Case File | Jeffrey MacDonald -- Innocent or Guilty?

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal. Sometimes on our show, the story ends before a case can go to trial. And when that happens, it can leave a sense of disappointment.

The criminal justice system doesn't always result in a satisfying conclusion, but at least it lays everything out on the table. If nothing else, it gives the world a chance to explore and understand a person's motives.

But in cases like the tragic murder of Carol Stuart, that sense of closure isn't there. Chuck Stewart took his own life when he discovered that the truth was going to get out.

His decision to end things implied guilt, but did it confirm it beyond a reasonable doubt? That's what trials are supposed to do, right? Remove all doubt as to what happened.

The who, the why, the how of it all. But then again, even when there is a trial, there's still no guarantee of certainty.

One of the most litigated murder cases in American history played out in the courts for over 50 years, and there are still plenty of unanswered questions about exactly what happened.

Chief among them, did investigators get it right, or is an innocent person behind bars? But I'm not the one who will be telling you this story. For that, we're going to kick it over to the podcast The Prosecutors.

1:55

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Every week, host Alice and Brett delve into the messy, complex cases that have been fascinating true crime fans for decades.

With their experience as prosecutors, they look at all the facts breaking down the narrative, the lies and the story told by the evidence. From The Prosecutors, this is their first episode about Jeffrey MacDonald, White Rabbit.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett, and I'm joined, as always, with my exacting co-host, Alice.

Exacting? Am I really that exact? I don't know if I am.

And the person who suggested that wanted you to know they meant it in the good way, not the like, negative way.

Because I guess there's a positive and a negative way to look at exacting.

You know, it's one of those like, compliments that is actually a put down. Because I thought exacting was a compliment until you said it was not a compliment.

Well, it can be a compliment, but it might also be not a compliment, right? It's like being earnest.

There you go.

It can be good to be earnest, or it can be bad to be earnest if you're too earnest. So I think it's the same thing. I think it is a compliment or not a compliment depending on who's saying it.

But in this case, we definitely mean it as a compliment. So compliments to you, Alice.

3:22

A Controversial Case

So today, we are beginning our journey through the Jeffrey MacDonald case. I think you guys probably have all heard of this case. It is one of the most famous and controversial cases in true crime.

If there's one thing we love, it's controversy.

I love it, right? We're just like asking people to come and attack us. You said you loved controversy.

We love controversy.

And this is a controversial case.

It really is.

People feel very passionately about one way or the other. And I'll just say this is one of the cases that really got me into true crime. This is one of those that I kind of fell down the rabbit hole on about 10 years or so ago.

And I read all the books. I read Fatal Vision and I read Wilderness of Error and I read The Journalist and the Murderer. I mean, all of them.

I was fascinated by this case and this is one that we've been wanting to cover. And then a few weeks ago, we did a live get vocal for Maggie Freeling on her Patreon with the wonderful ladies from Women and Crime.

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And this was the case we discussed. And Alice and I thought, let's do a deep dive on this. And that's why we're here and that's what we're going to do.

And I don't know how long this is going to take, how many episodes this is going to be, but I hope you guys will stick with us because this is, I think, one of the most interesting cases in the history of true crime.

It's fascinating, Brett. I'm so glad we're diving into this. I really was researching it just for our get vocal.

And in researching it, my jaw was just dropped the entire time. So for those people out there who don't know what we're talking about, why don't you tell us a little bit about this case?

Well, as I said in the introduction, this is a case that goes all the way back to 1970. And it was the kind of case that grabbed the attention of people across this country.

This was a case, if you were alive in 1970, you knew about this case, you followed it, you saw it. It was one of those cases that was big before crime dominated the headlines. We sort of think of maybe the OJ.

Simpson case is one of the first examples of a case that attracted national attention. But really, this case was kind of like that because of the circumstances of what happened here.

You had someone, Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, who was not only a surgeon and a doctor, but also a green beret and his entire family was murdered. And he said they were murdered by a group of crazed, drugged out hippies.

Now, 1970, this is the time of the Manson family murders. This is a time when people are really worried about this. They're concerned about this.

They're worried about groups of people like the Manson family going around and murdering innocent people. And it seemed like you had that happening here in North Carolina, on the other side of the country, from where the Manson murders happened.

But very quickly, the people who were investigating this crime began to doubt that it was committed by an intruder, and instead began to think that the unthinkable had happened.

That Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, the golden boy, the surgeon, the green beret, father of two daughters with a son on the way, had brutally destroyed his own family.

6:48

The Home Invasion Story

So let's go through the story here and lay this out in detail. At 340 a.m. on Tuesday, February 17th, 1970, Jeffrey MacDonald, a surgeon and green beret stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, makes a frantic call to MPs.

Later on, on April 6th, 1970, he would be interviewed by people investigating this crime. And here is the story that he would tell them in a recorded interview.

As I said, very shortly after this happened, and this is the story that he would tell for the rest of his life. He says that on Monday, February 16th, so the day before, his wife got home at around 930 from a class she was taking.

