Rating: 
Summary: riveting and full of emotion
Review: I believe that jeffery macdonald is guilty. Even if you throw all of the evidence out I have two words to say. Lie Detector. Apparantly, he took one and it wasn't too good. But even giving him the benefit of the doubt, if I was in his shoes and I didn't do it I would say "Bring in all of the cameras and give me one now." He didn't do that instead he tried every other avenue. {Didn't get a speedy trial etc}. Another thing that has always bothered me was that noone heard anything. The people upstairs said that they could hear normal conversations if all of the tv's were off. If you were a mother and three people were in your bedroom and trying to kill your children why wouldn't you scream at the top of your lungs? She was aware enough to fight back.{Broken arms,cuts on hands etc} Why not scream as loud as you could. Why say "Jeff why are they doing this to me?" Why not scream "Someone help" as loud as she could? But if she was having an arguement with her husband and he hit her{Which we know happens even today} and it escalated from there she would have been use to hiding and masking arguements. He said as he was giving the children mouth to mouth that he patted Kristen on the head and told her that it was allright.Did he say that then or as he was pulling her over his lap so that he could stab her with a knife. It breaks my heart to think of that baby's final moments. Had she just seen her mother beaten and stabbed over her bed? Did her father then reach out to her. We know that her mother bled profusely in her room. These are things that we will never know because the only one who knows will never tell. But if he was so sure of his innocence there would have been a lie detector test. I hope that the faces of those two babies haunt him for the rest of his life. Does he think of them on birthdays, holidays, etc. Does he think of what they would have been doing now if he wouldn't have murdered them. At least Susan Smith, took responsability for what she did as horrible as it was. At least she said she was sorry. Jeffery Macdonald is nothing more that an OJ Simpson but without the dream team behind him. Oh, and one other thing, where was the blood in the living room where he was stabbed? There was none.
Rating: 
Summary: Guilty as sin
Review: MacDonald, for some odd reason, has always had his supporters. These are the same people who could have served on the O.J. Simpson jury: completely out to lunch. This book isn't perfect, and Joe McGinniss is certainly not unimpeachable (after all, he's the man responsible for 'discovering' and encouraging Bret Easton Ellis' writing). What it comes down to is this (and I can't figure out how MacDonald's supporters downplay this): the guy was a Green Beret. His family was brutally slaughtered and he had minor wounds. Was he a complete and utter wimp who was physically unable to protect his wife and children (something I can't believe) or was he himself guilty of the killings? This book gives good background on the evidence used to indict and convict the pathological, narcissistic nobody, Jeffrey MacDonald.
Rating: 
Summary: The Evil that is Joe McGinniss and his Fatal Vision
Review: This book was first published in 1983. On August. 31, 1984 Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald filed a law suit against Joe McGinniss for fraud and breach of contract. At the trial in 1987, the jury hung 5-1 in favor of granting Jeffrey MacDonald 15 MILLION dollars due to McGinniss'book. The reason was simple. McGinniss had falsely quoted his theory about the drugs from medical textbooks. He had invented many of the passages in the " Voice of Jeffrey MacDonald" at times combining quotes made over two years apart as if they were all in a row. The court also learned that until one month before its publication McGinniss had continued writing to MacDonald telling him that he was writing a book about his INNOCENCE. The court also heard of the fact that much of the physical evidence presented in Joe's book was false or expanded upon in order to lead the reader to believe MacDonald was guilty. When asked on the stand whether or not he believed his drug theory occured he replied: " I'm not convinced that it actually happened." The trial also heard that McGinniss had misquoted one of MacDonald's own passages. In the passage MacDonald had said he had taken 5 Eskatrol diet pills between Dec. and Feb. yet McGinniss said that he took 3-5 per DAY!! Thus, 200 such pills!!! In the end McGinniss settled out of court before his reputation could be damanged any further. In 1993 McGinniss was accused of plagerism for his work on a Ted Kennedy book. MacDonald in the meantime contiues to maintain his innocence. DNA testing has commenced as of this time and is expected to be concluded shortly. The lead prosecutor in the MacDonald case, Jim Blackburn was recentlyy paroled from prison for embezzlement, fraud, and extortion. Brian Murtagh is under investigation for hiding MacDonald evidence. McGinniss is today a persona non grata in the world of writers. When MacDonald is proven innocent it is my hope that Joe McGinniss will be arrested and put into custody for destroying a life. ( This won't happen but McGinniss will no doubt lose his fancy house when a monstrous new law suit is filed.)
