Fatal Vision or Fatal Justice - The Case of Jeffrey MacDonald

nineteen sixty nine, the city of Los Angeles wasn't fear because they knew that there was a killer on the loose.

They had evidence of it. Someone had gone into home in a very upscale area in LA and had butchered five people. It was terrifying. But you know, that case resonated not just in LA but all over the US. There were stories that were written, there were fears that were expressed in the news. Who was this? Who would

do this? But all the way over on the other side of the United States, in North Carolina, Fort Bragg, to be very specific, there was another mass homicide that had been committed and it had eerie connections, at least seemingly on the surface, to those nights back in August of sixty nine. Six months later, terror would revisit the country and people had questions, and still to this day, this question still linger. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this

is body bags. Dave. You and I were kids when the case cases that we're going to discuss today went down. I really have no memory of the so called Jeffrey MacDonald case. From a real time.

another one on the way. And here is this green Bray doctor who you know, calls nine well, I don't know they'd have nine one one, but called whatever version it was back then to call for emergency.

They were frightening to the people taking the calls, you know, And anyway, so Jeffrey McDonald claims that, And I mentioned this to you in the prep because something has always fascinated me about this case with regard to Jeffrey McDonald. Again, remember, this is a man who claims he tried to defend his family and they and they were murdered, and that he is perfectly innocent. He didn't do anything wrong other

than not defend his wife and kids. But he always starts the story with a couple of different things depending on who he's telling it to. I believe when he was on Dick Cavot show talking about the murders, he mentioned watching a late night TV show, you know, but he talks about washing dishes at two am. Always thought the reason he shares something like that, who cares that you were washing dishes at two am? Who cares? But it was to show like he's this he is the all.

He's such a good guy. This green Bereat doctor was washing dishes at two in the morning because he didn't want his pregnant wife to wake up to it in the morning. This is a good guy.

was going on at that particular time, that means that I'm espousing the truth. And of course, you know, when you're an investigator and you look at someone and they're going through this traumatic event and they can give you those kinds of details at that moment in time, you kind of raise your eyebrow. Because I've sat across from people that have been in the midst of an attack and they have I've had people over the course of

my career I try to talk to and I don't want to say that they were catatonic, where you know they've got the fixed stare where they're looking like beyond you.

But it feels like I've experienced that a number of times where they can't give you they're even nonverbal, And so what's fascinating is when you get that original statement from somebody that has witnessed something that was attacked, perhaps the themselves in the case of Jeffery McDonald, how much how much detail did they give at that time where

they all over the board? Did the story change? And I mean like in a change where your brain is kind of dropping down a little bit relative to the trauma you've experienced, you have a bit more clarity, because it's amazing. Sometimes you'll have these people, you know, that will begin to kind of rapid fire and regurgitate things, and you know you can hear fear in their voice, and sometimes they don't get the facts straight, but it

doesn't mean that they're trying to deceive you. When you have somebody that sits there and they can give you these put fine points on things over and over again like this, you got major questions. And I think that's the case with Jeffery McDonald.

book called Fatal Vision written by Joe McGinnis. He was hired by Jeffer McDonald's team to be embedded with them after Jeffer MacDonald had been arrested accused of murder of his family, and they allowed Joe McGinnis to be with them in their defense at trial because they felt like Jeffer McDonald felt like, this guy will tell the truth, you know, he'll expose to the world what I've been through. And Jeffrey McDonald didn't get his wish because Joe McGinnis

wasn't bedded with him. He did see Jeffer McDonald for who he was. And the book he wrote, called Fatal Vision, actually pushes the fact that Jeffer MacDonald murdered his wife and children. After that, there were books about Jeffrey's innocence.