She was taking some classes. They were both relatively, well, they were both very young, I'm going to say relatively. Both of them were 26 years old.

They had known each other for a long time. In fact, they had been high school sweethearts. So she returns home from a class.

The girls, his two girls, Kristen, aged two, and Kimberly, aged five, were already in bed. The two sort of, you know, they're relaxing. They're winding down from the day.

They're watching Johnny Carson together. In fact, MacDonald would later make a joke about this on the Dick Cavett Show when he appeared on that show to talk about this tragedy that he was watching another late night show that night.

At some point around midnight, his wife goes to bed while he stays up until about two reading. At some point, he also washed the dishes. Now, this is something to remember because it will strike you as a little unusual as we dive into this case.

MacDonald had done a double shift at the hospital. By some accounts, he had been up for about 48 hours at this time. So it may seem strange to you that he stays up so late reading, and then he's also washing dishes.

But in addition to this, he was taking part in an experimental program with the military where he was taking some amphetamines that I believe they were testing to see about weight loss.

Obviously, amphetamines also give you a lot of energy, and that might have been the reason that despite the fact he had been working so much, he was still awake at this point. So after he washes the dishes at around 2, he decides to go to bed.

But his youngest daughter, Kristen, she had gotten in the bed at some point with his wife and had actually wet the bed. So MacDonald picks up Kristen, takes her to her room, gives her a bottle, and then he goes to go to sleep on the couch.

It's some indeterminate time later. He wakes up to the sound of his wife and his oldest daughter, Kimberly, screaming. His wife is screaming, Jeff, why are they doing this to me?

And his daughter is shouting, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. He wakes up to all this confusion, and he sees people standing at the foot of his wife's bed. And there are also three men and a woman in the living room standing in front of him.

The woman was holding a candle, saying, Kill the pigs, acid is groovy. And she was wearing a floppy hat and had stringy blonde hair.

It only gets more scary at this point. MacDonald's trying to get up to get to his family, but the men are hitting him. They're hitting him in the head and in the chest.

One of them punches into his chest, and it's particularly painful. Presumably this is when MacDonald would have been stabbed in the chest. He later has a stab wound in his chest.

MacDonald continues to be beaten up by these men, and then he's hit in the head with what he thought at the time was a baseball bat. One of the men was black and wearing a military jacket with sergeant stripes.

And that's really the only one of the men that he describes with any detail. So we know, for instance, he's described the woman as having a floppy hat and stringy blonde hair. The other people there are very general.

They're just some guys. But you have this one gentleman who he describes as being black and wearing this military jacket with sergeant stripes. That might seem unusual to you, but we've talked about this before.

For whatever reason back then, there were a lot of people who wore military jackets. They were sort of in style.

So even though these were presumably hippies who weren't in the military, you did have this person who was wearing this jacket, though some people have speculated that maybe he was in the military and that had something to do with this.

MacDonald is recounting what happens. He said that the men kept punching him. And at some point, MacDonald's pajama top gets pulled over his head and wrapped around his hands.

And he is kind of tied up with his own pajama top. And he said he used the top to try and deflect the punches and stabs that were coming at him. During this time, the woman who was holding that candle told the men, hit him again.

Finally, MacDonald after this intense struggle fell to the ground and the last thing he remembered was seeing a pair of either white muddy boots or brown boots. And then he passed out.

I think you can already see why this is a case that really grabbed the attention of people at the time. As we said, this is the time of the Manson murders and you have someone who is a stand up guy. This is also the Vietnam War.

I mean, everything is wrapped up in this, right?

You have a guy who is in the military who is like, you know, straight laced guy serving his country and then you have these people who he describes as essentially hippies who are on drugs, who are saying things like acid is groovy, kill the pigs, who

are invading his home, they are beating him up and they are threatening his family. I mean, this is a story that it's like a made for television movie at the time and it really tapped in to a lot of the concerns and the politics, everything that was

We talked about the different times, right?

People were already scared because of the Manson Murders, because of kind of the unknown of the hippies kind of. And here this murder is highlighting what we should all be afraid of.

Exactly. And either whatever you think happened here, if you think this actually happened, then it's a manifestation of that time.

If you think MacDonald is making this up, then he is in a very savvy way, attempting to tap in to that fear and use it to his advantage.

It's sort of the opposite of what we see in some other cases, cases like Timijin Kintsu or the West Memphis 3, where it's the government or the prosecution or the police who are trying to tap into fear in order to attack the other and convict the

other of a crime they didn't commit. Here you have MacDonald using that to his advantage to, if he's making it up, to put this on the other and say, the other came into my home and they attacked me and they did all these terrible things.

MacDonald passes out. He says he passes out. And the next thing he knows, he wakes up freezing cold.

The pajama top is still wrapped around his hands. At this point, he gets his hands untangled and he goes to the bedroom where he finds his wife on the ground with a knife in her chest.

He takes the knife out of her chest actually, and then lays the pajama top on top of her to keep her warm. He starts to give her CPR, but he can see that there's air coming out of her chest, which is obviously a bad sign.

