NC - MacDonald family murders at Fort Bragg, 1970 - Jeffrey MacDonald innocent?

[madeleine]

He's exactly where he belongs and I hope he stays there.I know how much he loves and needs to be in the spotlight but I am sick and tired of it.Too many reasons why I believe he did it.Yes,maybe the police screwed up,like it happens in many cases...that doesn't make him INNOCENT though...
The fact that Michael Peterson (staircase MURDERER) is free now makes me wonder what's happening to the justice system lately and I am scared we will see another monster like JMcD free as well in the future.

 

[madeleine]

Oh my goodness, people confess all of the time to crimes they didnt commit. Especially when they are as unbalanced and lost as HS. She called the judge at home to tell him that MacDonalds attorneys were trying to kill her didnt she? Or the DA was? Or the judge?

Credible, no.

MacDonald claimed he had killed that generic black guy about 18 months after the crime-remember? That is what he told Colette's parents. They couldnt understand why he did something like that and why he wouldnt use the guy to lead LE to everyone else....then he confessed that he lied about that story. Oh and he was headed to Russia to be the Army Team Doctor to the Army's boxing team. Oops that was a lie to....

MacDonald is getting what he wants again-he is shining the spotlight back on himself. He isnt getting out-I remember all of the hoopla about him caving and going to his parole hearing.

@bold

that was a huge red flag for me....how ridiculous was that,I thought he was smarter than that...but then I got it....it wasn't about him being smart or not,it was about him being so arrogant and thinking he can get away with everything!

 

[rosierider]

I will no longer presume that he is guilty based on Joe McGinniss' book Fatal Vision.

 

[Cappuccino]

I might just about believe MacDonald if his story about what happened that night wasn't so ridiculous. Candle wielding hippies chanting "kill the pigs" and "acid is groovy"....uh huh. Then there's defense "investigator" Ted Gunderson, a man whose credibility is close to zero outside the conspiracy theory circuit.

 

[Fluttershy]

A new article from the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...8bc1c6-2da8-11e2-89d4-040c9330702a_story.html

 

[katydid23]

A new article from the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...8bc1c6-2da8-11e2-89d4-040c9330702a_story.html

GREAT article. Thanks for posting the link. Makes me feel more confident that this appeal will be denied.

 

[hollyjokers]

Joe McGinness has a new short story, Final Vision, coming out on Wednesday, $2.99 on amazon & byliner.com. I think its sort of a rebuttal to Errol Morris' book.

 

[hollyjokers]

That wapo article was excellent!

 

[Nova]

A new article from the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...8bc1c6-2da8-11e2-89d4-040c9330702a_story.html

UNBELIEVABLY GREAT LINK, one that quickly demolishes Errol Morris' arguments. (I'm still heartsick about Morris because I normally admire him very much.)

Among other points, the author of the article makes the crucial point on what motivates journalists, and their need for a "new" story. At this point, Dr. M's guilt is old news; the only story worth telling is that, "Oops! Jeff was innocent after all", and that's why so much recent media has been so kind to the killer.

Fluttershy, I repeated your link at a private forum, giving you and WS full credit. If this was wrong of me, please PM me and I will fix my error. Nothing was "borrowed" but the actual link itself, of course.

 

[believe09]

from that BRILLIANT Washington Post link:

“There were wounds in Kristen’s chest that didn’t have corresponding defects in the clothes,” Murtagh says. He talks in lawyer speak. What he means is: Kristy was probably killed as she slept, by someone who first lifted her pajama top, as if to better identify the location of vital organs. She is knifed front and back, with anatomical precision, along the heart, the aortic arch and the pulmonary vein.

And:

But there’s another, more important, hair sample that Morris’s book doesn’t spend much time on at all. He draws no inferences from it. It is a broken hair from a male Caucasian, with blood on it, found at the crime scene in Colette MacDonald’s hand. At trial in 1979, experts could not positively identify its source, and defense lawyers made much of this failure, suggesting this was proof of an outside murderer. The imprint of the Real Killer!
This was one of the hairs analyzed many years later at the behest of the defense, under more sophisticated tests, with clearer results.


