Jeffrey MacDonald Case: Timeline Of Events For Green Beret Convicted Of Killing Wife

RALEIGH, N.C. -- _ Feb. 17, 1970: Colette, Kimberley, and Kristen MacDonald – the wife and daughters of Capt. Jeffrey MacDonald – are killed in the family apartment on Fort Bragg, N.C.

_ May 1, 1970: The Army formally charges MacDonald with killing his family.

_ July 5, 1970: The Army opens an Article 32 hearing against MacDonald.

_ Oct. 13, 1970: The Army recommends all charges against MacDonald be dropped.

_ December 1970: MacDonald receives an honorable discharge.

_ Jan. 24, 1975: Jeffrey MacDonald is indicted on three counts of murder in federal court, mainly because of the persistence of Colette's stepfather, Alfred Kassab. He was one of MacDonald's early supporters but later became convinced of MacDonald's guilt.

_ Aug. 29, 1979: MacDonald is convicted of the murders of Colette, Kimberley and Kristen and sentenced to life in prison.

_ Aug. 22, 1980: The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals dismisses all charges against MacDonald, who is released.

_ March 31, 1982: The U.S. Supreme Court reverses the 4th Circuit decision. MacDonald is rearrested and returned to prison.

_ Spring 1984: The book "Fatal Vision" by Joe McGinniss, who had access to MacDonald and his defense team during the trial, is published. McGinniss had thought MacDonald was innocent, then changed his mind. MacDonald eventually sued McGinniss for breach of contract, and the two reached a $325,000 settlement. MacDonald was not allowed to keep most of the money, which went into a trust.

_ Nov. 18-19, 1984: The mini-series based on "Fatal Vision" airs on NBC.

_ March 27, 1991: MacDonald, now eligible for parole, maintains his innocence and doesn't apply.

_ 1995: "Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders," written by MacDonald supporters Fred Bost and Jerry Allen Potter, is published.

_ Aug. 30, 2002: Jeffrey and Kathryn MacDonald are married.

_ May 10, 2005: MacDonald attends his first parole hearing after 14 years of eligibility. He continues to maintain his innocence, and the board turns down his request within a few months.

_ December 2005: MacDonald's attorneys file motion in 4th Circuit requesting a hearing on newly discovered evidence.

_ Jan. 13, 2006 – 4th Circuit rules that MacDonald can introduce evidence of Jimmy Britt, a retired deputy U.S. marshal who said he heard prosecutor Jim Blackburn threaten a witness, Helena Stoeckley.

_ March 10, 2006: DNA testing shows MacDonald's hair was found in Colette's hand. Also, hair from unidentified person is found under fingernail of a daughter.

_ Nov. 4, 2008: U.S. District Court Judge James Fox dismisses the appeal filed by MacDonald's attorneys.

_ Feb. 19, 2009: MacDonald's attorneys ask 4th Circuit to order a new trial.

_ April 19, 2011: 4th Circuit orders Fox to consider new evidence.

_ Sept. 2, 2012: "A Wilderness of Error," written by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, is published.

_ Sept. 17, 2012: After several scheduling delays, the hearing on new evidence is on the calendar in U.S. District Court in Wilmington.

Loading Slideshow

• Jeff MacDonald

  FILE - This 2007 file photo provided by Kathryn MacDonald, shows Jeffrey MacDonald at FCI Cumberland. MacDonald's pregnant wife and two young daughters were murdered in their Fort Bragg, N.C., home in 1970. MacDonald was convicted of the crimes. On Monday, Sept. 17, 2012, MacDonald is scheduled to appear in federal court for a hearing about new evidence in the case. (AP Photo/Kathryn MacDonald, File)

• Jeffrey and Colette MacDonald

  FILE - In this 1969 file photo provided by Kathryn MacDonald shows Jeffrey MacDonald, right, and his wife Colette in Fort Bragg, N.C. MacDonald's pregnant wife and two young daughters were murdered in 1970, and MacDonald was convicted of the crimes. On Monday, Sept. 17, 2012, MacDonald is scheduled to appear in federal court for a hearing about new evidence in the case. (AP Photo/Kathryn MacDonald, File)

• Jeff MacDonald

  FILE - This 1970 file photo provided by Kathryn MacDonald shows Jeffrey MacDonald at Fort Bragg, N.C. MacDonald's pregnant wife and two young daughters were murdered in their Fort Bragg home in 1970. MacDonald was convicted of the crimes. On Monday, Sept. 17, 2012, MacDonald is scheduled to appear in federal court for a hearing about new evidence in the case. (AP Photo/Kathryn MacDonald, File)