It's a little confusing exactly what he does and when he does it, and you can imagine why that would be if this is what he was going through. But at some point, he goes to check on his kids and he sees that there's blood everywhere.

At some point, he also goes back to the living room where the back door is open and he looks outside, but he doesn't see anything. He says, the back door is usually locked, but for whatever reason that night, it was open.

He goes to the phone, he picks up the phone, tries to talk to the operator and tell them that he needs help, but the operator says he needs to call the MPs.

Rather than doing that, at this point, he goes back into the bedroom to check his wife's pulse and finds none. He then goes to check on his kids again, who are in very bad shape. They're in their beds, they're covered in blood, they've been stabbed.

At one point, he says he tried to give them CPR as well, but it was to no effect. Now he realizes that he has blood on his hands, and sort of in the days, he wanders into the bathroom and starts to check himself out.

But he can't really find any cuts. He has so much blood on him, he can't tell where he's injured. He washes his hands and goes back into the living room, where he picks up the phone again and calls the MPs and reports the stabbings.

The next thing he knows, he's laying next to his wife and the MP is giving him mouth to mouth, and that's where this story goes national.

I mean, that is just a horrific story and one of the most gripping stories you can even imagine.

16:22

A Troubled Marriage

There's a lot to it. So let's jump into the timeline, Brett. Let's start with who MacDonald and his wife are.

In August 1963, MacDonald and Collette are married. They'd known each other since they were kids, and Collette was one of the women that MacDonald was dating.

But the difference with the other women is that Collette discovered she was pregnant, and they were relatively young, and so the two of them got married when she found out she was having their baby.

By MacDonald's own account, he did not see this as requiring him to be faithful to Collette. That's an interesting admission from MacDonald himself. I guess he's just doing the right thing by marrying Collette because she's pregnant.

Yeah, MacDonald's very open about his infidelities.

Now over the years that followed, MacDonald had numerous affairs, and at least 15 and honestly probably more.

He was unapologetic about it. MacDonald himself would not characterize these trysts as affairs. He said, quote, I don't think they were real girlfriends.

They were one night stands. I never had a love affair with anyone where we planned weekends away or divorce. I wore my wedding ring.

It was the temper of the times. I like women, and I wasn't thinking of the consequences. I had high testosterone, and among the guys around me and people in medical school in the service, I wasn't doing anything unusual.

It was 68, 70, and a lot of things were exploding. So he has spoken about this a lot. And as you can tell, in his mind, it wasn't really cheating because it was just sex.

It wasn't emotional. And he was just doing what any, I guess, red-blooded American man with a lot of testosterone in the 68s and 70s would be doing, having sex with lots of different women who were not his wife or the mother of his children.

Yeah, and it's really interesting because it's hard to think about this case and not think about cases like Scott Peterson. But in a way, I don't know how this cuts. Obviously, this is bad for him.

It makes him look bad. It makes him look like he's kind of a scumbag, but he's so open and honest about it, it makes you wonder if it really would be a motive for murder, for instance.

It's hard to believe that Collette didn't know about this, and it doesn't seem like he felt all that tied down by his family. He was perfectly willing to do whatever he wanted.

So when we talked about Scott, we had a feeling that his motive was really he didn't want to be tied down, and there was a baby on the way, and he knew his lifestyle was going to have to change. It doesn't seem like MacDonald ever felt that way.

No, not at all. Really unremorseful is what comes to mind. Now, in January of 1970, MacDonald begins working out with the boxing team.

Shortly thereafter, he tells Collette that he would be traveling with the team to Russia for three months.

This, of course, meant that he would not be able to communicate with Collette during that time and likely would be gone when she gave birth to their son. And at this point, they already had two young daughters, and she was pregnant with their son.

Obviously, not a nice thing to do if you're MacDonald, even if you want the opportunity to travel to Russia to be with the boxing team or whatnot. Yeah, your wife's about to have a baby, and her other pregnancies had been difficult pregnancies.

They hadn't been easy. There was no indication this one would be easy either. And for him just to disappear for three months when she's got two other kids to take care of, you would think that would cause some problems in the family.

Right.

And it's not like he's, you know, hard up for money, and this is his way to make a living for his family. He's a Green Beret surgeon who has a good job. This is a hobby.

You know, this is not a way for him to make a living to support his family. This is truly just for him. It's not for Collette.

It's not for his daughters. It's not for his unborn son. And so again, you kind of see how he's beginning to take shape here and what kind of man he is.

Now, the next month, February 1970, Collette was five months pregnant with their son, and she was dealing with two young children. Like we mentioned earlier, Kristen was only two and Kimberly was five.

And MacDonald would later report that Collette was actually happy about the fact that he was going to Russia. I think any one of you out there who has a significant other, who may be a parent, can know that that's a lie.

Collette was not happy about that. But much like the trip itself, this was all a lie. This was just MacDonald's way of telling a story.

Yeah, it was all made up.

