The longest-running and most expensive trial in US history, the McMartin preschool case, began in the fall of 1983, when Judy Johnson claimed that her son, Billy, had been sodomized by Ray Buckey, a twenty-five-year-old teacher at McMartin Preschool in affluent Manhattan Beach, California.

Over the weeks that followed, Johnson’s accusations became increasingly bizarre: she alleged that Buckey and other teachers had dressed as witches to abuse her son; that Buckey “flew through the air”; that Peggy McMartin Buckey (Ray’s mother and the school administrator) had stuck scissors in the boy’s eyes, and that she had beheaded an infant and made Billy drink the dead baby’s blood. Johnson’s accounts involved a goat, a lion, an elephant, and day trips via train and airplane to other sites for sex abuse and torture. Her son showed no signs of physical abuse, and Johnson herself would later be diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia, but her accusations set in motion an elaborate chain reaction.

A police search of Buckey’s home turned up “evidence” — a rubber duck and copies of Playboy. After arresting Buckey, the Manhattan Beach police chief sent a letter to parents naming him as a suspected child abuser. The letter asked parents to question their children as to whether they had witnessed or been victims of abuse, helpfully naming several possible variations of sexual assault they might have experienced. It also suggested that nude photos might have been taken. Persistent questioning by panicked parents produced further accusations, and a major part of the police investigation was handed over to Kee MacFarlane of the Children’s Institute International, a clinic for the treatment of child abuse.