Fiendish Killers

by Anne Williams

  Anyone who survived the concentration camp, remembered vividly the slightly built man, with the immaculate uniform, the tilted SS cap, the well-scrubbed face and neatly combed hair. Unlike the other physicians stationed at Auschwitz, Mengele seemed to glory in the power and was in total agreement with the brutal treatment of the inmates. He liked to be present to supervise the selections of incoming transports and it is believed that as many as 400,000 babies, children, mothers, fathers and grandparents were given their fate by just the flick of his riding crop. He wasn’t opposed to actually using this riding crop on any insubordinate prisoners and there are even reports that he used his pistol under extreme circumstances.

  Mengele, although not the chief physician at Auschwitz, was appointed his own laboratory block with independent financing. At thirty-two years of age, he was in charge of his staff of inmate physicians, who were well aware of his feelings towards the prisoners. In his mind they were not fit to be humans and his behaviour reflected this attitude. This became apparent from the moment Mengele arrived at Auschwitz, when he ordered 600 sick women that he found in the camp hospital to be taken directly to the gas chambers. However, it was not just his harsh administration that Mengele will be remembered for, it was also the perverse experiments he carried out on his hapless victims.

  The main reason Mengele wanted to be present at the arrival ramps was his obsession with twins. He gave strict orders that any twins were to be housed in separate quarters, pampered and treated like priceless objects. Mengele felt that by studying the identical features of the twins he could somehow unlock the secret to creating a genetically engineered perfect human being. Each twin was carefully measured and his findings were carefully recorded, with the dissection report always coming last. However well the twins were treated, Mengele never saw them as people – to him they were just his subjects of research. He carried out twin-to-twin transfusions, stitched twins together, sex change operations and the removal of organs and limbs, all under the guise of experimental surgery. He injected them with viral and bacterial agents to see how long it took each twin to succumb to the infections. He tried swapping body parts from one twin to another to see if it would continue to thrive. There was no end to Mengele’s research, and he had no compunction whatsoever about personally killing the twins as the final step.

  His research didn’t stop at twins, however, he also had a ‘collection’ of dwarves and people (especially Jews) with any genetic abnormality. He became interested in a condition called ‘noma’, which was gangrene of the face and mouth caused by extreme debilitation. Although the condition was caused by the conditions at Auschwitz, Mengele was still obsessed in finding the genetic causes for the disease.

  Another horrifying type of experiment carried out by Mengele were his attempts to change the colour of a person’s eyes. He began by injecting various chemicals into the eyes, but, of course, the end results were pain and infections which usually led to blindness.

  He was known to have conducted some of the most abominable experiments ever carried out during World War II. He would strap children to slabs of marble and then, without medication or any form of anaesthesia he would perform macabre surgical procedures, which nearly always ended in death. His behaviour certainly defies rational explanation, and his reputation became equal to that of a demon. In addition to his own experiments at Auschwitz, Mengele also sent specimens such as eyes to his old associate Professor Verschuer, to carry out his own research.

  Not many children survived Auschwitz, but those who did recall the smiling Uncle Mengele bringing them sweets and clothes before being taken to his laboratory, where the nightmare would begin.

  last days in exile

  Mengele’s days as a ‘doctor’ at Auschwitz came to an end on January 17, 1945, when the Soviet Army marched into Poland. The only option Mengele had was to flee the country. Using a false identity, he managed to reach Argentina on an Italian ocean liner, where he was harboured by a number of South American families.

  By the time the Brazilian police tracked down his whereabouts, all that was left was a grave marked ‘Wolfgang Gerhard’ and a few skeletal remains. Mengele was eventually broken by more than thirty years of being on the run. Although he died in 1979 from a stroke while swimming near Sao Paulo in Brazil, news of his death did not reach the rest of the world until 1985.

  There is no doubt that Mengele was a fiendish killer, a direct result of Adolf Hitler’s seduction and perversion of the German people. Although there is some consolation in the fact that the once frightening figure died a lonely and embittered old man, there is no justice, however, in knowing that Mengele remained unrepentant and untried to the very end.

  Doctor Jeffrey MacDonald

  Jeffrey MacDonald and Colette Stevenson had been high school sweethearts and their relationship continued when they went off to college. They had both grown up in New York and within two years of starting college, the pair decided to marry in 1963. Their first child, Kimberly, was born in April 1964 and Colette became a full-time mother while Jeffrey continued his education.

  When MacDonald left Princeton University, he attended Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago. Times were difficult for the young couple, and they found it even harder when the second child, Kristen Jean, was born in May 1967. After qualifying, MacDonald joined the Army and the family were relocated to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the home of the Paratroopers and Special Operations.

  Life started looking up and MacDonald was soon promoted to a surgeon with the Green Berets. Colette was expecting their third child and she wrote excitedly to all her friends back home about their new life. However, her new-found joy was to be short-lived.

  a very bad day

  It was a cold, rainy morning on Tuesday, February 17, 1970, and for the MacDonald family it turned out to be a very bad day. At about 3.30 a.m. a telephone operator took an emergency call from a desperate sounding man. He said he was Captain MacDonald and that he needed her to call the military police and an ambulance to 544 Castle Drive. Then, just before he passed out, he managed to whisper the words ‘stabbing – help!’

