Fatal Vision

"It seems to me that if this person were to be seriously challenged in terms of his own concept of who he is and how other people see him, he is most vulnerable in this area of manliness. And that if he were pushed in this area—if he's going to explode—that's most likely, I think, where he would explode."

  "Let's say, if a woman, his wife, and he have a quarrel, and she said, 'Oh, you're not a man,' or something more specific, could that do it?" Woerheide asked.

  "If your question is, could that bring out a rage, I think yes."

  "And could it bring out a rage that might be characterized as a temporary paranoid psychosis?"

  "Well, I don't know, because that is an academic question, and you have many, many disagreements about that."

  "All right. Let's put it in layman's terms. Under the circumstances that I have outlined, is the subject capable of a violent outburst?"

  "I think so."

  "Which he might very well regret a few minutes later?" "Yes, yes. I think this type of person might be swept up in a rage."

  "Well, let's say he had just killed his wife. Do you think he would go so far as to kill his children to cover up the fact that he killed his wife? Do you think he could go to an extreme like that in a rage?"

  "I could only speculate about it, but I can imagine that a person like this might commit murder at a point of rage. And the rage might not be over in a period of just a minute. The rage may last for some time. If that occurs, then I'd say that maybe this is possible."

  "The whole thing could basically be accomplished in, let's say, two or three minutes," Victor Woerheide said. "There's no problem about a period of rage extending that long, I take it?"

  "No, I don't think so. Also, whether subsequent people—like the children in this case—would be murdered at the point of rage, I don't know, but I can imagine that the fear at that point might have been an overwhelming, extraordinary fear."

  "Now in regard to this particular case," Woerheide asked, "and the paranoid-type psychosis, might this be expressed by, say, in regard to the MPs who came to the house and found an emergency situation, the CID agents who conducted the investigation, the medics who came and gave first aid, the hospital personnel who treated him—taking the attitude they're all bunglers, they're idiots, they're stupid, they are jerks, they didn't do things right, they're incompetent—"

  "Yes, it could be conveyed that way. Also, in reviewing the informal psychological data—that is, how did the subject relate to the examiner and to the testing situation, I might say that I felt there were several instances where I had to question—is this man's reality testing amiss somehow? Is there some psychotic process operating here?

  "Because his behavior was quite inappropriate, given the data I had. And even if some of the comments and the asides that the subject made during the examination were explained away and therefore did not look psychotic or paranoid, there still remains an attitude conveyed by the subject which I would call 'paranoid-like.'

  "It is the conveying of a contempt, of a disparagement towards the examination, towards the examiner, towards the whole process that was going on at that time.

  "In my experience, I have found that to occur usually with people who have a long-standing paranoid orientation toward life. Either-they feel they're being done in or persecuted a lot, or they feel that they are someone very special and have maybe special privileges and this sort of thing. More the grandiose type.

  "I call it 'paranoid-like' because I had not enough data nor opportunity to pursue that further, but to me that's a legitimate question."

  A grand juror then asked a question: "Does every individual have a certain amount of paranoia?"

  "No," the psychologist said. "I disagree with that. There is a school of thought within psychology and psychiatry that would hold that everyone has a little bit of everything in them. But I don't hold to that myself. I think that that really makes our discipline somewhat ridiculous. Because to me it's on the order of saying, well, everything in the world is a shade of yellow, but if you're not yellow, that just means you're a different variety of yellow. I don't find that appealing at all."

  "Then I conclude," the grand juror asked, "that everyone does not possess that point of rage which would push them into an act of brutal violence? Some people do not possess that point?"

  "Well, I think theoretically it is possible to say that any one of us could become enraged. But, practically speaking, there are people that I'm sure all of us have known who never exhibit rage. And not necessarily because it's suppressed. It's that their world view is different, and so they don't get into that sort of thing. My feeling is that you cannot substantiate the idea that we all are this way and the circumstances simply haven't occurred to us."

  The psychologist was then asked, as had been the other witnesses, if he had any further comments to make.

  "Well," he said, "it is a little bit outside my area of training to answer the question of whether or not this person committed murder, but I do feel it within my area to say that it is possible that this person could have a rage reaction and might have become violent at that time. I think it is possible.

  "And when I first wrote my report four years ago, I took care to state that I could not assess the probability of the subject's having committed murder. I have acquired some experience since 1970 which makes me change my opinion. I would now put more emphasis on the likelihood that it could happen."

  Jeffrey MacDonald's mother came to Raleigh to testify.

  "Mr. Woerheide," she said, "in our family we had three children, two boys and a girl, and it was a strongly masculine-oriented family. Jay, being the firstborn, was kind of a special person, naturally, to his father, and there was some sibling competitiveness in terms of Jay being the one who was reasonably successful in the early years. Jeff would, in a sense, emulate him. Like if one played football, then the other one became interested in playing football. They were like three-sport men in high school. They were both good. Jay happened to win an award as the All-Suffolk Lineman of the Year; Jeff was the quarterback on his team.

