Parole was denied then, and the U.S. Parole Commission said MacDonald must wait 15 years for reconsideration. She also said she had nightmares. A military police officer glimpsed a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat while driving to the MacDonalds home at 544 Castle Drive, but that information wasnt acted on promptly, Morris noted. Despite MacDonalds claims of innocence, Bob Stevenson, Colettes brother, remains convinced of his guilt. , The Fayetteville Observer. The results of DNA testing released in March 2006 showed MacDonald's hair clutched in his wife's hand. It became clear quickly that the law enforcement investigators did a poor job of protecting and preserving the crime scene. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. Colette MacDonalds family originally believed that Jeffrey was innocent. FBI crime scene diagram of 544 Castle Drive, Fort Bragg. The initial report of the killings was the top story in The Fayetteville Observer that afternoon: Officers Wife, Children Found Slain At Ft. Bragg. Longtime crime reporter Pat Reese wrote that Colette and the children were apparently murder victims of a ritualistic hippie cult.. connect@underthelights.org (205) 612-7070. Gary Cole (left with Matthew Faison) played a murderous MacDonald in a 1984 TV mini-series about the case, Fatal Vision, based on the best-selling book by Joe McGinniss. I will be more than happy to post it straight from my computer, FrmrCSI refused to provide any link to the final overlay image he claimed to have created. Ten, 12 years later, it was still boarded up, he said. MacDonald told investigators that four drug-crazed hippies had attacked his family three men and a woman in a blonde wig and a floppy hat who carried a candle and chanted, Acid is groovy, kill the pigs. Charges against MacDonald were dismissed in an Army hearing. If he did it, he committed a terrible crime, and who could possibly explain it? The books describe them meticulously collecting fiber samples, bits of blood-stained surgical gloves, and other physical clues. This account of the MacDonald murders and their aftermath is drawn from court documents, newspaper archives, the true-crime books Fatal Vision, Fatal Justice and A Wilderness of Error, and the memories of people who lived here. Many horrific things happened. 544 castle drive crime scene photos. Morris was friends with one of MacDonalds attorneys, Harvey Silverglate, and Morriss dissatisfaction with McGinnisss and Malcolms books led him to 544 Castle Drive on Christmas morning, 1991. When one considered that it was an area in which a life-and-death struggle had taken place between a Green Beret officer and four intruders who had obviously been in some sort of murderous frenzy and at least some of whom had been armed, there seemed remarkably few signs of disorder, wrote author Joe McGinness in 1983s Fatal Vision, the first book published about the MacDonald case. Paul Woolverton. It was released by authorities in 1984 . It was Feb. 17, 1970, some 50 years ago. I think this case, among other things, is a wilderness of unreliable narrators, Morris told me. The reports say: . During the mid-1970s', when Bundy lived . A flowerpot was nearby, with the plant and its root ball lying on the floor next to it. MacDonald would be moving into a prison cell less than three months later. In answer to this, another poster pointed out that not only were the crime scene pictures no doubt many-generation (degraded) by the time they were first posted online, but the processes FrmrCSI peformed would have degraded the images even more. McGinness portrayed MacDonald as guilty. Below are the police investigation photos of the horrible offense that went down at the Tate and LaBianca Residences at the hands of the wacked-out Manson family on August 8 and 9, 1969. When the MPs first arrived, one of Colettes breasts was exposed. Further, it was revealed that in February, 17-year-old Helena Stoeckley of Fayetteville, a drug-using police informant in the local hippie community, had made comments about the MacDonald case to the Fayetteville police officer she worked with. CrimeDoor is the first app of its kind. It landed on its side. He went inside and found carnage. In sum, after examination of FrmrCSIs images, and his comments about how he performed his alleged analysis, we find that this analysis seems to have consisted of the following: They thought home invaders would have attacked MacDonald, the biggest threat, before attacking his wife and children, he said. CID is a common term for the Armys Criminal Investigation Command. ABOUT CRIMEDOOR. Kathryn MacDonald, a longtime friend of Jeffrey MacDonald whom he married in 2002, said the end of 544 Castle Drive is bittersweet for her husband. A retired U.S. marshal claims that federal prosecutor Jim Blackburn