The MacDonald Family Murders

On February 17th, 1970, 26-year-old Jeffrey MacDonald called 911, saying that there’d been a stabbing at his home and people were dying. MacDonald, a Green Beret, lived on the Army base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Military police responded quickly to the MacDonald house to find a horrific scene: 26-year-old Colette and the MacDonald’s two daughters, five-year-old Kimberley and two-year-old Kristen had been stabbed and bludgeoned to death. MacDonald, however, was still alive with only minor injuries. His story quickly began to unravel to investigators as he continued to blame the murders on a group of intruders, whom he described as “drug-crazed hippies”. Was MacDonald telling the truth or had he murdered his family in a fit of rage, then staged it to look like a copycat Manson murder?

Who were the MacDonalds?

Jeffrey Robert MacDonald was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City in October of 1943 to Mac and Dorothy MacDonald. He had two siblings, Judy and Jay. Jeffrey’s mother described him as a kind, agreeable child with a “sunny disposition”. She said that her son was always interested in athletics and being a well-rounded student. He participated in the school’s music program and student council. MacDonald attended Patchogue High School where he was voted “most likely to succeed” and “most popular”. While in high school, MacDonald dated the same girl, on and off. Colette Stevenson was born on May 10, 1943 in Patchogue, New York. She enjoyed the arts, music, movies, books, and her classes. She wanted to get a degree in English Literature and hopefully become a teacher. MacDonald and Colette met each other in middle school, where his mother said that he was very enamored with Colette. Later, when Dorothy was asked to describe her daughter-in-law in one word, she said that she was “delightful”.

MacDonald and Colette dated on and off throughout high school, before he earned a scholarship to Princeton University in New Jersey. Colette began attending Skidmore College in upstate New York. Despite living in two different cities, MacDonald and Colette were serious about each other. After her sophomore year at college, Colette discovered that she was pregnant and that MacDonald was the father. The couple decided to get married and were wed in New York City on September 14th, 1963. Their first daughter, Kimberley Kathryn was born on April 18th, 1964 in Princeton, New Jersey. Kimberley was a reserved little girl who loved school. She loved reading and drawing and was a gentle child. While she was always advanced in her milestones, Kimberley was not a take-charge girl and often needed coaxing to try new things. She loved being a big sister.

After MacDonald completed three years at Princeton, the family moved to Chicago in 1964. He had been accepted to Northwestern University Medical School and completed his undergraduate degree and medical school simultaneously. Meanwhile, Colette was elated to find that she was pregnant again. She gave birth to Kristen Jean on May 8th, 1967. Kristen, unlike her sister, was wide open. She didn’t seem to be scared of anything. She was outgoing and a tomboy who loved animals. She was hardly ever standing still and loved being outdoors. In a book written after her death, the author described Kristen as “a tiger”.

MacDonald finished his surgical internship at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. The Vietnam war was in full swing and, after talking it over with his wife, MacDonald decided to enlist in the US Army. After training, the family ended up at the Army base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina in August of 1969, not far from Fayetteville. MacDonald had earned a coveted spot in the Army’s Green Berets, which was a nickname for the Army’s Special Forces. He was working as a surgeon on base and, for the first time since they were married, MacDonald had a reliable paycheck and a normal schedule. The family seemed to have settled into life on the Army base and really appeared to be a perfect, all-American family. MacDonald had even bought his daughters a pony! The family became close friends with Rick and Judy Thoesen, who both worked in the medical facility on base. Judy said that MacDonald and Colette were loving parents. She said, “He loved his girls. They had everything going for them at that point.”

The Murders

1969 was a difficult year for the United States. The summer of love was considered to be over and the Vietnam war was still taking the lives of many American soldiers. A lot of the soldiers that were returning to the United States struggled with mental health issues and drug addictions. MacDonald was encountering a lot of these soldiers on base, however, he was known to be very unpopular with a lot of them. MacDonald refused to prescribe drugs to the soldiers who had addictions. It caused a lot of tension on base.

On February 16th, 1970, MacDonald came home to his on-base one story apartment on Castle Drive. The area where the family lived was patrolled by military police and reserved for married officers. He arrived home around 5PM and took Kimberley and Kristen to feed and play with the pony he’d bought them a few months prior for Christmas. The girls had named the pony “Trooper”. The three returned to the residence around 5:45PM, where MacDonald showered and changed into his pajamas. After dinner, Colette left the home for an evening class she was taking in pursuit of her teaching degree. MacDonald put Kristen to bed around 7PM and he took a nap for about an hour. After waking up, he and 5-year-old Kimberley watched her favorite TV show, “Laugh-In”, and then he put her to bed. Colette, who was pregnant with the couple’s third child, came home around 9:40PM. About 4 and a half months along, Colette was especially excited that she was carrying the couple’s first son. The couple sat down to watch The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Colette didn’t last long and turned into bed shortly after the show started. MacDonald finished the show, then read a novel for a bit. Kristen woke up crying, and MacDonald went to her room and calmed her with a bottle of chocolate milk. Kristen went back to sleep and MacDonald finished his book around 2AM. He washed the dirty dishes from their dinner that night and headed into his bedroom to go to sleep for the night. In his room, he found 2-year-old Kristen sleeping in his bed with Colette. Unfortunately, Kristen had wet the bed. MacDonald carried Kristen back to her bedroom and, rather than disturb his wife by changing the sheets, he grabbed a blanket and went to sleep on the couch in the living room. MacDonald said that he fell asleep very shortly after laying down.

