Jeffrey MacDonald ft. Robin Warder

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Riddle Me That is a true crimepodcast that deals with adult themes. Some
episodes explore disturbing topics such as murder, abuse, sexual violence, drug abuse,
suicide, and self harm. Pleaselisten at your own risk. Theories
disgusting episodes may not be the opinionof the host. Welcome back to the

(00:32):
show. I'm Jules and this hasRiddle Me That True crime. So I
am again joined by my co hostfrom the Path Wind Chili and the host
of the Trail Wink called Robin Warder. Thanks for having me yet again.
It's been minutes since we last talked. I know, we've had a week
that has just been packed with eachother. We did like a three hour

(00:52):
recording on Tuesday, we did alive stream on Thursday, and then it's
Sunday today and we're doing like anotherthree hour long recording. Yep. We
did another episode just before this one, so it's a double feature for us.
Yeah, and then we've got anotherrecording either tomorrow or Tuesday. So
it's a lot of rob and Jewelsin Ashley time this week, a lot

(01:15):
of cases to talk about. Sotell me about the case you are going
to be telling us all about today. Well, I've decided to cover the
Jeffrey McDonald case, which is alsoknown as the McDonald family murders, which
took place in nineteen seventy and isone of the cases I've most obsessed with
and have had an interest with forover thirty years now. I felt compelled

(01:36):
to talk about it because I recentlywatched a documentary series about the case,
titled A Wilderness of Error, whichwas five parts long and hilariously enough,
I watched the series on Disney Plusbecause it was originally released on Hulu a
couple of years ago. But theway it kind of works for rights issues
is that a lot of the contentfrom Hulu gets dumped onto Disney Plus in

(01:57):
Canada. So I even made atweet about it the other day that I'm
watching the Jeffrey McDonald's case on DisneyPlus. What a time to be alive.
That's so strange thinking of Disney Plus. I just wouldn't think of it
as a destination for true crime documentaries. Yep. And that's exclusively in Canada
because apparently it's on Hulu and theStates, so we're the lucky ones.

(02:20):
Oh and just as a side note, before we get into this case,
Robbins, You want to talk aboutthe Keith Warren documentary Uprooted because you just
watched it. Yes, it wasjust aired on Discovery Plus two nights before
this recording. It was three episodeslong, and it was excellent. If
you're not familiar with the Keith Warrencase at all, I highly recommend it
because it covers all the pieces ofevidence which showed that his death was likely

(02:42):
a murderer and not a suicide asthey have classified it as. And what's
pretty cool is that at one pointthey interviewed a councilman named Hans Raemer who
early in twenty twenty one felt compelledto make a push to reopen the investigation
and get Keith's death reclassified as ahomicide. And he's specifically he said that
he listened to an interview with anEMTN dallas Lip, who discovered Keith's body

(03:05):
on a podcast, and while hedid not specifically refer to the podcast by
name, that would be riddled methat because Jules did an interview with dallas
Lip last year as part of ourseries on Keith Warren and this Hans Raamer
guy listened to these episodes and feltcompelled to take action. Well, we
did a number of episodes for ThePath beIN Chiley, and then I just
did those standalone episodes for Riddle MeThat with Sherry Warren, Keith's sister,

(03:30):
as well as Dallas Lip who's nowfire Captain. And I can see how
after listening to that specific interview,because Dallas is so detailed and he's got
such a clear memory of exactly whattranspired, that that would light a fire
under Hans Rimer and he would belike, Okay, there's something not right
here. This family deserves answers.Okay, So now we're going to talk

(03:54):
about the Jeffrey McDonald case. AndI'm curious. You say you kind of
have a basic knowledge of about thiscase, but you don't know a whole
lot. Yeah. I think Ilistened to an episode on a podcast years
ago on this case, so Iremember the bizarre details. The acid is
groovy, kill the pigs or orwhatever. I can't remember if it's from
this. I get this in themonths and one confused with the hippie element

(04:16):
and the quotes. But yeah,I remember the detail, like the basics
of it. But you're going tobe shedding a lot more light on the
intricacies of the case for me.Oh yes, I mean this is one
of the most heavily covered cases ofall time because it's been the subject of
so many books and documentaries and podcasts, and it seems like half of them
have a pro guilt vibe the otherhalf have, it say, pro innocence

(04:40):
vibe, because Jeffrey McDonald has beenin prison for over forty years for this
pride and to this day he stillmaintains his innocence, and opinions are sharply
divided. And this is a rarecase where even if you believe McDonald is
guilty, you can kind of understandwhy people believe he's innocent because his defenders
have done a very effective job atbuilding up a pro innocence narrative in this

(05:02):
case. But if you break itdown, then there's only one conclusion you
can reach. And I'll tell youmy opinions as we go on later on
in this episode, But believe itor not, I was first introduced to
this case back in the nineteen ninetieson an episode of The Jerry Springer Show
of All Places, because Jerry decidedto break from his usual format and actually

(05:23):
make a trip to the prison whereMcDonald was incarcerated to interview him and get
his thoughts on his innocence. Andfor years I thought I had imagined this
whole thing, But then I dida Google search and it's like, oh,
Jerry Springer did do an episode onthe McDonald murders, which is very
out of characters. So yeah,I'm glad to know that that was not
a figment of my imagination. Ilove how you just randomly thought, Okay,

(05:45):
I'm making an association between Jerry Springerand this true crime case. This
can't be right. This has tohave been some kind of dream or figment
of my imagination. But yeah,that shows how widespread this case is.
If it's being featured on Jerry Springer, then you know there's a lot of
controversy associated with it. So ittook place in Fort Bragg, North Carolina,

(06:05):
in nineteen seventy. At the time, Jeffrey McDonald was twenty six years
old and he was working as aphysician. He had joined the army the
previous years and was holding the rankof captain at this point, and it
also signed up with the Green Breys, and he was essentially holding two jobs
because he was in the Army astheir group surgeon, and he was also
moonlighting as an emergency physician at alocal hospital. At this point, he

(06:29):
was married to his high school sweetheart, Collette, who was twenty five years
old, and they had two daughters, five year old Kimberly and two year
old Kristen, and Collette was fivemonths pregnant. He lived on base in
a small house, but everything changedat around three forty two am on the
morning of February of the seventeenth,where McDonald made an emergency phone call to
an operator claiming that he and hisfamily had been attacked in their home by

(06:54):
intruders, and the military police soonshowed up, and they discovered that Jeff
had a whole bunch of wounds onhim where he had one stabb wooed on
him on his left torso which hadpunctured and collapsed his lung, and he
had a number of cuts and abrasions, but the injuries to the families were
much worse and they were pronounced deadon site. Jeff was taken to the
hospital, but they discovered that Collettewas dead on the floor of her bedroom.

(07:16):
She had been stabbed thirty seven timestwenty one with an ice pick and
sixteen with a knife and also beenclubbed with a piece of wood and both
of her arms were broken. Kimberlywas found dead in her bedroom. She
had been clubbed in the head andstabbed in the neck with a knife ten
times. And the youngest daughter,Kristen, who remember was only two years
old, she was stabbed thirty threetimes with a knife and fifteen times with

(07:39):
an ice pick. So right awaythere were major alarm bells about why this
grown adult male. Even though hewas injured, his injuries seemed pretty mild.
But the so called intruders had justbutchered a woman and her two young
children. Yeah, the injuries arehorrific. Collette's injuries thirty seven times,
she's club over the head and shealso has her arms broken. Do they

(08:03):
know how her arms were broken?I think it was mainly because of the
piece of wood, Like she hadbeen struck in the head, and I
think she probably put up resistance andwas hit with the wood on the arms
which caused them to break. Geez, and then the little girls. Yeah,
so five year old Kimberly was stabbedten times in the neck. This
feels like a lot of overkill fora child, and she was also clubbed,

(08:26):
correct, Yeah she was. Andthen the youngest daughter, who was
two, which was Kristen, wasstabbed how many times? Thirty three,
no, forty eight in total,thirty three with a knife and fifteen with
an ice pick, So two differentweapons on this two year old girl.
She seems like so much overkill onthese tiny little children. I feel like,

(08:48):
how would an intruder When you breakit down, you've got Jeffrey McDonald,
who would be the strongest person,who would pose the greatest threat.
Usually you would want to bring downthat threat completely before you would be able
to then complete your attacks on themore vulnerable persons in the home. But
his injuries, although not minor,they didn't really seem to be enough that

(09:13):
you would be absolutely positive that hewouldn't be able to fight back or do
something to stop you. Yeah,exactly, and not get to share the
story that he shared once he recoveredin the hospital his injuries. He wound
up surviving them, and he claimedthat because Kristen had a bed on his
side of the bed while sleeping withCollette, he could not sleep there,
so he decided to fall asleep onthe couch while the TV was on,

(09:35):
and then he suddenly woke up anddiscovered four intruders inside his house. He
would describe them as two white males, one blackmail, and a woman with
a floppy hat, and he claimedthat they just started attack him in a
violent struggle ensued and that he couldhear his life and children screaming for help
in the bedroom to indicate that theywere being attacked as well, and eventually

(09:56):
he was knocked unconscious, and whenhe woke up and discovered that his his
wife and children had been murdered,that's when he called for emergency assistance.
And he claimed that the woman wascarrying a lit candle or the attack was
going on and uttered the words acidis groovy, killed the pigs. And
I don't know about you, butthat sounds exactly what a guy who had
never met a hippie before in hislife would automatically assume. They would say,

(10:20):
yeah, it sounds like something straightout of the Hey, I know
that Charles Manson did this. Let'sjust make up what a bunch of hippies
are going to say, and forthis frenzied attack, that this woman's just
all casually holding a candle, chantingthis it just feels a little bit theatrical.
That's exactly what the army thought whenthey first arrived at the scene,

(10:41):
saying that there's no way that theseevents happened. As he said, the
worst size that a struggle had takenplace in the living room, but it
seemed pretty mild, like we basicallyhad a knocked over flower pot and a
table that had been overturned. ButMcDonald made it sound like the struggled valiantly
with four people. Yet they noticedthat there were some Valentine's Day cards on

(11:01):
the top of a chest which werestill standing up, and they performed a
test where they stopped their feet andthat caused the cards to fall over.
So they were thinking there had actuallybeen a struggle here involving multiple people.
Then those cards would not be standingup straight. So they were beginning to
think that the crime scene had beenstaged, and sure enough they found that
the word pig had been written inblood on the headboard in the master bedroom,

(11:24):
which was very similar to how pighad been written at the crime scene
of the Share and Take murders whenthe Manson family killed them in August of
nineteen sixty nine, which was justsix months before this, and they would
later discover a key piece of evidence, an issue of Esquire magazine which had
been on the coffee table, whichhad bloodstains on it, and it just
happened to have an article about theManson family murders. So they started to