• JEFFREY MACDONALD

  FILE - In this Aug. 28, 1979 file photo, Jeffrey MacDonald, right, appears in federal court in Wilmington, N.C. MacDonald's pregnant wife and two young daughters were murdered in in their Fort Bragg home in 1970. MacDonald was convicted of the crimes. On Monday, Sept. 17, 2012, MacDonald is scheduled to appear in federal court in Wilmington, N.C., for a hearing about new evidence in the case. (AP Photo, File)

• MACDONALD MURDERS

  FILE - In this Feb. 15, 2000 file photo, this house, located at 544 Castle Drive on Fort Bragg, N.C., is the residence where Jeffrey MacDonald lived with his family. MacDonald's pregnant wife and two young daughters were murdered in 1970, and MacDonald was convicted of the crimes. On Monday, Sept. 17, 2012, MacDonald is scheduled to appear in federal court in Wilmington, N.C., for a hearing about new evidence in the case. (AP Photo/The Fayetteville Observer, Brian Thorpe, File) MANDATORY CREDIT; NO SALES

Comments

[moeelmore]

05:14 PM on 09/19/2012

What I wish some of the worlds dip sticks would just learn the facts. First, McDonald was a doctor assigned to a Special Forces unit. He was not qualified for Special Forces, had not been screened and selected for the training and never served in an operational unit. The Army Special Forces of the 70s were separate, as they are today, from the Navy and SEALs. They have different missions and skills. Laineybird has no clue of what a varied and intelligent group are in SF and other similar elements. No idea of the background, education, dedication and skills they possess. Saying that, they are still humans and represent the society from which they are drawn.

[laineybird]

10:30 AM on 09/19/2012

Only a nerdy out of touch green bieret would use those words, acid is groovy, kill the pigs.
NOBODY used the word groovy in 1970.

[porsche996]

09:15 PM on 09/18/2012

MacDonald was convicted by a jury of 2 counts of Murder in the 2nd degree, meaning that the jury believed that in his psychotic drug addled rage he wasn't premeditated for the killing of his eldest daughter and wife when he found his side of the bed had been spoiled again, despite his previous commands. The jury convicted him of murder in the 1st degree for the time lapse and premeditation in consideration of his alibi once he had calmed down and realized his circumstances, he went into his youngest daughters bedroom where she was sleeping, picked her up, covered her with his pajama top and stabbed her to death, ultimately slitting her throat to make his demented excuse, "plausible"

[Russ Motter]

02:37 PM on 10/23/2012

Your posts reveal you as a mere tool, overwhelmingly sold on an amatureistic prosecution's corrupt misguided portrayal of evidence contrived and ultimately deceitfully used in railroading an honest and innocent man of a horrific crime. How can you possibly sleep at night? Shame on your vulgar self.

[porsche996]

03:17 PM on 10/23/2012

Sold on my own senses. I met the man when he was in full flight from prosecution for his brutal, vulgar, deceitful,amatureistic murders of his children and he was not on a train but in the ED at Bauer. I knew nothing of him or his crimes when I met him, but I was shaken by the mere experience of proximity to such evil and it shaped and informed my opinion of him weeks before I was told of his past history of killing his entire family. It was shocking to me to realize that I had formed such an opinion of his dreadfulness and been sooooo correct in my snap judgement weeks before. He was given a fair trial, all the evidence was considered, the jury decided just as I describe it, to convict him of murder of the 1st degree.

[FaceTheTruth00]

01:50 PM on 09/18/2012

I would really like to see an impartial site/viewing of the case and evidence if there is one. I've googled this case and have found basically just information from one side or the other. I've read conflicting claims; such as that the suspect barely sustained any wounds, vs. that he had to be resuscitated by MPs and received deep stab wounds which included a collapsed lung.

On the surface, the idea of a "Manson-family style slaying" coming right on the heels of that actual slaying sounds, convenient, to put it mildly. Not that copycat killings don't happen.

Of course there are also claims of prosecutorial misconduct (that specific prosecutor was then disbarred for ethics violations?), and misplaced or unanalyzed evidence.

[porsche996]

04:33 PM on 09/18/2012

Read "Fatal Vision" and "The Journalist and the Murderer" and get back to us.

[FaceTheTruth00]

06:11 PM on 09/18/2012

I was thinking more about legal documents and court records. A book really isn't impartial,it's always going to be written from one point of view or the other.

[porsche996]

11:50 AM on 09/18/2012

Take the highway to hell, Jeff

[FearlessFreep]

04:02 AM on 09/17/2012

Whatever the truth of the matter, I'm glad he didn't get a death sentence.

[SFog]

03:07 AM on 09/17/2012

Acid is groovy? Kill the pigs? Really? Guilty guilty guilty. Get real people.

[maybesomeday]

05:36 AM on 09/17/2012

Not sure what you mean by this comment? If you weren't born before the 1980's then you would not understand those words. On the other hand if you are referencing how they just happened to be used only a short time after the Manson Family murder's then you have a slight point.

