Boxes of Evidence Enliven McMartin Trial

The week started routinely enough.

A weary jury, now in its second year of the McMartin Pre-School molestation trial, showed no reaction as a 13-year-old boy completed five days of the most graphic, detailed, bizarre--and sometimes inconsistent--testimony it has heard so far.

But then prosecutors lugged boxes and sacks into the courtroom and began extracting from them--piece by piece--items that Manhattan Beach police had seized during a search of the defendants’ home four years ago.

The evidence, which was not presented during the 18-month preliminary hearing, included crumpled pages torn from pornographic magazines, canisters of film, cameras, a rubber duck and other toys, a black robe, a Robin Hood costume with bells, crayon makeup and three pairs of underpants--men’s stretch bikinis--festooned with suggestive drawings and comments.

Taken together, prosecutor Roger Gunson said during a break, the items point to a preoccupation with oral copulation and children.

Hardly proof of child molestation, the defense countered in its cross-examination of two Manhattan Beach police officers who raided the home of Charles and Peggy McMartin Buckey and their son, Raymond Buckey, on March 6, 1984. Mother and son are charged with 100 counts of molestation and conspiracy involving 14 students who attended the family run Manhattan Beach nursery school in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders later pronounced the proceedings “one of the most interesting days of the trial.”

And even those jurors usually given to yawning, shifting restlessly, sitting with eyes closed, chomping gum or keeping an eye on the clock seemed to take renewed interest.

No matter that the robe turned out to be a graduation gown, not garb for satanic rituals. Or that the briefs were an adult’s, not a child’s. Or that the film and negatives portrayed clothed children engaged in normal activities, not nude sex acts. Or that the pornographic pictures involved only adults.

The testimony also elicited a description of the house’s massive brick fireplace, since dismantled, that matched the description of a wide brick hearth in a private home described by the previous child witness as one site where “the naked movie star game” was played.

That witness, a freckle-faced youngster who is now in the seventh grade, had testified that he remembered being taken repeatedly to a “blue house” not far from the nursery school where he and and his classmates were forced to play the game “on a brick hearth.” Unclothed, “we would walk across one at a time” while Raymond Buckey photographed them, he said.

Manhattan Beach Police Detective Steven Caros testified that during the search of the Buckey home he had been particularly impressed by a large, red brick fireplace with a raised hearth that divided the living and dining room and was covered with stuffed animals.

However, a second police officer who participated in the search testified Wednesday that he could not recall anything about the fireplace except that it had a stone mantel.

Caros testified that while investigating a noise complaint at the same address about a year later, he found two men tearing down the fireplace with a jackhammer and sledgehammer. No photographs of the original fireplace were presented.

The child who testified about naked games on the hearth also told of being being sexually abused by the defendants and others, of being photographed and forced to play naked games in a “secret room” at the Manhattan Beach nursery school and in a storeroom at a grocery store, of watching the mutilation and slaughter of ponies, chickens and rabbits at a farm, and of participating in rituals at a church in a beach town where he was ordered to drink rabbit’s blood.

However, although he implicated all seven original McMartin defendants when he testified three years ago, he said he is no longer certain that he was molested by anyone other than Raymond Buckey, Peggy McMartin Buckey, her daughter Peggy Ann Buckey, teacher Mary Ann Jackson, grocery store owner Ray Fadel and two “strangers.” Both Jackson and Peggy Ann Buckey were dropped as defendants in the case; Fadel was never charged.

Asked to describe “a time Raymond Buckey put his penis in your mouth,” the boy recalled that one incident took place “in the secret room. I was laying down on my back. He was laying on top of me. His waist was up near my face.”

Earlier, the youngster explained his theory that forgetting can be permanent or temporary, and that some things he now remembers were for a time “in my mind packed away tight.” Outside the presence of the jury, the judge described the boy as “unusual in his ability to respond to questions apparently as an adult does. In other words, his memory appears to be better; his responses are sharper, clearer and more definite.”

Meanwhile, Raymond Buckey moved a step closer to freedom when Pounders reduced Buckey’s mother’s $495,000 bail by $100,000. Peggy McMartin Buckey has been free for nearly two years and was described by the judge as “a model defendant.”

The money could now be used to help secure the release of her son, who is being held in lieu of $3-million bail. His attorney told reporters that he has raised more than $3 million in property and about $160,000 in cash, but still needs to raise either an additional $3 million in property or another $140,000 in cash. (Under California law, only 10% of the bail must be raised if cash is used to secure a defendant’s release, but if property is used to satisfy bail its assessed value must be double the amount of the bail).