Fatal Vision

by Joe McGinniss

  By the time a redrafted memorandum, designed to satisfy a superior who lacked the time to deal with raw material, reached a desk at the level at which decisions were made, it was as devoid of emotional content as a stock analyst's buy, sell, or hold recommendation.

  Also, the recommendation was always the same: do not prosecute. From a cost-effectiveness standpoint, the MacDonald case was considered a loser. Whether he was guilty or not was irrelevant: without a history of similar actions, without a confession, without any witnesses, and with no apparent motive—even if the original investigation had not been so badly mishandled—the attempt to convict him was so unlikely to succeed as to render unjustifiable the resources that would have to be expended. It was as if Colette and Kimberly and Kristen MacDonald were and always had been mere abstractions.

  Brian Murtagh, however, did not think of the case in those terms. He thought of the slashed and battered bodies of the pregnant woman and the two little girls, awash in blood in their own bedrooms during the darkest hours of a raw and misty night. For him, the prosecution of Jeffrey MacDonald was not simply a function of his professional life but a compelling moral issue. Murtagh eventually came to see himself not only as an employee of the U.S. government, but as a lawyer—the only lawyer— representing the interests of Jeffrey MacDonald's dead wife and daughters.

  Brian Murtagh had become almost as preoccupied by the case as had Freddy and Mildred Kassab. For two years he had sought—in meetings and in memorandums—to convey his sense of moral urgency to the seemingly endless teams of Justice Department attorneys who had been given responsibility for reviewing the evidence. For two years, he had failed. He was, after all, only a twenty-seven-year-old Army captain. He wasn't even a member of the Justice Department.

  "For two years," Murtagh said, "I couldn't get anybody to feel."

  Murtagh had grown up in the Forest Hills section of Queens in New York City. He had graduated from Georgetown University. He was five feet seven, wore horn-rimmed glasses, and weighed 130 pounds. He owned neither sports car nor yacht, and neither countesses nor airline stewardesses sought his company.

  One afternoon in the last week of June, having learned that the case was now in the hands of one of the Justice Department's "most experienced trial attorneys," he called Victor Woerheide to explain the depth of his commitment to the investigation and to offer to be of assistance. He expected to be told—and perhaps not very politely—that if Woerheide, or anyone else in the department, felt in need of help from a twenty-seven-year-old Army captain, he would ask for it. Instead, Woerheide said,

  "Pick me up on the comer of 10th and Constitution in half an hour."

  Victor Woerheide spent that afternoon at CID headquarters in Washington, listening to the tape of Jeffrey MacDonald's April 6, 1970, interview. Victor Woerheide looked at the pictures. Victor Woerheide flew to Fort Bragg and, in the company of Brian Murtagh, spent hours inside 544 Castle Drive. He learned the fine points of blood and fiber analysis. Working seven days a week and up to sixteen hours a day, he studied reports of the investigation and of the reinvestigation. He also had Brian Murtagh reassigned to serve as his aide at the Justice Department. And, in perhaps his most radical departure from bureaucratic tradition, Victor Woerheide even asked to see Freddy Kassab.

  For two years, to Kassab, the Justice Department had been a fortress he'd been unable to breach—a bastion of inaction fiercely guarded by an interlocking network of signatures, all of which appeared at the bottom of letters saying that the case was undergoing internal review.

  Now, on July 18, 1974, for Freddy Kassab, the Justice Department was Victor Woerheide—hulking, red-faced, and scowling— sitting behind a desk which was littered with hundreds of unanswered phone messages, some of them dating back months, as well as pieces of a partly disassembled outboard motor.

  Woerheide had one bare foot draped over the edge of the desk and was clipping his toenails into a wastepaper basket when Kassab arrived. He did not get up. He did not even put on his sock. But he did say to Freddy Kassab—whose commitment and perseverance he was already in awe of, and with whom, being a grandfather himself, he had developed a great empathy—that he believed Jeffrey MacDonald to be guilty of murder and that he was going to order the convening of a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

  The grand jury was impaneled in late July. The first person called to testify was Jeffrey MacDonald.

  "We have no expectation that this grand jury is going to indict Dr. MacDonald," Bernie Segal told the press upon his arrival in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his client. "He's being called as one of about fifty people who have got bits and pieces of information to give."

  At one o'clock on the afternoon of Monday, August 12, 1974, Jeffrey MacDonald entered the grand jury room. He was alone. In accordance with grand jury procedure, not even his own

  lawyer was permitted to be present. There were no cameras. There was no music. There was no applause. For an audience, there was only Victor Woerheide, an assistant from the U.S. Attorney's office in Raleigh, a court reporter, and the twenty-three citizens of North Carolina who had been chosen at random to serve as grand jurors.

  It was a long way, indeed, from Dick Cavett.

  PART FOUR

  THE DAYS OF AFFLICTION

  And now my soul is poured out upon me; The days of affliction have taken hold . . .

