Merged Jeffrey MacDonald did it. He really did.

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bynmdsue said:
So why are they going thru all this effort to frame him? Seriously, assuming that he is being framed for his family's murder, why frame him? What is the motive? What did he do or what does he know that it makes more sense to murder his entire family and frame him than to just kill him and be done with him. Or are the real killers and the evil forces framing him unrelated? I want to understand the logic of this conspiracy theory.
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Speaking generally, and not in relation to this case, the logic with virtually all miscarriages of justice is the investigators and prosecutors and the court system not wanting to lose face. Even more precisely, investigators are often extremely prone to confirmation bias and can convince themselves most sincerely that they've got the right person even when an objective view of the evidence wouldn't agree with them.

This last is particularly pernicious, since it's not a big step from that sort of certainty to sexing up the evidence a wee bit to make sure the bastard is convicted. Then once the conviction has been achieved, the entire system works against its being reversed.

It's not really a conspiracy as such, not usually.

In this case, though, the defence is about as convincing as "the dog ate my homework", so I don't think it's an example of that.

Rolfe.
 
Apology said:
Without even looking at the evidence very hard*, it's difficult to believe MacDonald's account. Just using logic and Occam's Razor, which is easier to believe: That there's a wide-ranging conspiracy involving hippies, military police, civilian police, and doctors, all acting in concert to frame MacDonald for murder for some yet unexplained reason, or that Dr. MacDonald felt that he'd be better off without his wife and children and decided to murder them? Which story is more common and more likely?

I also object to Freddy Kassab being depicted as "hard-drinking" and "emotional". Who wouldn't be emotional after their daughter and granddaughters were brutally murdered? Perhaps if MacDonald had been more emotional during his trial more jurors would have believed him. I fail to see what Kassab's drinking has to do with anything, since MacDonald wasn't exactly a teetotaler himself. Kassab may not have been the most pleasant person in the world and I'm sure he had many, many flaws, but criticizing the man like this long after his death just seems derogatory and mean-spirited.
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And adding to Freddie Kassab's anguish by telling him that he, MacDonald, and a few of his friends killed one of the perpetrators! It has been reported, by Collete's brother, that Mr. Kassab read through the reports and transcripts so many time, he had to get multiple copies.
 
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desertgal said:
There's logic in conspiracy theories? :D
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They have an internal "logic" all of their own that doesn't make sense in the real world but works fine for the "exceptional" individuals who believe in them. Like how they always ask "who benefits?" and then point out someone who did benefit so obviously that person must be in on it.

So are we just to believe the cops are incredibly lazy and went with MacDonald to save themselves the pain of having to do any real work?
 
KatieG said:
And adding to Freddie Kassab's anguish by telling him that he, MacDonald, and a few of his friends killed one of the perpetrators! It has been reported, by Collete's brother, that Mr. Kassab read through the reports and transcripts so many time, he had to get multiple copies.
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I have read the Article 32 transcripts several times and all I can see is a load of rubbish from Army CID agent Shaw about how Colette was supposed to have murdered the two little girls, and how she was supposed to have hit Dr. MacDonald with a hairbrush, and how bodies were supposed to have been carried in a sheet because the Army CID couldn't explain why there was blood at the murder scene.

My own opinion is that Colette's parents turned against Dr. MacDonald because they wanted him to stay with them and to be Colette's mother's doctor and for him to spend the rest of his life grieving for the victims. There was a female witness at the 1979 trial who wtnessed similar conversations with the Kassabs when she was in the company of Dr. MacDonald.

I agree it was not good public relations to appear on the Dick Cavett show. It was a light entertainment show involving mainly celebrity gossip and not profound enough.

Dr. MacDonald admits it was a mistake to try to sooth the hysterical Fred Kassab by telling him one of the murderers had been bumped off. Segal had warned Dr. MacDonald early on that Fred Kassab could be dangerous. I reckon that could be where McGinniss got his crazy amphetamine psychosis theory from, in order to make his MacDonald case Fatal Vision book more sensational and sell more copies.

