# The McMartin preschool ran a satanic ritual-abuse ring that molested hundreds of children in secret tunnels

**Verdict: Contradicted.** The McMartin case is the defining trial of the 1980s Satanic Panic. Seven teachers at a Manhattan Beach, California preschool were charged with hundreds of counts of child molestation tied to lurid claims of satanic rituals, underground tunnels, and animal sacrifice. After the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history, no one was convicted: charges against five defendants were dropped in 1986, Peggy McMartin Buckey and her son Ray Buckey were acquitted of most counts in 1990, and the remaining deadlocked charges against Ray Buckey were dismissed after a second hung jury, with no third trial. The claim we rate, that a satanic ritual-abuse ring operated at the school, is debunked. It grew out of coercive, suggestive interviews of very young children rather than physical evidence; searches found no tunnels, no pornography, and no corroborating forensics.

Category: Hoaxes & Pop Culture · Era: 1980s · First circulated: 1983 to 1984, after a parent's complaint in Manhattan Beach, California led police to send a letter to roughly 200 families and prompted mass interviews of the children; the satanic-ritual details spread through news coverage across the decade · Believed by: At its peak, many of the McMartin parents, investigators, therapists, and much of the national television audience following the story; belief in an organized satanic ritual-abuse network faded sharply after the acquittals and later research into the interviews, though a fringe still insists the tunnels were real
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/mcmartin-preschool

## Summary
In 1983, a mother in Manhattan Beach, California told police that her young son had been molested at the McMartin preschool. What followed became the defining episode of the Satanic Panic. Police wrote to roughly 200 families, a therapy center interviewed hundreds of children using anatomical dolls and heavily leading questions, and the children began describing not only abuse but flying witches, hot-air balloon rides, animal sacrifice, and molestation in secret underground tunnels. Seven teachers were charged in 1984 in what was then the largest molestation case in United States history. Seven years and roughly fifteen million dollars later, it ended with no convictions: five defendants had charges dropped in 1986, and Peggy McMartin Buckey and her son Ray Buckey were acquitted or saw their charges dismissed by 1990. This case file keeps two things apart: a real prosecution built on suggestive interviews that produced fantastical, uncorroborated claims; and the claim it rates, that an actual satanic ritual-abuse ring operated at the school, which is debunked.

## The claim
That the McMartin preschool was the site of an organized satanic ritual-abuse ring in which teachers molested hundreds of children, performed satanic ceremonies, sacrificed animals, produced child pornography, and moved children through a network of secret tunnels beneath the building, and that the failure to convict represented a miscarriage of justice rather than an absence of any real crime.

## Origin and timeline
- 1983-08: Judy Johnson, the mother of a boy who had attended the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, tells police she believes her son was molested by teacher Ray Buckey. Johnson is later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and dies of an alcohol-related illness in December 1986, before any trial; the defense is not informed of her condition until well into the case.
- 1983-09: Ray Buckey is arrested on suspicion of child molestation and released without charge for lack of evidence. Police then send a form letter to roughly 200 McMartin families naming Buckey and asking parents to question their children about possible abuse, seeding widespread alarm.
- 1984: Children's Institute International, a Los Angeles abuse-therapy center, interviews hundreds of current and former pupils using anatomically detailed dolls, puppets, and repeated leading questions. Interviewers conclude that around 360 children had been abused, and the children begin describing bizarre elements: satanic rituals, animal killings, and secret tunnels.
- 1984-03: A Los Angeles County grand jury indicts seven McMartin teachers, including Ray Buckey, his mother Peggy McMartin Buckey, his sister Peggy Ann Buckey, and the school's founder and his grandmother Virginia McMartin, on scores of molestation counts. It is called the largest child-molestation case in United States history.
- 1984-08: A preliminary hearing begins. It runs about 18 months and costs an estimated four million dollars before a judge rules in January 1986 that there is enough evidence to send the defendants to trial.
- 1986: Prosecutors drop all charges against five of the seven defendants, citing weak and inconsistent evidence. Only Ray Buckey and Peggy McMartin Buckey remain to stand trial. Parents and an archaeologist later excavate the site searching for the described tunnels; official investigations report no tunnels, no pornography, and no forensic corroboration.
- 1990-01-18: After a jury trial that had run since 1987, Peggy McMartin Buckey is acquitted on all counts and Ray Buckey is acquitted on 52 counts. The jury deadlocks on 13 remaining counts against Ray Buckey, and a mistrial is declared on those.
- 1990-07: A second trial on the deadlocked counts against Ray Buckey ends on 27 July 1990 with another hung jury. Prosecutors decline to try him a third time and dismiss the remaining charges. After seven years and roughly fifteen million dollars, the case closes with no convictions.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: Hundreds of children independently described abuse, so something terrible must have happened at the school.
  Evidence: The children's accounts were not independent. Most came through interviews at Children's Institute International that used anatomically detailed dolls and repeated, leading, and rewarding questions, techniques later shown to be highly suggestive with preschoolers. Recordings of these sessions were played at trial and are widely credited with the acquittals, because they showed jurors how interviewers steered reluctant or denying children toward the answers being sought. A 1998 experimental study that replicated the McMartin interviewing style prompted a majority of preschoolers to make detailed false allegations. Volume of similar accounts, when all filtered through the same coercive method, is not corroboration; it is the signature of the method.
- Claim: The children described secret tunnels beneath the school where they were taken to be abused, which proves an organized operation.
  Evidence: The tunnels were searched for and not found. Parents dug at the site, and in 1990 an archaeologist hired by believers claimed to find tunnel traces, but official and independent investigations concluded there were no tunnels under the McMartin building. The most dramatic ritual claims, flying witches, hot-air balloon trips, children flushed through plumbing, were physically impossible on their face, which is itself strong evidence that the interview process was generating fantasy rather than recovering memory.
- Claim: Investigators said the defendants produced child pornography and sacrificed animals, so a criminal enterprise clearly existed.
  Evidence: No such evidence materialized. Despite extensive effort, law-enforcement agencies located no pornography connected to the defendants, and no animal remains or ritual sites were recovered. The satanic and pornographic elements existed only in the interview transcripts, not in any physical record. A serious ring of the size alleged, hundreds of victims over years, would be expected to leave forensic traces; none were found.
- Claim: The failure to convict was a legal technicality; the McMartins got away with it.
  Evidence: An acquittal here reflected the weakness of the case, not a loophole. Two juries heard the strongest evidence prosecutors could assemble and refused to convict, and jurors publicly cited the coercive interviews as the reason. Prosecutors themselves dropped charges against five defendants for lack of evidence and declined a third trial of Ray Buckey. Under the law, Peggy McMartin Buckey and Ray Buckey were acquitted or had their charges dismissed; they were never convicted of anything, and the presumption of innocence stands.
- Claim: The original complaint came from a real mother, so the case must have had a genuine core.
  Evidence: The origin does not survive scrutiny as a foundation for the ritual-abuse claim. The complaint came from Judy Johnson, who was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and who made escalating, implausible allegations before dying of an alcohol-related illness in 1986, without ever testifying. The defense was not promptly told of her diagnosis. That a distressed, ill parent set events in motion is documented; it does not establish that any organized ritual abuse occurred, and everything built on top of it came from the interviews, not from her firsthand knowledge.

