Fatal Vision

by Joe McGinniss

  Two days later, MacDonald wrote:

  Newsday reporter going home today. Had long conversation with him about the article. He assures me I will do well financially by him at the right time, just to trust him and Bernie.

  Despite the fact that when the interview appeared, MacDonald found "very good response—it's being carried in Raleigh, possibly LA Times and Chicago Sun-Times" he was not content to leave such a vital matter as future publicity solely in the hands of Bernie Segal, nor to trust the Newsday reporter to do right by him financially. In October, even as he awaited the Army's decision on whether to dismiss the murder charges against him, MacDonald began to act as his own agent.

  He wrote to John Sack, then of Esquire magazine:

  Dear Mr. Sack,

  I am a 27 year old Green Beret physician currently awaiting the result (officially) of an Art. 32 investigation into the murder of my wife and two little girls. . . . This letter is being written to you for the purpose of interesting you in writing a major article and/or book regarding the events of the last 9 months. The Army has attempted to cover up a bungled investigation by charging me with the crimes, in spite of the fact that my story fits the facts. . . . We have complete files documenting the case and the Army screw-ups. ...

  The case has received nation-wide publicity on several occasions, as well as continuous local news in the NY and North Carolina areas. Several politicians have had some association with the case (Goodell, Pike, Ervin, Javits) and the Pentagon is intimately involved. Public opinion has changed so that it is now almost 100% on my side (at least from the mail I get). The case certainly has all the emotional impact any case could have, and in addition has some interesting sidelights, such as a fund-raising drive by a prominent NY socialite (Dr. Howard Bellin and his wife, Countess Christina Paolozzi). . . .

  My lawyers are currently in contact with Look magazine regarding a possible article, but I am more partial to your style and they will agree with any decision I make about the author. I would appreciate hearing from you as soon as possible. . . .

  On the same day, he wrote to Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times:

  I have recently read of your exploits in the world of expose, as chronicled by Time magazine—it occurs to me that you are well-suited to write a major article on my case, and I thought I would write directly to you and attempt to elicit your interest. My lawyers are currently in some first-stage talks with Look and Esquire, but nothing has been firmed up, and they will agree on whoever I choose to write the story. . . .

  He also wrote to a reporter named Jack Bass, of the Charlotte, North Carolina, Observer:

  I have recently read of your exploits in the world of expose, as chronicled by Time magazine—it occurs to me that you are well suited to write a major article and/or book on my case. . . . My lawyers are currently in some first-stage talks with Look and Esquire but nothing has been firmed up. . . .

  In both these letters, MacDonald mentioned that among the "several interesting sidelights" was the fund-raising drive being run by "NY Dr. Howard Bellin, M.D. and his jet-set type wife, the Countess Christina Paolozzi," that at least six senators were "involved intimately in the case," that there had already been extensive publicity, and that "I now have full public support."

  After John Sack declined to participate, MacDonald wrote to author Robert Sherrill:

  I am well aware of your interest in military justice. In addition, Mr. John Sack of Esquire suggested to me recently that I contact you. This letter is an attempt to stimulate your interest in writing a major article and/or book regarding my case. My lawyers are having some very preliminary-type discussions with Look regarding the case, but nothing is finalized. They will agree with me on whomever I choose to write the article/book, and I like your style, so I hope you respond to this letter, either way, as soon as possible. . . .

  He added that "people appear to be about 9-1 for me." During the same week, the editiors of Time magazine received a letter.

  Dear Sir,

  This letter is not a crank letter—all the facts in it can be verified by contacting the indicated people. My name is not signed because I am an active duty captain in the US Army and the Army has ways of making things unpleasant for people who speak out against the system.

  I have recently been an escort officer for Capt. Jeffrey R. MacDonald, M.D., a Green Beret physician who stands accused by the Army of the 17 Feb. slaying of his wife, Colette, 26, and his two girls, Kim, 5, and Kristine [sic], 2, in their Ft. Bragg Apt. Let me review a few pertinent facts with you and let you decide if this is a news story or not. . . .

  The letter continued for six pages, describing how MacDonald had been found "semi-comatose" in his apartment and had been rushed to Womack Hospital where he was found to be suffering from "several stab, wounds (about 5)." It further stated that MacDonald had been "placed in intensive care, and he required two chest tubes to be inserted ... to prevent death."

  The letter continued, "almost every thinking person on post is behind Captain MacDonald," and its author stated, "I know for a fact that Senators Goodell and Javits and Rep. Otis Pike are looking into the Army's role."

  Despite the fact that Captain MacDonald "remains in isolation," the letter said, "he seems to have maintained his cool, and his sense of humor, how only God can say. . . . His mother visits him frequently. ..."

  After urging that Time do a story on "this gross injustice," the letter suggested that reporters might want to contact Freddy and Mildred Kassab, "for a heart-breaking story of Capt. MacDonald's family life—how he bought his children a pony for Christmas."

