15 Fascinating And Disturbing Facts About the McMartin Preschool Trial

In the 1980s, the McMartin Preschool trial dominated the media and caused widespread hysteria among parents. The case circled around a preschool in Southern California and the people who ran it. Allegations of rampant sexual abuse at the hands of depraved daycare workers had parents all over the country worried their children might be experiencing similar horrors. However, when the trial finally ended, there was no definitive proof a single child at the preschool had been molested or forced to participate in satanic rituals, despite testimony from several children.

The McMartin Preschool case outcome caused people to second guess memories and outrageous claims. Decades later, at least one of the children who made allegations publicly apologized, admitting they made up the claims to please adults. There are still conspiracy theorists who are convinced the teachers were satanists and child abusers, causing many people to wonder what really happened at the McMartin Preschool.

In 2005, more than two decades after the McMartin Preschool case began, one of the children who made allegations about satanic rituals and child molestation, publicly apologized for making false accusations. That child - Kyle Zirpolo - said he's not even sure Ray Buckey worked at the preschool when he was student there, and he only had positive memories of his time at the school.

Initially, he denied ever being touched by Buckey, but the therapist replied, "Oh, we know these things happened to you. Why don't you just go ahead and tell us?" According to Zirpolo, after spending hours at the Children's Institute while he and his siblings were interviewed and examined, he decided the only way he could leave was if he told the therapists what he thought they wanted to hear. Zirpolo said helping the police keep the accused behind bars made him feel special and important, which is why he made up stories about abuse and satanic rituals.

In 1991, Virginia McMartin, the founder of the preschool, her daughter Peggy McMartin Buckey, and her granddaughter Peggy Ann Buckey - who all worked at the McMartin Preschool - filed a civil law suit against Robert Currie. Currie, whose child had attended the preschool, slandered the three women when he appeared on national television, saying they had participated in lewd activities and satanic rituals at the Manhattan Beach school.

Each woman sought a minimum of $500,000 in punitive damages, and while the judge found Currie guilty of slander, he awarded each of the former teachers just one dollar. According to the judge, the women failed to prove McCurrie's statements had damaged their reputations, or that McCurrie had intended to cause them distress when he made his allegations.

The allegations made against the staff at the McMartin Preschool were part of a larger phenomenon commonly referred to as "satanic panic." Satanic panic, or mass hysteria over satanic ritual abuse, reached a fever pitch in the 1980s thanks to books and documentaries that claimed occult abuse was occuring all over America.

Because of this, a number of innocent people faced untrue allegations, including Dan and Fran Keller. In 1992, the Kellers - a married couple that ran a preschool in El Paso, TX - were sentenced to 48 years in prison because children said they performed satanic rituals that included Kool-Aid laced with blood, trips to Mexico on private planes, bloody baptisms, stolen baby gorillas, and human dismemberment.

The Kellers - who divorced while behind bars - were released in 2013 after spending more than two decades in prison. A district attorney admitted the jury at their 1992 trial had been influenced by false testimony provided by an expert witness.

On January 30, 1976, 32-year-old Karen Klaas was attacked and strangled in her Hermosa Beach, CA, home. She was in a coma when she was rushed to the hospital, but she passed away a few days later on February 4, 1976. Seven years later when allegations were made against staff at the McMartin Preschool, rumors began to swirl that Klaas - whose youngest son was a student at the school at the time of her murder - may have been killed as part of a satanic ritual or because she knew about abuse that was taking place.

These rumors persisted for decades, until early 2017 when law enforcement officials announced DNA evidence found at the scene helped them identify Klaas's killer as Kenneth Eugene Troyer. Troyer, who was killed by police in 1982 during a shootout, had a relative who lived just two blocks from Klaas's house in 1976. According to police, Troyer - who was a convicted burglar - probably attacked Klaas when she interrupted him while he was burglarizing her home, and there was no connection between her murder and the staff at the McMartin Preschool.

After Ray Buckey's second trial ended in a mistrial, David Shaw, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, wrote a four-part series of articles about the McMartin Preschool case and the way it was covered by the media. This series of articles - which Shaw won a Pulitzer Prize for in 1991 - examined how the press, including the Los Angeles Times, failed to actually investigate the allegations made by the children or question the prosecution's case. Consequently, members of the public didn't question the allegations made by the children, even though many of them were outrageous and coerced by therapists.

