I was OBSESSED with this case for 30 years!!!! I want to present a paper (long) but it gives great details about how I went from "not sure", to "innocent", to "guilty" during this period of time:
New Views on the Macdonald Case:
My changing views on the case/examining a prosecution scenario:
Concerning my views changing over time, I share many of the same reasons that the other posters who changed their opinion previously gave. It started out for me about 15-20 years ago seeing the case on one of those crime-detective shows. I think it was Unsolved Mysteries. I remember getting Fatal Vision and I read it. At that time, I wasn't convinced of Macdonald's guilt because I believed that FV left many questions unanswered. I don't like unanswered issues to questions! I would literally wake up between 2:00 AM-4: 00 AM many nights over the years thinking. You know, I really need to find out more about Helena Stockley and her friends. I was particularly bothered that the Army and CID did not pursue all of the leads in the case. My thoughts were many things. Primarily that the whole story was not being told and I wanted more information.
Flash forward to about late 1994, and I watch The Justice Files on TV. The program was about controversial murder cases and the FIRST CASE on the program was Jeffrey Macdonald!!! Cool!!! I thought that now I was going to get some more information that could help me better understand the defense's side of the case!
The program was totally from the defense point of view. It talked about Macdonald's claims of innocence because of all of this evidence that "proved" the existence of intruders in the house that night. Their was an interview with Macdonald himself, part of a taped interview with Stockley and Ted Gunderson with Helena telling Ted how she was dressed that night. The focus was also on the "unidentified black wool fibers, found on Colette's mouth, shoulder, and club and Macdonald himself telling the interviewer quote:
Macdonald: "I can never overcome FV. I mean, we know that. I can not prove to the millions of people who have watched the reruns, over, and over and over, that I am NOT that monster that...."
Reporter: (Cutting in) "Are you saying this is fiction?"
Macdonald: “It is a fiction book. It’s masquerading as non-fiction. It’s sold in the wrong rack at the bookstore. You know I did NOT (pause).... murder my wife. I did not murder my children.”
Macdonald also gave this account following coming to after alleging that he had been knocked unconscious. Quote:
Macdonald: “The house was very silent. And my memories were immediately flooding in that I had heard Colette and Kim screaming. So I got up and went down to the master bedroom where I found my wife, covered in blood. And there was a knife in her chest, which I took out. And I began giving her mouth to mouth breathing.”
I had know all of this, but than I almost fell off the chair when the reporter said:
“One of the most chilling accounts comes from this man, Jimmy Friar. He says he mistakenly called the Macdonald house the night of the murders, trying to reach another doctor. A doctor Richard Macdonald.”
Quote:
Friar: “A lady answered the telephone and I asked to speak to Dr. Macdonald. And in the background, I could hear the ruckus of a table being overturned or furniture breaking. There was a ruckus...a scrimmage going on.”
Than the show picked up with Helena:
Stockley: “The phone rang. I picked it up. And someone asked for Dr. Macdonald. But, by this time, I was pretty high on Mescaline. And I just giggled and said he wasn’t there or something like that."
The show talked about how Prince Beasley had used Helena as a drug informant. How she said she was there, but didn’t do nothing. It also mentioned how Helena couldn’t remember anything at trial and why so much of what she knew was excluded because she was such a heavy drug user and unreliable. It talked about how the prosecution said that Macdonald’s collapsed lung was self-inflicted. That he had “stabbed himself in his bathroom, to cover up his crime.” Macdonald asks:
Quote: “Have you ever seen anyone self inflict multiple stab wounds and collapse their own lung, and injure themselves in the head several times until their unconscious?"
Harvey Silverglate and Alan Dershowitz talked about how they hoped the upcoming book Fatal Justice, would create enough reasonable doubt in the case, to force a new trial for Macdonald and acquit him based on the new evidence.
So I am thinking, WOW!!!! Where is all this stuff in Fatal Vision? I was one of the first to get Fatal Justice and at the time was just SHOCKED by all of this new information! Less than halfway through the book, I thought...How could all of this go unnoticed? He sure deserves a new trial at least. I began to show great disdain for everyone on the prosecution side. I wrote to the WW Norton, the publisher of Fatal Justice thanking them for all the research they put into the book!!! Three weeks later, I get a letter from Jeffrey Macdonald himself!!! He thanked me for my support of Fatal Justice and said that he had hoped to force the court of appeals to grant him a new trial based on the surpressed evidence that the book talked about.
At this point, I am thinking he obviously was screwed by the justice system. I started going on line whenever I could and collecting increasingly more data about the case. I said things like McGinnis, Murtagh, Worehide, and Blackburn should be prosecuted for what they did to this man. I felt great anger by what I saw as a terrible injustice.
I came to the C & J Macdonald board with a firm belief in Jeff’s innocence. I backed up that assertion based on how all of this information in Fatal Justice seemed to clearly illustrate that Macdonald had been wrongfully accused and convicted. At that time, only three other posters shared my view at what looked to me like a “pro prosecution board.”
Other posters pointed out something that I had overlooked in my desire to get more information about the case. They pointed out that Fatal Justice was just as polarized in its view as Fatal Vision, if not more so. FJ only seemed to tell what the defense wanted you to hear. The only noted exception was that FJ mentioned that Greg Mitchell had passed a polygraph in 1971 that stated he was not involved in the murders. I found out from the C & J message board, that Jeffrey Macdonald had helped Potter and Boast edit the original manuscript, how the lab notes that contained the alleged proof of intruders had been edited by Potter and Boast to only reflect what they wanted the reader to know. There was also little indication of Jeff’s problematic behaviors at the pre-trail hearing or trial concerning his demeanor on the stand. I concluded that BOTH books needed to be read to understand the case.
