Part Two: The Satanic Panic: America's First QAnon

Robert is joined again by Jake Hanrahan to continue to discuss Satanic Panic.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M hmm. What molesting children the devil? What is that
a bad way to open a show, Sophie, Well, no,
that's the only take. Try. Yeah, well I said it
was the Devil. I mean, no one likes the Devil

(00:20):
except for people who like the Devil. But this is
behind the Bastards, a podcast that will very soon be canceled. Um. Yeah,
I'm I'm Robert Evans, and uh I'm back with with
h Jacob Hanrahand. Your full name isn't Jacob, does it? Yeah?
I just called you Jacob. Well that's what I'm calling

(00:41):
you forever now, Jake. That yeah, I have that power.
I am legally a reverend doctor. Both reference and doctors
get to name things, Sophie. The state of New Jersey says, so, yeah, well,
the state of New Jersey has no say in somebody
who doesn't live in America. I think in New Jersey's

(01:05):
jurisdiction does in fact go across the Atlantic. It is
a coastal city. So back to the satanic panic, Jake,
how you doing? How you're holding up emotionally as we
tear in this? It's so good. Yeah, it's the worst.
So before we get into our main subject for the day,
which is the McMartin preschool trial. We're gonna talk about

(01:26):
some other wild ass satanic panic bullshit that was kicking
off in the late seventies. And this this involves a
little game you might have played called Dungeons and Dragons.
You're played d DJ, which people play it. It looks
really really cool. It's rules like yeah, yeah, yeah, I
played that as a kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're doing
Dungeon Dragons once and I just went in and was like, wow, yeah,

(01:49):
it's fucking a great game. Great thing for kids. Also
really good for kids, like teaches you storytelling, teaches you
like a lot of I learned a lot about how
to do journalism well by just like the way that
you put together wis and stuff. But people find interesting
it's a great game. Uh, A lot of people disagreed
with that in the nineteen seventies. So in nineteen seventy nine,
when the game is about five years old, a sixteen
year old named James Dallas Egbert the Third vanished from

(02:12):
the steam tunnels under his school, which is where he
and his friends played what honestly sounds like a pretty
righteous game of D and D. That sounds so cool. Yeah,
that sounds cool as hell. His family hired a private
eye to track him down, and that guy publicly theorized
that James's lef of Dungeons and Dragons contributed to his disappearance. Uh,
this was not true, but the press ran wild with it,

(02:33):
and while James was eventually found, he committed suicide shortly thereafter.
He was just very like, he chronically depressed kid, like,
a very sad story, nothing to do with D and D,
which was probably one of the few bright spots in
his life. Yeah, but obviously it was all blamed on
the game. In nineteen eighty one, the book Mazes and
Monsters was published on the case, and it was just nonsense.

(02:54):
It was followed shortly after by the nineteen eighty two
film adaptation starring Tom Hanks, which is a fucking if
you want to watch a terrible movie about how dn
D is the devil, Oh there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Mazes and fucking Monsters. So the private detective, who detective
who started all this, published his own book, The Dungeon Master,

(03:16):
where he clarified that D and D had nothing to
do with James's disappearance or suicide, which he instead again
blamed on chronic depression, but by that point it was
way too late. In two, another kid named Irving Pulling
committed suicide since he had played in a school supervised
D and D game. His mother, Patricia, sued the school
in t s R. Dn d's publisher, blaming them for
her son's death because quote, he had received a curse

(03:38):
during a game session. Oh yeah, yeah, and it's it
is this like, you know, the kind of people who
played D and D in the nineteen fucking eighties were
big old nerds. Right nowadays it's gotten to be more mainstream,
but like, you're a pretty big nerd in the eighties
if you're playing D and D and you're probably bullied

(03:58):
to fucking back, right, you probably get kicked out of
you every day. You know. It was always like when
I watched old American films, it was like the nerds
would always be doing like a version of Yeah. So obviously,
like these kids who probably had a lot of ship,
that was tough in their lives because it's hard to
be a kid, and harder still if you're a kid
who gets the ship kicked out of them by bullies,

(04:19):
um killed themselves and instead of looking into anything else.
They're like, well, they played D and D. That must
have been it, right, Yeah, it's going to be that.
Patricia Pulling, Irving's mom, formed an advocacy group called Bothered
about Dungeons and Dragons or Bad and dedicated to securing
government Yeah, dedicated to securing government regulation of role playing games.

(04:43):
A sentence that I could not type without laughing and
can't read without laughing, Like the government needs to regulate RPGs.
It's very funny, um and like the Christian right being
what it is. You know, there was there were people
in the country who both supported the regulation of RPGs
role playing games, and also thought civilian should be able

(05:04):
to own rocket propelled grenades the other kind of art
scheme where has just had a bit of therapy, Like yeah, yeah,
it's fucking great. So Pulling tried to sue TSR over
her son's death, but that didn't work because obviously there
was nothing to any of her claims. So instead she
dedicated herself to pumping out propaganda claiming that D and

(05:25):
D encouraged devil worship and suicide. Her pamphlets described D
and D as a fantasy role playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex, perversion, homosexuality, prostitutions,
satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination,

(05:46):
and other teachings. Wow. Okay, well it sounds like cooler
game than it was actually. Um yeah. One of the
things that's weird about this to me is like the
guy I played D and D with when I was
a kid was like a fucking young Earth creationist, was
a great dungeon master and also believing was six thousand
years old. Um So, not every Christian had this attitude

(06:08):
about D and D, but it was real common on
the Christian right for a while. I actually found the
cover art for one of the books that Bad put out,
and it's pretty fucking wild. The jacket quote, which is
purportedly from some some young fan of D and D,
was the more I play D and D, the more
I want to get away from the world. And you know,
you might argue that this says more about the world
that these kids were growing up in during the nineteen eighties.

(06:30):
The Dungeons and Dragons yeah, your life sucks. Your kid
pretend to be something that's not a kid that gets
bullied all the time, right, Yeah, of course you're going
to want to prefer that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the
book promises witchcraft, suicide, and violence inside and is marketed
towards educators, librarians, pastors, police and parents. And despite being

(06:54):
wrong about everything, Patricia was terrifyingly influential in both Christian
media and among law and for smith. Her books on
dungeons and dragons were so popular with evangelical pastors in
the US and in Australia, where she played a role
in propaganda distributed by the Australian Federation of Decency, which
is I guess a thing, and you know with a
name like Federation of Decency, that you're the worst people

(07:16):
in the country, right basically, like yeah, like anything we
don't like is devil. Yeah yeah, yeah exactly. So Patricia
Polling eventually got a p I S license and became
a consultant for law enforcement on a number of cases,
all of which the police lost. Yeah. She advised police
officers to open interrogations of teenagers with the question have

(07:37):
you read the Necronomicon or are you familiar with it? Fictional? Great,
she thought, like, h Lovecraft was a professor. Yeah, like
what she did? Someone after decades after Lovecraft def published
a book called The Necronomicon to kind of cash in

(07:58):
on the fact that number one. Yeah, well it was.
It wasn't even a real book. No, it was like
so at one point, she told the news a newspaper
reporter that eight percent of Richmond, Virginia was Satanist, a
figure she'd arrived at by calculating that four percent of
teens and four percent of adults were devil worshippers. And
the reporter pointed out, like, well, that's actually just four
percent of the population. If it's it's four percent of

(08:19):
teens and four percent of adults, that's four percent of people.
And she told them that it didn't matter that her
math was wrong because her numbers were conservative. Just amazing.
That kind of attitude hasn't changed. No, right wing, No,
it doesn't matter, we know what we mean. Yeah, it
doesn't matter. I feel that it's true. So like the

