My review in WSJ Saturday: Is Jeffrey Macdonald innocent, after all (See note at end)
The Girl Who Rode The Rocking Horse
Wall Street Journal, September 1, 2012
By Edward Jay Epstein
When military police arrived at the Fort Bragg, N.C., home of Capt. =effrey MacDonald at 3:50 a.m. on Feb. 17, 1970, they found a bloody =assacre. The captain himself, a 27-year-old military doctor, had =ultiple wounds, including stab wounds in his stomach and chest. His =ife, Colette, 27, and their two daughters-3 and 5 years old—had =een beaten and stabbed to death. The word "Pig" was scrawled in =food on a wall. The police saw signs of a struggle, including a table =tanding on end, torn and bloody clothing, and a paring knife, icepick =nd club. After MacDonald was revived through mouth-to-mouth =esuscitation, he described an attack by four intruders: three men and = blond woman who wore a floppy hat.
To the crime's investigators, the murder scene was open to two =nterpretations. First, home invaders had carried out the slaughter, as =acDonald claimed. Second, MacDonald had murdered his wife and =aughters and staged the appearance of a home invasion by upsetting =urniture, throwing objects around and inflicting deep wounds on =imself.
The first scenario had a well-publicized precedent in the home =nvasions of the "Manson family"—two incidents, instigated by =harles Manson, in which seven people were murdered and the word =93pig" was scrawled on a wall. The incidents had occurred just six =onths earlier in Los Angeles. Fort Bragg was an open base, making it =ossible for a band of intruders to enter the base and break into the =acDonald home.
But investigators did not buy the home-invasion scenario. To them, the =usband's guilt seemed more plausible. For one thing, husbands are =tatistically the most likely perpetrators of spousal murders, having =eans and opportunity and, if there is marital conflict, motive. ((On =his logic, Roman Polanski, the husband of Manson-victim Sharon Tate, =ould have been a suspect if he had not been in London shooting a =ovie at the time of that home invasion.)
There is a forensic problem, however, with husbands as suspects. Their =ingerprints, blood, hair and clothing fibers are not in themselves =ncriminating because, whether a man is innocent or guilty, the same =races of his presence will be found in the home. In a case like =acDonald's, where there are no witnesses, signs of staging a =rime—i.e., faking up the crime scene—become evidence of guilt.
Military prosecutors got the ball rolling in May 1970 by presenting a =ase—in what is called, in the military, an Article 32 hearing—that =acDonald had indeed staged the scene of the crime, to cover up the =urder of his family. The prosecutors never did present a motive: There =as no apparent estrangement between MacDonald and his wife, and no =ucrative insurance policy. The presiding officer in the hearing, Col. =arren V. Rock, dismissed the case for lack of evidence.
Then, in 1975, after MacDonald had re-entered civilian life, he was =ndicted by a federal grand jury, partly as the result of the efforts =f his wife's father, who had agitated continually for a civilian =rial, convinced of his son-in-law's guilt. A four-year delay =ollowed to adjudicate Mac0onald's claims of double jeopardy. =inally, on Aug. 29, 1979, he was convicted of first-degree murder and =entenced to life imprisonment. He is in prison to this day.
In the years after the verdict, the prosecution's narrative of the =rime—evil husband, perhaps on amphetamines, murdering his family and =oncocting a story about hippie-like intruders—was burnished in the =ublic mind by Joe McGinniss's 1983 best seller about MacDonald, =93Fatal Vision"; by a TV miniseries based on the book; and, later, =y "The Journalist and the Murderer" (1990), Janet Malcolm's =nalysis of Mr. McGinniss's wily interactions with his devious =ubject. Most people, including me, assumed that there was no =easonable doubt about Jeffrey MacDonald's guilt.
The assumption may well be false. In "A Wilderness of Error," Errol =orris, an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, challenges the =stablished narrative and offers a plausible counter-narrative. The =ook's thoughtful presentation of the evidence alone makes it worth =aking seriously. Just as important, Mr. Morris's tone is temperate =nd fair-minded. He is not an angry polemicist but, we cannot help =eeling, someone trying to get at the truth. His 1988 documentary, =93The Thin Blue Line," helped to commute the life sentence of a =onvicted murderer in Texas. Mr. Morris clearly knows what it is to =nterrogate conventional views and scrutinize legal documents with =are.