## Why people believe it
- The subject is the most frightening imaginable. When the alleged victims are small children and the alleged crime is abuse, the instinct to believe and protect is overwhelming, and doubting the accounts can feel like siding with molesters. That moral pressure made skepticism socially costly at the time.
- The claims arrived with expert authority. Therapists and a specialized abuse institute, not random accusers, presented the children's statements, and the sheer number of children saying similar things looked like independent confirmation rather than a shared artifact of the same flawed method.
- It fit a national panic already primed. The book Michelle Remembers and a wave of satanic-ritual-abuse fears had prepared audiences to expect exactly this kind of hidden evil in ordinary institutions, so the McMartin story slotted into a template people already half-believed.
- The details were vivid and the coverage relentless. Underground tunnels, robes, and rituals make an unforgettable narrative, and years of saturation media coverage kept the lurid version in front of the public far longer than the sober rebuttals that came later.
- Parents genuinely believed their children. Once a child, under repeated questioning, produced an accusation, loving parents understandably trusted it, and the emotional certainty of hundreds of families created a momentum that felt like proof even after the evidence failed to appear.

## Open questions
- How much, if any, ordinary (non-ritual) misconduct occurred at the school is genuinely unresolvable now: two juries did not convict, the interviews contaminated the children's accounts beyond reliable reconstruction, and the presumption of innocence governs. What can be said with confidence is that the satanic ritual-abuse ring described in the trial did not exist.
- Why suggestive interviewing of young children was so poorly understood in the early 1980s, and how much the McMartin debacle deserves credit for later reforms in how child witnesses are questioned, is a live subject in psychology and law.
- How a single implausible complaint escalated into the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history speaks to failures of policing, prosecution, and media that scholars still study, separate from the question of guilt.

## Sources
- McMartin preschool trial, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial
- The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial: An Account, Famous Trials (Douglas O. Linder, UMKC School of Law) (2007): https://famous-trials.com/mcmartin/902-home
- Chronology of the McMartin Preschool Abuse Trials, Famous Trials (Douglas O. Linder): https://famous-trials.com/mcmartin/904-chronology
- Chronology of McMartin case, UPI Archives (1990): https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/01/19/Chronology-of-McMartin-case/8103632725200/
- Six Years of Trial by Torture, Time (1990): https://time.com/archive/6714031/six-years-of-trial-by-torture/
- The McMartin Preschool Case: Satanic Panic, A&E: https://www.aetv.com/articles/mcmartin-preschool
- McMartin Preschool trials, EBSCO Research Starters: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/mcmartin-preschool-trials
- Did The McMartin Preschool Tunnels Exist? Everything Investigators Uncovered, Oxygen: https://www.oxygen.com/uncovered-the-mcmartin-family-trials/crime-time/did-mcmartin-preschool-tunnels-exist
- Kee MacFarlane, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kee_MacFarlane

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/mcmartin-preschool