(08:40):
fact that factually I'm just making ship up is fine. Yeah. Yeah.
And the fact that Patricia Poland was clearly incompetent and
wrong about everything and was still treated as a recognized
expert by law enforcement for years. Shou'd key you in
on a couple of things. One, cops generally aren't very
good at their job, and two, in nineteen eighties, it

(09:01):
was very easy to become an expert on Satanism as
long as you were good at scaring suburban moms and cops.
So all of this brings me to the centerpiece of
our story today, the McMartin preschool trial. Now, this is
still again the longest and most expensive trial in US history,
and I would contend it's also the very, very dumbest.
It started thanks to a young mother in distress named

(09:21):
Judy Johnson, and her story is about as heartbreaking as
it gets. Um, she's kind of the villain of this story,
but like it's fun. She's a bad situation. This lady,
she'd gotten into a bad marriage and she and her
husband only stuck together because they had a kid. And
then that child, their first child, got diagnosed with an
inoperable brain tumor at age eight, which would like just
destroy any parent, right, Like that's just gonna ruin you,

(09:44):
no matter who you are. And she was not a
superstable person. Before this happened, um doctors were not able
to help him, and so she developed an a rational
but understandable hatred of doctors in medicine, right, like, it's
not fair, But also like your kids, you're gonna have
so much anger over this that you're gonna blame somebody, right, Like,
you can't expect someone circumstance, no one would, uh, And

(10:07):
like a lot of people in this situation, Judy sought
refuge in religion. She carried a Bible with her everywhere
and was a very very hardcore fundamentalist and generally the
kind of fundamentalist you would expect to be worried about Satanism. Now,
you combine that with the fact that she was kind
of out of her mind with grief over a dying
child and the fact that her relationship with her husband imploded,
and you probably won't be entirely surprised at what she

(10:27):
does next, especially since it later came out she had
a series of schizophrenic breaks. So it also turns out
she's like, it's a horrible like she she's the villain,
and that she's responsible for the evil of this story.
You can't she's not morally responsible for any of her acts. Yeah,
like it's yeah, she had a very bad hand and

(10:49):
as a result she creates as a result of that
and this cultural panic over Satanism and all of these
different legal structures that have been set up in our society,
she's able to do tremendous harm. And it's just a
horrible fucking story. Um. So Judy had another child, Matthew, um,
and he was like two years old. I think when
they moved, she and her husband moved to southern California. Um.

(11:12):
And they moved to Manhattan Beach, which is like a
very nice part of Southern California's basically Santa Monica. It's
like right on the coast. It's a fucking beautiful part
of the world. There's no parking, but there was back then. Um,
it was a paradise filled with places for people to
put cars in those days. Uh. And it had a
pre school called the McMartin Pre School, which was considered

(11:32):
the very best preschool in Manhattan Beach. Um. And like
so as the very nice preschool in Manhattan Beach, every
parent and one of their kids in there. Um. And
so Judy wanted her son, Matthew to be there. Unfortunately,
Judy was a bit of a mess, and she failed
to enroll him before the school was full for that session.
Instead of finding another school, she dropped her two year
world child off off outside the school with a note

(11:54):
in his backpack that said, like you have to take him, basically,
like here's his name, and like deal with it. Yeah. Again,
she's not making very rational decisions here because she's profoundly ill. Um.
McMartin Preschool was founded by Virginia McMartin, who was in
I think her sixties at this point. Uh, And Virginia
was like, I don't think it's a great idea to

(12:16):
allow this kid here that his mom has basically trying
to force him on the school seems kind of sucked up.
But Virginia's daughter, Peggy, was more sympathetic and assumed that
a mom who would do something like this was had
to be going through some ship and that they should
help her out because these are very nice people. Um.
So they take Matthew in and he attends class for
a few months, and this proved to be a horrible
mistake because by this point Judy was not just out

(12:38):
of her mind with grief, she was also a hardcore
alcoholic and having schizophrenic episodes. So pretty bad situation, Jake, Yeah,
I'm gonna quote again from that book, Satan's Silence. That summer,
Judy Johnson became preoccupied with the condition of her younger
son's anus. In June, she would later tell the authorities.

(12:59):
Matthew come plained that it hurt when he made a
bowel movement. In July, she took him to a nearby
hospital emergency room, where she told the doctor that her
son's anus was itchy and that she thought she had
given him her vaginal infection. The doctor did not examine Matthew,
but he did treat Judy for vagenitis. A few weeks
later did he mentioned to her brother that Matthew's anis
was inflamed. She began making frequent inspections of her son's
rectal area. So a few things are going on here.

(13:21):
One is that again not a great, not a very
healthy household. This kid has bad hygiene, right uh. Also,
his mom is now daily poking and prodding his rectum
in order to check it, and that irritates it. And
she becomes convinced that the irritation that she is causing
is the is the result of sexual abuse, and she

(13:43):
grows convinced that this is because Matthew's teacher, a guy
named Ray Bucky, had sodomized her child repeatedly over the
course of the summer. Now, this is untrue, and one
of the reasons it's definitely untrue is that number one,
two year olds are very rarely sexually assaulted. Number two,
wind grown men penetrate to your children with their penises.
It either kills or severely injures the child. It causes

(14:05):
horrible injury, right, Like it's a terrible Yeah. Yeah, it's
not like something you would miss exactly, and it's not
like it would be it would not be something you
had to inspect for like the kid would probably need
to go to a fucking hospital. Um. Yeah, So again,
her allegations are untrue. But Ray was kind of a
weird dude. He'd spent most of his young adulthood as
a California beach bum with kind of a well off family,

(14:27):
smoked a lot of pot um. He did this thing
that California surfer dudes did where he didn't wear underwear
underneath his board shorts, so like he had people. One
of the things people knew about ray is that sometimes
he would sit down he could see his balls like
it was like a thing. Not again, he's not doing
anything like bad. Like the most you could say is like, hey, dude,
maybe you should be wearing underwear because like people were
saying your balls all the time. Like, nothing bad. Just

(14:51):
kind of a weird dude. None of the kid children
he taught ever had any complaints about him. He seems
to have been a pretty unproblematic teacher. I've I've never
run across any evidence that he actually he did anything
bad ever. Um, but he was a weird guy, and
it was also weird in nineteen eighty three for a
young man to teach preschool. That was a woman's job, right,
This is still an area, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, just

(15:16):
as certain people were suspicious of working mothers in this
period of time and thought that like that was contributing
to the breakdown of the family, a lot of folks
were suspicious of young men in childcare and assumed that
they must have some multerior motive. Um. And Judy Johnson
was one of these people, and her suspicion of male
teachers meshed with her hatred of doctors brought on by
the tragic circumstances of her oldest son to produce again,

(15:39):
all of these are like perfect storm things, right, Like
that's the thing about all this ship, like it isn't
just erupt out of nowhere. So I'm gonna read another
fucking horrible quote. Lately, she had noticed how Matthew would
run around pretending that he was giving people shots. As
the popularity of toy Doctor Kits testifies, this behavior is
common for small children. And although Judy and although Judy
hated medical professionals, matt You had been exposed to them

(16:00):
regularly that summer since his brother was getting hospital treatment
for his tumor. Yet, Judy Johnson believed that Matthew had
no idea what an injection was, so she asked him
if Ray Bucky had given him shots. Again, he said no,
but she pressed. Finally, after repeated questioning, he told his
mother that Ray took his temperature. Judy concluded that the
thermometer must have been Bucky's penis. Oh my god, yeah,

