Fatal Vision

  Whichever he was, victim or killer—and there did not seem to be a middle ground—Jeffrey MacDonald had clearly succeeded in putting a great deal of time and space between himself and the events of February 17, 1970.

  In the lotus land of Southern California he had insulated himself behind layer upon layer of wealth, prestige, creature comfort, and professional accomplishment.

  Yet now, across all that time and space, the past had reached out to claim him. From almost a decade ago, from 3,000 miles away, voices were calling him back.

  Back to the darkest hours of a cold and rainy February night and to the cramped little apartment at 544 Castle Drive in which his wife and daughters had lived the final, terrible moments of their lives.

  Jeffrey MacDonald had no choice. He had to go. Even before they raffled off the trip to Hawaii, I had decided to go with him: back to North Carolina to live with him during the trial. And then, perhaps, further back, into the past, along whatever tangled paths I might discover, to wherever it was they might lead.

  PART ONE

  THE SHADOW OF DEATH

  Let that day be darkness;

  let not God regard it from above,

  neither let the light shine upon it.

  Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it;

  let a cloud dwell upon it;

  let the blackness of the day terrify it.

  As for that night, let darkness seize upon it;

  let it not be joined unto the days of the year,

  let it not come into the number of the months.

  —Job, 3:4-6

  On May 31, 1963, from her mother and stepfather's apartment overlooking Washington Square in New York City, Colette Stevenson, who was twenty years old and had just completed her sophomore year at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, wrote a letter to her boyfriend, Jeffrey MacDonald, who was about to finish his second year at Princeton.

  My darling,

  Just a short note to tell you what I could say briefly (i.e., I need you) and something which will take a lifetime to say—I love you.

  Whenever I get depressed here, or impatient to do something, I take out some of your letters. Then I realize that any boredom now of mine, any spur of the moment ideas about jumping on a bus to see you, are important now because I'm not with you—but with all this summer and all our lives, I can at least leave you alone long enough to get some good marks on your exams.

  It's just that knowing you are so close—only an hour and a half away—it's much worse than being at Skidmore. You are so close but I don't want to come down. I do want to come down but I can't let my selfishness get the best of me this time. I rationalize and say it won't be long, but darling that doesn't help because I miss you until I am in your arms again.

  This might sound a little blunt coming from your shy, demure girlfriend, but at this exact moment I wish I had my

  tongue in your mouth. I wish I could be with you, loving you with every part of myself. I miss you, sweetheart, so much.

  I've been thinking a lot about this summer and about riding in a car with you again and being with you again and loving you (still) (yet) (forever) and I'm getting excited . . .

  Oh, by the way, at the risk of sounding very ultra-redundant again—I adore you.

  Yours forever, Colette

  p.s. Hope your tests are going O.K. I'm thinking of you all day, every day.

  p.p.s. You've just got to read Lord of the Flies. It was really great.

  She got pregnant that summer and they were married in September in a small Catholic church in Greenwich Village. She dropped out of Skidmore and they rented a house in Princeton, where Kimberly, their first daughter, was born in April of 1964.

  He left Princeton at the end of his junior year to enroll in medical school. Their second daughter, Kristen, was born during his third year at Northwestern.

  He completed his internship in June of 1969 and was inducted into the Army on July 1. In September, following a physician's basic training course at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and paratroop training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was assigned to duty as a medical officer at Green Beret headquarters, Fort Bragg.

  Colette and the children joined him there. They moved into a little garden apartment at the end of a row of garden apartments in a married officers' housing area known as Corregidor Courts. The address was 544 Castle Drive.

  At Christmas, in a card sent to friends from Northwestern, Colette said:

  We are having a great, all expense paid vacation in the Army. It looks as if Jeff will be here in North Carolina for the entire two years, which is an immense load off my mind at least. Life has never been so normal nor so happy. Jeff is home every day at 5 and most days even comes home for lunch—By the way, been having such a good time lately that we are expecting a son in July.

  It rained in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on the night of Monday, February 16, 1970, and into the early hours of Tuesday morning.

  It had been raining off and on for a week. A cold, demoralizing February rain which had turned the sandy soil muddy but which had brought no new life to the brown winter grass.

  At Fort Bragg, situated less than ten miles from downtown Fayetteville, the night had begun uneventfully. The military police patrol assigned to the Corregidor Courts housing area had responded to only one call since coming on duty at 11:30 P.M. and that had been from a captain having trouble with his oil burner. At least half a dozen times the two-man patrol had driven past 544 Castle Drive and had neither seen nor heard anything out of the ordinary. On a Monday night in February, the combination of cold and rain apparently was enough to have kept the streets almost deserted.

  Then, at 3:40 A.M., a Fayetteville telephone operator received a call from a man who asked in a very faint voice that the military police and an ambulance be sent to 544 Castle Drive.

  'Is that on post or off post?" the operator asked.

  She did not receive an answer to her question. Instead, there was only silence on the line. She put the call through to MP headquarters at Fort Bragg.