intimidated a witness, Helena Stoeckley, who said she was in the house on the night of the murders. Stoeckley later recanted that claim. The noise woke Kimberley, who entered the bedroom and was hit by her father amid the chaos. Talk about the case has faded as people who were alive at the time of the murders and the trial have died, said Pitts. After all, The Jinx ended with an apparent live-mic murder confession from the real estate heir Robert Durst. View Gallery. Jeffrey MacDonald was among the people interviewed before it. Colettes stepfather, Freddy Kassab, was at first a staunch supporter of MacDonald, but then became convinced of MacDonalds guilt and crusaded for the case to be reopened. The CID investigators concluded that MacDonald killed his family and then intentionally injured himself and staged the living room to support his claim of a home invasion. The grisly nature of the case and Manson-like details, as well as the length of litigation surrounding it, seem to have generated an almost mythical status around the case, says Dixon, a University of North Carolina School of Government defender educator, who has blogged about the murders. MacDonald, there had been stabbings, and he needed a doctor, military police and an ambulance to come to his home at 544 Castle Drive on Fort Bragg. And if he didnt do it, the government railroaded a man who was totally innocent and lost his wife and children.. Between six and eight officers arrived at roughly the same time. This month he declined an interview request with The Fayetteville Observer and at least one other media outlet, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. At least 6 dead, dozens injured in massive pileup on Illinois I-55. Even more surprisingly, he failed to provide any final report of the figures his alleged analysis software would have presumably output at the end of the analysis. I would be depriving the viewer of the experience of watching it, too.. Manufacturers blast report that warned of risks, Nicole Kidman wears Chanel dress from 2004 perfume campaign to Met Gala, Why some cities are planting 'trees that survive in the desert', Graphics, maps show deadly Texas shooting, 16 NFL big-name veterans on thin ice after teams' draft moves, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. This story has been shared 139,061 times. And with that, one of the biggest true-crime rabbit holes of the past 50 years enters the hall of mirrors, if such a thing is spatially possible. A new docu-series gives Morris the Morris treatment. Hairs from unidentified people were found in his children's hands. The crime scene pictures originally posted online are JPEG images. There was a lot of fear that families werent safe, Keefe said. Examiners failed to collect fingerprints from the childrens bodies. In Fatal Vision, some jurors told McGinniss they were unpersuaded by the prosecutions case until they listened to a recording of a law enforcement interview with MacDonald from April 1970. . She owned a large hat and blonde wig but disposed of both after learning about the tragedy, according to court records. Acids groovy, and, Acid is groovy. Every year, somebody wants to throw a rope around my legs and drag me through the family pool of blood again, says Stevenson, who declined to comment for this article, in Episode 1. The wound that he had was nothing compared to what they got, Hodges said. Why are they killing the baby [Kristen]? Cooney asks. His most serious wound was an ice-pick stab to his chest that partly deflated his lung. MacDonald testified to how he felt the CID did a poor job at securing the crime scene and that they had jumped to conclusions based upon the neatness of the . MacDonald left the military in December 1970, and in 1971 he moved to California to restart his life and his medical career. He said his name was Capt. The books say eight to 12 MPs were there. MacDonalds underlying medical conditions constitute extraordinary and compelling reasons for a prison reduction, wrote his lawyer Hart Miles in the motion. Homepage > 544 castle drive crime scene photos . That was just one of the many pieces of evidence. Did Jeffrey MacDonald Kill His Family or Was He the Victim of Manson Copycats? 