(11:46):
believe that Jeff had killed his ownfamily and was looking for a cover story
to explain intruders. And that's whenhe started thumbing through Esquire, read about
the Manson family and said, Hey, I'm going to blame it on a
bunch of dry addicted hippies breaking itinto my house because the Manson people will
believe it because it already happened inCalifornia. I mean, I guess to

(12:07):
play Devil's advocate. You never knowhow trauma is going to affect you or
affect your memory. So the factthat you know, doctor McDonald is saying
that he struggled so valiantly and he'sremembering something this way, it doesn't necessarily
mean that you're going to lay downthe foundation of these perfect memories. Well,
these horrific things are taking place aroundyou when you have all of these

(12:28):
serious injuries. But then on theother hand, it just seems so elaborate
and so fantastical that I can understandwhy the army is like, Eh,
this sounds fabricated. Yeah, ButI mean, you would ordinarily think that
this would be like a cut anddry case where they disbelieved his story and

(12:48):
that they would think he was theprime suspect for day one. But there's
a reason that this case is stillbeing debated fifty years later, and one
of the main reasons was an MPnamed Kenneth Micah who was one of the
first people to arrive at the murderscene, and he would later tell people
that as he was driving up tothe house, he saw a woman in
a floppy hat standing outside next toa building only about a few blocks away

(13:11):
from the McDonald residence. And asyou can imagine, McDonald he told that
story about being attacked by a womanwearing a floppy hat, and so this
seemed to back up his story becausethis was like almost four in the morning
and it was pouring rain that night, so it seemed very unusual that some
random woman in a floppy hat wouldbe standing out there. And the thing
with Kenneth Micah as a witness isthat he has always believed that was McDonald.

(13:35):
Was guilty and murdered the family himself, so he would have no reason
to lie about it. But hehas always said that if I had not
reported that woman in the floppy hat, that people would not be debating jeff
McDonald's innocence to this day. Howfloppy was the hat? Right, We've
got eyewitness statements which can be problematic. Is this a rain hat? Is

(13:56):
this a really wide brimmed hat.It seems as though, given the time
that this takes place, what yearwas this, nineteen seventy, nineteen seventy,
floppy hats were very much in fashion, so I could see that a
lot of women would be wearing them. And maybe somebody is just walking around
at night and taking their dog outfor a potty and they're wearing a hat.

(14:16):
And it just so happens that hecaught a quick glimpse at that moment,
and Jeffrey McDonald took that nugget ofinformation and used it for his defense
to create some kind of reasonable voute. Well, that's the thing is that
McDonald gave his story before he knewKenneth Micah had seen this woman in the
floppy hats, so he could nothave known this. But other people.
Skeptics have said that maybe they wouldfind some murder weapons outside, they would

(14:39):
find the ice pick and the knifein the backyard. So some people have
speculated that if McDonald staged this,he would have run outside and maybe he
saw this woman in the floppy hatpassing through the neighborhood and he used it
as the basis for his story.Yeah, that makes total sense to me.
You're trying to come up with somethingwhere somebody could have seen somebody like
that around the neighborhood. So ifhe was ditching those weapons and he saw

(15:03):
somebody like that, he's perfect.All somebody in the neighborhood has to do
is remember seeing somebody who vaguely meetsthis description within you know, a couple
hours, and I'm golden type ofa thing. That's what I'm thinking as
well. But but this caused thiscase to live on is that there would
be a prime alternate suspect who I'mgoing to talk about later named Helena Stokely,
who was known for being a drugaddict who hung out with like crazed

(15:26):
hippies and always wore a floppy hat. So his defenders have always taken this
as evidence that that was Helena Stokely. She was involved in the real murders.
That's who Micah saw. But MPMica has always maintained that I did
get a good enough look at thiswoman to see her face and confirm or
deny that she was Helena Stokely.Though interestingly enough, he's been interviewed about

(15:46):
this in recent years and kind ofchanged his story where he says that I
knew Helena Stokely personally, and Iam absolutely certain that the woman I saw
was not her. M that's aninteresting about face, but I think she's
just doubling down, vehemently denying thatthere's any possibility that this woman could have
been Helena Stokely. And it isvague a woman in a floppy hat,

(16:07):
and to make a jump to that, like, hey, we know about
a woman who liked to hang outwith quote unquote crazed hippies and wears a
floppy hat and likes to do drugs, so it makes sense that she would
be wandering around saying acid is groovy, kill the pigs while holding a candle
exactly. And I know that Micamade The reason he has changed that story
is because he's just so sick ofbeing asked about it. I know,

(16:30):
at the opening of the Wilderness ofAir documentary series, one of the first
scenes as him being phoned up foran interview and he's almost like, uh,
this again. So it's almost likehe's trying to revise details so people
will stop asking him about it,because he's always believed that McDonald is guilty.
Gotta be super frustrating too, becausebased on all of the evidence and
everything that he's seen, he doesn'tbelieve that there was anybody else that murdered

(16:53):
Jeffrey McDonald's family. He believes thatJeffrey McDonald is the one who's responded.
So I can imagine it would bereally frustrating knowing that this thing that you
witnessed, this woman in a floppyhat, is the one thing that's kept
that door for reasonable doubt open.He has always said that I think his
superiors were angry that he shared thatstory because if he hadn't, then maybe

(17:15):
this pro innocence favor on McDonald willnot have taken off. So I think
he almost regrets sharing that story.Well, what happened is that the Army
completely disbelieved McDonald's story and they decidedto charge him with murder. But because
this is the military, the justicesystem kind of works differently, so they
would hold an Article thirty two hearingto decide whether or not he was going

(17:37):
to go on trial with the murdersand if the evidence was strong enough.
But the problem is that because theseMPs were not used to working murder scenes,
this was totally unparalleled, had neverhappened before. They completely mishandled it,
like they did not secure the crimescene, They had people wandering in
and out all day, They didnot take fingerprints or secures certain pieces of
evidence. So when they tried topresent a case against him at the hearing,

(18:00):
it was a complete mess. Andto give you an idea of how
badly this was botched, they initiallydiscovered that McDonald's wallet was missing, and
of course they're using that like,see, this is evidence that there was
an intruder in the house and theystole his wallet, and it would later
turn out that it was actually stolenby the ambulance driver when he arrived at
the scene. He just decided tohelp himself to McDonald's wallet to steal the

(18:22):
money, and that completely compromised theinvestigation. What a cluster f and a
half. Seriously, you've got peopletrapesing all over the scene, and granted
it's nineteen seventy, they don't knowwhat DNA is because it hasn't been discovered,
so people are going to be alittle I mean, we even hear
about people being messy in recent cases, but no one's clearly wearing booties.

(18:45):
This hasn't been you know, kindof roped off or cordoned off, and
you've got ambulance drivers just you know, sticky fingers with the wallet of one
of the victims. It just seemsso perplexing how this could even happen.
I've just never heard about that before, where someone has stolen a victim's wallet
and murder scene. But it justgoes to show that everything that could have

(19:07):
gone horribly wrong with this investigation didand that probably is one of the reasons
why this case is still debated allthese years later. But ultimately, Jeff's
defense team generated enough reasonable doubt thatthe Army ultimately decided that they did not
believe there was enough evidence to takehim to trial, so they dismissed the
charges against him, and he eventuallygot an honorable discharge from the Army and

(19:30):
moved to California, and if ithad ended there, McDonald might have gotten
away with it indefinitely. But thenhe decided to make an appearance on The
Dick Cavett Show several months later inDecember of nineteen seventy and I want to
ask, have you ever seen thisinterview footage? No, I've never seen
it. Oh man, I mean, it is one of the most infamous
interviews you will ever find any truecrime case. Because Dick Cavo, he

(19:53):
was a comedian, so this waskind of out of character for him,
and he said that this was goingto be a different show and usual for
him because he was interviewing a manwhose wife and two daughters have been murdered,
and he says, I have tohandle this sensitively. But to his
surprise, it was Jeffrey McDonald whowas acting more comedic and jovial during the
interview, because he starts off bydescribing the scene of the murders, and

(20:15):
one of the first things he saysto Dick Cavit is, yeah, I
was just getting in. My wifehad gone to bed because we had been
busy watching a certain late night talks. So wink wink that he's kind of
gritty as he says this, andthroughout the rest of the interview, everyone
is assuming that he's trying to findjustice for his murder wife and daughters,
and that he's trying to send outwords so they could find the real killers

(20:38):
and bring them to justice. Butall he really does is talk about himself
and how the Army railroaded him andhow they unfairly accused him of the murders.
And he barely talks about collect Kimberleeor Kristen, and the whole interview
ends was saying, well, that'show the army handles things whenever you screw
things up, but they either transferyou or give you a promotion. And
then there's kind of this awkward silencethe audience it starts applauding his comment and

(21:02):
stuff like that, it just startsgritting and nodding, and everyone is like,
Yeah, this is not how agrieving father who has lost his family
should ever act when he's talking aboutthe crime on a talk show. That's
so awkward, especially I mean strangeaffect. We can convict somebody on that
alone. But one thing that wesee brought up again and again with statement

(21:22):
analysis experts, and I've said thisa million times, but I will say
it again. Micah Mclosure has alwayssaid, wherever somebody brings something up with
regards to a crime, that's thelevel of priority that it is. And
it sounds like Jeffrey McDonald's priority wasJeffrey McDonald and how everything is affecting him,

(21:44):
not the fact that his two daughtersand his wife have been slain and
there is a killer running around.It's like he's more concerned about how he's
being railroaded than actually trying to findjustice. And that doesn't seem to be
how an innocent person would act.Oh exactly. If you can pay our
interviews with Jeffrey McDonald to interviews withmost grieving family members who have lost someone

(22:06):
to a horrific crime, it's justtotally night and day. And it's kind
of funny. He had become kindof a semi celebrity at this point for
a horrible reason. It kind oflooked like from his interview that he was
enjoying it, that he loved thisattention of being on TV and being able
to interact with other celebrities. Iknow that Dick Cabotz said that he felt
like he was interviewing Bob Hope asa guest rather than someone who had lost

(22:29):
his wife and two daughters. That'sso weird. And I'm not trying to
diagnose or say that Jeffrey McDonald's isexperiencing any of these things. But it
is possible that somebody could be ameglomaniac, a narcissist, a sociopath,
and they could get up there andlegitimately have something terrible happened to them or
their family and behave in a completelytone death atypical way, but personally so

(22:52):
far from what you've told me.That's not the vibe that I'm getting here,
not really here. No. Iusually cut victims families a law of
slack when they're interviewed, and theydon't act like they're grieving enough or that
they're emotional enough. But this iskind of on a whole other level.
But one person who was watching theshow and was absolutely horrified was Collette's stepfather,
Freddie Kasab. Collette had lost herfather at a young age, so

