Merged Jeffrey MacDonald did it. He really did.

[BStrong]

I don't think it's right judgment to come on the internet and say that satanism doesn't exist. There are numerous references to it on Google of it existing in America and Australia, and of prominent people and celebrities and perhaps of Lockheed Martin being involved in it. It seems to be connected to pedophilia. Personally, I think it's connected to the JonBenet Ramsey murder.

That's like saying with a straight face that child prostitution doesn't happen, or bugging, or barking dogs day and night. People only say that because it's never reported on Fox News, and nothing ever gets done about it unless it becomes a public scandal.

I must say that Larouche had the right idea about the MacDonald case. Quite honestly I don't know much about him. I don't know why everybody seems to dismiss anything he says out of hand at the mention of his name.

This is from a Larouche article about the MacDonald case which makes sense to me:

www.angelfire.com/electronic2/kc_jones/009.HTM

Why am I not surprised?

Larouche isn't any more reliable of a source than Ted Gunderson.

 

[BStrong]

The documented record demonstrates that Stoeckley's first reference to being part of a satanic cult was in 1981. Why did it take Stoeckley 11 years to bring forth this claim? Ted Gunderson is the name, and conspiracy theories were his game.

http://www.macdonaldcasefacts.com/html/suspects.html

Gunderson's influence had little impact on inmate's legal fate for he couldn't conjure up a lab document that sourced a single evidentiary item to Helena Stoeckley. Interesting how Gunderson and every other MacDonald advocate couldn't come up with the forensic goods needed to set the Ice Pick Baby Killer free.

Speaking of forensic goods, still waiting on that lab document sourcing Stoeckley, Mitchell or any other intruder suspect to a single evidentiary item collected at the crime scene. I want to remind you that articles constructed by MacDonald advocates are not viable replacements for actual lab analysis.

Speaking of forensic analysis, BOTH the DNA test results AND the FBI's report on hair/fiber comparisons demonstrates that Paul Stombaugh's forensic analysis was flawless. In order to save you from yourself (e.g., saran wrap/saran fiber fiasco), I need to point out that the definition of flawless is without error.

http://www.macdonaldcasefacts.com

The California Attorney General's office actually issued an advisory to LEA's advising them that the AG's office would not under any circumstances investigate or prosecute any case where Gunderson was involved in any capacity.

 

[byn63]

Not one poster said "satanism doesn't exist" henri. what they said was that Helena never mentioned being part of a Satanic Cult until Ted Gunderson (father of the Satanic Cult conspiracy theories) came into the case and basically got her to add this into her confession/recant cycle.

In other words Satanism is not in any way shape manner or form involved in this case. inmate slaughtered his family.

 

[desmirelle]

During Vietnam, a deceased soldier's body went first to Hawaii, then to the mainland. Once arriving at the mainland (California), the bodies were sent to either the home of record (usually parent's home at that time) or to where the soldier's family was residing. North Carolina, Henri, is on the opposite coast. The only dead soldiers who arrived there were the ones from around there. Reading your posts, one would think every dead soldier went to Bragg straight from Vietnam. Didn't happen. (I do seem to remember an episode of "Miami Vice" that mentioned some such garbage, perhaps that's what you're thinking of.)

 

[Henri McPhee]

.

Speaking of forensic analysis, BOTH the DNA test results AND the FBI's report on hair/fiber comparisons demonstrates that Paul Stombaugh's forensic analysis was flawless. In order to save you from yourself (e.g., saran wrap/saran fiber fiasco), I need to point out that the definition of flawless is without error.

http://www.macdonaldcasefacts.com

You can't possibly say that Stombaugh's analysis was flawless. He made it up with guesswork. The truth will out about all this and what is coming out is that both Stombaugh of the FBI and Malone of the FBI were a couple of FBI con artist crooks. With regard to the DNA there was forensic fraud. There were broken and empty vials and hairs were substituted after Judge Fox had ruled that the chain of custody should be videotaped. That never happened. Any exculpatory hairs were deemed too small to be tested.

I never said that saran wraps were proof of saran in blond synthetic wig hairs. As a layman i just feel that any saran contamination of those fibers by a saran wrap should not be ruled out.