There is some background to this from an old Larry King TV show:

MACDONALD: ... and Alfred Kassab set up my interview on Dick Cavett. Years later, when Freddy changed his tack on this case and had become his...

KING: Obsessed with you.

MACDONALD: ... obsessed, and obsessed with publicity and being in front of the case -- and, very important you understand this, he was wined and dined very carefully by the CID agents.

KING: Why did they want you?

MACDONALD: I don't know that they wanted me, at first. I think once the investigation started, it becomes a team effort. I don't have major conspiracies in my head. I think it's...

KING: You don't?

MACDONALD: ... very simple. No. I think a bad cop made bad decisions that morning. Then they put me through the Article 32. Then I accused them on the Dick Cavett show of committing perjury under oath, which they did do.

KING: Your mistake was telling your father-in-law that you had the killers taken care of, right, to get him off your back? Is that correct?

MACDONALD: I did say that to him. What I was trying to do was give Mildred and Freddy a little closure. They had...

KING: No, I understand.

MACDONALD: ... shut up their house. They had turned off the lights, literally. They had a life-sized doll dressed in clothes from the kids. And I was trying to give them -- I said, Freddy, look, some of the Green Berets I know and I found this guy. We took care of it. And it was a really bad decision. I shouldn't have said that. But that is not what changed Alfred, Kassab.
 
bynmdsue said:
So are we just to believe the cops are incredibly lazy and went with MacDonald to save themselves the pain of having to do any real work?
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I think that attitude, as a general approach to criminal justice, is extremely naive and extremely dangerous. So the cops think this person did it? Fine, string the bastard up and throw away the key.

Sometimes cops are lazy, and go for the first person who crosses their path rather than take the trouble to investigate the case properly. Sometimes they become prematurely or irrationally convinced that a particular person is guilty and proceed to view every and all pieces of evidence through a lens that shows only the guilt of that person.

Deciding that someone is guilty simply because the cops believe he is guilty is short-sighted, and frankly unsceptical. History tells us that innocent people have been pursued by the police and convicted on numerous occasions.

That's why it's everyone's responsibility to look at the evidence for themselves before pontificating about a particular case, and in particular when disagreeing with someone who has looked closely at the evidence.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Speaking generally, and not in relation to this case, the logic with virtually all miscarriages of justice is the investigators and prosecutors and the court system not wanting to lose face. Even more precisely, investigators are often extremely prone to confirmation bias and can convince themselves most sincerely that they've got the right person even when an objective view of the evidence wouldn't agree with them.

This last is particularly pernicious, since it's not a big step from that sort of certainty to sexing up the evidence a wee bit to make sure the bastard is convicted. Then once the conviction has been achieved, the entire system works against its being reversed.


Rolfe.
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I agree about this matter. Officialdom never admits a mistake. I think it's amazing complacency. People have definitely been hanged in error in the past in the UK. It's like nobody knows for sure who did that chemical attack in Syria, and so we have all got to go to war over it, and spend billions at the same time, and support Mugabe in Zimbabwe at the same time because he is good friends with North Korea.

This is an amusing quote from 1948 in the UK which indicates the official attitude:

"The risk, under the conditions as they exist in this country, of the capital penalty being executed on anyone who was not in fact guilty of the crime of which he has been convicted is so small, indeed so infinitesimal, that that consideration can be dismissed."

Sir John Anderson, a former Home Secretary, 14 April 1948
 
Sally Clark, Angela Cannings, Donna Anthony, Sion Jenkins, Paul Esslemont, Barry George, Stefan Kiszko, David Asbury - and I haven't even started on the IRA bombings trials.

All of these were convicted, and subsequently proved innocent. In some cases the "crimes" didn't even happen. Nobody can simply declare that a suspect or even a convicted person must be guilty merely on the say-so of the police or the criminal justice system. Arguments to that effect are frankly woo.