There was no trip to Russia. There was no boxing excursion. It's unclear what MacDonald was going to do during those three months.

It's unclear if he just wanted to disappear and go on some, I don't know, like, you know, just travel around the country, sleeping with women, being away from his wife while she was giving birth.

But one thing we know for certain is there was no boxing trip to Russia. That wasn't going to happen. The boxing team later said that was a complete fabrication.

MacDonald's never really explained this that I know of. I've never really understood what his purpose was behind this, but it sort of gives you an idea of the kind of person he was at the time and maybe some insight into the pressures he was feeling.

Because of his family, despite the fact that up to this point, he had been willing to do whatever. He'd been willing to cheat on Collette. It seems like he feels like he needs to get away from little while.

And Russia's perfect, right? Because as we said, he would be out of communication with her. There's no way to contact her from Russia in 1970.

This is the height of the Cold War. You know, there's no Instagram or text messages or anything like that. So, he really has set himself up to be able to get away for a little while.

But it is a complete lie. And we know that Collette wasn't happy because she talked to her parents about that. More about that in a minute.

So, as Alice said, we've come to February 1970. This is when this crime is going to be committed. On February 14th, Collette and Jeffrey, they have some people over, I guess, to celebrate Valentine's Day or whatnot.

Ron Harrison, a good friend of McDonald's, comes over for pizza. And while he is there at the house, he and McDonald talk about the new Esquire magazine that McDonald had just received.

And McDonald is particularly interested in an article in that magazine about the Shannon Tate murders, the murders committed by the Manson family, which he described as wild and went into great detail with his friend Ron Harrison about how crazy it

was that there were these people out there who were committing these kinds of crimes under the influence of drugs. The next day, February 15th, 1970, Collette calls her mom to tell her that she is quote, not doing very well, and how upset she is with

Jeffrey for leaving her behind to go on this trip to Russia. And in fact, it's so bad that Collette's talking about leaving Jeffrey. She's talking about ending this marriage despite the fact that she's five months pregnant.

And in fact, she asks her mom if she can leave and just come home, bring the kids and come home. Now her mother, in an effort to save this marriage, and remember, her parents have known Jeffrey his whole life. These are high school sweethearts.

They have known each other for forever. Jeffrey grew up with Collette. And her mom, I think, like most people, she's trying to save the marriage.

She's trying to keep her daughter from doing anything rash. And she says, just give it till spring. If things are still bad, then you can come home.

Two days later, Collette would be dead.

I mean, that's devastating, Brett, with Collette really feeling the pressures of things. Things are not good, obviously, with what she thinks is an upcoming trip to Russia. This is not just because of the Russia trip.

They've had a rocky marriage, and she's facing the barrel of potentially being a single mother to three young children, but she's finding that preferable to being continually married to MacDonald. That's how bad things are right now.

And this is an important insight into their relationship because the story MacDonald will tell after the murders is that they essentially were perfect. They had a perfect relationship. They were happy to the extent he was having affairs.

Collette didn't care. She was very supportive of him and everything he did. If he wanted to go to Russia, by goodness she was supportive of him going to Russia.

Not only was she supportive of it, she was happy he was going to do it. And then you have Collette who gives a few hints to her mother about the real situation in the household and how things are going. Now, what does that mean?

We talk about this a lot and we talked about this with Scott Peterson. It is always dangerous to try and figure out what's going through the heads of people. You never know what's going on behind closed doors.

But I do think it is important when you're thinking about these cases, it's not just about the evidence. And sometimes people say, one thing I don't like about you guys is I just want to hear the evidence.

I don't want to hear how people would react in the situation or their state of mind. How can we know that? And I just don't think that's actually very realistic.

I think when we look at evidence, it's not just the cold record, right? It's not just the fingerprint was here, the blood was there.

Part of that is evaluating the circumstances and the situation and the evidence and the state of mind of the people who were involved in the situation. And I think that's what you tried to do here. And I think it's one thing juries have to do.

They have to think about that. It goes to motive, it goes to the circumstances. It goes to why this would happen.

No one murders their family out of the blue for no reason. That just doesn't happen.

And if you don't try and dig down into the minds of these people and what they're thinking and what they're doing, I don't think you can ever really understand or know the truth that's behind these stories. So that brings us to February 17th, 1970.

As we said, this is the day the murder occurs. Now we have already told you the story that Jeffrey MacDonald tells about what happened in that day. And let's pick up where we left off earlier with MacDonald waking up and someone being there.

So at around 340 a.m. is when the call went out to the MPs. Now we talked about this earlier.

MacDonald says he read till about 2, then he washes some dishes, he falls asleep on the couch. Apparently, very shortly thereafter, this crime begins because MacDonald will also be knocked out for some period of time.

So very shortly after he goes to sleep, this crime begins, he wakes up, he calls the emergency line and he says something that's kind of weird. I don't know how much he can read into this.

We've talked about this before, trying to read in the words people use when they call in emergencies. He says, some people have been stabbed at the house.

You know, not his wife's been stabbed, not his kids have been stabbed, just some people have been stabbed.

