Fatal Vision

by Joe McGinniss

  "Living up to this image of himself—this super-masculine striving, the fantasy of being a hero—was very important to him, yet when it came time to save his family, he was unable to do so.

  "I think he did have some unresolved masculine strivings with, possibly, some latent homosexual conflicts. I wouldn't call it latent homosexuality, or even fear of it, but the need to overachieve in a supermasculine way is usually meant to compensate for or to mask any areas of inadequacy that he may have noted in himself, that others may never have seen.

  "So he had a—a—an Achilles' heel, let's say, in this area of masculinity or virility, and some narcissistic need to be famous, or infamous.

  "He told me that he had gotten a lot of publicity from the case and had received four hundred letters from all over the country, some of them marriage proposals, but usually just suggestions that girls come and stay with him. He told me he enjoyed getting the mail.

  "As I saw him, here was a man who had lived according to certain expectations, going along with stereotypes, and in this kind of situation, even though it might have been devastating for the average individual, he had to prove to himself and to others that he was supernormal. That he was above the average and would be able to take it, no matter what the blow.

  "Based on my examination, I was fairly certain that he was not directly involved in the killings of his family, but that he did feel guilty because he had not been able to save them."

  The next day MacDonald traveled to the Norristown State Hospital outside Philadelphia and underwent six hours of psychological testing. He took the Shipley intelligence test; the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Index, which provides a general profile of an individual's overall personality adjustment; and the Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Tests, which are designed to elicit information about aspects of personality that a subject might be making a conscious effort to conceal.

  Over the weekend, with MacDonald having been escorted back to Fort Bragg, Bernie Segal—too impatient to wait for the submission of a written report—called Dr. Sadoff, whom he knew well and with whom he had worked often in the past.

  "I said, 'How did the interview go?' And he said—I remember this with perfect clarity—'I don't think your client killed his family.'

  "It was a Saturday morning and I was alone in the office, and I remember for a moment I was breathless. Bob said, 'He does not appear to be mentally ill. In fact, he seems rather well balanced and healthy.' At this point I let out a long whistle. For what had seemed a long time, I had suspended my own judgment about this man. Now, for the first time, I had been given reason to actively, affirmatively think that he had not committed the crime.

  "I still, of course, was not persuaded one hundred percent, but having come into the case carrying with me the presumption of guilt, and Thinking defensively, I could now go on the offense.

  "While I still believed that the Army would not have charged Jeff—or gone public with him as a suspect—unless they had some facts that pointed toward him, I could now approach the case from the point of view that their facts had led them to the wrong conclusion. The task now was not to prepare an insanity defense, but to plunge into the investigation of the case, and to go get the rest of the facts."

  Segal's belief that he was representing an innocent man was strengthened further within the next few days when he received the results of the psychological testing.

  "Captain MacDonald's adjustment certainly falls within normal limits," the psychologist informed Bernie Segal. "There is no sign of either psychosis or psychopathic tendencies that would lead him to commit a crime of violence. To what extent he can be successfully hiding actual guilt cannot be completely answered on the basis of psychological evaluation, but the nature of the crime is such that it was probably committed by either a psychotic or a criminal psychopath and it is clear that Captain MacDonald does not fit such a description."

  Bernie Segal forwarded to the Army summaries of both the psychiatric and psychological evaluations in the hope that authorities could be persuaded that MacDonald lacked the capacity to have committed the crime. The hope proved naive.

  At 1 P.M. on May 1, Freddy Kassab called a press conference in New York City to protest the fact that the Army had kept his stepson-in-law under restriction for more than three weeks without having actually accused him of any crime. "I was under the impression that it was only in Communist countries a person could be held in this way," Kassab said.

  At 4 P.M. the Army announced that Jeffrey MacDonald had been formally charged with three counts of murder.

  That evening, in Philadelphia, Bernie Segal told the press that his client was "very shaken and confused" by the development. "He cannot believe this has happened," Segal said.

  On Long Island, Mildred Kassab said, "The entire United States Army must have gone stark raving mad."

  * * *

  Five days later, MacDonald wrote again to the Kassabs.

  I'm just getting over the shock of actually being charged— even with the preparation and forewarning it was quite a jolt for this insanity to progress so far.

  IJm sure by now you're aware that the Army ignored the results of tests done on me in Philly two weeks ago before charging me. Typical Army—they used a lot of mumbo jumbo, but the end result was they refused to look at the results of the tests—evidence that proves I'm innocent. Apparently even if I was having communion in Rome with the Pope that night, the Army would have suppressed that and charged me.

  My lawyer warned me of this from the beginning. He said they will never admit they were wrong. He very bluntly told me my innocence was very unimportant at this point—more important are things like Army careers, publicity, egos, and incompetent investigators.

  Of course, in my innocence, I always held out hope that someone would come, release me, and say, 'Sorry for the mistake—you're free to go and experience the grief of losing that which (whom) you love most.'

