Mica asked MacDonald how the murders had occurred. MacDonald answered that there were four intruders, one of them a blond female with a big floppy hat, bearing a candle, and three men, one of them black. “I think I hit them,” MacDonald said. “I think I scratched them.”
Later, in the hospital, MacDonald said that he had been sleeping on the living-room couch when he was awakened by screams from his wife and one of his daughters. Opening his eyes, he saw his assailants standing at the edge of the couch, and before he could get up they started hitting him. In the struggle, his pajama top had been ripped and pulled over his head so that it ended up entangling his wrists. He used the pajama top to fend off an assailant who was trying to stab him, until another blow knocked him unconscious. When he awoke, he went to the master bedroom and found his wife horribly slaughtered. He placed his pajama top over her nude and bloody chest, then went to the children’s rooms, where he found them both dead from bludgeoning and knife wounds. He attempted to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to all three victims, but it was hopeless. He called the MPs, then lay down and embraced his wife.
Fayetteville, North Carolina, the site of Fort Bragg, had a relatively large hippie community, numbering about two thousand. The next day, while police filtered through the area, questioning its residents, agents of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Department visited the scene of the crime—and felt a slight uneasiness. A flower pot was standing straight up, but the flower it held was on its side. Why wasn’t the flower pot on its side, also? The coffee table was on its side, too, but when the agents stood it up and knocked it over it didn’t come to rest that way. Instead, being top-heavy, it rolled over on its top every time the agents pushed it. Had the table been placed on its side?
What made it more suspicious to them was that the flower pot and the table were the only signs of violence in a room in which a struggle had allegedly taken place between a man and four intruders. Was it possible that no struggle had occurred? Was it even more chillingly possible that the whole scene had been staged? If so, who did it? Was it the man who had miraculously survived with minor wounds while the rest of the family was slaughtered by multiple weapons?
Among the magazines that had been found scattered on the floor from the overturned coffee table, a copy of Esquire caught the attention of the CID agents. Its March 1970 cover announced, “EVIL LURKS IN CALIFORNIA,” and its featured article described the sensational murders of Sharon Tate and others in Hollywood by members of the Charles Manson cult. Were the MacDonald murders a copy-cat crime commmitted by unknown assailants, or had someone tried to make it look that way?
The next day MacDonald’s closest friend in the Green Berets, Lieutenant Ken Hanson, made the CID agents even more uneasy, revealing that MacDonald had not only read the article on Manson but had been fascinated by it. In a press conference called by the Army to provide information about the surviving victim, who was still hospitalized, Hanson said that two nights before the murders he had visited his friends the MacDonalds, and Jeff MacDonald had eagerly discussed the Esquire magazine article with him, at one point saying, “Isn’t this wild?”
The CID’s suspicions that MacDonald had staged the scene now intensified, but their attempts to collect other evidence were botched from the beginning. Dozens of MPs had tramped through the house on the night of the murders, tracking dirt and grass of their own into the rooms, smudging fingerprints and physically moving evidentiary items. Worse, the CID’s fingerprint expert botched the collection of prints. Incredibly, the camera he used to photograph the prints had malfunctioned. When he returned to redo the photography, he discovered that moisture had crept under the cellophane tape he had used to cover the fingerprints, and most of them were ruined.
Not only that, but a bloody footprint found in Kimberly’s room had been destroyed when a CID man attempted to saw the floorboards to remove it. And the pajama bottoms that MacDonald wore the night of the crime had been carelessly thrown away at the hospital where he had been taken.
Nevertheless, through all the errors, the Army had made some progress, or so it claimed. CID investigators had analyzed the family’s blood and discovered that each family member had a different blood type: A, B, AB and O—“a million-to-one-shot,” according to some reporters who commented on this finding. But pathologists know that the phenomenon is common when the parents have different blood types. Armed with blood-type information, the Army had analyzed the bloodstains in each room to establish MacDonald’s movements that night.
Furthermore, investigators had found fibers from MacDonald’s torn pajama top in each of the bedrooms—but none in the living room, where the garment was supposedly torn, indicating to them there had been no struggle in the living room, as MacDonald claimed. Utilizing both the bloodstain and the fiber evidence, the Army thus created a scenario for murder far different from MacDonald’s.
MacDonald had fallen asleep on the living-room couch while watching television that night, according to the Army’s reconstruction of the crime. Awakening, he went to his room and found that one of his children had wet the side of the bed. An argument with his wife ensued, escalating into a fight. In the words of the investigators, MacDonald “obtained a club” and beat his wife, becoming angrier until he lost “all control in a blind fantastic mindless rage.” Kimberly came into her parents’ room. MacDonald smashed her skull, either “by accident or on purpose,” and then carried her lifeless body to her own bed.
According to investigators, MacDonald then regained his senses and, realizing he needed a cover story for the murder of Kimberly, decided to eliminate the witnesses and blame all the murders on hippies. He clubbed and knifed the body of Kimberly. Meanwhile his wife had gone to Kristen’s room to protect her. There MacDonald hit his wife again, then dragged her back into the master bedroom and stabbed her with both a knife and an icepick. He then returned to Kristen’s room, knifed her seventeen times, and plunged an icepick into her fifteen times. Finally MacDonald stabbed himself to simulate an injury by an attacker, and telephoned for assistance.