  At 3:42 A.M. a desk sergeant heard the caller say:

  "Five forty-four Castle Drive . . . Help . . . Five forty-four Castle Drive . . . Stabbing ..."

  Then, apparently, the caller dropped the phone. The sergeant heard a clunking noise, as if the receiver had hit a wall or floor.

  For thirty seconds, maybe sixty, there was silence. Then the caller was back, speaking this time in a voice that the sergeant described as ‘almost too weak to be a whisper."

  ‘ Five forty-four Castle Drive . . . Stabbing . . . Hurry!..."

  Again, there was only silence on the line.

  Within ten minutes there were a dozen military policemen at the scene, milling about on the front steps or standing on the walk that led up to the house. The red lights and blue lights of their jeeps and patrol cars flashed in the raw and misty darkness.

  The front door was locked. The blinds were drawn. Inside, the house seemed dark and silent. A lieutenant knocked. There was no response. He knocked harder.

  One MP suggested that they break down the door. The lieutenant said no. This was, after all, an officer's residence. He tried once more, banging as hard as he could. Then he started back toward his car, thinking he would call the provost marshal to ask about obtaining a search warrant.

  On his way, he said, 'Somebody check the back door."

  A sergeant trotted around the side of the house. Two other MPs started to follow. They were only halfway around, however— and the lieutenant was only halfway to his car—when they met the sergeant coming back. He was no longer trotting, but running now as fast as he could.

  ' 'Tell them to get Womack ASAP!''

  Womack is the name of the Fort Bragg hospital. ASAP is a military acronym that means "as soon as possible." In this context, it meant: "Emergency!"

  The back door was open, though a screen door outside it was closed. The rear entrance led through a small utility room into the master bedroom.


  Colette MacDonald, who was twenty-six years old at the time of her death, lay on her back, legs apart, on the floor next to the bed. One eye was open, one breast exposed, and one arm was extended over her head.

  She was covered with blood. A torn and bloodstained blue pajama top had been draped across part of her chest. Her own pajamas, which had been pink, were dark with blood. Her face and head were battered and covered with blood and more blood had soaked—perhaps still was soaking—into the rug on which she lay.

  Her husband, Captain Jeffrey R. MacDonald, M.D., also twenty-six, lay next to her, motionless. He wore only blue pajama bottoms. He was face down with his head on her chest and one arm wrapped around her neck.

  "Just like with a girlfriend," an MP sergeant described it later. "As if he was crying on her shoulder."

  A small paring knife lay on the rug near a dresser. A bedspread and sheet—saturated with blood—lay rumpled together near the doorway that led to the hall. On the headboard of the double bed, in letters eight inches high, the word PIG had been written in blood.

  Jeffrey MacDonald began to moan. An MP ran to his side.

  "Check my kids," MacDonald whispered. "I heard my kids crying ..."

  An MP ran down the hall. He took two steps inside a darkened bedroom on his left. He shined his flashlight on the bed.

  Kimberly MacDonald, five years old, lay on her left side. The covers were pulled up to her shoulders and tucked beneath her. Blood covered her mattress and pillow. There was a large wound, through which bone protruded, on her cheek. There also were a number of gaping stab wounds in her neck.

  The MP backed quickly out of the room and stepped to a doorway on the opposite side of the hall. Shining his light on the bed in that room he saw the body of an even smaller child.

  Kristen MacDonald, two years old, also lay on her left side. Her left arm was outstretched. A nearly empty baby bottle lay next to her mouth. A large stuffed dog stood near the bed, its wide-eyed face pointed toward her.

  Her blond hair, her head, and her face were unmarked, but she had been stabbed many times in the chest and back. Her pajamas, sheets, and mattress were soaked with blood, and more blood had run down the side of her bed to form a large pool on the floor.

  Leading away from this pool, toward the doorway, was a footprint in blood that appeared to have been made by the bare foot of an adult human being.

  In the master bedroom, Jeffrey MacDonald was trying to speak. "Four of them . . . She kept saying, ‘Acid is groovy . . . Kill the pigs' ..." He seemed to be laboring for breath.

  "Why did they do this to me? ... I can't breathe ... I need a chest tube ..."

  He was shivering, his teeth were chattering, his muscles seemed to tighten as he shook. Suddenly, his eyes closed and he went limp. A military policeman began to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. MacDonald revived. He began struggling, trying to push the MP away.

  "I've got to check my kids!"

  "Don't worry, sir. Someone is down there taking care of them."

  "Fuck me! I gotta see my kids! Take care of my kids! Leave me alone!"

  He pushed harder and raised himself to a sitting position. Then he looked down at the body of Colette.

  "Jesus Christ!' he cried. "Look at my wife!" Then he mumbled, "I'm gonna kill those goddamned acid heads. I don't know why in the hell I fuck with them. I'm not gonna help them anymore."