The hair was Jeffrey MacDonald’s.

And at the end of the day, the pajama top bothers Morris too.

Case closed, MacDonald. Slither back under your rock.

 

[robinparten]

The Washington Post article was excellent, yet it left me feeling so disheartened about our legal system. Basically, several people have had to make it a main mission in their lives to ensure that MacDonald stays behind bars. Where does it all end? When can the victim's family ever feel that it is over, and stop living it over and over and over again? Even though he has been behind bars for many years (and I believe he will never get out), the fact that he can continue to play the legal system like a fiddle is disgusting. It's like filing a frivilous lawsuit, only no one can ever say enough is enough.

 

[Madeleine74]

Fantastic article! Can't refute the physical evidence. Did y'all notice the bit where the Post article author mentioned the hair with bloody root that was in Collette's hand... it was DNA tested by the defense and the DNA of the hair matched Jeffrey MacDonald! D'oh!

 

[borndem]

Nor can I. I have studied this case in great detail; MacDonald been did have a small bump on his head (Colette probably struck back at him), but this was nothing that would have knocked him unconscious.

ITA, rashomon. I think JM was tired & wired, and coming to bed & finding his side wet from Kimberley's (not Kristy's -- the urine test pointed to it being Kim's) urine really pizzed him off.

He may have yanked Kimmy out of the bed, or said he was gonna spank her for it, etc., and Collette tried to stop him; he hit Collette, and she then went into the utility room to find a weapon or to get away from him and found the club; she took the club and hit JR in the forehead which put him into a red-hot rage; he got the club from her and started on Collette; either he then hit Kim, or she got in the way or tried to stop her Daddy from hitting Mommy, and she got hit with it -- hard. And then it was on... I don't think Collette had a chance to hit him again, at all, after that first lick she delivered to his forehead. He became a murdering machine.

 

[believe09]

I wish I could shake Brian Murtagh's hand.

 

[Nova]

The Washington Post article was excellent, yet it left me feeling so disheartened about our legal system. Basically, several people have had to make it a main mission in their lives to ensure that MacDonald stays behind bars. Where does it all end? When can the victim's family ever feel that it is over, and stop living it over and over and over again? Even though he has been behind bars for many years (and I believe he will never get out), the fact that he can continue to play the legal system like a fiddle is disgusting. It's like filing a frivilous lawsuit, only no one can ever say enough is enough.

As the old saying goes, "Ya want it done right or ya want it done quick?"

The numerous appeals over four decades in the MacDonald case are due to (i) it being a high-profile and sensational crime that continues to attract supporters to JM's cause; and (ii) errors by the prosecution (both prosecutions, really, since the case was tried by two, different government agencies).

I don't think this case is at all typical. I am as convinced as anyone of JM's guilt and I hope this is his final appeal. That doesn't mean we need despair of the system.

The number of appeals fell quite a bit during the 1990s (I believe--don't quote me--that SCOTUS eliminated some appellate rights). Nearly 80% of appeals are denied in full and another 5-7% are denied in part. Even the ones that succeed most often deal only with the mandatory sentencing calculation--not innocence or guilt--and sometimes end with the defendant getting MORE time, not less.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/ascii/fca99.txt

One of my best friends is an appellate public defender in juvenile court. Her experience is that appellate courts will do back flips to avoid overturning a decision, especially one by a jury.

Their entire office of dozens of public defenders gets an appeal heard once in a blue moon. Actually getting a case overturned almost never happens except on TV. They think of their jobs as working to keep abuses from getting worse, not as actually getting innocent people off.

 

[katydid23]

I was at a small luncheon on Friday, and for some unknown reason, somebody brought up this case. Nobody knew very much about it, but they began to discuss their beliefs that he may have been railroaded. ullhair:

I let it go on for awhile, trying to sit it out. But they were saying that McDonalds new wife was so articulate and sincere, and they said that WHO would sit in jail and declare their innocence for decades, unless it was the truth. :what:

So I calmly, measuredly, spewed forth a few indisputable facts, like the irrefutable blood trails, the pajama knife holes and his pj fibers in the baby's bedroom. It grew silent, and we went back to enjoying our shrimp cocktails.

