Fatal Vision

by Joe McGinniss

  "Considering all known facts about the life and previous history of the accused, no logical motive was established. Because of the manner in which the victims were murdered, it is reasonable to conclude that the crimes were committed by persons who were either insane or under the influence of drugs.

  "The accused was subjected to two separate psychiatric evaluations. Although there is a four-month time span between the two, there is a striking similarity in the conclusions. Basically, they believe he is now sane and was sane on 16-17 February. Both feel that the accused was not trying to hide any facts from them and that had he been they would have been able to detect it. The accused's psychiatrist stated, in addition, that the accused was not capable of committing the crimes. . . .

  "Explanations for any discrepancies [in MacDonald's story] are logical, based on the testimony of the psychiatric experts, the time factor, his natural attempts to forget the horrible sights of 17 February, normal human failure to remember routine actions, and the confusion following the blow to his head."

  Taking into account also the testimony in regard to Helena Stoeckley, the inadequate preservation of the crime scene, and the abundance of investigatory mistakes, Colonel Rock concluded his report with two recommendations:

  That all charges and specifications against Captain Jeffrey MacDonald be dismissed because the matters set forth ... are not true.

  That appropriate civilian authorities be requested to investigate the alibi of Helena Stoeckley, Fayetteville, North Carolina", reference her activities and whereabouts during the early morning hours of 17 February 1970.

  Two weeks later, choosing not to make public Colonel Rock's recommendations, the Army announced simply that the charges against MacDonald had been dismissed due to "insufficient evidence."

  Jeffrey MacDonald immediately applied for an honorable discharge. He said he felt "bittersweet." He said, "This is no victory. My beautiful family is gone and their killers are still at large. I'd like to get those people. I can't understand why the Army didn't try harder. I plan to do a lot of investigating. I think they should get the death penalty if they are caught. They made their decision when they killed my family. They should pay for it." ,

  3

  The murder of three members of a family does not, in all cases, bring about a heightened and sustained degree of interest in the survivor. But when the survivor is an intelligent, physically attractive, Princeton-educated physician who happens also to be a Green Beret officer and who tells the world, less than six months after the Charles Manson murders, that the violence done to himself and his loved ones was wreaked by drug-crazed hippies in an apparent replication of the Manson cult homicides, it is inevitable that he will become, for a time, the focal point of a certain amount of public attention.

  That this happened to Jeffrey MacDonald was not surprising. That he found himself gratified and titillated rather than repelled by the phenomenon may also have been unsurprising, but in the months and years which were to follow the Army's announcement that the charges against him had been dismissed, it proved by no means insignificant.

  Even before the Article 32 hearing began, MacDonald seemed entranced by the newspaper and television publicity he was receiving and decided that, eventually, he would like to have someone write a book about the case. Handled properly, such a book could make him not only famous but rich. He, after allr " had a story, and nobody simply "told" a story anymore. People with stories sold the rights to them, something Bernie Segal repeatedly assured MacDonald that he would someday have the chance to do.

  To that end, MacDonald began to compile what he would later call a "diary" but what was, in fact, a reconstructed account of his version of the events which had led up to and had flowed from those terrible early morning hours of February 17.

  Thinking that someday this material could be turned over to an author whom he would come to employ, MacDonald, alone in his BOQ room in the evenings, began to write:

  Saturday, 14 Feb 1970. Went to PX and bought Valentine's cards and candy for my three girls—Colette, Kimberly and Kristy. ... I'm sure we made love that night, because we almost always did, given an evening together without others or without my work.

  Monday, 16 Feb 1970. Routine day at work. Heard from boxing club coach who said I would probably hear within several days about the proposed 30-day trip to Russia as physician for the team. Colette is almost as happy as I am about the possibility of my going—although we both wish she could go. . .

  Later, there would be occasional mention of memories of his wife and children, such as: "The kids especially in my thoughts today—tried to read Rod McKuen poetry but everything reminded me of the kids or Colette and I had to quit," but the diary's dominant theme, other than concern about the progress of the legal proceedings against him, soon came to be publicity.

  Friday, 22 May . . . The news today had the story of the $5,000 reward—it sounded very good on TV.

  Tuesday, 16 June—The publicity, I forgot to mention . . . was very good. Page One in the Sunday Raleigh News and Observer and was a good human interest story except we are sorry they used a picture of me in my convertible—it makes light of a very serious situation. It would have been better not to use that particular picture.

  Tuesday, 7 July—Yesterday's press fairly good to me. . . . Evening TV coverage excellent.

  Thursday, 9 July—It is apparent that the press is strongly behind me. . . .

  There then had occurred an incident in which CID agents, in an attempt to obtain a hair sample which MacDonald had refused to provide voluntarily, forced off the road a car in which he and his attorneys were riding. After a scuffle during which both Segal and an assistant, Dennis Eisman, fell to the ground, the CID agents forcibly removed MacDonald to a site where the hair sample was obtained.