(16:25):
I was just picturing like the kid running around filling
up like little shot glass like syringes, which is again,
like I think every kid probably as a period where
they play doctor and ship like it's a incredibly common thing. Yeah,
she becomes convinced. And again when she first starts asking

(16:45):
her kid, did did Ray molest you? He says no.
And that's the case with all of these satanic child
abuse cases. The kids are always saying like, nothing happens
at first, which is again we talked about like believing victims.
Part of the problem is that people didn't and they
pushed the victims repeatedly to like, yeah, it's it's very bad.
So Judy calls the cops. Uh. And she took her

(17:06):
son to the hospital, and of course the doctor listened
to her story and examined her boy um. And again
the doctor is like, hey, when adult men sodomized two
year olds, it results in horrific damage. Uh, and a
summer worth of anal rape would be immediately apparent in
a boy this young. And the doctor saw no evidence
of that. All he saw was evidence that Matthews Rectam
was irritated in a way you'd expect if his mom
was constantly poking it. The doctor was like, your kid

(17:30):
seems okay, and he sent Judy away. This made her angry,
and again she fucking hates doctors and she kept, and
so she kept like. She started going to the police next,
and through a mix of coaching her son to talk
about a stranger's penis and speaking for her kid in
police interviews, which remember they take the mom's testimony about
what the kids said as direct testimony from the kid,

(17:51):
Judy is able to convince the cops that her son
had been abused. She and the cops shopped around for
doctors until they found an intern at U c l
A who had never diagnosed sex abuse cases before. This
intern sees Matthews wrecked them and it's like, oh, yeah,
something must have happened here. Again, he doesn't really know
what he's doing because he's not good at this kind
of thing. Like the police like, yeah, let's find someone

(18:12):
to make the story true. You know, cops, I know,
it's just it's all so bad. It's all really bad.
It's so fucking terrible. So the long and the short
of this is the police opened an investigation into Ray Bucky,
and as soon as the word got out, people start
telling stories about Ray, not real ones, because again, he'd

(18:34):
never done anything, but the kinds of stories people tell
whenever someone a little weird gets accused of doing something terrible.
A week later, the police exacerbated this as cops are
want to do, by sending out a mass telephone request
asking if any other parents had been abused, and like,
the mass telephone request also has like, hey, please don't
tell anyone that we called you about this. But of
course everyone starts talking about it. It winds up in

(18:55):
the news and it starts spreading. And now what you
have all these parents going to their kids and being like,
were you listed? So Judy Johnson also keeps adding new
stories on about her son's abuse, claiming that Ray had
forced him to wear a bra because one time her
son had walked in on her dressing and said, Matthew
wear bra. Again, kid sees his mom wearing a bra,

(19:15):
doesn't really understand things, and it's like, oh, I want
to wear a bra. She interprets. This is like he's
been forced to wear a bra by his teacher. And also, yeah,
the day after this, she told police. Uh she so
she tells police this, and then the day after this
she starts claiming, based on the strength of vague comments
by a two year old, that Matthew had been tied
up with a rope by Ray. So again the story

(19:36):
keeps expanding, it gets more and more elaborate, and again,
the very concept of investigating child sex trauma was new
at this point, and the cops basically handed over responsibility
to this case to the few folks on their team
who had any training in this, and those people had
been trained to believe the children never lie or make
accusations based in fantasy. Again, that's the training too, in
addition to Michelle remembers and ship. So the cops keep

(20:00):
using the parents to ask if their kids had experienced anything,
and the parents, being people, start to get excited about
all the rumors flying around town. Some of them start
to talk to their kids, and after badgering their kids repeatedly,
those kids report what they think their parents want to hear.
Ray had taken weird pictures of them. You know, that
sort of stuff starts coming out. Now. The cops had
searched raise home and found no photos, but whatever, like,

(20:21):
it didn't matter that there was no evidence. The accusations
were out there. Poor boy, Oh, it's so worse. His
life is just shattered by It's fucked. It's completely fucked.
Satan's silence goes on to note that as this process
went on quote, other children embellished their stories. Within days,
Tanya Mrjuli had talked about being sodomized, and some of

(20:43):
her classmates said Ray had penetrated both of their rectums
and made them fillate him. They also named additional children
as victims, but when questioned, this new group denied anything
had happened. The police and many parents did not believe
the denials. They assumed that the children were keeping quiet
about the abuse, and they searched for telltale signs. One
woman said she noticed that her five year old daughter
was overly interested in her mother's genitals, and she vowed

(21:03):
to question them her further. Donna Murgilli remembered that since
the beginning of the year, Tanya had been plagued with
vaginal infections. Until now, Donna Antonia's doctors had attributed the
problem to poor hygiene, possibly due to the fact that
Tanya had been masturbating regularly since shortly after the birth
of her baby brother. Now, Tanya's vaginitis seemed to have
a more sinister origin. Police detectives urged parents to take
their children to u c l a IF for team evaluations.

(21:25):
These goings on were openly discutched disgusted in Manhattan Beaches,
markets and churches and its ocean front promenade. So again,
this all just goes viral, you know, and these kids
who all deny it at first start being pushed into
recalling abuse. By the end of September nineteen three, many
of the children who had at first denied any abuse

(21:46):
at all suddenly started coming up with elaborate stories about
what they'd suffered. Satan's Silence goes into very good detail
over all this, but to be honest, it is some
of the darkest shit I've ever read. For some reason,
detailed stories of children being convinced they were raped by
an innocent man is actually a more disturbing to me
than stories of actual child abuse. It's just it's so
fucked all of this stuff. For example, for an example

(22:07):
of how this ship went down, a popular nursery rhyme
at the time was what you say is what you are?
You're in naked movie star. It's just like some nonsense
kids would say, right, there's a bunch of ship like that. Yeah, right,
just ship kids say. Most people would recognize this as that,
But all of the adults in Manhattan Beach were by
this point fully off of their goddamn rockers, and the

(22:28):
fucking police detectives have decided that children who werecalled playing
this game, we're providing evidence that they'd be sexually traumatized
by Ray Buckey because the Naked movie Star game they
called it, like, it's just like fucking making horrible ship
out of absolutely nothing. So as this all expands, these
kids get sent to a social worker named Ki McFarlane

(22:48):
and Ki McFarland for an example of her background. She
she's very involved in, like the child protection movement, all
of this stuff we talked about last episode. She's involved
in like this kind of growing movement to try to
like do group therapy sessions. When I told you about
someone who was like, oh, I like these group therapy
sessions because they're like like public like self criticism sessions
that like leftist political groups. Dude, that's Ki McFarlane. So

(23:10):
she's that kind of person going into this um. And
again I think her motivation was good, but she is
another person who does horrific damage. And her main innovation
was that she had developed a series of anatomically correct
dolls little kids could use to discuss describe their abuse.
Now this could be a useful development for kids who'd

(23:31):
been abused, and we're too young to verbalize it. But
the problem is that Key used her dolls to make
kids feel like they were in playtime, and then she
would tell stories about the abuse she thought they'd suffered,
and kids, little kids being little kids, would start talking
about this thing, right because they think they're in playtime
and ship did you know? Um? Sorry, But one of
the most ironic things here to me is that the

(23:52):
actual child abuse in this case, at least, was from
all the people trying to do the child abuse right,
Like they're abusing these kids by planning this up on
them and putting them through this, Yeah, fucking them up
probably for life, like you can't go through this, and
like repeatedly interrogated about the rape that like, god, damn it,
it's so bad. But you know what's not nasty, Jake? Yeah,