  The "jet set Countess" Christina Paolozzi was mentioned, as was the fact that "Cpt. MacDonald has received hundreds to thousands of letters, all favorable except about 10, he says. He has received them from all over the U.S., Canada, and from other countries, including Russia, Poland, England, Peru, Brazil, and Italy, all favorable to him."

  In conclusion, the anonymous author wrote, "I sincerely hope you act on this letter. . . . Please try to set some of these facts before the public. It will be the truth and it will help to correct some of these terrible ills in the military justice system and it will force the military to release an innocent, grieving man. I'm so sorry I cannot sign my name."

  The letter was written with a typewriter and on stationery which appeared remarkably similar to those used in the writing of the letters to which Jeffrey MacDonald had signed his name.

  Time eventually did print an extremely sympathetic four-column article in its "Law" section under the heading, CAPTAIN MAC DONALD'S ORDEAL (referring to him as an "All-American achiever who had always had his merit rewarded"), and the Jack Anderson column—never reluctant to pounce on an example of military malfeasance—ran a story which accused the Army of having tried to "railroad" MacDonald, a man whose friends "swore he was incapable of such a hideous crime." The Washington Post printed the column under the headline GUILTY IN BERET KILLING STILL AT LARGE.

  Bernie Segal's negotiations with Look, however, failed to come to fruition, and none of the reporters or authors whom MacDonald had contacted agreed to tell the story he wanted told.

  Several years later, before a federal grand jury, a newspaper reporter who had covered the Article 32 hearing and who had interviewed MacDonald in his quarters on the morning that the charges were dismissed would recall his strong interest in the attendant publicity. "He was elated, of course, and phone calls were coming in. He'd run out and come back in and fuss with his uniform and say to me, 'Well, what do you think I ought to do? Do you think I should wear a khaki uniform or put on my greens?' And I said, 'I don't know. You're talking about for pictures?' And he said, 'Yeah, for pictures, what do you think? The guys will be coming by twelve. Television and all that.' And I said, 'Well, I think you look great in your greens.' So he put on his greens and he laid them out and was really concerned about that.

  "In the meantime, I was asking him things like, 'Well, now they've let you go. What are you going to do? How d
o you feel? And he said, 'I don't know. I can't tell you.' Then he says, 'The coffee will be ready in a minute.' And I start asking about revenge and he says, 'The natural feeling of grief was sometimes replaced with a helpless feeling of rage.'

  "Well, at that point I was thinking to myself, you know, the guy says, 'I'm filled with a sense of rage' and yet he wants to know how his uniform should look for the photographers.

  "I kept pushing at the revenge thing because I wanted to know what he was going to do—I knew what I would have done— and he said, 'Yeah, I'd like to get these people. I think they ought to get the death penalty if they are caught.' But then he started talking about going to a party in Philadelphia that night. And, like, he made a remark about the telephone operator that he'd just talked to on one of these calls that was coming in. It was really an off-color remark. And all this in between these very profound statements about how he wants revenge, and how he wants to kill people, to have the death penalty, and he's enraged, and then he says, 'Hey, that's a really sharp-sounding gal. I could do something with that.' And I said, 'My God, this guy is really flicking back and forth.'

  "I got a short note from him about five days after my story came out. He said, 'That was a really good piece. The best one you've done on me so far. How about getting me some copies of those pictures. They were just great. Signed, Jeff.' "

  Allard Lowenstein—by now a true and impassioned believer in his cause—arranged for MacDonald to be interviewed by Bob Schieffer of CBS. Within a week of his discharge the result appeared—as had the news, nine months earlier, that he was considered a suspect—on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

  "Captain Jeffrey MacDonald is a man under a cloud," Cronkite intoned. "He's lost his family under horrible circumstances and now he's fighting for his honor." During the interview which followed, MacDonald said he had suffered "approximately nineteen" stab wounds during the attack. Having then described the agony of the false accusation and subsequent legal proceeding, MacDonald charged that the Army was refusing to renew its search for the killers, "because they now see how totally incompetent their own investigation was and it would do nothing but hurt their image for the investigation to be reopened. I think it's as simple as that. They are just afraid of being shown up as the incompetent team of investigators they are."

  Concluding the interview, correspondent Schieffer said that the House Armed Services Committee had asked the Pentagon for a full report on the case. "But still unanswered is, who did it?" Schieffer said. "MacDonald feels that it's about time someone tried to find out."

  Four nights later, MacDonald appeared on the Dick Cavett show. Dressed in a new civilian suit and fashionably wide necktie, and with his hair longer and the beginnings of sideburns apparent, MacDonald walked onstage to be greeted by a surge of applause: no longer just a viewer of Johnny Carson, but—for one night at least—a competitor.

  A sympathetic Cavett referred to the "baffling story" which included "incredible bungling on the Army's part," and which was, essentially, "just a nightmare that this man lived through, and still is."

  Cavett then, saying, "I hope this isn't too painful for you—I feel like the journalist who asks the gory question," asked MacDonald to describe the night of the murders.