Gunderson said that the MacDonald case was a poor investigation and he was right. Not all the FBI lab technicians were in agreement with the Army CID lab, or with Stombaugh, but they were told to keep their mouths shut.

There is background information about all this from a recent aljazeera documentary which implies that the FBI have been wrong in about 95 percent of the time in their hair analysis, which I posted last year on this forum:

Bravo Al Jazeera America: Another brilliant probe of forensic failure in America - and the brutal consequences to wrongly charged and convicted people and to public confidence in the criminal justice system. HL); "This Monday, August 17th at 10pm ET/7p PT, Al Jazeera’s Emmy Award-winning “Fault Lines” investigates how the FBI used the flawed science of microscopic hair analysis to help convict thousands of criminal defendants. Are innocent people still in prison, and will anyone be held accountable?

In this new episode, "Under the Microscope: The FBI Hair Cases,” Fault Lines correspondent Josh Rushing and team travel to Savannah, Georgia to meet Joseph Sledge. In 1978, Sledge was convicted of murder, partly based on FBI testimony that his hair was “microscopically alike in all respects” to hairs found at the crime scene. He was released this January, after serving 37 years in prison, when DNA testing proved the hairs used at trial were not his. As “Fault Lines” reveals, Sledge is among at least 74 Americans who were exonerated after being convicted of a crime involving the forensic science of microscopic hair analysis. “There was no physical evidence tying Joseph to the crime, and the microscopic hair comparison was the closest they could come,” attorney Christine Mumma of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence said of Sledge’s case.

Before the advent of DNA testing, the FBI used the technique of hair analysis for decades. Al Jazeera America interviewed former FBI hair examiner Morris Samuel Clark, who said he testified “hundreds of times” in court about hair evidence, and that FBI microscopic hair comparisons were based on “16 different characteristics.” However, with no database with which to compare hairs, Clark conceded that the FBI could not account for how hair characteristics are distributed in the general population.

“The hairs on your head are quite different depending on where they’re selected,” said Dr. Terry Melton, founder of Mitotyping Technologies, a Pennsylvania-based DNA lab. “Microscopy is a very subjective science, and DNA is exactly the opposite.” In 2012, Dr. Melton’s DNA lab helped overturn convictions for two Washington, D.C.-area men: Kirk Odom, arrested for rape when he was 18 years old, and Santae Tribble, arrested for murder when he was 17. Sandra Levick, the public defender who represented both Odom and Tribble in their appeals, said, “We had all 13 of the hairs that the FBI had examined [in Tribble’s case] sent off [for DNA testing.]” DNA-testing revealed that one of the hairs used at trial belonged to a dog.

In 2012, these high-profile exonerations finally compelled the Department of Justice to conduct a thorough review. In cases reviewed thus far, they have found that 26 out of 28 FBI examiners made false claims at trial. “We can now say, based on a statistically sizable sample of cases they have reviewed, [the FBI] were wrong 95% of the time,” said David Colapinto, an attorney at the National Whistleblower’s Center.

As of April 2015, the Department of Justice says it has reviewed about 1,800 cases – but in 40% of them, it closed the review due to lack of documentation. Officials from Justice and FBI declined to speak on camera for “Fault Lines” but publicly, they say they will notify defense counsel in cases they have reviewed, while declining to release the names of the defendants to the public. But with at least 14 defendants in question already executed or deceased of old age, is justice working too slowly?

Fault Lines' “Under the Microscope: the FBI Hair Cases” premieres on Al Jazeera America

 

[desmirelle]

Your faith in Al Jazeera as a flaming beacon of truth on justice and judicial processes explains a whole lot about your posts.

 

[JTF]

Close Encounters Of The Trolling Kind

HENRIBOY: I get it. For the past 12 years, you've had a blast posting nonsense on true crime discussion boards. I don't believe that YOU believe in your talking points. Since you have no real interest in a constructive dialogue, you simply regurgitate content from prior posts in order to illicit a specific response.

This particular thread has attempted to focus on the documented fact, yet you have ignored the documented record and replaced it with your own amateur opinions and/or the opinions of MacDonald advocates. I realize that such fluff is all you have in your cognitive toolbox, but this forum has provided you with ample time to satisfy your cyber pleasure principle.

