'A Wilderness of Error': What did Jeffrey MacDonald do in years between family's murders and his conviction?
Fifty years ago, in February 1970, Army surgeon Jeffrey MacDonald's wife and two daughters were killed in a brutal way in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. It was MacDonald who had called for help in the early hours of February 17th that year and when four military officers responded to the scene, they came across MacDonald lying unconscious near his wife, Colette, who had been repeatedly clubbed, with both her arms broken and stabbed 21 times with an ice pick and 16 times with a knife. Colette had been pregnant at the time.
Their two daughters, five-year-old Kimberly and two-year-old Kristen were found in their respective beds. Kimberly had been clubbed in the head and stabbed in the neck with a knife between eight and 10 times while Kristen was stabbed 33 times with a knife and 15 times with an ice pick.
When the murders were discovered, MacDonald blamed the attacks on a group of four intruders, including three men and one blonde woman wearing a floppy hat, who chanted "Kill the pigs. Acid’s groovy," while the murders were being committed. That woman was later discovered to be 18-year-old Helena Stoeckley, who was a well-known drug user and the daughter of retired army personnel. Stoeckley herself had stated that she was at the house during the murders, but her story changed over the years.
The same year, an initial Army Article 32 hearing into MacDonald's possible guilt was overseen by Colonel Warren Rock. On October 13, 1970, Colonel Rock issued a report recommending that charges be dismissed against MacDonald because they were "not true," and he recommended that civilian authorities investigate Stoeckley. MacDonald was also discharged honorably from the Army upon which he returned to New York City where he worked.
MacDonald returned to work as a doctor, briefly in New York City, and then moved to Long Beach, California in July 1971, where he was an emergency room physician at the St. Mary Medical Center. He even gave television interviews. During his appearance on the December 15, 1970 episode of The Dick Cavett Show, he made jokes and complained about the investigation and its focus on him as a suspect. It was this interview that acted as a catalyst that turned his in-laws, Freddy and Mildred Kassab against him as they noted inconsistencies in his statements.
In July 1974, a Federal judge acted on a citizen's criminal complaint by Kassab and others, by putting the case before a grand jury. During that trial, MacDonald was found guilty in the second degree for the murders of Colette and Kimberly, and guilty in the first degree for the murder of Kristen. He was sentenced to three life terms.
MacDonald's legal team appealed the conviction on the grounds that he was not given the right to a fair and speedy trial, which is protected by the Sixth Amendment. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the conviction in 1980 because the murders and the eventual trials were separated by nine years. Following this, he was released from prison in August of 1980, and he returned to his work as a physician. However, the Supreme Court later determined in 1982 that MacDonald had not been denied the right to a speedy trial and was rearrested and returned to Federal prison and his original sentence of three consecutive life terms was reinstated with time already served since his 1979 conviction. Other appeals were denied in 1983, 1985, 1991, and 1992. MacDonald got married in 2002 to Kathryn Kurichh after the two developed a friendship after Kathryn wrote to him in prison asking how she could help him prove his innocence.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, he's currently incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. In order to get parole, he would have had to admit to the murders. He's now 76 years old.
'A Wilderness of Error' will continue with the final two episodes on FX on October 2, at 8/7c.
