A paper rebuking Stickels assessment of the McMartin tunnels

[barracuda]

I realize I am chiming in very late here but I spent Sunday morning reading through a lot of this stuff- and I lived in Socal. in the 80s so I have a vivid memory of this story...Given the involvement of folks like Gunderson and the Eberles, the waters become quite muddy but I still don't see why there is no hard photographic evidence of the tunnels. Mcgauley claims to have a ton but has never bothered to put any online (?). Summitseems to suggest that the tunnels were there and matched one child's description but, again, are there any photos of the tunnels, the pots, the Disney bag??
Again, I mean no disrespect nor ruffling of feathers.

Sonic, the entire Stickel report is available online:

Archaeological Investigations of the McMartin Preschool Site by E. Gary Stickel, Ph.D.

It is, unfortunately, a scan of a Xerox copy, so the pictures aren't great quality (that's where I got the photos I posted on this thread) but the pots, the Disney bag, and shots and diagrams of the tunnels are contained in it. If you're going to discuss the tunnels, that's a good place to start, especially wrt this thread.

[lightningBugout]

Can I just put one blonde question out there - when I first read Stickel's paper, I assumed there was a reason why he had concluded the Disney bag was not there by virtue of what the OP author referred to as "bioturbination."

The OP author is very comfortable attributing the bag to this cause yet, to me, that would be a glaring, improbable and very unlikely oversight. I'm left wanting to ask Stickel why he reached said conclusion but maintaining faith that he had good reason for his decision.

[SonicG]

Sonic, the entire Stickel report is available online:

Archaeological Investigations of the McMartin Preschool Site by E. Gary Stickel, Ph.D.

It is, unfortunately, a scan of a Xerox copy, so the pictures aren't great quality (that's where I got the photos I posted on this thread) but the pots, the Disney bag, and shots and diagrams of the tunnels are contained in it. If you're going to discuss the tunnels, that's a good place to start, especially wrt this thread.

Yes, thanks for that- I hadn't seen that the whole report is on-line. It is unfortunate that the photos are of such low quality but I will take a further look at the report and see what I make of it.

[nathan28]

FWIW my previous post where I suggest that the McMartin thing was a hoax to discredit other RA cases or pedo cases was largely inspired by barracuda's comment that the defense's legal strategy involved drawing the case out and that he wouldn't put his kid on the stand.

Because there was a game, and a meta-game. The defense knew they could win the game (the trial)--I'd suggest that all they'd have to do would be seriously discredit the psychiatrists, which, frankly, wouldn't have been hard even if everything the kids said to the psych. interviewers had been accurate (no more experts) and then they'd be left with the testimony of children (easily portrayed as unreliable)--but strategized such that the thing moved out into the meta-game ("the court of public opinion") where they delivered an even stronger blow. That's a higher-risk way to play (e.g., Dutroux in Belgium, w/ 300,000 people in the streets) but the reward was clearly higher--now no one will believe an RA claim, and even something like that Texas "swinger" club seems unbelievable. I find myself reading "Programmed To Kill" and knocking the last digit off every number I read despite most of it being public-domain mainstream press data.

Again, there's layers of assumption involved there but it's possible and worth considering.

(i am not an attorney)

back to the OP, I just put in a garden bed on a lot that had been a business--100 years ago. Digging about 6-10" I started hitting cobblestones, china, coal for furnaces, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if there were parts where a basement, etc. could have been excavated. OTOH, that Disney bag isn't what I'd call damning, but it's pretty notable.

[lightningBugout]

BTW I'm glad you mentioned the TX swingers case again. That thing just soared into successful multiple prosecutions like a bullet train. It all happened so fast that I'm not sure it got the press it demanded. IOW a true example of an open and shut case of multi-perp organized abuse involving parents, drugs, pornography and very large numbers of clientele that must have been organized through some sort of vetted network.

[barracuda]

Can I just put one blonde question out there - when I first read Stickel's paper, I assumed there was a reason why he had concluded the Disney bag was not there by virtue of what the OP author referred to as "bioturbination."

The OP author is very comfortable attributing the bag to this cause yet, to me, that would be a glaring, improbable and very unlikely oversight. I'm left wanting to ask Stickel why he reached said conclusion but maintaining faith that he had good reason for his decision.

Bioturbination in this context is a fairly mundane explanation for the presence of the bag at this depth. Wyatt mentions this phenomenon in terms of small animals like rodents moving objects underground in their act of churning debris, but plants can cause the same effect, especially the large root systems of trees, which get hold of objects in their path and slowly draw them along. I've actually seen a bicycle dragged partly underground via this process, caught in the roots of a mid-sized pepper tree and gradually subsumed over a twenty year period.

[lightningBugout]

I don't find it far-fetched at all, but it seems a litltle odd that the pro archaeologist had reason to rule it out (something I assume was carefully considered) and yet the psychiatrist decides, with no professional experience that it was the case, you know?

In any case - I'm no longer convinced the tunnels were real. They are starting to feel very far-fetched, and also at odds with the main caveat of serious RA - leave no evidence. IOW I don't buy that the perps would have left giant incriminating evidence right under everyone's nose - it conflicts with their overall sensibility. Not to mention, as someone recently pointed out to me - they didn't *need* them. They could be stage just as effectively. Maybe Underwager was right about that photo of the play structure but wrong that the kids created the fantasy themselves. Maybe it was a prop used by the perps.

You must admit what an effective red herring the tunnels question became and has continued to be. As if they were the lynchpin and the necessary smoking gun without which all of the kids testimony meant nothing - "if the glove fits, you must acquit."

