Fatal Vision

by Joe McGinniss

  "I think of Jeff as a very greatly controlled person. His temperament I find to be very even. I remember at a party, for example—this was for his mother's fiftieth birthday, in the spring of 1969—there was a guy at the table and he was the kind of guy who grew up as a tough. All the time he would pick up cement blocks and people and throw them around at random, and I forget whether—it was something to do with my wife, I think—and this guy could have picked me up and broken me over his knee and I wouldn't have been able to do a thing, and he came across the floor at Jeffs house and picked me right up off my feet against the wall and Jeff's response was one that I thought gave me a lot of insight into him.

  "He immediately responded to help me and defend me yet it was with just the right amount of control. His anger was there to show the man that he had totally misbehaved at his home and was treating one of his guests poorly, and yet he didn't step over the bounds. He wouldn't just run up and belt somebody in the mouth. He had a lot of control, whether it be in statements or actions.

  "Now, Jay—Jay was a tough guy. Jay is not the kind of guy you mess with. You don't go up to Jay and give him a hard time. Jay is a rough, tough guy and he would just pop you in the mouth.

  "Jeff and Jay and their sister, Judy, were always close, and they did everything—for instance, their father was dying and they went out on a limb, the three of them, to buy him a boat. The whole family, from what I understand, it was kind of like all for one and one for all, everybody tried to help each other.

  "In fact, the kind of people that Jeff’s family was, I think, had a large amount of influence on their marital relationship. The MacDonalds were a very gregarious people. The kind who would invite a stranger in off the street for Thanksgiving dinner. They were very accustomed to doing that kind of thing. They were a very socially active clan and there was always something happening, and if there wasn't something happening, they created it. It was the warmest social environment I have ever been in.

  "I personally couldn't have that much social life and have any kind of personal life. You know, for me that was too much one way, but it seemed to make Colette very secure and very happy.

  "Colette was more or less adopted by them. We didn't have, in the Stevenson household, a lot of close family life. It wasn't the kind of family where you had a lot of big gatherings, and Colette always wanted this, and as a result, when she was so totally taken into the MacDonald family, it was a very warm, very good experience for her."

  Of even greater interest to the two re-investigators was a written report filed by a CID agent who had interviewed MacDonald's sister in Schenectady, New York, on May 7, 1970, as part of the original investigation.

  According to the agent, the sister had described MacDonald as "a perfectionist who insisted that things in the home be maintained to his standards by his wife. This caused some arguments," the agent wrote, "and on occasion he would have outbursts of temper if things were not as he desired'

  The last paragraph stated: "At one point in the interview, she was asked if she thought her brother Jeffrey was capable of killing someone. She hesitated and after some thought responded that although she does not believe he did kill his family she felt he was capable of killing if he were provoked."

  Kearns re-interviewed MacDonald's sister. She told him in the spring of 1971 that all she had meant to imply was that anyone was capable of murder, not that she had meant to suggest that her brother had any particular predisposition in that direction. The agent who had conducted the original interview, however, insisted that the context had been clear and that her response had been quite specific.

  An area of MacDonald's life that Pruett and Kearns placed under particularly close scrutiny was the time he had spent at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, just after his induction into the Army. MacDonald had not lived on post but at the Sheraton Motor Inn on Austin Road in San Antonio. Kearns spoke to a doctor who had shared the motel room with MacDonald.

  "About the only thing that sticks out in my mind," the doctor said, "is the party we had the weekend after arriving in San Antonio. The party was held in a room directly under ours, occupied by two Army nurses.

  "There were about six or seven nurses and eight or nine men, including members of a band that was playing at the motel. Everybody was drinking Cold Duck and I got bombed out. The party lasted all afternoon and well into the night. One of the nurses spent a lot of time with Jeff and seemed to get to know him quite well.

  "Jeff dated her for a couple of weeks after the party and one night he must have asked me if I would sleep somewhere else so he could have the room. I don't remember him asking me but he must have because I stayed downstairs in the nurses' room with the same nurse who had been dating Jeff.

  "I don't know who Jeff had in our room that night. The nurse who had been dating Jeff appeared to be hurt because she liked him.

  "Then Jeff somehow became friendly with the manager of the motel and used to go out a lot with that gang. This manager was supposedly married to a model in New York and he really lived an incredible life, throwing wild parties and things like that.

  "Jeff met a divorcee who worked as a stewardess for American Airlines, and they spent a lot of time together. She had a really outstanding body but was not terribly good-looking.

  "After the course was over and Jeff had gone, I was there a few days longer. One day I met the stewardess at the pool. I got the impression that she really liked Jeff and was very sad because she was never going to see him again. I reminded her that a lot of guys who attended school there were married and liked to have a good time but then they had to go back to their families. I got the distinct impression that she might even have planned on packing up and following Jeff."

  An agent then interviewed the nurse who had dated MacDonald early in the summer. "I knew he was married," the nurse said. "He never told me, but after two weeks—after I knew him—I just finally asked how his wife was. He said fine and that was it. He did not talk about his wife, but he did mention his two children. He told me all the cute little things that kids do that wives like to tell husbands and husbands like to spread around. The only problem he ever mentioned was that his older daughter wet the bed and he was hoping that the younger one would not start, too."

