Fatal Vision

by Joe McGinniss

  Speaking very softly and slowly, Harrison explained that Jeffrey MacDonald had just received the new issue of Esquire magazine in the mail. It was the March 1970 issue. There was a picture of Lee Marvin on the cover, and next to it the caption: ‘‘Evil Lurks in California—Lee Marvin Is Afraid."

  Almost the entire issue was devoted to articles about witchcraft cults and drug orgies and violence in California. Among the stories to which MacDonald had specifically called Harrison's attention—saying, ‘‘Hey, Ron, you've got to take a look at this, it's really wild"—had been one which described how an "acid queen" with long blond hair, attended by a ‘'retinue of four," had consummated a candlelit LSD orgy by copulating with a black swan.

  Another story dealt with the murder of Sharon Tate by members of the Charles Manson cult.

  Mention was made of the fact that Tate had been pregnant when she was killed, and that the word PIG had been written in her blood on the headboard of her bed.

  A funeral service was held on Saturday, February 21. ‘'Hunched over in pain from the stab wound in his chest," according to newspaper accounts, Jeffrey MacDonald walked "dry-eyed, with head bowed," into the John F. Kennedy Memorial Chapel in the Special Forces area of Fort Bragg. A squadron of Green Berets in dress uniform carried the three silver caskets—one full-sized, two smaller—into the church.

  MacDonald sat in the front row, next to Colette's mother and stepfather. His own mother sat directly behind him. The chaplain read from the Book of Job. "Job, too," the chaplain said, "lost a couple of his children."

  MacDonald seemed able to control his emotions until the final moments of the service. Then, the newspapers reported, "sobs shook his shoulders," and he emerged from the chapel "with tears running down his handsome face," and returned directly to his hospital bed.

  Very early on the morning of Sunday, February 22—the morning after the funeral—Freddy Kassab borrowed Jeffrey Mac-Donald's white 1965 Chevrolet Impala convertible and drove to 544 Castle Drive.

  He parked across the street from the apartment. It was empty and sealed and, as a crime scene under continuing investigation, guarded by military police. For more than two hours, Kassab sat alone, staring at it.

  He was a portly, balding man, fifty years old. He had been born in Montreal to wealthy Syrian parents and had been educated in European private schools. As a child he had learned to speak French fluently and had worn his first tuxedo at the age of six.

  At the age of eighteen, he had enlisted in the Canadian Army and had been assigned to intelligence work. He had served as a liaison with the French resistance, making half a dozen parachute drops behind enemy lines. He had been wounded four times during the war and while he was on a mission in Italy his young Scottish wife and infant daughter had been killed by a German bomb dropped on London.

  Kassab had returned to North America after the war and his life had become somewhat more prosaic. He moved to an apartment in New York City, remarried, and found work at a Sears, Roebuck store in Brooklyn, where he sold washing machines.

  In 1957, while on Long Island, overseeing a housing development in which his mother held a financial interest, he met an interior decorator named Mildred Stevenson. She was the mother of two children and her husband had committed suicide a year before. Kassab's second marriage, which had produced no children, was in the process of divorce. Within a year he married Mildred Stevenson, becoming stepfather to her seventeen-year-old son, Bobby, and to her thirteen-year-old daughter, Colette.

  The Kassabs enjoyed an extensive European honeymoon, sailing first class on the Liberte. Their drink of choice was Dom Perignon. Later, while touring the Monte Carlo casinos to which Freddy, as a child, had accompanied his wealthy father, they spent time in the company of King Farouk.

  In the decade that followed however, the Kassabs had fared less well than expected financially. Mildred's decorating career did not prove profitable and a dress shop which they opened in her hometown of Patchogue proved too posh for community standards and had to be sold at a loss.

  They sold their home in Patchogue and moved to the apartment on Washington Square. Within a few years, however, that, too, was surrendered and they returned to Long Island where Freddy found work as a salesman for a firm which distributed liquid egg yolk in large quantity to manufacturers of macaroni, baked goods, and mayonnaise.

