Fatal Vision (36 page)

"No, I'm not taking any chances, Jeff. For a hundred and fifty dollars' airfare it's not worth it. The minute you don't have that thing anymore they could still spit right in your eye."

"Aaah, listen. Don't—that's silly, to come down. I'll mail it up.

"No. I don't trust the mail. And the editor doesn't either. I spoke to him about it. I'll just come down and pick it up and meanwhile we can visit a little."

"All
right," MacDonald said, a notable lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

Ten minutes later, MacDonald called back.

"Hi, Freddy? Listen, I was sleeping when you called before. Would you go over that once more, fast, for me? I mean, I thought that—you know, it was all about a story, and you're coming down tomorrow and everything, but, ah, I haven't been feeling well, I have the flu, and I was sleeping and I'm not sure
I
got all of it."

Kassab repeated his account of the meeting with the magazine editor.

"Was this
Look
or
Life?"
MacDonald asked.
"Look."

"And they're interested?"

"Oh, God, yes. He said that they were definitely very interested."

"Okay. Now what was this about a three-month-type thing?"

"He said it would take that long to do a complete investigation. They'll look into every sneeze, and—I mean, he said these two fellows that they've got make most FBI men look like public school kids."

"Oh, great. That's terrific."

"In other words, they'll do an
in-depth
investigation." "Right. Now did they, ah, discuss—I'm sure finances never came up, huh?" "What?"

"Finances never came up?"

"No, no, no, no. I never even thought of it."

"Yeah, well, see, that's got to pay for some of my expenses, that's the thing."

A few minutes later, Kassab received a call from an aide to Bernie Segal, instructing him not to proceed any further in discussions with any magazines because that was an area Segal wanted to supervise personally, to assure that "Jeffs interests are protected."

Within the hour, Kassab received another phone call from MacDonald, who said this time that his lawyers had instructed him not to give Kassab a copy of the transcript because to do so would be to risk court-martial for release of classified information.

This news so angered Kassab that he inadvertently disconnected his electronic recording device.

The next morning, MacDonald's mother called. "Freddy," she said. "I just wanted to call because Jeff said you sounded very upset last night and he was upset. He sounded hysterical on the phone to me when he said, 'I understand Freddy's position very well but I am in danger of being court-martialed.' In other words, that kind of information cannot be released."

"I
am upset," Kassab said. "The thing that upsets me is that they've come to the conclusion that this transcript is going to be a money-making scheme. Well, ah, I don't go along with that and for them to tell Jeff that he can't give me a copy of the transcript because somebody's going to court-martial him is a lot of nonsense, and I know it and they know it."

"Well, I don't know what the technicalities are, Freddy. I really don't."

"First of all, nobody has given an order to Jeff that he cannot release that transcript."

"Well, Jeff said
to me last night—and - I
can only tell you what I heard from him—that there is that outside possibility."

"As far as I'm concerned," Kassab said, "this is just Bernie's way of scaring Jeff, which I think is a terrible thing to do because under no circumstances—there is no possible way—"

"Look, Freddy, everybody wants action. We all want to get the real killers, all right? By the same token, at this particular moment perhaps is not the time when the transcript essentially can be freed. Right now he is still in the grip of the Army."

Jeffrey MacDonald's mother then urged Kassab to relax a little bit, to try to unwind, perhaps to take Mildred away for a few days, maybe to Cape Cod, from which she herself had just returned. The Cape was beautiful in the fall, she said. Very restorative.

Kassab told her he would never take a vacation—he would not even take a weekend off—until the real killers had been caught.

Despite the fact that Freddy Kassab had been, from the start, Jeffrey MacDonald's most outspoken supporter, he had always made MacDonald slightly nervous. As Bernie Segal put it, "Freddy's a zealot, and there's no telling when a zealot might get dangerous."

As early as Sunday, June 14, MacDonald had written in his diary:

Freddy called today—they are coming down to see me on ' Thursday or Friday. I have mixed feelings. I'm uneasy about seeing them. The last time I saw them, I was in the hospital, recovering from the tragedy and my wounds—now, I'm charged with the murders, and have to face the parents of my wife. Granted, they have been terrific in their support, but, like everyone else, they can't help but wonder. Besides, we have been a little worried about Freddy's statements that 'only a full court martial will clear my name,' which is a lot of bullshit. I just have to get out of this mess.

Five days later, after the Kassabs had arrived, MacDonald noted:

Today was not too bad. We had a very nice dinner at the Officer's club and they were really nice about reaffirming their support for me.

There was, however, one point which concerned him:

Freddy wants a complete transcript of the Art. 32 hearing, but I don't think he should get it—I don't see the reason for that.

Now that it was November and the charges had already been dismissed, MacDonald saw even less reason for it. The case against him was closed. There was no need for Freddy to stay involved. Let law enforcement authorities renew their search for the four intruders. MacDonald himself—once he was safely discharged—would launch his public attack against the incompetence and malevolence of the military bureaucracy which had put him through so much needless torture, but there was no cause for Kassab to start probing into the details of the case. No good could possibly come of that.

Kassab—undeniably a zealot, at least insofar as the murder of Colette and her children was concerned—would not, however, wait passively for action that might never be taken. He himself would act: prodding, goading, and cajoling others—particularly those in positions of influence—to join him.