Sometime in the early morning hours of the 17th, MacDonald said he was awakened suddenly by Colette and Kimberley screaming. He said that his wife was shouting, “Jeff, why are they doing this to me?” And that his daughter was shouting “Daddy, daddy, daddy!” Still on the couch, MacDonald opened his eyes to see four figures standing in the living room: two white men, a black male in an army fatigue jacket with E-6 sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve, and a woman with long blonde hair and a floppy hat. The woman held a lit candle in front of her face and chanted “acid is groovy, kill the pigs.”

MacDonald tried to get up off the couch, but was immediately struck with a club by the black male. He was stabbed multiple times with what he believed was an ice pick. During the struggle, MacDonald said that his pajama top was basically pulled off and to his wrists. The men continued to strike him until he lost consciousness. When MacDonald regained consciousness, he stumbled to the master bedroom to find his wife covered in blood and unresponsive. He said that he tried to perform mouth to mouth breathing, but that every time he did, blood bubbled out of her chest. He used his pajama top to cover Colette’s upper body. He then made his way to his daughters’ bedrooms and saw that both of the girls were dead. He went back into the master bedroom and was able to get to the phone and make a call before going unconscious again, laying beside his dead wife.

At 3:42AM, 911 dispatchers received a phone call from the MacDonald residence reporting that there had been a stabbing. Military police responded, thinking that they were walking into a domestic violence situation. When they arrived, they found a horrifying scene. When they entered the MacDonald home, they found 26-year-old Colette lying on the floor of her bedroom, covered in blood. She was dead, with 16 knife wounds to the chest and neck, 21 wounds in the chest from an ice pack that had been pushed in to the hilt of the pick, and had been hit at least six times with some sort of object in the head. Both of her arms were broken. Her husband’s pajama top was draped over her chest. MacDonald was lying on the floor next to her, with his arm around her. He was unconscious, but alive. When MacDonald woke, he immediately asked about his family, wondering if his children were safe.

Military police continued to the childrens’ rooms to find two more devastating scenes. Five-year-old Kimberley was laying in her bed, in a pool of her own blood. She’d been struck in the head with an object multiple times. One of the strikes shattered her skull. Another strike, on the left side of her face, was so forceful that it left shards of bone sticking through the skin by her eye. She’d also been stabbed several times in the neck with a knife.

Two-year-old Kristen was also lying dead in her bed. She had a total of 33 stab wounds to the chest, back, and neck. The wounds were made by a knife and an ice pick. One of her fingers was cut to the bone, which suggested she held her hand up to protect herself. The only survivor of the MacDonald family was 26- year-old Jeffrey.

What the Fuck Happened?

Jeffrey was taken to the hospital with minor injuries from a knife. A surgeon on staff said that the most serious of MacDonald’s wounds was a “clean, small, sharp” laceration on the right side of his chest, which caused a partial deflation of his right lung. The surgeon said that this was easily fixed. MacDonald told police his account of what had happened earlier that morning, with the four strangers who’d broken into his home, attacked him, and murdered his family. He described them multiple times as “drug-crazed hippies”. He denied having any enemies in the community, but it was brought up that MacDonald was particularly hard on drug users on base.

It wasn’t long before the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) unit of the Army arrived on scene. William Ivory was the first agent on scene and found himself bothered by multiple things that he just felt did not add up between MacDonald’s account and the murder scene. The living room, except for a knocked over plant and coffee table, looked untouched. Other than those two items, there were no obvious signs of a struggle, especially one as violent as MacDonald had described. They were only able to find one fiber from MacDonald’s pajama top in the living room, despite him claiming that that’s where he received all of the stab wounds. However, there were multiple fibers located in the master bedroom and in both of the girls’ rooms. Some were found beneath Colette’s body, under Kimberley’s sheets, and one underneath Kristen’s fingernail. Police found it strange since MacDonald said he had already taken his pajama top off when he entered the girls’ rooms.

There was a significant amount of blood found in the bedrooms, but NONE on the living room floor. MacDonald’s glasses were found in the living room with a small speck of blood on them, that was found to belong to Kristen. However, MacDonald had said earlier that he wasn’t wearing his glasses when he entered either of the girls’ bedrooms.

