Jeffrey MacDonald: Time For Truth

Convicted Murderer Says New Evidence Will Exonerate Him

(CBS) 
Bill Ivory, for one, says he is not buying it. He remembers seeing the body of Colette MacDonald.

“I looked at that and saw how everything was laid out," he says. "I saw a weapon over to the side. And the position of her body. On the headboard of the bed, the word ‘pig’ was written in blood."

MacDonald told investigators that these brutal murders were committed by hippies, who had broken into his house, a story, that in today’s world, seems a little tough to swallow.

“Fayetteville at that time did have a big drug problem. A lot of hippies here,” says Peter Kearns, an army investigator from Washington, D.C. Kearns led a follow-up investigation into the MacDonald case, which included producing and starring in a filmed presentation of the evidence.

“A lot of GIs were using drugs then and he had a job where he counseled them,” says Kearns.

“If you were a physician, an Army physician, you were under orders to turn in drug-abusing patients,” says MacDonald. Asked whether he thought someone he turned in might have been involved, he says, “Sure, that’s one of the thought processes we immediately went through, of course.”

But the more closely investigators examined the crime scene, the more closely they began to question MacDonald’s claims.

“The coffee table was laying on its side but other than that there was no sign of any monumental struggle with him and three or four other people,” says Ivory.

For one, Ivory says MacDonald had drugs and medical equipment, items drug-crazed hippies would have grabbed.

Bill Ivory says the evidence pointed to a different story. “The theory that we came up with was that there was an argument. Something started in the master bedroom. He may have hit her first or she may have hit him first.”

A dull kitchen knife was found near Colette’s body but this was not the murder weapon. Police found what they believe were the three murder weapons outside the back door: an ice pick, a paring knife, and a 31-inch length of building lumber, which investigators say was at one time a part of a bed slat on Kimberley’s bed.

“It was about a 2-by-2 that was finally grabbed on and he started swinging. He just lost all control,” says Kearns.

“We believe, also, the older girl was in the bedroom with them and got in the middle of the fight between them,” says Ivory. “He swatted back and hit her on the side of the head and dropped her to the floor.”

“We know this because there is a large amount of her blood right at the entrance to the master bedroom,” Kearns says.

Because each member of the MacDonald family had a different blood type, investigators were able to follow the blood evidence like a trail of breadcrumbs left by the victims.

“He went and took the bedding off of that bed in the master bedroom and (we) believe he wrapped the older girl in that, getting blood on him from her and getting her blood on that sheet,” says Ivory.

The trail led them from the master bedroom to Kimberley’s bedroom, where investigators say MacDonald placed his daughter’s body back in her own bed.

“While he's doing that, his wife regains consciousness and goes to the baby's room and lays across her on the bed, obviously in an attempt to protect her,” says Kearns.

“He followed her into that room,” says Ivory. “And he began beating her more there with the club. That's evidenced by blood sprays that were on the wall and on the ceiling.”

The investigators believe MacDonald picked up his wife’s body in the same bedding already bloodied by his daughter Kimberley and brought her to the master bedroom, but not before leaving a clear and important clue along the way.

Investigators found a bloody footprint leading from Kristin’s bedroom. “There are no ridge marks here. So, we can't say it's his. But all the configuration fits his foot,” says Ivory.

Investigators say after he killed his wife and his daughter Kimberley, he came back in and stood to face his youngest daughter, Kristen, who was still in her bed.

“And then he killed her. And the only reason in the world that he killed her was because she was a witness. And she was old enough, she could say, ‘I saw daddy hitting mommy,’ ” says Ivory.

It’s at this point, investigators say, that with his entire family dead, MacDonald decided to include himself in the attack in order to be believed. Kearns believes MacDonald stabbed himself, collapsing a lung.

Now a victim himself, investigators say MacDonald then went about setting a stage to fit his story of an attack by drug-crazed hippies, a story they discovered MacDonald may have borrowed from some very recent history.

In the apartment, investigators found a copy of Esquire magazine, which included articles about the Tate/LaBianca murders.

In the summer of 1969, just six months earlier, the nation was stunned by a seemingly senseless series of murders in southern California. On Aug. 9, actress Sharon Tate and four houseguests were brutally murdered in the middle of the night. The following night, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were slaughtered in their home.

Both crimes were carried out by the cult-like followers of Charles Manson and the issue of Esquire found in the MacDonald home contained a detailed account of the murders.

Ivory says the article described the crime scenes, described the word "pig" being written on the walls, and described the hippies coming in and causing mayhem in the house.

