Fatal Vision

by Joe McGinniss

  Politically, his leanings were toward the Left. Socially, his sympathies lay with the counterculture. Married, with three young children of his own, Segal seemed at first an odd choice as defense counsel for a Green Beret officer who had been accused of murdering his own family and who had blamed drug abusers for the crime. Jeffrey MacDonald's mother, however, was acting on short notice, under great pressure, with guidance from only one friend.

  On the surface, it seemed no less odd that Segal would have been willing to take the case. The four intruders—had they been arrested and charged—would have been far more typical clients for Bernie Segal than was a Princeton-educated Green Beret doctor—the personification of the establishment ideal which Segal had so frequently challenged.

  Bernie Segal, however, in addition to his other characteristics, possessed a forceful, flamboyant personality and considered the practice of criminal law to be at least as much theatrical art as judicial science. The limelight energized him. He did not shun publicity. He was at ease with an entourage and he had always been at his best on center stage. The lure of a case which had already made national headlines was powerful.

  Besides, like so many others who had first read or heard the horrid details back in February, Bernie Segal had been affected on a personal level by the MacDonald murders.

  "From the start," he said, "the story evoked a whole rush of very painful feelings. I can remember actually shuddering when I read about it the first time. My own children were only a little older than Jeffs—twin daughters, seven, and a son, five, at the time—so of course I responded as a father to the very special tragedy of the death of a child: that there was so much that they now would never have a chance to experience.

  "Then there was the ugliness of the Manson syndrome. Here it was again, six months later. From working with many of my clients I was extremely familiar with LSD, and I remember saying, 'Goddamn the acid. Goddamn the acid'—a drug that could unleash that sort of evil.

  "Not long afterwards, I saw a little squib in the Philadelphia Bulletin about the Alabama State Police stopping two men and a woman in a van on suspicion of involvement in the MacDonald killings, and I then began feeling, 'Oh, God, now they're going to stop every freak and long-haired American traveling in a group of more than one.' I began to feel resentment that this would open the door to even more repressive police behavior in America at a time when I was fighting against that sort of thing every day."

  Then, on the evening of April 6, Bernie Segal received a call from a former ACLU colleague named John Ballard, of the Philadelphia law firm of Drinker Biddle and Reath. "A conservative, Quaker-oriented business law firm," Segal said, "but one with a social conscience."

  As general counsel to the University of Pennsylvania, Ballard had referred a case to Segal two years earlier—that one also a triple homicide, involving a Penn student who, having been ejected from a fraternity Christmas party, had drunkenly poured gasoline on a papier-mache snowman and had set the fraternity house ablaze. Three students had died, but Segal had succeeded in having the charge reduced to manslaughter, and his client had served only a short prison sentence.

  Now, John Ballard said, he was calling on behalf of a corporate client from New Hope, one Robert Stern, whose "godson" (this was not technically true, but the close relationship implied by such a term had existed since Jeffrey MacDonald's early childhood) was the Green Beret officer who had just been held as a suspect in the murders of his wife and daughters at Fort Bragg.

  Bernie Segal said yes, of course he would try to be of service.

  "You must understand," Segal said, "prior to my meeting with his mother on April 7—in fact, during the meeting and even after the meeting—I had every reason to believe that Jeffrey MacDonald was guilty of those murders.

  "The police only arrest the obviously guilty. They don't know how to catch the others. That's why the solution rate on major crimes is so low. So my thinking, all through that initial period, was 'He probably did it.'

  "But you must remember also that at the start of any criminal case, the call comes in and it's like the alarm going off at the firehouse. At first, you're just running to the fire. You're responding to an emergency. Feelings about guilt or innocence— about the client as an individual—come later, if they're going to come at all.

  "1 must say, at the meeting on April 7, I was very impressed by Mrs. MacDonald. She was, quite obviously, upset, but she snowed a remarkable sense of poise and presence. She was handling the crisis beautifully. I liked her very much right away. And of course I agreed to see what I could do."

  The first thing Segal did was to call Fort Bragg. He was able to speak to Jeffrey MacDonald early on the afternoon of April 7. He explained how he had come to be involved.

  MacDonald said he already had been assigned a military lawyer, a tall, slow-talking Virginian.

  "Are his shoes shined?" Bernie Segal asked over the phone.

  "What?!" MacDonald sounded incredulous. Here he was, all but accused of having murdered his own wife and children, and in his very first conversation with the Philadelphia lawyer who presumably had been hired to set things right, the first question the lawyer asks is about the condition of his other lawyer's shoes.

  Segal repeated the question. "And this time," he said later, "I could almost hear Jeff smiling over the phone. That was when I first knew I had a client who was not only intelligent but who caught on very quickly. He said, no, as a matter of fact, the military lawyer's shoes were kind of scruffy. I said, 'Okay in that case, trust him. Cooperate with him until I can get down there myself.' The point being, you see, that if an Army lawyer keeps his shoes shined, it means he's trying to impress the system. And if he was trying to impress the system in that situation—the system being one which had already declared a vested interest, just by public announcement of suspicion, in seeing his client convicted—then he wasn't going to do Jeff any good. The unshined shoes meant maybe he cared more about being a lawyer."

