Jeffrey Robert
MacDonald (born October 12, 1943) is a former American physician and United
States Army officer who was convicted in 1979 of murdering his pregnant
wife and two daughters in February 1970.
Early life
Jeffrey MacDonald
was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York
City, the second of three children of Robert
MacDonald, known as "Mac,"
and his wife, Dorothy (née Perry).
Raised on Long Island, he attended Patchogue High School, where he was
voted both "most popular" and
"most likely to succeed,"
and was Senior Class President and
captain of the football team. MacDonald's grades were high enough for him to
win a scholarship to Princeton
University. While there, he resumed a romantic relationship with Colette Kathryn Stevenson, his high
school sweetheart. On September 14, 1963, upon learning she was pregnant with
his child, they married. Their daughter, Kimberley,
was born on April 18, 1964.
After attending Princeton
for three years, MacDonald and his family moved to Chicago in 1964, where he was accepted to Northwestern University Medical School. Their second child, Kristen, was born on May 8, 1967. The
following year, upon his graduation from medical school, he completed an
internship at the Columbia Presbyterian
Medical Center in New York.
MacDonald joined the United States Army
on July 1, 1969, and the entire family moved to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he held the rank of captain. He
was assigned to the 6th Special Forces
Group as a Group Surgeon in
September 1969.
The murders
At 3:42 a.m. on February 17, 1970, dispatchers at Fort Bragg received an emergency phone
call from MacDonald, who reported a "stabbing."
Four responding military police officers arrived at his house located at 544 Castle Drive, initially believing
that they were being called to settle a domestic disturbance. They found the
front door closed and locked and the house dark inside. When no one answered
the door, they circled to the back of the house, where they found the back screen
door closed and unlocked and the back door wide open. Upon entering, they found
MacDonald's wife Colette and his daughters Kimberly and Kristen dead in their
respective bedrooms.
Five-year-old Kimberly was found in her bed, having been
clubbed in the head and stabbed in the neck with a knife between eight and ten
times. Two-year-old Kristen was found in her own bed; she had been stabbed 33
times with a knife and fifteen times with an ice pick. Colette, who was
pregnant with her third child and first son, was lying on the floor of her
bedroom. She had been repeatedly clubbed (both her arms were broken) and
stabbed 21 times with an ice pick and sixteen times with a knife. MacDonald's
torn pajama top was draped upon her chest. On the headboard of her bed, the
word "pig" was written in
blood.
MacDonald was found next to his wife alive but wounded. His
wounds were not as severe nor as numerous as those his family had suffered. He
was immediately taken to nearby Womack
Hospital. MacDonald suffered cuts and bruises on his face and chest, along
with a mild concussion. He also had a stab wound on his left torso that a staff
surgeon described as a "clean,
small, sharp" incision that caused his left lung to partially
collapse. He was released from the hospital after one week.
MacDonald's account
MacDonald told investigators that on the evening of February
16, he had fallen asleep on the living room couch. He told investigators that
he did so because Kristen had been in bed with Colette and had wet his side of
it. He was later awakened by Colette and Kimberly's screams. As he rose from
the couch to go to their aid, he was attacked by three male intruders, one
black and two white. A fourth intruder, described as a white female with long
blonde hair and wearing high heeled boots and a white floppy hat partially
covering her face, stood nearby with a lighted candle and chanted, "Acid is groovy, kill the pigs."
MacDonald claimed the three males attacked him with a club
and ice pick. During the struggle, his pajama top was pulled over his head to
his wrists and he used it to ward off thrusts from the ice pick. Eventually, he
stated that he was overcome by his assailants and was knocked unconscious in
the living room end of the hallway leading to the bedrooms.
Investigation
The Army's Criminal
Investigation Division (CID) did not believe MacDonald's version of events,
and, as Army investigators studied
the physical evidence, they found that it did not seem to support his story.
The living room, where MacDonald had supposedly fought for his life against
three armed assailants, showed few signs of a struggle apart from an overturned
coffee table and knocked over flower plant. In addition to the lack of damage to the
inside of the house, fibers from MacDonald's torn pajama top were not found in
the living room, where he claimed it was torn. Instead, fibers from the pajama
top were found under Colette's body and in both Kimberly and Kristen's
bedrooms. One fiber was found under Kristen's fingernail. Furthermore, Kimberly's
blood was found on the pajama top, even though MacDonald claimed that he wasn't
wearing it while in her room.
The murder weapons were found outside the back door. They
were a kitchen knife, an ice pick, and a 3-foot long piece of lumber; all three
were determined to have come from the MacDonald house. The tips of surgical
gloves were found beneath the headboard where "pig" was written in blood; they were identical in
composition to a supply MacDonald kept in the kitchen.
The MacDonald family all had different blood types — a
statistical anomaly that was used to theorize what had happened in their house.
