• 09/03/2023
• By wizewebsite
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Heartless killer or innocent victim? The story of the American doctor still raises questions<

What police found inside looked like a scene from a horror movie. An injured man was lying on the body of a beaten and stabbed woman, two children were lying in their beds in a pool of blood in adjacent rooms. They too were stabbed. The only survivor of the attack was that man - military doctor Jeffrey MacDonald.

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While MacDonald told investigators that his family was attacked by a group of three men and one woman, the accumulated evidence told a different story. After nine years of court battles, he was found guilty and sentenced to several life sentences. The problem, however, is that several testimonies were found that supported his version of events. In addition, MacDonald has always insisted that he is innocent and that the murders were carried out by a group of four people, reminds Bustle. To this day, the case is one of the most controversial in American judicial history.

MacDonald has been behind bars for more than four decades and is trying to be released. The most recent attempt so far took place four months ago, when the court requested a so-called compassionate release. This occurs under certain circumstances for federal prisoners over the age of seventy.

"These are situations where they have served thirty or more years of the prescribed sentence, or there are extremely serious reasons in favor of release. According to the decision of Judge Terrence Boyle, however, MacDonald does not fall under the law that allows this - it only applies to prisoners who committed crimes before 1987. Therefore, the judge rejected MacDonald's request," reports The Fayettville Observer. But MacDonald still has a chance - he can apply for parole including subsequent supervision by a curator at liberty.

The story of an initially successful doctor attracted the attention of many documentarians and writers. Even years after the murder, television interviews him directly from prison, and even the famous Larry King had fun with him. He was also the inspiration for one of the episodes of the series Thoughts of a Criminal.

Source: Youtube

Probably the most famous book about MacDonald is Fatal Vision by the now deceased journalist Joe McGinniss. The author was invited to write it by MacDonald himself, who hoped that his account of the entire brutal murder would change the image the public had of him. "However, this intention of his failed significantly at the moment when McGinniss began to be convinced of MacDonald's guilt. And instead of a celebratory book, he wrote a 976-page tome full of evidence that the former elite US Army medic is a narcissistic sociopath who brutally murdered his own family in a fit of rage. The best-selling book of 1983 inspired the series, and MacDonald sued the journalist. The publishing house eventually settled the dispute out of court," writes the New York Post.

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Even so, a large part of the public is still on MacDonald's side. “Jeffrey MacDonald doesn't look like the murderous psychopath portrayed in Fatal Vision. He's more like the epitome of the American dream - a good-looking, working-class young man who shined in high school on the football team. He won a scholarship to the prestigious Princeton, became a doctor, married his high school sweetheart and volunteered for the army. And then his life suddenly collapsed thanks to a terrible miscarriage of justice," explains MacDonald's popularity to Vanity Fair magazine.

Even the imprisoned MacDonald attracts attention. Apart from the constant efforts to be released, he probably filled the pages of American newspapers the most in 2002. "That's when he got married for the second time. His second wife, Kathryn, believes in his innocence," The Washington Post reported. He met his current wife decades ago. She wrote to him in prison in 1997 saying she wanted to help him get a retrial. They began writing regularly, then a friendship grew into stronger feelings. The wedding took place in a prison. After eighteen years of marriage, Kathryn MacDonald is doing everything she can to get her husband out. She even turned to former US President Donald Trump for mercy.

MacDonald is now seventy-seven years old and lives in the Cumberland Federal Correctional Facility in the US state of Maryland.

Dozens of stab wounds

The murder in Fort Bragg shocked America at the time, when its extreme brutality was especially striking. The United States was still reeling from the Manson Family rampage at the time of her perpetration—and suddenly most of the young family was dead. A young pregnant woman brutally stabbed and beaten, a model wife who was also studying. Two innocent children - girls aged five and two - were beaten and stabbed. And the wounded husband, a successful doctor of the special unit of the US Army - the so-called Green Berets.

What the police saw in the family home really looked like a scene from a horror movie. MacDonald's pregnant wife, Colette, was lying on her back in the master bedroom. Both of her hands were cut and broken, and she had apparently covered her face during the attack. She had a total of 37 stab wounds on her chest and neck - from a knife and an ice pick. Jeffrey MacDonald, who was lying on top of his wife, was also stabbed and beaten, though not nearly as badly. His head was resting on her chest.