It is, and that is so strange when you've been stabbed as well, right? You would think that you'd say something like, we've been stabbed, we've been attacked. Someone's got us, you know.

It is a strange thing to say because it's not active. You know, when we edit briefs, you know, we are always editing out passive voice. This is some people, who knows who had been stabbed, not they are, they've stabbed us, you know, that's active.

For something so traumatic to be said kind of passively is a strange utterance.

And I'll also say this, and once again, I just want to highlight this because we get this a lot when we do these. We're not saying that any one thing points to his guilt or innocence.

We're not saying, well, Jeffrey MacDonald is guilty because he used the passive voice when he said that his family had been stabbed. That's not what we're saying.

What we're saying, like we often say, is you look at these cases, you have the evidence, and it is a mosaic. It's a picture that you're painting. It's a building that you're creating.

It's a foundation you're laying. And every little piece is important and tells part of the story. Everybody knows that you use passive voice when you don't want to claim responsibility for something, right?

The whole like, mistakes were made, right? Like that kind of thing. You're distancing yourself from what happened.

Not saying I made a mistake or we made a mistake. It's, mistakes were made. And here you have a similar circumstance.

Some people had been stabbed. It's just, it's a weird way to describe it. And it does feel like he's distancing himself, subconsciously, obviously, from the crime that had occurred.

Now we'll talk about MacDonald's injuries later. He is taken to the hospital. He has been stabbed.

He will be discharged from the hospital on February 26th. 1970, so about nine days later, which is not a short period of time to spend in the hospital. In 1970, I don't know, I feel like they kept him in the hospital longer than 1970.

Now, you know, he had shot, they don't even let you stay overnight or whatever. But he was there for nine days. We'll talk about his injuries and whether or not they were serious.

30:30

Decades of Litigation

So he has that interview with the investigators in April, the one where he tells his story. By May 1st, the Army has charged MacDonald with murder.

One really quick note there, Brett, note that it's the Army that charges MacDonald. And remember earlier in the story when he claims that he tried to call the police and the operator said to call the MP, the military police.

This is interesting because we're here in Fort Bragg, where the jurisdiction is the Army's. And so, note, it's not the state that's charging MacDonald, but it's the Army.

That is an interesting thing and it's gonna have an impact on this case, really, for the rest of time about how this goes. I admit I'm not an expert on military justice.

I'm not either, except just to note that we've talked about jurisdictions before on the podcast. Jurisdictions just means there's an area, kind of like your kingdom, for different law enforcement.

So states within the localities, we've talked about how there's the local, county, state, those sorts of things, different law enforcement have different jurisdictions.

Now, the military is interesting because it's part of the government, the federal government, but there's special rules that govern military bases. And there's military law that governs military bases as well.

And so they are different types of charges, different laws that apply, and different processes in terms of how you get charged and the process in terms of having your due process in court, the trial that could happen.

And an important distinction with the military, you may all know the Constitution requires that anyone who is going to be held for a capital offense or a felony has to be indicted by a grand jury.

Well that's not true when the military, the military has a different system. An Article 32 hearing is what you have in the military. And MacDonald had one of those.

It's a preliminary hearing where the government essentially has to show that they have enough evidence to move forward against MacDonald. And in this hearing, things don't go well for the military.

The military kind of felt like they had a slam dunk here. They really believe that the evidence pretty clearly pointed to MacDonald.

But MacDonald's lawyer, who would remain his lawyer throughout this whole process, really knocked it out of the park in the Article 32 hearing and was able to point to some real problems with the prosecution's case.

Now, a lot of them, frankly, were more cosmetic, but they had an impact on the presiding officer. So you had a colonel who is presiding over this case. He's not a lawyer.

So he's deciding whether or not there's enough evidence to go forward. He's not a lawyer because this is the military. He's the colonel.

He's the one who's going to make the decision. He had a military jack advising him who was helping him to make this decision. But at the end of the day, he's just an ordinary guy.

Kind of like, I guess, a jury is just ordinary people. And he's trying to make this decision. And the defense hammers on things that they will hammer on for really up until this day.

Some mistakes that were made by the investigators, things that might seem small, but nevertheless were important. The military, somebody in the military hung up the phone and they picked up a flower pot that had been knocked over.

One of the big things that happened, the military was pretty convinced that this was a staged scene. So, the living room, there wasn't a lot of evidence of a fight. We'll talk about that more later, but there was some.

The flower pot was knocked over that I mentioned earlier. One thing was the table. There was a sort of a table in front of the couch and it was sitting on its side.

And the military guys had tried over and over and over again to knock this table over where it stayed on its side instead of falling all the way onto its face.

So, instead of being on the side, it's top heavy, it would just roll all the way over onto its face. And they kept kicking this thing over, and they kicked it over in all these different ways, and they could never get it to land like that.

So they go to the house with this colonel who's presiding over this, and he kicks it over, and the first time he does it, it lands on its side.

And the reason it lands on its side is because when he kicked it over, there was a chair sitting next to it.