  Throughout this period of financial disequilibrium, there were two constants in the life of Freddy Kassab. One was his wife, Mildred, for whom his love was deep and strong, and the other was his stepdaughter, Colette. Stepdaughter, he felt, was an awkward, formal term, and one which did not even begin to reflect the depth of feeling that had grown between Freddy and Colette. He thought of her and spoke of her as if she had always been his daughter—as if she were a reincarnation of the infant daughter in London he'd scarcely seen—and his feeling was reciprocated in full. He was, to Colette, not a stepfather, but a father, replacing the father who had killed himself.

  Freddy Kassab had quickly become acquainted with Jeffrey MacDonaid. Colette, it seemed, was virtually obsessed with this bright, energetic, and extraordinarily charming classmate. She doodled his name—JEFF—in double block letters everywhere: in her schoolbooks, in her mother's cookbooks, and on the desk blotter in the Kassab living room.

  While they were dating, in junior high school, Freddy Kassab would often drive them to the movies. Even after they stopped seeing one another—following Colette's summer flirtation with the student from Purdue—Jeff continued to show up at the Kassab house. Unbidden, he would mow the lawn in summer, and shovel the driveway in winter. More than once, he would leave a surprise gift for Colette on the back steps of the house, ringing the doorbell and then disappearing before anyone could come to answer it.

  With Colette at Skidmore and Jeff at Princeton—and with Jeff having announced his intention to pursue a career in medicine— both Freddy and Mildred were delighted at the resumption of the relationship. Jeff was so obviously a special young man: so full of drive, of ambition, of intelligence. To both Freddy and Mildred it was gratifying to think that Colette would someday be this doctor's wife.

  Neither, however, was prepared for the call they received on the afternoon of August 30, 1963—a call from Mildred's sister in Patchogue, with whom Colette had been living for the summer (the summer which had begun with her letter to Jeff from Washington Square).

  "Don't be upset," Colette's Aunt Helen said "but Jeff and Colette have just been to see me, and she's pregnant. They're on their way in to tell you right now."

  The Kassabs stood at their living room window, looking out at the street below. They saw Jeff and Colette arrive and park the car. They watched as three times Jeff and Colette, hand in hand, circled the building on foot, trying to build up the courage to ascend.

  Mildred, in particular, was horrified at the news. Not that Colette had been intimate with Jeff: as mother and daughter, they'd had frank talks about that subject long before, and it was Mildred's view (which Freddy, with his old-world values, did not fully share) that Colette, at age twenty—three years older than Mildred had been at the time of her own first marriage— was competent to make her own decisions in that regard.

  What appalled Mildred were the stupidity, the carelessness, and now the consequences involved in getting pregnant while only halfway through college. Particularly when the father was facing four years of medical school after that.

  Mildred suggested an abortion, but neither Jeff nor Colette would hear of it. Their minds were already made up: they would be married. When the Kassabs persisted in expressing an opposing point of view, Jeff went to the telephone and called his mother. She drove in immediately from Long Island to lend her voice to Jeff and Colette's side of the argument.

  Neither Freddy nor Mildred had ever before met Dorothy MacDonald, but both were impressed by her forceful personality—a characteristic also so apparent in her son. She rode over all objections the Kassabs raised. Others might have their futures ruined by s
uch a happenstance, but not Jeff. Nothing would stop him. His drive was too strong. Once he set a goal he would achieve it. He would continue at Princeton and then go on to medical school and become a doctor as planned. Colette could now be with him every step of the way, sharing the joy he would feel in his accomplishments, as well as sharing with him the joys of parenthood.

  A wedding date was set for two weeks hence. One hundred people were invited. The wedding was held in a Catholic church because Jeffrey MacDonald was a Catholic, and the reception was at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It all cost a lot more than Freddy Kassab could afford, but he acted as maitre d' for the entire affair and everyone agreed that they had never seen him more charming or radiant.

