The Fatal Vision Murders: Hippie Cult or Husband's Rage?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Jeffrey McDonald has always said that four intruders, three men
and one woman, attacked the family in February nineteen seventy
while chanting acid is groovy, Kill the pigs. His two
daughters were stabbed to death in their bedrooms, while McDonald
and his wife were found in theirs. Pig was written
in blood on the headboard. Collad had been stabbed nearly

(00:33):
forty times with an ice pick and a knife. McDonald
had been stabbed just once, which caused his lung to
partially collapse. Despite his injuries, Army investigators didn't buy McDonald's
account and charged him for the murders. In May nineteen seventy,
after seventy witnesses testified at the six week long Article

(00:54):
thirty two hearing, the presiding colonel exonerated McDonald and urged
civilian authorities to pursue another suspect, a drug addicted police
informant named Helena Stockley, who matched McDonald's description of the
female intruder and her Army vet boyfriend, both of whom
reportedly told witnesses they were involved. For the next few years,

(01:17):
McDonald went on with his life, but in nineteen seventy four,
his once supportive stepfather in law, now convinced of his guilt,
filed a citizen's criminal complaint that ultimately led to McDonald
being indicted for murder. Prosecutors argued that McDonald had got
the idea to stage the crime scene and blame a
hippie gang from an article in Esquire about the Tate

(01:39):
LaBianca murders perpetrated by the Manson family. McDonald took the
stand in his own defense, but withered under cross examination.
He was convicted and sentenced to three life terms. But
did he really commit the murder or was he telling
the truth about intruders and vading his home and murdering

(02:01):
his family. I'm Darren Marler and this is weird Darkness. Welcome, weirdos.
I'm Darren Marler and this is weird Darkness. Here you'll

(02:24):
find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,
unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the show.
And if you're already a member of this weirdo family,
please take a moment and invite someone else to listen.
Recommending weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for

(02:47):
me to keep doing the show. Coming up in this episode,
Jeffrey MacDonald was an Ivy League educated surgeon and a
Green Beret. That sounds like an interesting story in and
of itself, but he is also either a murderer or
the victim of a murderous hippie cult. And that's a
story that you and I can really sink our teeth into. Now,

(03:10):
bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
and come with me into the weird darkness. We are

(03:42):
going to solve some murders. Okay, we won't actually solve them,
but to the best of our abilities, with the information available,
we're going to make a guess. If you use a
loose enough definition of the word solve, then I think
that qualifies. Early on the morning of February seventeenth, nineteen seventy,
McDonald called police and reported that a group of four

(04:05):
or five hippies had entered his home, knocked him unconscious,
and brutally murdered his wife and two young daughters. Two
competing theories submerged almost immediately. Those who knew McDonald insisted
that the hippie story was true. The police investigating the
crime insisted that McDonald had murdered his family and concocted
the hippie story as a cover. Somebody is wrong, and

(04:29):
we're going to figure out who. There is more information
available on this case than you and I could ever
actually analyze. Most of it is garbage. That's the way
it works in famous cases. The facts get diluted, distorted,
and misconstrued into a thousand competing theories until the sheer
density of the nonsense is so overwhelming that the case

(04:51):
becomes impenetrable. We aren't going to let that happen to us.
We're going to get our information primarily from two sources
by Joe McGinnis and A Wilderness of Error by Errol Morris.
Both books are well researched, honest in citing sources, and
reasonable in their presentation of the facts. And of course

(05:13):
the books come to completely opposite conclusions, which is where
we come in. For what it's worth, if you haven't
read them, I recommend both books. I'll link to both
of them in the show notes for you. Morris's book
is a little more lively and readable, but McGinnis's is
more disciplined and journalistic in his approach. For me to

(05:33):
accuse Morris of excessive editorialization would be the epitome of
the pot calling the kettle black. So please don't infer
that one of these books is better than the other.
They are different in tone and substance, but I think
that each of them is fair, honest, thorough and interesting.
You're lucky to get two of those things in a
true crime book, let alone all of them. Even though

(05:56):
Morris and McGinnis do a fantastic job of describing the
facts of the case, we're still going to use autopsy
and police reports from the Jeffrey mcdonaldcase dot Com to
help guide us as well. Let's start with a summary
of the pertinent facts. On February seventeenth, nineteen seventy, at

(06:24):
about three forty five am, military police from Fort Bragg
were dispatched to five forty four Castle Drive for what
the initial responding officers described as a possible domestic disturbance.
Fort Bragg is a large United States Army base adjacent
to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Five forty four Castle Drive was
a three bedroom apartment about one thousand square feet, where

(06:47):
Captain Jeffrey McDonald lived with his pregnant wife, Collette MacDonald,
and their two young daughters. Between six and eight officers
arrived at roughly the same time. Several officers knocked at
the front door with no response, but Sergeant Richard Tavere
found the back door open. He entered, passed through a
small utility room and found two people on the floor