(23:15):
Freddie married her mother, Mildred,and was very close to the family.
He almost considered Collette to be likehis own daughter, and he also was
deeply in love with his two stepgrandchildren, so of course his top priority
was trying to find the real killers. Because he always got along well with
Jeff. He thought he was theperfect son in law. And he was
absolutely outraged the first time he wascharged with murder in the Article thirty two

(23:40):
hearings and openly supported him every stepof the way. But then when the
charges were dismissed, he said that, Okay, Jeff, we want to
find out who really did this.Can you get me a transcript of the
article thirty two hearings so I canlook over the evidence. And Jeff would
just kind of keep blowing them off. And his first instinct is that he
wanted to move to the other sideof the country, to California to get
on with his life because he becamea physician out there. He bought a

(24:03):
new condo, a new boat,and didn't seem to have much interest in
solving the case. And then whenFreddie watched him on the Dick Cabot Show,
he was absolutely horrified, and thenhe kind of started to do a
complete one eighty and realized that myson in law actually committed these murders and
he is guilty, and I'm goingto bring him down. So, as
far as we know from any ofthe family members or any of the friends

(24:26):
close to the couple, was thereany kind of marital discord that anybody was
aware of. There was, butit was kind of kept kind of hush
hush because Jeff actually cheated on Colletteand numerous occasions, and there was a
lot of stress in the household becausepeople kind of suspected that her last pregnancy
was an accident and that he reallydidn't want another child. And he was

(24:47):
like working really really hard at thispoint, like he was doing double duty
in the army and also working asan emergency room physician to support a wife
and two children soon to be threechildren, and he would work sometime twenty
four hour shifts forty eight hour shiftsin a row and become absolutely exhausted.
So even though they put on ahappy face every time they were in front
of people or in public, itseems like after the murders, people started

(25:11):
noticing that there was a lot ofstrife there and that Jeff was not exactly
an ideal husband. I can't imagineworking double duty with the army and as
an emergency room physician that is anincredibly stressful job. You're going to run
a huge sleep deficit, and thenhaving to come home and have these young
children. It would be a lotfor somebody to deal with. So I

(25:33):
can imagine that there would be somestress, and maybe that's why he chose
to do destructive, unhealthy things likecarry on affairs rather than dealing with the
problem in hand. Oh, exactly. And one of the theories which would
be presented, and I don't knowif it's true, is that he was
apparently taking a lot of amphetamines atthis point to work these long shifts and

(25:56):
keep himself going. And some peoplehave looked at that kind of a motive
for the crime, because he alwaysclaimed that when he arrived home that night,
he discovered that Kristen and wet thebed and that he was unable to
sleep in the bed even though hehad worked something like twenty four or forty
eight straight hours, And they suspectthat this might have been one of the
things to set them off and committhe murders, though that's never beneficially confirmed.

(26:19):
That's really interesting that it could havebeen a catalyst. But the fact
that he brings it up makes methink that it means something. I don't
know why, it feels like it'ssignificant, Do you think so? I
think so. Yeah, because somepeople have suspected that he may not have
intended to kill his wife and childrenthat night. It might have just been
a fight that went out of control. But by that point he might have

(26:41):
been regretting the fact that he decidedto settle down and become a family man
with these two children and a thirdon the way. So while he never
dreamed that he was going to murderthem, if things escalated into violence,
he may have said, Hey,this is a great opportunity for me to
make a fresh start, and thenI can do my own thing and I
can sleep with as many women asI want, And that might have been
what compelled him to stage the wholecrime scene. Yeah, that makes total

(27:04):
sense to me. It seems likeif he didn't do this, he probably
lost control, and that might havebeen the catalyst, was the fact that
she'd wet the bed. Because Ican imagine if you've worked this long shift
and you're already feeling the stress,you're regretting your two year old child.
You're thinking, gosh, I wouldhave preferred just two kids. I'm working

(27:26):
so hard this one's in my spotin bed, and she's urinated in the
bed. I can't even sleep whereI'm supposed to be sleeping, Like that's
got to be so frustrating, andprobably thinking why hasn't my wife got up
and changed the sheets type of athing. Why isn't Colette got up and
fixed this so I don't have tocome home to a bed filled with pea?
And then he may just overreact,even though Colette may have no idea,

(27:48):
right it could just be so faraway that she's just sleeping and doesn't
know that her daughter's wet the bed. I have the feeling that there was
a lot of tension in the marriageat this point, and this might have
just set everything off because I knowCollette had been developing outside interest. She
wanted to take college classes and stuff, and I think Jeff was having issues
with that because he just wanted herto be a stay at home mom who
would raise the kids. So thatcould have provided another issue. And this

(28:11):
could have just the bed wedding thing. I know it's also been mentioned as
a potential motive in the John beanA Ramsey case, but that could have
just been the inciting incident that justset everything off. Yeah, that's exactly
where in my mind when you originallybrought up the bed wedding was the whole
people use it as a catalyst forPatsy potentially losing it on John Benet because

(28:33):
she'd wet the bed yet again,even though I don't personally believe that's what
happened, but a lot of peopledo. That's why I think it's a
lot more plausible as a theory inthis case than the John Bene Ramsey case.
I agree. So anyway, asI mentioned, Collette's stepfather, Freddie
Kasab, was horrified by Jeff's appearanceon The Dick Cavot Show, and anytime

(28:55):
he would call him up to tryto get him to launch a new investigation
into the murders, would keep luwingthem off. I got to the point
now where Freddie started tape recording theirphone conversations in case he needed to use
them against him later, And atone point Jeff during a phone conversation says,
don't tell anyone. But I decidedto take some vigilante justice into my

(29:15):
own hands, and I got someof my Green Bret pals and we decided
to track down one of the hippieswho killed Collette and the two girls,
and we took care of him anddisposed of his body so you don't have
to worry about it. And ofcourse Freddie, unbeknownst to him, Freddie
was recording this conversation and it turnedout, of course, to be a
complete lie, and this would beused as damny evidence against him later on.

(29:36):
Who lies about that? That's justso atypical. It's weird. It's
just weird. I'll say it.Oh it is, yeah. I mean,
you can make comparisons to Oj Simpson, but at least OJ put up
the pretense of wanting to look forthe real killers in order to get people
to leave them alone. But JeffreyMcDonald isn't even trying here. He's just
kind of wanting to move on withhis life. And then when his stepfather

(29:57):
in law pushes him hard enough,he says, Okay, I admitted I
tracked down and killed one of thekillers. Are you happy now? Will
you leave you alade to fabricate detailslike this to this grieving family. You're
just going to lie about that,and you think that they're not going to
check into these details or mention thisto the police. The fact that he
thought he could get away with thislie. We know the Jeffrey McDonald is

(30:19):
a very intelligent man, but thisfeels like a really poor move on his
part, and he's even admitted ininterviews later on that this was a stupid
thing to do and he shouldn't havedone it. But a lot of his
mistakes in this case were his ownundoing, just because of his own arrogance,
because he does seem like a prettynarcissistic person. So anyway, Freddie

(30:41):
decided that he finally obtained the transcriptsof the article thirty two hearing, which
was the very first time he heardJeff's story about what happened from front to
back, and he just noticed abunch of sizable holes and inconsistencies in his
story, And of course he wantedto get the Army to help him with
the investigation, and they were morethan happy to help because Jeff had made
them look really bad during his interviewon the Dick Cavot Show, because all

(31:03):
he did was bitch and complain abouthow they had railroaded him. So he
was pretty much saying to Freddie,yeah, if you need any help getting
him charged with murder again, wewill be happy to help out. And
sure enough, Freddie finally went tothe Justice Department and they built up a
new investigation, and then finally inJanuary of nineteen seventy five, Jeff was
finally indicted for the three murders,and he would finally go on trial in

(31:26):
Raleigh, North Carolina in July ofnineteen seventy nine. And this is very
interesting because, like you mentioned earlier, this is the nineteen seventies, so
we're not going to have DNA evidence. But one of the damning pieces of
physical evidence they were able to useto build a case against Jeff was that
there was a weird genetic anomaly inthe McDonald family where each member had a

(31:48):
different blood type, which I've neverheard of before. Because Jeff had Type
Collette had Type A, Kimberly hadType A B, and Kristen had Type
OH. And there was so muchblood out in the house that night that
ordinarily it would have been impossible tobe able to determine whose blood belonged to
which person, but because they eachhad a different blood type, they were

(32:08):
able to separate the blood and figureout who it belonged to, and that
totally started poking holes in Jeff's storywhen you've only got blood typing the fact
that they've all got different blood types, which I agree, I've never heard
of. I think usually blood typeseems to be inherited, so there seems
to be some commonalities between blood types. So when we see five different people

(32:31):
with five different blood types, thatseems like a lot. Have you ever
heard of that before, where afamily has a different blood type for each
member. No, I mean,I guess a lot of family members.
People don't even know their own bloodtypes. In a lot of cases,
okay, don't even know most ofmy family members know what their blood types
are. I did a specific testto find out what mine is, but

(32:52):
yeah, a lot of them don'teven know. So I think you ask
a lot of people, they're notgoing to actually know what their blood type
is unless they've had a specific testor given blood. Yeah, that's what
I'm thinking as well. And Idon't think they ever would have been able
to make a case against Jeff.It wasn't for this genetic anomaly, but
it became like a blessing because theycould figure out whose blood type was at

(33:13):
which place in the house, andof course it didn't match Jeff's original story
because he mentioned being attacked in theliving room, but there were no traces
of his type bee blood anywhere.But they did find some type bee blood
in the bathroom sink, so thatled credence to the idea that he inflicted
the wound on himself on his lungwhile standing over the sink with a scalpel.

