Fatal Vision (50 page)

I was making excellent money, building a new circle of friends, and after a while I really got into the lifestyle.

In the condo, I had this heavy, Spanish-style furniture and I bought first just a twelve-foot rowboat from Sears with an outboard motor and then I bought a twenty-eight-foot yacht and later of course traded that in for an even bigger boat.

I
sold the Chevy and bought a four-passenger Mercedes convertible, two tone. It was really a gorgeous car. It was a movie star's, I can't remember his name . . . Dana Andrews. It was Dana Andrews's car, this very lovely two-tone brown, light brown over dark brown, with rolled red leather interior and the hand-rubbed dash made out of some kind of gnarled wood, and it was really fun, it was a beautiful car.

I
had it for several years. The problem with it, it had no power going up hills and it was old enough and had enough miles on it and was underpowered enough that it was constantly breaking down and it got to the point where literally it was in the shop a week a month or two weeks a month, usually just waiting for parts, and I got a little tired of it, so I eventually went to the auto show in Los Angeles and got a—just on the spur of the moment, by myself one day, went to the auto show and was looking around and, to make
a
long story short, saw this Citroen SM—thought, on the first pass, that it was the ugliest car I'd ever seen, went back a couple hours later and thought that it was kind of
a
good-looking car—it was more unusual than anything else at the show—and went back about two hours later—now I'd been at the show about six or eight hours—and realized that it was really kind of a handsome car and it was four-passenger and it was kind of luxurious, but it was sporty, and, ah, I started thinking about it and two days later I started looking in earnest and called this dealer whose literature I had picked up and eventually he sold me one, a brown one with the JRM-MD license plates.

Seventy-two and seventy-three were really the fun times. They were very good years. I was beginning to put my life back together. I was becoming a successful doctor, and the rest of my life was made up of boating and working out and seeing Joy. We had a really tremendous relationship, both socially and emotionally and certainly sexually—she being the most sensual woman I'd ever seen—and me becoming very successful professionally.

Joy was this gorgeous receptionist who worked for one of the yacht dealers in the area, and I remember very clearly the first time I saw her. She had on a camel-colored suit and looked very prim and proper, had her hair up, and there was no real hint except in her eyes of this incredible beauty and tremendous sensuality that was to unfold.

But I remember I walked into the showroom and she looked at me and did a double-take and I looked at her and did a double-take and she stared at me and I stared at her, and basically our fates were sealed from that moment on, as silly and romantic as it sounded.

We spent a whole lot of time together—I'd say every weekend from Friday night until Monday morning and sometimes a night or two during the week, and certainly all of our going-out time was together. We really never went anywhere without the other person. ^All trips, all of my medical meetings that I went to, I always brought Joy. We did a lot of little trips to Las Vegas, some trips to Lake Tahoe, and a lot of meetings, medical meetings.

Joy recognized in me my extreme competitiveness and also she fed, you know, my ego. She understood that I loved sports and football and basketball and baseball, and sort of always wanted to do the best possible in it, and she encouraged it. She would throw down the gauntlet on how far I could run or whether I'd be able to work all night and then play a big football game against the police. And she enjoyed watching me do it almost as much as I enjoyed doing it, if not as much. She was very flushed with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, just as I was. And we would have all these intense experiences together, very often with her needling me and then being very proud in whatever accomplishments I did make.

We had some just unbelievable vacations. I took her to Tahiti, as a matter of fact. I told her—asked her what she wanted for Christmas and she said, oh, just have a nice dinner somewhere, and I told her, well, I'll tell you what, instead of for Christmas—her birthday is December 9th—I told her that for her birthday before Christmas I would take her out to dinner, to the restaurant of her choice.

And she said fine, and she was, you know, thinking up neat restaurants in Beverly Hills and Las Vegas and San Francisco, and I said, "Why don't I just take you to Tahiti?" And she said okay, and just kind of giggled and the next day I went down and got the tickets and came back and gave them to her and she just couldn't believe it.

We had ten days on Tahiti, three days on Bora Bora, and seven days on another island. That was a fantastic vacation.

I'd say by springtine of '72 Joy and I were, you know, really getting it on, so to speak, to use. a lousy California expression. We had fabulous times together. In particular, we had some incredible times on the boat that are all-timers, in which the two of us—occasionally my mother was along— but frequently Joy and I went by ourselves and had these great weekends over at Catalina, swimming and sunning and fishing and diving and making love.

When Joy and I were alone, making love was a large proportion of our time, including out in the sun on the top of -the boat, on the engine hatch and down below on the bunk and every conceivable place in between, and we were sort of shameless, you know—it was a shameless abandon.

It was two sort of passionate people, neither of which had had a very smooth life to that point—certainly mine had been much more tumultuous and traumatic—but it was two adults basically at play, trying to please each other and please ourselves, and we both understood that.

We wanted to experience everything, like, as fast as we could. We always tried to do the most with the best, the flashiest, the most fun, the highest flight and the longest trip and the deepest dive, and um, um, we had an absolutely fabulous sex life together. It was almost nonstop. It was— Jesus—sometimes day and night.