  The years that followed had gone much as Jeffrey MacDonald's mother had predicted, with the exception that the joys of parenthood were soon amplified by the presence of a second child.

  Freddy Kassab had stayed in close touch with Colette throughout her marriage. In addition to the frequent family visits, he had made it a practice to call her at least twice a week on the WATS line from his office, often taping the conversations and replaying them for Mildred at night.

  In September 1969, when Jeff was transferred from Fort Benning to Fort Bragg, Freddy had driven Colette and the children to their new home. He and Mildred had returned for a Christmas visit, and it was the memory of that time which was affecting him most strongly now, as he sat in tearful silence in the white convertible on Castle Drive.

  He remembered, in particular, Christmas morning. He had risen early, as was his custom, and at about 6 A.M., as he had been making coffee in the kitchen, Jeff had come out of the bedroom and had said, "I've got a surprise for the kids and I want you to come down and take a look."

  The two of them had dressed quickly and quietly and had driven a few miles to the stable which housed the pony Jeff had bought. Returning to the apartment, Jeff had told Colette that he'd ordered a gift for the children but that the department store had fouled it up. If they would all get in the car, however, he could at least take them down and show it to them in the window.

  They had started down Bragg Boulevard toward Fayetteville, but had quickly turned off on a side road. Colette had asked why. Jeff had been vague, saying, "Well, I've got to stop here and pick something up."

  Then they reached the corral and got out of the car and Jeff said, "I want you to see something over here," and he and Freddy led them over and showed them the pony.

  For years, Jeff and Colette had told friends that their dream was to someday have a farm in Connecticut, with five children, horses, and lots of dogs. Jeff would practice at a university hospital—probably Yale—and Colette would have her teaching certificate. This Christmas pony was the first tangible step— other than the two children, with the third due in July—toward that goal.

  Colette had been so happy, Freddy Kassab recalled, that it had taken her almost half an hour to stop crying.

  Residents of Castle Drive were now beginning to emerge from their apartments, some in bathrobes, just bending over to pick up the Sunday paper from the stoop. It would soon be time for Freddy Kassab to return to his grieving wife. But he lingered just a few minutes longer in front of 544 Castle Drive. This was the last place he had seen Colette and Kimberly and Kristen alive and it seemed as close as he would ever be to them again.

  The bodies were flown north at 1 P.M. Sunday, in the cargo hold of the Piedmont Airlines plane on which Freddy and Mildred Kassab and Jeffrey MacDonald's mother rode.

  Five days earlier they had flown down together, their nervous, apprehensive curiosity gradually giving way to a stifling, overwhelming sense of dread.

  Now, as they flew back in silence, there remained nothing to dread. The worst had happened—the worst that could ever happen to anyone—and its effects would govern the remainder of their lives.

  Mildred Kassab stared out the window of the plane. The one thought that tormented her above all others was a recollection of her final conversation with Colette.

  She had called from Long Island late Sunday afternoon—less than thirty-six hours before Colette's death. Jeff had been working his twenty-four-hour shift at Hamlet Hospital, and Colette, five months pregnant, had been stuck without a car, in February, in the small, cramped apartment on the Southern military base, with her two children bored and restless and confined to the apartment by the rain.

  Colette had asked if she could bring Kimberly and Kristen north for a visit. Mildred had looked out at the backyard, where snow was falling. In the fall, the Kassabs had begun construction of a swimming pool. When completed, they felt, it would be something that the children could enjoy for years to come. Now, however, in mid-February, it was just a deep hole in the ground, surrounded by tall piles of slippery, snow-covered dirt. Mildred had thought that it might pose a hazard for Kimberly and Kristen. So instead of saying, "Catch the first flight tomorrow,'' she had responded with words that would haunt her the rest of her life. "Wait until spring," she had said.

  Now, on the plane, she was suddenly struck by the unwelcome thought that Colette had not had to wait until spring after all. And that she and the children were coming north not for a visit, but to stay.