Starting with the assumption that they were the only four people bleeding in
the house, investigators theorized that a fight began in the master bedroom
between MacDonald and Colette, who possibly argued over Kristen wetting his
side of the bed while sleeping there. Investigators speculated that the
argument turned physical as she probably hit him on the forehead with a hairbrush,
which resulted in his concussion. As he retaliated by hitting her, first with
his fists and then beating her with a piece of lumber, Kimberly, whose blood
and brain serum was found in the doorway, may have walked in after hearing the
commotion and was struck at least once on the head, possibly by accident.
Believing Colette dead, MacDonald carried the mortally-wounded Kimberly back to
her bedroom. After stabbing her, he went to Kristen's room, intent on disposing
of the last remaining potential witness. Before he could do so, Colette, whose
blood was found on Kristen's bed covers and on one wall of the room, apparently
regained consciousness, stumbled in, and threw herself over Kristen. After
killing both of them, he wrapped Colette's body in a sheet and carried it back
to the master bedroom, leaving a smudged footprint of her blood on his way out
of Kristen's room.
CID investigators
then theorized that MacDonald attempted to cover up the murders, using articles
on the Manson Family murders that he'd
found in an issue of Esquire in the
living room. Putting on surgical gloves from a medical supply in the hallway
closet, he went to the master bedroom, where he used Colette's blood to write "pig" on the headboard. He
laid his torn pajama top over her dead body and repeatedly stabbed her in the
chest with an ice pick. He then took a scalpel blade from the supply closet,
went to the adjacent bathroom, and stabbed himself once. Finally, he used the
telephone to summon an ambulance, discarded the weapons out the back door,
disposed of the surgical gloves and scalpel blade, and lay by Colette's body
while he waited for the military police to arrive.
On April 6, 1970, Army
investigators interrogated MacDonald. Less than a month later, on May 1, the Army formally charged him with the
murder of his family.
Article 32 hearing
An initial Army
Article 32 hearing into MacDonald's possible guilt, overseen by Colonel Warren Rock, convened on July
5, 1970 and ran through September. He was represented by Bernard L. Segal, a civilian defense attorney from Philadelphia. Segal's defense
concentrated on the poor quality of the CID
investigation and the existence of other suspects, specifically a woman named Helena Stoeckley.
Segal presented evidence that the CID had not properly managed the crime scene and lost several items
of critical evidence, including the four torn tips of rubber surgical gloves
found in the master bedroom, and a single layer of skin found under one of
Colette's fingernails. In addition, he claimed to have located Stoeckley, the
woman whom MacDonald claimed to have seen in his apartment during the murders.
Stoeckley was a well-known drug user in town who was known to socialize
frequently with other heavy drug users, including Army veteran Greg Mitchell, her some-time boyfriend. Witnesses
claimed that Stoeckley had admitted involvement in the crimes, and several
remembered her wearing clothing similar to what MacDonald had described.
On October 13, 1970, Colonel Rock issued a report
recommending that charges be dismissed against MacDonald because they were "not true," and he recommended
that civilian authorities investigate Stoeckley. In December, MacDonald
received an honorable discharge from the Army
and returned to New York City.
Justice Department
After the Article 32
hearing, MacDonald returned to work as a doctor, briefly in New York City and then in Long Beach, California in July 1971,
where he was an emergency room physician at the St. Mary Medical Center. He
also made media appearances, most notably on the December 15, 1970, episode of The Dick Cavett Show, during which he
made jokes and complained about the investigation and its focus on him as a
suspect.
During this time Freddie
Kassab, MacDonald's stepfather-in-law, turned against him. Initially, he
was one of his supporters and testified in support of his innocence during the Article 32 hearing; however, his
support lessened after MacDonald's appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. Kassab's support continued to erode after
MacDonald refused to provide him with a transcript of the Article 32 hearing. MacDonald also made contradictory and at times
outlandish claims; in one instance in November 1970, MacDonald told Kassab that
he and some Army friends had
actually tracked down, tortured, and eventually murdered one of the alleged
killers of his family, but refused to provide details about who the person was
or what he might have told MacDonald. He later claimed that it was a lie to try
to put to rest Kassab's persistence about finding his stepdaughter's killers.
Once Kassab finally received a copy of the Article 32 hearing transcript (after
lengthy evasions by MacDonald), he noted numerous inconsistencies in
MacDonald's testimony. One example was his assertion that he had sustained near-life-threatening
injuries during the alleged assault on him; Kassab saw him in the hospital less
than 18 hours after the attack and found him sitting up in bed, eating a meal,
and with very little in the way of bandages or dressing.
In March 1971, in company with Army investigators, Kassab visited the crime scene for several
hours in order to test the physical evidence against MacDonald's testimony. His
work convinced him that MacDonald himself had committed the crimes. Since the Army's investigation was completed, the
only way that Kassab could bring him to trial was via a citizen's complaint
through the Justice Department. He
filed the citizen's complaint in early 1972, but it was held in limbo because
the three murders happened while MacDonald was serving in the Army, and since he was no longer with
the Army, the citizen's complaint
was declared moot.