Fatal Justice comes to mind, a brilliant book. I don't believe everything in it, just like I don't believe everything in Fatal Vision, but I asked Jo to do because I want to know what the forensics tell you as an investigator, as a death investigator, do the forensics actually solve the crime or is it really just here's what happened. It could be his story, it might not be. That's what I want, and then I want the opinion based on the forensics. What do you believe, Joe. So I'm

going to lay this out very quickly. Jeffery McDonald made a very specific claim, and we're going to use that as Joe explains what happened to each individual in that home that night. Jeffer McDonald claims that he had washed the evening dinner dishes before deciding to go to bed. His younger daughter, Kristen, had wet his side of the bed, so he had taken her to her own bed, not wanting to wake up his wife to change it by changing the sheets. He had taken a blanket from Kristen's

room and fallen asleep up on the living room couch. Again, this is Jeffrey McDonald's story. He's asleep on the couch when he is awakened hearing Colette and Kimberly's screams and

Colette shouting Jeff, Jeff, help, why are they doing this to me? Think about that for just a minute. As he rose from the couch to go to their aid, he was attacked by three male intruders, one black and two white. The shorter of the two white men had worn light, possibly surgical gloves. A fourth intruder he described as a white female with a long blonde hair, possible wig, and wearing high heeled knee high boots and a white

floppy hat partially covering her face. The individual stood nearby holding a lighted candle and chanting quote, acid is groovy, Kill the pigs. Acid is groovy, killed the pigs, McDonald claimed. The three males then attacked him with a club and an ice pick, with the female intruder shouting hit him again. During the struggle, his pajama top was pulled over his head to his wrists, and he had to use this bound garment to ward off thrust from the ice pick.

Although eventually he was overcome by the assailants, nannock to unconscious in the living room and of the hallway leading to the bedrooms. When he regained consciousness, the intruders were gone. He stumbles from room to room, attempting mouth to mouth resuscitation on each of his daughters, to no avail. Before finding his wife. He then pulled a small pairing knife from Colette's chest and he tossed it on the floor and attempted to find her pulse. He draped the pajama

jacket over her body and phone for help. That is Jeffrey McDonald's story, Joe.

saw something that. In their time at Fort Bragg patrol in the streets, going from family structure to family structure in the married housing area, dealing with drunk gis or maybe even having to break up a few domestic disputes, there's no way they could have been prepared for what

lay before their eyes. You know, you mentioned the term just second ago, Dave, the word groovy, the idea I'm thinking about that that song from the fifth from the sixties and everything is groovy, you know, and even Liberachi. And this has almost become like a meme on the internet. He actually redoes this lot. He does it on air on his show with a bunch of these dancers that are dressed. I guess, like, I don't know what their

perception of sixties hippie culture was. Of course, they're all clean and have nice haircuts, and you know, their nails are not dirty. And they're all dancing around him as he's at his piano playing this feeling groovy. And when you mentioned this term, because we had talked about this before, that image came to mind. And now you've.

particular tried to distance himself from the Vietnam War. I can't imagine for quote unquote hippies gravitating to arguably one of the most military locations in the nation. That alone, to me is striking. And then that they could get access to the house.

He's not a damn Green Beret. He's not a Green Beret. He volunteered to be a physician assigned to special operations. I think it was I think it was fifth group, third group or fifth group, I can't remember anyway. On post at at Fort Bragg, and Fort Bragg is the center for training for RSF guys, and it still remains that way today. He was not a Green Beret. I think that that goes into this idea of this you know what you were talking about with him washing dishes.

He's like this noble warrior, you know, and you see him all festooned early on in his in his military get up that he's wearing along with his green beret. And by the way, most Green Berets that I know don't like to be referred to as green berets. That's just not something that they like. They refer to themselves as silent warriors, unlike to see who write a book all the time. The SF guys. The SF guys, you know,

they're quiet people most of the time. This guy, I can only imagine it must have been cringeworthy for them. You know, these guys have been in high intensity battles low those many years in Vietnam, and you got this guy who's showing up in this environment claiming to be one of them. And he's a physician, and Dave, none of the stuff that he's saying makes sense relative to the injuries that we see portrayed, particularly at autopsy on all three of these symptoms. Well, let's take it that way.

could actually go and see the crime scene. And when again February seventeenth, nineteen seventy his trial did not take place until nineteen seventy nine, and the jury was able to walk the crime scene. They were actually able to go in and look at what Jeffrey McDonald said happened and where it happened. This is something that has really been a problem for me in crimes where or a crime scene is destroyed. For instance, out in Idaho, the

Coburger crime scene. From the moment they destroyed that, there was no reason to destroy that house other than covering up something is all I can figure. Not accusing anybody. I'm just saying I don't I mean emotional damage to a community because there is a murder house. I understand what they're saying there. I just think that justice is more important than emotional feelings for the day.

locked Parkland down. You think about Idaho and they tear the thing down because it makes somebody sad. I'm reflecting

back right now over all of the death cases that I work, particularly homicides, Dave. You know, I've been to the same address multiple times on unrelated homicides, like I've had succession of homicides that have occurred in the same dwelling.

