Fatal Vision

by Joe McGinniss

  "In the confusion of the time, I thought that if I said it once loudly enough maybe I wouldn't have to continually, you know, reply to those questions.

  "I don't find it easy to beg for sympathy. Every time I tell the story of February 17th, I—you know—I die a little bit. I'm ashamed that I couldn't help my family. But I tried.

  "I'm the one that hears Colette and Kimmy. I can't keep talking about that. You expect me to talk about it over coffee to everyone that comes by or I'm not normal.

  "The grand jury—except for my lawyers, the grand jury and Colonel Rock are the only people who ever heard the whole story. My lawyers never really heard the whole story until I was in front of Colonel Rock. I mean never in detail at once in one sitting.

  "You make it sound like we are supposed to be sitting and talking about it constantly. The only one that I know that does that is Freddy.

  "So, I don't spend a lot of time talking about it. I don't tell everyone I meet. I don't tell all my friends. I didn't tell anyone the whole story. That doesn't seen abnormal to me and yet you make it seem the other way. You make it sound like it's abnormal that I don't go around telling everyone. Saying, 'Hey, let me tell you about Fort Bragg, 1970.'

  "That brings me to Freddy. He feels, I guess, that I never told him the full story. And I didn't. He also feels that I lied to him when I told him about these stupid, pathetic attempts to find the real killers.

  "He's partially right but he's partially wrong, too. I never did sit down with him and tell him the whole story. But contrary to the implications that he keeps leaving, he was apprised of everything. We were in daily contact. He knew exactly what was being said all through the Article 32. And then I gave him a copy of the Article 32.

  "And it isn't as though—later on, a couple of years later, geez, it sounds like he never knew what was going on and he never heard. He heard daily. He talked to Bernie and the other lawyers and myself all the time. He knew exactly what was going on. I never just decided to just go over to his house and sit down and start telling him again. He never asked, for one. My friends never asked. You know, my family has never asked me. My mother has never said to me, 'What happened?' It seems to be one of my major sins that I don't talk about it all the time.

  "Freddy was a funny kind of friend. All through the Article 32 he was my devoted supporter. He was proclaiming my innocence the loudest. He said he would be the only one, or he would have been the first to know if anything was wrong between Colette and me, even if we never told him, because he was so close. He knew we were happy.

  "Freddy was the hardest person for me to talk to later, because of that. I mean, he made a very dramatic and nice testimony for me at the Article 32. But then at the end, here I'm in this obligation to Freddy. I'm supposed to devote my whole life to the night of the 17th and spend the rest of my life foraging through North Carolina, one-man FBI.

  "Well, I can't do it, And I knew I couldn't do it, and I lied to him. I told him that. I was ashamed that—well, I'm ashamed now I told him. I'm ashamed I didn't die that night. That sounds stupid to you, I know.

  "So here I was, trying to prove, especially to Freddy, you know, that I would do the best I can. So I do this little fantasy bit. Well, that's over. We've talked about it. I tried to satisfy him."

  MacDonald flipped through the pages of his statement. "Shit," he said, "it's not making sense even reading it. i'm sorry I told Freddy about it.' This doesn't make any sense."

  Nevertheless, MacDonald continued his reading. "So now I'm up to the winter of 1970-71 and I'm in New York trying to practice medicine, waiting for my residency at Yale to start in June of '71, trying to carry on my life.

  "But you've got to understand that this was a life that Colette and I had planned. Colette and I were supposed to go to Yale and get a farm and I was supposed to be a hotshot orthopedic surgeon and live on a farm with the kids.

  "I can't—I mean, I can't keep that dream going without Colette and the kids. So I go out to California. So what? There's no crime in that.

  "Essentially, to paraphrase all these pages that I'm turning, you know, I just had to change my life. So I go out there and work with a friend of mine from the Army, a different kind of life. I don't expect Brian Murtagh to understand that. Maybe the grand jury will.