(24:16):
the products and services to support this podcast. We're back. Ah,
Those ads were a lot better than manipulating children and
the believing they were the victims of massive sexual abuse.
That's what I say about what Sophie. That counts us

(24:39):
a nice thing I said about the products. Okay, well,
Will Roberts still have a job by the end of
this record. So yeah, so Ki McFarland, we're talking, we're
talking k M k mc fee. So she she she
has these dolls and she yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna

(25:01):
read you a quote to talk about like how she
uses these dolls from a right up by the University
of Missouri Kansas School of Law. That's kind of analyzing
this case. Um, so here's yeah, how this all goes.
Parents were encouraged to send their children to see I I,
which is the place she worked at, For two hour interviews.
McFarland pressed four hundred children through a series of leading
question and the offer of rewards to report instances of

(25:21):
abuse at McMartin. Children generally denied seeing any evidence of
abuse at first, but eventually Mini gave McFarland the story
she clearly wanted to hear. After the interviews, McFarland told
parents that their children had been abused and described the
nature of the alleged abuse. By March nine, three hundred
and eighty four, former McMartin students had been diagnosed as
sexually abused three hundred and eighty four. But well, no,

(25:46):
we're getting into that. It starts to expand massively. So,
in addition to interviews, a hundred and fifty children received
medical examination. Dr Astrid Hager, who was one of McFarland's colleagues,
concluded that eighty percent of the children she examined had
been molested. For the most part, she based her findings
not on physical evidence, but on medical histories and her
belief that any conclusion should validate the child's history, which

(26:08):
is not how you do science, you know, yeah, no,
not good medicine. So to make it clear just how
coercive McFarland's methods were, I want to read a passage
about her interrogation of a little girl named Tanya. Long
after most McMartin kids had been pushed into inventing lurid
stories of abuse. Tanya held her ground that her teachers

(26:29):
had done nothing wrong. But Tanya's mother eventually broke down
in the face of all the other parents who'd grown
convinced that their kids had been abused, and she sent
Tanya to Kie McFarland. Kim McFarland's technique with Tanny was
much more refined. Before asking the child anything about sex abuse,
McFarland spent several minutes, engaging her in fantasy play. Oh Froggy.
McFarland squeaked as she and Tany manipulated a frog puppet
and a toy doctor kit. I think you have a

(26:50):
little temperature here. The two played with the banana Puppet,
Big Bird, Mr Doggie, Mr Dragon, Cookie, Monster Bugs Bunny,
Mr Alligator, pac Man, and Mr Snake. Not until Tanya
was deeply absorbed in the world of pretended, McFarland present
her with a collection of very special dollies in this
little bag. They look like real people underneath we can
take off their clothes. Tanya then identified the dolls we

(27:10):
weise chee cheese, which is what you called breasts, butts weenie,
and the naugas hole or vagina. McFarland proceeded to ask
Tanny if she had ever seen a man's weany her daddy's,
Tanya answered. McFarland was not satisfied. How about someone else,
I don't know who else? Another man? Still, Tanya existed,
insisted she had only seen her father's. Well, I know
some secrets, said McFarland, and I know that you know

(27:33):
them too. You know what I know some secrets about
year old school? When Tanya still didn't respond. McFarland added
that she had seen the little girl's friends from mcmartin's
and they told her all the bad secrets. We can
have a good time with the dolls, McFarland coaxed, and
you know, we can talk about some of those bad
secrets if you want to, and then they could go away.
Wouldn't that be a good idea? Urging puppets on Tanya,

(27:54):
she again asked if she knew bad secrets. Uh, Tanya
shook her head. Then maybe she could figure them out.
McFarland's said she should off her secret machine and assured
Tanya that she would feel better if she told it
bad things about Ray. I hate those secrets, Tanya finally said,
addressing a bird puppet on McFarland's hand. Ray Ray did
bad things and I don't even like it. Do you
see what happens here? Yeah? I just thinking though, like that, Tanya, right,

(28:19):
what a like strong minded child was just absolutely not
like literally just pushed to the point of like committing
something that didn't happen. Yeah, you know, like despite all that, Yeah,
and again like it really has the problem here is
not that like you shouldn't believe children when they report rebus.
It's that you shouldn't badge your children who insists they
haven't been abused into it. It's yeah, there's part of

(28:42):
me that's like, right, I get it. If if any
parent heard anything like that, you'd be like, oh, yeah,
but this is beyond that. This is like literally that
woman planning these ideas. Yeah, it's so bad. Yeah, and
I don't like I think McFarland. McFarland had a long
history of working with abused kids, like before anyone, before
people even really believed that it happened. She was doing

(29:02):
that work, and she came from a good place, but
she goes fully. I mean, like what she's doing is
evil here, Yeah, exactly. Now, the McMartin case didn't start
off as a satanic ritual affair. You'll notice, like we
haven't been talking about like the devil in this case yet, right,
But you have to remember that stories about other such cases,
like the ones we discussed last episode in Kerrent County,

(29:24):
we're all over the news and Current County was only
like two hours away from McMartin. Both parents and students
were hearing all the ship on TV. And the kids
are hearing this ship on TV. And as these kids
are getting interrogated and has to give more information, they
start to make up ship based on the stuff they're
hearing on fucking television, right, and also based on the
stuff they're being told by their parents. And this starts

(29:44):
with Matthew Johnson, who again his mom is the the
very very sad story lady m who is very Christian
and believes in all this stuff. And she starts, she
starts pushing her son to tell stories of not just
being molested by Ray, but by being of being molested
by McMartin teacher Betty Raider, who was sixty four years
old at the point. And the more Matthew said, the

(30:04):
more his mom praised him, and she started to suspect
that the McMartin school had been the center of a
vast network of pedophile Satanist because again, she's profoundly ill
and an alcoholic. By January nine four, matt was telling
stories of being molested at a ranch. And I'm gonna
read one of the transcriptions Judy made of her son's stories.
And keep in mind parents could enter statements they coaxed

(30:25):
out of their kids into the legal record and authorities
treated this as a direct statement from the child because
kids and kids are also, you know, incapable of making
things up. So this is the statement she coaxes out
of her son, or at least says that she coaxes
out of her son. Who knows what how much he
he fucking said. Matthew feels that he left l a
international in an airplane and flew to Palm Springs. Matthew
went to the armory. The goatman was there. It was

(30:47):
a ritual type atmosphere at the church. Peggy drilled the
child under the under the arms armpits. Peggy's one of
the teachers. Under the arms and armpits. Atmosphere was that
of magic arts. Ray flew in the air Peggy, Abs
and Betty were all dressed up his witches. The person
who had buried matt Who buried Matthew, she said he
had been buried, is miss Betty. There were no holes
in the coffin. Babs went on him with a went

(31:09):
with him on a train and an older girl where
he was hurt by men in suits. Ray waved goodbye.
Petty gave Matthew an enema. Staples were put in Matthew's ears,
his nipples in his tongue. Babs put scissors in his eyes.
She chopped up animals. Matthew was hurt by a lion.
An elephant played. A goat climbed up higher and higher,
and then a badman threw it down the stairs. Lots
of candles were there, they were all black. Ray pricked
his right pointer finger put it in the goat's anus.

