Did Jeffrey MacDonald Murder His Family?

One of the most intriguing cases from North Carolina involves a man named Jeffrey MacDonald. MacDonald had attended Princeton University on a scholarship and then Northwestern University for medical school. He married his high school sweetheart, a woman named Collette Stevenson, before becoming a surgeon in the 6th Special Forces Group in the United States Army stationed at Fort Bragg in 1969. On the night of February 17, 1970, MacDonald, who was 26 at the time, awakened to a real-life nightmare. As he later told the military police, around 2 or 3 a.m., he woke up from where he was sleeping on the living room couch to the sound of screams. There, he saw two white men, a black man, and a white woman with long blonde hair and a floppy hat in the living room with him. He said the woman was holding a candle and said, “Kill the pigs. Acid is groovy.” He said he fought with the intruders and was hit over the head with a baseball bat. He also sustained an injury to his chest from an ice pick. He then lost consciousness. Collette MacDonald, also 26, had been stabbed to death in the master bedroom. She was four months pregnant. Five-year-old Kimberly and two-year-old Kristen had also been brutally murdered. During the investigation police found a knife in the master bedroom, a blood-stained baseball bat, ice pick, and another knife in the backyard. Someone wearing gloves had written the word “pig” in blood on the headboard of the bed. An article that ran in the Feb. 19, 2020 issue of The Fayetteville Observer noted that at the time of the murders, Fort Bragg was an open post, meaning there were no security gates or checkpoints to stop anyone from entering the base as they pleased. The Manson Connection. The crime was even more chilling given that the Manson murders had occurred in California only six months earlier. The community was shaken, and pawn shops all over the area sold out of rifles and handguns as people fearing they would be the next victims tried to protect themselves. Investigators noted that MacDonald’s injuries were far less severe than those of his murdered family. Collette had been stabbed at least 37 times. Investigators also said the living room, where the Green Beret had allegedly fought off four different attackers, seemed staged and not as disorderly as one would have thought. The Army charged MacDonald with homicide on May 1, 1970, and began what is known as an Article 32, or pretrial hearing. It ran from July 6 to September 11 of 1970. During this hearing, the following information was revealed. Seventeen-year-old Helena Stoeckley of Fayetteville, who was a drug addict and police informant in the local community, had made comments about Jeffrey MacDonald to the Fayetteville police officer she worked with. While her statements were vague, because she claimed she was high on the night of the murders, they possibly implicated her as being present at the crime scene. She was known to have worn a blond wig, boots, and a large, floppy hat. In October of 1970, the Army dropped all charges against Jeffrey MacDonald. He left the military at the end of that year, moved to California, and attempted to restart his medical career. Colette MacDonald’s family initially believed Jeffrey MacDonald’s story, but over time they became more convinced he was guilty. Her stepfather lobbied authorities to keep the investigation alive. In January 1975, a federal grand jury indicted Jeffrey MacDonald for the murder of his family. The trial ran from July 19 to August 29, 1979. When true crime author Joe McGinnis interviewed some of the jurors after the trial, they said when they listened to a recording of a law enforcement interview with MacDonald from April 1970, they had the gut feeling he wasn’t telling the truth. Investigators also used the different blood types of MacDonald, Collette, and the children to show where their blood was found throughout the apartment. It appeared to paint the picture that MacDonald had moved from room to room to commit the murders. The prosecutors also presented articles from Esquire Magazine about the Manson murder case in California. The magazine had been found with blood smeared on it in the MacDonald’s living room. This article told how the word “pig” had been written in blood on a door with actress Sharon Tate’s blood. MacDonald was found guilty of second-degree murder in the deaths of Colette and Kimberley and first-degree murder in the death of Kristen. He received three life sentences. Jeffrey MacDonald continued to appeal his conviction over the years. He was freed for several years after the 4^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled his right to a speedy trial had been violated. But then the Supreme Court reversed the ruling in March 1982, sending him back behind bars. True Crime Notoriety. In 1983, author Joe McGinnis published the true crime book “Fatal Vision,” which concluded that MacDonald was guilty and inspired a miniseries of the same name that ran on NBC in November of 1984. Actor Gary Cole played Jeffrey MacDonald and Karl Malden played MacDonald’s father-in-law, Freddy Kassab. Eva Maria Saint and Andy Griffith were other notable co-stars. The miniseries received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including Outstanding Drama/Comedy Special. Karl Malden won Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Special. Upon MacDonald’s request, Joe McGinnis had worked closely with MacDonald and had access to all the evidence presented during his trials. The author even lived at MacDonald’s home in California while he was behind bars at one point. But when the time came to turn in the completed manuscript, he would not let MacDonald see an advance copy. There was a reason for that. In the book, he asserted that he believed MacDonald was guilty of the murder of his family, and had a psychotic episode while taking a diet pill that got taken off the market in the late 1970s because of troubling side effects. MacDonald felt betrayed, and ended up suing the author in civil trial that resulted in a settlement. The podcast “Morally Indefensible,” produced by truth media, describes the tumultuous relationship between the convicted murderer and the true crime author, and explores whether or not McGinnis acted unethically during the research process of the book. In 2012, Errol Morris published “A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald,” which focused on alleged errors in the MacDonald investigation. Filmmaker Marc Smerling explored new evidence in a series by the same name that originally ran on the FX Network. MacDonald, now 79, is housed at a medium-security federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland.