THE ARCHEOLOGIST’S REPORT: AN ANALYSIS
Archeologist Stickel’s findings and conclusions appeared unassailable and
had spread across the child protection community, uncritically accepted as valid.
Indeed, prior to reviewing the report I had heard more than one professional say
that the McMartin Preschool tunnels had been found. One of those professionals is
a nationally known figure who made his remarks to an audience of several hundred
child protection workers at a major conference.
Thus, I obtained a copy of the report and reviewed it. Finishing my review, a
more plausible conclusion than that of the archeologist emerged—that evidence of
filled-in tunnels had not been found. Rather, Stickel had found a family trash pit of
the type that was, and is, often dug on the property of rural homeowners. Often
such a pit is dug by hand. Old bottles, tin cans, table scraps, metal objects and
other trash are disposed of in the pit. Combustible refuse is sometimes burned in
the pit. When the pit is nearly full, a new pit is dug in the space beside the first pit,
with its dirt used to cover the first pit. When the second pit is filled with trash it is
then covered with dirt as a third is dug, and so on until, over many years, a string
of pits has been dug, each filled with trash, and covered with a thin layer of soil.
This string of covered pits might later give the appearance of having once been a
tunnel. This, most likely, was the archeologist’s discovery.
As I reviewed Stickel’s report there were many details, large and small, to
support the conclusion that Stickel had found a string of old trash pits, rather than
tunnels. First is the history of the property itself (p. 26). Originally the lot on which
the preschool later was built (931 Manhattan Beach Boulevard) was vacant, and a
home and detached garage were next door (927 Manhattan Beach Boulevard).
Records show that the home and garage stood at least as early as 1928. The house
and garage property, and the vacant side lot that would later contain the preschool,
were purchased by a Mr. Mark Morris in 1942. The area was rural, as evidenced by
the presence of a septic tank. City trash pick-up most likely was not available.
The preschool building was constructed much later, in 1966. The lot
containing the original house and garage was sold by Morris in 1972, and a
demolition order was obtained for the house and garage. The new owners, Mr. &
Mrs. Clifton Warren, re-sold the property in 1975 to a Mr. Goldstein who allowed
the preschool to use the now vacant lot (at # 927) for a play yard. Mr. Goldstein
continued to own the property in 1990, at the time of the archeological dig by Dr.
Stickel. Thus, the history of the area fits well with the possibility that the “tunnel”
discovered by Stickel could have been a rural homeowner’s trash pit, in use for
several decades from the 1920s to the 1960s, prior to construction of the preschool
in 1966.
The contents of the “tunnels” further support the likelihood that Stickel had
found an old trash pit. Stickel listed many objects that he found (pps. 54, 70, 75).
These included sections of boards, wood fragments, a variety of metal objects, an
inner tube, numerous bottles, TV antenna wire, tin cans, scissors, eye glasses,
exposed film, cinder blocks, plywood, tar paper, roofing nails, four trash-filled pots
(three of metal, one of crockery, the largest about fourteen inches tall, all in
disrepair), a one-gallon glass food jar, 35 to 40 rusted tin can fragments, a crockery
lid, an old medicine bottle, various glass fragments from a large jar, a small
“pestle-like stone,” a rusted metal rod, and 60 to 70 rusted metal can fragments.
It is unlikely that the McMartin defendants would have brought in that
amount and variety of refuse. Much more likely is that there were no tunnels.
Further support for the trash pit theory is found in an analysis of the bottles found
in the debris. The analysis was done by members of the South Bay Antique Bottles
and Collectibles Club at the archeologist’s request. Club members concluded that
all of the bottles dated from the 1920s through the 1950s (up to 1960) with the
majority from the 1930s and 1940s (p. 141), during the decades when the Morris
family and the earlier owners would have disposed of them there.
There are other reasons to think that this was a trash pit. In the “tunnel” were
found many animal bones. These do not confirm the children’s reports of satanic
animal sacrifices. The bones were sent by archeologist Stickel to Dr. Charles
Schwartz for a zooarchaeological analysis. Dr. Schwartz issued reports to Stickel
on June 2 and June 15, 1990. He found that the bones came from chickens, pigs,
dogs, birds, and cattle. All were adult animals at the time of death. While it is
conceivable that the smaller animals could have been sacrificed during satanic
rituals, it is unreasonable, based on Stickel’s report of the size and height (about
four feet at the “entrance”) of the “tunnels,” to think that adult cattle were
sacrificed there. Moreover, Dr. Schwartz concluded (p. 17 of his report, attached as
p. 138, Appendix I.4, to Dr. Stickel’s report) that the bones represented food
remains and that the cuts were standard butcher’s cuts that had been made with a
band saw, a finding that is inconsistent with ritual sacrifice. Thus, the bones fit a
scenario of trash that included food remains, in addition to the cans, bottles and the
like described above, all tossed into the pit either by the Morris family or the
family that earlier had lived on the property, all prior to construction of the
preschool in 1966.