(07:08):
of the master bedroom. Collect MacDonald was lying on her back,
dead and covered in blood. Jeffrey McDonald appeared to be
unconscious and was lying beside her with his head on
her chest. The word pig was written in blood on
the headboard. Police checked the rest of the hump and
found six year old Kimberly dead in one bedroom and

(07:30):
two year old Kristen dead in another. Both were in
their respective beds with the lights off in both rooms.
Jeffrey McDonald regained consciousness, said that he couldn't breathe, and
ask the police to check on his children. The officers
attempted mouth to mouth resuscitation, which caused Jeffrey to choke
and shake. He regained composure enough to tell the responding

(07:52):
officers that two white men, a black man and a
white woman had stabbed him. The woman was wearing a
floppy hat and carrying a candle. All of the attackers
were saying acid is groovy and kill the pigs. Jeffrey
was taken to the emergency room for treatment, and the
Army's Criminal Investigations Division CID was summoned to investigate the murders.

(08:17):
The Army's CID takes a beating in every telling of
this story for the job they did on the crime scene.
I'm not going to suggest that they did a good job,
because they certainly did not, but I think the extent
of their mistakes has been exaggerated. It's not that they
did every single thing incorrectly, as some critics seem to suggest.
It's just that the mistakes that they did make were

(08:40):
devastating to the case. Most importantly, they let too many
people into the crime scene, didn't supervise those people, properly,
allowed potential evidence to move or in some cases, disappear
before it could be documented, and did not preserve the
integrity of potential trace. Evidences happen in every criminal investigation,

(09:02):
but some mistakes are easier to overcome than others. These
were not easy mistakes to overcome, especially in a case
like this one turned out to be. After hearing Jeffrey
McDonald's story, Officer Kenneth mcwe told the lieutenant on scene
that while McHugh was responding to the call, he had
seen a woman standing on a street corner a couple
of blocks from the McDonald home. She was wearing a

(09:24):
large floppy hat. Given the time of mourning and the
weather conditions light rain, mchughe thought the situation was peculiar.
He recommended that the woman be located immediately, but it
does not appear that any attempt was actually made to
do so. Add that one to the list of mistakes.
This dext part is going to be unpleasant, so let's

(09:47):
get through it as quickly as possible if you don't
have the stomach for it. I understand. I'm going to
describe the medical examiner's findings, but here's a short version
if you want to skip over the specifics. Collect was
brutally beaten with a blunt object and stabbed multiple times
with at least two sharp objects. Himberly was beaten with

(10:07):
a blunt object and stabbed multiple times, and Kristen was
stabbed multiple times. The autopsy reports are online, but I'll
warn you that the ones I reviewed included the medical
examiner's photos. Do not look at those photos. There is
nothing that you or I could learn from those photos
that we couldn't understand better from the written report. Those

(10:30):
photos would serve no purpose but to haunt you, and
I don't want you to go through that. Kaleed MacDonald
suffered approximately thirty seven stab wounds. There were twenty one
small round stab wounds scattered throughout her chest and upper
left arm, and another sixteen elliptical gaping incisional wounds to
her chest, neck, and abdomen. Her lungs, trachea, and pulmonary

(10:54):
artery were all lacerated, causing massive internal bleeding. The two
different types of stab wounds suggested two different weapons were used.
The stab wounds alone would have been fatal, but Collette
had also suffered three large lacerations and several smaller lacerations
to the front, sides and back of her head. The
lacerations were caused by a blunt object and were accompanied

(11:17):
by a skull fracture. Lastly, Colette suffered a compound fracture
of her right wrists with the bone exposed, another compound
fracture just below her left elbow, and a fracture of
her left wrist. She had been approximately four months pregnant
with what the medical examiner discovered was a boy. Six

(11:37):
year old Kimberly was struck in the head an undetermined
number of times with a blunt object. The medical examiner
noted at least two blows to the right side of
her head, causing multiple skull fractures, including one that penetrated
through the thickness of the skull and dislocated a portion
of it. Kimberly's nose was broken and displaced to the
side as well. Kimberly was also statabbed approximately eight to

(12:01):
ten times in the neck, with incisional type stab wounds
similar to those identified in her mother. Based on the
bleeding of the wounds, the medical examiner believed that Kimberly
was beaten before she was stabbed, though either attack would
have been fatal on its own. Two year old Kristen
suffered more than twenty wounds to the chest and neck

(12:23):
and another dozen to were back. The wounds appeared to
have been caused by two different weapons. Kristin also had
cuts to the front and back of both hands, along
with bruising on her neck, shoulders, and buttocks. Several of
the stab wounds penetrated her heart causing death. Jeffrey MacDonald
was hospitalized for nine days, but fared far better than

(12:45):
the rest of his family. The examining physician noted a
one centimeter break in the skin on his chest, which
in actuality was a stab wound that caused a partially
collapsed lung. The doctor also noted swelling and a laceration
in the middle of Jeffrey's forehead, a superficial laceration to
his abdomen, and a one and a half centimeter laceration

(13:06):
to the front of his upper left arm. I can
tell that two things are really standing out to you already.
Number one, hopcome Jeffrey McDonald had such comparatively minor injuries
considering what happened to the rest of the family. And
Number two, who was the mysterious woman in the floppy hat.