  On Friday, April 10, Bernie Segal flew to Fort Bragg—where his long hair, he said, made him "an object of considerable, and not friendly, curiosity"—and had his first meeting with Jeffrey MacDonald.

  "I was surprised by the way he looked," Segal said. "I'm not sure what I had been expecting, but he had a nice face. A very nice, open face. I liked the man I saw. I liked his immediate, strong handshake and the forthright style with which he presented himself. He seemed bright and alert. A man whom it would be a pleasure to know and to work with."

  Not much of substance—other than fee—was discussed at the first meeting. "I was there mainly to let him know the Marines had landed," Segal said. "Someone was going to help him. Affirmative steps would be taken."

  Flying north that night, on the last plane out of Raleigh—after a seventy-five-mile drive from Fort Bragg—Segal formulated the first of those steps.

  "Number one," he said, "the Army had to have some evidence. Otherwise they would never have made their announcement. Number two, a high percentage of persons killed are killed by members of their own family, so despite the favorable impression he'd made on me, I remained aware that his guilt was a real possibility. And, number three, if he had done it—given the nature of the crime—he had to be a very sick person. So I decided that was the first area I ought to explore.

  "I didn't explain it in quite that way to him, of course. I believe the way I phrased it when I called him over the weekend was: 'Number one, whoever committed these crimes was a very sick person. Number two, I would like to show that it could not have been you because you are free of mental illness or defect; so, number three, I'd like you to come up here for psychiatric examination as soon as I can arrange it, because, frankly, your freedom from mental illness is going to be a very positive element in your defense.'

  "Privately, of course, I was thinking at that point that I was probably going to have to employ an insanity defense."

  On Tuesday, April 14, Jeffrey MacDonald wrote to Colette's mother and stepfather, Mildred a
nd Alfred Kassab.

  This is unreal. This seems like Edgar Allan Poe, or at least Alfred Hitchcock. I keep waiting to either (1) awaken, or (2) have someone come in and tell me it's all been a mistake and I can go.

  The whole idea behind it is so incredible—I loved them so much I get sick when I think about them. I would gladly go to jail if that would bring them back—even if I could only spend one day with Colette, Kim, and Kristy again. But for them to come up with me as the villain is beyond my comprehension.

  Apparently, I made several mistakes—first, I foolishly thought that only people who did something wrong need lawyers—then I insulted the idiots when they questioned me on Monday 6 April—(never insult small-minded men in positions of power).

  When I lost my family I didn't care about much at first. Then I gradually began to work again and just wanted to get back into medicine. Now this—I suppose it will pass and the truth will eventually come out, even if they make the mistake of forcing it through a trial. It no longer matters to me, because what little I had left (medicine) is pretty much destroyed by the Monday 6 April news conf. But it of course drags both my mother and you people down again—on top of everything else you've had to undergo. I'm so sorry for that—I wish I could spare you all of this mess.

  I'm still confined to quarters—they shut off my phone & I have to be escorted to meals. I guess I'm guilty until proven innocent, and I haven't even been charged with anything.

  Hope Mildred is getting out more. Trust you are all beginning to get back on your feet. Let me know when the pool no longer has ice on it.

  I will keep in touch. Thank you, more than you know, for your support. You are wonderful people. I loved the girls (your girl—my girls) more than you can imagine.

  Love, Jeff

  On April 18, Mildred wrote back.

  Thank you for letting us hear from you. I have just returned from taking fresh flowers to the cemetery. Kim's 6th birthday. When you go there and see the names in bronze it is still unbelievable. All of them! Just like using an eraser on a blackboard.

  The waste, me rearing Colette with constant joy in her, bearing first Kim, then Kristy, in so much pain, your work together under such financial difficulties, to make a home, get your career, all for nothing.

  The infuriating thing is the stupidity of the powers that be—letting two months pass, all chance of catching those monsters go by, and fastening on you.

  Jeff, please know that Freddy and I have never wavered for an instant in knowing how idiotic that conclusion is. Good heavens! If anyone ever adored his family, you did. And they loved and trusted you implicitly, as we do. The horror of your position can at least help you from thinking too constantly of them.

  Meanwhile, the guilty persons can leave the country if they choose. They must be caught! Someone must pay, and with their lives, for this awful thing they have done.

  Freddy is extremely eager to do anything to get at the real people responsible. He loved Colette and the kids even more than he realized. He neither eats nor sleeps. We all wander around the house during the night eating sleeping pills and waiting for morning.

  Know that we are constantly thinking of you and telling everyone of your love for your family. If your lawyer makes the right moves, he can get you completely vindicated and your future once more assured.

  All of our love comes to you, Jeff. We know you.

  On Monday, April 20, Jeffrey MacDonald, accompanied by an armed escort officer, presented himself in Bernie Segal's Philadelphia office. There, for the first time, he spoke to his lawyer in detail about the events of February 17.