544 Castle Drive: The Fort Bragg apartment at 544 Castle Drive where the murders took place was preserved for many years, due to the ongoing investigation. In early 1971, Helena Stoeckley was again giving police contradictory statements about the MacDonald case. The cellulose nitrate-based film and negatives were decomposed and deemed as fire hazard. His father was highly disciplinary, but not abusive . Based on crime scene and blood evidence, as well as MacDonald's own inconsistencies and arrogance, the jury convicted him on all counts. MacDonald started a new life in California as an emergency room doctor, purchasing a luxury condominium, a sports car and a yacht. Either way you will not lose the digital quality that was mentioned earlier. Blood soaked her pajamas and the carpet beneath her head from dozens of stab wounds to her neck and chest and blows from a bat or club that fractured her skull. After an argument, MacDonald used a three-foot-long wooden club to batter Colette, who was five months pregnant. So did 5-year-old Kimberley and 2-year-old Kristen in their bedrooms nearby. Objects are not meant to be precise depictions of the exact furnishings, since much of that information is not known to me, but they are reasonable representations. Colettes brother, Bob Stevenson, agreed reluctantly to appear in the series, but the experience was visibly painful, his face often streaked with tears. The U.S. Justice Department released it back to the military in 1983 and by 1987 it had been renovated into a duplex. 544 Castle Drive, Fort Bragg, North Carolina: The Fatal Vision Murder House: . A jury convicted Jeffrey MacDonald, a former Green . "It might be better for everyone concerned that it is being torn down," Hodges said. No ridge lines are visible in the JPEG crime scene photo even athigh magnification (ball portion of Colettes footshown below): Apparently not realizing that the point of showing the image above was not to "see the foot," since in the crime scene photo we can see the foot already without any problem, and that the point was to zoom in to see the detail (or lack thereof) in the image he used in his alleged analysis, FrmrCSI responded to this by claiming that "If you would not have enlarged your picture you would be able to see the foot, if that is what it is. Using the diagram that appears in Fatal Vision, I have created a 3D computer version of the Jeffrey MacDonald apartment at 544 Castle Drive, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The man who dialed the operator relayed a desperate situation. This would later become a significant point. In order to perform his alleged analysis, FrmrCSI claims that he first copied the low-resolution JPEGs from the internet, saved them, "enhanced" them, then "printout as a transparencyon a highend photo printer, then scan into another computer on a highend scanner, (both printer and scanner is more than your normal citizen can afford). Morris scans the room with a quizzical expression. The military often describes an Article 32 investigation as the military justice systems version of a grand jury proceeding in civilian courts. Cans of Campbells soup, the wall calendar with appointments that would never be kept, toothbrushes in a rack in the bathroom. Sometimes he passed the house while making deliveries. The doctor, Capt. The photographer focused on a few key details, like a tilted painting on the wall, disheveled . Kelvin Culbreth, the radio executive, said he was a pizza driver in the summers when he was home from college. She was a very gentle person, but she was extremely maternal, Kassab said. Additionally, the JPEG algorithm pixellates, for lack of a better word, creating spotty areas and other degradation due to the loss of pixel data (depending on the amount of compression used, this degradation may or may not be noticeable when the image is being viewed normally). Chuck Hodges said his father and the other investigators had doubts about MacDonalds story of a home invasion from the beginning. He first became eligible in 1991, but he didnt have a parole hearing until May 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Again it was raining, the whole area is muddy as hell, Thompson said. The front door was locked, and the MPs were hesitant to break in. Jeffrey and Collette MacDonalds Romance and Marriage. MacDonalds pregnant wife, Colette, and their daughters, 5-year-old Kimberly and 2-year-old Kristen, were found brutally murdered in their respective bedrooms. Another discrepancy involves the first chair to the right of the door in the living room: in the diagram it seems to be drawn as an armless dining chair but a study of the living room photo in Fatal Vision shows that the chair actually seems to be a recliner. February 2007Recently, a poster on the Crime and Justice/Jeffrey MacDonald discussion board claimed, in the Bloody Footprint thread, to have supposedly analyzed the crime scene photos of Jeffrey MacDonald's footprints in the hallway of 544 Castle Drive and the photo of Colette's foot. Sometimes she said she couldnt remember that night. The MacDonald case provided a harsh lesson for the military about preservation of crime scenes, said Kelvin Culbreth, a local Cumulus Media radio executive who grew up in Fayetteville. Crews will spend Saturday demolishing a Fort Bragg duplex where the gruesome murders of a pregnant woman and her two daughters occurred