(31:31):
Old Grandma played the piano. A baby's head was chopped
off and the brains were burned. Peggy had a scissors
in the church and she cut Matthew's hair. Matthew had
to drink the baby's blood. Ray wanted Matthews spit. You
see what they said, like this is a kid, it's nonsense,
like they're fucking elephants in it, Like right, but surely
the police would have looked him like there's no wounds. Nope,

(31:53):
And why did she let him go on a plane
with strangers if she was already worried about No, he
didn't she none of this happened. Yeah, but like she
claimed that this was like while he was at school
for eight hours, they took him on a plane to
Palm Springs and like they were goatmen. Like it's all
it's clearly like a kid being coaxed into coming up
with fantasies. And they sound like a child's fantasies. This

(32:13):
isn't what happens in sex abuse cases. There are very
early elephants. It sounds like her fantasies, you know what
I mean, Like not fantasy, but it's clearly some ships.
Like I can't believe that the police ever got serious. Yep,
they super do. Once the news broke that Satanists were
behind the purported abuse at McMartin, other kids came forward
with an avalanche of stories of devil worship, child sacrifice, etcetera.

(32:37):
Kids talked about watching babies get murdered and all sorts
of wild ship. And one of the things that they
would claim in this period, because this happens all over
the Satanic panic, is there's claims people will claim I
sacrifice babies or I saw babies sacrificed like all of
this ship and that people would ask like, well, but
there's no nobody was murdered, like, there's no reports of
dead people. So they developed this whole theory that Satanists

(32:58):
had a tactic of having children at home and not
getting them birth certificates so that they could have babies
to sacrifice that the state didn't know about. Like, yeah,
it's it's a cute, Yeah you had the Like the
most insane theory is that the video of Hillary cutting
a baby's face off and wearing it, and it's like

(33:19):
none of them have seen it. They're like, oh, we
know it's there, do you know? It's like I don't
think you do, because that would be like the only
thing the news talked about for like a year if
it happened, right, like a thought that was real the people.
I mean, well, I don't know if someone would be
on it, you know, yeah, someone would be on it,
and it would be like the top topic of discussion

(33:40):
nationwide world. Yeah, Like like I look at how much
people discussed when Hillary Clinton fell down that one time,
Like if she was killing babies, it would be huge.
Hundred people know the video exists, but we're all dumb
because we don't believe it's amazing. So yeah, it's all yeah. Again,

(34:01):
there's no evidence of any of this stuff. There's no
evidence of any baby's getting killed, there's no evidence of
any plane trips to Palm Beach, but also authorities, the cops,
and the parents believed every word of this because at
this point complete mania had overtaken Manhattan Beach. Like everyone
is out of their goddamn minds at this point. And
some of it's understandable, like their parents who legitimately think
that there's a child rape epidemic at their school that

(34:22):
their kids were involved in. Like nobody's thinking anymore in
Manhattan Beach, right. Yeah. The whole thing as well though,
is like I think the police, oh, but like the
police kind of abusing the phears of her Absolutely, it's horrible.
I'm gonna quote again from the University of Missouri, Kansas

(34:44):
is right up here. Judy Johnson's reports of misbehavior at
the mcmartin's school preschool became increasingly bizarre. She claimed that
Peggy bucky raised mother, was involved in Satanic practices. She
was said to have taken Johnson's sun to a church
where the boy was made to watch a baby being
beheaded and then forced to drink the blood. She insisted
that Ray Bucky had atomized her son while his head
was in the toilet, and had taken him to a
car wash and locked him in the trunk. Johnson told

(35:05):
police that Ray pranced around the pre school in a
cape in a Santa Claus costume, and that other teachers
at the school chopped up rabbits and placed some sort
of star on her Son's bottom. Eventually, most prosecutors would
come to recognize Johnson's allegations as the delusions of a
paranoid schizophrenic, but the snowball of suspicion had been started rolling.
Chief cool Meyer's letter led to Newt which is the
letter he like sent out to parents, led to new

(35:26):
accusations and demands from parents for a full scale investigation
of doings at the McMartin preschool. Bowing to this pressure,
pressure at the district attorney's office handed a major portion
of the continuing investigation over to Ki McFarlane. So oh no, really,
it's puppet lady. It's so fucked up, God, like the

(35:49):
worst person. You give it to her. Let her investigate
the preschool, the person whose job is absolutely not to investigate,
like man of criminal conspiracies. Yeah yeah again. No physical
evidence was ever uncovered of any sort of abuse or
anything else illegal. The closest thing they had to evidence

(36:09):
was that softcore porn mags were found in Ray Bucky's home,
which like yeah, yeah, and they're like playboys, Like it's
not even anything that's like you could say, is like
super raunchy, right, Like, none of this stopped the case
from going forward. On March twenty two, nineteen eighty four,
a grand jury indicted Ray Bucky, Peggy, Bucky Peggy and Bucky,

(36:32):
Virginia McMartin, and three other McMartin teachers. These seven people
were initially indicted on one hundred and fifteen counts of
child sexual abuse. Two months later, they were indicted on
another ninety three counts. The case had become a political
issue for the d A Robert Philiposian, who was facing
re election and thought that putting away some Satanists would
help his chances. Now, most of the McMartin seven were

(36:54):
held with outrageous bails. Ray Bucky was held without bail,
and he spends five years in jail as a ristle
in jail as a child molester, which like just yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean it's they just destroy this man. Now. As
the case proceeded, all of the McMartin seven had their

(37:14):
homes searched. Nothing was found. By this point children were
telling stories about secret tunnels under the school and being
forced to bury ritually murdered babies. And of course, since
the cops aren't finding anything, a lot of McMartin parents decided, like,
what the cops have to be in on it because
they're not finding any of the evidence that's got to
be there. So the parents take it upon themselves to investigate, right,
so we get we finally get um. In March of

(37:39):
nineteen eighty five, as the case war on fifty McMartin
parents showed up at a lot next to the school
and started digging to try to find the caves under
the school, literally literally digging. Yeah, and the d a,
who again wants to get reelected, hires an archaeological firm
to help them. Oh my god. And they're all certain

(38:02):
that it's also just bizarre to have people who's like,
like people have job titles and training for a reason. No,
they don't, fuck it, Who are going to figure this out? Ye?
So yeah, everyone is certain that they're gonna dick find

(38:24):
mass graves and caves underneath the school filled with like
that's where the evidence has got to be, is the
caves under the school. They don't find anything because there's
nothing there because no one at the mcmartins school had
been molestic kids, you know. Um, So the actual court case, thankfully,
there is a period here where some rationality enters into it,
because the actual court case against the McMartin seven runs

(38:46):
into immediate problems over the fact that there is no
evidence that anyone's actually been harmed in any way, shape
or form. Um. Yeah, but this is five years into
a jail sentence for this guy. Well no, not not yet.
This is like through I mean the trial takes actually
twenty eight months just the trial, and of course there's
years before this where all of this is building. Yeah,

(39:06):
he spends five years in jail. Um. So again there's
no evidence at any point, and that's the actual court
case runs into the massive problem of the complete lack
of evidence. But all of these people have already been
convicted in the court of public opinion, and in fact,
the d A announced quote the primary purpose of the
McMartin preschool was to solicit young children to commit lud

(39:29):
conduct with the proprietors of the school, and also to
procure young children for pornographic purposes. His assistant announced that
millions of child porn films of the victims existed. The
media dutifully reported on all of this, even though again
no evidence of this had ever been found. Millions said millions,
millions found not not ever, not nothing, assistant assistant to

(39:53):
some weird stat And again, part of this is the
problem that is starting to get better in American media,
but it's still pretty bad. Where the police say something
and journalists don't investigate it. They say, oh, the police
said this, this has to be the truth. Let's report
on what the police said. And it's like, well know,
they lie all the time, right, And you get like

(40:13):
any kind of like the un might say something or
say anything against it, people like, oh, here we go conspiracy,
Like no, it's your job, like question people in power, Yeah,
that's journalism. And also all of these groups have lied
on a number of occasions, let me list them. It's
not a conspiracy to say that people in power lie
exactly right, Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's what the it's