Investigators also found a finger smudge, in blood, along the edge of the magazine. While it could not be positively linked to MacDonald, it worked with Ivory’s theory of the crime.

Bill Ivory believes MacDonald looked up the articles after murders “to get his story straight.”

Ivory and his team’s interpretation of the evidence pointed them to just one suspect, Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald.

But MacDonald says he had nothing to do with the murder. “I was in the house that night. I know what happened. To me, it was inconceivable that anyone could buy this hypothetical scenario.”

In fact, MacDonald was right. After a three-month military hearing, the Army’s official position was that, despite the significant efforts of their own investigators, there was not enough evidence for a court martial.

MacDonald thought the ordeal was over and received an honorable discharge shortly thereafter.

While the Army seemed to be done with MacDonald, investigators still had no doubt as to who committed these crimes.

“He's 100 percent guilty. There's no mystery to me,” says Kearns. "He knows he did it. I know he did it."

But until they could prove it in a court of law, MacDonald would remain a free man.

“When I first came to represent Dr. MacDonald, I wondered to myself, ‘Is it possible that he murdered his family?’ ” says Bernard Segal.

It’s the one question that has always haunted this case and everyone involved in it. Was MacDonald capable of these brutal murders?

Segal says when he finally met MacDonald, he encountered “a remarkably appealing, likable young man.”

Segal defended MacDonald when the Army tried and failed to indict him due to a lack of evidence. “He was now a man who had no family and who wanted to try and start his life over again.”

And MacDonald did just that. Like a lot of young, single men at the time, he headed west to southern California. MacDonald found a new career in emergency room medicine and a new lifestyle, which included all the spoils of success.

With the Army’s case dropped and civilian authorities not particularly interested in prosecuting, MacDonald might simply have faded from public view. But he couldn’t seem to let it go. Apparently enjoying his new-found celebrity, MacDonald continued to try his own case in the court of public opinion.

On Dec. 15, 1970, MacDonald appeared on the popular late-night program "The Dick Cavett Show," where it became very clear that he was fast becoming his own worst enemy.

“He knew how to do it, as we say in the talk show trade. He knew how to handle himself,” says Dick Cavett, who remembers well the night he was face to face with MacDonald. “His affect is wrong, totally wrong. My affect was, ‘Gee, to find your wife and kids murdered.’ And even his answer to that was something like, ‘Hey, yeah, isn't that something?’ Almost sounded like Bob Hope. Very like Bob Hope.”

During the show, MacDonald took barbs at the Army, saying he was angry and critical about the way the Army had handled the case.

Watching the show that night, Colette’s family was extremely disturbed by MacDonald’s appearance.

“All he spoke about was how his rights had been violated,” says Colette’s older brother, Robert Stevenson. "I don't think he once mentioned about let's get the murderers. My family's been killed. But I remember him grinning like a Cheshire cat."

And Colette’s stepfather, Freddy Kassab, who had at first sided with MacDonald in his defense, was so incensed at his son-in-law’s behavior that it became the seed of an obsession to bring him to justice.

“It never occurred to me that Alfred Kassab would turn on me, to be quite honest,” says MacDonald.

“When I was faced with the evidence, put together with what I knew he had told me, nothing fit. Absolutely nothing,” Kassab told the CBS News program 60 Minutes in 1983.

Stevenson says Kassab spent countless hours recreating the crime scene and trying to solve the crime.

Realizing the government had no plans to indict MacDonald, Kassab joined forces with Peter Kearns. Together, they took matters into their own hands.

“It wasn't until Freddy and I went from New York down to Clinton, N.C., to swear out a citizen's arrest. That's when the federal government got off their duffs and got an indictment and a grand jury,” says Kearns.

On Jan. 24, 1975, Jeffrey MacDonald was arrested once again, this time by the federal government.

Wade Smith, one of the top trial lawyers in North Carolina, was chosen to partner with Bernie Segal. Their defense strategy was a simple one: that a man like MacDonald is not capable of committing these crimes.

“Is it possible for a person to live a good life and all of a sudden, in one moment, slaughter and mutilate his children, stab his wife many, many times, and then live out his life and have nothing like that happen again? And it suggests to me a reasonable doubt about whether he did it in the first place,” says Smith.

When his trial finally began on July 16, 1979, MacDonald was confident he would be exonerated.

During the next six and a half weeks, 60 witnesses testified, hundreds of items were placed into evidence. Eventually, he was found guilty.

Almost a decade after the murders of Colette, Kimberley, and Kristin MacDonald, the federal government was satisfied that justice was finally served.