(13:30):
I like the way you think you're good at this.
We'll look further into the Jeffrey McDonald case when weird
darkness returns. The CID processed the scene, but not terribly well,

(14:05):
so we aren't going to get nearly as much reliable
evidence out of their analysis as we would expect from
an indoor murder scene. Where police responded that quickly, investigators
observed that a coffee table in the living room was
tipped over on its edge. They noted that the rest
of the living room was undisturbed. They later learned that
at least one potted plant had been tipped over when

(14:27):
responding officers arrived, but an unknown person had tipped it
back upright. That's definitely not ideal at a crime scene,
and it does raise a lot of questions about their
other observations. The investigators put a lot of emphasis on
the undisturbed living room, and it was later the foundation
on which they built their theory that Jeffrey MacDonald murdered

(14:49):
his family and staged the scene. They insisted that it
was virtually impossible for the coffee table to end up
on its side unless it was deliberately placed like that.
They tipped the coffee table over hundreds of times and
insisted that every single time it came to rest on
the top, not its side. A mechanical engineer drafted a

(15:10):
really official looking document with equations and diagrams to argue
that the table would always come to rest on its
top when it was tipped over, but a skeptical Army
judge who was presiding over a hearing on the murders,
wanted to see for himself. He went to the McDonald home,
tipped over the table, and it landed on its side
on the very first dry It's a nice lesson for

(15:33):
us to keep in mind as we try to solve
these murders. Always be humble about your evidence and conclusions,
because they are never as definite or convincing as they
might seem to you. Colette was dressed in pink pajamas,
but she also had a bath mat and a blue
pajama top laying across her chest. Investigators later learned that

(15:55):
Jeffrey McDonald had been wearing the blue pajama top and
that it had forty eight round puncture holes. If you recall,
neither Colette nor Jeffrey had forty eight round puncture wounds.
An examiner at the FBI lab determined that all forty
eight of the holes could have come from the stab
wounds suffered by Collette. The garment was found crumpled and

(16:16):
folded in such a way that many of the stab
wounds could have caused more than one hole in the fabric.
There was also bedding on the floor near the doorway
of the master bedroom, and the bedding was covered in blood.
A small paring knife with a bent blade and a
bloodstain near the tip was found on the floor between
an armchair and a dresser. The word pig written in

(16:38):
blood on the headboard had a smooth texture with no fingerprints,
leading investigators to believe the culprit had worn a glove.
Portions of a rubber glove were found in the master bedroom,
and surgical rubber gloves were found under the kitchen sink.
For what it's worth, handwriting experts also concluded that the
author used their right hand. If we try us that,

(17:00):
then we can safely eliminate any suspects who don't have
a right hand, which is hopeful because I had a
theory about pirates that I can now safely discard. Outside
of the back door, investigators found a wooden club that
appeared to have blood on it, another pairing knife, and
an ice pick. McDonald denied that the family had a
nice pick, but several witnesses who had been to the

(17:23):
house contradicted him. The club had blue fibers on it
that were consistent with McDonald's pajamas, but also had dark
wool fibers that were not definitively matched to anything in
the McDonald's home. With three people dead and a fourth stabbed,
there was a great deal of blood in the house.
As luck would have it, each member of the family

(17:45):
had a different blood type. In the master bedroom, investigators
found blood matching Collette, Jeffrey, and Kimberly's blood types. In
Kimberly's bedroom, investigators found blood matching Kimberly, Collette, and Christen's
blood types. In Kristin's bedroom, investigators found blood matching everybody's time.

(18:05):
Blood matching Jeffrey's type was found at both the kitchen
and bathroom sinks. Some of the blood was undoubtedly transferred
by the killer or killers moving about the house, but
the volume of blood showed that Collette was actively bleeding
in both the master bedroom and Kristin's bedroom, and that
Kimberly was actively bleeding in the master bedroom and her
own bedroom. Kristin appeared to have been attacked and killed

(18:28):
entirely in her own room. There was also a bloody
footprint leading out of Kristin's room. The blood was Collette's,
but the foot appeared to be Jeffreys. That couldn't be
determined for certain, however, because the footprint was destroyed when
CID attempted to cut out the floorboards to preserve it.
A fingerprint that was never matched to anybody was found

(18:51):
on a jewelry box in the McDonald's bedroom, and Jeffrey
later claimed that two rings were missing from the jewelry box.
Jeffrey McDonald's wallet was definitely stolen, but by an EMT
who eventually confessed to taking it. CID failed to preserve
and photograph most of the fingerprint evidence correctly, and the

