From the start, he had claimed that the murders had been committed by a band of Manson-like intruders who had burst into the apartment in the middle of the night, in February 1970, stabbing him and knocking him unconscious and then slaughtering his pregnant wife and two young daughters.
The Army had cleared him of all charges nine months after the crimes, following the longest pre-court-martial hearing in military history, but his dead wife's stepfather—at first his most impassioned defender—had turned bitterly against him, MacDonald said, and had hounded him throughout the years that followed.
After a 1975 indictment, the charges had again been dismissed— this time by a federal appeals court, on grounds that he had already been denied his constitutional right to a speedy trial—but the U.S. Supreme Court had recently vacated that ruling, clearing the way for the impending trial, which would be, MacDonald said, "an obscene charade."
"It's inconceivable to me," he said over a second pot of coffee, "that more than nine years after the night my family was killed and I came so close to being killed myself, I can still pick up a newspaper and see myself called a murder suspect in the headlines.
"My only consolation is that in a few weeks it will finally be over. For nine years I've been haunted—both by the loss of my family, and by this ridiculous accusation that for some reason I killed them myself. The normal assumption might be that this is the sort of thing that gets easier with time. Well, I'll tell you something. It doesn't.
"It's always there. You speak at a medical conference and it's there. You ask a girl out and it's there. You wonder, 'How much does she know? How much should I tell her on the first date?'
"And for the past three months—knowing it would definitely come to trial—I've been under more stress than at any time since 1970. I'm not sleeping, I'm not eating well"—he pointed to his half-empty plate—"I'm showing irritability at work. It's going to be a terrible ordeal to go back there, to relive the whole thing, but at this point, in a way, I'm almost looking forward to the trial. Maybe this will finally clear the air.
After the meal, Jeffrey MacDonald took me back to his condominium. There was a Jacuzzi just off his master bedroom, wall-to-wall carpeting, a lot of glass. Glass-topped tables, sliding glass doors, and large mirrors lining the walls. I had never before been in a home in which such a large percentage of wall space had been given over to mirrors.
Hot sunlight shimmered on the water beyond the dock but air conditioning kept the interior of the condominium cool. He poured me a glass of fruit juice and asked if I would like to go with him to North Carolina, in order to write a book about the case.
For years, h
e said, he had resisted such an
idea, refusing all who had approached him with book or movie proposals. Publicity of any sort in regard to the deaths of his wife and daughters caused him pain. He had struggled hard to put the past behind him and leave it there. But now that this would no longer be possible—now that his nightmare finally was building toward its climax—he'd changed his mind. He was frustrated. He was angry. He felt abused by the judicial process. Perhaps, after all, it was time for the full story to be told.
A few days later I received an invitation to a party. It had been sent by the Long Beach Police Officers Association.
Dear Friend,
As you may already know, the time is drawing near for the trial of Jeffrey R. MacDonald vs. the U.S.
A group of "Jeff's Friends" has organized in an effort to lend both financial and emotional support during this crucial time. We have planned a dinner, a dance, and raffle as a means of showing our support. The date to remember is June 18, a Monday. There will be a sumptuous gourmet dinner at Bogart's in Marina Pacifica beginning at 7
p.m
, and to round out the evening there will be a dance in Bogart's Disco beginning at 8
p.m.
Tickets for the dinner are $100 per person, which includes admission to the disco. For those who are able to give more, there will be a Golden Circle Table, seating with Jeff, for $500 per person, which also includes admission to the disco.
During the dance there will be a lively auction of unusual one-of-a-kind items and services (bring your checkbook). We will also draw and announce the winner of the Hawaii Vacation for 2.
The evening promises to be filled with good friends, good fun, good feelings. So please circle June 18th oh your calendar and help us send Jeff back to North Carolina on an emotional high.
It was a perfectly lovely evening in every way. The food was superb, fine wines were available, and at the Golden Circle Table there was no shortage of champagne. For three dollars, one could even purchase a bright yellow bumper sticker which
Said
free the fort bragg one.
Everyone to whom I spoke—doctors, policemen, former girlfriends, even an old Princeton roommate—exuded admiration and affection for Dr. MacDonald. Superlatives were the order of the night. He was the best and the brightest, the strongest and gentlest, the most loving and most worthy of love. Everyone thought the world of Jeff. He seemed almost too good to be true.
I watched as the subject of this intense adulation moved slowly from table to table, chatting easily, smiling often, his new girlfriend, Sheree Sizelove, glowing softly at his side. She was twenty-two, blond and cheerful, and just launched on her career as an American Airlines stewardess.
Dressed in an impeccably tailored cream-colored suit and charming everyone in his path, MacDonald had about himself something of the aura of Robert Redford in
The Candidate
—with, perhaps, faint, distant echoes of Gatsby.