(33:34):
And that's why his type bee bloodwas found there, because he was
a surgeon, so he might haveknown a good place to inflict a wound
that wouldn't have been fatal. Andthey also found type bee blood on the
kitchen floor. And what was interestingis that they found a tip of a
surgical glove over the word pig,which had been written in blood on the
headboard. And it seems kind ofunusual that a bunch of drug addicted hippies

(33:55):
would be wearing surgical gloves, butthere were some surgical gloves underneath the counter
in the kitchen, so they suspectedthat Jeff crawled down there to get them,
and that's why his TYPEE blood wasfound there. Maybe if he wanted
to write those letters in blood.Jeffrey McDonald, like he said, he's
a surgeon. He's sophisticated enough toknow that fingerprints are going to be something

(34:15):
that you might be able to findin blood. And if you find his
fingerprints in the blood where it sayspig on the headboard, then that could
directly point to him being the personwho is responsible for everything. So maybe
he put on surgical gloves and thenjust decided to wash those surgical gloves off
after and then put them in thegarbage, Because it doesn't really make sense

(34:36):
that a bunch of drug addled hippiesare going to be using surgical gloves.
What are they going to ask himwhere his surgical gloves are? Like,
what exactly? It's kind of aweird contradiction where they're so high on drugs
that they're talking about acid. Yetthey're very skilled at crime se manipulation to
not leave any physical evidence behind.And they also found the fact that the
ice pick and the knife that hadbeen used to murder the two girls and

(35:00):
Collette, they were found in thebackyard and they belonged to the McDonald residence,
so it seemed like a thing wherethey showed up there to commit these
murders. Yet they didn't bring anyweapons along with them and only used items
that were found in the McDonald household. That seems very convenient. What about
the candle? Did they ever sayif the candle was found in the McDonald
household or if somebody brought their owncandle to the crime scene but didn't think

(35:21):
to bring any actual weapons they usethose in the home, because that's even
weirder. But what is interesting,though, is that's often used as a
point in favor of his innocence becausethey did find traces of candle wax there
and there were no candles at theresidents, So they were saying, see,
that supports his story. This hippiebrought a candle there and was burning
it while committing these murders. Butthey've also kind of written that off by

(35:44):
saying that they'd only even in thehouse for like a year or two,
and it's possible that this candle waxwas very old and had been left there
on a previous occasion. Yeah,I guess it's pretty hard. It's sort
of like DNA. You can't tellwhen that candle wax got there unless it's
warm or it's mushy. It couldhave got there a year ago, six
months ago, a day ago,it's true, and they've used the same

(36:05):
thing for the fingerprints, whereas defendershave said they found fifteen sets of unidentified
fingerprints in the house that proves thatintruders were there, but they had visitors
over to the residence. Is likeyou search anyone's house, you're going to
find unidentified fingerprints from people who havebeen there, and that doesn't necessarily mean
they committed murder. Oh my gosh. Since we've moved back, my husband
and I are staying until we canfind a place to lease in an airbnb

(36:29):
because we'd originally planned on moving toSpain in three months, so we just
got a long term rental here.And can you imagine, just say,
for example, something happened and theyhad to investigate a crime at an airbnb.
Can you imagine, even though theycleaned them, the amount of fingerprints
that they would find that are unidentified. It would be astronomical. So I

(36:50):
think the fact that you've got thesefifteen unidentified fingerprints isn't that significant because I
think every home you're going to findsomething. Oh exactly, this was a
military base, so a number ofpeople had lived in that house long before
the McDonald So I do not thinkthat the fingerprints have much significance. And
then you've got friends that come over, You've got delivery people that come in,
plenty of people that are servicing things. You've got like a plumber coming

(37:14):
over or an electrician. You've gotsomebody just delivering a pizza. You might
have people that are touching your surfacesand you don't even really realize it.
So I think there's just so manyexplanations, and just the fact that they
found these fingerprints they can't tie toanybody doesn't really mean much. And going
back to the blood type evidence,another thing that seems weird is that they

(37:34):
found traces of Kimberly's type A Bblood inside the master bedroom and traces of
Collette's type A blood in the bedroomsfor both of her children. And if
they were being attacked by hippies intheir own bedrooms, why is the different
blood types in there. So thisallowed the prosecution to come up with the
scenario about what they believed happened.He suspected that Jeff and Collette had gotten

(37:54):
into a big argument in the bedroomover Kristen wedding the bed before they took
her back to her own bed,and things got so heated that Jeff decided
to pick up this wooden club thatwas used to hold up as a table
and used it to beat up onCollette, and while this was going on,
Kimberly became curious about the noise inher parents' bedroom that she ran in

(38:15):
and likely by accidents. Jeff swungthe club back and wound up club in
Kimberly, and at this point itwas pretty much the point of no return
where he's thinking that, well,if I beat my wife, then maybe
no one will find out about it. But if they discover that I hit
my five year old daughter with aclub and possibly caused brain damage, then
I'm going to be in so muchtrouble. So I have to stage this

(38:37):
as a crime scene. So hedecided to finish off Collette. Then he
took Kimberly back into her bedroom andstarted stabbing her. And by this point
Collette she was still alive, soshe actually ran back into the bedroom to
try to protect her daughter, andthat's why her blood was found in there.
And this is the most disturbing partof the story to me, because

(38:58):
Collette and Kimberly's desk have started offas accidents where in the heat of the
moment, Jeff decided to swing hisclub around and accidentally hit them, so
that's why he decided to stage themurder scene. But at this point,
Kristen was still sleeping in her bed, and Jeff then made the calculated decision
to kill her too while she wassleeping, and that's when he got the
ice pick and the knife, andhe stabbed her a total of forty eight

(39:21):
times in order to back up hisstory and just the idea of a father
deciding to stab his own two yearold daughter while she was sleeping in order
to invent this fictitious scenario about intrudersthat is just so disturbing to me.
If that's what happened, what isthe total number of stab wounds between call
it Kristen, Kimberly, and thenJeff. Jeff had one stab wound,

(39:46):
which was the one that caused hislung to collapse, and he had a
number of abrasions. Collett's had thirtyseven stab wounds, twenty one with an
ice pick, sixteen with a knife. Kimberly had ten stab wounds with a
knife, and she had also beenclubbed in the head. And Kristen,
the two year old she was stabbedthirty three times with a knife and fifteen
times with an ice pick. Sopeople look at that and it's like,

(40:07):
why would you stab the adult maleonce but stab these helpless children so many
times. That's a lot of stabwounds too. He really had to commit
to this. But I agree withyou. I think the most likely scenario
is it didn't start off with I'mgoing to murder my whole family. It
just ended up being this outburst ofviolence, probably due to the fact that

(40:29):
his daughter had what the bed.Because he brings this up, so I
definitely think it's a point of significance, and I know you do too,
so this I but it's what reallybothers me. It all bothers me,
Like there's no part of innocent peopledying and innocent children dying. But it's
his youngest daughter, is it,Kimberly, it's his youngest daughter, Kristen.

(40:52):
That he could have even staged thiswhole thing where these people broke in,
but he somehow managed to escape withKristen. He didn't. He chose
to then go and end her ownlife too, maybe because he thought it
was further committing to the story,or he thought, hey, I've already
started, I may as well continueand just be completely untethered to any other

(41:12):
human being. I don't know,what do you think? That's what I'm
thinking as well, is that hecould have staged the scene with Kimberly and
collect but let Kristin survive because shewouldn't have been able to provide any testimony.
She didn't see anything. So hecould have said, these intruders broke
in body, escaped with my youngestdaughter, and then continued raising her.
But I think he was at thementality where he never really wanted these children

(41:34):
to begin with. He wanted tomake a fresh start, so this was
an opportunity to get rid of her. And one thing I've always noticed that
whenever Jeffrey is interviewed and he tellsthis story, the one part where he
just starts to get more emotional thanusual is when he describes finding Kristen's body.
And I think to myself, ifhe feels any guilt about this whatsoever,
it would probably be the death ofKristen, because while the other ones

(41:57):
he could tell himself it was anaccident that escalated out of control, Stabbing
Kristen was a calculated decision so that'swhy it really stands out that part about
how could a father do that totheir own two year old and he had
time to think about this, hegrabbed multiple implements to do this, stabbing
her with a knight and an icepick. It's just so much overkill.

(42:20):
That's why when they found the bloodon the Esquire magazine they thought that was
damning. Where they thought he's justlooking through it for ideas and says,
oh, Manson family they killed,They stabbed people thirty times, so maybe
I could do the same thing tomy own family. So people will believe
that this murderous cult of drug addictscame in here and committed this crime.
Yeah, I feel like he's areally smart man, but he's not as

(42:42):
smart as he thinks that he is. Oh exactly, yeah, because he
wasn't an intelligent man. But heobviously is not going to be an expert
on forensics. It's not like youwatch CSI back then to learn how to
commit the perfect murder. So Ithink he's coming up with the best scenario
he can think of under those circumstances. But of course a number of poles
would open up and people didn't believeit and he likely didn't know that each

(43:05):
member of his family had a differentblood type, so when he committed this,
if he is the perpetrator, whichI'm definitely leaning towards it being him,
it's reasonable to assume that he figuredthat at least one or two of
the children would share his blood typeand or share collect blood type, so
it would be a lot more intermingledor intermix But the fact that they each

(43:25):
had different blood types that makes thestory a lot more clear of exactly the
way in which these events transpired.Pretty much like they don't prove that he
did it, but they'd show thatthe story he provided did not happen exactly
the way he did, and thatgave them just so many openings to build
a case against him. But oneof the most interesting piece of evidence that

(43:45):
they used against him at trial wasa pajama top he had been wearing because
when he called the police, hewas shirtless and claimed that when the intruders
attacked him, they pulled his pajamatop over his head and stabbed it several
times, and that indeed they founda whole bunch of holes in it.
But they did a demonstration in courtwhere they showed that if you were to

(44:06):
stab a pajama top, well itwas wrapped around someone's hands, you're probably
going to make a whole bunch ofholes that are all over the place.
They're going to be sloppy, they'renot going to be neat. And they
kind of had a lucky break becausewhen they performed the demonstration in court,
the prosecutor was stabbing down on thepajama top and accidentally nicked the assistant prosecutor
in the hand and cut it,Whereas Jeff didn't have any cuts and knicks

(44:28):
on his hand, so that providedan additional hole in his story. But
when they showed the pajama top,all the holes in it were just kind
of neatly space together and stuff.It looked like he had been stabbing down
on them while they were not wrappedaround his hands, And sure enough they
found a whole bunch of When theylooked at the ice pick holes on Collette's
body, they completely lined up tothe holes on the pajama top. So

(44:50):
they figured that she probably put thepajama top over her when he was inflicting
the stab wounds on himself, andthat's why they lined up, and sure
enough, they found fibers from thepajama top her body and also on the
wooden board which was used to clubCollette, So it just seemed like more
evidence that he had staged the crime. That must have been quite the day
in court when you've got the prosecutorand the assistant prosecutor or whatever, and

(45:14):
they're showing this demonstration, one stabbingat the other one's hand and they actually
draw blood. I'm sure the jurywas really paying attention at this point.
Pretty much, yeah, like itwas just an accident, but the prosecution
was kind of smiling, saying,Oh, this is a lucky break because
now we've found another point we canuse to debunk McDonald's story. So that
hand wound was totally worth it.I guess. Yeah, happy accident exactly.

