Fatal Vision (56 page)

"Shit, I don't know if I dropped it or threw it. I think I threw it away. And then I had picked it up again and I covered Colette with it, covered her chest. And sometime in here I picked it up and looked at the wound again, I guess to see if it really—if I'd really seen what I'd seen. And I put it back on her, and I remember trying to cover her. I think that there was some clothes in the chair across from her, and I reached across and I was pulling things. I remember that.

"I don't remember a white towel that the CID is so interested in. I don't know if I covered her with a white towel or not. I may have. I may not have. I was covering her. And I checked her pulses. And when I'd come back from the phone I—I—it seemed to me that the back door was open. And I walked over to the back door and looked out. And I didn't see anything. But I remember thinking all this time how silent it was compared to how it had sounded.

"So I—I went back to Kimberly and I think now that I gave her mouth-to-mouth breathing, and it seemed to me that the air was coming out of her chest. So the CID said, 'Ah-hah! She didn't have any wounds in her chest.' She had wounds in her neck and chest area—the upper—the lower neck and chest, and all I can remember is it was bubbling. I don't specifically remember, you know, thinking to myself it was neck or chest. I remember that the air I was breathing into her mouth was now bubbling. And so I went to check Kristy, and sometime in here—really silly—it really sounds stupid—-one of the times that I was coming out of the kids' rooms, I reached up or something like that and I felt my head and when my hand came away it had some blood on it, and I remember I was thinking to myself, my head really hurts—you know, I thought to myself—I wasn't even really—you know, making any sense to myself.

"I guess my thought was that it was blood from me, and I went in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The bathroom is right there. It's like one step. It's not like a long voyage. It's one step.

"And I stepped into the bathroom, and I—you know, I really can't put that in there. You know, it's put in—in narratives. It's put into testimony.

"So now, you know, if you really have to pin me down and force me to say so, I think that I went into the bathroom the first time that I came out of Kristy's room before I went in and saw Colette the second time.

"But if you knew how—you know, what do you say when you mean recollections? What I see is my wife and my kids, and I see bubbles coming out of their chests, and I remember them asking for help.

"And there's this dumb-ass operator, and I remember that I was talking on the kitchen phone and I was saying this is Captain MacDonald, I need help, I'm at 544 Castle Drive, and she said, 'Is this Captain MacDonald?' and I said, 'You dumb idiot, I just told you that!' Or something like that. I thought I was yelling at her. She testified it was very faint. Seemed to me that I was yelling at her.

"And then there were some clicks and buzzes and all kinds of sounds on the phone, and then a male voice said this is Sergeant something or other, and I said, 'There are people who are dying here. We need medics and MPs,' and I heard in the background— 'Tell Womack ASAP!' and I don't—really don't remember anything else.

"In the April 6 interview there—they made all kinds of inferences at the Article 32 that I said I remembered going back down the hallway to my wife. What I recollect—what I really recollect—is I remember the end of the phone conversation. And the next specific recollection I have is I was fighting with an MP and he was saying relax and I was saying, 'Relax?! Shit, will you look at my wife?! Jesus Christ, look at my wife!' And people were running by and shouting and screaming, and I heard, 'Put that down! Don't touch her! Don't move her!' And they were saying, 'Who did it? Who did it?' and people were struggling with me and pushing me and I was looking up, and all I could see was MP helmets, shiny helmets, all around me.

"And I remember I was fighting with these MPs or medics in the hallway, right between the two bedrooms. I was on a stretcher and they were fighting with me and strapping me down or something like that, and then I remember I was in an ambulance and I said, 'Get my wife and kids to the hospital.' And the next thing I remember is I was arguing with this nurse about my Social Security number. She kept asking me, said, 'What's your Social Security number?' And I said, 'Fuck you!' I said, 'What do you care what my Social Security number is?' I said,
‘I
want my wife and my kids,' and she said, 'They're all okay,' and I was sitting up or trying to sit up on the stretcher and I kept looking around and I said, 'Where are they? Bring them in!' And she said, 'They're all okay,' and I said, 'What the hell do you want my Social Security number for?' "

On the morning of the fifth day, Woerheide asked MacDonald about his wounds. "Now, I've never really said this before," MacDonald said, "because obviously I was the accused and it sounds ridiculous for you to testify about your own medical wounds, but if the exam I had in the emergency room were done anywhere other than in the Army it wouldn't be any good.

"It was a totally inadequate medical record of an examination from any physician's viewpoint. It's the first time I've ever said that, but it's true. And it's, you know, one of the two or three major reasons this case is still going on and I'm here: because of the medical record.

"I was never re
-
examined after the emergency room. No one ever came in and looked at me. And I don't care what anyone thinks anymore. That's shitty. That is inadequate medical care.

"So when I talk about the wounds I had, a lot of them aren't listed in the medical report. But that medical report is not a routine medical report by any means. There is no doctor that would be proud of that medical report. There were four contusions to the head, there was a much larger contusion to my left shoulder, there were three stab wounds, and then as far as puncture wounds there were roughly three, six, nine, and eight— about seventeen."

On the afternoon of the fifth day, Woerheide asked MacDonald if he would care to make a statement to the grand jury before concluding his testimony. He said he would.

"I'm sure it's going to occur to the grand jury," MacDonald began, "that if what I'm saying is true, how did this incredible sort of prosecution ever get going? And I'd just like one sentence to sort of give my theory, if I'm allowed that.