In addition to directing the fourteen-doctor group that handled all emergency services for St. Mary's, he was an instructor at the UCLA medical school, author of a forthcoming textbook on emergency medical techniques, founder and director of the first Long Beach Paramedical Squadron, medical director of the Long Beach Grand Prix auto race, past president of the Southern California chapter of the Heart Association, the first person ever granted honorary lifeti
me membership in the Long Beach
Police Officers Association, and a nationally known lecturer on the subject of recognition and treatment of child abuse.
Whichever he was, victim or killer—and there did not seem to be a middle ground—Jeffrey MacDonald had clearly succeeded in putting a great deal of time and space between himself and the events of February 17, 1970.
In the lotus land of Southern California he had insulated himself behind layer upon layer of wealth, prestige, creature comfort, and professional accomplishment.
Yet now, across all that time and space, the past had reached out to claim him. From almost a decade ago, from 3,000 miles away, voices were calling him back.
Back to the darkest hours of a cold and rainy February night and to the cramped little apartment at 544 Castle Drive in which his wife and daughters had lived the final, terrible moments of their lives.
Jeffrey MacDonald had no choice. He had to go. Even before they raffled off the trip to Hawaii, I had decided to go with him: back to North Carolina to live with him during the trial. And then, perhaps, further back, into the past, along whatever tangled paths I might discover, to wherever it was they might lead.
PART ONE
THE SHADOW OF DEATH
Let that day be darkness;
let not God regard it from above,
neither let the light shine upon it.
Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it;
let a cloud dwell upon it;
let the blackness of the day terrify it.
As for that night, let darkness seize upon it;
let it not be joined unto the days of the year,
let it not come into the number of the months.
—Job, 3
:4
-6
On May 31, 1963, from her mother and stepfather's apartment overlooking Washington Square in New York City, Colette Stevenson, who was twenty years old and had just completed her sophomore year at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, wrote a letter to her boyfriend, Jeffrey MacDonald, who was about to finish his second year at Princeton.
My darling,
Just a short note to tell you what I could say briefly (i.e.,
I
need you) and something which will take a lifetime to say—
I
love you.
Whenever
I
get depressed here, or impatient to do something, I take out some of your letters. Then I realize that any boredom now of mine, any spur of the moment ideas about jumping on a bus to see you, are important now because I'm not with you—but with all this summer and all our lives,
I
can at least leave you alone long enough to get some good marks
on
your exams.
It's just that knowing you are so close—only an hour and a half away—it's much worse than being at Skidmore. You are so close but I don't want to come down. I
do want
to come down but I can't let my selfishness get the best of me this time. I rationalize and say it won't be long, but darling that doesn't help because I miss you until I am in your arms again.
This might sound a little blunt coming from your shy, demure girlfriend, but at this exact moment
I
wish
I
had my
tongue in your mouth. I wish I could be with you, loving you with every part of myself. I miss you, sweetheart, so much.
I've been thinking a lot about this summer and about riding in a car with you again and being with you again and loving you (still) (yet) (forever) and I'm getting excited . . .
Oh, by the way, at the risk of sounding very ultra-redundant again—I adore you.
Yours forever, Colette
p.s. Hope your tests are going O.K. I'm thinking of you all day, every day.
p.p.s. You've just
got
to read
Lord of the Flies.
It was really great.
She got pregnant that summer and they were married in September in a small Catholic church in Greenwich Village. She dropped out of Skidmore and they rented a house in Princeton, where Kimberly, their first daughter, was born in April of 1964.
He left Princeton at the end of his junior year to enroll in medical school. Their second daughter, Kristen, was born during his third year at Northwestern.
He completed his internship in June of 1969 and was inducted into the Army on July 1. In September, following a physician's basic training course at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and paratroop training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was assigned to duty as a medical officer at Green Beret headquarters, Fort Bragg.
Colette and the children joined him there. They moved into a little garden apartment at the end of a row of garden apartments in a married officers' housing area known as Corregidor Courts. The address was 544 Castle Drive.
At Christmas, in a card sent to friends from Northwestern, Colette said:
We are having a great, all expense paid vacation in the Army. It looks as if Jeff will be here in North Carolina for the entire two years, which is an immense load off my mind at least. Life has never been so normal nor so happy. Jeff is home every day at 5 and most days even comes home for lunch—By the way, been having such a good time lately that we are expecting a son in July.
It rained in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on the night of Monday, February 16, 1970, and into the early hours of Tuesday morning.
It had been raining off and on for a week. A cold, demoralizing February rain which had turned the sandy soil muddy but which had brought no new life to the brown winter grass.
At Fort Bragg, situated less than ten miles from downtown Fayetteville, the night had begun uneventfully. The military police patrol assigned to the Corregidor Courts housing area had responded to only one call since coming on duty at 11:30
p.m.
and that had been from a captain having trouble with his oil burner. At least half a dozen times the two-man patrol had driven past 544 Castle Drive and had neither seen nor heard anything out of the ordinary. On a Monday night in February, the combination of cold and rain apparently was enough to have kept the streets almost deserted.
Then, at 3:40
a.m
., a Fayetteville telephone operator received a call from a man who asked in a very faint voice that the military police and an ambulance be sent to 544 Castle Drive.