To act effectively, however, he needed to be fully informed. To be informed, he needed the transcript of the Article 32 hearing. To be told by an assistant to Bernie Segal that he could not have a copy infuriated him.

If MacDonald was made nervous by Kassab when Kassab was an unswerving supporter, he was considerably more jittery about the prospect of Kassab's becoming alienated from him in any way. What Freddy wanted most was to have the killers caught. Perhaps if he learned that something along those lines had occurred, he would be able to relax a bit.

It was, thus, in an attempt to pacify his father-in-law that Jeffrey MacDonald—on the night of Sunday, November 18— called Kassab from his BOQ room and said, "There's something happened down here that I can't tell you about on the phone."

"Yeah?"

"Ah, all I can say on this phone is one down, three to go." There was a brief silence. "Did you get what I mean?"

"Yeah, I got what you meant." "But that's for real." "Yeah. Good. Good, good."

"I don't know," MacDonald sighed. "It doesn't really change anything."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Well, nothing's going to change anything, Jeff."

"I think, ah, that ah, our friend Miss Helena Stoeckley is really gone," MacDonald said, "because I would have found out—there's no question that I would have been told had she still been in town. And, ah, he claimed that, ah, she wasn't around. And there's no question he was willing to say anything he knew."

There was another brief pause. Kassab, believing that MacDonald's own telephone might be tapped, remained deliberately unresponsive.

"So, ah, things are happening," MacDonald continued, "but, ah, like I said, it's—again, it's a very depressing type of thing because nothing changes. I mean, ah, still, Colette and Kim and Kristy are gone."

"I know."

"But, ah, it's necessary."

"Yeah. Well, give me a call when you can from some other phone and give me a blow-by-blow or something."

"Well, I don't even like to talk on yours, that's the problem. What I'll do is I'll send off a note from another post office."

"Yeah. Or I'll be in the office tomorrow. In the morning, anyway."

"All right."

"You got my office phone number?" "Yeah."

MacDonald called Kassab at his office the next day and elaborated on his cryptic announcement. He said that on the preceding Friday night he and some Green Beret friends had tracked down one of the four intruders—the larger of the two white males, the one without the mustache. After beating him until he'd told them all he knew, they had killed him. "He's six feet under," MacDonald said, adding that he would continue to press the hunt for the other three. Apparently he felt that this would be enough to satisfy Kassab's desire to see the killers apprehended.

Later that day, he wrote to Kassab:

I am beginning work on my speech for a news conference the day I get my discharge. I think here is best, but I'm not sure. AP & UPI seem to do a good job getting it out—we can deliver mimeos of speech & photos if necessary to
Newsday, Post,
L.I.
Advance,
and
Times
the morning I hold the conference.

Or I can hold it up there, but then the area down here refuses to cover it well. Vice versa is not true for some reason. I feel quite satisfied the media is still interested enough to cover it. Don't jump the gun.
{Only you
know what I'm planning)—the time will come and it will only take one day's coordination of effort to get maximum exposure.

I will deny our phone conversation of today if anyone ever asks. I'm sure you can figure out why. What must be done must be done.

Within days of his arrival in New York in December of 1970—it was, in fact, on a weekday, and Freddy Kassab was at work—Jeffrey MacDonald went to the Kassab home on Long Island to deliver some pictures of Colette and the children that Mildred Kassab had requested.

Ever since hearing, from her husband, that MacDonald had tracked down and killed one of the intruders, Mildred had felt herself beset by a variety of conflicting emotions: satisfaction that at least partial revenge had been obtained, concern that Jeff's action might cause him new legal problems, and frustration at the thought that, by having killed the one person who might have been able to lead him to the others, he had made it more difficult for any fresh investigation to succeed.

Her rage at those whom she believed to have been the murderers of her daughter was so intense that she felt no qualms over Jeff's private admission that he now was a murderer himself: so strongly did she believe that the Army was not interested in seeking justice that she did not begrudge him the act of having obtained some measure himself, however unorthodox and distasteful the means.

But most of all Mildred Kassab felt curiosity. Who had it been? What had he said? What had been the motive? Where were the others? What did Jeff intend to do next? If his purpose in telling the tale had been to defuse the Kassabs' interest in the case, it was obvious that he had badly miscalculated.

As Jeff sat at her kitchen table eating pie and drinking coffee, and looking everywhere around the room except directly at her, Mildred let ten minutes pass, waiting for him to say something.

When he did not, and when it became apparent that he did not intend to, she herself brought up the subject which had dominated her thoughts for the past three weeks.

"Jeff, I know you don't want to talk about it, but I must know. What did you do? What did he say? Tell me."

MacDonald continued to glance around the kitchen, his eyes still not meeting hers.

"Oh, this guy," he said, "he's a complete idiot. He doesn't know what he's doing at all."

Immediately, it struck her as strange that he was speaking in the present tense, not the past. In addition, the more she had thought about it, the more foolish it had come to seem that he had eliminated the one person who could have definitively established his innocence. But even these notions were subordinated to her burning curiosity. Jeffs victim had been, after all, a man who had participated in the murder of her daughter.