  "Right now, in California, I'm director of the emergency department. After I left here in August they made me director. Big deal, they called me in and they said, 'Despite what's happening, we still like you.' And I said, 'Big fucking deal, you don't have to like me.' And they said, 'No, you're doing a good job and we want to make you director. So I'm director now.'

  "It's a busy emergency room." MacDonald's voice, which had been firm, was beginning to quaver. "A lot of car accidents, and heart attacks. And gunshots . . . and . . . stabbings.

  "I work very hard. And I work on purpose. I've got to work. I stay busy, see a lot of people. I'm exhausted. I work a twelve-hour shift. I make a lot of money. That's not my goal in life. I make a lot of money so I spend a lot. That's another crime.

  "I—this really sounds trite—I like emergency medicine. You know, I help a lot of people. It makes me—makes me feel a little useful." He paused momentarily, sobbing.

  "You know," he resumed, "I didn't do enough to save my family. And then you come in here and you say someone's folded the top of my pajama top and put little probes through it and that means that I killed Colette.

  "What can I say about that? These arguments about other women are just—they are absurd. I've slept with a lot of women. It doesn't mean anything to me, at all. It never has meant anything to me. It's been very easy for me my whole life. I haven't chased one girl in California and I must have slept with thirty since I've been there.

  "Because I didn't spend the rest of my life, you know,

  praying on the graves, you tell me I don't love my family. And that means I must have killed them. That's not true!" Again, MacDonald began to sob.

  "Oh, it's a lot of shit.

  "I didn't kill Colette.

  "And I didn't kill Kimmy and I didn't kill Kristy and I didn't move Colette and I didn't move Kimmy and I didn't move Kristy and I gave them mouth-to-mouth breathing and I loved them then and I love them now and you can shove all your fucking evidence right up your ass!"

  Three days later, the grand jury returned an indictment charging Jeffrey MacDonald with three counts of murder.

  PART FIVE

  CRY ONE FOR THEM

  If, in the future, you should light a candle, light one for them.

  And if, in the future, you should say a prayer, say one for them.

  And if, in the future, you should cry a tear, cry one for them.

  —from the closing argument to the jury delivered by Assistant U.S. Attorney James L. Blackburn in the trial of Jeffrey MacDonald

  1

  Jeffrey MacDonald flew back to California as soon as he had finished testifying. On Friday, January 24, 1975, he took Joy 'the most sensual woman I've ever seen") for a ride on his boat.

  When they came back, in midafternoon, Jeff lifted weights and did sit-ups while Joy watched. His mother stopped by, which was not uncommon. She and Joy were sitting on the couch, chatting, while Jeff, in his underwear, was starting to flip through the day's mail, when there came a knock on the door.

  He opened it to find three FBI men standing there. They told him the grand jury had just handed up the indictment. After dressing, he was taken, in handcuffs, to the Orange County jail, where he was held on $500,000 bail. A week later, following a hearing at which more than a dozen doctors, nurses, nuns, and policemen testified to his good character and professional skill— and at which, in open court, he was compared, not unfavorably, to Albert Schweitzer—bail was reduced to $100,000. This was immediately pledged by friends and colleagues, allowing him to resume his normal life.

  The nuns who ran St. Mary's Hospital believed Jeff MacDonald to be a magnificent human being and saw no reason to allow his unfortunate misunderstanding w
ith the Justice Department to interfere with his performance of professional duties. Despite the indictment, he was permitted to continue as director of emergency services. There seemed never the slightest doubt in the mind of anyone who knew him there: he was a tragic figure, almost heroic in his strength and tranquillity under duress. The indictment, it was widely believed at St. Mary's, was nothing more than a manifestation of how the judicial system could be perverted by the sick and evil whims of a single man—in th case, Jeffs ex-father-in-law, Freddy Kassab.

  A trial, he told everyone, would of course demonstrate his innocence, but the indictment itself was such an outrage, was clearly unjust, invalid and unconstitutional, that the charges should never come to trial.

  From San Francisco, where he had begun to teach law at an inner city school called Golden Gate University, Bernie Segal had assured his most favored and famous client that the inditement would be quickly dismissed.

