Fatal Vision (51 page)

"Have you always had a good family relationship with your father, your mother, your brother, and your sister?"

"Yes."

"Have there been any problems?" "Sure."

"Have there been any family crises?" "Yes, there have been family crises." "Have these family crises had any effect on you and your life?"

"Yes. I lost my family at Fort Bragg. That affected my life."

"I am referring," Woerheide said placidly, "to your family consisting of your father, your mother, your brother, and your sister."

"Sure. My father died at the age of forty-eight when I was in my sophomore year at medical school. That affected my mother and affected us. My brother used drugs and that affected us. My sister is mildly anxious, a young married female and has her crises and calls in the middle of the night, but nothing spectacular."

Woerheide then asked MacDonald to describe his trip north from Puerto Rico in the fall of 1969, at the time of his brother's hospitalization, only three months before the murders.

"I received notification of a need for emergency leave," MacDonald said. "I was just told that my brother was hospitalized. I subsequently found out that he was in a state hospital. He had a bad reaction to drugs and apparently beat up some policemen or was put in a straitjacket and was taken to the hospital with handcuffs on. I think he had a broken wrist or something and then he dove through the window of the state hospital. I arrived there like a day and a half later."

"How long were you there?"

"Two and a half, three days."

"Did you visit with any friends while you were in Patchogue at that time?"

"Not that I remember."

"You don't recall seeing any friends at all?"

"Friends of my mother's probably would have stopped by the house, but I don't think that—"

"Well, this is a name that has cropped up and I am going to throw it out to you at this time. How about Penny Wells?"

"No."

"Do you know who I mean?" "She is an old girlfriend of mine." "And you didn't see her on that occasion?" "No, sir."

Woerheide paused to look through some papers. Then he resumed.

"Now,
I
know there has been some talk about this famous Jump Party down in Texas. I won't go into that at this time—"

"Feel free, sir," MacDonald said sarcastically.

"No, I'll save that for a later point," Woerheide said. "But I just want to know whether there were any social activities during other Green Beret training missions that were comparable to the so-called Jump Party."

"No, sir."

Woerheide shuffled some more papers. "Now, going back to the occasion when you took the emergency leave and traveled to Patchogue, did you at that time go to a certain bar which apparently your brother frequented?''

"The Shortstop Bar."

"The Shortstop Bar. Where is that located?"

"I don't remember. I have been into a lot of bars to bail my brother out. This was either in New York, in Greenwich Village—I think that's where it is, actually."

"So while you were there you went down to New York, Greenwich Village, and you went to this bar?"

"Right."

"What was the purpose of going to this bar?"

"To find out who had been selling my brother drugs."

"What drugs was your brother using?"

"He said he had been taking amphetamines, uppers. And then the night of this bad trip, he told me that someone had given him two capsules—typical drug abuser comment. And I said, 'What were they?' and he said he didn't know. He presumed they were mescaline or LSD.

"Actually, I presumed that, because he was in this tremendous hallucinatory state. He was having wild hallucinations, but when I questioned him it was apparent that he had been speeding— taking amphetamines—for a long time that I hadn't been aware of. And on reflection, some of his prior actions seemed a lot more in tune with his speeding.

"For instance, he used to drive from New York to Chicago nonstop. And I used to wonder how the hell anyone can do that. It's a long drive. And he used to stay up all the time. He used to party day and night. It never occurred to me that my brother would be taking amphetamines."

"All right, now you went to this bar?"

"Yes."

"Well, describe to us the people you saw in the Shortstop Bar."

"They were just bums. A bunch of guys that don't work for a living. A lot of my brother's friends are that way. They're just bums. They sit and drink all night and now I find out they were taking a lot of drugs. So I had an argument in the Shortstop Bar with a couple of guys who said they knew Jay. I had been told that the bartender was one of the guys supplying Jay with speed. So I guess I got a little pushy with them and there was a little scuffle and I hit the guy or something like that."

"There was a little pushing and shoving?"

"I went up to him, and I said, 'Do you know Jay MacDonald?' 'Yeah, I know Jay.' I said, 'Do you know he is in the state hospital?' words to that effect. And the guy said, 'Well, no,
I
didn't know that.' I said, 'Yeah, he had a bad reaction to some pills someone gave him.' And he said, 'Oh,' or something. And I said, 'Yeah,' and I probably told him he was an asshole. And I heard he had given him the pills. And he said he didn't. You know, who the hell did I think I was sitting in a public bar accusing him of that. So the words got a little heated and
I
pushed him and he pushed me and I hit him."

That questioning had been designed to make only one point and it had succeeded: Jeffrey MacDonald was a man with a quick temper and no stranger to physical violence.

Seeming to skip almost at random from subject to subject— none of them directly connected with the murders—Woerheide kept MacDonald off balance.

