months passed, the wait seemed interminable. and then finally the decision. motion granted. a judge would rehear the case against stoll. no cameras were allowed during the testimony. but outside the courtroom, those little boys, now men, described circumstances in 1984 which they said were surreal. terrifying. so how did all this stuff get started? the sheriffs came to my house and told my parents that other kids had seen stuff happen to me. what kind of stuff? that sexual acts occurred between me and john stoll and i had seen stuff happen between john stoll and other children. that s a lie? yeah, they were asking telling me i had to lie. donald grafton was 7 at the time he says he was pressured to testify against stoll. i knew i was forced to lie but i still i gave in.
at all. found guilty of molesting children. i m sorry, but i m no child molester. john stoll protested his innocence, but authorities claimed otherwise. stoll used his swimming pool as bait, they said, an operation so successful prosecutors argued that stoll was more than just a calculating molester. but the mastermind of a depraved sex ring that preyed on young children. margie grafton was a friend of stoll s, and at that time a young mother with two little boys. you knew john stoll? yes, yes. one of the girls that i had worked with, it was her boyfriend. and we started doing things on the weekends for the kids. we would go different places but we would always end up at the pool, you know. tell me about margie grafton. she s this nice person and i
i didn t molest him. our interview had come at the conclusion of that court hearing. the result, partly because of what jed had said, was anything but certain. thanks, everybody. thank you. appreciate it. now as the interview ended, stoll was led away to await whatever his fate might be. freedom or more years in prison as a confirmed sex offender. whom would the judge believe as he weighed his decision? coming up the ruling on the petition for a writ of habeas corpus is as follows congratulations.
interview, issuing instead a few months after stoll s release, this statement standing by the conviction. my office remains convinced, based on the evidence presented at the 1984 trial and 2004 evidentiary hearing that the children were, in fact, molested by john stoll. the sheriff s officer who interviewed the kids feels the same way. social worker velda morillo declined to comment. and stoll, though finally free from prison, can never recover his lost life or the time he lost with his son. that s the one thing i cannot get away from. i cannot help but think about that. because that was my son. you know, that s really the hardest. jed s the hardest. i notice you said that was my son. yeah. it was my son, yeah. a lost son, no job, 20 stolen years. which makes what happened 24
here are some adults who knew that this was bull [ bleep ]. there was some adults that knew, keith, i know they knew and they left it go. john stoll, margie grafton, jeff modahl and many of the other parents allegedly connected to the bakersfield sex rings were alarmed when they compared notes during their trials. the children who had testified against them said stoll sounded almost like they were reciting from a script. what they said was so similar. but when stoll was sent off to prison to serve that 40-year term, he had no proof, no evidence to support his suspicion. still, he spent his first years in prison often in solitary confinement in a mind twisting rage. the first five years in prison i was in and out of the hole. why did you get in the hole? i had an attitude. for stoll, changing that attitude meant finally shutting his mind off from the world beyond these walls and giving up any hope that someone outside cared about him or his claims of