Tim Grobaty: Convicted murderer Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald still hopes for retrial

MORE VISIONS OF MACDONALD: The first time we spoke face to face with Jeffrey MacDonald was in 1984 in prison in Bastrop, Texas, and he was mad at us the minute we walked into the room set aside for our little chat. "I'm not sure I even want to talk to you," the man convicted of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters said, glaring at us.

We asked why. He said, "You wrote in your last story that I have no friends left in Long Beach."

We told him we had written just the opposite. In fact, the only reason MacDonald had agreed to talk with us in the first place, turning down such opportunities with The New York Times, ABC News and others, was because Long Beach, where he had done admirable and heroic work setting up and running St. Mary Medical Center's trauma unit, was where his supporters all lived and worked.

To them, and his friends among city firefighters and police, MacDonald was the opposite of a killer, he was a saver of lives.

As proof of our misdeed, he produced a fax of the Press-Telegram containing the front-page story we had written about the TV adaptation of Joe McGinniss' damning book "Fatal Vision." In the lead paragraph, it stated that MacDonald had lost his Long Beach friends.

"I didn't write that," we said.

"It's got your name on it," he responded.

"Someone changed it. I didn't write that."

It had been the work of a copy editor, jazzing our article up a bit.

MacDonald never got over his iciness in that interview and he was antagonistic throughout. He was maybe a degree or two warmer when we met with him a few years later in prison outside of Phoenix.

Here's what we never got out of MacDonald: A sense of hatred or even anger about the people who supposedly killed his wife and daughters, or a sense of sorrow about their deaths. He spoke solely of the injustice of his imprisonment. It's nothing that could be used against him in court, but it always rubbed us the wrong way.

Similarly, he was in a courtroom when one of the people he had said was among the murderers was present and he had shown no reaction. Maybe it's the sort of coolness that allows one to remain calm under the intense pressure of the emergency room that enabled him to show indifference to a person who slaughtered his family.

MacDonald beat and stabbed his wife and his 5- and 2-year-old daughters in Fort Bragg, N.C., in February 1970, and the case still grabs headlines once or twice a year, with trials, dismissals and appeals cropping up between books - most famously McGinniss'. There have been several books declaring MacDonald to be innocent, and it does appear that the handling of the case and its attendant evidence could have been shabby at times - and now Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris has entered the fray with his book "A Wilderness of Error."

Morris' 1988 film "The Thin Blue Line" famously resulted in the exoneration of a man wrongly convicted of murder, and MacDonald is Morris' new project, with the author attacking the legal system as well as author McGinniss for his ostensible role in turning the public against MacDonald.

This comes at the same time that a U.S. District Court is considering some DNA evidence (three hairs that don't match the MacDonald family's DNA) and a statement made by a U.S. marshal (who has since died) saying he heard a prosecutor in the case threaten Helena Stoeckley (also dead), a woman MacDonald has identified as one of the hippies who killed his family.

We can't imagine anything coming of it. There was just too much evidence, circumstantial or otherwise - not the least of which were the horrific beatings and stabbings of MacDonald's wife and daughters compared to the little ice-pick wounds "suffered" by the Green Beret doctor, or his cavalier playboy antics in the years following the murders when he was still a free man.

And, as for his friends in Long Beach, they seem to be drifting off as well. When we last wrote about MacDonald, in 2010, we received a number of emails from people who knew MacDonald first- and second-hand.

Kathy Berry wrote about a friend of hers who dated MacDonald in the 1970s: "I remember asking her about him and she said, `He is a great guy. However, I have also seen his temper, which is why I no longer date him. And, yes, he is capable of murder."'

"I, too, was a believer of his innocence," wrote Tom Richey. "After all, he had treated my daughter at St. Mary's emergency room and could not have been more kind to a very frightened family and a terrified little girl.

"During the early '80s, I worked with a fellow who had known Jeffrey growing up and all he said was MacDonald had a dark, smoldering temper that was known to explode at times. I know it's secondhand and doesn't mean a thing, but I sleep better knowing he is behind bars."

Finally, Leslie Shea wrote, "I worked with Jeff in the '70s at St. Mary. He was so charismatic. ... He was my most influential mentor, giving me the push I needed to go into nursing school that has turned into a career I love. ... This is the man I knew, so I never believed he could do anything so heinous, and I was devastated when he was convicted in 1979.

"After `Fatal Vision,' however, I came to realizations I didn't want to come to: Almost anyone is capable of almost anything given the circumstances.

"One thing I never wavered on, however, is the belief that his trial was not fair and unbiased. It's unfortunate that he now has maybe the best chance for a retrial, when memories and evidence are degraded and witnesses are dead."
