EFTA02559764.pdf

From: Ed Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 10:45 PM To: Epstein, Jeff Subject: My review in WSJ Saturday: Is Jeffrey Macdonald innocent, after all (See note at end) http://on.wsj.com/T1hFWf The Girl Who Rode The Rocking Horse Wall Street Journal, September 1, 2012 By Edward Jay Epstein When military police arrived at the Fort Bragg, N.C., home of Capt. =effrey MacDonald at 3:50 a.m. on Feb. 17, 1970, they found a bloody =assacre. The captain himself, a 27-year-old military doctor, had =ultiple wounds, including stab wounds in his stomach and chest. His =ife, Colette, 27, and their two daughters-3 and 5 years old—had =een beaten and stabbed to death. The word "Pig" was scrawled in =food on a wall. The police saw signs of a struggle, including a table =tanding on end, torn and bloody clothing, and a paring knife, icepick =nd club. After MacDonald was revived through mouth-to-mouth =esuscitation, he described an attack by four intruders: three men and = blond woman who wore a floppy hat. To the crime's investigators, the murder scene was open to two =nterpretations. First, home invaders had carried out the slaughter, as =acDonald claimed. Second, MacDonald had murdered his wife and =aughters and staged the appearance of a home invasion by upsetting =urniture, throwing objects around and inflicting deep wounds on =imself. The first scenario had a well-publicized precedent in the home =nvasions of the "Manson family"—two incidents, instigated by =harles Manson, in which seven people were murdered and the word =93pig" was scrawled on a wall. The incidents had occurred just six =onths earlier in Los Angeles. Fort Bragg was an open base, making it =ossible for a band of intruders to enter the base and break into the =acDonald home. But investigators did not buy the home-invasion scenario. To them, the =usband's guilt seemed more plausible. For one thing, husbands are =tatistically the most likely perpetrators of spousal murders, having =eans and opportunity and, if there is marital conflict, motive. ((On =his logic, Roman Polanski, the husband of Manson-victim Sharon Tate, =ould have been a suspect if he had not been in London shooting a =ovie at the time of that home invasion.) There is a forensic problem, however, with husbands as suspects. Their =ingerprints, blood, hair and clothing fibers are not in themselves =ncriminating because, whether a man is innocent or guilty, the same =races of his presence will be found in the home. In a case like =acDonald's, where there are no witnesses, signs of staging a =rime—i.e., faking up the crime scene—become evidence of guilt. Military prosecutors got the ball rolling in May 1970 by presenting a =ase—in what is called, in the military, an Article 32 hearing—that =acDonald had indeed staged the scene of the crime, to cover up the =urder of his family. The prosecutors never did present a motive: There =as no apparent estrangement between MacDonald and his wife, and no =ucrative insurance policy. The presiding officer in the hearing, Col. =arren V. Rock, dismissed the case for lack of evidence. Then, in 1975, after MacDonald had re-entered civilian life, he was =ndicted by a federal grand jury, partly as the result of the efforts =f his wife's father, who had agitated continually for a civilian =rial, convinced of his son-in-law's guilt. A four-year delay =ollowed to adjudicate Mac0onald's claims of double jeopardy. =inally, on Aug. 29, 1979, he was convicted of first-degree murder and =entenced to life imprisonment. He is in prison to this day. EFTA_R1_01720333 EFTA02559764 In the years after the verdict, the prosecution's narrative of the =rime—evil husband, perhaps on amphetamines, murdering his family and =oncocting a story about hippie-like intruders—was burnished in the =ublic mind by Joe McGinniss's 1983 best seller about MacDonald, =93Fatal Vision"; by a TV miniseries based on the book; and, later, =y "The Journalist and the Murderer" (1990), Janet Malcolm's =nalysis of Mr. McGinniss's wily interactions with his devious =ubject. Most people, including me, assumed that there was no =easonable doubt about Jeffrey MacDonald's guilt. The assumption may well be false. In "A Wilderness of Error," Errol =orris, an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, challenges the =stablished narrative and offers a plausible counter-narrative. The =ook's thoughtful presentation of the evidence alone makes it worth =aking seriously. Just as important, Mr. Morris's tone is temperate =nd fair-minded. He is not an angry polemicist but, we cannot help =eeling, someone trying to get at the truth. His 1988 documentary, =93The Thin Blue Line," helped to commute the life sentence of a =onvicted murderer in Texas. Mr. Morris clearly knows what it is to =nterrogate conventional views and scrutinize legal documents with =are. The book's affidavits and interview transcripts reveal