Again, I challenge you to provide a single CID or FBI lab document that sources a known intruder suspect to this crime. Articles and your amateur opinions are not a part of this challenge. If you can't meet this SIMPLE challenge, I suggest you go play your games on another true crime thread.

In regards to Paul Stombaugh's forensic analysis, I didn't prove that his analysis was flawless. A trial jury, the FBI and the AFIP concluded that Stombaugh didn't make a single error in this case. Stombaugh's work included hair/fiber comparisons, fabric damage, and bloody and non-bloody fabric impression analysis.

There is a reason why most of the reporters covering the 1979 trial, ALL of the jurors and inmate himself, felt that Stombaugh's forensic analysis was the main reason why inmate was convicted of murdering his family. All of the anti-FBI articles in the world cannot change the FACT that Stombaugh made no forensic errors in this case.

Read it and weep.

http://www.macdonaldcasefacts.com/html/guilt.html

 

[Henri McPhee]

In regards to Paul Stombaugh's forensic analysis, I didn't prove that his analysis was flawless. A trial jury, the FBI and the AFIP concluded that Stombaugh didn't make a single error in this case. Stombaugh's work included hair/fiber comparisons, fabric damage, and bloody and non-bloody fabric impression analysis.

There is a reason why most of the reporters covering the 1979 trial, ALL of the jurors and inmate himself, felt that Stombaugh's forensic analysis was the main reason why inmate was convicted of murdering his family. All of the anti-FBI articles in the world cannot change the FACT that Stombaugh made no forensic errors in this case.

Read it and weep.

http://www.macdonaldcasefacts.com/html/guilt.html

That's patently untrue. Stombaugh was never qualified to testify about bloody and non-bloody fabric impressions for a start which is against the federal rules of criminal procedure and evidence. That's an irregularity. Both Janice Glisson and Dr. Thornton were in disagreement with Stombaugh's conclusions. Stombaugh was a con artist who was able to fool a jury and journalists by fabricating evidence in order to overturn the Article 32 verdict.

There seems to be confusion in America about this rule 804 (b) (3). The University of Pennsylvania Law Review distinctly says that Judge Dupree was clearly erroneous with regard to refusing Helena Stoeckley's statements because Dupree said she was a bad character and that it was hearsay evidence. The Supreme Court, including some Judge Bryan, seems to think Dupree was not erroneous. Similarly Friar's testimony about a phone call to the MacDonald house during the MacDonald murders seems to have been excluded from the 1979 trial for the same sort of reason. I don't think bad characters have their statements excluded from trials in British courts.

There is a pro-MacDonald website called Jeffrey MacDonald :Guilty or innocent? It doesn't seem to give a name:

MY OPINION

Being a very close friend of Colette MacDonald since high school you would think that I would jump on the bandwagon that her husband did it and he deserves justice, right? Wrong. I have known the MacDonald's for so long, and was even a bridesmaid in their wedding, to know that Jeffrey would never do this to his family. He loved his wife and daughters very much, and was excited to be welcoming his first son into the world very soon. Yes him and his wife fought, but what married couple doesn't? They were very good working through their arguments and were happier than ever before the accident. I may have a biased opinion because I knew the family, but looking at the evidence I still do not believe that Jeffrey MacDonald killed his family. There is not enough evidence, and so much of it was corrupted, that you could not properly prosecute someone with that kind of evidence. It is only right that he shouldn't be serving time for a crime that he did not commit, but that is only my opinion. What is yours?

 

[desmirelle]

Stombaugh was a con artist who was able to fool a jury and journalists by fabricating evidence in order to overturn the Article 32 verdict.

Point of Fact: There was never and still is not a verdict from an Article 32 hearing. What is made is THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO PROCEED WITH PROSECUTION UNDER THE UCMJ FOR COURT-MARTIAL. In 1971, the decision was no. MacDonald then resigned his commission and left the US Army. At that point authority over him transferred from the US Army to the US Department of Justice. DOJ held a grand jury hearing and decided opposite the US Army decision of 1971.

In essence, an Article 32 hearing is the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury hearing. It's not a trial.

