This case is what got me interested in true crime.
I wouldn't speculate one way or the other about the pathology of Jeffrey MacDonald. I believe he is somewhat narcisstic. I think most people when put under a microscope will come out with some type of diagnosible disorder.
I am not convinced either way of MacDonald's guilt or innocence. I am very convinced he was not given a fair trial. There are so many reversible errors in the trial that a first year law student would have ordered a new trial. But since the appeal goes to the sitting judge at the trial... no such thing was ordered. For him to grant a new trial would be an admission of poor ruling and poor performance as a judge.
Discovery was witheld from defense, the judge was the former father-in-law of a member of the prosecution team, and the prosecutor was allowed to interogate rather than cross exam MacDonald on the stand. His questions would have been an automatically sustained objection in any other court but this judge's court. "If the evidence shows (fill in the blank) do you have an explanation for that?" Every one of his questions for long periods of time were just like that.
NOBODY can prove a negative, but more importantly no defendent is charged with proving his innocence. And the questions were worded so that false "evidence" was sometimes inserted into the questioning and Mr. MacDonald was charged to explain how it got there. Even authentic evidence cannot be explained by an innocent man. Yet the questions were worded to make him explain or prove himself a liar. If he could explain... he MUST have done it. If he was just guessing... only the guilty would surmise a decent explanation. If he could not explain... it "proved" he was a lying killer. It was a complete play on words designed to literally trick the jury into hearing something they were not. Yet the judge allowed a completely ILLEGAL round of questioning despite any objections by the defense.
As for Mr. McGinnis... He didn't just deceive Jeff MacDonald. He fabricated nearly HALF of the "facts" in his book. He introduced some "amphetamine addicted motive" that was completely unsupported by any evidence and he was compelled at the civil trial to admit he made it up as a form of "poetic license".
But the accuracy of the book wasn't even the issue in the civil trial. The issue was whether the author violated his contract with Dr. M, a contract which gave the author unlimited access to Dr. M's defense, based upon Dr. M's assumption that such access would convince the author of Dr. M's innocence. Was the author obligated to tell Dr. M as he became convinced of Dr. M's guilt? Dr. M says yes. The publisher and author say no. The jury never got to decide.
Au contraire... the accuracy of the book WAS the issue. But MacDonald couldn't sue for libel or defamation from prison since it would go nowhere. And he since he had contracted McGinnis to do the book with an open ended agreement about the author's conclusions, he couldn't sue for breech of contract. He sued for fraud. And it was McGinnis that ended the trial before it came to conclusion and settled because he himself was forced to admit on the stand that he, Joe McGinnis, did not believe MacDonald had killed his family.
The FOIA has opened the files from the case and found enormous discrepencies, exculpatory evidence that was buried including blond wig hairs, candle wax, statements from MPs on the scene admitting to altering the scene before photos were taken. A glass with remnants of chocolate milk from the refrigerator that contains unidentified fingerprints that are also inside the refrigerator was found and logged. The blood type of the urine on the sheets in the master bedroom was found to be that of the other child, and not the child prosecutors contend was in the bed with her mother. There are unidentified hairs not belonging to any member of the family that were found clutched in the two-year-old's hand. And there have been confessions from two people, not just one mentally disturbed woman, recorded. One came from a young man dying after an accident. When the man he confessed to reported the confession to police, some checking revealed that the dying man was the first person named by the woman who had confessed all along.