  I am worldly about many things, but now I really confess to a naivete about how people are prosecuted for alleged crimes. Fortunately, it's OK with me if they want to look into the past. I have nothing to hide, and they can call anyone they want to the witness stand to testify as to our family, the relations among my family, or my personal or professional character. Let them just 'drive on' because they will never find anything but love in my family. I think they are the ones who need psychiatric testing.

  If there is a heaven, as Colette and Kim always felt, I'm sure that Colette, Kim, Kristy and our unborn son are there now—what must they be saying as they look down on this insanity? Does their new status give them infinite patience and understanding of mere mortals' errors & procedures? Or are they as sick of all this as I am. I wish I was with them right now, wherever it might be.

  This time, almost a month passed before Mildred Kassab could bring herself to respond.

  Dear Jeff,

  How the days drag! Every day I look at a stack of letters, yours on top, and say, today! The last time I was going to write was on Mother's Day & Colette's birthday. I started a letter and the damn tears kept spilling on the paper, so I quit. I hope someday I will stop weeping; it's a terrible weakness, 1 know, but it's such a shame, such a pity.

  Do you realize that it is just ten years this month that we attended yours & Colette's high school graduation? You started out to beat the world and all of the plans for the future—blasted by those killing rats.

  I am constantly thinking of how I can get someone to find the sick sadists who killed my darlings. I will never rest until these people—or should I say animals—are caught and punished. There isn't a fitting punishment any more, since we have become so humanized.

  I have many of Colette's letters and I read them over and over. It almost makes me feel that it never happened. But it did.

  The swimming pool looks beautiful, all aqua and white, with cement walls, patio, and new green sod. The plantings are blooming and the whole thing looks like Hollywood. I hate it. We didn't do it for ourselv
es.

  We love you and do wish so much for you, Jeff. If we could only make everything nice and tidied up again. It's just too big, though, and when you are all through you still have nothing.

  2

  Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs legal procedures applicable to members of the U.S. armed forces, requires that, subsequent to the lodging of a criminal charge by military authorities, an Investigating Officer be appointed to inquire "as to the truth of the matter set forth in the charges," and to make a recommendation, "as to the disposition of the case."

  Col. Warren V. Rock, an infantry officer with thirty years' experience who was serving as director of psychological operations at the John F. Kennedy Institute of Military Assistance at Fort Bragg, was assigned to conduct the Article 32 inquiry into the murder charges against Jeffrey MacDonald.

  Were he to find that the charges had merit, Colonel Rock could recommend that MacDonald be court-martialed. Should he find them to be without substance, it was within his power to recommend that they be dismissed.

  It had become standard practice within the military to treat an Article 32 hearing as merely a formality, at which the prosecution—often unopposed by the defense—did no more than outline its case, presenting just enough evidence to persuade an Investigating Officer already inclined in that direction that the charges were worthy of referral to court-martial.

  Bernie Segal, however, did not intend to follow standard practice. His past experience with the military legal system had led him to believe that once a case had advanced to the court-martial level—at which the defendant's fate was determined by a "jury" composed of officers chosen by the very military authorities who had brought the prosecution—it became almost impossible to win. At that stage the prosecution simply had too much control, and for too many of those involved—career officers, for example, concerned with their own chances for promotion—there was simply too much at stake: too much to be lost and too little to be gained from the embarrassment of a "not guilty" verdict.

  Segal decided to mount a full-scale defense at the Article 32 hearing.

  The proceeding was convened on the morning of Monday, July 6, well attended by the public and press. The lieutenant who had been in charge of the military police at 544 Castle Drive during the first hectic hours following the discovery of the bodies testified.

  Under cross-examination by Bernie Segal, he admitted that he did not know how many military policemen had been inside the apartment; that he had never attempted to compile a list of names; that he had left no one in charge, to make sure that evidence was not disturbed, when he himself had left the apartment to call for an ambulance and to notify the provost marshal of the crime; that, in fact, one of his men had picked up the receiver that was dangling from the bedroom telephone in order to notify headquarters that the MPs had arrived at the scene; that even after hearing MacDonald's description of the four assailants, he had failed to order the establishment of roadblocks at exits from the post, despite suggestions from several of his men that he do so; and that soon after his arrival at 544 Castle Drive he had noticed wet grass, tracked in from outside, at various locations throughout the apartment, but that he did not know if this debris had been brought in, unknowingly, by his own men—at least a dozen of whom had been running up and down the dark and narrow hallway of the apartment, some on the verge of hysteria as a result of what they had seen—or, perhaps half an hour earlier, by the four intruders who had murdered Jeffrey MacDonald's wife and children.

  Military officials in attendance were apparently taken aback by the sharp focus and aggressiveness of Segal's cross-examination. The realization that there was the potential here for unfavorable publicity quickly penetrated the upper levels of the chain of command. Following the lunch recess, it was announced that the remainder of the hearing would be closed to press and public.