(45:37):
But of course there's a reason whypeople have still been debating this,
and that's Helena Stokely. I mentionedher earlier on but she was known for
being a local drug addict who wasalways around Fort Bragg because her father had
been in the military, and shehung out a lot with other drug addicts,
and she also wore a floppy hat, just like the suspect that McDonald

(45:59):
had described During the attack, andover the years she had allegedly made a
whole bunch of confessions that she wasresponsible for the murders of the McDonald family.
And she also had a boyfriend namedGreg Mitchell who was a former Vietnam
veteran who had returned with PTSD,so he also got hooked on drugs,
and multiple witnesses would say that theyhad heard Greg Mitchell confessed to being involved

(46:22):
with the murders as well. Andthe motive that was presented is that a
lot of the time, drug addictswould be wheeled into the Virgenency room where
McDonald worked, and that he wouldturn them over to the police if he
discovered drugs in their system. Sotheir rationale was that because McDonald had turned
in a lot of their friends,they wanted to go to his residence and

(46:43):
rough them up to teach him alesson. But because they were on a
lot of drugs at the time,things kind of escalated out of control and
that's why they wound up stabbing himand fatally murdering his whole family because they
were just not in their right mindsat the time. And according to a
lot of their friends, Helena Stokelyand Greg Mitchell were so with guilt over
the whole thing that they made multipleconfessions to multiple people over the years that

(47:06):
they were the real perpetrators. Whatdo you make of that? Well,
it's kind of weird because Stokely wasactually brought in to testify at the trial,
but she apparently had a meeting withthe prosecutor where she said that she
was going to admit on the standthat she and her friends were responsible for
the murders, but the prosecutor,James Blackburn, said, well, if

(47:28):
you confess to that on court,I will also charge you with murder.
And then by the time Stokely testify, she completely recanted her story and said
that well, I was on somany drugs that I don't even remember where
I was that night. It's alla big blur. And in addition to
drug problems, she also had issueswith mental illness. And I know that
the defense wanted to bring in alot of the other witnesses who claimed they

(47:50):
had overheard Helena and Greg Mitchell confess, but the judgement not allow them because
they said it would be hearsay.So I don't know if all those people
were lying. I think there isa good chance that there were points where
Helena Stokely and Greg Mitchell legitimately theybelieved they might have been involved in the
murders because they took so much drugsat that time that they can no longer
tell fantasy from reality. But theyjust cannot find any conclusive evidence to place

(48:13):
them in the household. Yeah,I agree with you. I think that
when you factor in mental illness anddrug use, we see so many false
confessions. And we just talked abouta case the other day. I you
and Ashley remember the name of it. I'm not that familiar with it,
but it was one of the guyshad said that him and his friend had
committed this murder, but they hadn'tright, and he'd basically said that it

(48:37):
was like he'd made up the youknow, it's a case my churn,
Ryan Ferguson and Charles Ericson case.Yes, yes, yes, So it's
really similar to that, right sortof in the sense that maybe this person
really believes it. It wasn't RyanFerguson, it was the other guy who
had said that they had committed themurder, correct exactly. That's the only

(48:59):
reason Ryan and was ever charged becauseCharles Ericson had apparently been telling people that
he was having these weird dreams thathe and Ryan committed this murder together,
and when the police brought him infor a questioning, he eventually confessed,
whereas Ryan says, I had nothingto do with us at all. He's
completely making up the story. Butbecause Charles was willing to testify against him

(49:19):
and go to prison, the jurybelieved it, and that's why Ryan wound
up being convicted. And Ryan hassince been exonerated and been released, but
Charles is still in prison because ofhis confession, but none of the physical
evidence matches him at all. Soit seems very likely because he was taking
so many drugs at that time,that he legitimately started to believe that he
participated in the murder. But astime went on, he finally realized that

(49:40):
this was all a fantasy and thathe had been manipulated by the detectives.
Yeah, I just see the parallelsbetween the two. It's possible that Billina
Stokely actually really did believe that,but that doesn't mean that just because that
is her memory, that that isindeed what happened. So I can see
why the prosecution was, like,Okay, if she's going to get up

(50:00):
there and say that she's responsible,then we don't want to put her on
the stand. I mean, youmight be able to tear apart her confession
because do you know, if shehad an alibi for the time that this
took place, it's kind of weird. It doesn't look like she is.
She's changed her story so many timesover the years that it's hard to tell.
But I know there were witnesses whoclaimed that they saw her and her

(50:22):
group together like a couple of otherhippies around between midnight and two am,
and that she was seen returning toher home maybe around like four thirty am
after the murders took place. Soshe really doesn't have a specific alibi that
places her at another location while themurders were taking place. But all the
people she hung out with were alwayson drugs anyway, So even if someone
provided her with an alibi, youcan't tell if that's reliable or not.

(50:45):
Well, no, if everybody thereis using drugs and they're not really the
most reliable narrators, I don't reallythink it's going to be something that's even
possible to get a proper alibi,because everybody that she's hanging out with is
likely tripping on acid too or whatever. It was their drug of choice,
and so I don't know, Ijust don't really. I can't picture a

(51:07):
group of people who are on acidbeing like, let's go and do that.
I know, the Manson murders totake Lebianga murders and stuff we're committed
by. You know, Manson's basicallyhis family. And they were taking drugs,
were they not? They were takingquite a few, like a law
right, definitely, yeah, ButI don't think it's a typical thing.
A bunch of hippies go and dropacid and get these murderous intentions. Psychedelic

(51:30):
drugs aren't typically like something like bathsalts or amphetamines that cause people to act
with murderous rage. Not typically,even if they did have a personal grudge
against McDonald because he was turning indrug users, wal would possessed them to
suddenly decide, well, we're gonnastab him once and then we're going to

(51:50):
go into the bedroom and stab hischildren multiple times. What kind of drugs
drive a hippie to do something likethat? And usually hippies are all about
love and oneness and all those sortsof things. Killing children isn't usually going
to be in their wheelhouse. It'snot even going to be something that they
would ever consider. I know somany people have said that they either heard
Helena or Greg Mitchell say that allwe wanted to do was rough them up,

(52:14):
but things got out of control andthen we committed all these murders.
And another story that was presented aboutGreg Mitchell, which could not be presented
at the trial because it was hearsay, was that a couple of years after
the murders, he allegedly went tothis drug rehab facility on a farm because
he was trying to get clean.But then one morning they woke up and
discovered that he was gone, andthat he had written the message on the

(52:37):
wall of a barn. I killedthe McDonald's wife and his children, And
a lot of people have shared thatstory, but a lot of the skeptics
has said, well, if youfound that, why didn't you take a
photograph and send it into the police. So we have no idea if that
story is actually true. I've heardthat story attached to it and spoken about
like it's a fact of the case. So that's interesting that it would have

(53:00):
like, Okay, well, it'stenuous at best if we don't have any
photographic evidence to back this up,because, like you said, it's pretty
jarring. I think that even innineteen seventies, someone's got to have a
polaroid hanging around. Oh exactly.Yeah, I mean I can believe maybe
that Greg Mitchell may have said thathe committed the murders or believed he did,
or maybe even wrote that somewhere,but the fact that no one took

(53:22):
a picture of what was one ofthe most high profile crimes of the nineteen
seventies makes me question the credibility ofthat story. Yeah, and just because
he believes that he did it doesn'tmean that he's the one responsible. To
a harken back again to John VaneRamsey and we've got John Mark Carr,
right, Yeah, same type ofthing. Yeah. So, anyway,

(53:44):
because they couldn't present much of anargument about these alternate intruders being the murderers,
Jeff McDonald wound up being fine guiltyand sentenced to three life sentences.
But of course this took place innineteen seventy nine, and we're still talking
about the case to this day.Because they have published a number of books
and produced a bunch of documentaries thatare pro guilt and pro innocence. But

(54:05):
I think the big turning point isbecause prior to the trial, McDonald had
worked with a writer named Joe McGinniswho said that he wanted him to publish
a book about this story and talkabout how he was a victim and he
was falsely accused and that he wascompletely innocent of these crimes. And even
after he was sent to prison,McDonald still thought that McGinnis was going to
do this and write this big proinnocence book that was going to clear his

(54:29):
name. And then, to asurprise, it was released in nineteen eighty
three and it was titled Fatal Vision, and it's pretty much considered to be
like one of the biggest, mostpopular true crime books of all time.
But to McDonald's surprise, it tooka pro guilt vibe because McGinnis said that
while he was researching the case andwriting about it, he became convinced that

(54:49):
Jeff was actually guilty of these crimes, and the book did not betray him
in a flattering light. And itwas turned into an acclaimed TV mini series
which aired on television one year laterand won a bunch of Emmy Awards.
Have you ever watched the Fatal Visionminiseries. No, but I'm gonna have
to go and find it and watchit. It's easily available on YouTube and
it's very well done. It starsCarl Malden as Freddy Kasab And what I

(55:15):
like is that the actor they castto play Jeffrey McDonald was Gary Cole in
one of his earliest roles, andhe's terrific in its showing McDonald's two sides,
where on one hand he can looklikable and charming, but the other
hand, he can look selfish andnarcissistic. And what's kind of funny to
me is you probably know Gary Colefor his role as Bill Lumberg in Office
Space, right, Yes, Ilove Office Space. But what's hilarious is

(55:38):
that one of the most distinctive thingsabout Bill Lumberg is that he has these
giant glasses. But Gary Cole,when he's playing Jeffrey McDonald, also is
wearing a large pair of glasses throughoutthe movie. So all I can think
of is him doing his dialogue inthis Bill Lumberg voice, like, Yeah,
I'm gonna have to ask you notto charge me with my family's murders,
that'd be great. So if youdo watch Fatal Vision, it will

(56:02):
be hard to separate Jeffrey McDonald fromBill Lumberg. Because of Gary Cole,
I'm gonna be expecting him to askfor TPS reports exactly. Yeah, But
all joking aside, it's a reallygood performance, and I'm glad that Gary
Cole's career kind of took off afterhis betrayal. But here's where it gets
complicated. But because Jeffrey McDonald hadsigned a contract with Joe McGinnis, technically

(56:24):
McGinnis was in breach of contract bywriting this pro guilt book because he didn't
do what he said in this contractwith McDonald. So they wound up going
to court over the whole thing insettling out of it, and I think
McDonald was awarded three hundred and twentyfive thousand dollars. So technically, Fatal
Vision is an excellent book, andI agree with a lot of its conclusions

(56:45):
about McDonald as being guilty, butI can also acknowledge that it was a
very unethical book because McGinnis breached thecontract and wrote this pro guild book behind
McDonald's back. And I think thisis one of the main reasons that they
have had this narrative that Jeffrey McDonaldis an innocent man who was falsely accused
because he technically did win an outof court settlement for launching a lawsuit against

(57:08):
this book. That's difficult too,because I can imagine when he approached this
it was like, Okay, thisis a guy who could be innocent.
And then as a journalist, whenyou poured in all this time and all
this energy into researching this, andyour opinion changes and you're like, I'm
supposed to be objective here. I'mnot supposed to be pro innocence, pro