  Having sensed that a confrontation on this issue was about to erupt, Segal had arranged to have a car full of reporters and photographers trailing the vehicle in which MacDonald was riding. The incident was, therefore, widely reported. In his diary MacDonald noted:

  The news was out immediately—it appears to be the biggest story in weeks. Headlines all over, TV, radio, and countless phone calls. Rep. Pike, Sen. Javits, Jack Anderson's column in Washington—everyone is interested. The AP and UPI wire services told Freddy in Long Island that it is world wide, not just national.

  The day after the incident, he wrote:

  More pictures today, taking some advantage of the neck brace worn by Denny, and involving AP, UPI, and local. The press conference in New York tomorrow [at which the Kassabs and Jeffrey MacDonald's mother planned to renew their demand that the hearing be reopened to the public] sounds like it will be well-attended.

  The following day, he reported:

  The news conference was attended by two major TV stations, multiple radio stations, AP, UPI, local newspapers. Freddy just told me it went beautifully. No mention here yet, but it was on the 6 PM news in New York. . . . Dennis is wearing his brace, and there has been extensive TV coverage of same.

  The publicity he was receiving, in addition to fueling his desire for more, also had the effect of attracting to his cause certain of those "beautiful people" to whose ranks MacDonald was drawn.

  He got a letter from the Countess Christina Paolozzi, the New York socialite and fashion model who was at that time the wife of a Park Avenue plastic surgeon named Howard Bellin—a man whose friendship MacDonald had cultivated during his internship year at Columbia Presbyterian.

  The Countess informed him that she and her husband had agreed to lend their names to a fund-raising effort in his behalf, and that Dr. Bellin had already written a letter seeking contributions to the "Jeff MacDonald Defense League."

  She further assured him that, "If all goes well and they drop these ridiculous charges, we will give you a fund-raising party where you'll come in person. We've got a lot of guest rooms in this eighteen-room apartment on Park Avenue. You've got a room here when you get free, and we will show you how the rest o
f the world is living during this year of monetary crisis. . . . Oh! My Jeff, I have tears in my eyes for you darling. It is the waste. I do not understand. But only a few men get a chance to find out how much their friends would do for them. And how many people really honestly care. And maybe you are privileged that way."

  The Countess's letter prompted an assistant of Bernie Segal's to announce to the press that, "The ' Jet Set' is joining the defense," and that letters requesting contributions had been sent to "all the big people—the ultrarich."

  To Jeffrey MacDonald, who had used grit, brains, and charm to climb from blue-collar Patchogue to the Ivy League and then to the threshold of an immensely promising career in medicine— but who now sat under armed guard in a bachelor officer's room at Fort Bragg, accused of murder—the allure of such a promised land was powerful. If celebrity was to be a by-product of his tragedy, he would not fight it.

  The lack of aversion to publicity was a quality which MacDonald shared with his attorney, Bernie Segal. Not content with giving daily briefings to the local press (and hoping to spark interest in a book), Segal arranged for MacDonald to grant a lengthy and exclusive interview to the Long Island newspaper Newsday. It was the first time that MacDonald had spoken publicly, in detail, about the events of February 17. He had hitherto described them, even to his closest friends and family, as simply "too painful to talk about."

  Though the interview occurred weeks before he would testify at the Article 32 hearing, MacDonald was far from reticent, describing in detail the attack and its aftermath (stating that he had sustained twelve icepick wounds across the abdomen and three icepick wounds on the left arm, one stab wound in the left arm, two stab wounds in the abdomen, and a stab wound in the right chest, and that at Womack Hospital he had been treated for shock) and even going so far as to discuss his contemplation of suicide on the night of April 6 ("I was laying in bed, looking at the pipe running across the barracks, an exposed pipe with all that dirty green chipped paint, and looking at my belt and saying to myself, 'If I jump off my desk with a belt, will it work?' ") and to draw stick-figure diagrams which illustrated the locations of the bodies of his wife and children inside the apartment.

  MacDonald also told the interviewer that "My whole image of myself has been changed drastically. It's been the hardest thing for me to accept—that I failed my family when I was needed most. You can put in all kinds of rationalizations—there were four people against one, you were hit on the head, you were unconscious—but the fact remains I did not defend my family and they are dead. This is what keeps me awake nights. In my mind I feel that I have let them down, and I have to live with that and that's been a crushing blow for me to face up to."

  An even more crushing blow, he said, was the sudden realization, on April 6, that the CID suspected him of having committed the murders.

  "In the prior six weeks, there was absolutely no hint that I was a suspect. As a matter of fact, on multiple occasions the provost marshal had personally assured the press that I was indeed not a suspect, that there was no evidence against me, and my wounds were multiple and serious and I could not have inflicted those wounds on myself.

  "It's funny how long it took me to get the idea that some people, in fact, did not believe me. You know, it didn't normally occur to me—since I had witnessed four people and I had seen my kids and my wife in this condition—that this wouldn't seem reasonable.

  "First of all, you know, you'd either have to be on drugs or be psychotic, there's no two ways about it. What was done in that house was not done by normal people.

  "But apparently some people were bothered by the fact that I did survive my injuries, which, while serious at the time, are not as serious as the rest of my family's. Although in number I had just as many stab wounds, they weren't as deep because I was defending myself."