Rolfe.
 
Case Closed

With the exception of MAYBE the JFK case, no murder in history has been investigated more thoroughly than the Jeffrey MacDonald case.

1) Original CID investigation

2) Article 32 hearing

3) CID reinvestigation

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

4) Grand Jury hearings

5) 1979 Trial

6) 1980-1982 FBI investigation

7) 1984-1985 Appellate hearings

8) 1990 Appellate hearing

9) 1992 Appellate hearing

10) 1999 DNA protocol hearing

11) 2005 Parole hearing

12) 2006-2008 Inmate's 7th attempt at obtaining a new trial

13) 2012 Appellate hearing

14) 2013-Present Inmate's 8th attempt at obtaining a new trial

This case is open and shut. In 1979, MacDonald was convicted in less than 7 hours of 3 counts of murder. The conviction was based on a mass of forensic evidence which included blood, fibers, hairs, bloody footprints, bloody fabric and non-fabric impressions, and fabric damage evidence. In 2006, DNA testing by the AFIP produced 5 inculpatory test results which included a broken, bloody limb hair sourced to Jeffrey MacDonald which was found clutched in his dead wife's left hand. The nonsense produced by Henriboy does nothing to alter this mountain of inculpatory evidence.
 
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Rolfe said:
I think that attitude, as a general approach to criminal justice, is extremely naive and extremely dangerous. So the cops think this person did it? Fine, string the bastard up and throw away the key.

Sometimes cops are lazy, and go for the first person who crosses their path rather than take the trouble to investigate the case properly. Sometimes they become prematurely or irrationally convinced that a particular person is guilty and proceed to view every and all pieces of evidence through a lens that shows only the guilt of that person.

Deciding that someone is guilty simply because the cops believe he is guilty is short-sighted, and frankly unsceptical. History tells us that innocent people have been pursued by the police and convicted on numerous occasions.

That's why it's everyone's responsibility to look at the evidence for themselves before pontificating about a particular case, and in particular when disagreeing with someone who has looked closely at the evidence.

Rolfe.
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To whom are you referring?
 
I was attempting to make the point that simply stating baldly that the police wouldn't go after someone who was innocent is completely unhelpful, as it is demonstrably the case that police have done precisely that in numerous cases in the past. Therefore, one can only counter arguments about actual guilt or innocence by debating the evidence.

The answer as to who has the better grasp of the evidence in this thread is left as an exercise for the reader.

Rolfe.
 
Evidence Of Guilt

IMO, inmate would have been convicted on the blood and fiber evidence alone, but the evidence that sealed the deal was the blood stain analysis. Inmate claims that he took off his torn pajama top when he "found" his wife on the master bedroom floor. This resulted in MacDonald having to stick to a story where he was not wearing his torn pajama top when he subsequently "found" his two daughters in their beds.

Lab analysis by the CID and FBI determined that there were 10 locations on MacDonald's torn pajama top where his wife had bled on the garment before it was torn. In addition, there were 5 bloody fabric impressions found on bedding used to transport Colette MacDonald from her daughter's bedroom to the master bedroom. The bloody fabric impressions included two bloody impressions from Jeffrey MacDonald's right pajama cuff, one impression from his left cuff, one impression from Colette's right pajama cuff, and one impression from her left cuff.

Inmate denies ever touching the bedding in question, but broken head hairs from both Colette and Kimmie MacDonald, and seam threads from inmate's torn pajama top were found in that bedding. In addition to hairs and threads, both Kimmie's and Colette's blood was found in massive quantities on the bedding. These were direct bleeding stains and not the result of blood transfer. This demonstrated that both Kimmie and Colette were carried in that bedding.
 
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That's more bull from JTF. The blood stain analysis was conducted by the hair and fiber man Stombaugh of the FBI. He was not qualified to render an opinion about fabric impressions He was making it up. Janice Glisson of the Army CID disagreed with Stombaugh about the blood and the tear on the pajama top. She was a qualified blood expert. She said the blood was on the pajama top after it was torn and not before, which disproves the Stombaugh violent argument theory.