(57:30):
gil. I'm supposed to look atthe facts and then kind of go from
there. But yet he's already agreedwith McDonald. The only reason that he's
just closing this information to him isbecause he said, I'm going to be
portraying it in this kind of alight. But yet he chooses not to
do this. So it's one part, I guess, heroic, but on
the other part, really unethical andkind of yucky. It's true. I

(57:53):
don't know if you've heard it,but there's actually a true crime podcast called
Morally Indefensible, which covers the McDonaldmurders, but it kind of takes a
unique angle because it not only looksat the crime, but also this whole
interaction with Joe McGinnis and whether ornot he committed serious misconduct by writing this
best selling book and going against hisclient's wishes, even if his client was

(58:14):
a convicted murderer. I mean,it's pretty tough. Right you made an
agreement, you're in breach of contract. No matter what you think about Jeffrey
McDonald, I don't think you canargue that it isn't unethical even if he
is a murderer. It doesn't matter. You agreed to do something and then
you didn't fulfill your end of theagreement and you profited off of it.
And so I can see why thecourt awarded him that money. Doesn't mean

(58:36):
that he's innocent. It just meantthat he was essentially kind of screwed over
here. And that's the thing isthat even if you believe McDonald as guilty
as sin, he did get kindof a rough break in certain aspects,
and there were a lot of problemswith how he was portrayed in the media
and how the conviction took place.I can even acknowledge that he technically did
not get a fair trial because therewere just thousands a piece of evidence and

(59:00):
apparently the government kept blowing the defenseoff and they did not get access to
all this evidence until maybe a fewweeks before trial, so they did not
have adequate time to prepare for it. And the prosecutor in this case,
James Blackburn, if you see himin interviews, he looks like a fairly
likable guy, but there have beenaccusations that he withheld evidence from the defense

(59:21):
and did some unethical things. Andsure enough, many years after the fact,
he wound up being disbarred and sentto prison for embezzling money. And
I think the other prosecutor worked onthe case also got disparred. So technically
we have this man who was screwedover by the guy writing a book about
him, and he was also putin prison by two prosecutors who wound up
being disparred and going to prison forother crimes. So once again, this

(59:45):
builds the narrative that Jeffrey McDonald wasscrewed over in a huge way, even
if he was guilty. Yikes,it takes a lot to get a prosecutor
dispar how many cases have we coveredwhere there's been multiple Brady violations and nothing
happens to the prosecutors. That's kindof the cardinal sin with a prosecutor is

(01:00:05):
that you can do all these Bradyviolations or unethical things at trial because people
will forgive you if you wind upputting like a person away in prison for
murder, but if you embezzel moneyfrom your own clients, you are screwed,
and that no one will come toyour defense for that. Yeah exactly.
I mean that's a great point.People will excuse and justify the poor
behavior of holding back or withholding evidencebecause they think, well, we know

(01:00:30):
that this person is guilty. We'remaking the right choice, even though it's
unethical and they're not allowed to doit. So many prosecutors do it and
get away with it. But yeah, you can't get away with embezzling money.
No one's going to jump up andbe like, there's a reason for
this, it's justifiable. Oh exactly. Yeah. So that's what kind of
pulls the narrative is that McDonald hasused that a lot, saying that,

(01:00:50):
hey, the guy who put meaway has been to spar that shows that
I was wrongly convicted, even thoughthey're just so many complicating factors in this
case. But because of the controversyinvolving fatal vision and the whole thing with
James Blackburn, it seemed like inthe late eighties early nineties that's when the
whole pro innocence movement started. Becausethey released a documentary on the BBC called

(01:01:12):
False Witness, which is also verygood and available on YouTube. They published
a new book called Fatal Justice,which took a one eighty from Fatal Vision
and looked at the possibility that McDonaldwas innocent and wrongly convicted. It was
also shown on Unsolved Mysteries as afinal appeal segment, and McDonald was also
interviewed on the aforementioned Jerry Springer Showto proclaim his innocence. So he was

(01:01:35):
pretty much everywhere during this time period. And I have to admit that when
I first became familiar with the case, I started to believe that McDonald might
be innocent because there was just thispro innocence movement everywhere at that time.
This is one of the first nationaltrue crime obsessions, isn't it. Pretty
much? Yeah, this was beforepodcast or the Internet, but there were
just so many books, TV specialsand documentaries that people would become obsessed with

(01:02:00):
the Jeffrey McDonald case, So itwas pretty much sereal before there were cereal
totally. That's really interesting because there'sso many books all with titles with fatal
in it, and it seems likethere's a basilion different documentaries and even today,
there's so much interest in this casebecause of the interesting alternate suspect in
Helena Stokely. I think, yeah, exactly, because you're not going to

(01:02:22):
find this with many other cases wheresomeone is guilty of a murder stays their
innocence, but they actually find analternate suspect who confesses to the crime.
To make a comparison Diane Downes,who was in prison for murdering some of
her children. She is still tothis day maintaining her innocence, but no
one really believes it because she alwayssays that this unnamed other suspect shot her

(01:02:44):
children, even though they never foundany promising candidates who could have done it
besides her. But in this caseyou have Helena Stokely and Greg Mitchell,
people who have allegedly confessed that theywere the real killers. Did Diane downs
blame a black man. I thinkI know Susan Smith did. I can't
remember if Diane Downs did, butshe did say that she was a victim

(01:03:05):
of a carjacker and that this personshot her children instead of her. Yeah,
that's just terrific. But yeah,she's definitely the best suspect. There's
no other suspect out there. Sospeaking of Helena Stokely and Greg Mitchell,
they both died during the nineteen eightiesat very young ages because of course they
were drug addicts and they developed likea lot of health problems. So even

(01:03:27):
if they were guilty, they willnever stand trial for these crimes. But
after McDonald was convicted, Helena Stokelystarted doing interviews again where she says I
lied at trial. I only didnot admit to my role in the murders
because I was wearied that I wasgoing to be put in prison. But
now I fully admit once again thatmyself and my friends we were responsible for
the McDonald family murders, and thatJeffrey McDonald is innocent. And if you

(01:03:51):
go on YouTube, you can finda whole bunch of interviews that Stokely did
during the early eighties where she's beinginterviewed by a private investigator named Ed Gunderson.
Ted Gunderson was a former FBI agentwho became a defense investigator for the
McDonald's team, and watching Stokely's interviews, on the surface, you can believe
that she's telling the truth. Butthen you find out about Ted Gunderson and

(01:04:14):
that he is a complete nut jobfor lack of a redder term, because
as the years went on, hewould be one of the big purveyors of
the Satanic panic movement who was convincedthat there was a bunch of ritual satanic
abuse going on where people were molestingchildren and murdering them, and that the
government was being controlled by the NewWorld Order, and he kept smouting off
all these conspiracy theories. And onceyou learn about that, and the fact

(01:04:38):
that he became the big pro innocenceadvocate for Jeffrey McDonald, then you start
to believe that he could have manipulatedStokely into falsely confessing, and it destroys
kind of the credibility of that case. Oh yikes. Yeah, that definitely
makes you look at it a littlebit differently. If he's one of those
people that truly believed in the satanicpanic. It was like the Salem Which

(01:05:00):
trials, but with daycare workers andstuff. It was just horrific. If
you knew a Google search on YouTubefor Ted Gunderson, you'll find a bunch
of old interviews with him where he'stalking about satanic panic and stuff like that
and how the government was running thesesatanic cults and stuff who were murdered stuff,
And it's like, wow, whatwas trying to get myself released from
prison of my name cleared? Iwould not want this guy on my side.

(01:05:24):
No, But I mean, Iguess beggars can't be choosers. And
I don't know how many people areat that point lining up to be a
vocal support of Jeffrey McDonald. Iknow he's got quite a few people and
like innocence projects and stuff that havelooked at this case. Right. Oh
exactly, because in twenty twelve,they would actually publish a new book about
the story, called A Wilderness ofError, which is where they got the

(01:05:46):
title of this true crime series.And it was written by Errol Morris,
who was a filmmaker who actually gainednotoriety when he released a documentary in nineteen
eighty eight called The Thin Blue Linewhere he actually got an innocent man off
death row who had been falsely convictedof murdering a police officer. And once
I saw that Arl Morris was writinga pro innocent book in McDonald's favor,

(01:06:10):
I did a double tape saying,Okay, this guy has a documented history
of getting innocent people out of prison. There's got to be some credibility here.
He must have good reason to believethat McDonald did not do this.
But it seems that as the yearshave gone on and Errol Morris has looked
more closely into the case, itseems like he is more inclined to believe
that maybe McDonald was guilty all along, and I might have made a huge

(01:06:30):
mistake coming to his aid. Imean, that's fair, right. I'm
with you in the sense that Ican understand why people can come to the
conclusion that he could be innocent becausethere is a very good alternate suspect or
suspects. And then you also havethe fact that he likely didn't get a
fair trial. You have credibility issues, ethical issues with both prosecutors, and

(01:06:55):
it seems like the way he wasportrayed in the media may have been problematic.
So was there reasonable doubt? Potentially? Did he get a fair trial?
Probably not. Is he completely innocent? I don't think so. No,
definitely not. It seems like alot of the pro innocent things.
They will bring up all these pointsabout how he didn't get a fair trial

(01:07:15):
or that Helena stokely confessed, butthey will completely ignore a lot of the
damning physical evidence against Jeff, whichyou really can't come up with an explanation
to account for. One thing thatbothers me about it is the fact that
you told me that his blood typeis found in the sink in the bathroom,
and we know he's a surgeon,we know that he's going to if
he's going to injure himself, youdon't want to just stab at yourself.

(01:07:38):
You want to look in a mirrorto make sure that you get the exact
right spot, especially since he's onlystabbing himself once. We see these fevered
attacks on the female members of hisfamily. Yet he only has one precise
stab wound and nothing that was fatal. So it seems like if there's no
blood where he's saying there will beblood, but yet there's blood in the

(01:08:00):
bathroom, So it looks like hewas looking in the mirror and made sure
that he got that wound in theright place. And that's hard to explain
that blood away in that sink.I mean, you can make all the
arguments you want about Helena Stokeley's confessionsand all that, but they can't explain
his blood is in the sink andwhy the blood of all the family members
are in different rooms because they completelycontradict his story. Does that remind you

(01:08:24):
at all of the Darly Root haircase, where her blood is in the sink
and that's a difficult thing to explainaway. Oh, exactly. Yeah.
A lot of people have made comparisonsbetween the two cases, and they seem
pretty similar, where we have someonemurdering their children and blaming an intruder.
But I think what stands out isthat Darly Root here they've never found any
convincing alternate suspects, whereas here we'vehad people who confessed. But in both

(01:08:46):
cases there is physical evidence that's reallyhard to explain away if you believe that
the defendant is innocent. So oneother piece of evidence I wanted to talk
about, which actually made me convincedthat McDonald was innocent. For a couple
of years was a man named JimmyFryer who claimed that on the night of
the murders, he was an outpatientfrom a hospital clinic and he phoned the

(01:09:06):
operator to say that he needed tospeak to doctor McDonald, and there was
apparently another doctor on the base calleddoctor Richard McDonald, but this operator wound
up transferring Friar to Jeffrey McDonald's residenceby mistake, and according to Fryar,
a woman wound up answering the phoneand she could hear this weird giggling and
then in the background he heard amale voice say, hang up the damn

(01:09:28):
phone, and then the call wentdead. And then later on years later,
Helena Stokely pretty much shared the exactsame story where she said, yeah,
we were attacking the McDonald family andthen the phone rang and then I
answered it and giggled until Greg Mitchelltold me to hang up the phone.
And once I heard this, Iwas like, okay, Like, there's
no way that these two independent eyewitnesses could tell these exact same story.