The Army formally charged Captain Jeffrey MacDonald with murder.
Protesting his innocence, MacDonald hired a civilian attorney, Bernard Segal, to defend him. Even though the handsome young doctor seemed eminently sane to him, Segal cautiously ordered a psychiatrist to examine MacDonald. When the psychiatrist concluded that MacDonald was not only sane but was also of a personality unlikely to commit such murders, Segal accepted the case. And within days he notified the Army that, instead of waiting for a military court-martial of his client, he would challenge the prosecution at the Army investigatory hearing, which, under military law, precedes a trial.
The hearing was, in effect, a real trial lasting for four months, with witnesses examined and cross-examined on the stand under rules of evidence. Unlike the trial nine years later, it took place when the events were fresh in the memories of the witnesses, and all those witnesses were available to testify. Yet in both trials, MacDonald’s guilt or innocence would rest largely on forensic evidence. Thus, in the defense of his client, Segal first showed how the investigation of the scene of the crime had been botched by the CID almost completely. Footprints and fingerprints had been destroyed, physical evidence had been tampered with—any or all of which might have proved MacDonald’s innocence. Then Segal dramatically presented “proof” that intruders had been in the house. MacDonald said that one of the intruders, a girl, had carried a candle, and Segal revealed that candle drippings had been found in the living room and in Kristen’s bedroom. Furthermore, the wax did not match any of the candles found in MacDonald’s home, so it must have come from outside. In addition, unidentified bloody fingerprints had been found in Colette’s jewelry box, from which two rings were missing.
To fortify his case, Segal next produced witnesses who had seen intruders in the neighborhood that night. One witness testified that she and her husband lived about two hundred yards from the rear of the MacDonald residence, and that night she
“heard the sound of running and scuffling outside [her] open bedroom window on the second floor. The voices were of teenagers, two male and one female, in the vicinity of Castle Drive.”
Other witnesses testified that a neighbor had told them that she was awakened that night by the sound of a car running outside her house; that she looked out the window and saw a girl with long blond hair running from the direction of the MacDonald home, and that this girl got into a red or maroon convertible as it pulled away.
The neighbor herself, questioned later in the hearing, said it was true that she was awakened that night by the noise of a car but denied that she saw a girl with long blond hair outside. Her denial may or may not have been influenced by a frightening episode that had occurred the day after the murder, when two young men pointed a gun at her home from a car outside. She had immediately called the MPs and had worried about it ever since.
But the most dramatic testimony by far at the hearings was the identification of a hippie girl named Helena Stoeckley who, Segal believed, was one of the murderers. William Posey testified that he lived in the middle of the hippie community across the way from Helena Stoeckley. He said that Stoeckley normally wore a white hat and a long stringy blond wig. At approximately 4 A.M. the night of the murders, Posey had awakened to go to the bathroom. At that time he “heard a car next door whip in…. real fast” up the driveway. Posey heard laughing and giggling, so he walked to his front door, where he saw Stoeckley get out of a Mach I Mustang. Judging from the sounds, he said, the car contained at least two males.
Approximately a week later, Posey said, Stoeckley told him she had been questioned by the police about her whereabouts on the morning of February 17 and had told them she could not remember where she had been because she was stoned on mescaline. She recalled only riding around that evening.
But Posey’s most sensational testimony linked Stoeckley directly to MacDonald. On the day of the MacDonald family funeral services, Posey said, Stoeckley had worn a black dress, black shoes and a veil and had placed a funeral wreath on her door in mourning.
Finally, Segal presented a motive for hippies to murder MacDonald and his family. Captain James N. Williams, an operations and training officer at Fort Bragg’s medical facility, testified that MacDonald was the group medical drug abuse counselor. He said that one of his enlisted men told him that “they believed their men were being turned in to CID for being on drugs” and that MacDonald had the reputation of being an informer.
In sum, MacDonald’s defense presented evidence that there had been intruders inside his home and in the vicinity at the time of the crime, and that one of them may have been Helena Stoeckley. And there was a motive for the killings—revenge against an “informer.” This, plus the testimony of independent psychiatrists who declared MacDonald sane and a man who did not have the psychological background to commit such a crime, all seemed to point to his innocence.
In contrast, the forensic evidence presented by the Army against MacDonald seemed inconclusive. The presiding officer who functioned as the judge dealt with it the following way in the official report:
The Army said that fibers from MacDonald’s pajama top should have been found in the living room if there had been a struggle, and they were not. The officer noted, “It is unknown when the pajama top was torn…. With the garment wrapped around the accused’s arms, the fibers…. may have, in some manner, remained with the garment until it was opened up to be spread across the chest of Colette.”
As for the bloodstains, which the prosecution used to prove its scenario of murder, the presiding officer commented: “Considering the amount of blood evident in the killings…. it is entirely plausible to consider that some of it contaminated the clothing of the assailants and was subsequently transferred by them from room to room.
