
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 30, 1990                   TAG: 9005300465
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/12   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                LENGTH: Short

MCMARTIN PRESCHOOL DEMOLISHED

A bulldozer razed the McMartin Pre-School, bringing to an end a search by parents for secret tunnels and hidden chambers where they claim their children were molested and engaged in satanic rituals.

Some of the parents held a news conference Tuesday to demand the state bar association investigate District Attorney Ira Reiner's prosecution of the case, the longest and costliest criminal trial in U.S. history.

Raymond Buckey, 31, is the remaining defendant in a case dating to 1984 that once involved hundreds of child molestation allegations at the school. The six other defendants were acquitted or charges against them were dropped.

Buckey is being retried on eight molestation counts unresolved by a jury that acquitted his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey.

In Manhattan Beach, construction crews Tuesday razed the single-story school building to make way for an office building.

Private investigator Ted Gunderson, a former FBI agent hired by parents and others sympathetic to the alleged victims said he found "disturbed dirt" beneath the school. He said it indicated tunnels and secret chambers once existed.

The district attorney's office conducted a similar excavation several years ago but found no evidence of tunnels.

by CNB