  Segal began to file motions, seeking dismissal on constititional grounds. He argued, first, that the indictment constitute double jeopardy because MacDonald had already been cleared on the murder charges by the Army. Secondly, Segal contended the the indictment, coming almost five years after the original filing of charges, was a violation of MacDonald's right to a speedy trial, as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.

  In Raleigh, North Carolina, Federal District Court Judge Franklin T. Dupree, Jr., denied both motions, ruling that, unlike general court-martial, the Article 32 hearing had been merely a investigative proceeding and thus not the equivalent of the jury trial which would have made the principle of double jeopardy applicable.

  Judge Dupree also declared the speedy trial claim invalid finding that this right did not pertain until after a person had been "accused" of a crime, and that, "in this case [accusation] did not occur until the indictment had been returned."

  After also denying a motion for change of venue, Judge Dupree set a trial date of August 18, 1975.

  His new circumstances began to affect Jeffrey MacDonald's personal life. For months, his relationship with Joy had been deteriorating, and now the added pressures which arose in the wake of the indictment contributed to its total dissolution.

  "We were at the point of starting to talk about seeing other people," MacDonald said, "and then when I wouldn't see her on a Friday night I'd go crazy and try to call her and try to find out where she'd been. She did date several people, one of then-being someone who played on the Los Angeles Rams.

  "We had gone to one of those big basketball games that I organized, in which the Long Beach Heart Association that I had become very prominent in, was putting on this charity basketball game; and our team was playing the Los Angeles Rams football team in basketball. We had this big crowd in Long Beach City College gym, and we had cheerleaders on both sides, and then we had rented a country club for a cocktail party afterwards that the Rams came to.

  "Joy, of course, was this extravagantly sensual person with a tremendous body. And I was dancing with everyone at the party, and Joy just decided, well, she was gonna, too. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

  "And she ended up dancing with Jack Snow and Isaiah Robertson and I think Jack Youngblood and a bunch of others. And I remember that I was furious that she had the nerve to do that. And then I calmed down and realized that it was my decision, I had made that decision, and I would have to sort of control myself and understand that if I was gonna date other people and keep Joy at a distance, then she was probably gonna end up dating.

  "She came up to me and said that she couldn't live this way. We had some long, teary episodes, sort of a very painful, about six months. She clearly loved me, and I loved her, but I wasn't willing to give up my solitude, the grieving process, my bachelorhood, the occasional dates with other people.

  "So we were in the midst of this breakup anyway, and the indictment dramatically accelerated it. She leaves town, says she can't be in the same town with me if we're not in love, and foolish me lets her go north. Then, you know, I'm doubly distraught: this thing, trying to protect myself, and, honestly—I'm not saying this to be a good guy—I think trying to protect Joy somewhat.

  "I mean, in retrospect, I think Joy is probably the reason I had those years of real success and happiness in '72 and '73 and '74, just prior to the year of the new pain. I think Joy, for a lot of reasons, made those years possible.

  "She was not Colette and she never tried to be Colette, and she would almost state that openly. She was defiant, she was rebellious, she was saucy, she was tantalizing on purpose, things that Colette never was.

  '‘ Joy—sometimes it seemed like her goal in life was to turn on a hundred men at a big cocktail party and she did it without even trying. If she tried, it made it even worse. She was a staggering sensual person. And yet she, you know, she was gentle and loving and kind and she wrote me poetry and we shared so many incredible moments together. I mean, they were years that I think a lot of couples probably don't have that much passion and love and giving to each other over twenty-five or thirty or fifty or a hundred years, and we had it all in two or three.

  "It was certainly a tumultuous love affair. We had passion enough for ten and I think love enough for at least five or six, and I wish we had gotten married, to tell you the truth. I think we probably could have had a nice life together.''

  On August 15, 1975, three days before the trial was to begin, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, sitting in Richmond, Virginia, ordered a stay and agreed to hear Jeffrey MacDonald's appeal of Judge Dupree's original rulings.