 

[Henri McPhee]

Point of Fact: There was never and still is not a verdict from an Article 32 hearing. What is made is THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO PROCEED WITH PROSECUTION UNDER THE UCMJ FOR COURT-MARTIAL. In 1971, the decision was no. MacDonald then resigned his commission and left the US Army. At that point authority over him transferred from the US Army to the US Department of Justice. DOJ held a grand jury hearing and decided opposite the US Army decision of 1971.

In essence, an Article 32 hearing is the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury hearing. It's not a trial.

It used to be said on the MacDonald forums that if MacDonald had been cleared at a proper court martial that under American law he could not be tried again in a civil court. I think that's the double jeopardy rule.

With regard to Judge Dupree refusing the out of court statements of Helena Stoeckley under some kind of hearsay rule, this matter seems to be highly technical and to vary from state to state in America. Under the Massachusetts court system the law seems to be that a judge should not be stringent about the matter and should let the jury decide. This is part of the legal waffle about the matter:

Commonwealth v. Drew, 397 Mass. at 74 n.8. The Supreme Judicial Court has stated that

“[o]ther factors the judge may consider are: the timing of the declaration and the relationship between the declarant and the witness, the reliability and character of the declarant, whether the statement was made spontaneously, whether other people heard the out-of-court statement, whether there is any apparent motive for the declarant to misrepresent the matter, and whether and in what circumstances the statement was repeated” (citation omitted).

Id. at 76. However,

“n determining whether the declarant’s statement has been sufficiently corroborated to merit its admission in evidence, the judge should not be stringent. A requirement that the defendant corroborate the declarant’s entire statement, for example, may run afoul of the defendant’s due process rights . . . . If the issue of sufficiency of the defendant’s corroboration is close, the judge should favor admitting the statement. In most such instances, the good sense of the jury will correct any prejudicial impact.” (Citation omitted.)

Id. at 75 n.10. See Commonwealth v. Nutbrown , 81 Mass. App. Ct. 773, 779–780 (2012) (in deciding whether statement is “trustworthy,” trial judge must look only to credibility of declarant, leaving it to jury to determine credibility of witness who testifies to declaration)

 

[desmirelle]

It used to be said on the MacDonald forums that if MacDonald had been cleared at a proper court martial that under American law he could not be tried again in a civil court. I think that's the double jeopardy rule.

Wow! You got that one right!

Point of Fact: Captain Jeffrey Robert MacDonald was never tried under ANY court-martial board. He had an Article 32 hearing. And an attorney who knew squat about the REAL MILITARY JUSTICE SYSTEM.

 

[ScottPletcher]

Wow! You got that one right!

Point of Fact: Captain Jeffrey Robert MacDonald was never tried under ANY court-martial board. He had an Article 32 hearing. And an attorney who knew squat about the REAL MILITARY JUSTICE SYSTEM.

Exactly. Under an Article 32 hearing, "jeopardy" did not attach, because MacD was not facing criminal penalty based on that hearing. No jeopardy attached, no possibility of "double jeopardy". C'mon, Henri, that's easy enough for even you to accept it!

 

[desmirelle]

My favorite thing in all this is that if Bernie Segal had understood the military justice system, he would have let the case go to a General Court-Martial, massacred the prosecution with all the errors, gotten mack the knife off and we'd be discussing how mac got away with murder and there's only civil (wrongful death) action that can be taken against him.....but Segal did not trust the military and here we are, listening to endless theories as to WHY a Captain (only a captain because of his medical training, not for military experience) would merit such a frame when Victor Wierhyde could have ended it with "ain't worth my time" (he was the one who decided whether the case deserved a grand jury, not a judge) in 74 or 75 (forgotten which year and haven't looked up proper spelling of his name).

 

[byn63]

Victor Woerheide is I believe the proper spelling Desi......I agree if Bernie had understood the system he would have let it go to Court Martial. But even with all his grand standing and theatrics the best he got was "insufficient evidence" so even though the defense likes to claim that he was exonerated by the USArmy - in reality they did not exonerate him, they dropped the charges, discharged him, and let the civilian authorities do the rest.

I always found it interesting that IF NOT for the transcripts of the Article 32, Freddy may never have realized the extent of inmate's guilt. Although he may have been suspicious of the phone call claims of "finding one of the hippies and killing him" I am not sure his fury would have been aroused without the 2 minutes between calls and all inmate claimed he did and all the other things that didn't add up.

