Fatal Vision

by Joe McGinniss

  "What does the polygraph tell you?" MacDonald asked.

  "It tells basically what a person believes to be true."

  "How infallible is it?"

  "Well, the instrument itself just measures physiological changes."

  "I know that, I understand that—that's what I mean."

  "The percentage figures they have had on it is that it's less than one percent they have ever made a mistake on," Grebner said. "I mean, these are verified cases. This is on thousands and thousands of cases. These are the statistics that I have. I would say human error is involved in about four-tenths of one percent."

  "Sounds pretty good," MacDonald said. "Now what happens if this test—what is your strongest evidence? What if the polygraph backs up everything I've said, and you still have all this bullshit lying around. Then what happens?"

  "I will be the first guy to shake you by the hand and say I'm sorry."

  "And if it comes up wrong? If I'm one of the ones who has a little, ah, a little more sweating than usual, then I immediately go to Leavenworth without a trial."

  "No. In the first place, polygraph can't be used against you."

  "It can't?"

  "No. It is an investigative tool, Captain. We believe it."

  "You mean it is not admitted in court? Why not?"

  "There are several reasons. But mainly because with a jury they wouldn't know how to evaluate this type of evidence as compared to other evidence. If you went to most juries and said, well, there was deception indicated during the polygraph examination, they would overweigh that evidence—and there's always that four-tenths of one percent."

  "So if I take this polygraph test and it comes out okay, then I can, ah—you people will feel real nice towards me then? Right?"

  "As I said, if it comes out no deception indicated, I'll say I'm sorry I bothered you."

  "Sounds pretty good to me," MacDonald said.

  "So, if you are willing to take it," Grebner said, "I will call and make the arrangements."

  "Why not? When is this going to be done?"

  "Well, I'd have to call them. Within the next day or two."

  "You mean someone is going to fly down here to do this?"

  "Probably tonight." Grebner left the office to call CID headquarters in Washington. William Ivory also departed, leaving MacDonald alone in the room with Robert Shaw.

  "Christ," MacDonald said. "This will be in the newspaper within eight hours. I'll have my mother down here again, and my in-laws. I'll tell you what, this is a lot different from what I had in mind. I don't like this. You see, ah—Jesus, this scares me." Shaw did not reply.

  "You mean to tell me that this thing is never wrong?" MacDonald said. "I find that hard to believe, just from any instrument. And I just, ah—I don't like the, ah—so much emphasis placed on what look to me like pretty superficial things. That's the only thing I'm scared of, to be perfectly honest with you. I mean, it seems to me that you guys have gone on some pretty mild stuff in calling me a family murderer. I'm not asking, you know—it's just—ah, my own feelings in the matter right now are that it looks a little dangerous to me, because that, ah—ah—Jesus, that looks—ah, like pretty minor stuff, and ah, in my own mind I can explain it very easily, you know, and not feel bad about it, if you know what I mean."

  Still, Shaw did not respond.

  "I mean," MacDonald continued, "if I was investigating, I would say, Jesus, so the table—so the table is top-heavy. What if her knee was against it when it went over. You know, it just—it doesn't seem to me to be, ah—that, ah—you can call a person in and, ah—take what's left from him on something like that. It just doesn't—doesn't hold any water. And there's not much left. I mean—Jesus Christ."

  "Well," said Shaw, "as you know, there's been a lot of work. We've had every major CID office in the continental United States doing work for us. We've had most FBI offices doing work for us. Everything. Every aspect. And it's just not there, Captain MacDonald. Those people you saw just can't be found anywhere. People like them? Yes. There's been—I won't say arrests, but there have been thousands of detentions all over the country."

  "Okay, two possibilities," MacDonald said. "One, they haven't been found yet. And two, they've already been questioned and have answered the questions satisfactorily. Now, isn't that possible? I mean, certainly—certainly in a lot of cases your best team wasn't on every person, if you know what I mean. I'm not implying or anything about individuals, but—"

  "That's true."

  "If you had every office in the country working, and every FBI, it is perfectly conceivable that these people have already been questioned and what's needed now is a break, a lucky thing. You know, a lady says, ah—geez, I used to know a girl, and she always said things like that when she came home looking funny when she was staying at that boarding-house. You know, something like that.

  "You know what I mean? You luck into it. And maybe I'm just, you know, I'm hoping for, ah—for a miracle, but it just seems to me that, ah—"

  "It isn't inconceivable," Shaw said.

  "Yeah. I mean, I've—I've—you know, I've read things where, ah—you have questioned people many times, and it comes back at the end that they questioned him once and he gave satisfactory answers and that was it.

  "I mean, you know—they had a place or a time or, ah, no motive whatever, and, ah—it's a big country, and a lot of people in it."

  "That's right," Shaw said.

  "As you know better than I do, trying to find someone—" "I hope this thing comes out like that," Shaw said. "I really do."

  "So do I," MacDonald said.

  Grebner returned to the office to say that the polygraph operator would be arriving that night and that the test would be administered either the next day or the day after that.

  "Okay," MacDonald said. "Is that it?"

  "Yup."