(19:12):
fingerprints they were able to identify came back to either
the McDonald's or the investigators on scene. There were waxed
drippings on Kimberly's bedroom floor and on the coffee table
that did not match any of the candles found in
the McDonald's home. A magazine found in the living room
had a feature story on the Manson murders, which had
appeared in California six months prior. A witness who'd been

(19:36):
at the house several days earlier claimed that he and
McDonald had discussed the magazine story and that, like everybody
else in the United States at that time, Jeffrey was
aware of the Manson murders. Another family lived in an
apartment above the McDonald's. The day of the murder. Each
member of the family said they had not heard anything
out of the ordinary. The family's dog had not barked

(19:59):
until the police arrived. During a subsequent interview, however, the
wife of the family claimed that she had woken up
at an unknown time by the sound of Collette speaking
loudly and angrily, although the woman could not hear what
was said. The woman's teenage daughter, whose bedroom was directly
above McDonald's living room, claimed that she also heard an

(20:20):
adult male either sobbing loudly or laughing hysterically. Investigators didn't
do a formal interview with Jeffrey right away, but spoke
to him as he recovered. He relayed the following story
as presented in McGinnis's book. Jeffrey McDonald had worked a

(20:44):
twenty four hour shift at the emergency room from six
am on February fifteenth to six am on February sixteenth,
although he did manage to catch a little sleep in
a hospital cut during slow stretches. He then worked his
regular shift for the army on Fevcrebruary sixteenth. That evening,
he came home and took Kimberly and Kristin to go
feed the horse he had gotten them as a Christmas present.

(21:08):
Collette was taking evening classes at a local college, so
Jeffrey tended to the kids that evening while she attended
a psychology class. He put Kristin in bed at seven pm,
then fell asleep on the floor for an hour. Kimberly
woke him up at eight pm to watch television, then
Jeffrey put her in bed at nine pm. At about
nine forty pm, Collette returned home from class. Jeffrey and

(21:32):
Collette had a drink and watched television, then Colette went
to bed. Jeffrey stayed up for a while longer and
read a book. At a little after two am, Jeffrey
prepared to go to bed. He found that Kristin was
in bed with Colette, though, and that Kristin had wet
the bed. He carried Kristin to her own bed, then

(21:52):
slept on the couch so he would not have to
wait Collette or change the sheets. Once upon a time,
Neanderthal men were pretending not to see toddler poop on
cave floors. In a thousand years, a future dad will
be tiptoeing around his rocket ship, feigning obliviousness to these
space babies spit up. Jeffrey McDonald may indeed be a monster,

(22:13):
but not because he let his wife sleep beside a
puddle of urine instead of cleaning it up. That's a
decision that four out of five dads would support, and
the fifth guy is probably a liar. Jeffrey McDonald said
that he did not know how long he was asleep
on the couch, but that he was woke by the
sound of his wife shouting jeff Jeff help, and kimberly screaming, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.

(22:37):
He opened his eyes and saw four people standing over him.
One was a black man wearing an army fatigue jacket.
Two were white men, one of which had a mustache
and a red sweatshirt. One of the men was wearing gloves.
There was also a blonde woman with a floppy hat,
wearing boots and carrying a candle in front of her face.
All of them were wet, as though they'd been out

(22:58):
in the rain. A woman was chanting acid is groovy,
and kill the pigs. McDonald tried to get up, but
was struck in the head with what he thought was
a baseball bat. He started to struggle with the men,
and his pajama top was wrestled over his head and
around his wrists. He felt a sharp pain in his
chest and looked down to see that he'd been stabbed

(23:19):
with an ice pick. He then passed out, faced down
on the floor. When Jeffrey regained consciousness, the house was silent.
He went to each of the bedrooms and found that
his wife and daughters were dead. He tried to resuscitate them,
but it didn't work. He also removed a small knife
from his wife's chest and covered her with his pajama top.

(23:41):
Jeffrey went into the bathroom to check on his stab wound,
and then made two attempts to call the police, once
with a phone in the bedroom and once with the
phone in the kitchen. He then waited with his wife
until police arrived. While investigators on scene immediately suspected Jeffrey
in the murders, a Fayetteville narconic detective noticed that the

(24:01):
description of the woman in the floppy hat sounded an
awful lot like an informant he knew by the name
of Helena Stokely. The detective tracked her down on the
day after the murders and found her with a group
of the types of drug addicts and hippies she was
known to consort with. He detained the group for questioning,
but CID never responded to do the actual questioning, and

(24:23):
they were all released without charges. Stokely's neighbor claimed to
have seen Stokely arrive home in a blue car sometime
between three am and four thirty AM on the morning
of the murders. The neighbor claimed that in numerous discussions
over these subsequent days and months, Stokely made several statements
indicating that she was present for the McDonald murders, or

(24:45):
that she was so high on drugs that she could
not remember if she was present. Stokely frequently claimed to
be so high on messoline an LSD that she could
not remember anything that happened that night. Stokely's roommate operated
the neighbor's account and said that Stokely returned home with
her boyfriend Greg Mitchell at around four am. At least

(25:08):
six different people have come forward to claim that Stokely
had admitted involvement in the murders to them, but she
has denied any involvement to law enforcement and in court testimony.
Private investigators have also found several witnesses who claimed that
Mitchell has made non specific statements over the years that
they took as proof of his involvement in the murders.