"It just seemed to me that Mr. Grebner and Mr. Shaw and Ivory made very, very critical errors on the morning of the 17th, never checked them, had the interview with me six weeks later, and from that point on they were set up sort of for a prosecution.

"It sounds absurd. Sounds absolutely ridiculous. But Mr. Grebner has testified under oath that he walked into the house, made a decision that the living room was staged and we asked him why and he said because of the flowerpot.

"All he had to do was ask an MP. All he had to do was line the MPs up and say, has anyone seen anyone touch anything? He never did. The first time the MPs were questioned was six months later. Now, that's unbelievable police work. So, you know, to come to a rational theory as to why what I am saying may be true or may not be true, how could the CID—why would the CID do this to Captain MacDonald?

"It wasn't any malevolent sort of thing with a nasty colonel in the background to ride down Captain MacDonald. It was, initially, stupid mistakes made. But then they acted on those mistakes. They never checked them, and they—they acted on those mistakes.

"Look, I'm here, obviously, defending myself, so what weight does my word carry? But to say that they found no evidence of other people in that house when they had the back door open and the front door open, and people walking in and out at random, with no guard at Kimmy's room and no guard at Kris's room and no guard at the master bedroom, preserving the crime scene—all you have to do is read the lieutenant's testimony. He had no idea how many men he had under his control. He didn't know their names. He didn't give them any orders except don't touch anything. That's all he said! He didn't station guards at the doors. There were unknown numbers of people walking through that house, including someone in dungarees who sat on the couch.

"To reconstruct that initial hour after they arrived is going to be impossible. That crime work that morning was destroyed. But I suggest to you, sir, that that doesn't make me guilty of homicide.

"And it just seems unusual to me that the CID would make a lot out of some bloodstains in the master bedroom which were five to seven in number with the largest being as big as a quarter when my remembrance of the house was that the whole house was covered with blood.

"And it seems to me when they picked me up and put me on a stretcher and take me down the hall and then bring another stretcher in the hall for the kids and what not, before these critical spots are identified—you know, to incriminate me on that basis is absurd. I find it really insane, actually, at this point of my life.

"They take a wheeled stretcher with me on it, struggling, and wheel it down the hall and out the living room. Then they take photographs and state to me that I staged the crime scene."

MacDonald's tone, as he continued, became increasingly aggrieved: what he seemed to want most to communicate to the grand jurors was the
unfairness
of it all.

"They also never bothered to ask the doctor if he had moved anyone, because—because to—apparently to them very important fibers wound up under the body of my wife. Fibers that they say belonged to my pajama top. Well, apparently we're never going to know if they could have belonged to my pajama bottoms either. But the fact is they never asked the doctor and the doctor stated he picked her up and looked at her back, and that the cloth could have fallen off her onto the floor at that point. In addition, I moved her. Apparently they failed to take that into consideration.

"I know it's going to be very difficult for twenty-three normal people to say, 'Well, Jesus, how can we believe this guy when the Army and all these investigators and the FBI spent all this money and time and they didn't find anything.'

"They never set up any roadblocks! And then the CID implicated me because a group of assailants that were in my house that night were never found. I suggest that they weren't found because of that initial couple of hours where unbelievably bad decisions were made.

"And I also suggest that later on when they got information about at least what sounds like good potential leads—I'm not saying that the leads pan out or anything; I'm not saying Helena Stoeckley is guilty—I'm not saying that. I'm saying that that indicates the type and the scope and the way that investigation went on.

"I don't mean to harangue the grand jury, I honestly don't, but some of the stories of the handling of this case are so bizarre that it is beyond belief.
They never set up any roadblocks!

"Well, I'm on the stand. I'm not going to—I mean my life is—was shattered like, you know—you can't conceive of what was going on in my mind or anything. And it doesn't make any sense.

"But I do suggest to you that I'm a little confused about the line of questioning about the girl in the BOQ. This is half a year later, after I've been through an unbelievable thing. And for someone to visit me in the BOQ—even if it did occur before my release from custody, which I don't think it did—is totally meaningless.

"Well. I hope I'm getting my point across. To say that I committed homicide and murdered my wife and kids because they couldn't find any grass or mud in the house is the most atrocious, insane reasoning. And for me to be here today is

crazy. This is insanity! The Army reinvestigation was done a year and a half ago—two million dollars and ten thousand pages, three thousand pages, or whatever it came to—making sure that we can't prove that the CID makes mistakes. That's what they did.

'if you add it all up, it sounds terrific. They've had two Army investigations—in their words, the biggest investigation the Army has ever had. And they can't find the group of four assailants so therefore I'm guilty.

"All I'd like to say, sir, is, you know, you haven't asked me, but, you know, I didn't murder my wife and kids."

Jeffrey MacDonald returned to California, but the grand jury remained in session until January of 1975. More than seventy-five witnesses testified.

Gradually, a picture of Jeffrey MacDonald began to emerge: a context into which the grand jurors could place the man they had seen and the story they had heard during MacDonald's week on the witness stand.

Benjamin Klein, the surgical resident who had examined MacDonald in the emergency room in 1970, said, "I didn't feel he was in any great danger, medically. He was not suffering from shock and his wounds were not bleeding very much. He was able to sit up by himself and to talk without being short of breath."

Merrill Bronstein, who had been staff surgeon on call in 1970, said, "He was clinically stable. He didn't have a lot of things besides the pneumothorax and even with that he was not having any difficulty breathing and there was no change in his pulse, blood pressure, or other vital signs.