McMartin: Trial by Error

See the post “McMartin: Out of Control” for sources not cited here.


Between the end of the preliminary hearing on January 1986 and opening statements on 14 July 1987, the prosecution for the McMartin case had to overcome a number of obstacles.

For starters, they had to deal with the increasingly bizarre information given to them by the initial accuser, Judy Johnson. In police interviews given over the course of 15 and 16 February 1984, she related the proceedings of a ceremony that sounds more or less like a “black mass,” with corrupted recitations of The Lord’s Prayer, communion, and satanic hymns played by Virginia McMartin on the piano. At this mass, a goat levitated until thrown down the stairs by Ray Buckey, who then stuck his finger into the beast’s rectum after pricking his finger to draw blood. They decapitated a child approximately the age of Johnson’s son, and forced the children to drink it’s blood. Helping out were teachers Peggy Buckey, Babette Spitler and Bette Raidor, along with some unidentified men wearing suits and ties. Johnson specifically cited Raidor as the person who put Billy into a coffin, and buried him.

A week later, Johnson made more claims. According to the prosecutor’s notes:

Billy feels that he left LAX in an airplane and flew to Palm Springs area. Described the airplane as one like used by federal express only it had windows. Billy went to armory located behind Judy (?) residence. Ray drove there in his VW bus. Billy went with Peggy who drove a red and white VW bus, at the armory there were some people there wearing army uniforms. The goat man was there. After going to the armory, Billy was taken to Sand Dune Park, at the armory it was a ritual type atmosphere. When Billy was taken to a church, Judy believes it was the Church of Religious Science [address]. At the church Peggy drilled a child under the arms (arm pits.) Atmosphere was that of magic acts. (Ray flew through the air.)

Judy Johnson’s psychological condition has always been a subject of controversy. Still, certain actions were documented by police. During the first week of March 1985, her brother and father, both fearing that her mental health might be deteriorating, paid her a visit. She ordered them, at gunpoint, to leave. By this time, Johnson had become increasingly suspicious of just about everyone, thus she kept a twelve-gauge shot gun and a twenty-caliber rifle in her home. Her brother and father immediately arranged for her commitment, and she wound up at the Kaiser Hospital of Harbor City, CA. Twelve days later, doctors there diagnosed her as paranoid schizophrenic.

Eventually released, Johnson withdrew with her sons, all the while self-medicating with booze--despite her allergies to alcohol. She drank herself to death on 19 December 1986, about eight months before the trial began.

Another blow to the prosecution came in January 1987. Screenwriters Abby and Myra Mann, while researching for a film on the McMartin case, spoke to Dep. DA Glenn Stevens, one of the prosecutors. During the interview, Stevens admitted his belief that the children were “embellishing and embellishing” their stories. Moreover, he told the dramatists that the prosecution was withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense, specifically the aforementioned February interviews with Judy Johnson, which certainly gave the appearance that she wasn’t all there (in fact, Stevens called her “a banana boat”). Moreover, he characterized lead prosecutor Lael Rubin as a liar, and accused fellow prosecutor Robert Philibosian of seeking publicity so that he could run for higher office.

Defense attorneys Danny Davis and Dean Gits moved for a dismissal based on Stevens’ revelations, but Judge William Pounders denied the motion. The trial would therefore go on as planned.

During the trial, the prosecution called a Paul Bynum to the stand. Bynum was a private investigator originally retained by defense attorney Davis. But after finding a tortoise shell on the McMartin property back in 1984, he began to suspect that the stories of child abuse were true. Thus, as a prosecution witness, Bynum took the stand on 10 December 1987. But the house of one juror had been broken into that morning, so Judge Pounders called for a recess to allow the juror a chance to go home and take care of business.

Bynum simply planned to testify the following morning. Unfortunately for him, a .38 caliber bullet had other intentions. His wife found him dead four hours before his scheduled testimony. Police determined that he had committed suicide. Those close to Bynum objected to that finding. As one friend, former Manson prosecutor Stephen Kay, said, “Paul was kind of a worrier….but there was no hint of suicide. He was very upbeat about his wife and new daughter, both of whom he adored.”

Bynum’s death took away what might have been the only credible prosecution witness, despite the fact that there was very little pertinent information he could offer, save for finding a turtle shell. Still, Rubin could have asked him about an item allegedly found on Peggy Buckey’s desk: his notes from a case that he handled as a Hermosa Beach Police Detective. Granted, there are ten thousand ways to Sunday to explain how those notes could have gotten there. But it could have possibly established a link between the Buckeys and nefarious outside sources, some of whom could have had an interest in exploiting children for any number of reasons. Whatever Bynum could have said on the stand was rendered moot by his death.

The rest of the trial didn’t go so well. Although the prosecution started out with 135 charges, that got whittled down to sixty-five due to lack of evidence for the other seventy. But what hurt the prosecution the most were the very experts who should have been their strongest witnesses.

Click here to read earlier posts in this series.