(25:31):
I won't bore you with the details of the Mitchell
accusations because they are second and third hand accounts of
vague statements made a long time before the investigator spoke
to the witnesses. Stokely made statements to several people about
a rocking horse with a broken spring that was in
the McDonald home. A picture in the local paper showed

(25:51):
the rocking horse, but Stokely was a serious drug addict
at the time, so who knows how diligent she was
in following the Fayetteville Observer, and the picture didn't show
that the spring was broken anyway. Stokely was known to
own a blonde wig, a floppy hat, and boots. She
got rid of all of them sometime after the murders.

(26:13):
A blonde synthetic fiber was found in a hair brush
in the McDonald's home. Investigators insisted that it could not
have come from a wig, but Morris made a pretty
convincing case that it definitely could have during an autopsy.
Medical examiners routinely collect scrapings from under the fingernails of victims.
Trace evidence tends to accumulate there when a victim is

(26:35):
clawing at and fighting an attacker. A small hair was
found amongst the scrapings from under Collet's fingernails. DNA testing
done decades after the murder concluded that the hair did
not come from any of the McDonald's. There was debate
amongst the investigators whether the hair was actually under Collet's
fingernails or if it was merely contamination from sloppy evidence handling.

(26:58):
At any rate, the source of the hair has never
been identified. FBI Special Agent Paul Stambau was reviewing photographs
of the case when he noticed that there was a
suitcase near the closet. There was blood spatter all around
the suitcase, but none on it. Stambaugh surmised that the
suitcase was placed there after the murders, and I can't

(27:20):
find fault in that logic. Whether it was done by
the killer or by the officers on Stein, though, is
something we'll probably never know. Officer Kenneth McHugh told Morris
while Morris was writing his book that mcew was aware
of Stokely in nineteen seventy and knew what she looked like.
He told Morris he was certain that the woman he
saw in the floppy hat was not Stokely. Morris was

(27:44):
skeptical that McHugh would have been able to tell under
the circumstances, but mcew was adamant. I believe him. He
was the passenger in a two officer car and the
woman was standing on a street corner when they came
to a stop. He got a good look, and the
us on the beat know the regular customers. It could
be at night from a block away, and I could

(28:05):
still spot the regular customers when I was working a beat.
It's a relatively small number of people you deal with
over and over again in law enforcement, and you get
to know them pretty well. A polygraph examination got thrown
around liberally in this investigation, as it tended to in
investigations of this type during that era. Let's not get
bogged down with polygraph results, though, for what it's worth.

(28:28):
Stokely passed a polygraph in which she claimed to have
been present for the murders, and Jeffrey failed a polygraph
in which he claimed he didn't kill his family. A
polygraph can be a useful tool if used with restraint
by a skilled polygrapher. It can be the worst kind
of garbage evidence when it's not I don't know anything
about the polygraph operators in this case, and there were

(28:50):
a lot of them, so I'm choosing to ignore all
of the contradictory results and move on as if the
tests never happened. You can do otherwise if you choose,
and speaking of contradictory gibberish, we're also going to ignore
all of the evidence provided by the parade of forensic
psychologists employed in this case. I'll summarize it for you

(29:12):
so you can quickly toss it aside. Jeffrey McDonald's personality
type was such that he was incapable of committing the murders.
And also, Jeffrey McDonald's personality type was such that he
was a narcissistic psychopath, capable of murder at any time.
If you've read my book, and at this point there's
no reason for you not to, we're friends. Now buy
four copies and give them to your favorite bobsled team.

(29:33):
Then you know how I feel about experts. They are
critically important to understanding a lot of things, but they'll
also say whatever they are paid to say. Be skeptical
of anything that sounds too good to be true. Jeffrey
tried to portray his marriage as ideal, but investigators uncovered
a series of facts that painted Jeffrey in a different light.