The book's affidavits and interview transcripts reveal flaws in the =xpert testimony, in particular the testimony that argued for the =rimes being staged. In the 1970 military hearing, for example, =rosecutors focused on a small table found resting on its edge. =ccording to an expert witness, it was not possible for a table to land =n its edge, in such a way, as the result of a scuffle; its position =ad to be staged. Col. Rock, the presiding officer, was unconvinced. He =imself went to the crime scene, kicked the table once and saw it land =n its edge.
The staging evidence presented by FBI lab experts in the 1979 trial was =ore complex—involving, among much else, claims about the holes in =acDonald's shirt (supposedly punctured in the wrong shape) and the =ocation of blood. Mr. Morris shows that many of these staging claims =ere as problematic as that tipped-over table in the 1970 hearing. What =s more, the FBI, it was discovered later, had held back exculpatory =vidence, like the yellow hairs on a hairbrush in the home, which did =ot match the hair of any member of the MacDonald family.
The most powerful part of "A Wilderness of Error" is the evidence =or a counter-narrative that seems to support MacDonald's version of =vents. Multiple witnesses saw a girl in the vicinity of MacDonald's =ome on the fateful night. One of the witnesses was a military =oliceman racing to the MacDonald house, who saw a woman in a floppy =at. After a description went out, a 28-year-old drug user and =arcotics informer named Helena Stoeckley, who lived in nearby =ayetteville, N.C., was picked up and interrogated. As it turned out, =he had admitted to at least six people that she was in the MacDonald =ome on the night of the murder, high on drugs, wearing a blond wig, =hite boots and a floppy hat and accompanied by three male Vietnam =eterans.
Stoeckley recalled details dovetailing with MacDonald's description, =ncluding that she had held a candle, as MacDonald claimed. He had said =hat she tried to ride a rocking horse in the home and answered the =acDonald's phone. (A witness later said that he had called the home =hat night, searching for a doctor; a female voice answered and hung =p.) Stoeckley passed a lie detector test. One of the veterans she =amed was seen by an acquaintance painting the words "I killed the =acDonald family" on a wall.
Yet the jury never heard the Stoeckley confession. Mr. Morris has =leuthed out what might have happened. In 2005, during one of the =ttempts by MacDonald's lawyers to free their client, the U.S. =arshal charged with bringing Stoeckley to the courthouse for the 1979 =rial, a man named Jimmy Britt, gave an affidavit stating that, when he =ad first brought Stoeckley to see prosecutor James Blackburn, he heard =er give a detailed confession to the prosecutor. Blackburn, he said, =hen told Stoeckley that, if she repeated her account under oath in =acDonald's trial, he would have to charge her with murder. =Blackburn, who was disbarred in 1993 for ethical transgressions, =enies Mr. Britt's account.) In any case, Stoeckley changed her story =n court, saying that she could not recall ever being in the MacDonald =ouse. Without her testimony, the defense could not call any of the six =orroborating witnesses because the judge ruled that their testimony =ould be inadmissible hearsay.
In May 1982, 34 months after MacDonald was convicted, Stoeckley =epeated her original, confessional account in a taped interview for =BS's "60 Minutes." The producer decided against airing it, =owever. Mr. Morris suggests that the
show had become "disconnected =rom [the] reality" of the event, being heavily committed to Mr. =cGinniss's tale of a drug-crazed, murderous, lying doctor. Stoeckley =ied the following year.
If the members of the jury had been allowed to hear Stoeckley's =ccount, and the corroborating testimony, I find it difficult to =elieve they would not have felt a reasonable doubt about MacDonald's =uilt. But they did not hear it, and MacDonald has been in prison for =hree decades. Mr. Morris has produced a brilliant book about the =ulnerability of justice to the preconceptions of prosecutors and the =ower of certain narratives to crowd out all others, even highly =lausible ones. I strongly recommend this book.
Mr. Epstein's newest book, "The Annals of Unsolved Crimes," will =e published by Melville House in March.
As ever,
Ed Epstein
www.edwardjayepstein.com