Three other artifacts found in the dig initially seemed at odds with a trash pit
scenario. Discovery of the three items seems to have been a particularly powerful
controlling variable in establishing Stickel’s “tunnels” conclusion. That is because
these items had been manufactured after construction of the preschool building.
Thus, the three items had to have found their way underground after construction
of the school in 1966. The items were a fragment of what was likely a fold-top
sandwich bag, decorated with Disney characters and dated “Disney class 82-83,”
and two metal plumbing pipe fastener clips whose date of manufacture was
probably after 1966. But reliance on these as evidence of surreptitious tunnel fill
by the defendants is dubious because alternative explanations for the presence of
the three items are readily available.
First, it is likely that the bag fragment was carried underground by a squirrel,
gopher or other burrowing rodent. This activity, known as bioturbation, is common
and was noted by Stickel (p. 39) in describing how, elsewhere in the dig, a “snacksized cellophane wrapper”
that he discovered might have found its way underground. It is unclear why archeologist
Stickel did not apply a similar analysis to the Disney bag’s presence, slightly more than
two feet underground beneath the edge of the preschool building.
Second, the pipe joint clips were found on a pipe connected to a toilet in
classroom # 3, in the general “tunnel” area about two feet below ground, not far
from the building’s side wall. Because Stickel found no opening through the
concrete floor that would have enabled a human to have placed the clips on the
pipe, the presence of the clips appeared to fit his hypothesis that a room or tunnel
had existed beneath the floor. Evidently Stickel did not consider the possibility that
a plumber might have dug inward from outside the building and down just enough
to repair malfunctioning plumbing. Given that the classroom floor was concrete, a
plumber (and the building’s owner) likely would have preferred an outside route,
rather than use of a jackhammer to tear through the classroom’s concrete floor.
Several others of Stickel’s findings that initially seemed to support the
presence of a tunnel also have more plausible explanations. For example, there had
been talk of an alarm system by which a perpetrator in the school could have been
warned that a parent had arrived unexpectedly. Stickel reported finding an alarm
system running from room to room throughout the classroom building. One of
Stickel’s project staff members, Ted Gunderson (p.155, Appendix I.6), noted that,
while a child easily could have reached the classroom light switches, “…the ‘fire
alarm’ switches were out of a child’s reach in every case and were all about 4 ft. 6
in. above the floor.” Implied was that conspirators could have warned each other,
including conspirators below ground, on occasions that parents arrived
unexpectedly at the preschool, while children could not have reached the switches
in futile efforts to get help. More likely, however, is that the alarm switches were
placed relatively high on the walls because staff did not want children to set off
false fire alarms. The archeologist seems to have considered neither this ordinary
reason that fire alarm switches had been placed relatively high on the wall, nor
why the switches had been connected to a bell whose location was outside the
preschool’s front office door where parents and others entering the building surely
would have heard the alarm’s ring. Thus, the benign placement of wall switches
seems to have been interpreted by Stickel as evidence of wrongdoing, while at the
same time the exculpatory implications of the bell’s location were not addressed in
the archeologist’s report.
Such oversights are common in human experience. Psychologists have coined
the mentalistic term “confirmatory bias” to explain a phenomenon in which one
notices data which seem to confirm one’s hypothesis, and ignores (or does not see)
data that tend to disconfirm that hypothesis...
...Many other questions remain as well. Why would the defendants have
brought in fill dirt that included dozens of tin cans, bottles, trash-filled crockery, an
inner tube, TV antenna wire, steak bones, animal bones and other such debris?
Would Ray Buckey and the other defendants have brought in fill dirt from a dump?
If they had gotten their fill dirt from a dump, what are the odds that its contents
would exactly date from the 1920s to the 1950s when the earlier homeowners
would have been dumping their household trash? What are the odds that they
would have obtained their fill dirt from a dump that would have contained the
Morris family’s mailbox? The odds are powerfully against all of that. Rather, odds
are that there were no tunnels beneath the McMartin preschool and that what was
found was an old trash pit, nothing more.
The thinking of a cadre of true believers continues to remain under the control
of the lore that children could not be wrong about abuse, could not be led to
believe that abuse occurred when it had not. And they believe this in spite of
research on child suggestibility. They continue to assert their belief that, indeed,
many children were abused at the McMartin preschool, with some of the abuse
occurring in tunnels. They believe it notwithstanding the failed prosecutions, the
absence of incriminating hard evidence, and the use of questionable interviewing
techniques such as multiple interviews and leading (to the point of coercion)
questions by child abuse investigators. At least now this much is known, if any
abuse took place at the McMartin preschool, it was not done in tunnels, because
there were none
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