts of molestation involving six children and was ordered to stand trial on eight counts. Those charges, however, were dropped in 1986 by Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, who termed the evidence against her, and four other defendants, “incredibly weak.”

After her five weeks of testimony, defense attorney Dean Gits said the woman’s testimony contradicted and far outweighed that of a 13-year-old boy and a jailhouse informant who testified that Raymond Buckey had confessed to him while they shared a cell.

“If Peggy Ann and Ray molested (the boy) in a secret room every day and at a supermarket, performed satanic rites and killed rabbits at a church, photographed and molested kids at a house, filmed kids on a stage at a theater and killed horses with a sword at a farm, they must have been really busy,” he said.

“They would have had to do all those things within a 16-day period (when the child and Peggy Ann Buckey were at the school).”

Outlines Testimony

Gits said Buckey’s testimony also showed that:

- Raymond Buckey’s trip to South Dakota in 1983 was not a rushed journey to hide pornography because the plane tickets were purchased before any of the Buckeys knew that an investigation was under way.

- Raymond Buckey was not teaching at the school when the child who testified against both brother and sister was enrolled.

- The van in which Raymond Buckey allegedly transported children belonged to Peggy Ann Buckey and was being driven by her in Irvine and Long Beach, where she was attending college.

- Evidence seized by the prosecution during a search of the Buckey home and shown to the jury in what Gits called “an attempt to create guilt by innuendo” was merely gag underwear, a graduation robe and a toy that turned out to be a puzzle.

- Peggy Ann Buckey was present at the school during some of the time that six of the children who testified at the trial were students, but she observed nothing suspicious.

“Most importantly,” Gits said, “for the first time the jury saw a member of the Buckey family testify and came away with a sense of what that family is and the love they have for each other. If that is a definition of bias, then she is unquestionably biased. Would she lie? We asked her that and she said that she wouldn’t.

“Never once did the (prosecution) focus on whether Peggy Ann Buckey molested a child or saw molestation. . . . Their only point was that she was there for more than five weeks, and we had to endure days and days of cross-examination for that purpose.”

Prosecution’s Focus

The prosecution focused its attack on her alleged misrepresentations of how frequently she was at the nursery school and her claim that she never knew the exact charges against her, which spanned a three-year time period.

She repeatedly told the news media and the judge in an administrative law hearing in which she is seeking to regain her teaching credentials that her tenure at the preschool was brief.

“I was there five weeks in 1978 as a substitute teacher, and that’s all I was there,” she said on one nationally televised show. She explained to the jury that she had been referring to a particular child who testified against her at the preliminary hearing.

Payroll records introduced as evidence, however, show that was she was paid for helping or teaching at the school for 115 days between 1977 and 1980, and her grandmother’s diaries, also in evidence, make references to her being there at other times as well.

‘Not Believable’

“Her explanations about lots of things were not believable--such as the amount of time she said she was there or her claim that she never knew the charges against her,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin said outside the courtroom after Buckey had completed her testimony.

“I think she was also evasive and could not or would not answer my straightforward questions. . . . Either she has a serious defect in her mental ability to understand and respond to simple questions, or she blatantly lied.

“It is very apparent that (the defense’s) strategy is to put former teachers on the stand in an attempt to show that nothing happened at the preschool, to pit their word against that of the children.”

Outside the hearing of the jury, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders said he found some of Peggy Ann Buckey’s answers “astounding” and her explanations “preposterous.”

“She’s digging a hole for herself” with her responses, he said. “It is, in my view, inconceivable that a person of the intelligence of Peggy Ann Buckey would not know the charges against her when she went into the longest preliminary hearing in U.S. history (and would remain) in the state of ignorance that she professes now . . . just because someone (her lawyer) says ‘you don’t have to worry about them, they’re all false.’ ”

Fought to Bar Testimony

Prosecutors fought unsuccessfully to bar her trial testimony on grounds that she had a “familial and economic” interest in the outcome of the case.

Her relatives, if convicted, face life in prison, and her sole source of income for the last three years has been $70,000 earned as a paralegal for attorney Danny Davis, who represents her brother.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Roger Gunson argued before Pounders that she was “the most rehearsed witness in the whole case.” In answer to defense questions, however, she told the jury that she would not lie to protect her mother, brother or her job.

The trial, now in its 21st month, is already being called the longest criminal trial in U.S. history.

Among 1988’s highlights in the 5-year-old case that has cost county taxpayers $11 million so far:

- More than one-third of the district attorney’s case--35 counts--was dropped after three children refused to testify and prosecutors said their review of the 40,000-page transcript showed that they had failed to prove several other counts.

- The last of nine youngsters took the witness stand to describe acts of oral copulation, sodomy, intercourse, animal mutilation and sacrifice, naked games, pornographic filming, and other criminal acts by the Buckeys. The defense has denied all the accusations.

- A mother testified that after her daughter told her about “games” that led her to believe that her child had been molested, she contacted police and soon after received a threatening telephone call from defendant Peggy McMartin Buckey, who has not yet testified.

- Kee MacFarlane, the social worker whose controversial interview techniques are a crucial issue in the trial, testified for five weeks, after which the jury watched videotapes of those interviews conducted by MacFarlane and her two assistants at Children’s Institute International.

- Dr. Astrid Heger, the USC pediatrician who examined all the complaining child witnesses, testified that she had found physical evidence of molestation in most of them.

- Several teachers at the Manhattan Beach preschool, including former defendant Mary Ann Jackson, testified that they were unaware of any molestations on the premises and that no children were ever taken from their classrooms for such purposes.

- Pounders went to Manhattan Beach to meet with the 7-year-old boy whose accounts of sexual abuse triggered the McMartin investigation five years ago, and determined that he would not testify in court.

- In December, Pounders reduced Raymond Buckey’s bail from $3 million to $1.5 million, and that of his mother, who is already free on $395,000 bail, to $295,000. Raymond Buckey has been behind bars for nearly five years.

Said Pounders: “It has been all year long of concern to me that Mr. Buckey is still incarcerated” without determination of his guilt or innocence.

Testimony from the next defense witness, not yet announced, will begin Tuesday.