Books published by Manor Publishing House

It began on August 12, 1983, when a disturbed woman's bizarre accusation ignited hysteria across the small Southern California community of Manhattan Beach.Driven by over-zealous investigators and a sensational news media, the legend of The McMartin Preschool became the "case of the century"-the longest, most expensive criminal trial in United States history.Four years later, in the spring of 1988, in the midst of the ongoing frenzy, authors Matthew LeRoy and Deric Haddad, students at San Diego State University, left school to follow the case, a path that led them to Manhattan Beach, an upscale community where a vortex of suspicion left most residents leery of outsiders.In this instance, however, where the inquisitors were two unassuming college students, many opened their doors . . . and they had so much to say.Through the summer of 1990, the authors conducted over one hundred interviews, as they bonded with key players on both sides of the conflict. No other journalists or network reporters were able to obtain such a diverse range of sources.Now, thirty years later, this extraordinary event comes to life.Written in a creative non-fiction format, They Must Be Monsters is told through the eyes of the "mother who started it all." Using exclusive content-her volume of lost archives-the depth of her paranoia is unveiled; the portrait of a schizophrenic woman whose dark visions became a microcosm of the community around her. These authentic, never-before-seen documents finally bring an end to the mystery behind her fateful accusations.The events of Manhattan Beach are true, an untold story, the calamity of an upscale seaside town gripped by fear, where friends turned on neighbors in a frantic campaign of misguided retribution-a devastating crucible that afflicted a generation of innocent people, an event eerily similar to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.It's a tale of horror, rage, superstition, and faith; a shameful moment in American folklore that's been erroneously ignored by historians-a great injustice that should've never taken place-but,as history tends to repeat itself, most tragically did.

It was somewhat delusional: the idea that we, two undergrads, would leave college to chase the mystery behind the McMartin Preschool case, a criminal proceeding that had steadily become the longest, costliest in United States history. It was the epitome of naiveté-but we were too green to see it.Back then, in 1987, as we examined the case and the community of Manhattan Beach that gave it life, we saw an absence of blunt journalism; that a false narrative had spun tragically out of control. No one, it seemed, was ready to face up to what we'd done.To the general public, the story was uniquely grotesque-a conspiracy of adults who'd sexually abused hundreds of preschool kids, as deplorable as any crime had ever been.But if, as some argued, the case was a hoax, then it was an American tragedy of monumental proportion, where young children were being used and exploited as weapons to persecute innocent citizens, all of it orchestrated by the very people-parents, prosecutors, and clinical professionals-who'd so nobly claimed they were out to protect them.From our perspective, it was not so much a story about "child molestation," but a remarkable account of a community gone mad, a historical event that had been hopelessly misunderstood, and thus, misreported.And so, for three years, we kept going, following one lead to the next, until the day we finally got our hands on the truth.By doing so, it's fair to say, we became experts on the events of Manhattan Beach, the two people uniquely qualified to write They Must Be Monsters. It's not because we took a course, or did an abundance of research, or sat through the trial-frankly, we did all of those things-but because we took it further than anyone else. We went there. We lived it.Having sat on this information for nearly three decades, we're ready to go on the record, to reconcile this forgotten calamity. We're doing it for ourselves, for the people who suffered, and, most importantly, for our great society of fair-minded citizens who never knew that something so unjust had actually occurred in modern America.