Rating:
Summary: Just to make a scientific point.
Review: Truthfully, I have never read this book but I was just looking at reviews to see if this was something that I would like to read and being a doctor, I would just like to respond to the review posted first which states that it would not be possible for a father with type B blood and a mother with type A blood to have a child with type O blood. Clearly the person who wrote this opinion is not speaking from an informed viewpoint. If the mother's genotype is AO (giving her type A blood) and the father's genotype is BO (giving him type B blood), then it is clearly possible that is both O alleles are passed to the child that the child can have type O blood. Forgive the pickiness but it's important to clear up the pseudoscience.
Rating:
Summary: Hidden motive?
Review: After having read this book, there is no doubt at all in my mind about MacDonald's guilt. However, there is a possible hidden motive that nobody has quite explored. The prosecution made much of the fact that each of the four persons in the MacDonald family had different blood types, and used this fact to trace the movements of the various people through the house that night. Yet MacDonald had type B blood, his wife type A. My biological studies convince me that it is IMPOSSIBLE for two such people to produce a child with type O blood, which one of the MacDonald children had. Not that it justifies the murders, but is it just barely possible that the sainted wife of the philandering Doctor also had an affair? Is it also possible that the motive for the killings was nothing more than a jealous husband who flipped out?
Rating:
Summary: guilty
Review: I think Jeffrey macdonald is guilty, and the book proves this to be true. There was too much evidence to say he is not. I would also like to read further into the case and find out the life of jeffery today.
Rating:
Summary: Jeffery macdonald should be a free man
Review: As far as stories this book will scare the living daylights out of you, but the truth is that there were many mistakes made at that crime scene. If that jury would have seen all of the evidence there is 100% resonable doubt, & I do believe that that is the way our american justice system is suppose to work. I would suggest that anyone who thinks that jeffery macdonald is guilty read Fatal Justice & hear both sides of the Story.
Rating:
Summary: The definitive work of the monster that is Jeffrey McDonald
Review: "Fatal Vision" was perhaps the most terrifying look into the sick human psyche I have ever read. McGinnis did an excellent job of presenting the facts of the case, never losing site of the real victims: Collette, Kimmy, Krissy, and the unborn McDonald child. I don't believe any thinking person can read this book and not be convinced of the guilt of Jeffrey McDonald. If the written text is not enough, the diagram of the 544 Castle Drive apartment and the blood trail documented there would sway even the most die-hard McDonald advocate.
Rating:
Summary: A True Crime Classic
Review: A beautifully written, horrifying, and ultimately rather sad account of the Macdonald killings. McGinnis is to be commended for having the moral courage to follow the story to its logical, if bleak, heart. A must-read book; essential for all true crime fans.
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Study in Psychopathology
Review: Joe McGinnis peels back the layers of MacDonald's superficially-smooth personality to reveal the family-murdering monster within. Dr. Mac was by his own admission consistently unfaithful to his wife from early on in their marriage, and indulged his need to disconnect from Colette and the kids by being a workaholic and a liar, e.g., the "boxing team is going to Russia" story. The pattern of dishonesty and deception continued in the years after the murder, as Dr. Mac told whopper after whopper to the investigators, to his in-laws (saying he had tracked down and killed one of the "real" perps), to McGinnis, to basically anyone who would listen. Being unfaithful and dishonest doesn't by any means prove Dr. Mac's a murderer; the physical evidence unambiguously does. That McGinnis proves MacDonald a liar over and over only reinforces the point brought out in psychological testing: Dr. Mac is a profoundly disturbed man quite capable of having committed this horrifying crime. The power and fascination of the story lies in how very much at odds this conclusion is with our normal way of looking at people. By those standards, Dr. Mac would seem to be a great guy. But, as McGinnis shows, nothing could be further from the truth.
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