  "I can skim through it briefly," MacDonald said. "To get deep into it does produce a lot of emotion on my part." He told how Colette had gone to her evening class, how he had put the children to bed, how later ("even though I am a Green Beret") he had washed the dinner dishes, and how, "my wife came home and we had a before-bedtime drink and watched the beginning of a late-night talk show."

  He paused here, and a smile flickered across his face. The audience—aware of the Cavett-Carson rivalry—responded with generous, if slightly uneasy laughter.

  Later, MacDonald said he had sustained twenty-three wounds in the attack, "some of which were potentially fatal." He said, "I could have died very easily. I was in an intensive care unit for several days, and had surgery—you know, chest tubes in my chest."

  "Did this seem like a nightmare at the time?" Cavett asked. "It is always easy to say, 'He went through a nightmarish experience.' Did it—did you know that it was real, that it was actually happening, or did it seem like a dream?"

  "Yes, it still at times seems like a dream. Nightmare really is a very mild term for that night. And what's happened since has gotten so unbelievable. I mean it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and you run out of words to describe it. Unbelievable kind of says it, but then you keep saying that and it doesn't mean anything after a while."

  "Yes."

  "There were no facts against me, as Colonel Rock's very beautiful report illustrates. He was appointed as the investigating officer, and he was—actually acted as judge and jury for this three-month hearing. And I was fortunate in getting a very intelligent, strong man who could withstand some of the pressures that the Army was bringing to bear. There are people in the Army who wanted a court-martial regardless of any evidence. I mean, I've watched these men. I've seen them testify and I've seen perjury."

  "Could that be because they had to find somebody?"

  "Yes. That was a very large part of it, I think. Absolutely. They had done really nothing. They had performed very incompetently and they realized that they had to do something. So they charged me."

  "Yes," Cavett said. "We have a message, then we'll be right back."

  Following the commercial, Cavett asked, "What's this done to you? Do people look at you and say, ah, how do we know he didn't do it?"

  "Well, yes, right. That's ah—most people to my—you know, face-to-face meetings have been very nice. I must say that. But I don't think I'm being paranoid when I say that there is certainly a flavor of suspicion in a lot of people's minds, and, ah, it comes out in various ways. Some people pat you on the back as if to say, 'Well, we know you did it but it's okay anyway.' Other people say, 'Well, it's going to be very hard to have patients come and visit you in the future, isn't it?' And, ah, I was accepted for my residency in orthopedic surgery at your alma mater, Yale, two years ago, and now it's being reviewed by the board of trustees."

  "Did—did—did the idea of psychiatric examination ever come into play?"

  "Yes, we did that because my lawyer thought it was an extremely valuable tool. When he first met me he said, The first thing we have to do is have you examined by a competent man, and if he comes up with wrong findings, I'm not going to defend you/ He was very blatant. He was very honest with me and I appreciated that.

  "So we went through a very long, arduous examination and he testified later to the effect that I was perfectly sane and normal and it was his opinion that I was not the personality type, or had any of the characteristics of people who would commit a crime of violence, especially on those close to him. Six months later, a team of Army psychiatrists came up with the same findings."

  "What about the fact that you were a Green Beret? Does that color it in some people's minds because they say, 'These guys are trained to kill,' and so forth?"

  "Well, I must say I would have expected that, but surprisingly enough I think my mail—I would read my mail as saying that the fact that I am a Green Beret gave me more support, I would guess. A lot of people wrote to me because I was a Green Beret, I think. And they said very nice things, like, 'I once knew a Green Beret and he couldn't possibly have done it.' "

  "Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, we have very little time left. What do you want to come of all this? What's going to happen next?"

  "Well, I think Congress is looking into things. We hope that they get into it in a big way and reopen the old investigation."

  "Congressman Lowenstein is helping you in some way?"

  "Allard Lowenstein from Long Island, right. He's doing a magnificent job and he's just a great person." v

  "Ah, this must have cost you a fortune," Cavett was saying, "aside from all the other—"

  "Right, well, aside from my family and what not, and the nine months, somewhere
in excess of thirty thousand dollars."

  "Not to mention," Cavet said—since MacDonald, to that point, had not—"that the ah, perpetrators of the crime are still free."

  "Absolutely. There are at least four people running around who have, ah, murdered three people."

  "It's just unbelievable," Cavett said. "Does it seem like your life was, in a sense, ended at one point and started again in a Kafka short story?"

  "That's exactly the feeling that you get. And you still get the feeling when you—when I wake up in the morning, you know— that it really didn't happen and my wife's still here, and what not. It's been a hard year."

  "Boy, it's a fantastic story. I don't know what to say about it. It'll be fascinating to see what happens. Good luck to you. After this message, we'll be right back."

  And Jeffrey MacDonald exited to music and applause.

  PART THREE

  THE CONTEMPT OF FAMILIES

  If I covered my transgressions as Adam,

  by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom:

  Did I fear a great multitude,

  or did the contempt of families terrify me ... ?

  —Job 31:33-34

  1

  For Freddy and Mildred Kassab, the summer of 1970, like the spring, and like the last month of winter, had been a time of unrelieved torment.