(29:55):
He had multiple affairs during the marriage, he worked extremely
long out and took on extra jobs, and for reasons
that were highly suspicious and never made clear. Jeffrey was
lying to his wife about a month long trip he
was supposedly going to take to Russia. Jeffrey was the
team doctor for the Fort Bragg boxing team and told

(30:16):
Colette that he was going with the team to Russia.
In actuality, there was no trip and Jeffrey wasn't going
anywhere with the team. After the murders, Jeffrey went on
a media campaign in which he exaggerated the extent of
his injuries and ranted about the incompetence of army investigators.
He also told an outlandish story to his former mother

(30:37):
in law and father in law in which he claimed
to have found one of the murderers, tortured them, and
killed them. This came at a time when his father
in law was pressing him for information about the murders
and the investigation. McGinnis uncovered some evidence that Jeffrey MacDonald
had been using amphetamines in the weeks leading up to
the murder. They were not illegal at the time and

(31:00):
were commonly used for weight loss. McDonald acknowledged using the pills,
but not in the quantities alleged by McGinnis. McGuinness makes
some pretty far fetched claims about how McDonald's amphetamine use
could have caused psychosis and hallucinations, which I don't think
are worth considering. Colleagues tend to notice when an emergency
room doctor is hallucinating, but amphetamine use could definitely cause

(31:24):
irritability and exacerbate other sources of stress. The Army held
what was called an Article thirty two hearing in July
of nineteen seventy. It was a hearing to determine if
there was sufficient evidence to charge Jeffrey MacDonald with the
murders of his family. Not only did the hearing examiner
determine that there was insufficient evidence to charge Jeffrey MacDonald,

(31:45):
he also made the rather extraordinary proclamation that Jeffrey was
innocent of the crime. As a reason we use the
term not guilty instead of innocent. In trials, it is
exceedingly difficult to prove innocence, which is why we don't
ever require somebody to do it. In nineteen seventy nine,
Jeffrey was charged with and convicted of the murders in

(32:07):
the United States District Court. Obviously, the jury did not
agree with the Army examiner's assessment. When we're darkness returns,
we'll review what we've learned and see who committed these murders,

(32:30):
or at least will try the facts that point to

(32:58):
Jeffrey McDonald. Jeffrey's family was brutally murdered while he sustained
relatively minor injuries. Why would intruders leave a witness alive
when he was unconscious and completely at their mercy. It's
even more confounding in light of how excessive the violence
was toward his wife and daughters. Jeffrey was a Green
Beret who regularly trained with the Fort Bragg boxing team.

(33:21):
I'm not insisting that he could overcome three adult men
in a fight, but we would certainly expect a man
like Jeffrey fighting for his family's lives to sustain more
than a bump on the noggin and a single, non
incapacitating stab wound. McDonald said that he placed his pajama
top on his wife after she was dead, but it

(33:41):
was full of holes and he wasn't. He claimed that
he used it to fight off his attackers while it
was tangled around his wrists. But what are the odds
that a pajama top wrapped around his wrists would get
stabbed forty times in a fight without McDonald's wrists, hands,
or forearms getting stabbed at all. McDonald claimed that he

(34:01):
woke up to the sound of his wife and Kimberly
both screaming for help, and he woke up to four
people standing over him. So how many people was he
suggesting were in there? If his wife was being attacked
in one room, his daughter in another, and four people
were standing over him, then that was a crowded little house.
And yet the neighbors living above them heard none of

(34:23):
those people, and the neighbor's dog didn't bark until police arrived.
Jeffrey McDonald's blood was found in front of the kitchen
sink where he kept surgical gloves. Investigators believed that whoever
wrote pig in blood on the headboard was wearing gloves.
The murder weapons were abandoned just outside the back door,
and even though Jeffrey claimed otherwise, they all seemed to

(34:45):
come from the McDonald household. Why would intruders not bring
any weapons to a murder and why would they risk
leaving behind finger prints? Domestic violence homicides are the most
common type of homicide for women and children. Jeffrey was
a documented philanderer. Despite the many character witnesses who insisted

(35:05):
that he would never hurt his family, he did admit
to multiple extramarital affairs. Cheating on your wife hurts your family,
and to insist otherwise is disingenuous. Jeffrey went on television
and provided interviews to the media in which he exaggerated
the extent of his injuries. On a late night talk show,
he claimed to have been stabbed more than twenty times,

(35:27):
even though the physicians who examined him found no such thing.
Jeffrey was a liar. The stories he told his wife
about going to Russia and the stories he told his
in laws about killing one of the murderers were absolute whoppers.
Not every liar is a murderer, but in my experience,
every murderer is a liar. This was North Carolina in

(35:50):
nineteen seventy, and MacDonald said that a black man participated
in the murder of a white woman and two white children.
I doubt the police exercised much restrain in the pursuit
of any suspect who loosely fit the description, but none
was ever identified. So now a few facts that might
point to intruders as the murderers. McDonald may have cheated

(36:13):
on and lied to his wife, but there was never
any suggestion of physical abuse. Until he was accused of
their murder. McDonald gave a very specific description of the
female intruder. An officer MCCUs saw a woman who matched
that description within two blocks of the murder scene. It
was almost four am and raining at the time, so
it was a really unusual place for a person to

(36:34):
be let alone somebody matching the description of a nearby
crime Helena Stokely owned a blonde wig, floppy hat, and
boots that were consistent with the description McDonald gave of
the intruder. She confessed to at least a half dozen
people that she was present for the murders, and told
many others that she was so high on messoline and

(36:54):
lsd that she did not know if she was involved
with the murders. Stokely need to know about the broken
rocking horse in the McDonald house, a detail that was
not public knowledge. Dark wool fibers were found on the
club that was used in the murders, but the fibers
could not be matched to anything else in the McDonald's home.

