Fatal Vision (3 page)

'Is that on post or off post?" the operator asked.

She did not receive an answer to her question. Instead, there was only silence on the line. She put the call through to MP headquarters at Fort Bragg.

At 3:42
a.m
. a desk sergeant heard the caller say:

"Five forty-four Castle Drive . . . Help . . . Five forty-four Castle Drive . . . Stabbing
..."

Then, apparently, the caller dropped the phone. The sergeant heard a clunking noise, as if the receiver had hit a wall or floor.

For thirty seconds, maybe sixty, there was silence. Then the caller was back, speaking this time in a voice that the sergeant described as
^‘
almost too weak to be a whisper."

^‘
Five forty-four Castle Drive . . . Stabbing . . .
Hurry!
..."

Again, there was only silence on the line.

Within ten minutes there were a dozen military policemen at the scene, milling about on the front steps or standing on the walk that led up to the house. The red lights and blue lights of their jeeps and patrol cars flashed in the raw and misty darkness.

The front door was locked. The blinds were drawn. Inside, the house seemed dark and silent. A lieutenant knocked. There was no response. He knocked harder.

One MP suggested that they break down the door. The lieutenant said no. This was, after all, an officer's residence. He tried once more, banging as hard as he could. Then he started back toward his car, thinking he would call the provost marshal to ask about obtaining a search warrant.

On his way, he said, 'Somebody check the back door."

A sergeant trotted around the side of the house. Two other MPs started to follow. They were only halfway around, however— and the lieutenant was only halfway to his car—when they met the sergeant coming back. He was no longer trotting, but running now as fast as he could.

' 'Tell them to get Womack ASAP!''

Womack is the name of the Fort Bragg hospital. ASAP is a military acronym that means "as soon as possible." In this context, it meant:
"Emergency!"

The back door was open, though a screen door outside it was closed. The rear entrance led through a small utility room into the master bedroom.

Colette MacDonald, who was twenty-six years old at the time of her death, lay on her back, legs apart, on the floor next to the bed. One eye was open, one bre
ast exposed, and one arm was
extended over her head.

She was covered with blood. A torn and bloodstained blue pajama top had been draped across part of her chest. Her own pajamas, which had been pink, were dark with blood. Her face and head were battered and covered with blood and more blood had soaked—perhaps still was soaking—into the rug on which she lay.

Her husband, Captain Jeffrey R. MacDonald, M.D., also twenty-six, lay next to her, motionless. He wore only blue pajama bottoms. He was face down with his head on her chest and one arm wrapped around her neck.

"Just like with a girlfriend," an MP sergeant described it later. "As if he was crying on her shoulder."

A small paring knife lay on the rug near a dresser. A bedspread and sheet—saturated with blood—lay rumpled together near the doorway that led to the hall. On the headboard of the double bed, in letters eight inches high, the word
pig
had been written in blood.

Jeffrey MacDonald began to moan. An MP ran to his side.

"Check my kids," MacDonald whispered. "I heard my kids crying
..."

An MP ran down the hall. He took two steps inside a darkened bedroom on his left. He shined his flashlight on the bed.

Kimberly MacDonald, five years old, lay on her left side. The covers were pulled up to her shoulders and tucked beneath her. Blood covered her mattress and pillow. There was a large wound, through which bone protruded, on her cheek. There also were a number of gaping stab wounds in her neck.

The MP backed quickly out of the room and stepped to a doorway on the opposite side of the hall. Shining his light on the bed in that room he saw the body of an even smaller child.

Kristen MacDonald, two years old, also lay on her left side. Her left arm was outstretched. A nearly empty baby bottle lay next to her mouth. A large stuffed dog stood near the bed, its wide-eyed face pointed toward her.

Her blond hair, her head, and her face were unmarked, but she had been stabbed many times in the chest and back. Her pajamas, sheets, and mattress were soaked with blood, and more blood had run down the side of her bed to form a large pool on the floor.

Leading away from this pool, toward the doorway, was a footprint in blood that appeared to have been made by the bare foot of an adult human being.

In the master bedroom, Jeffrey MacDonald was trying to speak. "Four of them . . . She kept saying,
^‘
Acid is groovy . . . Kill the pigs'
..."
He seemed to be laboring for breath.

"Why did they do this to me?
...
I can't breathe
...
I need a chest tube
..."

He was shivering, his teeth were chattering, his muscles seemed to tighten as he shook. Suddenly, his eyes closed and he went limp. A military policeman began to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. MacDonald revived. He began struggling, trying to push the MP away.