Dr MacDonald doesn't know for certain if he touched or brushed the bedding in question. That does not mean he was lying. It's extremely weak so-called evidence. It's fabricated evidence.

How does JTF know for certain that Kimmie's blood was found in massive quantities on the bedding? The Army CID reported that there were supposed to have been a few drops of Kimmie's blood on the bedding, but there was a strong fight about that at both the Article 32 and at the 1979 trial. In any case it doesn't prove that Dr. MacDonald was the murderer.

I agree with Rolfe. In the Ramsey case the police and FBI jumped to the conclusion the Ramseys did it right from the start with no real proof to back it up. In this recent chemical attack in Syria Israel could have been behind it. Their air force has intervened in that civil war before now, but they have never admitted it. In any case the Syrian government can't allow UN weapons inspectors in because they don't control the area.

A response by MacDonald defense lawyer Gordon Widenhouse in the MacDonald case has just been uploaded on to the the internet if anybody is interested. This can be found at:

http://www.thejeffreymacdonaldcase.com/html/newuploads.html

It's written in plain and clear English and it is mercifully short. I find the new information from Helena Stoeckley's lawyer Leonard that she provided him with information and as good as confessed as interesting. That was never revealed at the 1979 trial, or at subsequent appeals, because of the lawyer-client confidential relationship, which no longer exists because of NSA bugging.
 
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There was a wrong name in the Widenhouse response. It's an easy mistake to make and I might have made it myself in the past.

The man who made the wrong number phone call to the MacDonald murders apartment at the relevant time was Friar and not Frier. I think it's relevant information. Friar had no motive to lie and there was no money in it for him. Helena Stoeckley mentioned it happened in one of her confessions. MacDonald lawyer Wade Smith disegarded Friar as a witness at the 1979 trial probably because his information could not be proved and Friar's character was not one of the highest integrity.

Murtagh did a con job on Segal at the 1979 trial by telling Segal Frier's testimony had no forensic significance. Frier was the FBI lab technician who had discovered the mystery black fibers around the mouth of Colette and on the wooden club murder weapon. As a result the judge and jury were kept in the dark about the matter. The same thing happened when Murtagh deliberately left off the blood and pajama fibers found where Dr. MacDonald fell in a chart shown to the jury.
 
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This is part of what the forensic expert Dr. Thornton thought about Stombaugh of the FBI and his fabric impression analysis. From the 1979 MacDonald trial:

Q Now, I ask you to look at the area marked "E" on the pajama top, would you please identify that? That is an area which has been referred to by Mr. Stombaugh as a shoulder impression. Let me see if I can find you the section of his testimony.

MR. MURTAGH: Your Honor, I don't believe that is what Mr. Stombaugh said.

MR. SEGAL: I am going to read exactly what his words were, Your Honor.

BY MR. SEGAL:
Q Refer to page 4140 of the testimony. He was asked the question about Area "E."
"Area 'E' is the appearance of a bare left shoulder and the bottom of it has the appearance of a torn left cuff of a pajama top, the trailing out portion here."
Dealing first of all with the statement that Area "E" has the appearance of a bare left shoulder, do you agree or disagree with that conclusion?
A I disagree.
Q What is the basis of your own opinion in this regard?
A I am unable to replicate an impression that has the appearance of "E" on that item by using a shoulder, neck, or clavicle region of a human being. I can replicate it to some extent by folding the fabric over an area of bloody cloth.
Q Let me go back over what you just told us. First of all, is it your opinion that it is not in any reasonable fashion a bare--it is not an impression made by a bare left shoulder as far as you can ascertain?
A That is correct. I don't think there is any credible possibility that it could be a bare left shoulder.

MR. MURTAGH: OBJECTION to that, Your Honor.

THE COURT: I will strike the word "credible." Don't consider that.

