Fatal Vision - the Jeffrey MacDonald case

An old one but fascinating at the same time. (hint of McCann about it as well)

.... Worth a read if you're into the true crime stuff.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_Vision_controversy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_R._MacDonald

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_McGinniss

I saw a made for TV documentary about this case in the 1980s, based on the book Fatal Vision, with Gary Cole playing the leading role.

There's no doubt in my mind that Jeffrey MacDonald killed his family, hoping that it would be blamed on crazed hippies as in the Charles Manson murders six months earlier.

I'd quite like to watch that. Never heard of this until was doing some random reading last night. But yes, I would say he's fully responsible for it.

It's on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-HhvxI9RDE

Cheers. That list of doc's and films to catch up on is getting very long indeed.

Snipped from a link on the OP.

In June 1979, MacDonald had hired McGinniss to write a book about MacDonald's innocence. Between the Supreme Court's denial of review and the trial date, MacDonald arranged with McGinniss to interview him, attend the trial, and write a book about the case.

But McGinniss later became convinced that MacDonald was guilty of murdering his family. In the spring of 1983, McGinniss published Fatal Vision, saying that he had become convinced of MacDonald's guilt early in his research due to MacDonald's behavior and the court evidence, and presenting detailed arguments for guilt.

Imagine Summers and Swanface doing something similar....

It would have been good if Joe McGinnis had been able to check out the McCann case while he was alive.

I had not heard of the MacDonald case before I watched the programme in 1985; it just sounded interesting and the memory of it has stayed with me.

There had been an arson attack on a family close to my own home a few months earlier. The husband escaped but his heavily pregnant wife and three children all died.

I knew of him as he was a local shopkeeper and at first I was devastated for him. However, it was a bit of a light bulb moment for me when I watched the MacDonald programme - I realised that the probability of the local man being an innocent victim was not very high.

The police certainly suspected him but, as far as I am aware, nobody has ever been charged with the murders.

I mentioned elsewhere that alarms always go off when one person survives a family massacre, normally with fairly trivial injuries or none at all. I was thinking of this case in particular so will give this topic a bump.