(40:38):
what you do if you have powers you yeah. Yeah.
So people magazine called McMartin California's Nightmare Nursery Time published
an article with the one word title brutalized, Like media
goes whole hog on this ship, not all of them,
because again, okay, so the the authors of Satan's Silence,

(40:58):
which have been quoting from our journalists during this period,
and there's some of like the only people seemingly in
the country who are like this is nonsense, Like all
of this is nonsense. What is wrong with you people?
And they like their book is published like right around
the time that all of this, like all these cases
start to fall apart, like Satan's Silence is from that time.
That's part of why it's such a good Um. I mean,

(41:20):
it's also is where I got all the background of
like what set this up. I can't say enough about
what a good book it is if you want to understand, Yeah, yeah,
very good journalists. Um yeah, it's a good book. Um.
So yeah. All these lies about the McMartin teachers led
to a lynch mob mentality within the community of Manhattan Beach.
Peggy Bucky was stabbed in the crotch by a random

(41:43):
man while she was out on the street. The school
was lit on fire and spray painted with graffiti that
said Ray must die. Several parents went so far is
to solicit the services of a hitman to bomb Peggy's
car like off the No, it never like yeah, they

(42:06):
just like the first episode, we're basically talking about people
filling a car up with gas and then they just
put a brick on the brakes. There's no one at
the wheel. It just goes sucking careening into the city. Yeah,
it's fucking it's so bad. It's like to tell though,
like such a portionary tale. It's it's so important that
people know about this exact Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, I'm

(42:31):
gonna quote again from Satan's silence about like how out
of control ship gets in Manhattan Beach. The fact that
the accused were behind bars did not calm the frenzy
running through the South Bay as parents and authorities pursued
Judy Johnson's claims and became convinced that mcmartin's staff was
only one arc of a gigantic sex ring. Searching for
the other accomplices, parents formed investigative squads armed with address

(42:54):
lists supplied by c I I, which is what McFarland
worked at. UH. They drove to their sons and daughters
around to find molestation sites like the Devil House, which
is like what the kids had just been making shut up,
and they were trying to find real locations that clearly weren't.
As the children pointed their fingers at homes and businesses,
mothers and fathers wrote down addresses and submitted them to
the d a's office, which in turn distributed them to

(43:15):
more parents, and and they're like, hey, we hear this
business might be involved in mass child sex abuse, as
your kid's been near it, like just and it's just
like they're just firing a shotgun into a crowd basically,
like they're just shattering lines left and right, like right,
like it's so bad. A father staked out nearby commuter

(43:38):
airports and copied registration numbers off the tales of planes,
while reporting suspicious characters such as the female pilot who
maybe a lesbian. The kids are, yeah, yeah, buck them,
because again the kids are talking about how they were
flown places. So like some dad shows up to take
down all the plane the in numbers on planes, Um, yeah,

(44:01):
so is the primarily besides word of mouth? Is this
just like grocery store magazine covers? Is that what it
is that's getting this information out of you know, major
news and the and the d a's office. The cops
are calling people and being like, we hear about this
happening in this school or this building. It's not it's
like tabloid. It's like there's like credible quote unquote credible. Yeah,

(44:24):
like fucking Time is reporting on this ship. Most people
trust Time, Like you could argue Time magazine actually a
long history of shitty journalism, but like the people, Yeah, yeah,
it's not like the National Enquirer spreading ship. It's like
looking like the d a's office. You're supposed to theoretically
be able to trust the d A. If you're like

(44:44):
a random citizen, you would assume that they're not just
spreading nasense. But that's why you shouldn't assume that. Can
you take a can you take an addie addie break? Yeah?
So if you know who doesn't spread nonsense about mass satanic,
pedophilic conspiracy is that chatters the lives of human beings
like a cluster bomb. I mean, i'd certainly hope you'd
say the products and services that support this show, that's right,

(45:09):
not a one of them. Fantastic. Okay, we're back, So
I'm going to continue that quote about just how out
of control things get. The paranoia was all encompassing. One parent.
Jackie mcgauley, who had a two year old daughter enrolled

(45:31):
at McMartin pre school for a short time after the
investigation started, came to believe that Ray Bucky had molested
her child, even though the police were watching watching him closely.
At this time, she also became suspicious about many other people,
including a local newspaper columnists she was dating. When the
two broke up, mcgalley accused him of sexual abuse. Later,
she made the same charge against a worker at the
rich Stone Center where her daughter went for therapy. Her

(45:53):
allegations never went anywhere, but were lost amiddle wash of
outlandish claims, including rumors that the mayor's wife was ferrying
corpses around in her station wagon. At times, people who
spread these stories ended up accusing each other. One couple,
for instance, through a celebratory party for McMartin children and
their parents the day the teachers were arrested. Later there
were whisperings that those two were accomplices because the rumor

(46:16):
went Their business was located next to the athletic club
where Matthew Johnson and later other children said they had
been molested. Yep, you just can't go anywhere anything. Yeah,
because again, everyone's lost their fucking minds at this point, Like, yeah, exactly,
it's a sort of collective insanity that's taken home here. Yeah.

(46:39):
As the trial wore down, Judy Johnson broke down completely.
Her husband left her, and she of course immediately accused
him of being part of a vast satanic pedophile conspiracy.
She eventually barricaded herself and her children and her small
home with like a pile of guns. She threatens her
brother when the twelve gage shotgun when he flies in
from out of town to help, and she's eventually taken
forcibly two way psyche atric hospital, where she's diagnosed with

(47:01):
paranoid schizophrenia. Police who searched her home found a cash
of guns and AMMO, including a rifle, under the bed
of her cancer written son, who told cops that he
would kill them to protect his mom because he's been
like they've all been, and like finished, it's terrible And yeah,
I mean he dies shortly thereafter because of the untreated
brain tumor, and so does his mom. She dies from

(47:22):
massive liber deterioration caused by alcoholism. Um, it's just a
terrible just a nightmare of a story all around, like again,
and she's responsible for a lot of this, all this starting,
but also like fuck yeah, just a fucking horrible, horrible tragedy.
Everything about it's terrible. Ultimately for me, I'm just thinking,

(47:42):
like what the funk were the police doing? Like they
facilitated this, They absolutely did, But again they're also not
the smartest people tend to join the police force, and
they're being told, they're being trained in a lot of
cases that satanic ritual sex conspiracies are a major problem
in America and an absolutely real thing. People believed this ship.

(48:05):
There's a great video called um Defending Yourself against Edged Weapons,
I think, and it's like a police training video that
I believe was made in the eighties, And it's actually
a pretty good training video if you actually want very
practical training on like how dangerous fucking knives are. It's
all about like knives are fucking horrifying. But there's a
scene in it because they like recreate a bunch of
scenes where like cops get stabbed, and one of the

(48:27):
scenes they're like busting up a satanic covin And it's
not like a joke. Think they thought that this was
the thing that happened. Um, it's it's fucking something else.
So on November two nine, after twenty eight months of testimony,
that McMartin case went to a jury who spent two
and a half months deliberating. They acquitted Peggy Bucky on
all charges and wound up deadlocked on Ray Bucky. Jury

(48:48):
four person Louis Chang noted the interview tapes were too
biased to leading. That's the main crux of it. Another
juror told reporters whether I believe he did it or
whether it and whether it was proven are very differ print.
Judge Pounders offered his own appraisal of the verdict. I
was not surprised by the verdicts. I would not have
been surprised at any decision that Jerry made. The judge
basically being like everything like who the funk knows, Like

(49:11):
everything is so out of control at this point nothing
could surprise me. Yeah, and that's kind of like he
says some stuff to that effect of like I'm just
glad like to not be involved in the ship anymore.
Like this is so this of course, outraged child protection
groups and parents across the country. Five hundred people, including
dozens of McMartin parents, marched through the streets of Manhattan

(49:33):
Beach with signs that said, we believe the children good stuff. Well,
but then abody. One TV poll at the time noted
that of respondents thought the BUCkies were guilty. In the end,
no one was convicted of any crimes at the McMartin preschool.
But Ray Bucky still, you know, spent five years ago.