Those houses were never torn down, you know, and I was actually talking to a group recently in London and a former Scotland yard detective who worked for them for thirty years, and I just asked him, I said, listen, because they use the term and a lot of people use the term raising raising a location, which means to tear it down. Have you, guys ever do you in your recollection do you ever remember raising a location as a result of of homicide? And he's like, no, that's absurd,

And so you look at that reflection. You know, after all these years, Jeffrey McDonald, they were able to lock this place down and they didn't care if it, you know, made somebody feel as that they need to go to a cry corner or get their blanket or what it is there would be and go over and shake over the idea that, oh my gosh, horrible homicides took place there. That's not what they were about. They wanted to discover

the truth. And sometimes if you're absent that evidence, Dave, there's no way to go.

have my respect. And I don't picture any man allowing this to take place in his home and to only have a bump on the head and a small incision on his chest while his family is totally destroyed. I don't see that as a possibility, especially from somebody who is in the military and is trained. Whether he's dream Brayer or not, he is still a supposed to be

a man, and he's supposed to protect his family. And his story is I don't I don't understand how he could have so few injuries while there's such overkill on the girls. That's for starters. So let's get into the forensics show what based on his story. Now, when you go to a crimes when you're investigator, your death investigator, and you hit a scene like this, do you listen to his story of what happened? Or do you block that out and just let's look at the bodies and

what's going on in this house? How does that begin for you?

husband over here that has been injured. We're looking for purpose right now, because he states that these subjects came into his home and committed these crimes. This is what he says happened at in the immediate You're not gonna have all those fine details at this point in time. And at that point time, I'm gonna say, okay, fine, that's enough. I've heard enough, because I don't you know, I don't want to from a forensic standpoint, I don't

necessarily want to be encumbered by that knowledge. Now, if there's something dangerous in there, or if there's something like it, you know where you'll get cues from folks like particularly uniform officers that will roll up. They'll say things like, look, when you get to the front door, I'm just throwing this out there as an example. We had kick the door down, so you'll see wood all over the floor, you know where the door facing was knocked out, or

there's a huge puddle of blood. Be careful where you step. That's information that has great utility for me because when I go in, I want to be able to observe each one of these bodies inside to in the pristine state, pristine as it applies to the context of the crime scene.

I don't want any kind of outside element coming in. And again, going back to Tate, Lobbyanca, and specifically the Tait case, you know the cues that you know doctor Noguchi gave that he wrote about, you know in his book because he was at the scene of Tate. He said that his eyes always go up. That's the first place he looks. He doesn't look at the bodies. His

eyes always go up. He looks at the ceiling, He looks at the surroundings, and then he kind of makes he targets until he makes his way down to the body, because he wants to understand the entire environment and the context of the bodies in that environment before he makes any kind of assessment. Beyond that, and that's that's very important. And when I read that book and read that statement that's that he'd made all those years ago, it kind

of rung true. And I find it interesting. You know that we're you know that we're talking about this now with Jeffrey MacDonald. So when you enter into an environment like this nowadays, what you would do is you would probably break off into teams, and each team would handle an individual body. UH to process the body, you'd have somebody that would handle Collett's body, the wife who has just these horrendous injuries that she is sustained, Dave, the

injuries alone that collect sustained. And by the way, you've got multiple weapons involved in this. She doesn't just have stab one. She's got puncture wounds as well. And these puncture wounds arise from something you don't hear much about nowadays, and that's an ice pick, and so it's been driven into her multiple times. I've given this thought, as you know, as a as an investigator, why would she have multiple

