'A Wilderness of Error': Jeffrey MacDonald, Chris Watts and other troubling instances of family annihilators
FX's latest limited docuseries centers on the murders of former Army Green Beret surgeon, Jeffrey MacDonald's wife, and two daughters in 1970 and everything that has happened since. When military officers responded after MacDonald called for help from his Fort Bragg home in North Carolina in the early hours on February 17, 1970, they found a brutal scene. MacDonald's wife, Colette, who was pregnant when she died, was lying on the floor in the couple's bedroom. She had been repeatedly clubbed, with both her arms broken and stabbed 21 times with an ice pick and 16 times with a knife.
Their daughters, five-year-old Kimberly and two-year-old Kristen, were found dead in their respective beds. Kimberly was clubbed in the head and stabbed in the neck with a knife between eight and 10 times, while Kristen stabbed 33 times with a knife and 15 times with an ice pick.
MacDonald blamed the murders on four intruders, including a blonde woman wearing a floppy hat and heels. MacDonald claimed that she was holding a candle and saying “Kill the pigs. Acid’s groovy," while the murders were being committed. His claims were initially believed after an initial Army Article 32 hearing dismissed the charges against MacDonald. However, Colette's stepfather Freddy Kassab -- who initially supported MacDonald -- suspected that his son-in-law was, in fact, guilty and sought to reopen the case and put the case before a grand jury. In 1975, Kassab's request was granted and in the trial that followed, MacDonald was found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree murder in 1979. He was sentenced to three life terms in prison.
The MacDonald family murders and the eventual trials that got MacDonald convicted and imprisoned are the focus of 'A Wilderness of Error' which is based on Errol Morris's book of the same name. While Morris believes MacDonald may be innocent, others do not.
Cases like Jeffrey MacDonald may be few but they are not as rare as we might like to believe. Perhaps the most recent and notable case of family murders is the Watts family murders that took place in 2018. Chris Watts eventually confessed to killing his wife and two daughters and it was believed he had done so he could begin a new life with his mistress. A Netflix documentary arriving later this month centers on the Watts family murders.
The individuals who kill their family members are known as family annihilators. A Howard Journal of Criminal Justice study has found that these individuals are mostly men and that there were four types of family annihilators: the self-righteous, the disappointed, the anomic, and the paranoid family annihilators. Both Chris Watts and Jeffrey MacDonald are believed to be paranoid family annihilators. In both cases, the men were involved in affairs and their pregnant wives suspected them as well.
There are other famous cases of paranoid family annihilators, most notably that of Scott Peterson who murdered his wife and unborn son in 2002. Laci Peterson was first reported missing in 2002. It was only in 2003 that the remains of Laci and the late-term fetus of their baby were found. Following this Peterson was arrested. He was convicted of the murders in 2004 and sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2005. On August 24, 2020, the death penalty for Peterson was overturned, though his conviction was upheld.
Other examples of paranoid family annihilators include John List and John Sharpe. List killed his wife, mother, and three children at their home in Westfield, New Jersey, in 1971. He disappeared and assumed a new identity, remarried, eluding justice for nearly eighteen years. He was apprehended in 1989 and was convicted on five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole. The Sharpe murders took place in Australia, with Sharpe killing his pregnant wife and 20-month-old daughter. Reportedly, Sharpe did not want another child and some believe his wife had discovered his sexual abuse of their daughter.
'A Wilderness of Error' will continue airing the final two episodes on FX on October 2, at 8/7c.