  Thus, rather than having to fly to Raleigh to stand trial on three counts of murder, MacDonald was able to continue living the life he had built for himself in California. Professionally, he had remained extremely active, aiding in the development of a national training program in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, in addition to continuing as director of the St. Mary's emergency room and the Long Beach paramedical squadron. In his personal life, too, he continued to evolve despite his regret over the departure of Joy. By August, he had begun to date a woman named Bobbi, who worked as a nurse in a Los Angeles hospital.

  "Bobbi," MacDonald said, "was, and is, this very, very gorgeous redhead—stunning appearance; tall and very sophisticated looking. A really lovely creature, taller than Joy, though not as busty, not nearly as sensual, especially in her impact in a room, but lovely in a more ethereal way, and I think as attractive to a lot of different people, although, like, the sap starts flowing in a group of men when Joy walks by, whereas with Bobbi, you know, there are raves about her beauty but it isn't quite the sensual beauty that Joy always had. In any case, I thought Bobbi was one of the prettiest girls I'd ever seen.

  "The relationship blossomed very quickly, even under this stress at the time. It was funny, I always had said to myself and did say to myself all through the first year or so with Joy—I mean, with Bobbi, I was not gonna sort of just fall into a situation and have it happen; I was gonna be more in control of it. And I told Bobbi right from the word go that I wasn't looking to get married, that I had just had a long relationship with Joy and it ended kind of painfully, and I was in the midst of this thing, I still had the indictment over me. She understood completely and we started dating.

  "But it's just like always: you date a person two or three times in a row and pretty soon that's all your friends can do is ask you two as a couple out; and whenever you want to have people over for dinner or go somewhere with a foursome or something, it's much easier to call a girl that you know instead of starting to play the singles game each time; and so Bobbi and I, as well as being very attracted to each other, sort of got into our one-on-one situation fairly quickly, even under the circumstances."

  The relationship had, in fact, blossomed to the point that Jeffrey MacDonald and Bobbi were on vacation together in Hawaii when, in January of 1976, he received a message to call Bernie Segal immediately.

  Segal informed him that, by a 2-to-1 vote, a three-judge panel from the Fo
urth Circuit Court of Appeals had overruled Judge Dupree on the speedy trial question.

  The panel majority found that the Army's filing of charges on May 1, 1970, had been the "functional equivalent of a civilian arrest warrant," and that, following the dismissal of the charges, the Justice Department's delay in seeking an indictment—due, at least in part, the appeals court ruled, to bureaucratic "indifference, negligence, or ineptitude"—had violated MacDonald's constitutional rights. They ordered the indictment dismissed.

  The charges of indifference, negligence, and ineptitude had been the very ones which Freddy Kassab had leveled so often and so heatedly between 1972 and 1974. Now, however—and it would be difficult to conceive of bitter irony's coming in a purer form—the Fourth Circuit decision nullified the result which Kassab had sought so fervently to obtain.

  To Jeffrey MacDonald, however, there was nothing either bitter or ironic about the result.

  "We're in Hawaii," he said, "at this condominium on Maui recommended by my accountant—having, incidentally, an incredibly romantic time: for sheer fun and opulence, you know, doing nothing but lying in the sun and making love, it was, I think, even the equal of the trip I took with Joy to Tahiti—and got this call that I call Bernie as an emergency and was told that the Fourth Circuit had ruled in my favor, that the case was over, that I had won.

  "Well, the emotion—I was sort of speechless, it was like this unbelievable weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I wasn't, like, laughing, it was just, uh, it was almost, uh, sort of tears of relief rather than tears of joy. It wasn't a joyful time because I felt that the whole prior six years up to this had been a, you know, a charade, a nightmare, and not sort of like an athletic event that you're trying for the end of but a prison camp or some sort of survival that you had to get through. And it wasn't a matter for exultation to finally win; it was a matter of relief that it was over. And I didn't really feel that it was a great victory, I felt it should have happened in 1970, that it should never have happened, anything should never have happened.