McMartin Parents Dig Up School in Last-Ditch Search

Weeks before a wrecking crew arrives to bulldoze the infamous McMartin Pre-School into history, a group of parents is digging frantically for a tunnel and secret room where they believe their children were molested.

No matter that earlier investigators found no evidence of subterranean chambers and that no children testified to their existence at the three-year trial of former teacher Ray Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey. Or that a jury found Ray Buckey not guilty of the majority of charges against him and acquitted his mother.

After seven anguished years, the parents of Manhattan Beach are neither letting go nor giving up.

“We’re not letting go because we want the children to be believed,” explained Robert Salas, whose son attended the school but did not testify at the trial. “The tunnel story was just one of the stories they told. And they’ve been ridiculed.”

Arnold Goldstein, a Hermosa Beach real estate broker who bought the Manhattan Beach Boulevard property for $320,000 in February, filed plans last week that call for razing the school and constructing a three-story office building in its place and on an adjacent lot.

The nursery school had been owned by attorney Danny Davis, who acquired it from the McMartin family in partial payment of legal fees for representing defendant Ray Buckey, grandson of school founder Virginia McMartin.

“I’m permitting these people to go on the property to find whatever they want and get it out of their system,” Goldstein said. “It would be nice if this would all die down.” He said he has given written permission for excavating until May 10.

Only one child testified at the trial about the existence of a secret room used for molestation and he did not describe it as being underground. However, former prosecutors on the case said Friday that more than a dozen former McMartin students had talked about a trap-door, a tunnel or a secret underground room.

“We took some of them individually onto the school grounds and asked them where it was,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Roger Gunson. “They’d mark the floor. We examined all the tiles and found no indication that any of them were put down separately or at various times. We scraped tiles off the floor; no patching of concrete was observable. . . . There was no indication that tiles were ever removed. There was nothing in the concrete (slab flooring) to suggest it had been replaced or resurfaced.”

A district attorney’s investigator who visited the excavation two weeks ago later explained to the parents that the three girls scheduled to testify in Ray Buckey’s retrial on eight undecided counts have not talked of tunnels or secret rooms.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Joe Martinez, one of two new prosecutors assigned to the case, said the excavation is irrelevant to the pending case against Buckey and is not being done at the district attorney’s request. The families who testified at the first trial or are scheduled to testify at the second are not involved.

“We just feel this is something between (other) parents and the owner of McMartin,” he said. “We have a strong case. We don’t need anything more.”

However, he added, “if they came up with something great--pornographic photos for example--of course we’d be interested.”

Neither of Ray Buckey’s lawyers, Danny Davis and John J. Wagner, could be reached for comment.

Parents say that with demolition imminent, this is their only chance to find out what lies beneath the school.

Earlier this month, they quietly hired a contractor to saw a large opening in a corner of the northeast classroom. Several children--none of whom testified at the trial--identified this area as the location of a trap door and slide they said led to a tunnel and secret dirt room where they were molested. Parents say it may have led to a triplex next door.

Literally over their heads in dirt and debris, the parents this week turned to outside experts--a geologist, a professional tunnel digger and a photographer. Former FBI senior special agent Ted Gunderson, now a private investigator, is coordinating the dig, bagging and cataloguing each item found.

So far, several days of digging, scooping and sifting nine feet down have revealed what appears to be a distinct area filled with soft dirt and sealed by a patchwork of concrete, parents say.

They say unearthed items include curtain rings matching those that hung at the windows, wood and floor tile chips painted in the classroom’s original color, a bone fragment from a large animal, and several other objects that they believe could not have gotten beneath the floor unless there was once an opening.

Parents also are trying to decipher marks scratched into the cement on the foundation wall--one of which, they say, appears to spell “hell.” They have made rubbings to study the markings at home.

The dig is being documented with video and still cameras.

“We didn’t want a circus,” Salas said, explaining why the parents have not sought to publicize their findings. “But we really believe we’ve found the entrance to the tunnel.”

Like the other parents, who asked that their names not be used, Salas knows that many outsiders regard the diggers as irrational and obsessed. They are making this final search, he explained, in an effort “to validate” what their children have said.

“If it’s proven there was a tunnel, that could be shown as the way children were taken off the school grounds undetected,” he added, shaking his head that the district attorney’s office wants no part of the dig.

The final stage of jury selection for Buckey’s retrial is scheduled to begin Tuesday. As many as 100 prospective panelists who have agreed to serve for several months and who say they have not formed an opinion about the highly publicized case will be questioned further. Twelve regular jurors and six alternates will be selected to hear the case.

Opening statements, the next step in what is already the longest and costliest criminal proceeding in U.S. history, are expected next month.