 

[Henri McPhee]

I don't think you can blame Professor Segal for there being no court-martial. Segal did warn MacDonald that Kassab could be dangerous. Army CID agent Kearns had told Kassab and Colette's mother, that MacDonald had been involved in marital infidelity. Kearns just 'knew' MacDonald did it and Kearns demanded the urine stain be retested after ninety weeks, which defied known scientific fact.

In a way MacDonald can be faulted for not employing private investigators after the Article 32 proceedings. It could be that he didn't want to spend the money on it and he didn't appreciate the grave peril he was in. It was not until he was imprisoned that he employed private investigators like Ted Gunderson and Detective Beasley and Shedlick in order to prove his innocence, and to pressure Helena Stoeckley.

There was somebody like Major-General Flanagan who made the remark that there was insufficient evidence for MacDonald to be convicted. The Army CID then got the FBI, and Stombaugh of the FBI in particular, to only say it could be and the same with the threads, with FBI reconstructions to fool a jury and 'find' the evidence. That isn't evidence. Then for Murtagh to withhold the exculpatory evidence.

There is a bit about Stombaugh of the FBI from another forum:

P.S. Stombaugh's work on the Kennedy case, while quite possibly flawed, was not the lynchpin incriminating Oswald. If you read his testimony, he was actually pretty careful not to say that fibers came from Oswald's shirt, or blanket. Unfortunately, the media, in its zeal to convict Oswald in the public eye, oversold the importance of his conclusions.

Stombaugh's work on the Jeffrey MacDonald case is much more suspect.

 

[desmirelle]

Segal got the Article 32 hearing to render a decision favorable to his client. So, no matter what you do or don't think, apart from Inmate's mass murder of people he should have protected, Segal is the actor whose part made it possible for the case to be heard in 1979 and the present, perfectly proper and appropriate incarceration of his 1971 client.

I don't fault mac for not hiring private investigators - he knows who the killer is, looks at him every day in a mirror to shave. It would have been a waste of funds he needed to spend on THINGS.

You keeping citing 'what's-his-name' and 'whosit' as saying there was "insufficient evident" without citation, this is only relevant if 'what's-his-name' and/or 'whosit' was on the jury. And we get it, you don't like that Stombaugh testified, but your endless obsession with him is getting a little creepy.

 

[BStrong]

That's patently untrue. Stombaugh was never qualified to testify about bloody and non-bloody fabric impressions for a start which is against the federal rules of criminal procedure and evidence. That's an irregularity. Both Janice Glisson and Dr. Thornton were in disagreement with Stombaugh's conclusions. Stombaugh was a con artist who was able to fool a jury and journalists by fabricating evidence in order to overturn the Article 32 verdict.

There seems to be confusion in America about this rule 804 (b) (3). The University of Pennsylvania Law Review distinctly says that Judge Dupree was clearly erroneous with regard to refusing Helena Stoeckley's statements because Dupree said she was a bad character and that it was hearsay evidence. The Supreme Court, including some Judge Bryan, seems to think Dupree was not erroneous. Similarly Friar's testimony about a phone call to the MacDonald house during the MacDonald murders seems to have been excluded from the 1979 trial for the same sort of reason. I don't think bad characters have their statements excluded from trials in British courts.

There is a pro-MacDonald website called Jeffrey MacDonald :Guilty or innocent? It doesn't seem to give a name:

In what capacity did Stormbaugh testify?

In California, Gunderson was specifically noted by the California Attorney Generals office as having no credibility as a witness or investigator and at that point he was officially barred from involvement with criminal cases in California.

I have no information about your particular fixations wrt the JM case but individuals in the U.S. have been determined to be non credible witnesses and their accounts or involvements w/ particular cases have been discounted by LEA's and/or the courts.

In civil courts, there is a particular term used to describe certain individuals that attempt to use the civil court system as personal vehicles for the harassment of others, the Vexatious Litigant:

http://www.courts.ca.gov/12272.htm

That is seriously restricted from filing civil actions.

In short, in the U.S. a witness/investigator/litigant can be restricted from using the court system or their testimony or involvement in a case can be discounted by LEA's and the courts in criminal trials and if the individual in question has been determined to be vexatious they are not allowed to file actions in civil courts.