Kee MacFarlane, the unlicensed therapist who interviewed most of the children, became romantically involved with Wayne Satz, a TV reporter for KABC in Los Angeles, after she got involved with the case. This caused many people to question whether their relationship influenced how the television station covered the allegations made against staff at the preschool and the ensuing trial.

Seven teachers from the school - Virginia McMartin, Ray Buckey, Peggy McMartin Buckey, Peggy Ann Buckey, Mary Ann Jackson, Babette Spitler, and Betty Raidor - were charged with more than 100 counts of child abuse. Following nearly two years of preliminary hearings, the charges against all but two of the teachers were dropped due to lack of evidence. Ray Buckey and his mother Peggy Martin Buckey still faced trial.

The trial finally began in 1987, and three years later on January 18, 1990, a jury acquitted the defendants on 52 counts. However, the jurors were unable to agree on a verdict for 13 other charges. They said they felt as though some of the allegations were true, but the prosecution hadn't provided enough evidence to warrant convictions. Later that year, Ray Buckey was retried for eight counts, but the judge for the second trial declared a mistrial when the jury was unable to agree on his guilt or innocence.

The two trials cost an estimated $15 million and took approximately seven years of court time. The McMartin Preschool is one of the longest and most expensive trials in American history.

In retrospect, many of the allegations were the result of coercive interview tactics by law enforcement and therapists, including Kee MacFarlane, an unlicensed social worker who worked at the Children's Institute. MacFarlane - who routinely used dolls and puppets to communicate with children - interviewed a five-year-old child who adamantly denied every being abused by Buckey, a male teacher at the preschool. In response to his denials, MacFarlane told the boy "you're just a scaredy cat."

When another child said he hadn't been molested by Buckey, MacFarlane - via a puppet - asked the boy, "Well, what good are you?" She also said to the child, "You must be dumb." Critics have argued these types of interviewing tactics are likely to cause children to make allegations simply to please the interviewer or for the questioning to end.

Initially, the majority of the children told the staff at the Children's Institute - a private therapy center - they hadn't been molested. However, after repeated questioning, most of the current and former students from the McMartin Preschool described shocking and strange acts perpetrated by the school's staff.

According to the children, they were forced to participate in satanic rituals that included animal and human sacrifices, and they were made to play a game called "Naked Movie Star" that involved posing nude for pictures. The children also told therapists they were raped, fondled, sodomized, and forced to take part in orgies. 

One child told a defense attorney that Chuck Norris - a popular action star at the time - had been present at the satanic rituals, while other children claimed they jumped out of a plane and even traveled to space in a hot air balloon. Other claims included digging up dead bodies, secret tunnels underneath teh school, flying witches, and being locked in refridgerators.

After parents received the letter of Buckley's arrest, police told them their children may have been witnesses or victims of acts that had allegedly occurred at the preschool, including sodomy, oral sex, and fondling of genitals. The police department provided a form asking parents to complete about any inappropriate behavior.

Hundreds of parents with children who were current or former students at McMartin Preschool contacted law enforcement. Initially, the children were interrogated by police officers, but eventually they were questioned by therapists and social workers after parents concluded the interviewing tactics used by cops were too traumatizing.

In the end, approximately 360 children out of the 400 who had been interviewed made allegations of abuse, which ranged from deeply disturbing to incredibly bizarre.

It all began in 1983. Judy Johnson contacted police in Manhattan Beach, CA, claiming her two-year-old son was sodomized by her estranged husband and Ray Buckey, one of the child's teachers at the McMartin Preschool. Johnson said her young son was having painful bowel movements and she found blood in his diaper, leading her to suspect sodomy. Buckey was arrested and questioned about the allegations, but he was released when officials failed to find any evidence to corroborate Johnson's claims.

However, Johnson was adamant Buckey, as well as other teachers at the McMartin Preschool, had abused her son and his fellow students. So she sent a letter to the district attorney. In the missive, Johnson said "Ray flew in the air" and one of the female teachers had "drilled a child under the arms" and taken her son to meet a "goatman."

After the district attorney received this document on September 8, 1983, the police department sent a letter about the allegations to the families of approximately 200 current and former students.