Fatal Vision/Justice: Jeffrey R. MacDonald (Part I)

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.