  Job 30:16

  At the request of MacDonald, author Joe McGinniss (above) lived with the accused in a fraternity house on the North Carolina State University campus during the 1979 trial to gather information for a book. It was during the three years following the guilty verdict that McGinniss studied every aspect of the case and formulated his own opinions, PHOTO BY NANCY DOHERTY

  The Voice of Jeffrey MacDonald

  For me, for my own personal head, the move from New York to California, I think, was really what allowed me to survive. To come back from—you know, from February 17th.

  It gave me space. It got me away from the people I knew and were around and all the things that constantly reminded me of Colette and the kids, and from Freddy and Mildred, and the concentration in the East on getting back into the case and either writing a book or continuing the pursuit with Congress, or, ah, continuing the pursuit of the assailants.

  All of that was suddenly broken and I was out on the West Coast, working very hard by normal standards, but not hard by my standards—working sixty or seventy or eighty hours a week—becoming well known in medicine, writing papers, writing articles, chapters in textbooks, teaching a whole lot—I became a well-known instructor in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, I was one of the first instructor-trainers for the whole California Heart Association and then was made a member of the national committee for American Heart and began to teach CPR all over the country, and after about six months they made me director of the emergency room at St. Mary's.

  I was making excellent money, building a new circle of friends, and after a while I really got into the lifestyle.

  In the condo, I had this heavy, Spanish-style furniture and I bought first just a twelve-foot rowboat from Sears with an outboard motor and then I bought a twenty-eight-foot yacht and later of course traded that in for an even bigger boat.

  I sold the Chevy and bought a four-passenger Mercedes convertible, two tone. It was really a gorgeous car. It was a movie star's, I can't remember his name . . . Dana Andrews. It was Dana Andrews's car, this very lovely two-tone brown, light brown over dark brown, with rolled red leather interior and the hand-rubbed dash made out of some kind of gnarled wood, and it was really fun, it was a beautiful car.

  I had it for several years. The problem with it, it had no power going up hills and it was old enough and had enough miles on it and was underpowered enough that it was constantly breaking down and it got to the point where literally it was in the shop a week a month or two weeks a month, usually just waiting for parts, and I got a little tired of it, so I eventually went to the auto show in Los
Angeles and got a—just on the spur of the moment, by myself one day, went to the auto show and was looking around and, to make a long story short, saw this Citroen SM—thought, on the first pass, that it was the ugliest car I'd ever seen, went back a couple hours later and thought that it was kind of a good-looking car—it was more unusual than anything else at the show—and went back about two hours later—now I'd been at the show about six or eight hours—and realized that it was really kind of a handsome car and it was four-passenger and it was kind of luxurious, but it was sporty, and, ah, I started thinking about it and two days later I started looking in earnest and called this dealer whose literature I had picked up and eventually he sold me one, a brown one with the JRM-MD license plates.

  Seventy-two and seventy-three were really the fun times. They were very good years. I was beginning to put my life back together. I was becoming a successful doctor, and the rest of my life was made up of boating and working out and seeing Joy. We had a really tremendous relationship, both socially and emotionally and certainly sexually—she being the most sensual woman I'd ever seen—and me becoming very successful professionally.

  Joy was this gorgeous receptionist who worked for one of the yacht dealers in the area, and I remember very clearly the first time I saw her. She had on a camel-colored suit and looked very prim and proper, had her hair up, and there was no real hint except in her eyes of this incredible beauty and tremendous sensuality that was to unfold.

  But I remember I walked into the showroom and she looked at me and did a double-take and I looked at her and did a double-take and she stared at me and I stared at her, and basically our fates were sealed from that moment on, as silly and romantic as it sounded.

  We spent a whole lot of time together—I'd say every weekend from Friday night until Monday morning and sometimes a night or two during the week, and certainly all of our going-out time was together. We really never went anywhere without the other person. ^All trips, all of my medical meetings that I went to, I always brought Joy. We did a lot of little trips to Las Vegas, some trips to Lake Tahoe, and a lot of meetings, medical meetings.

  Joy recognized in me my extreme competitiveness and also she fed, you know, my ego. She understood that I loved sports and football and basketball and baseball, and sort of always wanted to do the best possible in it, and she encouraged it. She would throw down the gauntlet on how far I could run or whether I'd be able to work all night and then play a big football game against the police. And she enjoyed watching me do it almost as much as I enjoyed doing it, if not as much. She was very flushed with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, just as I was. And we would have all these intense experiences together, very often with her needling me and then being very proud in whatever accomplishments I did make.

  We had some just unbelievable vacations. I took her to Tahiti, as a matter of fact. I told her—asked her what she wanted for Christmas and she said, oh, just have a nice dinner somewhere, and I told her, well, I'll tell you what, instead of for Christmas—her birthday is December 9th—I told her that for her birthday before Christmas I would take her out to dinner, to the restaurant of her choice.

  And she said fine, and she was, you know, thinking up neat restaurants in Beverly Hills and Las Vegas and San Francisco, and I said, "Why don't I just take you to Tahiti?" And she said okay, and just kind of giggled and the next day I went down and got the tickets and came back and gave them to her and she just couldn't believe it.

  We had ten days on Tahiti, three days on Bora Bora, and seven days on another island. That was a fantastic vacation.

