Peggy Buckey’s Comment in Elevator Snarls Man’s Murder Trial

In a bizarre development involving two lengthy and sensational trials in neighboring courtrooms, jurors two weeks into deliberations in the case of accused murderer Harvey Rader were told to start all over again Wednesday.

The action was taken because of remarks made by McMartin molestation case defendant Peggy Buckey in an elevator Tuesday.

Juror Dismissed

A Rader juror, who overheard Buckey discussing the case, was dismissed by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lorna Parnell--who ruled that the panelist had been “contaminated” by what she heard--and replaced by an alternate.

The same juror had been the subject of an earlier hearing, after the jury foreman complained that she was refusing to participate in deliberations.

Buckey, who with her son, Ray, is charged with molestation and conspiracy involving 11 children who attended the family run Manhattan Beach nursery school, told the agitated judge that she had said nothing more than that she felt “very sorry” for the family of one of the alleged murder victims she had come to know during trial recesses.

“My heart goes out to them for what they’re going through,” she quoted herself as saying to a friend, lawyer Charles Lindner, when the juror--the only other person in the elevator--identified herself as a panelist, stopping the conversation. Lindner, not the juror, immediately reported the incident to Parnell.

The juror, under questioning by Parnell on Tuesday, said she was not paying attention, until she heard Buckey say something like “Sol went to England,” an apparent reference to Sol Salomon, who disappeared with his wife and two children in October, 1982.

The remark could be construed as lending credence to the defense, since the Salomons’ bodies have never been found.

Denies Making Statement

Buckey on Wednesday denied saying anything about England, adding that she did not even know who “Sol” was.

Rader, whose trial began in March, could face the death penalty if convicted. He is also a suspect in the 1982 disappearance of a Granada Hills couple and a Burbank man. Defense attorney Mark Lessem said he fears the switch in jurors could hurt his client’s chances for acquittal and indicated to reporters that Buckey’s comments may not have been accidental.

Meanwhile, as the juror was being thrown off the panel, McMartin defendant Raymond Buckey was testifying in the courtroom next door about “pyramid power,” as the judge, jury, and even one defense attorney tried to stifle laughter.

Buckey said he kept a large pyramid over his bed, because he believed it helped him sleep. He added that he had a collection of smaller pyramids.

He explained that, from what he had read, pyramids “supposedly have a positive effect on living things. All I know is I experimented with it and it worked.”

The 31-year-old Buckey testified on cross-examination that in 1982 he attended a convention on nutrition and unidentified flying objects in Reno, where he helped a friend sell pyramid-shaped hats.

Shortly thereafter, he and a woman he met at the convention went to Lake Tahoe and to Pyramid Lake, where they were baptized naked, he told Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin.

The ritual, which Buckey said was “a spur of the moment thing,” was performed by a man described by Buckey as “supposedly a wandering minstrel” the woman knew and by the prosecution as “a silver miner who claimed to be a minister.”

Wearing Pyramid Hat

Prosecutors said outside the presence of the jury that Buckey had been seen driving around Los Angeles wearing a pyramid hat in early 1984, while under surveillance by a district attorney’s investigator.

The defense argued, unsuccessfully, that Buckey’s experiences with “pyramid power,” an ancient concept repopularized in the 1960s, are irrelevant to the molestation issues at hand.

But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders said the defendant’s dabbling in the fringe movement--taken together with previous testimony about his drinking, use of marijuana and other problems--”tends to discredit” defense contentions that his mother would not risk the reputation of the 30-year-old McMartin school by hiring an unfit teacher, even her son.

Pounders indicated that Buckey’s conduct was not consistent with being a pre-school teacher.

In addition, Pounders said in ruling that the prosecution could explore Buckey’s use of pyramids, the defendant’s participation in activities that many might view as bizarre “tends to refute” the defense position that Buckey’s alleged involvement in satanic-like rituals at a Hermosa Beach church testified to by one child are too bizarre to be believed.

“This is not that far off,” the judge said of the pyramids.