Fatal Vision (26 page)

And the bulletin was going on and on that the doctor, who had been treated at the hospital for multiple wounds, in a statement released just moments earlier by the Fort Bragg Public Information Office, was named as the chief suspect in the case, and that he would be confined to quarters or something like that.

So I remember sitting there and thinking, well now what do I do? Here I was listening to a newscast about myself, and there were probably, oh, a hundred to two hundred people in the room sort of semi-watching me, and I certainly wasn't confined to quarters or anything. And yet the whole thing was incredibly bizarre.

And I also was angry because I sort of had just left the CID and there was no mention of this type of thing, a press release of an actual statement that I was
the
suspect. I had been left with the impression that they hadn't solved the case and they were looking at everyone again, and they needed some answers from me because the nitwits had never talked to me.

So I didn't finish eating. I sort of got up and put the tray where it belonged and went out, and started driving back to my BOQ. And I got back to the BOQ and there were MPs, there were several, like five, around the building, and one inside the building in front of my door.

That night was a very bad night. An absolutely bone-chilling, unbelievable and indescribable feeling of depression and nothingness, and it's—the best thing I can say is it seems to me that it's death, it must be what death is like, although death must be a little more peaceful than this. This was a turmoil that's beyond belief, a mental turmoil with images and with the weight of a depression adding to it that you're really unable to describe.

But I remember thinking for what seemed an eternity about suicide, and actually looking up and measuring visually the height of the pipes that were hanging from the ceiling in my room, and whether or not I could commit suicide using a sheet, or belts or something, and feeling that it seemed ludicrous, it seemed melodramatic, it seemed like it, again, wouldn't change anything and it would probably fail. It was probably gonna be a nothing-type attempt, and I could just see the guard outside the door rushing in and reviving me and then being this incredibly ludicrous situation of a failed suicide attempt the day you've been called the chief suspect in the murder of your family, which of course everyone would immediately take to mean that, well, he did it and that's why he was trying to commit suicide, and in fact that wasn't it at all: it was the incredible obtuse-ness and meaninglessness of, first, the loss, and, second, these accusations.

So that night was spent, you know, alone, looking at the ceiling, the desk light was on most of the night, I think all of the night. The paint in the room was a crummy paint, as a matter of fact it was light green. The ceiling was white but it was now an off white, a gray white, really, from dirt. And the paint was peeling, the pipes were peeling, and I remember thinking that if I looped my belt over it there was gonna be paint chips all over everything.

I thought a lot that night—specifically, on purpose—about Colette and Kim and Kristy. And—this sounds silly and it's sort of even embarrassing to say—but I remember I kept thinking how, like, Colette would be angry. She would be very, almost self-righteous if she were able to hear what these nitwits were now saying I was a suspect in.

And I was like, having a conversation wi
th Colette and she was saying,
I
know you tried, and, believe me, that's all I ask.
And I was, you know, telling her I was sorry. And she's saying,
But you couldn't help it, it happened, and what's worse now is these jerks are now saying that you did it.
She said,
I
could tell them otherwise,
and, you know,
Kimmy and Kristy and I know differently, so don't worry about it.

And so, at about that time, when I was really in solitude and in this deepest of depressions and trying to wrestle with what, you know, what was happening, and why it was happening and what to do, dawn came up. It was a feeling of rebirth that I've had many times before, like when I used to work all night on Fire Island driving a cab. And when dawn came up you were charged with this new energy, despite being sleepless for like twenty-four hours.

That's what happened here: the dawn came up and all of a sudden a lot of the super-d
epression and gloom and suicide
thoughts just absolutely melted away. The light of the day truly brought a new dawn, and what it brought me was an anger. It was almost like the sun was firing me and infused me with an energy to fight.

And I remember saying—and I even have a recollection that it may have been out loud—it may have been thinking, but I have this feeling that I almost said this one thing out loud, after this long, long night, and that was: "Fuck them! They're not gonna get me. They're not gonna make me commit suicide, and they're not gonna convict me of something that I didn't do, this outrageous thing."

And I said, "Fuck 'em. I will fight." And around 8:15 or 8:30, in fresh-pressed khakis and my jump boots, with my little satchel briefcase under my arm, I went over to the Judge Advocate General's office, and I walked in and the office was a long, thin office with multiple people at different desks, typing, and I walked in and there was a female secretary at the front, and I said, "I'm Captain MacDonald and I'm here to see about getting a lawyer."

And the whole world stopped in that room. Like, every typewriter stopped and every head turned to me, and there was this moment of suspended animation.

And I remember being a little imperious about it—imperial, I guess, is a better word—I sort of stood taller than before. And I said, "Maybe you didn't hear. I'm Captain MacDonald and I'm here to see about an attorney."

PART TWO

THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE

For what is the hope of the hypocrite

though he hath gained,

when God taketh away his soul?

—Job 27:8

Five minutes after Jeffrey MacDonald's mother got home from work on the evening of Monday, April 6, 1970—her first day back since Monday, February 16—she received a phone call from a captain at Fort Bragg informing her that her son was being held under armed guard in his BOQ room, a suspect in the murder of his family.

Within half an hour, Bob Stern called from New Hope, having just heard the news from Walter Cronkite. He told Dorothy MacDonald to hire a civilian lawyer immediately. She said she didn't know any lawyers. He said he would call his corporate attorney and ask him to recommend someone who specialized in criminal work. Half an hour later, he called back to say that Bernard L. Segal of Philadelphia would meet with them at 10 o'clock the next morning.

At thirty-eight, Bernie Segal was balding and slightly rotund. The hair he did have was thick and curly and flowed back from the center of his head, down his neck, almost to the level of his shoulders. Away from the office, he sometimes wore it in a ponytail. In rimless glasses, he bore more than a passing resemblance to the middle-aged Benjamin Franklin, which, for a lawyer in Philadelphia, was not necessarily a disadvantage.

Segal had been born and raised in Philadelphia. His father had owned a men's and boys' clothing store. He had attended the Philadelphia public schools, Temple University, and the law school of the University of Pennsylvania.

In the early 1960s, working with the American Civil Liberties Union, he had been active in black voter registration projects in

the South and spoke often of how he had once spent three days in the Pascagoula, Mississippi, jail.

More recently, Segal had become well known (some would have said notorious) for his defense of war protesters, draft resisters, and military deserters. In addition, he had made something of a specialty of representing persons charged with violations of narcotics laws. He was, in fact, a staunch defender of the very types for whom Jeffrey MacDonald reserved the most scorn.

Politically, his leanings were toward the Left. Socially, his sympathies lay with the counterculture. Married, with three young children of his own, Segal seemed at first an odd choice as defense counsel for a Green Beret officer who had been accused of murdering his own family and who had blamed drug abusers for the crime. Jeffrey MacDonald's mother, however, was acting on short notice, under great pressure, with guidance from only one friend.

On the surface, it seemed no less odd that Segal would have been willing to take the case. The four intruders—had they been arrested and charged—would have been far more typical clients for Bernie Segal than was a Princeton-educated Green Beret doctor—the personification of the establishment ideal which Segal had so frequently challenged.

Bernie Segal, however, in addition to his other characteristics, possessed a forceful, flamboyant personality and considered the practice of criminal law to be at least as much theatrical art as judicial science. The limelight energized him. He did not shun publicity. He was at ease with an entourage and he had always been at his best on center stage. The lure of a case which had already made national headlines was powerful.

Besides, like so many others who had first read or heard the horrid details back in February, Bernie Segal had been affected on a personal level by the MacDonald murders.

"From the s
tart," he said, "the story evok
ed a whole rush of very painful feelings. I can remember actually shuddering when I read about it the first time. My own children were only a little older than Jeffs—twin daughters, seven, and a son, five, at the time—so of course I responded as a father to the very special tragedy of the death of a child: that there was so much that they now would never have a chance to experience.

"Then there was the ugliness of the Manson syndrome. Here it was again, six months later. From working with many of my clients I was extremely familiar with LSD, and I remember saying, 'Goddamn the acid. Goddamn the acid'—a drug that could unleash that sort of evil.

"Not long afterwards, I saw a little squib in the Philadelphia
Bulletin
about the Alabama State Police stopping two men and a woman in a van on suspicion of involvement in the MacDonald killings, and I then began feeling, 'Oh, God, now they're going to stop every freak and long-haired American traveling in a group of more than one.' I began to feel resentment that this would open the door to even more repressive police behavior in America at a time when I was fighting against that sort of thing every day."

Then, on the evening of April 6, Bernie Segal received a call from a former ACLU colleague named John Ballard, of the Philadelphia law firm of Drinker Biddle and Reath. "A conservative, Quaker-oriented business law firm," Segal said, "but one with a social conscience."

As general counsel to the University of Pennsylvania, Ballard had referred a case to Segal two years earlier—that one also a triple homicide, involving a Penn student who, having been ejected from a fraternity Christmas party, had drunkenly poured gas
oline on a papier-mache
snowman and had set the fraternity house ablaze. Three students had died, but Segal had succeeded in having the charge reduced to manslaughter, and his client had served only a short prison sentence.

Now, John Ballard said, he was calling on behalf of a corporate client from New Hope, one Robert Stern, whose "godson" (this was not technically true, but the close relationship implied by such a term had existed since Jeffrey MacDonald's early childhood) was the Green Beret officer who had just been held as a suspect in the murders of his wife and daughters at Fort Bragg.

Bernie Segal said yes, of course he would try to be of service.

"You must understand," Segal said, "prior to my meeting with his mother on April 7—in fact, during the meeting and even after the meeting—I had every reason to believe that Jeffrey MacDonald was guilty of those murders.

"The police only arrest the obviously guilty. They don't know how to catch the others. That's why the solution rate on major crimes is so low. So my thinking, all through that initial period, was 'He probably did it.'

"But you must remember also that at the start of any criminal case, the call comes in and it's like the alarm going off at the firehouse. At first, you're just running to the fire. You're responding to an emergency. Feelings about guilt or innocence— about the client as an individual—come later, if they're going to come at all.

"1
must say, at the meeting on April 7, I was very impressed by Mrs. MacDonald. She was, quite obviously, upset, but she snowed a remarkable sense of poise and presence. She was handling the crisis beautifully. I liked her very much right away. And of course I agreed to see what I could do."

The first thing Segal did was to call Fort Bragg. He was able to speak to Jeffrey MacDonald early on the afternoon of April 7. He explained how he had come to be involved.