  A number of military policemen (MPs) were despatched to the house, but they did not call the base hospital to send an ambulance until they found out whether it was absolutely necessary. When they arrived at Castle Drive they found the house in darkness and entered through the back door. Inside the master bedroom lay the body of twenty-six-year-old Colette, laying on her back and covered in blood. Her face and head had been badly beaten, her legs were splayed apart and her pyjamas had been ripped to reveal her chest.

  Lying next to Colette was her husband, Jeffrey, with his arm draped across his wife’s body. As one of the MP’s, Kenneth Mica, bent down to see if he was still breathing, Jeffrey managed to whisper, ‘How are my kids? I heard them crying?’

  Mica immediately stood up and ran into the other bedroom. To his relief he found five-year-old Kimberly asleep under the covers, but as he shone his flashlight on the child the sight sickened him to his stomach. Her head had been smashed in and there were several stab wounds around her neck.

  In the third bedroom, two-year-old Kristen lay dead with multiple stab wounds to her chest and back. Then Mica rushed back to MacDonald, who was having problems breathing, so he gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. When MacDonald started to regain consciousness, he tried to push Mica away and shouted at him to attend to his wife and children.

  Mica tried to get out of MacDonald who had carried out such a vicious attack and he managed to tell him, ‘Three men – a woman – one man was coloured, he wore a field jacket, sergeant’s stripes. The woman, blonde hair, floppy hair, short skirt, muddy boots – she carried a light, I think a candle.’

  Mica remembered seeing a woman wearing a floppy hat standing out in the rain as he was on his way to Castle Drive, and at the time he thought how strange it was. However, as he was on his way to an emergency call he didn’t stop to speak to her.

  Eventually the amb
ulance arrived and they wheeled the semi-conscious MacDonald out on a stretcher, still calling to see his wife and kids.

  Macdonald’s side of the story

  Jeffrey MacDonald had to stay in hospital for seven days and was treated for wounds to his head, various cuts and brushes on his shoulders, chest, hands and fingers, plus several puncture wounds around his heart. One of the knife wounds had punctured his lung, causing it to collapse, and he wasn’t considered well enough to interview until February 25.

  MacDonald told the military police that his wife had gone to bed before him, because he wanted to stay up and watch something on television. A little while later he heard Kristen crying and made her a bottle. He said he checked that the windows were only open a little way and then returned to watch television. When he did eventually go up to bed he found that Kristen had climbed into his side but had wet the covers, so he moved her back to her own bed and went to sleep on the living room sofa.

  He found it very hard to talk about his family and kept breaking down during questioning. He managed to compose himself enough to give them his side of the story. He told the police that he had been woken by the sound of his wife screaming but before he could get off the sofa he was attacked by a black man with a baseball bat, while two white men held him down. His pyjama top had been pulled up over his head, which prevented him from fighting back, because his arms were trapped in the sleeves. He remembered being stabbed several times with a sharp object and a blonde woman standing close by with a candle yelling, ‘kill the pigs’ and ‘acid is groovy’. He said he was continually hit round the head until he lost consciousness. When he came round the intruders had gone and he tried to revive Colette with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. When he knew it was hopeless he ran to try and help his children, but when he realised it was useless he phoned for the emergency services.

  The Army investigator at Fort Bragg was young and inexperienced and didn’t believe MacDonald’s story. He told the CID that he felt he had fabricated the whole thing and injured himself to prove his innocence. The CID took notice of the investigator and then focussed all their efforts on trying to prove MacDonald’s guilt, ignoring all the evidence back at the house.

  In fact the whole investigation turned into a complete fiasco because the MPs made no effort to make sure the evidence at the house was left untouched. The telephone receiver, which had been left dangling after MacDonald made his call, was picked up and used by one of the MPs to let headquarters know they had arrived at the scene. After MacDonald described his four assailants to Mica, he made no effort to set up roadblocks on the exits leaving the Army barracks, despite several suggestions from his men. Added to this, at least a dozen MPs had been running about the house after the call-out, and as it was a wet night, it would have been impossible to know who brought in the wet grass that had been tracked in from outside, the police or the intruders. No fingerprints or hair samples were taken from the victims, with the exception of a sample taken from MacDonald, which actually turned out to be hair from a pony he had bought for his daughters.

  MacDonald was officially charged with murder on May 1, 1970 and his outraged father-in-law, Freddy Kassab, started his own publicity campaign to show that the charges against his son-in-law were completely false.

  In the meantime, Bernie Segal, MacDonald’s attorney, was given a tip-off regarding the identification of the woman in the floppy hat. Her name was Helena Stoeckley, the daughter of a retired Army officer. Not only was she involved with drugs and the world of witchcraft, but she was also an informant for the local police. Unfortunately, by the time the police were given this information, Helena Stoeckley was nowhere to be found.

  the trial

  During the trial Segal called a number of MacDonald’s friends and family to stand as character witnesses. The most important of these, was his father-in-law, who gave an exceptionally emotional testimony on behalf of himself and his wife, Mildred:

  We know full well that Jeffrey MacDonald is innocent beyond any shadow of doubt, as does everyone who knew him. I charge that the Army has never made any effort to look for the real murderers and that they know Captain MacDonald is innocent of any crime.