(37:15):
At least two unrelated witnesses claim that Stokely's ex boyfriend,
who was with her on the night that McDonald's were murdered,
made incriminating statements about the murders over the years. A
blonde synthetic fiber was found in Collette's hair brush that
couldn't be matched to any wigs owned by Collette. Prosecutors
argued that it came from one of the girl's dolls,

(37:37):
but a doll expert pointed out to Morris that the
length of the fiber made it extremely unlikely. Wax strippings
were found in two rooms that couldn't be matched to
any candles in the McDonald's home. There were fingerprints from
an unknown person on Collet's jewelry box, and Jeffrey McDonald
claimed that two rings were stolen. Jeffrey was a free

(37:58):
man for nine years between the army hearing and his
conviction in federal court. He was never accused of another
violent crime that entire time. And finally, a short hair
from an unknown source that definitely did not come from
any of the McDonald's was found in evidence obtained from
under Collette MacDonald's fingernails. The conclusion, I have to admit,

(38:26):
I am a lot more conflicted about this than I
thought I was going to be. When I first read
Jeffrey's version of Advance, I assumed it was an open
and shutcase that seems like a completely fabricated story. In
February of two thousand and one, I was certain that
planes were going to be flying into skyscrapers all the
time from that point forward. Thankfully that wasn't the case.

(38:48):
I'm sure that in February of nineteen seventy it seemed
like random attacks from murderous hippie cults were going to
be normal. Thankfully they never were. Jeffrey McDonald's story feels
like a fictional account that seemed believable at a very
specific moment in history, but that did not withstand the
scrutiny of time. After reviewing all of the evidence, though,

(39:11):
I'm much less certain. The case against Jeffrey McDonald has
serious problems that can't all be explained away. So who
do we think killed Collette, Kimberly and Kristen McDonald. Well,
we might disagree on this one, but I still think
Jeffrey MacDonald murdered his family. Let me speculate recklessly about
what happened, and then you can tell me why I'm wrong.

(39:34):
I think that Jeffrey McDonald was under a great deal
of stress in February of nineteen seventy. He worked three
jobs army doctor, emergency room doctor, and a physician for
a boxing team. He got very little sleep and had
a pregnant wife, two young daughters, and a horse to
take care of. In McGinnis's book, Jeffrey devotes an uncomfortable

(39:55):
amount of time describing his various romantic conquests before and
after Collette. Seemed really important to him that he always
had a beautiful woman on his arm. Colette was a
beautiful woman, but she was also pregnant with their third child.
Despite his protestations to the contrary, Jeffrey MacDonald cheated on

(40:15):
Colette more than once, and that's not something a happily
married man does. Jeffrey married Colette when they were nineteen,
and I think by nineteen seventy he was starting to
feel trapped. It's pretty common for people to feel trapped
in a marriage at some point. Sometimes the feeling passes
and they stay happily married. Sometimes it doesn't and they

(40:36):
get divorced. But sometimes the suppressed frustration of a situation
like that boils over into anger or violence. I think
that happened with Jeffrey. I have no idea what the
specific impetus was, but I think Jeffrey was sleep deprived, stressed,
and agitated the night of the murders. I think that
after the girls went to bed, Jeffrey and Colette had

(40:59):
an argument. Because they didn't want to wake the girls,
they kept it quiet, which explains why the neighbors didn't
hear any fighting, but may have heard Colette speaking angrily.
At some point, it became violent. Collette struck Jeffrey with
the club, either out of anger or fear, causing the
bump on his head. He snapped, took the club and
brutally attacked her. She tried to protect herself with a knife,

(41:22):
nicking Jeffrey on the abdomen and arm, but he overpowered
her and took the knife as well. He broke her
arms with the club as she tried to protect herself,
then he stabbed her repeatedly with the knife after she
stopped resisting. The attack either started in Christin's room and
moved to the master bedroom, or started in the master bedroom,
moved to Christen's room and then moved back to the

(41:44):
master bedroom to account for the large amount of Colette's
blood in both rooms. Kristin was only two years old
and was thus able to sleep through the fight, but
Kimberly woke up at some point and went to the
master bedroom. Jeffrey had already killed or was in the
process of killing Colette. Jeffrey did not yet know what
he was going to do after the murder, but he

(42:04):
understood that his old life was definitely over and he
was never going to be able to be a father
for Kimberly after what she had seen, so he struck
her in the head with the club twice, knocking her
unconscious and possibly killing her. He then carried her to
her bed, where he stamped her several times to ensure
that she was dead. I think he then decided that

(42:27):
he couldn't leave Kristin alive after what he had done,
so he went into the room and stabbed her to death.
She awoke during the attack and raised her hands in defense,
causing cuts to both hands. I like Paul Stamba's theory
about this suitcase. I think Jeffrey MacDonald's initial impulse was
to pack a suitcase and head out on the run.