Worse for the prosecution, the two forensic items that had triggered the entire investigation of MacDonald turned out to be false alarms. The flower pot had been placed upright not by MacDonald staging a scene, but by an MP with a sense of tidiness. And the top-heavy coffee table that “always” rolled over on its top and never came to rest on its side was personally tested by the presiding officer with the following results: “On [the presiding officer’s] visit to the MacDonald apartment [he] knocked over the coffee table in the living room. The table struck the adjacent chair and landed on its edge.”
On October 13, 1970, the presiding officer issued his verdict:
In the interest of military justice and discipline it is recommended that:
1. All charges and specifications against Captain Jeffrey R. MacDonald be dismissed because the matters set forth in all charges and/or specifications are not true.….
2. 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, based on evidence presented during the hearing.
Jeffrey MacDonald was a free man.
3
The Army hearing in North Carolina of the MacDonald case and the trial of Charles Manson and his “family” in Los Angeles were held at the same time, although the Manson trial took longer to finish, ending in December 1970. There was certainly no controversy when Manson and his cohorts were convicted—nor was there controversy when MacDonald was declared not guilty. Justice had been served in both cases. My own gut instinct that it would have been too difficult for MacDonald to stage such a crime had been vindicated in a hearing at which all the witnesses and all the evidence had been examined.
In fact, I had almost forgotten about the case until five years later when I attended a medical seminar in Los Angeles. A physician from Long Beach, California, a city on the southern border of Los Angeles, sipped coffee with me during a break between lectures. “You remember that Army captain, Jeff MacDonald?” he asked. “The one who was charged with murdering his family.”
I nodded, and he said, “He’s living in Long Beach now.”
“Is that true?”
“Yes,” my friend said, “and he’s one of the finest physicians I’ve ever known. He’s head of emergency medicine at St. Mary’s and he works ten to fourteen hours a day. He’s always willing to drop everything to rush to the hospital when someone wants him. And he cooperates on all kinds of physician committees engaged in different projects, as well.”
I said that was wonderful, and my colleague continued, “But here’s the funny part. The organization which loves him the most in Long Beach is the police department. Here’s a man who was tried for one of the most gruesome crimes in history, and now in my little town of Long Beach he’s the special pet of the police. They even give banquets to raise money for him.”
I was surprised by his last words, and asked him why MacDonald needed money.
“For his legal costs. Didn’t you know? Some fanatical relatives of MacDonald’s wife have pressured the government into retrying the case.”
“But that’s double jeopardy, isn’t it?”
“That’s what MacDonald says. But the relatives say MacDonald was cleared at an investigative hearing, not a real trial, so double jeopardy doesn’t apply.”
My colleague, a stocky man with thinning hair and rimless glasses, stopped talking for a moment, then said quietly, almost to himself, “How could he have done it?”
“You think he did murder his family?”
“His wife’s relatives think so. The Justice Department must think so, too, or they wouldn’t have called for a grand-jury hearing. But I know him. I’ve met him socially and professionally many times. The man is not only a dedicated doctor but a completely nice guy who never raises his voice, let alone becomes violent. It’s incredible to accuse him of butchering his wife and children in a wild rage. He’s just not the type.”
Driving home that night on the freeway, I ruminated on the controversy. What a strange case! MacDonald, by all accounts, was continuing his reputation as a solid citizen, beloved of colleagues
, neighbors and even the Long Beach police.
And yet the Justice Department believed he was guilty of the fantastically horrible murders of his wife and children. I had worked with legal authorities long enough to know they didn’t move unless they were sure of someone’s guilt. They were inundated with too many crimes to waste time on borderline cases.
Had my gut instinct that Jeffrey MacDonald was innocent been wrong?
4
The heat was brutal in Raleigh, North Carolina, in August 1979. Jeffrey MacDonald, intense, sometimes irritable, always bitter, paced up and down one of the rooms in a college fraternity house which his defense team was using for offices. He couldn’t believe this was happening, he told one of the team. He couldn’t believe he was here on trial for his life again, nine years after he had been acquitted of the same crime. Then he stopped pacing and said he had heard that the prosecution was going to admit it could find no motive for the killings. How, he asked, could they prosecute a murder charge without even a motive? Why would he have killed his family without a motive?
But then a member of the defense team soothed him by saying that the forensic evidence that would be used against him was the same as in the first trial. And a judge had ruled in favor of him on that very evidence.
In essence that was true, and it remains one of the most fascinating aspects of the MacDonald case to forensic scientists, making it almost a classic in our field. In 1970 at the Army hearing, bloodstains and fiber evidence had proved inconclusive, but now the greatest forensic laboratory in the world, the FBI’s, had entered the fray. Ever since 1975, when grand-jury proceedings in this long case had begun, FBI scientists, led by a chunky, muscular assistant supervisor, Paul Stombaugh, had been analyzing all the evidence found in the house, and conducting experiments to prove MacDonald guilty.
The Coroner Series Page 25