stab wounds and multiple puncture wounds. You've got multiple weapons involved, and I think that it's to give the appearance, Dave, that you've got multiple perpetrators. So you've got somebody that is thinking about this this far in advance that Okay, not only am I going to use one knife, I'll use two knives. And let me see what else can I use? Oh yeah, an ice pick? We're not too

far removed. During that period of time when people relied on ice picks, you'd have, you know, and it would not have been like a too distant of the memory to know that. You know, probably his grandparents, maybe his parents even had had ice delivered to their home and you'd have to chip it off. So everybody had an ice pick in the house. My grandmother had several in the house. And old guys back in the day used to carry ice picks with them to defend themselves with

because they're easily concealed. They don't have the same profile as a knife. Does you know you can carry an ice pick? You know the I don't know if it was bad battally Rory Brown, but he had a razor in his shoe, I know that. But you would old guys would carry carry ice picks in their shoes. And so it's a very it's a very savvy kind of street street kind of weapon that you would use almost like a shive that's created in a prison, which is

fascinating to me. But the fact that just Collette alone is attacked on multiple planes of her body, and she is so viciously attacked Dave that you see several areas of concentrated injuries on her that are kind of varietal. They'll go, You'll have clusters here, clusters there, And it's almost an attempt, I think, to give the impression that this was a frenzied killing when it very well might not have been. All right, So.

I mean, you're really just there, here's the body, here's the evidence. What happened?

this case because one of the things I forgot to mention that not only does she have injuries that are generated by a knife and from an ice pick, she's also been beaten with a club day and so that, you know, to think about what somebody's motivation was, it sounds like something you'd hear in an acting class innovation, you know, And I don't know, I don't know what their motivation was, but I can tell you with Collette, you can actually see that the individual is highly motivated

in the sense that it's a frenzied killing and she's she's been so beaten and traumatized that she's got I think that she's been stabbed twenty one times with an ice pick, sixteen times in the neck in the chest with a knife, and her trachea, which is kind of interesting, is severed in two places. Well, you know, you might think about cutting a throat, but let's just say that

you are a physician. Anatomically, you're going to think about, well, what would be one of the ways to facilitate somebody's death, well, to get into their airway. As a matter of fact, if she even had one little sign of life in her, Dave, and the EMTs arrived, they couldn't get her intubated, like you could not put a you couldn't establish an airway on her in the field. You would have to perhaps you could go in and I've seen this happen where

you have a slice to the trachea. EMTs sometimes will go into the trauma area and create an airway there externally just to be able to inflate the lungs. Okay, So that's kind of an interesting injury, that her trachea is actually cut in two places here, Dave, anatomically, But Dave, I gotta tell you, I saw a a comment and you actually referenced it just a few months ago about Collette McDonald had apparently taken his pajama top off and

had laid it across her chest. And by the way, he also had removed apparently a paring knife from her chest, which any doctor knows that if someone has an instrument, a knife, a branch from a tree, a piece of rebar, you don't take it out, period, You leave it in place. He shouldn't know that. But yet she's got this paring knife that's laying on the floor next to her that was apparently pulled out of her chest by him. But

back to the pajama top. It's laying on top of her, and when the PD rolls up, that's not the only thing that's laying on top of her. He's laying on top of her. His head is literally resting on her chest. And to say that that his injuries that he sustained in the attack of these evil hippies that are chanting everything is groovy or where the hell killed the pigs? Yeah, acid is groovy killed the pigs? You know, he's he doesn't show signs of much signs of being a warrior as far.

referred to as the intercostal space. And doctors know this because when, for instance, when you're trying to put in like an emergency room, if you have a chest that is filled with blood. One of the things that happens in the emergency room in cases of severe trauma like car accident, that sort of thing, you make an incision in the intercostal space and you put in a test

a chest or drain. So there's actually a tube that they'll stick into the chest and it pulls all of that blood that's free floating in the chest and what would referred to as the plural spaces. Interestingly enough, that's

where this injury was, and it clipped his lung. It's a survivable injury and probably it's in my mind at least, it's one of those kinds of injuries where you're scratching your head and you're thinking, you know what, this is quite ghastly, but this is something that is not necessarily life threatening, particularly in the immediate if you've got an emergency room that's right down the road. So that's one

