Rating: 
Summary: I'm giving it five stars because it was so riveting
Review: I read this book in the mid 1980's, shortly before the miniseries came out starring Gary Cole as Dr. Jeffrey McDonald. As I read the book everything pointed to his guilt. Then I found out the author, Joe McGinnis, had bent and twisted facts and made the outcome his own personal work of fiction. Dr. McDonald sued and won his case but after all these years he is still behind bars for something I'm certain he didn't do. Stationed at Fort Bragg, NC in 1970, the McDonalds seemed to be a happy military family, Jeffrey was a doctor, a Green Beret, and husband to pretty wife Collette, and father to little daughters Kimberly and Kristen. A son was on the way. Then, one horrible night in February, Collette, the unborn baby and two toddler girls were savagely murdered in their beds. Dr. McDonald was also attacked and stabbed. Dr. McDonald claimed some strangers showed up in his home while he was asleep, and as he slept on the couch in the living room he awoke to them, three men and a woman in a floppy hat with long blond hair who was holding a candle and chanting,"acid is groovy, kill the pigs." This was less than a year after the Manson murders. At least one knife and an icepick was used on the victims, and Collette was beaten in the head and both of her arms were fractured. The word "pig", was smeared on her bedroom wall in her blood. Shades of the Manson family.
A woman matching this description was seen near the scene that rainy night as emts' were approaching the McDonald residence, but was not investigated at that time. Later, a hippie, Helena Stokeley, who was known to own a long blonde wig, confessed to being a participant of the crimes but was never taken seriously, presumably because she was a drug addict who frequently tripped on acid. She has since died. Well, I've always heard LSD and other hallucinogens can cause a person to do some pretty weird and awful things. Why they didn't jump on this woman is incredible.
The army investigation decided not to prosecute Dr. McDonald due to lack of evidence. Then he moved to California and rebuilt his life as a civilian surgeon only to be charged years later in a Federal court for three counts of murder. In those days a fetus was not considered a person. It was mostly because of his former stepfather-in-law trying to play Sherlock Holmes that caused Dr. McDonald to go to trial and after about 9 years of freedom, he was sentenced to life in prison. Now there is DNA evidence that will almost certainly free him if it is ever concluded. If this man is proven innocent it will be a great day, but he will never get back all those years that changed him from a young, handsome man to the silverhaired gentleman who almost certainly would have been a grandfather several times over. It's just not plausible that this family man, this doctor would just snap and methodically butcher his entire family one night. The reason I give this book a good rating is it is so hard to stop turning the pages. But when you've finished it read "Fatal Justice" by Jerry A. Potter and Fred Bost. You'll have a completely different perspective.
Rating:
Summary: One of the classics of the true crime genre
Review: This is one of the most sobering of true crime tales, and one of the most intriguing. Former Green Beret officer Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald (still in prison last time I checked) called the police early one morning to report that his pregnant wife and two young daughters had been murdered by a marauding gang of hippies shouting "Kill the pigs, acid is groovy" while he received some superficial wounds trying to fight them off.Joe McGinniss who at the time was best known for his Nixon campaign book (The Selling of the President 1968) jumped on the case and made arrangements with MacDonald to follow him around and interview him. McGinniss has said that initially he believed MacDonald was innocent, but as he grew to know MacDonald, and as he sifted through the evidence he began to change his mind until in the end he believed along with the prosecution and the jurors that MacDonald had murdered his family. McGinniss reports all this in such a compelling manner that the reader is lead step by step to the same horrific conclusion (or at least most readers are). Also changing their minds about MacDonald were the wife's parents who at first refused to believe that he could have done something like this. Yet in the end they too were convinced. Not convinced however were MacDonald's many supports including as I recall members of the Long Beach, California police department, many of MacDonald's co-workers, and a number of women who found the doctor very attractive. All of this is interesting but what I think most fascinated McGinniss and what most fascinates me is an answer to the questions of Why did he do it? and How could any human being do something like that? The most plausible theory (this is basically McGinniss's theory as well) to explain why he did it goes something like this: In a rage (possibly induced in part by amphetamine use) MacDonald badly or fatally injured one of his family. Rather than own up to this and face the consequences he had the "fatal vision" (thought to have been conjured up in part from an Esquire Magazine article or in remembrance of the Mason family murders) of acid-crazed hippies breaking into his home and attacking his family with him in heroic defense. To make this work he would have to kill everybody except himself and construct a crime