  The Voice of Jeffrey MacDonald

  Through that year, my freshman year at Princeton, Colette clearly became the love of my life. There was no question about it. That was the year our love flowered.

  I remember your heart would just leap into your throat at a phone call or when you'd see her return address on a letter and you would joyously finish school on a Friday at noon and start hitchhiking or taking the bus up to Skidmore.

  It was an enormously exciting time but it was also a delicate time because Colette was not at all like my prior girlfriends. She was very delightful and warm but yet she had this little bit of aloofness about her which some people took to mean snottiness, but it was never that, it wasn't that at all. If anything, it was timidity on her part. As I got to know her well and we fell in love and whatnot, I realized that it wasn't from a real aloofness, but more from a hesitancy and a slight fear of the world in general.

  Basically, she was a very shy person without too much self-confidence. She did not at all have the sort of widespread contact that I enjoyed or my brother or my sister enjoyed, and she kind of leaned on my self-confidence and we had—that was part of our relationship: she liked my leadership and I liked her vulnerability and femininity.

  She was always questioning and bright and intuitive and alert, but she had this—sort of an underlying anxiety at all times—very soft and feminine and attractive in a way—and it was nice, sort of, to be her—her boyfriend and her protector.

  We were writing each other constantly. I remember I wrote her a long, urn, poem, several pages in length, and she thought it was extremely romantic. I think, probably, in retrospect, it was one of the worst things ever written. It was terrible. It was very sophomoric. But I remember that she kept it and—it was, you know, a sophomoric thing to do, but we were young and in love.

  I was pretty active in my pursuit. You know, it was okay for me to go to New York and possibly pick up a girl, or even have Penny Wells down on a weekend, but it wasn't special anymore. There was nothing neat about that. The specialness was Colette.

  She said she had occasional other dates and I think that's true. As a matter of fact, L remember one specific weekend during the winter. I called her and she apologized—you know, I was going to go up to see her on short notice—and she apologized profusely because she had a blind date arranged by her roommate.

  The blind date came over from Dartmouth for the weekend, and I remember spending the whole time kind of jealous and angry and hurt, and waiting all through the week for a letter, which I got about Friday of the following week, in which she said the weekend was a bust.

  Whether that was a transparent lie or not, it certainly lifted my spirits. I remember, like, refalling in love when I got the letter saying that her weekend with the blind date was a disaster, the
guy from Dartmouth was a quote, animal, unquote, which was what we all kidded everyone from Dartmouth about being.

  I remember Thanksgiving of that freshman year. Colette was not going to come down, which seemed very strange, and she told me that it was because of funds. She didn't have the funds to come down. And I remember thinking ^ how weird that was, with Freddy and Mildred living in such, you know, supposed splendor in Greenwich Village.

  And I know this sounds ridiculous and self-serving, but it's not. I sent her something like thirty dollars or forty dollars for her bus ticket down to New York. Now I know it sounds ridiculous, but I remember writing to her and sending her either, like, two twenty-dollar bills or a forty-dollar check, and told her don't be absurd, you know, come down for Thanksgiving, it would be very lonely for you to be up there at Skidmore.

  And I remember her calling me and thanking me, and then she invited me in. Now, I wasn't there the whole weekend, I don't remember exactly how long, but I stayed overnight at the apartment in Greenwich Village, on Washington Square, and the things that I remember most were two things.

  One was the walk through the Village, because it was one of those beautiful fall days and we were holding hands and we were very much in love, and we stopped at an outdoor cafe, and we went through the park at the end of Fifth Avenue and watched the organ grinders and the, the, you know, ah, the people at the time when there were a lot of guitar players, urn, and we thought, you know, that Greenwich Village was super, um, that it was neat and artsy-craftsy, et cetera, cetera, and we had a very, like, lovely day.

  I also remember that night, the nice dinner we had at Freddy and Mildred's apartment. Mildred was a good cook and the dinners were always a little more formal than I was used to at my house. My house was very casual.