Fatal Vision (78 page)

"In the confusion of the time, I thought that if I said it once loudly enough maybe I wouldn't have to continually, you know, reply to those questions.

"I don't find it easy to beg for sympathy. Every time I tell the story of February 17th, I—you know—I die a little bit. I'm ashamed that I couldn't help my family. But I tried.

"I'm the one that hears Colette and Kimmy. I can't keep talking about that. You expect me to talk about it over coffee to everyone that comes by or I'm not normal.

"The grand jury—except for my lawyers, the grand jury and Colonel Rock are the only people who ever heard the whole story. My lawyers never really heard the whole story until I was in front of Colonel Rock. I mean never in detail at once in one sitting.

"You make it sound like we are supposed to be sitting and talking about it constantly. The only one that I know that does that is Freddy.

"So, I don't spend a lot of time talking about it. I don't tell everyone I meet. I don't tell all my friends. I didn't tell anyone the whole story. That doesn't seen abnormal to me and yet you make it seem the other way. You make it sound like it's abnormal that I don't go around telling everyone. Saying, 'Hey, let me tell you about Fort Bragg, 1970.'

"That brings me to Freddy. He feels, I guess, that I never told him the full story. And I didn't. He also feels that I lied to him when I told him about these stupid, pathetic attempts to find the real killers.

"He's partially right but he's partially wrong, too. I never did sit down with him and tell him the whole story. But contrary to the implications that he keeps leaving, he was apprised of everything. We were in daily contact. He knew exactly what was being said all through the Article 32. And then I gave him a copy of the Article 32.

"And it isn't as though—later on, a couple of years later, geez, it sounds like he never knew what was going on and he never heard. He heard daily. He talked to Bernie and the other lawyers and myself all the time. He knew exactly what was going on. I never just decided to just go over to his house and sit down and start telling him again. He never asked, for one. My friends never asked. You know, my family has never asked me. My mother has never said to me, 'What happened?' It seems to be one of my major sins that I don't talk about it all the time.

"Freddy was a funny kind of friend. All through the Article 32 he was my devoted supporter. He was proclaiming my innocence the loudest. He said he would be the only one, or he would have been the first to know if anything was wrong between Colette and me, even if we never told him, because he was so close. He knew we were happy.

"Freddy was the hardest person for me to talk to later, because of that. I mean, he made a very dramatic and nice testimony for me at the Article 32. But then at the end, here I'm in this obligation to Freddy. I'm supposed to devote my whole life to the night of the 17th and spend the rest of my life foraging through North Carolina, one-man FBI.

"Well, I can't do it, And I knew I couldn't do it, and I lied to him. I told him that. I was ashamed that—well, I'm ashamed now I told him. I'm ashamed I didn't die that night. That sounds stupid to you, I know.

"So here I was, trying to prove, especially to Freddy, you know, that I would do the best I can. So I do this little fantasy bit. Well, that's over. We've talked about it. I tried to satisfy him."

MacDonald flipped through the pages of his statement. "Shit," he said, "it's not making sense even reading it. i'm sorry I told Freddy about it.' This doesn't make any sense."

Nevertheless, MacDonald continued his reading. "So now I'm up to the winter of 1970-71 and I'm in New York trying to practice medicine, waiting for my residency at Yale to start in June of '71, trying to carry on my life.

"But you've got to understand that this was a life that Colette and I had planned. Colette and I were supposed to go to Yale and get a farm and I was supposed to be a hotshot orthopedic surgeon and live on a farm with the kids.

"I can't—I mean, I can't keep that dream going without Colette and the kids. So I go out to California. So what? There's no crime in that.

"Essentially, to paraphrase all these pages that I'm turning, you know, I just had to change my life. So I go out there and work with a friend of mine from the Army, a different kind of life. I don't expect Brian Murtagh to understand that. Maybe the grand jury will.

"Right now, in California, I'm director of the emergency department. After I left here in August they made me director. Big deal, they called me in and they said, 'Despite what's happening, we still like you.' And I said, 'Big fucking deal, you don't have to like me.' And they said, 'No, you're doing a good job and we want to make you director. So I'm director now.'

"It's a busy emergency room." MacDonald's voice, which had been firm, was beginning to quaver. "A lot of car accidents, and heart attacks. And gunshots . . . and . . . stabbings.

"I work very hard. And I work on purpose. I've got to work.
I
stay busy, see a lot of people. I'm exhausted. I work a twelve-hour shift. I make a lot of money. That's not my goal in life. I make a lot of money so I spend a lot. That's another crime.

"I—this really sounds trite—I like emergency medicine. You know, I help a lot of people. It makes me—makes me feel a little useful." He paused momentarily, sobbing.

"You know," he resumed, "I didn't do enough to save my family. And then you come in here and you say someone's folded the top of my pajama top and put little probes through it and that means that I killed Colette.

"What can I say about that? These arguments about other women are just—they are absurd. I've slept with a lot of women. It doesn't mean anything to me, at all. It never has meant anything to me. It's been very easy for me my whole life. I haven't chased one girl in California and I must have slept with thirty since I've been there.