And the way he kicked it over, the chair actually held up the table, so that the table stayed on its side instead of falling all the way onto its face, which meant MacDonald's story suddenly was plausible.

And these things had a real impact on this officer to the extent that when this was all over, he dismissed the charges against MacDonald.

He said he did not think MacDonald was responsible, and he recommended that the civilian authorities look into the people that MacDonald had described as being in his house.

Because, even though this happened on a military base, if the crime was committed by civilians, civilian authorities would need to prosecute those people. As Al said, there's weird jurisdictional things going on here. Fort Bragg is an open base.

The ordinary people are traveling through it all the time. So there's some real sort of interesting jurisdictional issues that might arrive. So at this point, MacDonald is free to go.

The military said there's not a case here, and he starts to move on with his life. He says he's really irritated with the military. He's irritated that anybody would think he was responsible for this.

And he wants out, so he gets out. He's honorably discharged. And he moves across the country to Long Beach, California, where he begins a new life as a doctor.

And he says, look, I wanted to get away from everything. I wanted to forget about everything. So he starts to live sort of a new life.

He becomes a playboy, dating a lot of women, buys a yacht, has a beachfront condo, has a nice luxury sports car, really kind of living the life now in California, leaving all of this darkness behind him.

But there was one person who was really irritated by that. And that was Collette's stepfather, Freddie Casab. Now he considered Collette to be his daughter.

It didn't matter that she wasn't his daughter by blood. And when she died, there was no one who supported MacDonald more than Freddie. Freddie was completely on his side.

He testified at the Article 32 hearing about MacDonald and how wonderful MacDonald was, to the point that he said if he had another daughter, he would want the same son-in-law. That was how much he was behind MacDonald.

And he expected when MacDonald was acquitted, that the next step would be not leaving everything behind, not forgetting everything that happened, but finding the killer. He wanted to figure out who did this.

He wanted to know who killed Collette and his grandkids, and he was ready to go, but MacDonald wasn't.

Which by the way, Brett, his response makes a lot more sense, right?

I understand everyone processes grief differently and that MacDonald may have wanted to forget about this horrible thing that happened, but this is an intense mystery if in fact, someone had robbed you of your entire life.

Forget what you feel about your wife, that you had a lackluster marriage, that maybe you never was really in love with her because you had all these trysts or whatever you want to call them.

But that was your flesh and blood, your kids, one of them your unborn son. You would think that there'd be some parental tug to think, I need justice for my children who did this. What monster is this?

They need to meet some sort of justice or they can't do this again. I need to stop them before they steal someone else's family. But nothing.

The person who's feeling that is a stepfather and a step-grandfather, not the husband and father of the victims.

And I'm sure somebody will write in and say, how dare you guys judge him for how he reacted? Like you said, everybody reacts differently. Maybe I'm biased by our profession or by being involved in the true crime world.

But I do not know of any other circumstance like this. Typically, what you see is victims want justice. In fact, people become obsessed with finding justice, and we see that all the time.

People who spend the rest of their lives trying to find who killed their kid or killed their husband or killed their wife.

I mean, look at Kelsey, Kelsey German, who has completely dedicated her adult life to Abby and Libby in the Delphi murders and even chosen her course of educational study based on, you know, the tragedy that befell her family.

And I mean, that's a sister, you know, someone immediate family. So we see that more often. That's very common.

And remember, when the FBI or law enforcement are profiling a witness, that factors in as well. Of course, not everyone reacts the same way, but there are profiles that most people fit.

And wanting to know who killed your children is a very common reaction. One that MacDonald does not exhibit.

Yeah. And look, we struggle with this. I think we always try and point out that just because somebody acts a certain way, it does not necessarily mean they are guilty or innocent.

Usually, I think that has more to do with their immediate reaction. This idea that, you know, he should be crying all the time or, you know, stuff like that.

I completely don't buy that or the, he spoke about her in the past tense with the Scott Peterson stuff. No, I don't buy that. I think that stuff is all just kind of random.

But I don't think that means that you can't derive anything from people's behavior. And the FBI and the behavioral science unit and all those guys, they certainly don't think that they look for these kind of patterns.

They look for certain things that people tend to do that shows whether or not they might be involved.

A good example of this that a lot of people know is if you find a child who's been murdered and they're wrapped in their favorite blanket, the parents did it. That is something parents do when they murder a child.

Now, you know, once again, different people might react different ways to killing their kid, but that is something that the FBI has seen again and again and again as a sign that it was the parents who were involved.

So yeah, I think it is relevant that MacDonald was ready to completely leave this behind and never ask another question about it when there were supposedly this gang of people who had murdered his entire family and tried to murder him.

And yet he's just going to leave it all behind.

Now he may have wanted to forget it, and it may have seemed like he had left all of this cloud around him behind. But five years later, January 24th, 1975, a federal grand jury indicts MacDonald for the murders of his wife and children.