Five-year-old Kimberley MacDonald was lying in her bed in one of the children's rooms. Someone repeatedly beat her on the head and body with a wooden stick. She also had ten stab wounds to her neck, but her death was already caused by a serious head injury. Even the younger girl, two-year-old Kristen, was lying in her bed. In the upper part of the body, the toddler had 33 stab wounds, a knife and an ice pick.

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On the headboard of the MacDonalds' double bed, the police found pig written in large letters, which means pig in English. The letters were written in Collet's blood.

An injured MacDonald called for help to the house. On the fateful night, he was allegedly sleeping on the couch in the living room because his older daughter had wet his side of the double bed where she lay with her mother in her sleep. "Our life was completely normal before. I don't remember anything special. That night I was awakened by the combination of my wife's and my older daughter's screams. They were both screaming for help and calling my name," MacDonald described to the police and repeated this statement in 2003 during an interview with Larry King.

MacDonald said that in the light coming from the kitchen, he noticed three men - two white and one black. He also reportedly spotted a young blonde woman wearing a hat. When he tried to get up from the couch, the black man allegedly started hitting him in the head. According to MacDonald, he tried to defend himself, but the blows were so strong that he does not remember some moments. "I don't know exactly when my wife stopped screaming, but her voice still rings in my head," he said in a 2003 interview with King.

When the attackers left the house, MacDonald crawled to his wife and began to give artificial respiration. He was then supposed to find the dead children in the rooms, call the police and return to his wife's body.

Evidence to the contrary

Although MacDonald's account sounded like a heart-wrenching tale of a gruesome murder committed by an unknown group, within hours of dawn, investigators began to doubt that version. There was a lot of evidence against MacDonald. For example, the small living room in which the doctor was allegedly attacked showed no signs of struggle, except for a few small things. MacDonald had self-defense training.

The fibers from MacDonald's pajamas also raised doubts. His top was supposed to be on him when he was attacked, and he was supposed to find his wife in it. When he found out that she was dead, he covered her with his pajama shirt and went to the daughters' rooms in just his pants. "However, traces of the T-shirt were also found under Coletta's body and near the bodies of the dead girls. Traces of blood were also suspicious. Her bedrooms were full, including Kristen's, where MacDonald's bloody print was found - but the blood was Coletta's. But there was almost no blood in the living room. A trace of his younger daughter's blood was also found on MacDonald's glasses. But he claimed to investigators that he wasn't wearing glasses when he found her body," Vanity Fair magazine describes the evidence.

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Evidence also showed that someone used rubber gloves to write the sign Pig. And the MacDonalds had exactly the same one in the cabinet under the kitchen sink. A drop of the doctor's blood was found near the cabinet. “The murder instruments, carefully wiped clean of fingerprints, were found near the back door of the house. A bloody piece of wood, similar to a baseball bat, an ice pick and a knife were among the furnishings of the house, although MacDonald claimed he never saw them," reports Vanity Fair.

MacDonald's statement also revealed other inconsistencies. It rained on the night of the murder, and the doctor himself said that the woman from the murdering foursome had wet shoes. But the police found no traces of the muddy shoes anywhere in the house. Last but not least, the way he behaved worked against the doctor. In the hospital, literally a few hours after he lost his wife and children in an extremely cruel way, he was strangely calm. And he didn't collapse even in the following days and weeks.

The scenario of the murder

An anomaly was key to confirming the investigators' hypothesis that MacDonald was the killer. It turned out that each of the family members had a different blood type. This made it easy for detectives to determine where someone was based on bloodstains.

Finally, the investigative team compiled an approximate scenario of the events of the fateful February evening. It all apparently started with a marital quarrel, the content of which could have been either the older daughter's urinating or the doctor's infidelity. He later admitted this, but claimed that his wife never knew anything about it. However, detectives claimed that Colette apparently hit her husband in the head during the argument.

MacDonald didn't like something like that and stabbed his wife. “Elder daughter Kimberley, whose brain fluid was found on the door frame, was apparently seriously injured accidentally during a marital dispute. Believing Colette to be dead, McDonald carried the older, fatally wounded daughter to her bed. He believed that he had no other choice but to finish everything," Vanity Fair describes the probable scenario of the crime compiled by the investigators.