of the injuries that he had. And then he's got a knock on the head as well, and it created what's referred to what they eventually assessed with him as a mild concussion. You take that and compare to one of his children, which i'll speak to in a moment, that literally had a depressed skull fracture, and it looks like it was generally with the same club that was

used probably on Collette, probably on this child. And he's the entries that are really significant with McDonald, though, Dave, are the things that he had on his on his face, in his chest, and they were cuts, bruses and fingernails scratches, which of course that indicates that whoever it was that

fought him was fighting for their life. Well, you know what they say about mama bears, you know the worst that you know, male bears are terrifying, nothing like a mama bear, though if her cubs are around, in particular, it's gonna rip you to shred. She's gonna do everything that she can. And look, Colette, she's got these two precious girls that are there. She's being attacked. First off, she's trying to save her own life. She's got a life within her, Dave right, she's pregnant with her son.

She's gonna do everything she can. And I think that over the years people have put forth the idea that this all initiated perhaps as an argument between Collette and McDonald, and that I think I'd read one statement at one point in time where she had picked up an object and had thrown it at him, and he became so incensed over this that he began to, you know, attack her, which is a fascinating, fascinating when you begin to talk about physical evidence, it's being presented on his body, and Dave,

I was looking, man look, I looked at the photos of McDonald that they took at that particular time. I've seen people get more ghastly injuries in a strong windstorm than what this guy is presenting with. I'm completely unimpressed when you take that and you compare it to what his children went through, and of course what Collet went through. Dave. One of the things that really stuck out to me is that when she's got these really nasty lacerations to

her forearms, I think that this could be a combination of both being attacked with an edged weapon. In addition to that, it could be also being clubbed. They're kind of nasty and regular. When you see these things, they're not It's not something that you would see. For instance, she's got like this gaping, and anytime you hear gaping most of the time, that's going to be indicative of

laceration where the skin has really opened up. The edges are very jagged because it's a blow with a blunt object that literally tears the skin, you know, with you know, with sharp force injuries. And we're going to do a whole We're going to do a whole episode of Body Bags about sharp force injuries. With sharp force injuries, you have these kind of clean margins where they're they're perfect because you're talking about using a steel blade on a

surface and it cuts it through. But if you have a laceration that arises from blunt force trauma and it literally tears the skin. So it's on the aspect of her I'm actually looking at it right now. It's on the aspect of her lateral right wrist. So just imagine if you will lifting your right arm, fist clenched so that you're trying to block or parry, you know, use a fencing term, You're trying to parry this attack. And so the perpetrator when they're looking at you, the surface

that they're aiming for is blocked. Maybe they're going for a head strike, it's blocked. And so the first place that the injury is where a contact is made is actually on this lateral aspect of the forearm, and it opens up this kind of gaping, jagged, it's almost crescent shaped. It's the way it looks. So yeah, she's she's he's got injuries on her arms as well. But again back

to him, he's got nothing. I mean, he's he's literally got nothing on his body that gives you the indication that he, you know, he's trying to fend anything off. And here here's another interesting fact quote unquote about this Green Beret doctor. Green Berets, in particular special Forces guys even back then. We hear a lot about it now, but even back then, they were highly skilled at what's called c QB and that's close quarters combat. Okay, so it's not just like going in and clearing a room.

You have to try to understand the basics of some of the martial arts that are out there because you're going to be fighting people one on one. Well, he allegedly had they receive training in hand to hand combat, and it makes sense. You know, he would have been embedded with these guys there at Fort Bragg day to day training. They probably say, Doc, you've got to go through this training along with us. It doesn't mean he's

gone through Greenberry School. As a matter of fact, the only thing I really find reference to is that he'd gone to airborne school. Well, they you know, clerk typists go through airborne school. If they're going to be assigned to the eighty second, you know, or the one hundred and seventy third they're going to be assigned. You have to go through airborne training, which is a school that lasts about three weeks and it's basically gravity. That's it,

you know. I mean, yeah, it's rigorous. It's rigorous, but it's not like going through Special Forces training, which last years.