But those were the words of the day back then. Cops were pigs, groovy was a popular word and so where so many other words that today are politically incorrect.

[Scairp]

01:15 AM on 09/17/2012

OMG, he did it people. Don't be biased against the system. It does work most of the time and it for sure worked in this case. My husband and I had a discussion once several years, I think because there must have been something on t.v. about the case as we were going to bed. He expressed some small measure of doubt that Macdonald did it. So I put it to him this way: if some people broke into our house tonight, and we three females, myself, my then teen daughter and our little daughter who was about 2 years old at the time, were all slaughtered, would you too be killed trying to defend our family, or would you, ex-British army and marital arts black belt, survive with minor injuries? He had to agree it made no sense. The man did it. They even have a name for what he is, family annihilator. This is such bs and if he gets out then something is wrong with the system.

[IndyStacey]

10:08 AM on 09/17/2012

McDonald didn't have minor injuries. There was a deep stab wound that collapsed his lung, multiple defensive wounds on his hands and arms and two large contusions on his head.

Some evidence was tampered with, some disappeared. A witness confessed, but later died under suspicous circumstances.

Two forensic pathologists concluded that Collette's attacker was left-handed. McDonald is right-handed.

I think McDonald is innocent, but there is certainly enough for reasonable doubt.

[Scairp]

07:10 PM on 09/17/2012

You don't know anything about this case do you? He was not in danger of dying from any of his relatively minor injuries. On the other hand, his wife was beaten until her head was hamburger and both of her arms were broken, his one daughter was also severely beaten and the younger child had her throat cut. Please tell me how in any way his "injuries" compare with the brutal attack they sustained?

[EasterLemming]

01:14 AM on 09/17/2012

Like in many cases prosecutor misconduct was rampant. He still appears guilty, however.

[FearlessFreep]

04:01 AM on 09/17/2012

REVERSAL OF FORTUNE (the movie about the Claus Von Bulow case) has the line 'They may have framed a guilty man!'

[maybesomeday]

05:39 AM on 09/17/2012

Another case of a botched investigation. Regardless I remember that line quite well. F&F

[Hedda Canty]

07:52 PM on 09/16/2012

i am so confuse,he did, he didnt do it.in jail,not in jail.what is really going on. can u still try him after all these years,or there is no status of limit on murder. i am really asking a question..

[Haight]

01:42 AM on 09/17/2012

No there is no statute of limitations for murder, and he's been in prison for 30 years, right where he belongs.With three murders under his belt two, being his own small daughters, I hope they keep him there until they carry him out in a pine box.

[maybesomeday]

05:42 AM on 09/17/2012

He can't be tried for murder again since double jeopary would apply. However, if new evidence comes to light (which is what they are trying to do now with this case) then the conviction can be overturned and a new trial can be ordered. However in this case all the evidence has already been tested, there's nothing new here, and the guilty man is still guilty.

[itsmyownopinion]

01:56 PM on 09/16/2012

If there is credible evidence that Jimmy Britt, a retired deputy U.S. marshal, heard prosecutor Jim Blackburn threaten a witness, Helena Stoeckley, I want to hear it.

[diving in reality]

01:20 PM on 09/16/2012

march 10, 2006 "Hair from unidentified person is found under fingernail of a daughter"...

I believe that the murderer is still at large...

[innerpuppie]

04:47 PM on 09/16/2012

Or - there was an accomplice.

[bestpbx]

05:27 PM on 09/16/2012

That is the only thing that makes any sense. If there was anyone else involved, he still was there and he still is as guilty as hell.

[EasterLemming]

01:15 AM on 09/17/2012

No evidence it was connected to the murder. No match either.

[Joanne Brady]

12:33 PM on 09/16/2012

I guess I need to read "A Wilderness of Error." Right now if he did it or he didn't do it, it would seem he is in prison on bad evidence.

[porsche996]

12:24 PM on 09/16/2012

Don't make too much of his not having applied to parole. He is guilty of the murders, he's just trying to make some money for his new wife and Morris is trying to make some money from his new book with JM's help and the HP is promoting them both for some fiduciary reason.

[FearlessFreep]

04:05 AM on 09/17/2012

Of course, there's more money to be made declaring him guilty (as Joe McGinnis may have realized).

[maybesomeday]

05:45 AM on 09/17/2012

I read everything you wrote yesterday (Sunday) on the other article about this case. You make very convincing arguments to keep that man locked up. Maybe it could be as simple as the infamy of this case still raises doubts, but from what I've read the guilty person is in prison at the present time. Largely thanks to you my views on his case have changed.

[porsche996]

11:00 AM on 09/17/2012

Must be cause I'm from Jersey, we've got skills at spotting dangerous creeps.