Another strange finding at the scene was that the word “PIG” was written in blood on the headboard in the master bedroom. This eerily echoed the Manson murders of the Tate and LaBiancas that had occurred only six months earlier. Underneath the headboard, tips of surgical gloves were found. These glove tips were found to be identical to gloves that were kept in a cabinet below the kitchen sink in the MacDonald home. Just beside the cabinet, there were several drops of blood that matched MacDonald’s blood type. Oh, but there are so many people who have that blood type, couldn’t it have belonged to one of his family members? NO. WRONG. MacDonald was unaware at the time that every member of his family had a different blood type, which made it rather easy to track what had happened. Outside of the home, near the back door, investigators found an ice pick, a kitchen knife, and a piece of wood covered in blood, about the size of a baseball bat. They determined that all three were used in the murders and that all three had come from the MacDonald house.

MacDonald reportedly told investigators three times shortly after the attacks that he had taken the knife out of his wife’s chest. They weren’t sure why MacDonald was so fixated on getting this specific point across to police. It was also noted that later tests indicated that the knife had never been in Colette’s chest.

According to a Vanity Fair article about the murders, the CID used the paths of blood and evidence to create a likely scenario of what happened that night. They theorized that the attacks began in the master bedroom with some sort of trigger stemming from an insult to MacDonald’s masculinity. The couple fought and Colette hit her husband in the forehead with a hairbrush. They believed that MacDonald then struck his wife in the head with the wooden board that had been inside for use with household chores. The oldest daughter, Kimberley, was awoken by the commotion and walked into her parents’ room where she was also struck by the board. (Investigators believed this hit might’ve been inadvertently) Kimberley’s brain matter was found in the doorway of the master bedroom. MacDonald, assuming that his wife was dead, carried Kimberley back to her bedroom and killed her. Her blood was found on MacDonald’s pajama top (that he had said he wasn’t wearing when he went into their bedrooms). MacDonald believed that he had to kill the last “witness,” so he made his way to his youngest daughter, Kristen’s, room. Before MacDonald killed Kristen, Colette came into the room, severely injured, but still alive. She threw herself over Kristen, who was lying in her bed. Colette’s blood was found on Kristen’s bed comforter and on one of the walls in her bedroom. MacDonald proceeded to kill both of them in Kristen’s room. He wrapped Colette’s body in a sheet and carried her back to her bedroom. There was a footprint in Colette’s blood on the way out of Kristen’s bedroom. There were no bloody footprints leaving the master bedroom, only the one EXITING Kristen’s room.

After brutally murdering his entire family, the CID believed that MacDonald began his cover-up. Strangely enough, there was a copy of Esquire magazine in the living room, with multiple articles about the Manson murders. They theorized that MacDonald took a disposable scalpel from medical supplies that he had in a closet and cut himself between the ribs. He then put on a pair of his surgical gloves and wrote “PIG” on the headboard in Colette’s blood. He removed his pajama top and laid it on top of his wife, then stabbed through it several times with the ice pick. He then used the phone to call for help before either flushing the gloves and scalpel or throwing them in the garbage. (The garbage was discarded before the CID was able to go through it…)

MacDonald, of course, denied any of this, sticking to his story about the four intruders. With the amount of evidence that the CID allowed to be destroyed on scene, it would be difficult to prove what happened. The CID did not seal off the house, allowing 26 people to walk through the home before securing it. This included an ambulance driver who stole MacDonald’s wallet from the scene. They lost a blue fiber that was found beneath Kristen’s fingernail and a piece of skin found underneath Colette’s fingernail. CID allowed a doctor to turn over Colette’s body and move the pajama top that was lying on top of her. 40 sets of fingerprints were destroyed, along with the bloody footprint.

Article 32 Hearing

Three months after the murders, an Article 32 hearing was held to determine whether the Court Marshall would proceed with charges against MacDonald. It’s described as a proceeding similar to a grand jury or preliminary hearing. This was the largest Article 32 hearing in the history of the US Army. The attorney hired by MacDonald’s mother was reportedly very taken aback by MacDonald’s lack of emotion about the murders. The attorney had him evaluated by a psychiatrist who reported “possibly some latent homosexual conflicts” and “some narcissistic need to be famous or infamous”. The psychiatrist said that he was “fairly certain” that MacDonald hadn’t murdered his family.

MacDonald’s defense brought forth several character witnesses, including Colette’s stepfather, Freddy. Shortly after, Freddy announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of the real killers. During the hearing, a man came to MacDonald’s lawyer to tell him about a neighbor he had while living in nearby Fayetteville. The woman, who he knew as Helena, was heavy into drugs. On the night of the murders, the man recalled that he got up around 4AM to use the bathroom and saw a Mustang pulling into the driveway next door, with Helena and a few men. A few weeks later, the man said that Helena told him she was going to have to leave town because the police believed she may have been involved in the MacDonald murders. She said that she’d been so high that night, that she couldn’t remember what she’d done.