a booboo to the head and a small incision in his chest. Meanwhile, his pregnant wife has defensive wounds.

take out these little girls as well. And again I'm going back to McDonald's injuries, Jeffery McDonald, And you know, I would think the girls would have a little less than that, you know, to be killed, because there's no need they're little, tiny, no need to do to them what you just did to Collad. So what happened with the girls. How were they killed?

there and have somebody compressing on your chest. But the reason this is significant is that immediately as soon as he pops up, he makes this exclamation about acid heads, where he says, you know, look at my wife, and then he makes reference to the fact that now this is this is in the midst of them, you know,

treating him. I'm going to kill those acid heads. An acid head is a term that was associated with hippies, you know, because of lysergic acid, those sorts of things that people would take acids really really when it popped on the pop culture, if you will, and there were a lot of people that were experimenting with acid back then. The military was experimenting with acid back then. But that's a story for another day. And so this is the

first thing you're going to say. And then as he is being taken out of the house, he says, let me see my kids, Let me see my kids, and he's being carried off on a stretcher. Well, yeah, ye had, Jeffrey. Let's let's take a look at your kids. Let's do that. Why don't we do that? Because Kimmy's five years old, Dave, She's laying in her bed. She's laying in her bed, she's on her left side, and this precious little child, her skulls have been fractured. And I saw the images

of it, and it's it's ghastly, absolutely ghastly. She's the They believe that she was at minimum struck twice, possibly more. And so she's on the right side. This is the right side of her skull. So just imagine that you're laying in what we refer to as like a left recumbent position. So left recumbent means your left side of your body's contacting the surface, supporting the weight of your body. I don't know about you. I'm a side sleeper, so you know that's like, if you're a side sleeper, that's

a position. And apparently that's the position she was actually attacked in or on. And so she was struck so hard that not only is her skull fractured, Dave, but in addition to that she struck her cheekbone is fractured. And Dave, I got to tell you the McDonald's case in and of itself. You know, I've never seen this other than outside of a car accident. This child, this five year old, was beaten so furiously that her cheekbone is actually protruding through her skin. So this is going

to be a massive laceration. And when you see the

images that, you know, you know, just illustrate what kind of force is involved with this child. It's again I have to return to the to the word ghastly. You know, who would have the motivation to do that, you know, to a five year old? What could a five year old ever have done? You had made mention of the fact, well what could they have seen? You know what, what could they have seen? What could they have recounted, you know,

in a court. But it extends beyond that. She's been beaten all of her body with this bludgeon that's being used. And then I guess the hippie that are out there chanting, you know that acid is groovy, decide, well, you know, let's go in. And also in addition to beating this child, let's stab her. She's been stabbed eight to ten times. In addition of that, and again and again, Dave, she's

been stabbed in the neck. And so if you're if you are a physician, you know that the airway in and of itself is a critical location that you need

to have intact in order to save life. I find it fascinating that would Collecte and Kimmy, both their necks are attacked with a sharp instrument, Because if you've had any kind of trauma training and you're trying to resuscitate somebody, you know for a fact that it's going to be near impossible in this environment if they sustain those kinds of injuries to bring them back from you know, bring them back from death, death death, doorstep, you can't do it.

It's very, very difficult not to mention, you know, when an individual has been beaten so severely about the head to the point where the skull is fractured. It's almost indescribable. Dave Kristen, who's only two. Dave is found lying in

her bed. She again is on her left side, and it's almost too too horrible to even put out there, but it's been out there for years and for our friends, you know, I just I want everybody to understand that with this baby, you know, she's she stabbed Dave, I think thirty three times in her chest and in her neck, her hands, her back, And I wondered, as I was, you know, trying to and that's with a knife. That's with a knife, okay, because there's an additional fifteen injuries

that she has that are with this ice pick. Okay, She's got two knife wounds that actually penetrate her heart, Dave, and the ice pick wounds are kind of shallow, you know, compared to the knife wounds. But this this little angel, she if she had an awareness because she lifted those tiny little hands to defend herself, because she's got injuries on her hands. You know, she's trying to fend this thing.

one point in time, the scripture reads that you know your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs