district attorney from the 1980s, re-elected time and again, continued to insist that stoll was guilty. the prosecutor now trying the case, deputy district attorney lisa green, challenged their testimony. she called us liars, and i felt bad. you know, here we were redeeming ourselves and making it right and she calls us liars. and that s just terrible. she didn t seem to care about the truth. trying to say now you re lying when back at the trial you were telling the truth? yeah, now i m a liar. back then when i was 6 when i didn t hardly know the difference, i was telling the truth. there was some thought in the prosecutor s mind that these people who had recanted were actually now lying about to what end? to what end? what would they possibly gain from stepping forward?
i missed their childhood. i didn t get to watch them grow up. i didn t get to watch them lose their teeth or do the little plays in school or anything like that. but for stoll, there was no such exonerating evidence. and normal for him, remained his 6 x 9 prison cell. in 1995, stoll was transferred to a new prison, a dangerous time in an inmate s life as he fights for position in the cell block hierarchy. 95, i m walking across the yard and i see this huge guy and he goes, john. i said, whoa! it was stoll s old friend, big tough jeff modahl. shuttled from one prison to the next, the two hadn t seen each other since their convictions ten years before. as the two friends swapped stories, stoll learned of a stunning development in modahl s case. shortly after he was convicted,
i knew where i was even going to sleep that night for sure. i didn t have clothes. i wore a paper suit, made out of paper. to walk out of that county jail. and you want to talk about humiliation? again, for stoll, there was no exonerating evidence. no money for lawyers either. and so in prison, he remained. prepared to spend his life inside and had no idea that the departure of his friend jeff modahl would set in motion dramatic events and disturbing revelations. including some from the victims themselves, now grown men. coming up, do you know if john stoll ever molested any of those kids who went to that house? the children who testified doomed him to prison. now grown, they speak out. when secrets and lies continues.
the case that captured the nation s attention in 1984, though it eventually fell apart, was the mcmartin preschool trial in los angeles county. that case broke just weeks before stoll s. but just 100 miles away in bakersfield, where john stoll lived, it was different. the story came in just under the national radar, and yet it was even bigger. in bakersfield, during the mid- 80s, the district attorney ed jacobs investigated not just one molestation ring or two, or even three. he and his staff eventually prosecuted eight separate sex abuse rings. all within this tight-knit community, a tiny fraction of the size of los angeles. what dark force was at work? authorities came to believe the sex rings were part of a much larger satanic cult. tips led them to alleged grave sites in search of child sacrifices, but no bodies were found. still, hundreds of suspected molesters were investigated, dozens prosecuted.
they took my fingerprints and put me in a cell. i had never been to jail before and there were people there that were in for murder. grafton and her boyfriend were put on trial at the same time as stoll, as well as a fourth person. grant self, a convicted child molester who was renting stoll s poolhouse at the time the allegations were made. while he did occasional contracting work with stoll, stoll says he knew nothing of grant self s past. did you know him very well? never met the man before he came to work. he was sleeping in his car and said he needed a place to stay, and i told him, well, you could stay in the pool house for a couple weeks until you found another place. did you worry about the kids around him or have any reason to? why would you think something like that? i mean seriously, why? i mean now i m seeing child molesters under rocks, but i