  "Okay."

  Jeffrey MacDonald left CID headquarters at 3:30 P.M. Ten minutes later he called to say that he had changed his mind: he would not take a polygraph test after all.

  Grebner decided to have the operator come anyway and to talk to MacDonald again in the morning. Then he notified the provost marshal that MacDonald had finally been questioned. Then Grebner left for the Officers' Club, where he often met his wife after work.

  The day had not gone badly, Grebner reflected. Given the night to brood about the fact that the CID was convinced he was a murderer, MacDonald might yet confess. That, Grebner felt, would certainly be preferable to trying to court-martial a Green Beret doctor from Princeton on charges of triple homicide in a case based entirely on circumstantial evidence.

  At least MacDonald had not refused to answer questions. Given his detailed account of the attack and his ensuing movements—and the many conflicts between it and the physical evidence—the case against him was much stronger now than it

  would have been had he simply exercised his constitutional right not to talk.

  The goal from this point forward, Grebner felt, was to keep him talking. To take advantage of the fact that he obviously considered himself so much smarter than anyone else. Much would depend on the next twenty-four hours, Grebner believed. The one thing he did not want was for MacDonald suddenly to demand an attorney and decline to answer any further questions.

  Grebner stepped up to the Officers' Club bar and ordered his drink. Even before it was delivered, an acquaintance called out: "Congratulations!"

  Puzzled, Grebner asked what the occasion was.

  "Why, MacDonald, of course. They just broadcast the provost marshal's statement on the radio."

  "What statement?" Grebner asked in alarm. They were still in the midst of interrogation. There was not to have been any statement.

  "That you guys finally decided MacDonald did it after all."

  Leaving his drink untouched, Grebner rushed back to his office. It was true. The provost marshal had felt that for public relations purposes it was necessary to inform the press that, "After six weeks of careful inve
stigation, and examination of all evidence, we have been prompted to consider Dr. MacDonald a suspect." The statement had added that while formal charges had not yet been filed, MacDonald had been relieved of his duties and placed under restriction, pending further disposition of the case.

  As a public relations gesture, the statement had the desired effect: it even made the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

  Franz Joseph Grebner, however, knew immediately that he would never again have the chance to ask Jeffrey MacDonald any questions.

  The Voice of Jeffrey MacDonald

  I went back to my office that afternoon and I got there shortly before closing and the office was like very, very expectant, because everyone, of course, knew where I had been.

  Everyone watched me when I came in. And I tried to hold my most professional air. My buttons were lined up and my belt was at the right, you know, position, lining up with my fly and the buttons above. And I walked directly into my office and closed the door.

  Then, at about five o'clock, I decided that what I would do was, instead of going out that night to eat in a normal restaurant or something, I would just go over to the officers' mess, the single officers' mess.

  And I did do that. I was by myself. I went to the officers' mess right in the middle of the Special Forces area and I got on a cafeteria line and got a tray of food which I wasn't hungry for. And I remember standing in line, and they had a loudspeaker, you know, a speaker system with music, and I'll never forget this.

  I was standing in line getting food, and I had just gotten through the cash register area and was beginning to sit down, when they had a news bulletin that Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret officer from Fort Bragg who six weeks earlier had claimed that his wife and children were brutally beaten and stabbed by four hippies, was himself today named chief suspect.

  And I remember the truly—I don't mean to use cliches,

  but I don't know how else to explain it—the room was spinning again.

  I was—it was an incredibly strange feeling to be in this room with a tray of food, beginning to sit down, and like the room stopped and everyone was looking at me and pointing, and, sort of, most of them trying to be unobtrusive.

  And the bulletin was going on and on that the doctor, who had been treated at the hospital for multiple wounds, in a statement released just moments earlier by the Fort Bragg Public Information Office, was named as the chief suspect in the case, and that he would be confined to quarters or something like that.

  So I remember sitting there and thinking, well now what do I do? Here I was listening to a newscast about myself, and there were probably, oh, a hundred to two hundred people in the room sort of semi-watching me, and I certainly wasn't confined to quarters or anything. And yet the whole thing was incredibly bizarre.

  And I also was angry because I sort of had just left the CID and there was no mention of this type of thing, a press release of an actual statement that I was the suspect. I had been left with the impression that they hadn't solved the case and they were looking at everyone again, and they needed some answers from me because the nitwits had never talked to me.

  So I didn't finish eating. I sort of got up and put the tray where it belonged and went out, and started driving back to my BOQ. And I got back to the BOQ and there were MPs, there were several, like five, around the building, and one inside the building in front of my door.

  That night was a very bad night. An absolutely bone-chilling, unbelievable and indescribable feeling of depression and nothingness, and it's—the best thing I can say is it seems to me that it's death, it must be what death is like, although death must be a little more peaceful than this. This was a turmoil that's beyond belief, a mental turmoil with images and with the weight of a depression adding to it that you're really unable to describe.