 

[byn63]

"BLAME"? That is not the appropriate word. Personally, I am glad the case did not go to Court Martial because the evidence had not yet been reviewed fully by the start of the Article 32 and may not have been completed by Court Martial time and inmate might have gone free despite having slaughtered his family.

Bernie Segal was an arrogant anti-establishment jackass imo and in the end that is what was his undoing in this case. Because he believed he could be an Army Lawyer (just gone Civilian) and a first time Prosecutor, and didn't take the mountains of evidence seriously. He attempted to get all the physical evidence shipped across the country for defense testing, which even a child would know was NEVER going to be allowed......the prosecution arranged for lab space and access for the defense experts but the defense waited until the 11th hour to send them.....no way they could be effective. Plus, Bernie chose some odd ducks to say the least - the ham on the sled testing - OMG didn't that make them look stupid!

 

[Henri McPhee]

American justice and English justice is similar in a way and they both come from the same historical roots. A court must take into consideration nothing but the evidence in the case before it, and witnesses other than experts must not be allowed to give their opinions, but must speak only as to facts. Stombaugh of the FBI was supposed to have been a hair and fiber expert, though a dishonest one at that, like Malone. He was never qualified to pontificate about bloodstains and fabric impressions at the MacDonald trial in 1979. The FBI should have presented a serologist as a witness.

Ted Gunderson was for a long time a senior FBI man in California. His testimony was accepted in courtrooms when he was still in the FBI. It was only when he described the MacDonald case as a poor investigation and started getting into dangerous waters with regard to satanism and child prostitution then he fell foul of the Justice Department.

There is a lot of legal waffle on the internet about the out of court statements of bad character witnesses. That is relevant to the MacDonald case,and Helena Stoeckley. This is from a British website:

On the other hand it is to be noted that in the Evidence in Criminal Proceedings: Hearsay and Related Topics, Law Commission consultation paper (1995), No.138, at para. 7.44 it is stated:

"The fact that someone else has confessed to the offence is logically relevant to the issue of whether the defendant committed it or not: this is so whether the other person is a co-defendant who gives evidence, a co-defendant who exercises his right not to give evidence, a co-defendant who is tried separately, or a person who is never caught or never prosecuted."

It seems to me that there is force in that comment despite Lord Bridge's anxiety that if confessions by third parties were admitted it would only be too easy for fabricated confessions to produce unjustified acquittals. Accepting Lord Bridge's view in Blastland that statements by third persons are not admissible there is a long line of authority showing that a defendant must be allowed to cross-examine a co-accused as to a previous inconsistent confession so long as the material is relevant to the defendant's own defence. In my opinion a defendant should also be allowed to put a co-defendant's confession to witnesses to whom the confession was made so long as the confession is relevant to the defendant's defence and so long as it appears that the confession was not obtained in a manner which would have made it inadmissible at the instance of the Crown under section 76(2) of the Act of 1984. There may be doubt as to whether the co-accused will be called (so that it may not be possible to put the confession to the co-accused directly) and not to allow the defendant to introduce it by way of cross-examination of prosecution witnesses could lead to great unfairness.

This seems to me to be consistent with the opinion of the Privy Council of Lobban v. The Queen [1995] 1 W.L.R. 877, 888-889. There it was said, at p. 889:

"The principled objection to the discretion envisaged by counsel" [i.e. of the judge at the request of one defendant to exclude evidence tending to support the defence of another defendant] "is that it conflicts with a defendant's absolute right, subject to considerations of relevance, to deploy his case asserting his evidence as he thinks fit."On the other hand it is to be noted that in the Evidence in Criminal Proceedings: Hearsay and Related Topics, Law Commission consultation paper (1995), No.138, at para. 7.44 it is stated:
"The fact that someone else has confessed to the offence is logically relevant to the issue of whether the defendant committed it or not: this is so whether the other person is a co-defendant who gives evidence, a co-defendant who exercises his right not to give evidence, a co-defendant who is tried separately, or a person who is never caught or never prosecuted."

 

[desmirelle]

And we're back to which Helena statement to believe.

And you still haven't responded to JTF's request for a citation.

And Ted Gunderson's rantings on subjects unproven is why he lost credibility as a witness.

And you're still supporting a murderer.