The MacDonald case: the prestigious doctor and soldier who brutally murdered his wife and two young daughters, but continues to deny everything

Until 17 February 1970, Jeffrey Robert MacDonald It was an incarnation of the American dream.

Arrived in the world on October 12, 1943 in Jamaica, Queens, New York – the district in which Louis Armstrong lived until his death on July 6, 1971 -, already at the Patchogue High School, "it seemed that he was the only one in the world. a reflector followed each step, "as Tennessee Williams defined his character Jim O & Connor in his dazzling theatrical play. The glbad menagerie (The crystal zoo).

With blue eyes, perfect teeth and a Hollywood smile, each year was voted the most popular companion … and one that offered infinite possibilities of success.

Senior clbad president and captain of the football team, his senior grades have brought him with a scholarship to Princeton University: first line. There, he taught Albert Einstein …

He is married Colette Kathryn Stevenson, his girlfriend since high school, and his two daughters arrived: Kimberley and Kristen.

S & P to Chicago. Graduate as a doctor. Captain of the Army: Sixth Special Forces Group as Surgeon, in 1969, at 26 years old.

As the saying goes, "the limit is the sky"

But at 3:42 am on February 17, 1970, everything turned into blood.

An operator in Fort Bragg responded to an emergency call:

-We were stabbed … There are people who die …

Four military police officers arrived at the house at 544 Castle Drive, North Carolina, barely suspecting more than a domestic incident.

But, surprised, they saw a demonic bloodbath.

Colette, the pregnant woman of her third child, was dead on the floor of the bedroom:Olpes until she breaks her arms, and stabbed 21 times with an ice pick and 16 times with an ordinary knife.

Kimberley, five years old, dead in bed: blows to the head and ten stabs in the neck.

Kristen, two years old, also in bed, broke up: 33 knife wounds and 15 ice picks.

On the head of the matrimonial bed, written with blood, the word PIG (pig).

The atrocious mark of Charles Manson and his band of badbadins …, in the house of actress Sharon Tate – the very wife of the director Roman Polanski – pregnant.

Was the crime inspiring or was a scenario designed to mislead the researchers?

At the center of this coven, Jeffrey, wounded, his torn pajamas, kissed the corpse of his wife repeating:

-They were four … Two white women, a black woman and a white, blonde, long-haired woman, with high-heeled boots, a white hat that covered her face and who sang "The acid, it's good, kill the pigs. "

First suspicion. Jeffrey, checked at the hospital, had only minor injuries, bruises on the face and chest and a knife on the left side, "small, sharp and pointed", according to the coroner.

Later, this would be attributed … to a scalpel. Something that only a doctor can regulate.

An injury made by Jeoffrey himself?

An infinite judicial dance has begun.

At first, the experts of the Criminal Investigation Division of the army did not believe in the captain 's version. First screen capture: "There is no sign of fighting against three armed men: only an inverted coffee table and vase. Homicide weapons, a kitchen knife, an ice ax and a piece of wood three feet long were outside the house and near the back door. The surgical gloves used to write "pigs" with their tips are identical to those that MacDonald has at home. "

Apparently, according to the experts' final report, "a discussion started in the master bedroom, between Jeffrey and Colette, as Kristen had wet the side of the bed where her father was sleeping." It is possible that she hit him on the head with a hair brush, and that unleashed the fury of Jeoffrey, who killed all three, was wounded with a scalpel – the single, but not fatal, injury – and desperately made an unsustainable alibi. In the house, there was an edition of Esquire with notes on the murder of Sharon Tate and the group of Charles Manson: what better scenario?"

Despite all, defense attorney, Bernard Segal, based his plea on "the terrible quality of the investigation, the mistreatment at the scene of the crime and the failure to search for the named suspects." by my client ".

October 13, 1970, sThey dropped the charges against Jeffrey.

In December, the army separated with "honorable discharge ".

He returned to practice in New York and Long Beach, California, as a physician.

And he dared to appear in the press.

December 15, 1970, in the program tevé The Dick Cavett Show, Far from hurting his slaughtered family, he complains about the investigation, his role as a suspect and the worst …, hHe made jokes and laughed as if nothing had happened …

Freddie Kbadab, his father-in-law, watched the show and exploded in fury.

He sued: "In November 1970, this man told me that he had, along with friends of the army, found, tortured and murdered the real culprits of the murder of his family. .. but he refused to reveal names and details. "that at the hospital, less than eighteen hours after the crime, he was sitting on the bed, eating, serene, smiling and with very few bandages, this man is guilty! "

Unusual: It was only in January 1975 that the case was reopened, without consequences, and the murder trial began on July 16, 1979!

Nine years after the events …

August 29 of this year, Jeffrey Robert MacDonald was found guilty of all three murders after six endless hours of jury deliberations.

A little earlier, in June, Jeffrey had invited author Joe McGuinniss to write a book about the case: he hoped these pages would reaffirm him …

But McGuinnis buried him: "It's a very dangerous narcissistic sociopath. ".

However, in July 1980, another twist: a court of appeal overturned the conviction "Because the nine-year delay in sitting on the bench violated the Sixth Amendment: the right to a speedy trial."

Released on bail of $ 100,000, she returned to work at St. Mary's Medical Center as Director of Emergency Medicine.

But the bird has returned to the cage: his sentence was ratified unanimously on 16 August 1982.

Twelve years after the triple murder.

None of the tests (examination of fingerprints, blood, fiber clothing, DNA) allowed the rest of the innocence.

Now all calls have been rejected.

It is only in May 2020 that you will have a parole hearing.

In August 2002, he married Kathryn Kurich, former owner of a children's theater school.

After the marriage, Jeffrey was successfully transferred to a federal penitentiary in Cumberland, Maryland.

Closer to his new wife …

Sometimes He swears that he is innocent and the victim of an abominable error of justice.

From time to time, Bernard Segal, the first of his twenty defense lawyers, swears that his former client … "is Captain Alfred Dreyfus, North American".

From time to time, he remembers that he is 76 years old. But wait to die free.

Even this is possible in the vast jungle of law books.