  MacDonald then talked about April 6. "I walked in," he said, "and Mr. Shaw, and Mr. Ivory came in behind me, and Mr. Grebner said, 'Sit down, Captain MacDonald, we want to talk to you.' I mean it was a very somber act that I walked into. There were three men in business suits with guns on, staring at me, you know, and he said, 'We have a few questions to ask you,' and I said, 'Fire away,' and he said, 'First, before I do, let me read you your rights.'

  . "So I waived my right to counsel and they began questioning me, and there were very minor inconsistencies—nothing at all in, you know, the heat of the questioning, or as far as even they were concerned.

  "But then, after a little over two hours of interview, they started asking me questions that were obviously indicative that they felt that the scene was staged, and my reaction at that was incredulous.

  "I got mad at them. I was swearing at them, as a matter of fact. I said, 'You guys are out of your goddamn heads.' I said, 'What do you mean, staging? Six weeks after the crime is committed, you calmly assume it's staged by me?'

  "And I said, 'First of all, you've shown me a tremendous lack of investigatory ability. You've had—you've been really incompetent from the beginning, both on the investigation and on your public relations. My wallet was taken from your custody. It's taken you six weeks to figure out that the scene was staged, and now you're telling me that I murdered my family and you have absolutely no evidence. And furthermore, what motive do you think I had?'

  "At which point he pulled out a photograph of this girl from San Antonio, and he passed it to me and said, 'Do you know this girl?' And I looked at and I said, 'Yes, it's a girl I knew in San Antonio.' And he said, 'How long did you know her?' And I said, 'One day—one afternoon and evening,' and he said, 'What happened?' and I said, 'Nothing. I took her out.' And he said, "Did she know you were married?' And I said, 'She knew I was married and had two kids, and I told her so before we even decided on a date that evening.'

  "He said, 'Did your wife know?' I said, 'No, I was away from home and it was a one-night date—pickup—and nothing happened, and there was absolutely no letters, no phone calls, no follow-up, no before, nothing.'

  "I said, 'If you'd like to question the girl about that, feel free,' and they said, 'We have.' And I said, 'Terrific—then you know I'm not lying to you.' And they didn't say anything. They put the photograph away—put it in a folder.

  "This was all done in a—in a tremendously Dick Tracy-like atmosphere. You know, they had a light shining in my face and two guys were facing me and one guy stood behind me and, like, every fourth or fifth question was from the guy behind me, and in order to see him and his reaction to either the question or any answer that I would give, I'd have to turn to face him. It was really juvenile.

  "And I did not know that this was being tape-recorded, by the way. They didn't tell me that. They were just interviewing me. I never saw a tape recorder or a microphone or anything like that.

  "Then Mr. Grebner left the room and Mr. Shaw, who had taken the hard approach—he had been the one saying, 'You murdered your wife, you staged the scene'—he left the room and they left Mr. Ivory.

  "He was silent for about two minutes, and then he tried what is called in the Special Forces the Mutt-and-Jeff approach. He walked over and sat on the desk, and he leaned forward and he was very friendly and he said, 'Captain MacDonald, there have been a lot of allegations thrown around here today. Personally, I have no feelings on the matter except I don't like the way some of my, er, fellow workers do things. I don't like the way they approach the problem, and furthermore I don't really believe a lot of the things they have alleged here.'

  "And I looked at him and I said, 'Mr. Ivory,' I said, 'Really, now, this is very juvenile.' I said, 'I'm sure you're the other half of the Mutt-and-Jeff team, and you expect by putting your arm around me and patting my shoulder I am supposed to break down and confess.' I said, 'Let me set you straight: I have nothing to confess to. I have never done anything.'

  "Later, Mr. Shaw said to me, 'Would you take a lie detector test?' and I said, 'Absolutely.' I said, 'Without any question I'll take a lie detector test right now.' And there was stunned silence in the room.
I was amazed at their reaction. They were stunned. They just sat there and looked at me, and about a minute later Mr. Grebner said, 'You will?' And I said, 'Absolutely. I haven't lied to you.' I said, 'I'll take a lie detector test.' I said, 'Let's take one.'

  "And they looked at each other, and they said, 'We can't give it to you now.' And I said, 'Why not? You guys have made a lot of allegations. Let's take a lie detector test.' And Mr. Grebner said, 'Well, we have to get him from Washington.' And I said, 'Well, get him from Washington. I'll take a lie detector test.' And at that point he said, 'That will be all,' and I got up and left the office.

  "Then, at 4 o'clock I got a phone call to report to my commanding officer, and he said, it's my unfortunate duty to tell you that you have been named as a suspect in the murder of your family.' And then he said, i better also tell you that they're having a news conference with AP and UPI in about half an hour,' and I was just completely stunned."

  Later MacDonald was afraid that he might have given away too much for nothing. This concern was illustrated by his diary entry for Saturday, July 25, the day after the Army prosecutors had rested their case against him.

  The Newsday reporter, he wrote, "has been here for days now, going through files in the office. I'm a little ticked off at Bernie—he won't tell me anything about the financial arrangements, but he has given away much valuable material. If I now want to see another author about the story, this guy has most of the best info, with no guarantee that I get anything."