Fatal Vision (79 page)

"And she ended up dancing with Jack Snow and Isaiah Robertson and I think Jack Youngblood and a bunch of others. And I remember that I was furious that she had the nerve to do that. And then I calmed down and realized that it was my decision, I had made that decision, and I would have to sort of control myself and understand that if I was gonna date other people and keep Joy at a distance, then she was probably gonna end up dating.

"She came up to me and said that she couldn't live this way. We had some long, teary episodes, sort of a very painful, about six months. She clearly loved me, and I loved her, but I wasn't willing to give up my solitude, the grieving process, my bachelorhood, the occasional dates with other people.

"So we were in the midst of this breakup anyway, and the indictment dramatically accelerated it. She leaves town, says she can't be in the same town with me if we're not in love, and foolish me lets her go north. Then, you know, I'm doubly distraught: this thing, trying to protect myself, and, honestly—I'm not saying this to be a good guy—I think trying to protect Joy somewhat.

"I mean, in retrospect, I think Joy is probably the reason I had those years of real success and happiness in '72 and '73 and '74, just prior to the year of the new pain. I think Joy, for a lot of reasons, made those years possible.

"She was not Colette and she never tried to be Colette, and she would almost state that openly. She was defiant, she was rebellious, she was saucy, she was tantalizing on purpose, things that Colette never was.

'
^‘
Joy—sometimes it seemed like her goal in life was to turn on a hundred men at a big cocktail party and she did it without even trying. If she tried, it made it even worse. She was a staggering sensual person. And yet she, you know, she was gentle and loving and kind and she wrote me poetry and we shared so many incredible moments together. I mean, they were years that I think a lot of couples probably don't have that much passion and love and giving to each other over twenty-five or thirty or fifty or a hundred years, and we had it all in two or three.

"It was certainly a tumultuous love affair. We had passion enough for ten and I think love enough for at least five or six, and I wish we had gotten married, to tell you the truth. I think we probably could have had a nice life together.''

On August 15, 1975, three days before the trial was to begin, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, sitt
i
ng in Richmond, Virginia, ordered a stay and agreed to hear Jeffrey MacDonald's appeal of Judge Dupree's original rulings.

Thus, rather than having to fly to Raleigh to stand trial on three counts of murder, MacDonald was able to continue living the life he had built for himself in California. Professionally, he had remained extremely active, aiding in the development of a national training program in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, in addition to continuing as director of the St. Mary's emergency room and the Long Beach paramedical squadron. In his personal life, too, he continued to evolve despite his regret over the departure of Joy. By August, he had begun to date a woman named Bobbi, who worked as a nurse in a Los Angeles hospital.

"Bobbi," MacDonald sa
id, "was, and is, this very, ve
ry gorgeous redhead—stunning appearance; tall and very sophisticated looking. A really lovely creature, taller than Joy, though not as busty, not nearly as sensual, especially in her impact in a room, but lovely in a more ethereal way, and I think as attractive to a lot of different people, although, like, the sap starts flowing in a group of men when Joy walks by, whereas with Bobbi, you know, there are raves about her beauty but it isn't quite the sensual beauty that Joy always had. In any case, I thought Bobbi was one of the prettiest girls I'd ever seen.

"The relationship blossomed very quickly, even under this stress at the time. It was funny, I always had said to myself and
did
say to myself all through the first year or so with Joy—I mean, with Bobbi, I was not gonna sort of just fall into a situation and have it happen; I was gonna be more in control of it. And I told Bobbi right from the word
go
that I wasn't looking to get married, that I had just had a long relationship with Joy and it ended kind of painfully, and I was in the midst of this thing, I still had the indictment over me. She understood completely and we started dating.

"But it's just like always: you date a person two or three times in a row and pretty soon that's all your friends can do is ask you two as a couple out; and whenever you want to have people over for dinner or go somewhere with a foursome or something, it's much easier to call a girl that you know instead of starting to play the singles game each time; and so Bobbi and I, as well as being very attracted to each other, sort of got into our one-on-one situation fairly quickly, even under the circumstances."

The relationship had, in fact, blossomed to the point that Jeffrey MacDonald and Bobbi were on vacation together in Hawaii when, in January of 1976, he received a message to call Bernie Segal immediately.

Sega
l informed him that, by a 2-to-1
vote, a three-judge panel from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had overruled Judge Dupree on the speedy trial question.

The panel majority found that the Army's filing of charges on May 1, 1970, had been the "functional equivalent of a civilian arrest warrant," and that, following the dismissal of the charges, the Justice Department's delay in seeking an indictment—due, at least in part, the appeals court ruled, to bureaucratic "indifference, negligence, or ineptitude"—had violated MacDonald's constitutional rights. They ordered the indictment dismissed.

The charges of indifference, negligence, and ineptitude had been the very ones which Freddy Kassab had leveled so often and so heatedly between 1972 and 1974. Now, however—and it would be difficult to conceive of bitter irony's coming in a purer form—the Fourth Circuit decision nullified the result which Kassab had sought so fervently to obtain.

To Jeffrey MacDonald, however, there was nothing either bitter or ironic about the result.

"We're in Hawaii," he said, "at this condominium on Maui recommended by my accountant—having, incidentally, an incredibly romantic time: for sheer fun and opulence, you know, doing nothing but lying in the sun and making love, it was, I think, even the equal of the trip I took with Joy to Tahiti—and got this call that I call Bernie as an emergency and was told that the Fourth Circuit had ruled in my favor, that the case was over, that I had won.