(49:55):
These people's lives are just shattered. Like it's just a
mean a woman got stopped in the cross. Yeah, Like
it's so fucking it's so bad. Yeah, And like the
super fun thing, Jake, you're gonna love this part. The
super fun thing about the Satanic panic is that the
complete lack of evidence and the acquittal of all of
the charged people and what became the nation's longest and

(50:16):
most expensive court case, did nothing to quell the public
witch hunts. Again. They spent fifteen million dollars on this
case and can't find a goddamn thing. Well, the McCartin
trial was going on Kern County, which we talked about
the end of the first episode. Right that first case
interrupts again into a series of allegations of mass child
rape networks. The cases never go anywhere, and they're all
hampered by the fact that all of the cops, lawyers,

(50:37):
and judges involved in every given case like inevitably get
to cry it a secret satanic child molesters themselves, like
they get added into conspiracy. It's really blocks off the trials,
like now the judges being accused. It's like like the
just the community loses goddamn mind. Hundreds of innocent people
in the ensuing panic get charged all over the country,

(50:58):
many of them did time in jail some king decades.
Families are torn the funk apart. One example of this
would be the case of Carol Felstead and I'm gonna
quote now from a rite up on her case in
the conversation In n she went to her doctor complaining
of headaches. Rather than being given any kind of useful medication,
she was sent to therapy, which included hypnosis to recover
memories of ritual sex abuse. She was given psychotherapy and

(51:21):
like yeah, she was basically went through repressed memory therapy,
and she started to believe that her parents had been
the leaders of a satanic cult and that her mother
had murdered another of their children. And that Carol had
sat on top of the body and then set fire
to the family home, and like none of this was true.
What actually had happened is that, like they had, the
family had another daughter who was ill from birth and
died in the hospital um from a defective apart before

(51:43):
Carol was born. But obviously her parents talked about it
when she was a little baby, and like those I
like that got into her head and then wait, so
she had to repress a quote unquote repressed memory of
someone she'd never met. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's sucking. Uh.
Carol falsely claimed to have given birth to six babies

(52:06):
who are meant to be conceived and ritually sacrificed by
the Satanic cult. Her medical records showed that she'd never
been pregnant. But she believes all this, all these memories
that this therapist shoves into her head, she believes. She
cuts off contact with her family, changes her name, and
never ever, ever like forgives or come back to her family.
She dies in two thousand five, in like very strange circumstances.

(52:27):
It's just a terrible case. And like by all accounts,
before going to therapy, she was fine, she was doing great,
she was an intelligent young woman with a whole life
ahead of her, exactly like this, this therapist just destroys
her and her family. Yeah, yeah, it's tremendously fucked. Like

(52:48):
the actual number of casualties of this will never know.
It's probably thousands, thousands and thousands of easily, it's so bad.
In sixty minutes, there at a one hour special in
the Connection between Dungeons and Dragon, Satanic rites and suicide
seven to bats Ship. Christian activists published the Catechism of

(53:08):
the New Age, an unhinged pamphlet that argued, among other things,
that D and D was evil because it encouraged critical
thinking and children, which inevitably lead to heresy of the
devil thinking. And of course heavy metal music gets demonized
in this period too, right, and obviously, being good marketers,
a lot of heavy metal musicians lean into this and

(53:29):
like specifically start like doing devil stuff in their songs,
and their teenage countercultural fans do this as well, and
this sometimes end in tragedy because a lot of these kids,
they're just doing it to be like Funk the Man,
like the Yeah, exactly, but also it makes them suspects
and murders. Which is what happened in the case of

(53:49):
the West Memphis three. Have you ever heard of this case?
Real bad? Yeah. On May five of that year, eight
year old Christopher Buyers went missing with of his friends.
The boys were found murdered shortly thereafter, hog tied with
their own shoelaces. One appeared to have his genitals cut off. Um,
I mean, like, obviously, this is an actual horrific crime

(54:10):
that was committed, and it was immediately put down to
satanic ritual activity. Three teenagers were quickly accused of the crime,
based largely on the strength of the fact that they've
been arrested for vandalism and liked heavy metal, and the
whole case was a complete ship show. So, for one thing,
the police department that is investigating this case is not
just wildly incompetent, It was actively being investigated for stealing

(54:32):
drugs from another police department. The other West Memphis Police
are not a good department from So the cops never
secured the crime scene, UM, did not properly investigate the

(54:52):
crime scene, and the coroner was incompetent because he believed
and reported that the kids general genitals had been cut
off as part of like a ritual and the real
is that like it was a decomposing body that got
eaten by animals, right um, and a competent later, competent corners,
like this is clearly what was done, what happened to
the body after death. So the police in order to
find the culprits, rather than investigating because again terrible police department,

(55:15):
they go to a local juvenile psychiatrist and ask like, hey,
what kids do you think did this? Right? And the yeah, yeah,
who who who do we are is for this? Like
we we are so tired from stealing all these drugs
from the cops next door, Like we really don't have
any time to look into this ship. So the psychiatrist

(55:41):
blames a kid named Damian Eccles. Now Eccles was eighteen
at the time, and he yeah, he's the kind of
kid fortunate name. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is a really
it's it's a problem. And again his town is like
a hardcore religious fundamentalist. It's fucking West Memphis in the eighties. Uh.
And he wore all black and listened to the metal music.
He read Stephen King books. He was interested in the occult,

(56:03):
so he had like books on the occult, and ship
in his house, and he had mental health issues. He'd
spent time in a mental institution, which is why the
psychiatrist knew this kid was out there. And the psychiatrist,
doing exactly what psychiatrists should never do, blames him for
the crime, and soon so did the police. Yeah, they
wind up wrapping up a friend of Echo's in it,

(56:24):
Jason Baldwin, who was sixteen and was like a good
student who had no history of trouble um he but
was also a fan of like heavy metal like they,
and they drew scenes from like Metallica and Slayer and
Iron Iron Maiden songs, and like teachers found them and
so like, oh, these kids are like it's the devil. Yeah,
and they've both been arrested for vandalism in shoplifting, but
like nothing violent, like never an actual crime. Yeah, they're

(56:48):
fucking teenagers. Yeah, uh, it's it's real bad. And basically,
in order to convict these kids, the West Memphis Police
found a mentally disabled seventeen year old with an i
Q of seventy two who knew both kids, and they
bribe his poor family with like lies about reward money
that if he like well like and like they're talking
to him about like, oh, yeah, on, once you get

(57:09):
these kids convicted, you'll be able to buy a truck
and stuff like that, like it's unbelievably fucked up. Yeah yeah,
And so they questioned this, The family agree with him,
question this mentally ill kid who has no tie of this,
and the police question for twelve hours with no parent,
no lawyer, no child advocate with him, and he confesses
eventually that he echoes and Baldwin killed the kids, even
though his like as a clearly coerced confession that's frequently