Now, remember we said earlier he'd been charged by the army, and those charges were dismissed. Now, you may be thinking, wait a second, isn't there something called double jeopardy? You can't be charged twice with the same crime.

This is where different jurisdictions come in. This is the federal government charging MacDonald.

Yeah, he actually will make that argument later on. This is the most litigated case in the history of the United States. This case has been at the Supreme Court more than any other case.

This guy has litigated this case like crazy. And one of the arguments he did make at some point was that this was a double jeopardy situation.

And if this seems weird to you, think about it this way. You can be charged for the same offense in both state and federal court. And that's because those are two different sovereigns and they have their own laws.

And the fact that you have violated basically two different sovereigns laws means that you could be charged at the state level as well as the federal level. This is like that.

So, it's now, now it's not very common to see an indictment so long after the murders. This is five years later. That's on the longer side.

Of course, you've probably heard of cold cases that are cracked decades later. But here, he's been the suspect all along. Remember, he was charged soon after by the army.

But the federal grand jury indicts MacDonald. About a year later, he challenges this federal indictment. And January 23rd, 1976, the Fourth Circuit dismisses the indictment on the grounds that MacDonald's speedy trial rights were violated.

Remember how we said this is an extremely litigated cases. This is one where MacDonald had good counsel. They made all of the available arguments possible.

And he actually wins a lot. Not as many interesting cases are. They're appealed and ultimately we'll tell you the outcome of it.

But this means that the Circuit Court, so the Fourth Circuit, the court above it would be the US Supreme Court. The Fourth Circuit dismissing the indictment for violation of MacDonald's speedy trial rights is a very hard standard to meet.

And he met it in that case. The government appeals up to the US Supreme Court. And appeals take a very long time.

This is something that you all should know. For example, death penalty cases are famously well litigated. They go through all the courts, state and federal levels, multiple times, and those appeals take years.

So is the case here. More than two years later, almost two and a half years later, the Supreme Court on May 1st, 1978, reinstates the indictment in an 8-0 decision.

What that means is in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court reinstates the indictment and says the Fourth Circuit got it wrong. As you guys probably know, the US. Supreme Court has nine justices.

If one justice does not participate for whatever reason, you have eight. An 8-0 decision means it's unanimous. That's a big deal.

This is not one of those close decisions, split. Let me say this. This is interesting.

Clearly, there were eight justices who participated in this case. If they were split down the middle, a 4-4 decision, what that means is the decision below stands.

So if it were a 4-4 decision, the Fourth Circuit's dismissal of the indictment would have stood and because it's the US. Supreme Court, that would have been the ultimate answer. So MacDonald would have won, but that's not what happened.

The highest court decided no. His speedy trial rights were not violated.

And this is a big deal, right? Because people always say, I'm going to take my case all the way to the Supreme Court, but that's not how it works. The Supreme Court only decides a case if they want to decide it.

So they didn't have to take this case when the government appealed. They could have said, whatever, Four Circuit, they've done their thing. We don't care about this.

We're not even going to hear this case. And MacDonald would have been scot-free, but this was actually an important question about when the Speedy Trial Act applies.

And I'll just tell you, I have cited this case, the Supreme Court case before in cases involving similar issues to this, I've cited the MacDonald case because it's an important case in our sort of jurisprudence about criminal law.

Yeah, that's a great point, Brett. People may not know that there are tens of thousands of appeals filed with the Supreme Court every year. And they decide, they have oral argument for it.

Honestly, the number has dropped every year. I think we're somewhere in the between 65 and 85 range of cases every year. It's different.

There's no set number. But and then they decide a few hundred more on the papers, meaning no oral argument.

In other words, it's a very small percentage of the tens of thousands of cases that are filed with the Supreme Court that are actually decided. After the Supreme Court reinstates his indictment, MacDonald is not done fighting.

He then attempts to bring a double jeopardy claim, like we talked about earlier. But this double jeopardy claim was rejected as well. So note that he's not bringing factual challenges.

He's actually bringing constitutional challenges to his indictment here. He's saying, I have speedy trial rights under the Constitution. Those were violated.

Supreme Court says, nope, they weren't. He says, wait a second, Army already charged me double jeopardy. Same here, the courts say, no, the law, the Constitution allows this indictment to be brought against you.

So we haven't even gotten to the facts.

The double jeopardy claim is actually rejected by the Fourth Circuit. MacDonald then attempts to appeal to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court denies his appeal.

So this second one is one of those where the Supreme Court said, no, we're not going to hear this.

As you can tell, MacDonald has been very litigious on this federal indictment, and he decides to take this case all the way to trial. There are many outcomes, two major outcomes that can happen in a federal indictment. One is that you could plea.

In other words, you plea guilty without a trial. You get certain benefits from that. You don't have to go through a trial.

You get acceptance of responsibility, which means you get some sort of a break on your sentencing guidelines. But he decides to go to trial and maintain his innocence. The trial lasts from July 19th to August 29th in 1979.

Note that he was indicted four years earlier. So it took four years to litigate all this up to the Supreme Court twice before he ultimately went to trial. The legal system is slow, guys.