flaws in the =xpert testimony, in particular the testimony that argued for the =rimes being staged. In the 1970 military hearing, for example, =rosecutors focused on a small table found resting on its edge. =ccording to an expert witness, it was not possible for a table to land =n its edge, in such a way, as the result of a scuffle; its position =ad to be staged. Col. Rock, the presiding officer, was unconvinced. He =imself went to the crime scene, kicked the table once and saw it land =n its edge. The staging evidence presented by FBI lab experts in the 1979 trial was =ore complex—involving, among much else, claims about the holes in =acDonald's shirt (supposedly punctured in the wrong shape) and the =ocation of blood. Mr. Morris shows that many of these staging claims =ere as problematic as that tipped-over table in the 1970 hearing. What =s more, the FBI, it was discovered later, had held back exculpatory =vidence, like the yellow hairs on a hairbrush in the home, which did =ot match the hair of any member of the MacDonald family. The most powerful part of "A Wilderness of Error" is the evidence =or a counter-narrative that seems to support MacDonald's version of =vents. Multiple witnesses saw a girl in the vicinity of MacDonald's =ome on the fateful night. One of the witnesses was a military =oliceman racing to the MacDonald house, who saw a woman in a floppy =at. After a description went out, a 28-year-old drug user and =arcotics informer named Helena Stoeckley, who lived in nearby =ayetteville, N.C., was picked up and interrogated. As it turned out, =he had admitted to at least six people that she was in the MacDonald =ome on the night of the murder, high on drugs, wearing a blond wig, =hite boots and a floppy hat and accompanied by three male Vietnam =eterans. Stoeckley recalled details dovetailing with MacDonald's description, =ncluding that she had held a candle, as MacDonald claimed. He had said =hat she tried to ride a rocking horse in the home and answered the =acDonald's phone. (A witness later said that he had called the home =hat night, searching for a doctor; a female voice answered and hung =p.) Stoeckley passed a lie detector test. One of the veterans she =amed was seen by an acquaintance painting the words "I killed the =acDonald family" on a wall. Yet the jury never heard the Stoeckley confession. Mr. Morris has =leuthed out what might have happened. In 2005, during one of the =ttempts by MacDonald's lawyers to free their client, the U.S. =arshal charged with bringing Stoeckley to the courthouse for the 1979 =rial, a man named Jimmy Britt, gave an affidavit stating that, when he =ad first brought Stoeckley to see prosecutor James Blackburn, he heard =er give a detailed confession to the prosecutor. Blackburn, he said, =hen told Stoeckley that, if she repeated her account under oath in =acDonald's trial, he would have to charge her with murder. =Blackburn, who was disbarred in 1993 for ethical transgressions, =enies Mr. Britt's account.) In any case, Stoeckley changed her story =n court, saying that she could not recall ever being in the MacDonald =ouse. Without her testimony, the defense could not call any of the six =orroborating witnesses because the judge ruled that their testimony =ould be inadmissible hearsay. In May 1982, 34 months after MacDonald was convicted, Stoeckley =epeated her original, confessional account in a taped interview for =BS's "60 Minutes." The producer decided against airing it, =owever. Mr. Morris suggests that the 2 EFTA_R1_01720334 EFTA02559765 show had become "disconnected =rom [the] reality" of the event, being heavily committed to Mr. =cGinniss's tale of a drug-crazed, murderous, lying doctor. Stoeckley =ied the following year. If the members of the jury had been allowed to hear Stoeckley's =ccount, and the corroborating testimony, I find it difficult to =elieve they would not have felt a reasonable doubt about MacDonald's =uilt. But they did not hear it, and MacDonald has been in prison for =hree decades. Mr. Morris has produced a brilliant book about the =ulnerability of justice to the preconceptions of prosecutors and the =ower of certain narratives to crowd out all others, even highly =lausible ones. I strongly recommend this book. Mr. Epstein's newest book, "The Annals of Unsolved Crimes," will =e published by Melville House in March. As ever, Ed Epstein www.edwardjayepstein.com <?xml version=.0" encoding=TF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/Propertylist-1.0.dtd"> <plist version=.0"> <dict> <key>conversation-id</key> <integer>229589</integer> <key>date-last-viewed</key> <integer>0</integer> <key>date-received</key> <integer>1346453115</integer> <key>flags</key> <integer>859O195713</integer> <key>gmail-label-ids</key> <array> <integer>6</integer> <integer>2</integer> </array> <key>remote-id</key> <string>243570rntring> </dict> </plist> 3 EFTA_R1_01720335 EFTA02559766