MacDonald was then supposed to stab his older daughter and definitely break her head. It was during this that Kimberly's blood got on his pajama shirt. “He then went to Kristen's room to get rid of the last possible witness. Before he could do that, Colette woke up from her unconsciousness and threw herself on top of her daughter to protect her. Investigators thus explained why Coletta's blood was subsequently found on the bed and wall of Kristen's room," Vanity Fair mentions.

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When MacDonald killed his wife and younger daughter, he apparently took his wife's body and carried it into the couple's bedroom. According to investigators, he was inspired by the rampage of the murderous Manson family to create the sign Pig and the story of the group of attackers. He could read an article about her in a magazine that detectives found in the house.

Mistakes and the Mysterious Girl

It would appear that the army investigative team has gathered enough powerful ammunition to put MacDonald behind bars. But the opposite was true. MacDonald hired a lawyer and, with his help, pointed out fundamental mistakes by the investigators. What's more - the testimony of a young man appeared, who claimed that he saw exactly the group of people described by MacDonald not far from the crime scene on the fateful night.

As for the mistakes of the investigators, it was mainly the two most serious. “Twenty-six people went through the house before the crime scene was secured. Among other things, the driver of the called ambulance who stole MacDonald's wallet. Some crucial evidence was also lost without a trace for an unknown reason - for example, the skin taken from under Colette's fingernails. The doctor examining Coletta's body also turned it and moved it with MacDonald's pajama trick," explains Vanity Fair.

The nail in the coffin of the prosecution was when Coletta's father took MacDonald's side in an emotional speech. And he said he couldn't have asked for a better son-in-law. Psychologists also labeled MacDonald a narcissist, but not a man who could murder his family in cold blood. And the doctor continued to stand by his testimony, even though he refused to take a lie detector test.

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Then a crucial testimony emerged. The 22-year-old claimed that he saw his neighbor Helen, a young girl exactly matching MacDonald's description, in the company of three men in a place near Fort Bragg on the fateful night. Drug addict Helen Stoeckley, a troubled young woman, claimed that she did not know MacDonald, had not been to his house and did not even know where he was, but at the same time her statement was not very credible. "The problem was that she was so heavily drugged that night that she doesn't remember what she did or where she was," reports Vanity Fair.

The military court that tried the case acquitted MacDonald after this defense. There was not enough evidence against Helen Stoeckley. The killer of the young woman and her two children was thus to remain unknown for years to come.

A new life

After his acquittal, MacDonald left the army. He moved to New York, bought a luxury apartment and demonstrably found a lover. In addition, he joked about army investigators on the TV show. He seemed to forget the tragic fate of his family. After later moving to California, he enjoyed himself like never before. He gradually established a relationship with at least fifteen women.

However, Coletta's father could not start a new life and forget. After several years and numerous requests, he finally got access to the records of MacDonald's interrogations. And after reading them, and considering MacDonald's behavior, the devastated man got the impression that the perfect son-in-law might be a devil with an angelic face.

In the late 1970s, almost nine years after the murder, a new trial began. The thought that MacDonald was at large did not let many investigators sleep. They re-examined the evidence they had once obtained, and more and more tests assured them that the killer was indeed a successful doctor. In 1979, MacDonald was found guilty of three murders in a civil trial and sentenced to several life sentences.

However, the doctor appealed and legal battles lasting several years began. They earned considerable media attention. At times it seemed as though the doctor was still on the edge of his seat, with the evidence still pointing against MacDonald.

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However, young Helen Stoeckley's statements came into play. She admitted that she was part of the murdering party. Colette and her two children made a deliberate choice with their friends. And Stoeckley even named her accomplice - a former boyfriend who was already dead at the time. In addition, MacDonald had part of the media and the public on his side. "There's something attractive about him. When you meet him, you say to yourself: This is a good, decent, nice man, and the system has failed. You think about how to help him," journalist Jeffrey Elliot, who prepared an interview with him for Playboy magazine, described MacDonald's charm.

In the 1980s, Helen Stockley and the man she called her partner died of cirrhosis. During further appeal processes, it was repeatedly pointed out that the young woman was mentally unstable. Her statement could thus be completely fabricated. This was evidenced by the fact that Stockley's account of the murder differed from MacDonald's account of his recollection of the alleged four's actions.

Whose side is the truth remains a mystery to this day.