McMartin Jurors Resume Deliberations After Holiday Break : Molestation case: The judge expresses relief that the panel is safely back. They still must decide on 40 counts.

Smiling and looking refreshed after a two-week vacation, all 12 jurors in the McMartin Pre-School molestation trial returned Tuesday to the downtown Criminal Courts Building and resumed deliberations in the longest criminal proceeding in history.

Beaming, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders said he was relieved that the eight-man, four-woman panel was safely back in the jury room. He had expressed fears earlier that the loss of a juror could result in a mistrial--and a waste of the more than $15 million the case has cost county taxpayers--but agreed to honor the jury’s wishes that its partial verdicts not be unsealed and made final before the holidays.

Just before leaving on vacation, the jury--which had turned in verdicts on only two of the 65 counts against Ray Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, in six weeks of deliberations--suddenly returned a flurry of 24 more verdicts.

But optimism that it was winding up deliberations was premature, as the verdicts apparently concerned no more than three of the 11 alleged child victims. The jury still must decide 38 counts of molestation involving the remaining eight children, and a count of conspiracy against each defendant.

No verdicts were turned in Tuesday, although the panel asked to see more exhibits.

Pounders said Tuesday that he does not plan to unseal the verdicts piecemeal now, unless the jury appears to be bogging down or the loss of a juror seems imminent.

“I’m willing to wait as long as they are making progress,” he said.

The verdicts are not official until they are affirmed by each individual juror in open court.

The case, which first surfaced in 1983 with the arrest of Ray Buckey, now 31, based on a mother’s allegation that her 2 1/2-year-old son had been sodomized at the seaside nursery school in Manhattan Beach, has been in trial for nearly three years.

The investigation led to the arrests of the school’s founder, elderly Virginia McMartin, and six teachers at her family-owned preschool. All seven were ordered to stand trial after an 18-month preliminary hearing, but Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner dropped charges against five, citing weak evidence.

As the investigation widened, scores of “uncharged suspects” were questioned, and nine South Bay nursery schools ultimately were closed.