scene that would support his story. The prosecution and McGinniss careful show how MacDonald's crime scene construction failed. Readers interested in forensic science will find this aspect of the book absolutely fascinating, even if not entirely convincing. But to convict a man of murdering his family based on circumstantial evidence especially when the motive is not another woman, or money, but is instead merely a desire to hide what at worse would be manslaughter, seems quite a stretch for any jury, or so MacDonald apparently figured. But what went wrong was not only the evidence, but his personality. As McGinniss spent time with MacDonald he came to realize that Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald was not like other people. He was charming and very bright but there was a cold aspect to his personality, what in autism is called a "lack of affect." Obviously he was not autistic, or perhaps his is a form of autism. Anyway, according to the current psychiatric wisdom, such a person is called a psychopath or a sociopath. The words mean approximately the same thing, that is, a person who values only his or her own life and welfare, a person who has no real feelings of warmth for others, a person who has no compunction about taking the life of another if he or she can gain from it and get away with it. The compelling psychological argument for me (and perhaps for the jury that convicted him) is that ONLY such a husband and father could have done that. The fact that he fit the psychopathic personality type was what led to his conviction as much as the forensic evidence. I should add that even though over the years there have been tips about, and bizarre manifestations of, possible hippy suspects, MacDonald has remained the only real suspect. But did he do it? This book makes a powerful case that he did. Followers of sensational crimes such as the Jon Benet Ramsey case or the current case of Scott Peterson (reported as "laughing and joking" with his attorneys in court today as I write this) will see similarities here. In the Jon Benet case there is the sense of an attempt to cover up some violence inflicted on a member of the family because somebody (probably the mother) lost her temper, while in the Scott Peterson case there is the phenomenon of the sociopathic personality to explain an otherwise unthinkable crime. I originally thought that MacDonald was guilty and I still do, but I admit there is some doubt. Whether that doubt is "reasonable" is for you to decide. The jury has already decided. Someday there may be another trial. If so, that jury will decide. You might also want to read the "answer" to this book, Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders (1992) by Jerry Allen Potter. Or go to the various Websites. I think you'll discover, as I did, why we have trials by jury in which both sides present their arguments. Just hearing one side seems so convincing until you hear the other side. Bottom line: one of the very best true crime reads, the book that made McGinniss's career and helped to end MacDonald's: one of the classics of the genre.
Rating:
Summary: Inspires passionate debate, on both sides.
Review: Sorry, kiddies and students, but McGinniss really is a distasteful, publicity-grubbing worm. The more I look into this case, including personal interviews, the more I realize just how unethical McGinniss really was, and still is. The forensic case doesn't add up, and never, ever did. By the way, anyone who would ever take a polygraph test under any circumstances is definitely a fool. BUT NOT NECESSARILY A MURDERER. I would never take one under any circumstance, no matter what. Then again, unlike many who apparently get their information from Montel Williams and Maury Povich, I've actually done my research about the technology.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping
Review: FATAL VISION provides a gripping account of the 1970 MacDonald murders. Did Army doctor Jeff MacDonald murder his wife and daughters (as much evidence suggests), or was he beaten unconscious by late-night intruders who committed this brutal crime? When the case finally went to trial after nine years of legal wrangling, Dr. MacDonald hired author Joe McGinnis to cover what doctor hoped would be his acquittal - but the jury (and separately, McGinnis) concluded that he was guilty. McGinnis then wrote this page-turning account of the crime, investigations, six-week trial, legal maneuvers, plus additional facts the jury never saw. The author concludes with a shaky psychological conviction based on MacDonald's arrogant, self-absorbed personality. Seemingly more persuasive is evidence suggesting MacDonald abused a dangerous amphetamine for weeks leading up to the crime. Whatever your take, this compelling true-crime drama leaves many convinced of MacDonald's guilt, but others harboring enough doubt to stimulate debate. MacDonald's supporters attack this book as inaccurate and unfair. They point to investigative errors, [substance abuser] Helena Stoeckley, and disturbing claims of suppressed evidence from a book of similar title (FATAL JUSTICE) that requests a new trial. But MacDonald secretly flunked two polygraphs in 1970 - after refusing an army polygraph to clear his name - and the absence of blood, splinters, and pajama fibers in the suspiciously tidy living room appear to refute MacDonald's claim that he battled several intruders in there. FATAL VISION doesn't prove MacDonald guilty, but it's a compelling read.
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