 

[Madeleine74]

LOL Katydid! That's priceless. I got into one of those type of discussions a long time ago over the OJ Simpson debacle. The person thought he was innocent. Well within 5 min I spouted off a litany of physical evidence that no one could overcome. You'd have to be a drooling idiot to believe conspiracy over a long list of evidence. /good times.

Nova, Very interesting about your friend in the public defender's office. I've heard getting a conviction overturned is a very steep mountain to climb. I have mixed emotions about it. There are some cases that are so obviously wrong (Ryan Ferguson of MO) that one hopes there will be justice and another year won't go by with an obviously innocent man sitting in prison for a crime he didn't commit, being subjected to a very flawed system.

MacDonald isn't one of them, of course. He can't overcome the physical evidence and never will. But what else does he have to do with his time? Of course he'll utilize every resource to appeal and keep going. He's got nothing to lose by doing it and it keeps him busy and allows him to play the role of victim. He won't win this appeal, he's going nowhere, and eventually he will run out of options. I don't begrudge there being a path consisting of many possible avenues to appeal a conviction--it's needed to keep the balance in place. In the case of someone innocent you want them to have a fighting chance.

 

[Nova]

I was at a small luncheon on Friday, and for some unknown reason, somebody brought up this case. Nobody knew very much about it, but they began to discuss their beliefs that he may have been railroaded. ullhair:

I let it go on for awhile, trying to sit it out. But they were saying that McDonalds new wife was so articulate and sincere, and they said that WHO would sit in jail and declare their innocence for decades, unless it was the truth. :what:

So I calmly, measuredly, spewed forth a few indisputable facts, like the irrefutable blood trails, the pajama knife holes and his pj fibers in the baby's bedroom. It grew silent, and we went back to enjoying our shrimp cocktails.

Good for you, Katy!

I would have asked them, "What else has MacDonald had to do for 40 years BUT declare his innocence?". And then I might have mentioned how unpopular the killers of toddlers are in prison. MacDonald will never confess.

 

[Nova]

LOL Katydid! That's priceless. I got into one of those type of discussions a long time ago over the OJ Simpson debacle. The person thought he was innocent. Well within 5 min I spouted off a litany of physical evidence that no one could overcome. You'd have to be a drooling idiot to believe conspiracy over a long list of evidence. /good times.

We lost a couple of good friends when my husband (the shy, quiet one) finally went off about their belief in Simpson's innocence. I couldn't really be mad.

Nova, Very interesting about your friend in the public defender's office. I've heard getting a conviction overturned is a very steep mountain to climb. I have mixed emotions about it. There are some cases that are so obviously wrong (Ryan Ferguson of MO) that one hopes there will be justice and another year won't go by with an obviously innocent man sitting in prison for a crime he didn't commit, being subjected to a very flawed system.

Ryan Ferguson is the poster boy for wrongful conviction. The fact that he is still behind bars should tell us everything we need to know about our appellate system. I've always been one to answer my jury summons every time, but lately I've wondered whether I trust the system enough to be able to take that vow.

MacDonald isn't one of them, of course. He can't overcome the physical evidence and never will. But what else does he have to do with his time? Of course he'll utilize every resource to appeal and keep going. He's got nothing to lose by doing it and it keeps him busy and allows him to play the role of victim. He won't win this appeal, he's going nowhere, and eventually he will run out of options. I don't begrudge there being a path consisting of many possible avenues to appeal a conviction--it's needed to keep the balance in place. In the case of someone innocent you want them to have a fighting chance.

Exactly. I'm afraid I posted much the same about Dr. M before I read your post.

 

[Fluttershy]

I think lot of people have a very set image in their head of what families with domestic violence problems, especially those that lead to murder look like. Poor, co-habiting, previous convictions, drug problems, little education etc, etc.

No one likes the idea that families that have these things happen can be just like their own.
MacDonald was a nice middle class Army doctor who went to Princeton, with a nice middle class family. The world doesn't feel like a safe place when he can suddenly turn on his whole family and then lie about it.