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Customer Review
- Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2014I come to this book with little preconceived notion of what happened to Colette, Kimberly, and Kristin MacDonald. I read the book Fatal Vision and saw the miniseries when I was 10 years old. (Now that I'm a parent, I'm not entirely sure why my parents let me do that, but that is beside the point.) I was convinced that Jeffrey MacDonald did the murders, but I remembered few details of the case clearly.
I still think that the most likely explanation of what happened is that Jeffrey MacDonald killed his family. Morris, however, makes a very compelling case that his trial was unfair. Even a man who is very likely guilty is entitled to a fair trial. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is his discussion of question-begging evidence. The Thin Blue Line, Morris's documentary about a man wrongfully imprisoned, showed how the man's lack of remorse was used as evidence of his guilt, when it was actually evidence of his innocence. Likewise, the only evidence of MacDonald's psychopathy are the murders themselves. If he didn't do them, there is no evidence of psychopathy. The book is clearly meticulously researched. After I read it, I read two criticisms of it - an article by Gene Weingarten and the e-book by Joe McGinniss. Both claim that Morris cherry-picked evidence to prove his favored point. They pointed out very few specifics. One was an over-reliance on a witness who turned out to be untrustworthy. The witness, however, is hardly central to Morris's case. One was a bloody footprint, which Morris did deal with (albeit quickly). The other was whether it is in fact the case that the holes in MacDonald's pajama top could be made to line up with the stab wounds in Colette's body if it wasn't covering her body at the time. Morris should have dealt with this. Can't someone get a mathematician on the case to figure this out? Another was that they believe Helena Stoeckly, who confessed to the murders, was more unreliable than Morris suggests. Morris perhaps gives too much credence to her confessions, but I hardly left the book thinking she was a reliable witness. The last was about the extent of MacDonald's injuries. They criticize Morris for exaggerating the extent of them. This criticism seems fair.
Morris is definitely too apt to see ambiguous evidence as exculpatory. If you read this book, you should realize that you are reading the defense case against the prosecutor's Fatal Vision. However, I think the defense ought to be made, which is why I liked the book so much. I got the sense Morris was trying to make another Thin Blue Line and free another innocent man. I do wish he could have been more neutral about the evidence. He does present evidence that counts against MacDonald, but usually follows it up by trying to explain it away. However, his marshaling of all that evidence into a coherent book is admirable and readable. My favorite part of the book is his discussion arguing against relativism. He criticizes Janet Malcolm for writing a book criticizing McGinniss's journalistic ethics without bothering to find out if MacDonald did it. On the one hand, Morris is a bit hard on her since the book she was writing was on journalism, not on the case. However, Morris is right that the question of MacDonald's guilt or innocence is relevant to McGinniss's journalistic ethics.
A very effective technique that Morris uses in his NY Times columns is also effective here - that is, he transcribes his own interviews with participants. I wish more writers of non-fiction employed this.
Anyhow, after reading the book I am indeed convinced that MacDonald did not receive a fair trial and ought to be re-tried. There is some exculpatory evidence that was not heard by the jury. Even if a jury would still convict, they should do so on all the evidence.
As for the case itself, we are down to two implausible options. (1) If MacDonald did it, a man with no history of violence suddenly and savagely beat and killed his wife and daughter, and then went into a room and coldly killed his other daughter who was asleep and who didn't witness the crime. The relatively detailed description he made of one of the killers, by amazing coincidence, matched someone who had no alibi and was the type to make repeated false confessions. This was also someone whose mother and brother would testify that she confessed. That is one heck of a lucky stroke for MacDonald. (2) That three people broke into the MacDonald house that night, acted like cartoonish versions of what a conservative at the time would think hippies acted like (e.g., saying "Acid is groovy, kill the pigs), savagely kill three people (including two little girls), and leave MacDonald himself relatively unscathed.
While the book certainly does not establish MacDonald's innocence, it effectively raises interesting questions about the nature of evidence and the fairness of trials.