And there are benefits to that and there are also drawbacks to it. It's slow. The good part is you get all your claims aired out.

There is time to make sure that these claims are litigated. The con, a huge con, as you can probably tell, is that it's now been almost a decade since these murders occurred and there's been no conviction yet.

But at the end of this trial in August of 1979, MacDonald is convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and one count of premeditated first-degree murder. As a result of these convictions, he is sentenced to life.

Yeah, we'll talk about why he was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and one count of premeditated murder once we dive in to the evidence here. But there's actually an interesting reason that that's the way this case went.

But it's not over. He's fighting on.

He sure is fighting on, Brett. A year later, in August of 1980, the Fourth Circuit overturns his conviction on speedy trial grounds. By the way, that's bold for the Fourth Circuit because to make this ruling, it's huge.

It's almost unheard of for an appellate court to overturn a trial conviction, a jury conviction. They do this. And guess what?

On the grounds that the Supreme Court slapped them down on previously. So this is actually a very interesting struggle between the Fourth Circuit and the Supreme Court here.

And the reason for this, it's actually, it's actually nerd interesting. So when they did it the first time, the Supreme Court was like, now it's an 8-0 decision.

And you would think the Fourth Circuit would have thought, probably means this is not a successful thing. But the Supreme Court often decides things narrowly. So when the Supreme Court decided it the first time, they said, look, this is premature.

You can't dismiss an indictment on Speedy Trial Grounds. Go ahead, have the trial. Who knows?

He might be acquitted. And then we don't even have to worry about this, right? So go ahead and have the trial.

Maybe he'll be acquitted. Maybe he won't. But we're not going to dismiss an indictment now.

Go away, Fourth Circuit. Go back and try the case. And then he does.

And he immediately raises this issue again. And the Fourth Circuit's like, see? We were right all wrong.

You should have listened to us, Supreme Court, which is usually not something the Supreme Court takes kindly to.

Well, what this means is MacDonald walks free. His conviction was overturned. He is a free man.

There is no conviction standing for him. He is not a convicted murderer. So MacDonald moves back to California and he resumes his life as a doctor and playboy.

Now, in March 31st, 1982, this case was appealed up to the Supreme Court yet again. And the Supreme Court again reverses the Fourth Circuit. And this time, they reinstate the conviction, not in a unanimous ruling, but this time in a 6-3 ruling.

So a little bit closer, not the 5-4 decision you all hear of for particularly hot topic issues. This is a little bit closer, but with nine justices sitting on this case, it is a 6-3 ruling to reinstate the jury verdicts.

Now, what follows are decades of failed appeals and habeas petitions by MacDonald.

And that brings us to today. Many, many, many, many appeals and petitions later. As we said, this case has been litigated to the nth degree on every possible ground.

And MacDonald remains in prison.

52:31

Unanswered Questions

And the question that we are going to address in the episodes that follow is whether he should remain in prison or if in fact he is innocent as he still maintains to this day. And there is so much to discuss.

There's the blood evidence in this case which seems to tell a very specific story. And there are questions about the story MacDonald told and whether or not the evidence is consistent with that. And then there is the most enigmatic part of this case.

The woman in the floppy hat, did she exist? And in fact, do we know who she is? And if she did exist, is MacDonald innocent?

Those are the questions we are going to look at over the next couple of weeks. If you guys already have questions about this case, feel free to hit us up, prosecutorspod at gmail.com.

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Absolutely.

We have the world's best fans.

Well, guys, that is all we have for this week, but we will be back next week with more exciting, crazy, bizarre things about this case, one of the most bizarre and craziest cases in the history of True Crime.

But until then, I'm Brett, and I'm Alice, and we are the Prosecutors. I was watching this very strange spaghetti video.

You were watching a strange spaghetti video?

Yeah, they like poured prego sauce all over this counter, and then like put meatballs on it, and then put cheese on it, and then put spaghetti on it. It was very strange, I didn't understand it.

What, what? I left you for like five minutes.

I don't know, it's like a thing, apparently.

What are you doing?

It's like a meme. I don't know, everybody was watching this video, and so I watched it, and I don't understand it. I think it was supposed to be funny, but I didn't think it was.

Is it like a weird fetish thing?

You know, I kind of wondered about that, actually, because it is a woman doing it, and she's like, you know, rubbing all this spaghetti around on her countertop.

I don't know, it's very strange.

If you wanna hear more about the Jeffrey MacDonald case, you can find all episodes of The Prosecutors wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, hey, hey, before you go, don't forget to make sure you're subscribed to American Criminal and leave us a five-star rating. You probably heard it from other podcasts, but those two little things really help us out a lot.

You can also visit americancriminal.com to get in touch with us and let us know what criminals you'd like to hear about next. American Criminal is a co-production of Airship and Evergreen podcasts.

It's hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz. Audio editing and sound design by Sean Ruhl-Hoffman, music by Thrum. This episode is written and researched by Joel Kallen, managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Kallen and Lindsey Graham.