I than started looking at the actual court documents and studied the inconsistencies of Jeff’s statements compared to what the actual physical evidence showed. Bunny’s information from her “Magical Mystery Tour” (A poster at the C & J message board who studied the McDonald Case for years, discussed over 50 inconsistent statements made by Macdonald when weighted against the known physical evidence.) She illustrated how so many of Macdonald’s statements either were proven to be false, or just could not have been as he stated because of his flawed logic in them. This made me a “fence-sitter.” I thought, well, this is taking me back to when I read FV the first time. Both books are so opposed one-way or the other, I don’t know what to believe anymore. Macdonald’s statements were troubling when I saw them side-by-side with what was actually know at the MMT site. I could understand an inconsistency with up to maybe five statements due to changes in the evidence, memory distortion of the accused, or altering of some events over time. Maybe I can see a small amount of inconsistency with 5 statements or so, but not 50.
What really made me think of him as most likely guilty was learning about the “Fire Island Four.” These people bore an exact resemblance to the alleged intruders seen in the apartment that night. The facial features, body appearances, and clothes worn are identical to Stockley and her friends. It is doubtful that this would ever come up at trial because the defense would claim it is being prejudicial. Had I not known about these people, I would still be a fence sitter. The problem is this group of people had an airtight alibi. Because of this, Macdonald could not bring them into his intruder story. They could not be used as suspects because they were in New York at the time of the murders. It is known that they stayed at his brother Jay’s house and that Jeff had met them in a bar a little more than six months before the murders. When you also consider the facts dealing with the inconsistencies of Macdonald’s statements against the physical evidence, the over “neatness” of the crime scene, the fact that Macdonald could not have seen all that he claims to have seen with regards to his description of the intruders in a darkened room when it was known that Macdonald needed glasses to read or drive a car in regular daylight arouses even more suspicion about his story.
Macdonald’s defiance over the prosecution’s bed-wetting scenario indicates that this was what the initial fight was about. I do not believe Freddie Kassab’s assertion that Jeff had been molesting Kimberly. Evidence of this would have most likely shown up on the autopsy report. I don’t think Jeff went to bed that night. I do not believe that he went in, saw the wet sheet, pulled it back and did nothing. Especially when Colette had told her Child Psychology class recently Jeff and she had recent discussions about Kimberly’s (not Kristen’s as he clamed) bedwetting. She also said that many times Jeff would make her sleep on the couch. I find that strange. The most laughable part of his intruder story for me as that he claims one of the assailants had been wearing gloves. Just like the ones found under the sink opened up in the Macdonald home. Just like the fragments found in the bedding. I honestly think that Colette did something to Jeff that night that she had never done in the past. I think that during the argument she pushed him or hit him as he was yelling at her. I think that is where he lost it. Most likely, he hit Kimmy with the club while aiming for Colette saw how badly she had been injured and Colette is now fighting for her life trying to stop him. In a fierce struggle, Colette is also critically injured.
Kristen hears the struggle. Jeff is now crying hysterically because he knows he has gone too far and can never go back to where things were before. I think that in sheer agony, poor Colette goes in to Kristen’s room to protect her baby. Jeff kills Kim in the master bedroom. He knows that if he doesn’t, she will be a vegetable for the rest of her life. Jeff will have the mark of an abusive father and husband with his medical career ruined. Jeff settles down a bit and knows he has no choice but to kill Kristen. I don’t know when the bottle of chocolate milk comes into play, but I think that he killed Kristen in her bed or near her bed, and finished the killing of Colette while she was in Kristen’s room trying to protect her.
Jeff than settles down, than after the victims have died and thumbs through the Esquire Magazine goes to the kitchen and gets the bent Geneva Forge knife and icepick to overkill the family to make it look like a hippie attack. One question remains, when did he put the gloves on because no fingerprints were found on the weapons? He than takes the time to turn over the coffee table in the living room, write the word “Pig” on the headboard in the master bedroom and is able to remember the “Fire Island Four” to conjure up a story of a hippie attack for investigators.
The above seems to be a logical prosecution scenario. I am about 75% sure that this (or something similar happened.) Too much circumstantial evidence against Macdonald, the lack of physical evidence of outside intruders, plus inconsistencies in Macdonald’s own statements makes me reach this conclusion. In contrast, I will leave 25% reasonable doubt open to the defense. Not all of the physical evidence was presented at trial and there are issues of unidentified hair, candle wax, and blood traces found at the crime scene. Helena and her friend’s changed their stories too many times for believability. The unidentified items are a good try by the defense, but I don’t think there is enough there. As far as the unidentified hair fibers, if they were real, this could just show that (a.) Colette was a poor housekeeper and (b.) The Macdonald’s could have had guests in their home. If they were synthetic, Colette may have also owned a wig, or they could have come from the childrens’ dolls. (Or perhaps female guests in the Macdonald home may have worn a wig.) That part we may never know.
Fatal Justice does a better job than some give it credit for by describing the physical evidence not presented at trial or fully known to the defense. Unfortunately, selected “cut and past method used by the authors do NOT give a clear picture of all of the FOI documents. This is very misleading to the average reader, who should research the great documents at the C & J site to understand both accounts of this fascinating case. FJ should be read with the understanding of its biases toward the defense, understanding that important evidence was surpressed. However, it no longer carries its author’s belief that Macdonald is innocent. I think I have reached closure in this case. The only way that such will change again for me again is if DNA results can conclusively prove the existence of intruders in the home on the night/morning of February 16, 1970. A task that seems to have become progressively more unlikely with the passage of time.
Satch