"Because I didn't spend the rest of my life, you know,

praying on the graves, you tell me I don't love my family. And that means I must have killed them. That's not true!" Again, MacDonald began to sob.

"Oh, it's a lot of shit.

"I didn't kill Colette.

"And I didn't kill Kimmy and I didn't kill Kristy and I didn't move Colette and I didn't move Kimmy and I didn't move Kristy and I gave them mouth-to-mouth breathing and I loved them then and I love them now and you can shove all your fucking evidence right up your ass!"

Three days later, the grand jury returned an indictment charging Jeffrey MacDonald with three counts of murder.

PART FIVE

CRY ONE FOR THEM

If
, in the future, you should light a candle, light one for them.

And if, in the future, you should say a prayer, say one for them.

And if, in the future, you should cry a tear, cry one for them.

—from the closing argument to the jury delivered by Assistant U.S. Attorney James L. Blackburn in the trial of Jeffrey MacDonald

Je
ffrey MacDonald flew back to California as soon as he had
f
inished testifying. On Friday, January 24, 1975, he took Joy 'the most sensual woman I've ever seen") for a ride on his
b
oat.

When they came back, in midafternoon, Jeff lifted weights
a
nd did sit-ups while Joy watched. Hi
s mother stopped by, w
hich was not uncommon. She and Joy were sitting on the
c
ouch, chatting, while Jeff, in his underwear, was starting to flip t
h
rough the day's mail, when there came a knock on the door.

He opened it to find three FBI men standing there. T
hey told h
im the grand jury had just h
anded up the indictment. After d
ressing, he was taken, in handcuf
fs, to the Orange County jail, w
here he was held on $500,000 b
ail. A week later, following a h
earing at which more than a dozen doctors, nurses, nuns, an
d p
olicemen testified to his good cha
racter and professional skill— an
d at which, in open court, he was compared, not unfavorably,
t
o Albert Schweitzer—bail was reduced to $100,000. This was
i
mmediately pledged by friends and colleagues, allowing him to
r
esume his normal life.

The nuns who ran St. Mary's
Hospital believed Jeff MacDona
ld to be a magnificent human being and saw no reason to allow his unfortunate misunderstanding with the Justice Department to
i
nterfere with his performance of professional duties. Despite the
i
ndictment, he was permitted to continue as director of emergency services. There seemed ne
ver the slightest doubt in the m
ind of anyone who knew him
there: he was a tragic figure, a
lmost heroic in his strength and tranquillity under duress. The
i
ndictment, it was widely believed at St. Mary's, was nothing
more than a manifestation of
how the judicial system could be
perverted by the sick and evil whims of a single man—in th case, Jeffs ex-father-in-law, Freddy Kassab.

A trial, he told everyone, would of course demonstrate h
is
innocence, but the indictment itself was such an outrage,
wa
s clearly unjust, invalid and u
nconstitutional, that the charges
should never come to trial.

From San Francisco, where he had begun to teach law at
an
inner city school called Golden Gate University, Bernie
Segal
had assured his most favored a
nd famous client that the indite
ment would be quickly dismissed.

Segal began to file motions
, seeking dismissal on constiti
tional grounds. He argued, first, that the indictment constitute double jeopardy because MacDo
nald had already been cleared on
the murder charges by the Arm
y. Secondly, Segal contended the
the indictment, coming almost five years after the original filin
g
of charges, was a violation of MacDonald's right to a speed
y
trial, as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, Fed
eral District Court Judge Frank
lin
T
. Dupree, Jr., denied both motions, ruling that, unlike general court-martial, the Article 32 hearing had been merely a investigative proceeding and thus not the equivalent of the jur
y
trial which would have made the principle of double jeopard
y
applicable.

Judge Dupree also declared the speedy trial claim invalid finding that this right did not perta
in until after a person had been
"accused" of a crime, and that
, "in this case [accusation] did
not occur until the indictment had been returned."

After also denying a m
otion for change of venue, Judge
Dupree set a trial date of August 18, 1975.

His new circumstances began to affect Jef
frey MacDonald's
personal life. For months, hi
s relationship with Joy had been
deteriorating, and now the added pressures which arose in the wake of the indictment contributed to its total dissolution.

"We were at the point of starting to talk about seeing
other
people," MacDonald said, "
and then when I wouldn't see her
on a Friday night I'd go crazy and
try to call her and try to find
out where she'd been. She did date several people, one of then-being someone who played on the Los Angeles Rams.

"We had gone to one of t
hose big basketball games that I
organized, in which the Long Beach Heart Association that I had become very prominent in, was putting on this charity basketball game; and our team was playing the Los Angeles Rams football team in basketball. We had this big crowd in Long Beach City College gym, and we had cheerleaders on both sides, and then we had rented a country club for a cocktail party afterwards that the Rams came to.

"Joy, of course, was this extravagantly sensual person with a tremendous body. And I was dancing with everyone at the party, and Joy just decided, well, she was gonna, too. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.