  Freddy Kassab went immediately to Washington and held a press conference. He said, "I am here today for the sole purpose of attempting, in my small way, to set the scales of justice at a normal balance.

  "What I ask is not partiality, not anything illegal, not anything unusual: I simply ask that my son-in-law Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, be afforded the same right as any other American citizen, and that is a public hearing.

  "I ask that the command influence that was used to close these hearings after they were open for a few brief hours be overruled by a higher authority. Surely, in this great country of ours, there must be a way for a man—even though he is in the Army—to receive fair and equitable treatment.

  "My wife and I have a right to show to the whole country that the charges against Captain MacDonald are false.

  "My wife and I have three graves to visit, and when we do we want to feel that we are doing everything we can to protect from any wrong the one that was most dear to them."

  Despite a Jack Anderson column harshly critical of the Army for having barred the public from the proceedings, the hearing continued behind closed doors.

  The only spectator permitted to attend was Jeffrey MacDonald's mother, who was allowed in after a wire-service photograph showed her seated on the steps outside the locked hearing room, and an accompanying story quoted her as saying that as a sign of her belief in her son's innocence she would remain there each day that the hearing was in session, or until the military police dragged her away.

  Behind the closed doors, Bernie Segal was discovering—to his amazement and to his client's delight—just how confused, disorganized, and riddled with procedural error the Army's case against MacDonald really was. Segal's vigorous and exhaustive cross-examination of prosecution witnesses unearthed a series of. investigative blunders far more extensive and significant than he would have ever dared hope.

  From the earliest moments at the crime scene, when the military police sergeant had picked up the dangling telephone, to the later laboratory ineptitude which had resulted in the loss of the blue fiber from beneath Kristen's fingernail and the piece of skin from beneath the fingernail of Colette, the Army had been, as Franz Joseph Grebner had known since February, grossly incompetent.

  It turned out, for example, that the flowerpot whose upright position had so aroused Grebner's suspicions had actually been set aright by an ambulance driver who had ignored all instructions to leave the crime scene untouched. The same driver, according to the testimony of a military policeman who had observed him,

  had managed to steal Jeffrey MacDonald's wallet from a desk— all while the crime scene supposedly was being preserved.

  The doctor who had been called to 544 Castle Drive to pronounce death testified that he had rolled Colette MacDonald onto her side in order to check for wounds in her back, and that in so doing he had removed the blue pajama top from her chest. He said he did not remember where he had placed it, but would not rule out the possibility that fibers from it might have fallen within the body outline on the floor.

  The pathologists who had performed the autopsies had neglected to take either fingerprints or hair samples from the bodies, and, when a laboratory technician was later dispatched to the funeral home for the purpose of obtaining fingerprints, he found Kimberly and Kristen, already embalmed, "looking like two little angels lying there," and he could not bring himself to disturb them further. Thus, the children's fingerprints were never obtained, leaving many more "unidentified" fingerprints on the premises than might otherwise have been the case.

  The CID had not realized that hair samples were lacking until after the bodies were buried. For "known hair samples" to match against the blond hair found in the palm of Colette's hand, the CID chemist was forced to rely upon hairs taken from her coat collar, not from her head. The efficacy of this procedure was severely undermined when it was determined—much to the prosecution's chagrin—that a "known hair sample" obtained from a sweatshirt of Jeffrey MacDonald turned out to be not his hair at all, but a strand of hair from his pony.

  Each day's testimony—even during the prosecution's port
ion of the case—seemed to produce less evidence linking MacDonald to the crimes than it did new examples of CID bungling. The discarded pajama bottoms, the emptied garbage, the flushed toilets, the destroyed footprint which, superficially at least, had appeared to match a test print taken of the left foot of Jeffrey MacDonald—the string of errors would have been highly comical had their consequences not been so serious.

  Segal learned, for example, that following Ron Harrison's February 19 press conference, investigators and technicians alike had rushed to read the Esquire magazine found in the MacDonald living room. By the time the blood smear across the top of the pages was finally noticed and the magazine dusted for fingerprints, the only ones found were those of CID personnel and military policemen.

  Back at Fort Gordon, when the fingerprint technician developed the film on which he had photographed prints found inside the apartment, he discovered that more than fifty of the pictures were so blurred as to be useless. Perhaps, he theorized, trucks passing by or firing from a nearby artillery range had caused his camera to vibrate. Whatever the cause, when he returned to 544 Castle Drive to rephotograph the prints in question, he found that moisture had penetrated the protective tape he had placed over them and that more than forty had been obliterated and, would thus remain forever unidentified—markedly decreasing the certainty with which the prosecution could claim that there was no evidence of intruders inside 544 Castle Drive.

  As the toll of blunders mounted, Bernie Segal suggested ever more pointedly to the hearing officer, Colonel Rock, that irreparable damage had obviously been done to the crime scene and that this damage had rendered useless—indeed, had thrust into the realm of wild conjecture—any inferences which might otherwise have been drawn from the so-called physical evidence.