  But I remember thinking for what seemed an eternity about suicide, and actually looking up and measuring visually the height of the pipes that were hanging from the ceiling in my room, and whether or not I could commit suicide using a sheet, or belts or something, and feeling that it seemed ludicrous, it seemed melodramatic, it seemed like it, again, wouldn't change anything and it would probably fail. It was probably gonna be a nothing-type attempt, and I could just see the guard outside the door rushing in and reviving me and then being this incredibly ludicrous situation of a failed suicide attempt the day you've been called the chief suspect in the murder of your family, which of course everyone would immediately take to mean that, well, he did it and that's why he was trying to commit suicide, and in fact that wasn't it at all: it was the incredible obtuse-ness and meaninglessness of, first, the loss, and, second, these accusations.

  So that night was spent, you know, alone, looking at the ceiling, the desk light was on most of the night, I think all of the night. The paint in the room was a crummy paint, as a matter of fact it was light green. The ceiling was white but it was now an off white, a gray white, really, from dirt. And the paint was peeling, the pipes were peeling, and I remember thinking that if I looped my belt over it there was gonna be paint chips all over everything.

  I thought a lot that night—specifically, on purpose—about Colette and Kim and Kristy. And—this sounds silly and it's sort of even embarrassing to say—but I remember I kept thinking how, like, Colette would be angry. She would be very, almost self-righteous if she were able to hear what these nitwits were now saying I was a suspect in.

  And I was like, having a conversation with Colette and she was saying, I know you tried, and, believe me, that's all I ask. And I was, you know, telling her I was sorry. And she's saying, But you couldn't help it, it happened, and what's worse now is these jerks are now saying that you did it. She said, I could tell them otherwise, and, you know, Kimmy and Kristy and I know differently, so don't worry about it.

  And so, at about that time, when I was really in solitude and in this deepest of depressions and trying to wrestle with what, you know, what was happening, and why it was happening and what to do, dawn came up. It was a feeling of rebirth that I've had many times before, like when I used to work all night on Fire Island driving a cab. And when dawn came up you were charged with this new energy, despite being sleepless for like twenty-four hours.

  That's what happened here: the dawn came up and all of a sudden a lot of the super-depression and gloom and suicide thoughts just absolutely melted away. The light of the day truly brought a new dawn, and what it brought me was an anger. It was almost like the sun was firing me and infused me with an energy to fight.

  And I remember saying—and I even have a recollection that it may have been out loud—it may have been thinking, but I have this feeling that I almost said this one thing out loud, after this long, long night, and that was: "Fuck them! They're not gonna get me. They're not gonna make me commit suicide, and they're not gonna convict me of something that I didn't do, this outrageous thing."

  And I said, "Fuck 'em. I will fight." And around 8:15 or 8:30, in fresh-pressed khakis and my jump boots, with my little satchel briefcase under my arm, I went over to the Judge Advocate General's office, and I walked in and the office was a long, thin office with multiple people at different desks, typing, and I walked in and there was a female secretary at the front, and I said, "I'm Captain MacDonald and I'm here to see about getting a lawyer."

  And the whole world stopped in that room. Like, every typewriter stopped and every head turned to me, and there was this moment of suspended animation.

  And I remember being a little imperious about it—imperial, I guess, is a better word—I sort of stood taller than before. And I said, "Maybe you didn't hear. I'm Captain MacDonald and I'm here to see about an attorney."

  PART TWO

  THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE

  For what is the hope of the hypocrite

  though he hath gained,

  when God taketh away his soul?

  —Job 27:8

  Five minutes after Jeffrey MacDonald's mother got home from work on the eveni
ng of Monday, April 6, 1970—her first day back since Monday, February 16—she received a phone call from a captain at Fort Bragg informing her that her son was being held under armed guard in his BOQ room, a suspect in the murder of his family.

  Within half an hour, Bob Stern called from New Hope, having just heard the news from Walter Cronkite. He told Dorothy MacDonald to hire a civilian lawyer immediately. She said she didn't know any lawyers. He said he would call his corporate attorney and ask him to recommend someone who specialized in criminal work. Half an hour later, he called back to say that Bernard L. Segal of Philadelphia would meet with them at 10 o'clock the next morning.

  At thirty-eight, Bernie Segal was balding and slightly rotund. The hair he did have was thick and curly and flowed back from the center of his head, down his neck, almost to the level of his shoulders. Away from the office, he sometimes wore it in a ponytail. In rimless glasses, he bore more than a passing resemblance to the middle-aged Benjamin Franklin, which, for a lawyer in Philadelphia, was not necessarily a disadvantage.

  Segal had been born and raised in Philadelphia. His father had owned a men's and boys' clothing store. He had attended the Philadelphia public schools, Temple University, and the law school of the University of Pennsylvania.

  In the early 1960s, working with the American Civil Liberties Union, he had been active in black voter registration projects in

  the South and spoke often of how he had once spent three days in the Pascagoula, Mississippi, jail.

  More recently, Segal had become well known (some would have said notorious) for his defense of war protesters, draft resisters, and military deserters. In addition, he had made something of a specialty of representing persons charged with violations of narcotics laws. He was, in fact, a staunch defender of the very types for whom Jeffrey MacDonald reserved the most scorn.