  The nurse added that as the summer progressed, "Jeff sort of split off from the group of friends he first had and began running with the manager of the motel, and some other guy who seemed to be one of the local nouveau riche fops. Do you know what I mean? One of these sleazy-looking people who has made it big all of a sudden. I don't remember what his name was. He was sort of repulsive.

  "I could not see how Jeff could run around with them. Jeff was the perfect gentleman at all times. He was always sophisticated. I guess that was the attraction I had to him. The manager was repulsive. He was squalid, but he thought money would give him anything. It seemed that he and Jeff were, personality-wise, diametric opposites, and I could not see how they could get along.

  "Oh, and there was also a little guy who lived about four or five doors down from me. He was thin, black hair, small thin face with a little pointed chin and he used to double-date with Jeff and his stewardess along toward the end of the course. This guy tried to attack me while I was asleep one night and I told Jeff about it the next day and Jeff almost duked him out. But nothing permanent happened to their relationship. They continued double-dating these stewardesses."

  A sergeant who had been working as an undercover narcotics agent and who had infiltrated several parties at the motel during the time of MacDonald's residence reported that MacDonald had also dated a "blonde with a beautiful body" named Mary and a Swedish exchange student from a San Antonio college, who, according to "authorities at the college," was a "very uninhibited, promiscuous girl who might be a good prospect for any man desiring sexual relations."

  "During the month of June," the agent reported, "a party was held at this motel at which the Special Forces were the hosts. During this party things got out of hand and the polic
e were called. The personnel at the party were in the swimming pool nude and just about everything imaginable was happening.

  "It was also learned that at the Jump Parties there was performed what is called a 'Special Forces wedding.' This was explained as being what they called a 'sandwich' wherein a girl performed oral sodomy on a man while a man performed anal sodomy on a girl.

  "There are pictures of this scene but they had gone underground," the agent reported, "when it was learned this investigator was in the area. It was apparent that these parties turn into regular orgies where anything and everything goes, from drugs to any sexual act."

  Jeffrey MacDpnald, of course, had not been at the Sheraton Motor Inn in June but he had attended a Jump Party in December, and to Pruett and Kearns it was beginning to seem clear that he had been less than candid when he testified at the Article 32 hearing that only "very, very infrequently" had he had a sexual relationship with a woman other than his wife.

  The re-investigators then began to turn their attention to the life the MacDonald family had appeared to be living at Fort Bragg—a time which MacDonald would later recall as being filled with "a sense of ease" and a "new togetherness." Many of the MacDonalds' acquaintances offered support for this contention, but, bit by bit, Pruett and Kearns began to collect pieces of information which indicated that a more complicated range of emotion may have lain not far beneath the surface.

  One Green Beret friend recalled "a minor argument one afternoon. MacDonald and I had gone to his house for lunch on a work day and Colette appeared a little irritable. MacDonald said he knew what it was all about. He said she had probably taken a diet pill. Colette said that was right—she seemed concerned because she'd had difficulty wearing a new pair of slacks."

  A friend of Colette's recalled that she had, indeed, been taking diet pills prior to her pregnancy but that she'd stopped because of the "wild mood swings" brought on by the medication.

  The wife of the warrant officer who had lived next door to 544 Castle Drive told investigators about one particular outburst of temper. "Colette was painting outside," the former neighbor said, "and the telephone rang and she went in, and when she came back she said, 'Did you hear me screaming at Jeff?' Then she went on to explain that he was downtown and he had just bought this new stereo set for $700, or something like that. She said she blew up over the telephone and told him with all the bills they had to pay, she couldn't see spending the money." Another neighbor reported that Colette had said she could "kill Jeff" because of the purchase.

  As MacDonald's closest friend at Fort Bragg—and as the last person to have seen the family alive—Ron Harrison was someone to whom the investigators spoke at length. He told them, as he had always told everyone, that the marriage had seemed to him to be one filled with love and affection. The only signs of discord he'd ever noted, he said, were along the lines of Jeff saying to Colette: "Hey, what are you watching this for? The ball game's on." Or, "Ronald's out of beer, Colette." Or, "Ron needs some chow." At times like that, Harrison said, "She'd jump right up and take care of it. She was really number one and so were the kids."

  MacDonald himself, however, according to Harrison, had been bitterly disappointed when Colonel Kingston, whom he had so idolized, was transferred to Vietnam and MacDonald's Special Forces group was disbanded. MacDonald had been reassigned to a different group and given a lesser position: preventive medical officer instead of group surgeon. According to Harrison, this development had annoyed him and he had begun to speak of his desire to get to Vietnam.

  "Jeff was an impatient guy," Harrison said. "He was eager to do something. He wanted to go to the Nam, to Africa, to South America." To anywhere—it came to seem to Pruett and Kearns— other than 544 Castle Drive.

  On post, however, MacDonald had continued the tradition— begun at Princeton and carried on through medical school—of entertaining large groups of friends. Harrison, who himself visited the MacDonald home "two or three nights a week," recalled particularly a large party at Thanksgiving when MacDonald's mother was down from Long Island for a visit.

