This is a story about friendship. It was just fun that was occurring, and it was unmistakable, and we were best friends. A friendship that bloomed during the hot summer of nineteen seventy nine when a famous doctor named Jeffrey McDonald and we need lab here for barbed level and ABC met a famous journalist. Ladies and gentlemen, will you welcome please, Joe McGinnis. McGinnis named Joe McGinnis. I like Joe. We talked about the same things in the New York Knicks,
the Yankees, and the Mets football. Two friends who would go jogging together. And this was the beginning of the Running Room. And you know, you sort of get this covera after a while that summer they did just about everything together. We drank together. I mean we get the classic but a routine of all times. And with all this time together, Jeff and Joe hatched the plan. You see,
Jeff have been accused of a horrible crime. Reporter Joe McGinnis spent three years investigating Jeff McDonald, who granted him total access, and Joe was going to prove the menicine so that McGinnis might write the definitive book about it. It is called fatal vision. But unfortunately McGinnis summarized for us his stunning conclusion. It didn't turn out that way. All I'm saying is that Jeffrey McDonald beat and stabbed to death his pregnant wife and his two young daughters.
It was one of those sensational crimes that attracted nationwide attention. I was the first to enter the McDonald Some bizarre murders took place last night. There were things you'll never forget. The wife and two young daughters of Jeffrey McDonald were stabbed at death. The first I thought it was homicide suicide. Then he started a move. The truth is going to come out. I did not kill my wife. I did not kill my children, and that's going to come out
in the court A lot did. I had jury convicted doctor Jeffrey McDonald for murdering his wife and two children. McDonald was sentenced to three life terms in prison. We still, at that point had this hope that we hadn't been incorrect on Joe, that he was going to write a good book. This book became the only hope of some kind of indication exactly Joe McGinnis has woven McDonald's story into a book called Fatal Vision. Joe's book Fatal Vision didn't just say that Jeffrey McDonald had killed his wife
and children. You uncovered some facts that even the prosecution didn't. The book had drugs, Mike, there's no question as a possibility that I took to pill at speed and sex. Jeffrey McDonald had seventeen mistresses. He was a slut. What has he had to do with whether I committed a triple hibside Fatal Vision became a huge hit. I can never overcome Fatal Vision and Jeff's worst nightmare. I cannot
prove that I am not that monster. But for Joe McGinnis, you did this with a cooperation of Dr Jeffrey McDonald. Questions about his journalistic ethics. Should you have told him that you have found him in your own heart of hearts guilty? Who made the book his worst nightmare too? There's no reasons you can find him. The job of a writer is to write the book. Was the real villain of Fatal Vision? It's protagonist, Jeffrey McDonald's a psychopath.
He has no remorse, no conscience or its author. He was going to my mother, who was dying, saying, don't worry. When the book comes out, this will all be righted. For Joe. Getting close to Jeff was a necessary evil. My only ambition was to learn the truth and then to tell it. But had Joe even found the truth? A federal appeals court today reversed the murder convictions of Jeffrey McDonald in the slayings of his pregnant wife and
two young daughters. Is what Joe McCann has did morally indefensible, That's what I want to find out. I'm Mark Smirling from the Jinks in Crime Town, and this is my new podcast, Morally Indefensible. This season will take a close look at the friendship between a true crime writer and a convicted killer and the book that ruined both their lives. Either this is the most horrible, merciless, brutal killer on the face of the earth or one of the most
victimized men in American legal history. Morally Indefensible is presented by Effects Networks new docuseries A Wilderness of Error, and will be coming soon to Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.