McMartin Defense Warned to Speed Case

A crucial defense witness concluded four days of testimony Thursday after the judge in the McMartin Pre-School molestation trial warned attorneys to speed things up or he will halt the defense’s case.

Noting that the defense has put on 38 witnesses so far, Superior Court Judge William Pounders said defense attorneys keep dragging out the proceedings by asking “irrelevant” and “repetitive” questions. Pounders said that with only six weeks left before a scheduled summer vacation and with the number of jurors and alternate jurors dwindling, he intends to preclude testimony from anyone but school founder Virginia McMartin, a physician expected to rebut the prosecution’s medical evidence and the two defendants.

He cautioned defense attorneys that if they call any unnecessary witnesses and fail to have other witnesses ready, “I’ll require that the defendants testify. And if you decline to put them on the stand, I will rest the defense case.”

Defense Plans

Attorney Danny Davis said Thursday that he has no plans to call Virginia McMartin, and sources close to the case said they doubt that defendant Peggy McMartin Buckey will testify. Davis has promised that his client, Raymond Buckey, will take the stand in his own defense.

Former defendant Betty Raidor, a close friend of Peggy McMartin Buckey and a teacher at the Manhattan Beach nursery school for 20 years, testified that she never observed inappropriate behavior on the part of the Buckeys. Raidor answered “no,” “not ever” and “never” when asked whether she had ever touched a child for purposes of sexual gratification or seen the defendants or any other teacher do so.

The Buckeys are charged with 65 counts of molestation and conspiracy involving 11 youngsters who attended the school between 1978 and 1983.

Raidor herself had been ordered to stand trial on 10 counts of molestation and conspiracy after a preliminary hearing, but Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner declined to prosecute on grounds of insufficient evidence.

Raidor, 69, testified that she taught morning sessions continuously during the six-year period spanned by the allegations and was in charge of the afternoon child-care program until the summer of 1983.

‘Groups Playing Happily’

She denied any knowledge of the naked games, nude photography, bizarre field trips and animal mutilation described by child witnesses. Instead, she described innocent dances and games in which the children took “imaginary” trips to a farm, a zoo and a supermarket and sometimes “flew,” “crawled” or “hopped” like animals. She also described watching for arriving parents in a “lookout” game and said she kept a camera ready to catch “groups playing happily.”

Much of Raidor’s testimony focused on the records she kept on which children stayed for lunch and afternoon child care, with exhaustive arguments among the attorneys over the color of the ink and the way certain numbers were written.

Outside the courtroom, defense attorney Dean Gits said the records are important because they show that Raidor, not Raymond Buckey, was present during most of the afternoons attended by the majority of alleged child victims. Raidor testified that Raymond Buckey was seldom left alone with children.

“We’ve presented clear and convincing evidence that it (the alleged sexual abuse) couldn’t have happened during the normal school day,” Gits said, noting that all adult witnesses testified they had free access to the preschool during the morning and never saw anything untoward. “If it happened, it had to have happened in the afternoon. Now we’re coming to see it couldn’t have happened then, because Ray wasn’t there. To believe the prosecution’s case, you would have to believe that Betty was in on all this.”

‘She’s Lying’

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin, called Raidor’s testimony “a bunch of garbage.” After the jury was dismissed, Rubin said: “She’s lying and she has a motivation and you will hear about that on cross-examination,” which began late Thursday.

Raidor repeatedly answered “I don’t know” and “I’m not sure” to questions from Rubin but admitted that she had been called on the carpet by her employer, Peggy McMartin Buckey, for criticizing her son. Raidor vehemently denied that she had described Raymond Buckey to detectives as “a weird young man” or ever said she hoped that she would not be a witness in the case.

She admitted, after first saying she did not remember, that she had heard about an incident in which a child allegedly grabbed Raymond Buckey’s exposed genitals as he lounged on a school bench wearing shorts and no underwear.