  To Segal, the most notable aspect of MacDonald's presentation was his almost total lack of affect—of any semblance of feeling or emotion—as he described the weekend leading up to the murders and the events of Monday, February 16, and then proceeded, with no change of emphasis, intensity, or tone, to describe how he had been awakened by the screams of his wife and older daughter, how he had fought unsuccessfully with the intruders, how he had fallen unconscious in the hallway, and then how he had made his way from the master bedroom to the bedroom of his older daughter, discovering the bodies of Colette and Kimberly and trying to breathe life back into them.

  "It suddenly struck me," Segal said, 'Jesus Christ—this guy is telling this story rather dispassionately. What am I dealing with here?' But just at that point he began to talk about the baby. About Kristen. And, as he did—it was an almost imperceptible thing—there was a catch in his voice. Just for a moment, and then he went on past it, but it was there—that little catch in the voice when he talked about going into the baby's room.

  "And that's when I had my second level of response: 'Son of a bitch, I know what he's doing: as he's talking to me, he's not focusing on the horror. He's describing how he dealt with the situation. Describing how he was treating these people. He isn't really looking at the event head-on, because, obviously, that would be too painful. His focus is just a little bit off center— talking about the bodies as bodies. Not as his own wife and children but as people that, as a doctor, in an emergency situation, he was trying to save. Because the personal pain was too great to confront, he was describing his actions in a professional, clinical way. It was the only way he could tell the story at all.

  "And, you know, it was perfectly understandable. It was how I might later describe to someone how I responded to an accident involving one of my own children: this was an emergency which required action; here are the actions I took. By keeping the focus steadily on that aspect, he was able to look past his own pain.

  "This was very reassuring to me. I felt I now understood his apparent lack of affect. His response seemed genuine. Especially when I recalled that little catch in his voice when he talked about going into the baby's room. To me, that was the first real tip-off.

  "This is not to say," Segal continued, "that I was suddenly overjoyed. It did not immediately convince me of his innocence. Remember, I still had only the vaguest idea of what the so-called evidence against him was. But by the end of that meeting, my mind was much more open to the possibility of his innocence, and I remember thinking, 'Well, I'll be interested to hear what the psychiatrist, Bob Sadoff, has to say.' "

  On Tuesday, April 21, MacDonald was examined for three hours by Dr. Sadoff. He told the psychiatrist that he was innocent and that he knew he was innocent. He said the evidence against him was flimsy and that he knew he would ultimately be cleared. He said his friends and in-laws had been immensely supportive and that "everyone" was on his side, although maybe "the gods" were against him.

  In notes of the interview which would later be presented to a federal grand jury, Dr. Sadoff reported that MacDonald said, repeatedly, that he was not paranoid, "even though people do whisper, 'There he goes,' when he goes to chow or when they see him on the street."

  MacDonald added that he was the subject of many rumors— one being that he'd been having a homosexual relationship with Ron Harrison and that Harrison, in a fit of jealousy, had murdered Colette and the children. This was, MacDonald said, ridiculous.

  He denied ever smoking marijuana or taking any drugs other than "ten diet pills in his whole life." He told the psychiatrist he had lost 12 pounds prior to February 17 as a result of directing the weight-control program for his Green Beret unit. He said he had weighted 198 pounds but that his average was 186 which, because of his weight lifting, was "mostly muscle."

  In describing to Dr. Sadoff the events that had preceded the murder he said, as he had to the CID on April 6, that his wife had attended a class in "literature."

  According to Dr. Sadoff s notes, he also described how his older brother, Jay, had "in a weird coincidence," suffered a psychotic breakdown on the night of the murders. He said that Jay was "on the fringe of the Mafia" and had fallen deeply in debt to Mafia loan sharks through drug purchases and gambling debts and that the attack upon himself and his family might have been intended as retaliation against his brother but that it did not seem like "a Mafia-
type job."

  He said that of the "four or five" attackers, one might have been a girl with blond hair and a floppy hat, but might also have been a long-haired male. During the struggle, he said, he had felt a sharp pain in his chest and had seen blood and then had felt his pajama top being ripped over his head. He told Dr. Sadoff that he had sustained fourteen lacerations in his chest.

  MacDonald also complained to Dr. Sadoff that people seemed to expect him to break down and show more emotion and that when he did not they assumed he was "cold-hearted." He said he got mad at people who expected him to cry in front of them.

  He admitted to a feeling of relief that his wife and children were "gone" but said he was ashamed of that feeling. He said he sometimes missed the children more than he did his wife. He described Kristen as having been a "tough girl" and said Kimberly was more like Colette—"soft and feminine."

  "He spoke in poignant terms," Dr. Sadoff said later, "about his preparing himself, his beings a hero, his being all kinds of things: good-looking, bright, quote, 'a lover,' who had had a lot of girlfriends; being in an Ivy League school—he said he was the first member of his high school class in twenty-two years to attend an Ivy League school—getting through early, being a doctor, being the strong, brave Green Beret, and constantly doing such things as being boxing team doctor, lifting weights, and getting by on only three or four hours of sleep a night.