We went to Las Vegas one time and made love at least five times, didn't ever really get to the casino that first night, and the next morning took right up where we left off. And finally realized we had to get out of the room and go see Vegas a little bit. And we would stop at noon and stop late in the afternoon and then go out to dinner and then come back and make love and go out and gamble a little, come back and make love.

There was a need for a lot of release, a lot of immediate gratification. We did not, either of us, want to dwell on the past. We lived each day for that day, with a small bit of our eye on the future.

But I wouldn't let myself admit openly and in a repetitive fashion to her that I loved her. I wouldn't let her burrow into my soul, so to speak.

I was trying to explain to her that, look, we're in a funny situation. I am facing a background investigation in a triple homicide on which I had been charged once and found innocent, but this was now the civilian people. But she pooh-poohed—not the seriousness of the situation, but she had never considered that there would actually be a grand jury investigation, much less the publicity of an indictment.

I kept saying, look, we have to hold things off and be as reasonable as possible, because I can't expect you to stand

by me should the worst occur. But her said and unsaid feelings came tumbling out, of course, that she wanted to be by me, that she loved me, and that that was to be part of the relationship: she would take me with any warts.

En route to his grand jury appearance, Jeffrey MacDonald had made some notes to himself in a Rite-Nice Wide Ruled Theme Book which he had purchased for 59 cents.

The first notes concerned the opening statement he wanted to make.

"Soberness," he wrote at the top of the page. "Willingness to cooperate."

Then he wrote: "Memory—will try hard to get details, but painful experience. Painful because birthdays, anniversary dates, anniversa
r
y of Feb. 17, sleeplessness and
Pain
—once being accused, then exonerated totally and now (?) accused because of
Army
reinvestigation."

On the next page, he wrote: "Not easy to talk about it," and what was, apparently, a line he intended to deliver: "Bear with me while
I
try my best."

MacDonald made it plain from the start that he was not pleased to have been summoned, but the tone of anguish which he had wanted to project somehow became twisted into something much closer to hostility.

"This is not easy, for me to appear here," he said. "You know, this is my family that 1 lost. I get accused of it. They don't even interview me. They don't even interview me for six weeks. Al
though I go to their office and
ask, 'Don't you have any questions? Don't you want to talk to me?' No, no, no, we have suspects in custody. Six weeks go by. Fourteen MPs tramping through the house. Then I have to spend four years reliving this and now I'm back here in 1974."

"Captain MacDonald," Victor Woerheide said, "you have complained— "

'Doctor
MacDonald, Mr. Woerheide."

"Doctor MacDonald, you have complained—"

"I asked for a civilian reinvestigation in 1970. The Army reinvestigated itself. You could never reconstruct the initial hour of that crime scene."

"Doctor MacDonald, we are going to do the best we can, and all I am asking you is your voluntary cooperation."

"I am here to cooperate, sir. I have never refused to talk to anyone. I have never pleaded the Fifth Amendment. Until my lawyers got to me, I offered to give a polygraph examination."

"At this time," Woerheide asked, "in aid of the present grand jury investigation, will you agree to submit to a polygraph examination?"

"Let me talk about that with my attorney."

"And another thing, while we are discussing examinations, I understand at the time that your psychiatrist examined you in 1970 and the Army doctors examined you, there was some consideration given to asking you to take sodium amytal—truth serum—and submit to an examination under the influence of this truth serum. So I am going to ask you to consider and discuss with your attorney cooperating with the grand jury to the extent of taking both the polygraph and the sodium amytal examinations."

^’
Let me make a comment about the sodium amytal interview," MacDonald said. "This was discussed with my psychiatrist and it was his recommendation that unless there was an overriding need for sodium amytal—unless there were facts, and I repeat the word
facts
—that an amytal interview recreates
..."
MacDonald paused.

"May I assist you," Woerheide said, "by saying that it causes you to relive the experience concerning which you are being examined and that would constitute a painful ordeal for you. And in his opinion, at that time, you should be spared the experience?"

"Right."

"Doctor MacDonald, the event happened four years ago.
I
think you will agree it is high time that this matter was resolved."

"But resolved in what fashion, sir? To cover up the CID investigation again?"

"I am not trying to cover up the CID investigation."

"The second Army investigation was finished a year and a half ago. This is unbelievable."

"We are going to go into that," Woerheide said. "That is one of the reasons you are here."

* * *

For five days in August, Jeffrey MacDonald testified before the federal grand jury. Looming over him throughout was Victor Woerheide—his voice, even at normal pitch, sounding in the confines of a courtroom like the blast of an ocean liner's horn.

It was Woerheide's objective, at the start of the inquiry, to get MacDonald on record in as much detail as possible. He then planned to bring forward witnesses who would contradict the testimony that MacDonald had given. The final step would be to recall MacDonald to the stand and to confront him with each and every contradiction.

Woerheide paced himself, working slowly through the hot August days, aware that at any time MacDonald could invoke his constitutional rights against self-incrimination and refuse to answer any further questions. He did not want MacDonald to consider him—just yet—merely an extension of Grebner, Shaw and Ivory, Pruett and Kearns. The longer he was able to project an air of impartiality, the more likely MacDonald would be to keep talking, and, in the end, Woerheide was convinced, it was MacDonald's own words which would incriminate him.