  Another guest remembered: "There were a lot of people there. Colette had done a tremendous amount of work. I never saw so much food. Jeff spent most of his time taking care of his guests. They had a new color television set, and a lot of the men were watching the football game. Jeff's mother and Colette spent most of the time in the kitchen. I recall they served Cold Duck champagne with the meal because one bottle sprayed all over the ceiling when it was opened."

  For the Cold Duck, there was no need of a corkscrew, but Ron Harrison quite clearly remembered an extended discussion about an icepick. "There was a plastic bag of ice in the kitchen and the ice was all stuck together. As I recall, Jeff asked somebody— Colette maybe?—'Where's the icepick?' He was looking all around for it—in the kitchen drawers and everywhere. He was the host and couldn't find it. He even went out back to look. He said, 'Maybe it's with the stuff out there, the barbecue stuff in the shed.' So he went outside and looked around, but he came back without it because we finally had to use a screwdriver and the end of my knife—I had a pocketknife—to pry the ice apart and chip it away."

  Another frequent dinner guest—following her husband's departure for Vietnam—was Josephine Kingston. "I saw Jeff and Colette twice a week, three times a week for a couple of months," she said. "I recall we drank Cold Duck, a sort of wine, with our dinners." Mrs. Kingston also recalled that "one of the children would often wet the bed and would then go to the master bedroom and get in Colette's bed."

  There had been occasions, Mrs. Kingston said, on which she had seen Jeffrey MacDonald at her residence, alone. At such times, she said, the two of them had talked. When asked what they had talked about, she replied, "Oh, just everything." She recalled specifically that "he mentioned having a brother with some problems and he was sort of unhappy about that" and that "he wanted to go to Vietnam. He was very envious of my husband for his trip."

  Mrs. Kingston also said, "I don't think, truthfully, that Jeffrey wanted more children." She said he had been "disappointed" upon learning of Colette's pregnancy. "It seemed they had just gotten to a stage in their life where they could leave the children with a babysitter and now another was on the way."

  Eventually, the re-investigators brought up the subject of the Valentine that Mrs. Kingston had sent to MacDonald from Honolulu.

  "I know it was a silly thing to do," she said. "At the time, I thought it was just a gesture of friendship. When I left for Hawaii several weeks after my husband had been transferred to Vietnam, Jeff and Colette saw us off at the airport and I gave him a kiss. I remember telling him that this was the first time I had ever kissed him since I'd known him. Sending the card was just one of those indiscriminate things, absolutely no deep feelings involved."

  She was asked why she had sent the card to his office and not his home.

  "Oh, the whole thing was just a joke," she said.

  Mrs. Kingston was then shown a copy of the Joan Didion column, "A Problem in Making Connections," found in the same envelope that contained the Valentine. The column read, in part:

  I am a 34 year old woman with long straight hair and an old bikini bathing suit and bad nerves, sitting on an island in the middle of the Pacific watching for a tidal wave that will not come. . . .

  My husband switches off the TV and stares out the window. I avoid his eyes and brush the baby's hair. In the absence of a natural disaster we are left again to our own uneasy devices. . . .

  We are each the model of consideration, tact, restraint at the very edge of the precipice. He refrains from noticing when I am staring at nothing and frightened of the void. . . .

  At the end of the week I tell him that I am going to try harder to make things matter. He says he has heard that before, but . . . there is no rancor in his voice. Maybe it can be all right, I say. Maybe, he says.

  Mrs. Kingston was asked if she'd ever seen the article before. "I don't know," she said. "I may have. It might be some
thing my daughter would send to Jeff. I don't recall sending it. My daughter was writing on my behalf and she does things like that—sends clippings from magazines whenever she runs out of things to write about."

  Colonel Kingston's daughter, who was twenty-two years old, said, when asked about the card. "That is an embarrassing thing. At the time I never thought anything about it. I was in Hawaii getting cards for several friends in the States when I ran across that card. It reminded me of the time at the airport when mother gave each of the MacDonald family a kiss on the cheek, even the children.

  "Jeff laughed about it and teased her. I suggested to mother that we send him the card as a kind of joke about the kiss at the airport. If I had known that anything like this was going to happen, I would certainly never have sent it."

  In regard to the clipping, she said, "I never sent that. Definitely not. I've never even seen it before. I wouldn't send Jeff something like this. It is kind of coincidental, isn't it?"

  In addition to socializing with the wife of his former commanding officer and "becoming really acquainted" with his own wife, and making the acquaintance of nurse Tina Carlucci at Fort Sam Houston in early December, Jeffrey MacDonald, in the fall of 1969, was acquainting himself also with a number of other young women.

  He was, Ron Harrison said, doing some "counseling" for the red-haired wife of a Special Forces sergeant who was having marital problems. He was also, apparently, teaching the nineteen-year-old daughter of another colleague how to drive. Harrison recalled stopping by the MacDonald apartment one evening just as MacDonald and the young woman—whose name was Carla and who lived only a few houses away on Castle Drive—were on their way out for a lesson. MacDonald told Harrison to make himself at home and have a beer, saying he would be back in about forty-five minutes.