(57:32):
wrong and includes facts that weren't part of like the
physical evidence, and he immediately recants. But it doesn't fucking matter, um,
because all three of these kids get fucking convicted, and
it's it's I mean, like now, law enforcements pretty certain
that it was they were like those kids who were
murdered were killed by a single person, probably an adult. Um.
But yeah, twelve hours. I remember one reading something that

(57:55):
really made me think, Yeah, someone said, are like deep
long interrogations like that out right, it's like being war
aboarded with dialogues, you know what I mean. And it's
like I remember thinking, that's such a good way when
the water dialogue. Yeah, it's it's a nightmare. So Damian
Echols gets sentenced to death, Jesse ms Kelly gets sentenced
to life imprisonment plus two twenty years sentences, and Jason

(58:16):
Baldwin gets sentenced to life imprisonment. Um and yeah, the
the prosecution basically claims like this is part of a
devil ritual that the kids were doing, Like that's part
of the case. Um And obviously like there was never
any hard physical evidence. And in fact, in two thousand seven,
new evidence comes out that finds like genetic material of
someone who's not any of the three victims around the

(58:38):
bodies of the victims and was not any of the
defendants either, um, which you know. Anyway, the case they
appeal and ship like the case winds up, it takes
until again this happens in night. It's not until two
thousand ten that the people in the case are able
to negotiate a plea bargain. Like, they don't even get
declared innocent, like which you would think. Instead they have
to enter an Alfred plea and which they assert their

(59:00):
innocence but also acknowledged that the prosecutors had enough evidence
to convict them and they get sentenced to time served,
both having served like eighteen years um or all having
So yeah, it's right, that's a lifetime you know. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
it's horrible. It's horrible. It's a horrible, horrible story, Jake.
The thing is as well, this sounds dumb, but I

(59:22):
was just thinking, like, now, if a real Satanic group
came out, they could just be like, no one's gonna
believe that we did this, you know, like off the
off the Satanic Panic, like it's fine. Well, let's saying
that it would probably create a news Yeah. I mean,
all right, listen up, devil worshippers, you've got you've got
a window here. No no, Jakenrahan says, start committing crimes now, Jake,

(59:48):
this has all been a real bummer, just not a
great time. Um. And I want to end on something
that is at least kind of funny. So one of
the major spreaders of the Satanic Panic, one of like
the people who was responsible nationwide for getting a lot
of this nonsense out was friend of the pod Oprah Winfrey, um, who,
boy howdy, had a lot of people on to say

(01:00:09):
to tell leward lies about the things they've supposedly done.
But during one of these times, she actually had a
member of the Church of Satan on her show, and
a guy in the audience started claiming that he had
been a Satanist and had like murdered somebody as part
of a Satanic ritual. And you actually this guy got
cross examined by the Satanist that Oprah had on stage.
And it's fucking great, and I'm gonna I'm gonna see

(01:00:31):
you that video. Now we're gonna end on that note
because it's actually kind of funny. It's very, very funny.
So what happened in the in the in the ritual
where someone was murdered and how were they murdered? Uh,
they were stabbed seven times with with nice because it
was what here eight years ago, So it was about

(01:00:56):
and so rich was a witch? Is seventh and it
got out of hand and the High priest brought out
these seven daggers and the person in the form of
a cross with the seven daggers. Um, was this person

(01:01:18):
impaled against his or her will? They won't wished to
be sacrificed. You know that this was against his will? Um?
But so how did you know you were you weren't
going to be pulled in and impaled. That's why I
got That's one of the reasons why I got out
of the church. And the other reason why I got
out of the church was mentally, I had a nervous

(01:01:41):
breakdown after that and I just mentally could not handle it.
How do you explain that? My first question would be,
were you a member of the Church of Satan, a
card carrying member of the Church of Satan? And who
was the grotto leader? I don't remember his name. You
don't remember the name of a person who involved you

(01:02:02):
in murder? Not anymore now. Like I said, I had
had a nervous breakdown and I have partial amnesia. Man,
that is excellent, And then gave him a car to say, yeah, actually, yeah, yeah.
The guy that is cross examine him looks like Dracula,

(01:02:22):
looks like and he's like, no, this is stupid, and
he's he's very like methodical and lawyerly about how he
cuts that guy's claims apart. It's great. Yeah, yeah, So Jake,
how do you feel about the devil Um? I don't know.
I need a shower now, I think, like a long one,
you know what I mean? After all that's pretty grim. Yeah.

(01:02:45):
But again, like it's like I said before, like you
call all of that is like very interesting, and there
are some groups around, but this stuff just makes it
all look stupid. And God knows how many horrible crimes
slipped through the crux, you know what I mean, or
maybe will or I don't know. It's just it's just
so outrageous that that kind of hysteria took over through

(01:03:07):
the police as well. It's not our rageous, but you
know what I'm saying, it's just another thing of just
like wow, great job you can find. There are some
cases of like ritual murders, like we talked, very very few.
It is a thing that has happened in history in
this country and in other countries. Like it's not a
thing that never occurs. But it's not what they claimed

(01:03:29):
it was, right, there's no gigantic international network of Satanists
murdering children for devil powers. Yeah, and it often the
occult stuff is actually nothing to do with the devil. Actually,
there's very few actual Sate worship yeah, you know what
I mean. Yeah, And most Satanists aren't Satan worshippers because
it usually means something completely different. To them than like

(01:03:50):
or yeah, I mean there's alread yeah, there's there's a
bunch of different like I don't want to Like I've
known Satanists who like spoke pretty eloquently about like why
they called themselves that, and it wasn't like a worship
the devil thing. It was like yeah, but yeah, it's
like sometime often or whatever. Yeah, it's fine. I mean,
it's it's I think the best thing about this, like
like you know, when you were talking about us, thinking, man,

(01:04:12):
I don't want to hear this, and that made me think, like, yeah,
that's really why you should have to hit do you
know what I mean? It's such a demonstration of mass
hysteria and not even failure, but like almost like the
authorities are trying to make it worse. It was so bad,
you know what I mean, And the idea I think
that won't happen again, Like, oh it happened, that can
happen any time. It'll happen anytime. Like there's always shades

(01:04:33):
of this every time, Like there's shades of this and
sort of the panic that was erupting over Antifa earlier,
there's gonna be shades of it in the boogaloo stuff.
There's gonna be shades of it, and I mean human
on it is not just shades of it went onto
descendant of it, but like several shades of ship. Yeah, yeah,
it never like it's the kind of thing. There's a
bunch of things. If you're a responsible member of society

(01:04:54):
or a responsible society, you always have to be on
guard for fascism is one of them, you know, which
or another. It's what it is, right, it's a modern
day which one actually, yeah, like almost, I mean this
was a literal which they were looking. Yeah, it's awesome.
I'm I never knew how unreal how many people like

(01:05:15):
you're talking about probably somewhere around a thousand people harmed
one way or the other by Justina case right, almost
four kids, but like also like all these business family members.
God knows what problems those kids having their lives now
as well, that kind of abused by the authority. Yeah,
if you're if you were a McMartin kid who like
went through all this like hit us, hit us up.

(01:05:37):
I'm really curious about right. Yeah. Uh so, Jake, do
you want to plug things? Yeah? Man, definitely, people should
definitely listen to the new one clearance basically trying to
trying to bring everyone together, to kind of put the
story of put Chewing On together, but at the same
time going to be like, you know, by the end,

(01:05:58):
I want to be like, this is absolutely we think
it isn't his wife, you know what I'm saying. Um.
And yeah, also popular Fronts my platform, independent journals and
just search Popular Fronts and you'll find it all. Yeah,
check it out. Check out Jake's new podcast, check out
Jake's old podcast, Find Jake on the Street. No, don't
do that podcast. We're done.