BTW that same someone smart pointed something else out to me - the jury was hung. And most of the jurors were convinced that abuse had taken place. Hardly a slam dunk. Which makes it seem particularly odd that the case is used as any attempt at definitive evidence against RA.

[barracuda]

Our case was about Child Molestation-NOT satanism.

JM, since we have your attention, would you mind expanding on this statement somewhat? Do you explicitly mean your legal case, or are you referring to your understanding of the circumstances surrounding the abuses at McMartin?

[Project Willow]

Nice thread title to shove in Jackie's face, carnivorous fish. I just hoped she'd get a little better treatment here than on the skeptic's forum.

[lightningBugout]

Perhaps it would work better to start a new thread fish that specifically refers to the question of whether or not satanism was an integral charge in the overall McMartin case since the OP here was specifically about the tunnels and their archaeological investigation?

[lightningBugout]

Just decided to share something I wasn't sure about putting out there before.

In late May I was in a Manhattan Beach coffee shop talking to one of the McMartin parents. A beat cop came in who recognized her. They exchanged greetings and she said I should interview him also. I asked if I could and he politely declined. But then he sat down anyways and chatted with us. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was considering making a film about McMartin (actually about RA/MC, but I didn't want to overly complicate things). As he talked with the parent over the course of 45 minutes he started out by saying that McMartin had greatly damaged the community and that one way or another alot of the kids had had very tough lives since then.

In time he said two things that blew my mind. In his opinion, the way the site of the school was situated, its privacy, and the time that passed before the digs would have, in his opinion, definitely allowed tunnels to be removed or destroyed. But much much more clearly he told me this -- the Buckeys received undercover surveillance and one night, in a grocery store parking lot, Ray Buckey had been seen tongue kissing his mother.

Needless to say all this blew my mind.

[JM]

Nice thread title to shove in Jackie's face, carnivorous fish. I just hoped she'd get a little better treatment here than on the skeptic's forum.

Have I posted on this thread?
I just found it.

Is Nathan28 Debbie Nathan?
I hope so because she has never had the courage to talk to me, even though she makes money from writing about me and other things related to this issue that she has no connection to.

I wonder why FMSF and Nathan have nothing to say about gunderson and all his satanic panic activities.

There is a lot of good stuff on here, including pictures from the tunnel report. Thanks.

Yeah, I left Mr Randi's forum. I've been to England and I know how obstinate those guys can be. It was taking up too much of my time and I had to repeat information too often. They wanted newspaper or Internet articles to prove my personal experiences to them.
I know that is where Nathan gets her "facts"- - - -
ted gunderson was doing a commercial endorsing Sylvia Browne. She called my # looking for him months after I threw him out. Some psychic. I saw Randi's thread on her and, being able to see right through Browne, I joined the talk. Then I offered to help explain the whole gunderson/tunnels issue but they would never let me get to the main topic.

[JM]

Our case was about Child Molestation-NOT satanism.

JM, since we have your attention, would you mind expanding on this statement somewhat? Do you explicitly mean your legal case, or are you referring to your understanding of the circumstances surrounding the abuses at McMartin?

You didn't have my attention. I am not that psychic.
But since you asked, the legal case was not about satanism... freedom of religion and all.
The issue is sexual abuse of preschool aged children. If they were "satanists" (or whatever) I don't care. I start caring if satanists sexually abuse my child in the name of their beliefs. They never admitted to anyone I have ever heard of that they were "satanists."

[barracuda]

Our case was about Child Molestation-NOT satanism.

JM, since we have your attention, would you mind expanding on this statement somewhat? Do you explicitly mean your legal case, or are you referring to your understanding of the circumstances surrounding the abuses at McMartin?

You didn't have my attention. I am not that psychic.
But since you asked, the legal case was not about satanism... freedom of religion and all.
The issue is sexual abuse of preschool aged children. If they were "satanists" (or whatever) I don't care. I start caring if satanists sexually abuse my child in the name of their beliefs. They never admitted to anyone I have ever heard of that they were "satanists."

Thanks for noticing the question now, though, JM. I ask because we have had a variety of conversations concerniing satanic ritual abuse around this forum, some of it in the context of McMartin. Certain writers, like McGowan, emphasise lurid consructions like "their forced involvement in satanic rituals", as if the bald facts of the case weren't difficult enough. And the Stickel report, at least the version of it as I have read it (which I gather was a rough and perhaps tampered-with cut, but I wish I had printed it anyway when I had the chance) contains the implication that some evidence, such as the "witch's foot" on the star plate pictured upthread, is satanic in nature. It seems to me that these occult inferences were somewhat "added on", and don't really apply to the central issues of the case, and I feel that is sort of what I am hearing from you here. Yet the tunnels and other settings of the abuse are so compellingly evidence of a highly organized, structured and even melodramatic effort by the abusers, that they seem to connotate ritual of some kind. But maybe that is a bias of my own I should consider discarding when looking at the McMartin case.

While I really do have your attention, I'd like to ask you if you might cite any general reference or source material on the case you might recommend, and thank you for your valuable participation here. I've seen your writing in discussions on other forums and your grace under fire is commendable, to say the least.

[Percival]

If there is one person who gives McMartian skeptics like myself a reason to pause it is Jackie, she has credibility oozing out of every post she makes. There is no hyperbole or HEY LOOK AT ME in this woman at all and she is the main reason that I am willing to eat crow and reconsider my position on what really happened at that preschool.

Thanks for being here Jackie and thanks for representing those children in such a classy and humble manner. We do notice it dont think we dont. You are unlike many of the rest who were involved and a real breath of fresh air among the stale and rotten.