Posted 8:09 AM by Blah blah

Crime: Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald

I found this fascinating site called The Crime Library. Sometimes graphically violent and sexual, this site collects in-depth stories of the most notorious criminal cases in history, including O.J. Simpson, Nazi scientists, and lots of others directly from today's headlines. It includes crime fiction and analyses of why criminals do what they do. I warn you, this is not for kids to read. Some parts are disgusting but hold your interest in the way we feel when we see the worst depths of human behavior. I promise that you will never be bored.

I was particularly interested in the case of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald. This man had the background of an American "golden boy." From The Crime Library:

"Their fairy tale life was taking shape: handsome, hardworking, brilliant Jeffrey MacDonald had been the quarterback of the high school football team, president of the student council, and voted by his peers as the most popular student and the one most likely to succeed. And succeed he did. After Princeton, he graduated from Northwestern University Medical School and did his internship in the prestigious Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City.

He married the girl he dated in high school, the attractive and intelligent Colette Stevenson who had attended Skidmore College, while he was at Princeton.

Shortly after they began dating steadily, Kimberly was conceived and their marriage had to be moved up a few years. The timing wasn't ideal, but they were very much in love and would manage somehow.

After his medical training, MacDonald joined the Army and was later accepted into the famous Green Berets. They were stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The fairy tale became a horror story on the cold rainy morning of Tuesday, February 17, 1970...."

On that day, MacDonald's 26-year-old wife and two daughters, two and five years old, were found brutally murdered. Some of their heads had been crushed. His two daughters had been stabbed many times with an ice pick. MacDonald himself called the military police at the base where they lived, and they found him beaten up with a stab wound. Eventually, the Army decided that HE was the murderer, that he had stabbed himself and faked his story of an attack on his family. Dr. MacDonald was eventually convicted of the murders and has spent the rest of his life in and out of prison, mainly trying to prove his innocence. He has endured many court cases and appeals and spent most of his money in fighting the charges.

Before I read The Crime Library's version of this horrible story (told anonymously by a "top executive of an international Internet company"), I was inclined to believe him guilty. I read Joe McGinniss's intriguing story of this case, Fatal Vision, a while ago. While it may seem incredible that someone with such a bright future ahead of him would do something this awful and stupid, McGinniss convinced me at that time, with his details about MacDonald's infidelities with women and personal habits, which portrayed him as a slick narcissist and liar. This best-selling book was made into a movie.

However, I did not know, until reading The Crime Library, that McGinniss had himself betrayed MacDonald. The journalist had lied to his own "friend." MacDonald later sued McGinniss for fraud. I also didn't know that later, Jerry Allen Potter wrote Fatal Justice : Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders, which talks about the other side of this puzzling case. He argues that MacDonald has not received a fair trial and that the Army's bias has mishandled evidence. From Amazon.com:

Finally, many years after Joe McGinniss's famous Fatal Vision, we have a well-documented argument for the other side of the Jeffrey MacDonald case--an argument that the prosecution mishandled key crime-scene evidence, withheld potentially exculpatory material, and even discounted confessions from other suspects. Whether you change your mind about MacDonald's role in the murder of his family, you will learn much about the case that puts it in a new light. For example, the army narrowed in on MacDonald as their prime suspect very early in the investigation, and discouraged the FBI from developing alternate theories. And the judge in the case, Franklin Dupree Jr. appeared to have been biased in favor of the prosecution. Janet Malcolm, the New Yorker writer who wrote The Journalist and the Murderer (about MacDonald's relationship with McGinniss), called this book "quietly convincing."

Regardless of what you think about Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, both sides of this sickening case make for compelling reading. Either he is a calculating criminal or his prosecutors have seriously ruined justice and this man's life. He is still in prison and has a website committed to his defense. Read MacDonald's latest words on the case, written just last month. Believe it or not, MacDonald won the right to get DNA testing for his case in 1997, but they are still not done, almost FIVE YEARS LATER. He is still waiting and has fought a frustrating series of delays.