  There had been four of them, MacDonald told the MPs. Two white men, one black, and a woman with long blond hair who had been wearing a floppy hat and high boots and who had been holding a candle. He also told the military police that he was a doctor and he had been stabbed and he thought he was going into shock. If that happened, he said, they should elevate his legs and keep him warm and make sure he did not swallow his tongue.

  An ambulance arrived. Two medics wheeled a stretcher through the living room and down the hallway to the bedroom. MacDonald was placed on the stretcher.

  As he was being wheeled back down the hall, past the bedroom of his older daughter, Kimberly, he suddenly reached out, grabbed the edge of the doorway, and, struggling hard against the two medics and a military policeman, managed to pull himself halfway off the stretcher.

  "Goddamn MPs!" he shouted. "Let me see my kids!"

  With some difficulty, the MP and the medics restrained him. They then proceeded through the hallway, down the two steps that led to the living room, and out the front door of 544 Castle Drive.

  Once outside, Jeffrey MacDonald lay quietly. His eyes were closed and a sheet was pulled up to his chin. He was wheeled quickly down the front walk, through the chilly, misty darkness, past a small group of neighbors that had gathered, and toward the flashing lights of the waiting ambulance.

  The Voice of Jeffrey MacDonald

  I can still remember when I first met Colette. We were in eighth grade, in the junior high school on South Ocean Avenue in Patchogue, and she was walking down the hallway with her best friend, June Desser.

  June was thin, taller than Colette, very attractive, but I thought Colette was more attractive: much softer appearing. She had sort of a vulnerable look.

  I was standing in the doorway of my homeroom up on the fifth floor, the highest floor, of the Patchogue Junior High School, and they walked past and Colette turned around and looked at me and I looked back and they just kept going. But I had the distinct impression^-that I can still see today— that she was interested and wanted to say hello, but she was a little hesitant, or tentative about doing so.

  I remember then for about a week I kept trying to find out who was the good-looking blonde who was always with the other blonde. Some people told me they were sisters and some people told me they weren't. But they had their reputation of being kind of aloof. And Colette, of course, was from a reasonably wealthy family by Patchogue standards, and they were considered kind of upper-class, and I really couldn't seem to find out that much about her.

  Anyway, I met her again like two weeks later, in passing, and eventually I found out what her full name was and where her homeroom was, and we met on and off in the hallways, and, I believe, in one class. I finally had her in a—in either a history or an English class. And we started talking and eventually I found out where she lived and I

  drove my bicycle over to her house one day and we met that way.

  Those were seemingly—in retrospect now—painful times. Driving past her house on a bicycle until she noticed you, and then she'd call you over and you'd stand outside and talk in kind of a confused fashion—not trying to be forward or aggressive but trying to talk to her and get to meet her and know her better. And this would go on for hours.

  The person she lived next to was Timmy Cohane. He was a kid who'd had polio and had a weakened leg, with a brace, and he was one of Colette's best friends. I ended up becoming a good friend of his, too, and we used to go out and play basketball together at his house, but a lot of the reason I was over there was so I could end up seeing Colette.

  She would come over and sit on the fence and we eventually struck up this relationship and I ended up asking her out to the movies. It was either in the last part of eighth grade or the first part of ninth grade that we went to the Rialto Theater and sat in the balcony and held hands and watched A Summer Place, with Troy Donahue, and I think the blonde was Connie Stevens.

  We sat through it twice because we were so stunned by its beauty, and it was always sort of our movie. Colette and I always felt that we were those two people, falling in love. It was a beautiful thing to us in ninth grade.

  And that song—"Theme from A Summer Place"—was always a very good song for us. We fell in love to that song and whenever we heard it, it was, you know, a tremendous reminiscence. It was a tiny bit melancholy, as all love songs are to young people when they're falling in love, but it was a good melancholy, and we always—either of us—would turn up the radio when that song came on.

  Now, of course, if I—still to this day when I hear that song, I get this big flood of sadness a
nd nostalgia—and Colette and warm eyes and her blond hair and her warmth and me holding her in the theater as a ninth-grader.

  2

  In the ambulance, on the way to the hospital, Jeffrey MacDonald told the attendant that he needed fluids, that he was going into shock, that he was about to pass out. He spoke again of the attack: the female intruder had said, 'Groovy, hit him again." He also spoke briefly of his wife. She had called out, "Help me, Jeff. Help me, Jeff," he said, but he had been attacked before he was able to get to her. Then he exclaimed: "My God, she was pregnant!"

  In the emergency room, an orderly placed a Vaseline gauze bandage over a small wound in the right side of MacDonald's chest through which blood was bubbling. That was the only injury which seemed to require immediate attention.

  "He wanted to know where his family was," the orderly would later tell investigators. "Why weren't they here? He mentioned something about two Negro males, one white male, and one female—she was wearing a white hat and white boots. She was carrying a candle and she was saying, 'Acid is groovy' and 'Kill the pigs.' " According to the orderly, MacDonald said the intruders had been wearing "hippie-style" clothing.