"All right, sir," Woerheide said, brandishing a newspaper clipping, "I have here a
Newsday
article that was published October 20, 1970. The headline says
B
eret
F
reed in
F
amily
D
eaths
, and it says in part, "MacDonald and his attorneys expect to conduct their own investigation. The Army has never followed up on some of the leads that we turned up,' MacDonald said. 'I plan to do a lot of writing and investigating. We hope to get either the appropriate civilian agency or to get our own investigators so we can find the real killers.' Did you, in fact, hire your own investigators?"

"I never hired investigators, no. My lawyers cost me up to thirty thousand dollars at that point. My mother had to sell her home to pay for it. Plus, I was trying to rebuild a life and it became a little—it became a little bizarre. And—no, I didn't. That's one of my great sins, apparently."

"Were you personally seeking out the perpetrators?"

"Only in a very ineffectual manner."

"That's not being very definite. Be explicit."

"It was the same type of thing as, you know, when you—you went into bars, you talked to some people. I tried to track down Helena Stoeckley. It just isn't like
Kojak.
It doesn't work that way."

"But you were making an effort?" "Yes."

"On your own?"

"Yes, but I'm talking about a—you know, it was very difficult at that time for me to walk into a bar in Fayetteville and play undercover agent. This thing had been on the front pages for six months. There were hundreds of reporters around. You know, they were all over the place at the time."

"Well, you had friends. Were they helping you?"

"Not specifically. No."

"Were they helping you in a nonspecific way?"

"Yes. My lawyers still got leads. We still got phone calls. We still had things like that. Nothing great. No."

"Well, when you went into these bars around Fayetteville were you alone or did you have someone with you?"

"I believe usually I was alone. I probably had some Army friends with me occasionally."

"Can you recall the names of any of these Army friends?"

"Not at this time, no."

"But you were looking for the people who might be the perpetrators you described?" "Right."

"What leads did you have?"

"Look, Mr. Woerheide, I can't come in here four years later and make it sound like I was some sort of avenging hero going through Fayetteville. That isn't what happened. You know, I went to bars.
I
questioned people. I asked some things. There were, you know, probably occasional little pushing matches. This isn't a big deal, this thing."

"What do you mean by 'pushing matches'?"

"Well, you know,
I
would get upset. You know, with some doper."

"And then what would happen?" "Usually nothing."

"When something did happen, what would happen?"

"You mean you want me to recount every little fistfight? Is that what you want?"

"If you can recall, yes. When you say, 'every little fistfight,' how many were there?"

"A couple. I mean, you know, I—I was a very visible person in the community at that time. I could walk into a bar and fifty people would stop and say, 'Hey, that's Captain MacDonald!' You don't really get much information that way unless someone wants to come to you and give you information."

"How does the situation develop that would result in a fistfight?"

"I was sitting in a bar watching these kids buy little bags of pills right out in the open. They weren't even making any attempt to hide it. So I went over and sat down next to them. On reflection, it's really stupid."

"What happened then?"

"I asked some questions about Helena Stoeckley." "What happened then?"

"People would say, 'It's none of your business.' " "What happened then?"

"I said, "The hell it isn't my business!' And I kicked his chair out."

"And there was a little scuffling?"

"Yes. You leave before the MPs get there."

"This happened several times?"

"Yes."

"Doctor MacDonald, over what period of time did you engage in this investigative activity?"

"I don't specifically remember. It was a period of,
I
guess, weeks to months. I don't specifically remember dates."

"Tell us when you initiated it and when you finally gave up on it."

"When I was released in custody in October until I got out of the Army in December."

"After that, when you were living in New York, did you continue this activity?"

"No, I did not."

"Subsequently you moved to California. Did you continue the activity while you were there?" "No."

"In 1970, what was your personal relationship with your wife's stepfather, Alfred Kassab?"

"It was very good. It's not so good now."

"Did he visit you from time to time?"

"During the Article 32 but not after the Article 32 ended."

"Would you call him up and talk to him from time to time?"

"Surely."

"Would he call you up and talk to you?" "Sure would."

"How frequently did you have these conversations?"

"It seemed to me fairly frequently."

"And were you holding anything back from him?"

"No. Unfortunately, I made some things up."

"What did you make up?"

"The extent of my own investigation."

"All right, tell the grand jury now what it was you made up."

"Let me just say that I was trying to rebuild my life and I was doing—I was trying to get out of the Army. We—my attorneys and my mother and myself—had begun to feel a little uneasy about Freddy—Mr. Kassab. He kind of took over the Article 32 hearing and a lot of the publicity surrounding it. He would hold news conferences up at La Guardia Airport. He was writing letters and firing off telegrams to anyone that would listen." . "Was this public officials?"