(01:09:49):
This has to back up McDonald's accountof what happened. But then you dig
deeper and you find out that JimmyFryar is not a credible witness at all
because he didn't actually come forward withthis information until McDonald's trial in nineteen seventy
nine, which was nine years afterthe fact. He had a history of
mental illness in making up stories,and in any of McDonald's original accounts of

(01:10:12):
this case, he never mentioned hearingthe phone ring while he was being attacked.
So it seemed like Jimmy Fryer wasa guy who would liked to insert
himself into true crime cases in orderto get himself the center of attention.
And for this reason he was notcalled upon to testify at the trial because
I think the defense felt while he'sgot these credibility issues, he has a
history of mental illness, he'll probablybe torn apart on the stand. Yeah.

(01:10:35):
For many years afterwards, Jimmy Fryerkept sharing this exact same story and
claiming that this was evidence that McDonaldwas innocent. But the way I look
at it, the only reason Stokelyshared this story is because once Jimmy Fryer
came forward, the defense team sharedthe story about a phone call. Was
Stokely She shared this story and itgot accepted as truth. But once you

(01:10:55):
look deeper into it, it lookslike that this phone call never actually happened.
It's literally like the game Telephone,where a piece of evidence is kind
of has from one person who isincredible to the next person who is incredible,
and you've got two people who areincredible, and somehow this point this
has passed off as a fact ofthe case, but it's not. And

(01:11:16):
like you said, it convinced youfor a couple of years, so you
can see why Errol was like,Okay, yeah, he could be innocent,
and then years later, upon closerexamination, he's questioning his findings in
his book. Oh yeah, Imean this is one of those cases.
There are both pro and anti McDonald'swebsites out there, and if you go
to the pro Innocence website and youread their account of what happened, you're

(01:11:40):
like, Okay, this story isconvinceding it has to be true. He
has to be an innocent man.But then you go to the pro Guild
website and they break down every pointthat the pro Innocence website makes, piece
by piece, and then it leavesyou thinking that no, there's no one
else who could have done this besidesJeffrey McDonald, and it's funny. They
actually have a page called the Jeffreymc donald Magical Mystery Tour, which has

(01:12:01):
this very long chart of all thepoints McDonald brings up, and then on
the other side they bring up excerptsfrom the documents or the trial transcripts which
completely debunk it. And that's whereI found out about the whole Jimmy Fryar
thing, where they put up thewhole phone call thing, and then on
the other side they brought up pointswhich completely debunked it, and I said,
oh, yeah, it now seemslikely that all this evidence of his

(01:12:24):
innocence is complete bunk. Yeah.I think once you've laid out all of
the evidence, it's just what isso unfortunate here as having Mitchell and Stokely
come forward and say that they wereresponsible, Because in many people's eyes,
why would people who had nothing todo with the murders come forward over and
over and over again and say thatthey're responsible. I think in some people's

(01:12:46):
eyes, they just still can't understandhow false confessions happen. Oh exactly.
I mean this is back in thenineteen seventies where there just wasn't as much
knowledge about false confessions. We didn'thear about Brendon As or the West Memphis
three case yet, so there wasthis an automatic assumption. Why would these
two people confess to a murder theydidn't commit unless they were actually guilty.

(01:13:08):
But then you look at their drughistory and the mental health history, and
you can understand why this would happen. Yeah, and one thing I wanted
to mention is that I don't eventhink it's still up now, but if
you go to the pro Innocence JeffreyMcDonald's website, you kind of get a
glimpse into his egocentric and narcissistic personality. I'm going to read this exerpt that

(01:13:29):
always robbed me the wrong way,but here it is, word for word.
Quote. The loss of Collette,Kimberly and Kristen has been compounded by
the needless continuation of losses since theirdeaths. How many lives could have been
saved if Jeffrey McDonald continue to servehis community as a skilled and respective innovator
in the field of emergency in edicineend quote. Whew, that's disgusting.

(01:13:49):
So let's just let a murderer gofree, because he's really educated in the
doctor and an innovator. We're totallyundervaluing the lives of Kimberly Cullett and Kristen
here, like they're saying, well, it's bad that this wife and her
two children murdered, but it's aneven greater tragedy that Jeffrey McDonald couldn't show

(01:14:10):
his brilliance and genius in the fieldof medicine if he had not gone to
prison for their murders. Don't likethat, Yeah, And one other piece
of information I saw on the proGuild website which I thought was very compelling,
is that's how I've mentioned here thathe always gave a description of a
woman with a floppy hat, twowhite males, and a blackmail. But

(01:14:31):
even though they've assumed that the womanwith the floppy hat was Stokely and one
of the two white males was GregMitchell, they'd never really come up with
any compelling suspects who could have beenthe other white male and the blackmail.
But interestingly enough, in the earlystages of the investigation, they discovered that
four people matching that description had actuallyrented a house from McDonald's brother in New

(01:14:51):
York during the summer of nineteen sixtynine, which was months earlier, and
the female member of that group wasknown for wearing a floppy hat, and
it was established that Jeffrey went tovisit his brother at the house while these
four people were staying there, sohe would have known who they are.
So they actually investigated these four peopleand they were able to rule them out
as suspects because none of the physicalevidence matched them and they had alibis placing

(01:15:15):
them at other locations. But Ijust find that to be an odd coincidence
that he comes up with this descriptionof these four intruders who were ruled out
as being involved in the crime,and then all of a sudden, we
have four other people come out,like Elena Stokely and Greg Mitchell, who
were pushed forward as potential suspects.So part of me wonders if McDonald would
be's fabricating this cover story, rememberedthese four people from his brother's house and

(01:15:40):
used it as part of his story, and then they wound up being debunked.
So it just strikes me as toomuch of a coincidence that he would
come up with this and then findout that other people were responsible for the
crime. Yeah, was it acoincidence. I don't think so either.
I think that he saw these peopleand he's like perfect. At least when
you're coming up with a lie,having a lie that's based in some truth

(01:16:02):
is a lot more believable. Soif he's got actual physical descriptors for these
people, he can describe their affectat least makes it sound like he's not
pulling people out of thin air,you know what I mean. These could
be actual people. So it feelslike this is very well thought out,
or maybe not very well thought out. It was sort of like a last
minute thing. Okay, I needto come up with who could have done

(01:16:25):
this. Let's rock our brains.He thumbed through that Esquire article and is
like, okay, well I needto come up with some hippies. Well
wait, these ones stayed at mybrother's home, so I'll just describe them
and we're good. Here, we'vegot some other's suspects. Yeah, that's
exactly what I think happened. Andof course he would have been under so
much stress at that time because hemurdered his family and had to come up

(01:16:46):
with a cover story. So Idon't think he was thinking logically about how
whether people would believe it. He'sjust said I'll come up wherever I can
and hope that it holds. Andone more thing I wanted to mention is
that, of course they couldn't doany deed A testing back in the nineteen
seventies, but they finally did somein the mid two thousands, and they
used samples of Greg Mitchell and ElenaStokeley's DNA and could not find any traces

(01:17:10):
of it anywhere on any of theevidence. And they had found a limb
hair in Collette's hand which they suspectedhad been grabbed by her when she was
being attacked, and that would belongedto her killer. And they decided to
do DNA testing on it in twothousand and six, and guess who had
matched Jeffrey McDonald exactly. It didnot match Greg Mitchell or anyone else involved.

(01:17:32):
And technically it does not prove he'sguilty because by his own admission,
jeff said that he attempted to applyCPR to Collette and handled her body when
he was trying to save her,so that could provide an innocent explanation for
how his hair wound up in herhand. But also it kind of shows
that maybe when she was fighting himoff, she grabbed his limb hair and
that's why it wound up there.But they have not found any other DNA

(01:17:55):
that points to an alternate suspect.All the DNA found on the home belongs
to Jeffrey McDonald. Because we knowthat Collette had broken arms. So if
we talked about earlier on, ifwe're to assume that their defensive wounds right,
because if she's putting her arms upand then that's how her arms get
broken because she gets clubbed, shecould be grabbing at her attacker at that
point. So if there was ahair of somebody else found in her hand,

(01:18:18):
that would be reason enough for meto believe that there could be an
outside intruder. But the fact thatit's Jeffrey McDonald's hair, it's not the
only thing that makes me think thatit's him, But it's certainly just another
check mark on the side of JeffreyMcDonald guilty in my opinion, And I
think that a lot of his supporterswere kind of devastated about that DNA finding

(01:18:41):
because they had spent like the entirenineteen nineties lobbying for his innocence. Is
getting his story out there, andthen they finally do DNA testing and it
implicates them rather than exonerates him.But even so, he still to this
day maintains his innocence. He hasnever changed his original story. He's seventy
nine years old now and asked fora compassionate release from the prison because of

(01:19:01):
his age, but they denied himbecause he refuses to admit culpability. Because
he's actually gotten parole hearings, butthey will not let him out unless he
admits he murdered his wife and children. But he's still going to admit his
innocence to the day he dies,because I think he's too much of a
narcissist in a sociopath to ever admitculpability. So I don't think we will
ever get a full confession from him. I agree with you. I think

(01:19:25):
it's just it comes down to himbeing a narcissist and him doubling down and
sticking to this story. He wantsforever to have this live on even after
he dies with people still questioning hisinnocence are guilt because I think it's just
a sense of self importance, andthat's sort of the vibe that I get
from him. Yeah, because evenif he dies and doesn't get released,
he still doesn't want his legacy tobe that he is a murderer, so

(01:19:48):
he will never admit culpability. Buthe has a lot of people who still
believe him. He actually got marriedwhile he was in prison. He has
a wife who's been lobbying for hisinnocence for the past to decades, even
though they have never been together outsidethe prison walls. So he does have
that charm where he's able to convincethe right people sometimes. Well, what
is it the VSA in the South? Bless her heart? Yeah, bless