(42:47):
He was going to leave the country, change his name,
change his appearance, and try to disappear. But he was
a proud man who couldn't bear to live with that
stain on his reputation. I think that at some point,
while he was weighing his options, he glanced out the
window and saw a woman in a floppy hat. He
recognized how weird it was that she was out there

(43:08):
in the rain at that time of night. He assumed
she was a hippie from town, since there were a
lot of them, and an idea formed. Could he convince
everybody that his family was murdered by hippies. He staged
the scene as best as he could to fool the cops.
He stabbed his family's dead bodies with an ice pick
and a second knife to give the appearance of multiple attackers.

(43:31):
He wrote a message in blood, just like the Manson
family had done, and then he gave himself a precise
stab wound that would cause a serious sounding injury a
collapsed lung that ultimately would not be life threatening. He
then called the cops and did his best to sell
the lie. Helena Stokely was not the woman in the
floppy hat, but she did fit the description. She was

(43:52):
also a serious drug addict and could not account for
her whereabouts during the murders. She was young and dramatic
and kind of enjoyed the attention she was getting about
her possible involvement in the case. She stoked that attention
by making all kinds of incriminating statements to people in
her life, but ultimately she knew she wasn't there and
was in no actual danger of being charged with the crime.

(44:16):
She got plenty of details wrong about the murder, but
the bit about the broken rocking horse she either guessed
correctly or overheard from all of the investigators who questioned
her in the case. There you have it, a perfect solution.
It accounts for almost a quarter of the evidence and
only ignores the things that contradicted the hair under Kolet's fingernail.

(44:37):
You ask why did Helena Stokely get rid of her
wig and boots? You question the waxed rippings and the
McDonald home, the unidentified fingerprint on the jewelry box, and
the blonde synthetic fiber and Collet's brush. You demand not
to be rude, but I asked when we started that
you grant me a very loose definition of the word solve,
and with that in mind, I'm calling this solved. Thanks

(45:15):
for listening. If you like the show, please share it
with somebody you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories,
true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do. All
stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless
stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links
to the authors in the show notes. The murder conviction

(45:35):
of Jeffrey MacDonald was written by Barney Doyle for Crime Traveler.
And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll
leave you with a little light. Philippians four, verse six,
do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation,
by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to
God and a final thought. The more man meditates on

(46:00):
good thoughts. The better will be his world and the
world at large. Confucius, I'm thereon Marler, Thanks for joining
me in the weird darkness. Welcome to Marshport, Maine, a

(46:34):
quaint little coastal town preparing for their annual Winter Wonderland festival.
But beneath the lights and holiday cheer, something evil is
stirring and it's not a mouse. When a mysterious package
arrives on the doorstep of veteran police officer Matthew Klein
and his family's home, it seems at first like a

(46:55):
harmless holiday gift. However, there's no tag and no sender.
Inside lies an antique wooden advent calendar with strange engravings
and twenty four doors that each shelter something dark and unspeakable.
The line between reality and nightmare quickly becomes blurred as

(47:16):
Matthew races to figure out the calendar's origin and who
scent it. But as each door is opened and Marshport
is thrust into a sinister nightmare, Matthew realizes the terrifying
truth and is forced to relive the horrors from his
past that refuse to stay buried. The countdown has begun,

(47:36):
and once that first door is opened, there is no
turning back. Where Darkness presents Advent of Evil, a twenty
four episode audio saga beginning December first. Listen each day
for a new chapter through Christmas Eve, and if you'd
like to follow the story in print. The full novel
is now available in paperback and hardcover editions as well

(48:00):
on kindle. Grab the novel now for yourself or for
someone else and be ready to follow along December first,
and for a limited time only, you can also grab
an Advent of Evil gift pack, including a signed copy
of the novel by the author Scott Donnelly, wrapped up
with an Advent of Evil bookmark, pen, highlighter, hot chocolate, Chai,
tea chocolates, a candy cane, and some horror stickers. The

(48:24):
gift pack is in limited supply, so act fast if
you want to take advantage of it. You can find
links to purchase the book or the gift back at
Weird Darkness dot com slash Advent of Evil. That's Weird
Darkness dot com slash Advent of Evil, and then be
ready as the first episode comes your way December first,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Ruthie's Table 4

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Fatal Vision Murders: Hippie Cult or Husband's Rage?

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Ruthie's Table 4

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

The Fatal Vision Murders: Hippie Cult or Husband's Rage?

Stuff You Should Know