  The same sentiment was echoed time and time again, confirming that MacDonald was a devoted husband and father and an outstanding young soldier. The only blemish to his otherwise squeaky-clean record, was a number of illicit liaisons while he had been away on business trips.

  After a gruelling six-week trial, the case against MacDonald was reluctantly dropped on the basis of insufficient evidence. The Army, who were still smarting from the humiliation of their indiscretions during the investigation, vowed to carry on their campaign to get the captain convicted.

  the investigation goes on

  MacDonald, not surprisingly after the way he had been treated, applied for a discharge from the Army. He desperately needed to find a job to pay his mother back for the legal bills that had mounted up during his trial. While he struggled to return to civilian life, MacDonald made the mistake of still publicising the Army’s incompetence, even going as far as appearing on public television. However, the lighthearted way in which he talked about the death of his family lost him credibility with a lot of people, including his in-laws.

  The CID and the Army carried on with their investigations into the MacDonald case, desperate to try and clear their names. They managed to locate Helena Stoeckley, who told the police that she believed she had been a witness to the murders, but asked for immunity from prosecution. Forensic officers were unable to match her fingerprints with the few remaining prints that had not already been obliterated from the crime scene, and she was subsequently cleared as being a suspect. MacDonald, on the other hand, again became the prime suspect.

  Unaware of the latest revelations, MacDonald was busy rebuilding his own life. He had taken a job in the emergency department of the St Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, California. With the help of his close friend Jerry Hughes, MacDonald transformed the department into one of the best in the state.

  In August 1974, prosecutors contacted MacDonald’s attorney, Segal, and told him that they wanted access to MacDonald’s psychiatric files. Segal agreed as long as the doctor who read the report, Robert Sadoff, was prepared to give his evaluation to the grand jury. However, the doctor did not keep his part of the bargain. Then one of the grand jurors asked if MacDonald would take a sodium amytal test, a form of behavioural testing by injecting anaesthetic into part of the brain. MacDonald agreed quite willingly to the test, so long as Sadoff was present to supervise the procedure. However, despite the fact that a room was prepared for the test, the chief prosecutor never had any intention of letting it go ahead, nor indeed letting Sadoff testify, so it was called off. The grand jury, falsely believing that MacDonald had refused to take the sodium amytal test, had the doctor indicted for the second time for the murder of his family. His new trial was set for the middle of 1979.

  the second trial

  Little did MacDonald and Segal realise, but the odds were severely stacked against them. Dr John Thornton, a forensic scientist, who had been hired by Segal during the first trial, had never been given permission to see the original evidence or laboratory notes taken by the Army and the FBI. When Segal eventually managed to get permission, Thornton was only allowed to view the evidence once, which did not give him sufficient time to check the validity of what he saw.

  One vital piece of evidence that was concealed from Segal, was a strand of long, blonde, synthetic fibre, which was found clutched in Colette’s hand. It was the type of fibre used in making wigs, something which Helena Stoeckley openly admitted to wearing. She said she had worn a blonde wig on the night of the murder, but had disposed of it a little while later. There were also samples of skin and hair found underneath the fingernails of Colette and the children, neither of which matched MacDonald’s. However the original laboratory notes had deliberately been held back, as this would have immediately indicated that MacDonald was innocent
.

  Ironically, Helena Stoeckley had confessed to Murtagh before the trial that she had been present on the night of the murders, but didn’t remember much because she had been taking drugs. She said she was there with her boyfriend Greg Mitchell and several soldiers from Fort Bragg. She remembered seeing the MacDonald family being attacked, but became hysterical at the sight of all the blood and had to run from the house. However, like the other evidence, this was never made available to the defence. Fortunately, her confessions were recorded on video because Stoeckley died at the age of thirty from liver complications in 1982.

  Apparently Fort Bragg had serious problems with drugs in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and MacDonald was one of the physicians who was very concerned about the situation. He had threatened to try and resolve the situation and report on any soldiers who he knew regularly used drugs. So once again the evidence pointed to the fact that the attacks had been drug-related.

  Despite hundreds of items placed in evidence and the testimonies of over sixty witnesses, after six-and-a-half weeks of another gruelling trial, Jeffrey MacDonald was found guilty. The federal government were happy, satisfied that this time justice had been served.

  The final piece of evidence that made the jury sit up and take notice was the pyjama top worn by MacDonald on the night of the murders. He had told investigators that during the struggle with his attackers, his top had got pulled over his head and that his hands had become entangled in the sleeves. For this reason, he said, he was unable to fend off the blows from an ice pick. However, the prosecution said that the pyjama top told a completely different story. They claimed if MacDonald was telling the truth, then he wouldn’t be alive today. They claimed that he had folded the top and placed it on top of Colette’s body and then repeatedly stabbed her through it with the ice pick.