Between 1972 and 1974, the case remained trapped in limbo
within the files of the Justice
Department as they struggled over whether or not to prosecute. On April 30, 1974, after much persistence in
pursuing the prosecution of MacDonald, Freddie
and Mildred Kassab, aided by Peter
Kearns, and the Kassabs' attorney Richard
C. Cahn of Huntington, New York,
presented a citizen's complaint against MacDonald to US Chief District Court Judge Algernon Butler, requesting the
convening of a grand jury to indict him for the murders. As a result of the complaint, a grand jury
was convened on August 12, 1974. Justice
Department attorney Victor Worheide
presented the case to the grand jury, and the U.S.
District Judge Franklin Dupree was assigned to oversee the hearing.
Trial and conviction
A grand jury in North
Carolina indicted MacDonald on January 24, 1975, and within the hour he was
arrested in California. On January
31, 1975, he was freed on $100,000 bail pending disposition of the charges. On
May 23, 1975, he was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to the murders. On July
29, 1975, Judge Dupree denied his double jeopardy and speedy trial arguments
and allowed the trial date of August 18, 1975, to stand. On August 15, 1975, the
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
stayed the trial and on January 23, 1976, a panel of that court, in a 2–1
split, ordered the indictment dismissed on speedy trial grounds. An appeal on behalf of the Government led to an 8–0 reinstatement
of the indictment by the US Supreme
Court on May 1, 1978. On October 22,
1978, the Fourth Circuit rejected
MacDonald's double jeopardy arguments and, on March 19, 1979, the Supreme Court refused to review that
decision.
The murder trial began on July 16, 1979, in the Federal courthouse in Raleigh, North Carolina. Although
MacDonald’s lawyers, Bernard Segal
and Wade Smith was confident of an
acquittal from the first day, one thing after another went badly for the
defense. It began when Dupree refused a defense request to admit into evidence
a psychiatric evaluation of MacDonald, which suggested that someone of his
personality type was unable to kill his family. Dupree explained that since no
insanity plea had been entered for MacDonald, he did not want the trial bogged
down by contradictory psychiatric testimony from prosecution and defense
witnesses.
Prosecution
During the first day of the trial, Dupree allowed the
prosecution to admit into evidence the 1970 copy of Esquire magazine, found in the MacDonald house, part of which
contained the lengthy article about the Manson
Family murders of August 1969. Prosecutors
James Blackburn and Brian Murtagh
wanted to introduce the magazine and suggest that this is where MacDonald got
the idea of blaming a hippie gang for the murders.
The prosecution called FBI
lab technician and analyst Paul
Stombaugh who testified that MacDonald’s pajama top had 48 small, smooth,
and cylindrical ice pick holes through it. In order for this to have happened,
it would have to remain stationary, an unlikely occurrence if he had wrapped it
around his hands to defend himself from the blows from an attacker wielding the
ice pick. Also, by folding it one particular way, Stombaugh demonstrated how
all 48 holes could have been made by 21 thrusts of the ice pick, the same
number of times that Colette had been stabbed with it and in an identical pattern,
implying that she had been repeatedly stabbed through the pajama top while it
was lying on her. Prosecutors Murtagh
and Blackburn staged an impromptu re-enactment of the alleged attack on
MacDonald. Murtagh wrapped a pajama top around his hands and tried to fend off
a series of blows that Blackburn was inflicting on him with a similar ice pick.
The prosecution made two points with the demonstration. First, the ice pick
holes in the pajama top were jagged and torn, not smoothly cylindrical like the
ones in MacDonald’s. Also, Murtagh received a small wound on his left hand.
When MacDonald had been examined at Womack
Hospital, he had no defensive wounds on his arms or hands consistent with a
struggle. The implication was obvious and highly damaging to the defense.
Another piece of damaging evidence against MacDonald was an audiotape made of the April 6, 1970 interview by military investigators.
Listening to this tape, the jury heard his matter-of-fact, indifferent
recitation of the murders. They heard him become angry, defensive, and
emotional in response to suggestions by the investigators that he had committed
the murders. He asked the investigators why they would think he, who had a
beautiful family and everything going for him, could have murdered his family
in cold blood for no reason. The jury also heard the investigators confront him
with their knowledge of his extramarital affairs, to which MacDonald calmly
responded, "Oh... you guys are more
thorough than I thought."
Despite the evidence, the prosecution was hampered by the
lack of motive for MacDonald to have committed the murders since he had no
history of violence or domestic abuse with his wife or children. Since Dupree
refused both the defense and prosecution requests for any psychiatric evaluation
to be done for him, he also refused the prosecution's request to allow into
evidence any part of the Article 32
transcripts from his 1970 Army
hearing. Dupree ruled that since the current trial was a civilian trial and the
Article 32 military hearing had
several reports from the military investigators, which claimed that he may have
murdered his family in a drug-induced rage, it was considered biased and
hearsay.
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