BY MR. SEGAL:
Q Do you find evidence that it is inconsistent with that Area "E" having been made by a bare left shoulder?
A Yes.
 
Context

HENRIBOY: You need to put the time in to read the documented record before placing your fingers on the keyboard. I won't waste my time commenting on your history of bizarre postings and multiple name changes, but I won't let you distort the facts in this case.

Blood stain analysis was conducted by CID chemist Terry Laber and Chief of the FBI's Chemistry Division Paul Stombaugh. Laber concluded that 6 Type A blood stains found on the face or outer surface of inmate's pajama top pocket indicated that his wife bled on that pocket BEFORE it was torn from the garment.

Stombaugh concluded that 4 bisected Type A stains found on the left cuff, left sleeve, left shoulder, and left front seam indicated that inmate's wife bled on his pajama top BEFORE it was torn.

A prime example of your inability to place evidentiary items in their proper context is your posting trial testimony that has NOTHING to do with the bloody pajama cuff impressions found on the blue bedsheet. At trial, John Thornton actually agreed with Stombaugh's conclusions regarding 3 of the 5 bloody cuff impressions and for reasons still unknown, Thornton didn't analyze the other two bloody fabric impressions on the bedsheet.

http://www.macdonaldcasefacts.com
 
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Laber was very inexperienced at the time, like Craig Chamberlain. Laber was one of the prosecution experts in the controversial Darlie Routier case. I notice he has since changed his tune by putting an affidavit on the internet expressing grave doubts about the forensic evidence in that case.

Dr. Thornton was more qualified and experienced than any of them as a forensic expert. It looks as though Segal aso hired a blood expert, Dr. Morton, for the 1979 trial. All Thornton and Morton agreed with Stombaugh and Laber was that a pajama cuff might have brushed the sheet, but that doesn't make Dr. MacDonald a murderer. Bodies and fabrics were moved by the military police in the initial investigation.

The Laber testimony at the 1979 trial was a farce. He put up a diagram for the jury of where the blood was found and then half way through Judge Dupree started talking about parking arrangements for the journalists. For some reason Segal never cross-examined Laber and neither did Wade Smith, who I don't think understood the forensics of the case. The jury were then left with the impression that because there was blood Dr. MacDonald must be guilty. More about what Dr Thornton thought about Stombaugh's speculations :-

Q Dr. Thornton, I would like to ask you about the areas that you had sort of gotten into, "C" and "D," which were described by Mr. Stombaugh at page 4141 of his testimony. I am going to ask your opinion about those.
He stated at that time that, "Area 'C' conforms to a bloody handprint." He then said, "Area 'C' on the sheet...conforms to a bloody left hand--the two portions of it, here, here and here." He said, "As to Area 'D,' it conforms to a bloody right hand." Let me ask you, first of all, do you agree with his opinion and his conclusion?
A No, I think that is exceedingly unlikely
 
Henri McPhee said:
...
In this recent chemical attack in Syria Israel could have been behind it.
....
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And your evidence for this would be ....?

(Hey, maybe Syrian rebels or Israeli commandos killed the MacDonald kids. Nonexistent evidence just means somebody covered it all up, right?)
 
Credibility

HENRIBOY: Terry Laber was not cross-examined by Bernie Segal, so what does that tell you about the validity of his analysis? If Segal had an expert to refute Laber's testimony, he would have presented that expert in a NY minute. In terms of your trial excerpt, you prove beyond all doubt that you either don't understand the Government's forensic case or you're simply trolling up a storm.

The trial excerpt is in reference to Stombaugh's conclusions regarding bloody handprints and a bare shoulder impression he found on the blue bedsheet. I repeat, that testimony has NOTHING to do with Stombaugh's testimony regarding his analysis of bloody pajama cuff impressions found on the blue bedsheet. Analysis, by the way, that Thornton agreed with, so your credibility arguments are nothing but hollow chatter.

http://www.macdonaldcasefacts.com
 
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