  "Now with Jay, there was some difficulty when he reached junior high school. He would have highs and lows, like he would work hard and get good marks and then he would go into a slump and I would be called in and they would suggest that he was goofing off a little bit.

  "When he left high school—because my husband's background, you see, he was an engineer at the Brookhaven National Labs, but he was a man who was slightly upset about the fact that although he is classified as an engineer, he was not a four-year college graduate and one of the things that troubled him was that although he was capable and respected by everybody and his judgment was used frequently, and he was always considered a top-notch man, still, essentially, among the college people he was not valued as high in his salary, monetarily, and as a result he felt it was very important for his children to receive college educations, and so it was in our minds that Jay would go to college.

  "I realize now in looking back that one should really sit down and explore with the person whether or not that is what they wish to do. However, he really posed no objection and he was accepted at three colleges and he visited one and liked it very well—I believe it was the University of Virginia—and he visited another and didn't like it as much but his father insisted that he take the Northern choice rather than the Southern. With all due respect to the South, my husband just felt that the Northern education was something more akin to his background and so he went to St. Lawrence University in northern New York State."

  "But he never finished college?" Woerheide asked.

  "Excuse me, sir, you see, he really did, only it was like a hard way round. You see, St. Lawrence was ready to have him stay out for six months after his first semester because he took a girl after a prom back to Canada and then he came back and used very bad judgment again by speeding, being picked up, and because he was a St. Lawrence student it was reported to the college and because they had had three cases of similar nature, the
y sat in kind of harsh judgment on him perhaps. We got the notice that he was being held out of college for six months.

  "Now I as a parent, and my husband, Mac, felt that if we let him not go to college for six months that he might not continue and because of that feeling in the family that he was capable we thought we might try more locally, and Jay seemed very satisfied with the idea of going to a college on Long Island where he could come home nights.

  "And he did finish college at Adelphi by essentially going nights, days, working in between, and always financially trying to help so that everybody could support their own weight along with what we as parents were contributing.

  "As a personality, Jay looked like a leader and somehow because of the size of him and the quality of magnetism that he had, people assumed him to be one when in fact he tended to take on coloration from whoever he was with.

  "Like for instance the time that both kids worked as taxi drivers. My kids really put forth a great deal of effort whether they were taxi drivers, construction men, supervisors of construction—Jay went on to become a million-dollar-a-year salesman in insurance after he had graduated from college but it seemed to me that in everything he did, his judgment wasn't too sound. In order to prove himself, he was spending more than he was literally earning and it got to a point where he really was heavily in debt, but I was not cognizant of that until I guess it was too late."

  "He was on drugs?"

  "Well, he had come into college in his freshman year at 175 pounds and by the time he had finished at the end of the first year he was close to his present weight of about 240. So I should have recognized that the signs of distress were there. That kind of ingestion of either alcohol or food to that extent in that short period of time I recognize as sort of an oral need for support and I should have perhaps been more alert.

  "At any rate, in order to reduce, because he was a big man with a big appetite and loved big parties and did everything in a large and grand style—which was very much like my husband's attitude—like open the house, everyone is welcome—he probably tended to take on that aspect of my husband and he began apparently to take pills to reduce, to curb his appetite.

  "I learned later from Jeff and Judy both that he was probably taking much too much Dexedrine and that they were both aware of it and they had worked with him verbally and tried to warn him that it would have devastating effects but they really were not telling me because they felt that I would be upset.

  "This was right before he went down into the Village and became a bartender. He was a salesman and working with these men and so forth on the big construction jobs and I had the feeling then that he was living beyond his means, but he was always overwhelmed by the idea of, like, owning a Cadillac, things of that nature. He was a little grandiose in his dreams.

  "But of course you must realize also that when he started working on the beach—on Fire Island—that became part of his life. He really enjoyed the beach and as a result, each year, the reason why his jobs never seemed to last too long was that he was perfectly willing and able to work, say, from September through May but the minute it was summertime, for some reason that terminated his employment.

  "And you could see the pattern and we would all say to him, Jay, you really ought to think seriously about this and he would say, This is my way, and I like the beach, and I can make do at the beach.'

  "So he would rent this large house and then rent parts of it to the 'groupies,' who were people who came in and took a room for the season. Even in this beach situation, he did a magnificent job in terms of providing. He would be the cook for these people plus their friends and sometimes would even set up like lobster things on the beach, but always in a big style. Almost too much. I realized somehow that a sense of proportion was kind of wrong.

  "Then, apparently, they had started on marijuana at the beach, which I learned later because when he became ill, I learned through Mr. Hayes, who is Jay's friend, that they all had been smoking pot.

  "What happened was, I was at work one day and the phone rang in the morning and I answered it and as I recall it was Jay and he said, 'Hi.' And I said, 'Hello, how are you? Nice that you should call in the middle of the day, it lends a nice note to the occasion.'