  I'd say by springtine of '72 Joy and I were, you know, really getting it on, so to speak, to use. a lousy California expression. We had fabulous times together. In particular, we had some incredible times on the boat that are all-timers, in which the two of us—occasionally my mother was along— but frequently Joy and I went by ourselves and had these great weekends over at Catalina, swimming and sunning and fishing and diving and making love.

  When Joy and I were alone, making love was a large proportion of our time, including out in the sun on the top of -the boat, on the engine hatch and down below on the bunk and every conceivable place in between, and we were sort of shameless, you know—it was a shameless abandon.

  It was two sort of passionate people, neither of which had had a very smooth life to that point—certainly mine had been much more tumultuous and traumatic—but it was two adults basically at play, trying to please each other and please ourselves, and we both understood that.

  We wanted to experience everything, like, as fast as we could. We always tried to do the most with the best, the flashiest, the most fun, the highest flight and the longest trip and the deepest dive, and um, um, we had an absolutely fabulous sex life together. It was almost nonstop. It was— Jesus—sometimes day and night.

  We went to Las Vegas one time and made love at least five times, didn't ever really get to the casino that first night, and the next morning took right up where we left off. And finally realized we had to get out of the room and go see Vegas a little bit. And we would stop at noon and stop late in the afternoon and then go out to dinner and then come back and make love and go out and gamble a little, come back and make love.

  There was a need for a lot of release, a lot of immediate gratification. We did not, either of us, want to dwell on the past. We lived each day for that day, with a small bit of our eye on the future.

  But I wouldn't let myself admit openly and in a repetitive fashion to her that I loved her. I wouldn't let her burrow into my soul, so to speak.

  I was trying to explain to her that, look, we're in a funny situation. I am facing a background investigation in a triple homicide on which I had been charged once and found innocent, but this was now the civilian people. But she pooh-poohed—not the seriousness of the situation, but she had never considered that there would actually be a grand jury investigation, much less the publicity of an indictment.

  I kept saying, look, we have to hold things off and be as reasonable as possible, because I can't expect you to stand

  by me should the worst occur. But her said and unsaid feelings came tumbling out, of course, that she wanted to be by me, that she loved me, and that that was to be part of the relationship: she would take me with any warts.

  1

  En route to his grand jury appearance, Jeffrey MacDonald had made some notes to himself in a Rite-Nice Wide Ruled Theme Book which he had purchased for 59 cents.

  The first notes concerned the opening statement he wanted to make.

  "Soberness," he wrote at the top of the page. "Willingness to cooperate."

  Then he wrote: "Memory—will try hard to get details, but painful experience. Painful because birthdays, anniversary dates, anniversary of Feb. 17, sleeplessness and Pain—once being accused, then exonerated totally and now (?) accused because of Army reinvestigation."

  On the next page, he wrote: "Not easy to talk about it," and what was, apparently, a line he intended to deliver: "Bear with me while I try my best."

  MacDonald made it plain from the start that he was not pleased to have been summoned, but the tone of anguish which he had wanted to project somehow became twisted into something much closer to hostility.

  "This is not easy, for me to appear here," he said. "You know, this is my family that 1 lost. I get accused of it. They don't even interview me. They don't even interview me for six weeks. Although I go to their office and ask, 'Don't you have any questions? Don't you want to talk to me?' No, no, no, we have suspects in custody. Six weeks go by. Fourteen MPs tramping through the house. Then I have to spend four years reliving this and now I'm back here in 1974."

  "Captain MacDonald," Victor Woerheide said, "you have complained— "

  'Doctor MacDonald, Mr. Woerheide."

  "Doctor MacDonald, you have complained—"

  "I asked for a civilian reinvestigation in 1970. The Army reinvestigated itself. You could never reconstruct the initial hour of that
crime scene."

  "Doctor MacDonald, we are going to do the best we can, and all I am asking you is your voluntary cooperation."

  "I am here to cooperate, sir. I have never refused to talk to anyone. I have never pleaded the Fifth Amendment. Until my lawyers got to me, I offered to give a polygraph examination."

  "At this time," Woerheide asked, "in aid of the present grand jury investigation, will you agree to submit to a polygraph examination?"

  "Let me talk about that with my attorney."

  "And another thing, while we are discussing examinations, I understand at the time that your psychiatrist examined you in 1970 and the Army doctors examined you, there was some consideration given to asking you to take sodium amytal—truth serum—and submit to an examination under the influence of this truth serum. So I am going to ask you to consider and discuss with your attorney cooperating with the grand jury to the extent of taking both the polygraph and the sodium amytal examinations."

  ’Let me make a comment about the sodium amytal interview," MacDonald said. "This was discussed with my psychiatrist and it was his recommendation that unless there was an overriding need for sodium amytal—unless there were facts, and I repeat the word facts—that an amytal interview recreates ..." MacDonald paused.

  "May I assist you," Woerheide said, "by saying that it causes you to relive the experience concerning which you are being examined and that would constitute a painful ordeal for you. And in his opinion, at that time, you should be spared the experience?"