"I've got to check my kids!"

"Don't worry, sir. Someone is down there taking care of them."

"Fuck me! I gotta see my kids! Take care of my kids! Leave me alone!"

He pushed harder and raised himself to a sitting position. Then he looked down at the body of Colette.

"Jesus Christ!
'
he cried.
"Look at my wife!"
Then he mumbled, "I'm gonna kill those goddamned acid heads. I don't know why in the hell I fuck with them. I'm not gonna help them anymore."

There had been four of them, MacDonald told the MPs. Two white men, one black, and a woman with long blond hair who had been wearing a floppy hat and high boots and who had been holding a candle. He also told the military police that he was a doctor and he had been stabbed and he thought he was going into shock. If that happened, he said, they should elevate his legs and keep him warm and make sure he did not swallow his tongue.

An ambulance arrived. Two medics wheeled a stretcher through the living room and down the hallway to the bedroom. MacDonald was placed on the stretcher.

As he was being wheeled back down the hall, past the bedroom of his older daughter, Kimberly, he suddenly reached out, grabbed the edge of the doorway, and, struggling hard against the two medics and a military policeman, managed to pull himself halfway off the stretcher.

"Goddamn MPs!" he shouted. "Let me see my kids!"

With some difficulty, the MP and the medics restrained him. They then proceeded through the hallway, down the two steps that led to the living room, and out the front door of 544 Castle Drive.

Once outside, Jeffrey MacDonald lay quietly. His eyes were closed and a sheet was pulled up to his chin. He was wheeled quickly down the front walk, through the chilly, misty darkness, past a small group of neighbors that had gathered, and toward the flashing lights of the waiting ambulance.

The Voice of Jeffrey MacD
onald

I can still remember when I first met Colette. We were in eighth grade, in the junior high school on South Ocean Avenue in Patchogue, and she was walking down the hallway with her best friend, June Desser.

June was thin, taller than Colette, very attractive, but I thought Colette was more attractive: much softer appearing. She had sort of a vulnerable look.

I was standing in the doorway of my homeroom up on the fifth floor, the highest floor, of the Patchogue Junior High School, and they walked past and Colette turned around and looked at me and I looked back and they just kept going. But I had the distinct impression^-that I can still see today— that she was interested and wanted to say hello, but she was a little hesitant, or tentative about doing so.

I remember then for about a week I kept trying to find out who was the good-looking blonde who was always with the other blonde. Some people told me they were sisters and some people told me they weren't. But they had their reputation of being kind of aloof. And Colette, of course, was from a reasonably wealthy family by Patchogue standards, and they were considered kind of upper-class, and I really couldn't seem to find out that much about her.

Anyway, I met her again like two weeks later, in passing, and eventually I found out what her full name was and where her homeroom was, and we met on and off in the hallways, and, I believe, in one class. I finally had her in a—in either a history or an English class. And we started talking and eventually I found out where she lived and I

drove my bicycle over to her house one day and we met that way.

Those were seemingly—in retrospect now—painful times. Driving past her house on a bicycle until she noticed you, and then she'd call you over and you'd stand outside and talk in kind of a confused fashion—not trying to be forward or aggressive but trying to talk to her and get to meet her and know her better. And this would go on for hours.

The person she lived next to was Timmy Cohane. He was a kid who'd had polio and had a weakened leg, with a brace, and he was one of Colette's best friends. I ended up becoming a good friend of his, too, and we used to go out and play basketball together at his house, but a lot of the reason I was over there was so I could end up seeing Colette.

She would come over and sit on the fence and we eventually struck up this relationship and I ended up asking her out to the movies. It was either in the last part of eighth grade or the first part of ninth grade that we went to the Rialto Theater and sat in the balcony and held hands and watched
A Summer Place,
with Troy Donahue, and I think the blonde was Connie Stevens.

We sat through it twice because we were so stunned by its beauty, and it was always sort of our movie. Colette and I always felt that we were those two peo
p
le, falling in love. It was a beautiful thing to us in ninth grade.

And that song—"Theme from
A Summer Place"
—was always a very good song for us. We fell in love to that song and whenever we heard it, it was, you know, a tremendous reminiscence. It was a tiny bit melancholy, as all love songs are to young people when they're falling in love, but it was a good melancholy, and we always—either of us—would turn up the radio when that song came on.

Now, of course, if I—still to this day when I hear that song, I get this big flood of sadness and nostalgia—and Colette and warm eyes and her blond hair and her warmth and me holding her in the theater as a ninth-grader.