  "And he said, i just called to tell you that I love you and that I love Judy and I love her husband and I love their kids and I love everybody, but Mom, my head is all mixed up.'

  "And I said, 'Jay, where are you?' And he said, i am with Billy—he is here.' This was Mr. Hayes. And I said, 'May I speak to Billy, please?' And he put Billy on and I said, 'Billy, what is wrong?' And Billy said, i don't know, Mrs. Mac, but he really sounds like he is not all together. He has been driving around for a long time, he does not know how long. He has taken something that did not agree with him.'

  "And I said, 'What are you saying, he has taken something!' And he said, 'Well, I think he has taken something that was sold to him. He said he took a lot of it and the next thing he remembers is that he woke up in the gutter somewhere, and anyway he is all confused.'

  "And 1 said, 'Billy, where are you now?' And he said, 'I am at work.' And I said, 'How did Jay get there?' And he said, 'He drove here. He said that he followed the taillights of a truck and through God's providence it landed him here.' And I said, ‘I am coming right over.'

  "I got the directions—it was somewhere in Brooklyn. He was a garment manufacturer. In fact, I had a tour of his plant while I was there. When I got there, Jay was sitting at a desk clutching a copy of The Godfather, which apparently he had read and for some strange reason had begun to identify with.

  "In other words, all of the stories seemed to him like he was involved in that Mafia scene and he was really very withdrawn. He would answer if asked questions but they were not too cohesive. He looked frightened. When he did get up and move, he moved near the edge of a wall.

  "So I said to Billy, 'The only thing I can do now is call a man who is a professional who can give me some help. He needs help.' I had a friend who was a school psychologist and I called him and asked if we might have an appointment and explained that it seems that my son had taken a heavy dose of something and seemed disjointed in his mind and I would like help.

  "He said the only time he could see us would be the next day, and I asked, well, what could I do in the meantime? And he suggested that we stay with him, like talk him down, if possible, and that he would see him tomorrow.

  "So Mr. Hayes and I took him to a nearby motel. We hired three rooms—Jay being in the middle—and we stayed with him all night. We constantly talked with him. All during the time you could see that he was panicked into the feeling that some impending doom was happening—something terrible or dreadful was happening.

  "The next day he got in the car very willingly with me and we drove out to Long Island where this doctor was and the doctor took him inside and spoke with him for only twenty or thirty minutes. He then came out and said, 'Mrs. Mac, he is sick and sliould be hospitalized.'

  "He then spoke to Jay and told him that his mother was going to take him to a place were they would help him, and Jay said, 'No thanks,' and got up and ran out of the building and down the street.

  "And I looked at the doctor and I was crying and I said, ‘I just don't know what to do at this point. I am really frightened for him.'

  "And he said, 'Yes, in fact he should be picked up and I will have to call the police.' And I said, 'Well, if you feel that is wise,' and he said it is the only thing to do at this point.

  "So he proceeded to call and explain and gave the description of Jay and said I could go to the police station if they picked him up and so forth, but I felt that I would like to go out and get him myself and I got into my car and started driving and I drove through a few of the main streets, up and down, and finally at an intersection I saw several cars stopped and I stopped my car because I recognized Jay.

  "There were several cops around him and they had him in handcuffs and I walked over and of course a crowd was gathering an
d Jay was standing there trying to resist being arrested which seems understandable because he was really distressed and frightened out of his mind.

  "So in order to try and quiet him I put my hands up on his chest and said, 'Jay, we are not trying to hurt you. You do need help, please understand that. We are your friends.'

  "And at that point he took his handcuffed hands, broke out of the grip of the policemen, and came down and knocked my hands off his chest. And the police sort of stepped back and said, 'See that, he even hit his mother.'

  "Then he was getting slightly more resistive so the police, after he had struck me, decided that he was a real rough one, and they were all wrestling with him with his hands behind his back in handcuffs.

  "Now Jay was a very large person and he had very large hands and wrists so it was difficult for them and when they put the handcuffs on he was really upset.

  "I asked the policemen if they would help me get him to the private psychiatric hospital and they said no way. They said once the police are involved he goes to a police station and a staff psychiatrist is called and examines the person and if he deems it necessary he goes to the state mental hospital in Central Islip.

  "So they asked me to please follow them over to the police station and I did. And when he got there he was mute, he wasn't talking and he wasn't reacting anymore. And all of a sudden he rolled on the floor, like went off the side of the chair and kept saying, 'The handcuffs are killing me,' and then he started to cry and said, 'The reason is I am afraid of dying, I thought I was going to die.'

  "Then one of the policemen said, 'My God, I used to go to school with him, Mrs. MacDonald. What happened to him?' At that point we waited for the psychiatrist and it was very quiet and I explained to him that he was not going to die. He was healthy and well and we were going to help him. We would have to go from here to a hospital and I asked him if he understood that and he said he did.