(01:20:11):
her heart. Yeah. And onemore thing I wanted to mention is that
the person I feel really sorry forin this whole story is Collette's brother,
Bob Stevenson. He was interviewed duringthe Wilderness of Error's documentary I Told You
about It. He still gets reallyemotional talking about it, and he just
finds the experience so painful because thestory just will not die. Because Jeff
has never admitted culpability, he alwaysfinds people fighting for his innocence. So

(01:20:36):
every time somebody wants to write abook or do a TV special or documentary
about this case, they contact BobStevenson for an interview, and he just
gets so upset by it, sayingthat he was put in prison four decades
ago. I just want to moveon with my life and get closure.
But because he has managed to foolso many people for so long, this
is never going to end. SoI'm going to have people questioning me and

(01:20:59):
questioning his guilt for innocence until theday I die. And he's the person
that I feel the most sorry forbecause this is just never going to leave
him and he's never going to beable to move on from this horrible tragedy.
My gosh, this is so manyyears ago. Can you imagine?
It's like Groundhog Day over and overand over again, this being dredged up
and trying to move on from thattrauma. And I really hope that he's

(01:21:20):
had the ability to go to counselingand speak to a therapist and do some
you know, deep trauma work,because this is not something that just goes
away. This is not just awound that you can let heal and move
on with your life. Because Ibelieve that, like you said, Jeffrey
McDonald has manipulated a lot of peopleand he's been really really fortunate because of

(01:21:42):
Mitchell and Stokely, had they notbeen in the picture, had they not
so readily admitted their own culpability,which I think comes down to them being,
you know, drug users and havingmental health issues. But it's just
he got so lucky here, That'swhat I think it comes down to.
I don't think it's that he's hisbrilliant mastermind who committed the perfect crime.

(01:22:03):
I just think he sort of fellinto a situation that was favorable to him.
That's what makes the standout from otherso called wrongful conviction cases is that
most people in prison will claim thatthey're innocent, but they won't have this
supposed evidence to back it up,like the confessions from Stokely and Mitchell and
also the sighting of the woman inthe floppy had people still use that as

(01:22:24):
his evidence to this day that he'sinnocence. So he's always going to be
able to maintain that narrative and convincesome people no matter what. But I
think that the real hero in thisstory is collette stepfather, Freddie Kasab,
for changing his mind about Jeff andpursuing justice. And I don't think Jeff
ever would have been sent to prisonunless he fought so hard for them and
ensured that he would finally get chargedwith these murders. Well, I'm sure

(01:22:46):
that Freddie and the entire family sawthis one side of jeff when he'd married
Collette, this successful surgeon who's workingmultiple jobs to support his family, and
I'm sure that he was very charismatic, and he'd manipulated everybody in the family
to think he was wonderful. SoI can totally understand their reservations in believing
that he could be responsible initially,but in watching his behavior on those interviews

(01:23:12):
and going, Okay, his regardfor my daughter and for my granddaughters isn't
there. His regard is for himself. He seems the most concerned with Jeffrey
McDonald, and that's a problem.No matter what I look at it,
I do believe Jeffrey McDonald is anarcissistic sociopath. And these people kind of
scare me more than most average serialkillers, because it's one thing to kill

(01:23:35):
people for pleasure because you enjoy it. But here we have a guy who
is able to murder his wife andhis two young daughters and then just move
on and live a new life andcompletely put it behind him without any guilt
whatsoever. That always frightens me whenpeople are able to do this one horrific
thing and then go on to livenormal lives for the rest of the time.
You know what it reminds me ofis doctor Dunch from Doctor Death.

(01:23:59):
Oh, yes, yes, I'veheard to him. Yeah, yeah,
He basically maimed, he paralyzed people. He was horrible, he was doing
drugs. He just didn't seem tohave any regard. I listened to show
is called like Deadly Psyche or somethinglike that, and it's got former FBI
profiler Candice along and she talked aboutthe case of doctor Death or Christopher Dunch,
and she came up with a conclusionthat he knew exactly what he was

(01:24:21):
doing, that he did it becausehe wanted to kill people and he wanted
to hurt people. He wasn't abad surgeon. It was that he chose
to do these things. That's evenworse. He'd even did it to one
of his best friends and seemed tohave no regard for the fact that his
friend is now paralyzed because of actions, that he's taken surgeries, that he's

(01:24:42):
not performed well. But yet hestill would speak about himself in the most
favorable terms. It's so perplexing.I've watched the show and listened to the
podcast. I'd highly recommend it.Yeah, I still haven't listened to it
yet, but I am familiar withthe story. But it's hard to get
into the minds of people who canthink like that and have no empathy whatsoever.
You consider ourselves grateful that we're empatheticpeople who talk about victims on true

(01:25:03):
crime podcasts, I know, toremove the victim out of it, to
just think that people are not actualsouls or people, to just think that
there are things that you can manipulateto whatever it is that you want to
further, and then you discard ofthem whenever you're finished with them. It's
really really sick. But we comeacross these people occasionally, like McDonald,

(01:25:24):
who behave in that manner, andit's really shocking. It is, yeah,
because you just watch interviews with himand he just seems like an ordinary
guy and he doesn't look like amurder a family annihilator, but you just
know that there's something dark really inthere. So in closing, I don't
think Jeffrey McDonald will ever get outof prison because he's had so many appeals
turned down and because of his elderlyage, he's probably going to die sometime

(01:25:47):
within the next few years. AndI'm sure when he does die, we'll
get a million articles and books anddocumentaries about it where they debate whether or
not he was innocent or guilty.But I'm fairly comfortable saying that he was
guilty as well. I didn't knowthe details to this case nearly as well
as you've presented today, but cominginto it, I already had a feeling

(01:26:10):
that Jeffrey McDonald was guilty based onwhat i'd heard, and it was a
couple of years ago. But you'velaid out a really good case, and
I know you're the most objective personthat I know. You never go into
something researching it already having a beliefin innocence or guilt. So just the
fact that you got to a pointwhere you believe that Jeffrey McDonald is guilty

(01:26:30):
and he's responsible for the murders ofKimberly Collette and Kristian it makes me believe
it. But also just looking atthe evidence of myself that you've presented,
that's the conclusion that I draw Ijust think there's, you know, the
hair in the hand. If thatwas somebody else's hair, I could be
persuaded to think that maybe, Butit was Jeffrey McDonald's hair. There's no

(01:26:53):
evidence that there was any intruder atthat home, so it just by process
of elimination, he is the bestand only suspect, exactly. Like,
this is one of those cases whereyou can believe a narrative, but once
you do the research, then there'sonly one conclusion you can reach. So
I think that less attention should befocused on getting Jeffrey McDonald out of prison

(01:27:13):
and start focusing on other people likeTommy Ziegler. But that's a rant for
another time. That's a rant thatwe're always happy to go on because I
think that if anybody is deserving ofa fresh look, it's Tommy Ziegler.
But Florida doesn't like to overturn ordoesn't like to really address wrongful convictions.
It doesn't seem like like that's acase of a guy giving an outrageous story

(01:27:34):
which seems too weird to be true, but it holds up and hasn't fallen
apart. So that's why I thinkis a big difference between these two cases.
So any final thoughts on Jeffrey McDonald. I think he did it.
I think that it's just so unfortunatefor the family members that are left behind,
that are still tortured by requests frommedia to give interviews and to contribute

(01:27:56):
when it's a wound that they likelywould like to close and to move on
and to have some resolution, butit keeps coming up again and again.
And the fact that Jeffrey McDonald,I believe, is just such a successful
manipulator. He's taken the evidence takenStokely and Mitchell and used it to support
his narrative, and he's done apretty good job. The fact that after
that DNA was run and that itwas proven to be his hair and there's

(01:28:20):
just no physical evidence supporting anyone elsebeing there. The fact that people still
support him, I think is prettyamazing because we know that if Helena Stokely
and Eric Mitchell were there, thenthere would be some trace of them.
You can't what's that evidence theory ifyou can't walk into a scene without taking
something with you or leaving something behind, and there was no trace of them

(01:28:42):
left behind. Though, I guesspeople who are pro innocents say, well,
the police bungled the scene. Theycompletely screwed up the forensics, right
they did, Yeah, but theydidn't screw it up enough that they were
able not to determine that there werefour different blood types there. So I
think there was enough evidence to conclusivelyprove who the real perpetrator was. What
are your final thoughts, Acid asGroovy, Kill the Pigs, Mike job

(01:29:05):
Well, I want to thank RobinBorder, my co host on The Path
Went Chilly and host of the trollWentquolt, for telling me the story about
Jeffrey McDonald and the story about Kimberlycall It and Kristen, who are the
true victims in the story. AndI think because of his huge ego,
it becomes the Jeffrey McDonald show.So I don't want to forget saying their

(01:29:26):
names. Yes, definitely I feltthe same way. If any of you
are on my Patreon page. Iactually did a episode about the McDonald murders
as a exclusive bonus episode several yearsago, but it was nowhere near it
as in depth as this one.It was good to be able to discuss
it with someone who wasn't familiar withthe case and try to convince you of
my thoughts. Yeah, you convincedme pretty easily, because it's just I

(01:29:47):
can see exactly where you are.I can see why people can say he's
innocent. There are enough things herewhere people could go argue it either way.
But personally, I just think there'sno conclusion, like you said,
that you can come to besides thefact the Jeffrey McDonald murdered his family,
I think it was likely not anaccident, and that he acted out violently,

(01:30:11):
probably because of the bed wedding,and then it just escalated beyond that
point and just took a very verydark turn. All right, Robin,
do you want to tell the listenerswhere they can find you? On social
media? You can find me atthe website Trailwentcold dot com. You can
also find me on Facebook under theTrail Went Cold page, and I'm also
on Twitter on the handle Robin UnderscoreWarder. And we just passed our six

(01:30:34):
year anniversary on the podcast. Soif you haven't listened to The Trail Went
Cold, you have a large archiveof over three hundred episodes to listen to.
I cannot believe you're literally the sixthyear mark. That's crazy. It's
going to be ten years soon andwe're going to be like whoa boh,
exactly, I've done every single unsolvedcase in the world. Now. I
bet you have a really long listof ones you still need to cover,

(01:30:55):
though, Oh yeah, like Iwill. If I did this till the
day I die, would not beable to get to all the cases that
people have requested of me. Iwant to thank everybody for listening to this
special episode on Jeffrey McDonald with theGreat Robin Warder. And I also want
to do a big shout out tomy editor who goes by the name Smy
but her name is also Elisa,and she's done such a great job for

(01:31:17):
me. And I'm going to linkher music in the show notes, so
please go check her out support hermusic. She is incredibly talented. I'm
also going to link the Patreon inthe show notes if you were interested in
joining Patreon. So until next time, stay safe and remember accept nothing,
question everything.

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