"Well, the emotion—I was sort of speechless, it was like this unbelievable weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I wasn't, like, laughing, it was just, uh, it was almost, uh, sort of tears of relief rather than tears of joy. It wasn't a joyful time because I felt that the whole prior six years up to this had been a, you know, a charade, a nightmare, and not sort of like an athletic event that you're trying for the end of but a prison camp or some sort of survival that you had to get through. And it wasn't a matter for exultation to finally win; it was a matter of relief that it was over. And I didn't really feel that it was a great victory, I felt it should have happened in 1970, that it should never have happened, anything should never have happened.

"But in any case I had this new relief, called my mom from the same—I was standing by the, you know, this phone outdoors when I called Bernie, hung up, dialed my mom, then talked to someone at the hospital, and that was all I could get at the time. Got home to California and there was this big celebration back there that, you know, it was over for me."

The Justice Department, however, did not consider it over. Now that the great wheel of bureaucracy finally had been set in motion, its tendency was to continue rolling forward. In March, government lawyers asked the full Fourth Circuit Court to rehear the case. Six weeks later, the court split 3-to-3 on that request, thereby effectively denying it and leaving the Justice Department only one further option: a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Such a petition was filed in June. A full year passed with no response.

Through that year, Jeffrey MacDonald's new romance continued to ripen. "Bobbi," he said, "was, of course, a whole different person than either Colette or Joy. But while it's clear that she had a
very
different approach to life and personality and style than Joy, she was not
that
different from Colette. And I wonder just how much—I don't think my initial infatuation with Bobbi had anything to do with Colette.

"I think that Bobbi was an alarmingly good-looking woman, really very chic and sophisticated-looking. Very attractive, wore the right clothes, didn't wear bras, had a nice body, knew how to dress, knew how to travel, was,
is,
extremely witty, very intelligent, easy to be with. That was all very attractive right from the beginning.

"But I think as we started seeing each other frequently, and, you know, falling in love and spending a couple of years together basically—the good times and the bad times—she got closer to Colette. By that I mean that Bobbi, I think in my mind, created some confusion over who I was in love with: was I in love with Bobbi or was I in love with, you know, an attempt to re-create Colette?"

On June 20, 1977, the Supreme Court announced that it would accept the Jeffrey MacDonald case for consideration. Briefs were filed in the fall and oral argument took place in January of 1978.

On May
1
, in an 8-to-0 decision which did not deal with the merits of MacDonald's specific claim, but which was consistent with its previous rulings barring pretrial appeal in criminal cases, the Supreme Court declared that an appellate court cannot assume jurisdiction over a speedy trial claim prior to trial. To permit such a procedure, the Supreme Court said, would only "exacerbate pretrial delay."

Faced, once again, with the likelihood of having to stand trial, MacDonald began to encounter difficulties in his relationship with Bobbi.

"I found that the closer and the deeper the case became—in other words, once the Supreme Court turned down the Fourth Circuit victory for me and now it looked like the case would clearly go to trial, and I was having to do recollections again for Bernie and for case preparation and read all the Article 32 files again and get my files in order—I found that reliving the past and the years of my marriage and Kimmy and Kris were again vibrant and back in my mind day and night.

"And I was having this terrible role confusion in which Bobbi was becoming Colette. If it happened once it happened fifty times: I turned and was just ready to say 'Colette,' when Bobbi was there, and I actually had to think to say 'Bobbi.' I remember being terrified, the many nights lying in bed or at a movie and turning suddenly to her and being frightened that I almost called her Colette.

"Besides, Bobbi was beginning to—this was, of course, two years into our relationship now—Bobbi was beginning to need more, just as the old cycle always occurs. Joy had needed more at two and a half or three years; now Bobbi needed more. Seven days a week was what she wanted. We had a nice relationship on a five-day-a-week basis, well, four-day-a-week basis, but it wasn't enough.

"There was this unease in Bobbi all the time and constant picking and a need to reinforce and be told that she was loved. Even stronger than Joy, to be honest; she's a more insecure person. She has a lot of great strengths, but on this particular point she was very insecure.

"She was making visible demands, both verbally and with body language, and we got into this absolute identical situation that Joy and I had gotten into, where we both loved each other—it wasn't this, again, tumultuous A-plus sensual love that Joy and I had, with quick ups and downs, and lots of sensual makings-up, and quick trips everywhere, and sort of living on the pleasure principle—it was a different kind of thing, more structured and more orderly, partially because Bobbi liked it that way, but certainly because my life was much more businesslike and professional than it had been, and more dedicated to work, plus paying Bernie and getting ready for the case.

"But in any case, I found that I could devote less emotional effort to Bobbi at this time than I could even to Joy before. And our relationship took on this same six-month downward spiral that Joy and I had undergone, and almost for the same reason: I couldn't give up enough time and verbal effort and emotional commitment to truly, you know, to be truly dedicated to that person. I just couldn't do it, it wasn't in me, I didn't have the strength, I had too many other things happening that I felt
were
important. And eventually we split."

In October of 1978, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Judge Dupree's denial of the double jeopardy claim, and, in March of 1979, the Supreme Court refused MacDonald's request that it review that decision, thereby clearing the way for trial.

Jeffrey MacDonald flew east during the second week of July. He might not have been on the "emotional high" that had been the goal of the friends who had arranged the fund-raising dinner and disco party in his behalf, but he was, at least, accompanied by Sheree Sizelove, who had replaced Bobbi in his affections the previous fall.