nearly four decades ago. Or you copy the images onto a thumb drive and transfer them that way. 544 Castle Drive was sealed up after the murders and was undisturbed. Colettes head had been struck with such force that her skull was visible, court documents indicate. Despite the age of the MacDonald case, the publicity and national fascination continue. So now there are two versions of Wilderness: One is a book that questions MacDonalds conviction for having killed his pregnant wife and two young daughters. . On Jan. 11, MacDonald tested positive for the virus without experiencing any symptoms and called the results a false positive. Errol Morris, right, being interviewed by the director Marc Smerling through an Interrotron, developed by Morris to encourage eye contact with the camera. The Army charged MacDonald with the homicides of his wife and daughters on May 1, 1970. when he saw a crime scene photo of 2-year-old Kristen. At least six dead, dozens hurt after dust storm causes pileup on Illinois' Interstate 55, closing traffic for 30 miles in both directions. 544 Castle Drive was a three-bedroom apartment, about 1,000 square feet, where Captain Jeffrey MacDonald lived with his pregnant wife, Colette MacDonald, and their two young daughters. Does That Make Him a Typical Family Annihilator? (Even disregarding everything else, that fact alone would make the original online JPEGs completely unsuitable for any kind of serious computer analyzation of the type FrmrCSI claims to have done.) It was Feb. 17, 1970, some 50 years ago. His wife, Kathryn MacDonald, did not respond to requests for comment. In his fridge, officers found neatly packed body parts ready for consumption, and forensic evidence later revealed the remains were from 11 different victims. In October 1970, the Army dropped all charges against MacDonald. True Crime In the pre-dawn hours of February 17, 1970, military police on the Fort Bragg army base, in North Carolina, received a panicked phone call from a man identifying himself as Cpt. Certain facts are agreed upon. "The day the building was destroyed, I was there," says Christina . This was done by scanning the diagram and then overlaying interior and exterior walls, doors and furnishings. In February 2000, 30 years after the murders, a 31-year-old sergeant lived at 544 Castle Drive with his wife and children. After realizing hed likely killed his daughter, he transitioned to cover-up mode to save himself by ensuring each member of his family was dead then claiming that hippies chanting acid is groovy, kill the pigs were the real perpetrators, the prosecutor said. We would get out and walk up to the front porch and walk around the back.. The victims were identified as MacDonald's wife, Colette, 26, and the couples' two daughters, Kimberly, 6, and Kristen Jean, age 2. But Ive come to understand that its not going to go away., It would be fair to expect the FX series to make a strong argument regarding MacDonalds conviction, much as Morris did with The Thin Blue Line, which helped exonerate a man sentenced to death for the killing of a Dallas police officer. But wait, theres more. (7) Scanning that transparency (again adding unwanted data to the image via interpolation); Hallway. https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/jeffrey-macdonald-murder-case. Soon, MPs were on their way. The fibers and threads also were scattered through the bedrooms. People still stopped on the street to take pictures of the home, the sergeant said, and some knocked on the door and asked to look . The building was torn down in March 2008 to make way for an 11,000-square-foot community recreation center and swimming pool. From the beginning, the MacDonald case has been a jumble of subplots, twists and meta-narratives. Its monstrous on either side, said Bob Keeler, a reporter who worked the MacDonald beat at Newsday from 1973 to 1985, in a phone interview. (3) Wrongly sizing that image, adding unwanted data and also resulting in Colette's foot being much bigger than it actually is; So for everyone whos ever wondered what it might be like to be inside 544 Castle Drive, here we go: Differences between Bost's Fatal Justice diagram and Terraserver locations of witness residences. After graduating from Princeton University, MacDonald attended medical school, then pursued a military career. MacDonald, there had been stabbings, and he needed a doctor, military police and an ambulance to come to his home at 544 Castle Drive on Fort Bragg. Sometimes she said she thought she was there. He was actually the first CID agent on the scene that night, said his son, Hope Mills Fire Chief Chuck Hodges. MacDonald appeared partly conscious when the police found him, according to the books and court records. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the heart. To release him would undermine the seriousness of his crimes, wrote Harris. The five-part series, produced by . How does that happen? The photos show his wife . Kim Kardashian, Pete Davidson arrive at 2023 Met Gala, separately, Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr sues state GOP leadership after censure vote, Biden seeks talks with McCarthy amid warning of possible June default, Karl Lagerfeld's cat Choupette is star of Met Gala despite declining invite, Serena Williams makes major announcement at Met Gala, Is PVC pipe safe? The case brought national media scrutiny to Fayetteville and Fort Bragg on and off for years. These colorized versions of vintage black-and-white crime scene photos reveal a unique perspective on the murders, mobsters, and mayhem of decades past. I need to walk out of here, back to life. All Rights Reserved. Military police officers responding to a call from MacDonald found his wife, Colette, beaten and stabbed to death in the master bedroom; the couple's two daughters, Kimberly, 5, and Kristen, 3, were in their beds, also stabbed to death. It has been the subject of countless media treatments, including other major books by high-profile journalists and a hit mini-series starring a young Gary Cole each of which has helped shape the publics understanding of a conviction that MacDonald, 76, continues to appeal from prison. A jury convicted Jeffrey MacDonald, a former Green Beret, doctor and the victims' husband and father, in August 1979. Lets do another test to be sure. On Feb. 17, 1970, Colette Stevenson MacDonald, 26, and her two daughters, Kimberley, 6, and Kristin, 2, were beaten and stabbed to death in their home at 544 Castle Drive on the Fort Bragg Army . Hollywood writers, slamming 'gig economy,' to go on strike, Texas family called police 5 times before shooting spree that killed 5, Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot dead at 84, 7 people found dead during search for missing Oklahoma teenagers, 2 hospitals under federal investigation for denying abortion care, Met Gala highlights: Rihanna ends carpet, Kim Kardashian pays tribute. Debunking FrmrCSI's alleged "analysis" of the bloody footprints. He was wearing only his pajama bottoms. The series is based on A Wilderness of Error.. Oct. 2, 2020 8 PM PT. But five months later, investigators dropped all the charges and honorably discharged him from the Army. I dont want or deserve this, he wrote from prison in 1982, according to the book Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss. lots of crime scene photos like . This was done by scanning the diagram and then overlaying interior and exterior walls, doors and furnishings. If the group that MacDonald claimed murdered his family resembled Mansons crew, they wouldnt just fade into oblivion, theyd strike again, Cooney theorizes. The home had been kept sealed while the case was pending. MacDonald remained a suspect as the investigation continued. There was no forced entry into the home and MacDonalds injuries were far less substantial than that of his wife and daughters. It's one of the lesser pieces of evidence at a crime scene that has much but I believe its presence tells a very important story. 31 Vintage Crime Scenes Brought To Life In Stunningly Gruesome Color. He also appears in the documentary. You also receive detailed insights into each investigation with our cutting-edge tools, while our 3D re-creation of profiles elevates your access and knowledge of each story. Our interactive experience takes you through the victims' stories, providing clarity to deepen your knowledge about what happened and why. Eventually . (And selecting even a relatively large portion of the ball of Colette's foot in the original crime scene JPEG photo results in an image only 45 or so pixels wide, even less suitable for computer analyzation of this kind, in fact ridiculously unsuitable. I feel that Marc really wanted me to say that this experience had changed my views about the case, but I dont believe that they had or have., The case is for me a quandary and remains a quandary, he added. Law enforcement back in the day isnt what it is now.. It certainly gave our community some notoriety, said former Fayetteville Mayor Marshall B. Pitts Jr. Certain facts are agreed upon. In 1983, the writer Joe McGinniss (The Selling of the President 1968), who had befriended MacDonald and partnered with him on a book deal, famously turned against him in his true-crime best seller Fatal Vision. The next year, two of the three leads from On the Waterfront, Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint, played MacDonalds in-laws in an NBC mini-series adaptation, dramatizing the Kassabs conversion from MacDonalds staunchest allies to the most fervent believers in his guilt.

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