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Customer Review
- Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2012It's been a long, long time since I've read Fatal Vision or had more than a passing thought about Jeffrey MacDonald. I'd always assumed he was guilty--Fatal Vision made it look like a slam dunk--but now, while I still believe he did it, I know I'd have to consider it for more than six and a half hours before I'd voted. It's simply amazing how much a biased judge and an eager prosecutor can sway a verdict by selecting or rejecting evidence. Now, all the evidence is here in a neatly ordered pile for us "jurors" to go through without the hinderance of someone pre-screening it for us. For a true-crime buff, this is nothing short of a gold mine. Who knows how many other murder stories I've read had me thinking one way or the other based solely on the author's publishing agenda, his own feelings about the accused, the prospect of movie rights, etc, or which evidence the jury (and the reader) was permitted to see?
MacDonald's own words are probably the most compelling aspect of the book, but the amateurish job that the government did with the forensic evidence is truly scary. The only bringdown (and it's a big one) is the number of pages allotted to the pathetic Helena Stoeckly. Stoeckly herself is bad enough (how many times do we need to hear someone say 'I THINK I MAY have had SOMETHING to do with the murders', or 'I think I MAY have been in the house that night'?), but this aspect takes over the book until we're reading entire chapters devoted to amateur detectives with two-week old licenses who interviewed hippies who knew other hippies who knew Stoeckly and heard her say that she MAY have been in the house that night. This is worse than the dream sequence Marcia Clark opened her OJ case with, and occasionally made me squirm with embarrassment for the defense and for Morris. But he did include it, and it is here to be considered along with more concrete evidence that a fair trial was not conducted. Terrific book that will change the way you think about our justice system.