Officer Kenneth Mica was called to the stand by the defense to tell them what he’d seen that night while en route to the MacDonald house. He said that he saw a female standing on the corner of the street, about four or five blocks from the MacDonald’s home, wearing a dark coat and a wide brimmed hat. He believed her to be between 20 and 30 years old. Mica said that he reported this to a supervisor on the scene of the murders once he’d heard MacDonald describing a woman as one of the intruders.

Police were very familiar with the woman, Helena. that the man had described living next door to him. Her name was Helena Stoeckley. She was 18 and a heavy drug user. She was interviewed a few days after the murders and investigators said she provided no useful information, except to say that she was positive she was never in the MacDonald home and that she no longer had the floppy hat or the blonde wig. The colonel that presided over the hearing felt that the accounts of Helenaa being involved in the murders gave too much question to MacDonald’s guilt. He recommended that police investigate Helena further and determined that the charges against MacDonald were not true.

Freddy is here to fuck shit up

MacDonald was given an honorable discharge from the Army and went about trying to get his life together. This included selling most of his family’s things in a yard sale. He moved to New York reportedly to look for a journalist to sell his story to. He made an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show and spoke more about the Army’s supposed attempt to go after him rather than talking about his family. Freddy, Colette’s stepfather, was not happy with how MacDonald was acting. MacDonald finally told Freddy that he and other Green Berets had found one of the real killers and took care of him. He also gave Freddy access to the transcripts of the Article 32 hearing.

Freddy had been asking for the transcripts for months and took the opportunity to go through everything in detail. He began finding inconsistencies with MacDonald’s testimony. He made his way to the home where his daughter and granddaughters were murdered and began going over everything in the home. While Freddy once was one of MacDonald’s biggest supporters, he had grown extremely suspicious of his son in law.

Meanwhile, MacDonald moved to California, where he began working as an emergency room physician at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. He bought a yacht, a sports car, and it wasn’t long before he was dating. Unbeknownst to MacDonald, the CID had continued investigating him. They found that the MacDonald’s marriage was very rocky, that he’d had at least 15 girlfriends. A family member said that Colette was aware of the affairs and had told her that she didn’t want to do this anymore, referring to her marriage. She said that when MacDonald told Colette of an upcoming three month traveling assignment, Colette had called her mother to tell her that she was coming home with the kids. This was just two days before the murders. There are also reports that the day after Kimberley was born, MacDonald left his wife and baby in the hospital to travel to visit his high school girlfriend. He also admitted to having a sexual relationship with the wife of one of his peers in medical school. MacDonald later made excuses for his indiscretions, saying that he “wasn’t doing anything unusual…It was ‘68, ‘70, and a lot of things were exploding…I like women and I wasn’t thinking of the consequences…I had high testosterone.” A secretary on base reported that she had sex with MacDonald multiple times while he was still being accused of the murders. When asked if he thought he was a faithful husband, MacDonald said, “Well, I certainly wasn’t sexually faithful. I felt in my heart that I was emotionally faithful to Colette.”

Helena

While the CID was still investigating MacDonald’s involvement in the murders, they continued to probe into the claims that Helenaa Stoeckley had been part of a group that murdered Colette and her daughters. Unfortunately, her heavy drug use posed a problem. When she entered a rehab program, the resident psychiatrist noted that she’d use heroin eight or nine times a day, along with barbiturates, stimulants, and psychedelics. CID also discovered that the man who reported Helenaa as being his neighbor and seeing her the night of the murders, may have fabricated the story. Helenaa was an informant for a Fayetteville narcotics officer who said that Helenaa would basically do anything to have the officer tell her that she was doing a good job. When the narcotics officer questioned Helenaa about the MacDonald murders, she would only give her names of other friends she had who fit the descriptions of the intruders. Investigators were unable to match any of Helenaa’s DNA to anything at the scene, and finally wrote a report claiming that they believed MacDonald was behind the murders.

What a loser

In 1974, a grand jury was convened in Raleigh, North Carolina. They spent seven months reviewing evidence and listening to testimonies and finally indicted Jeffrey MacDonald on three counts of murder. MacDonald’s defense attorney was able to have the charges thrown out, saying that his client was denied the right to a speedy trial. In 1977, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the government’s appeal regarding the charges against MacDonald. The charges were reinstated and jury selection began in July of 1979.

It was believed that one of the big reasons that MacDonald had won the article 32 hearing was because the prosecution didn’t provide a motive. This time, they presented the theory that when MacDonald found that his daughter had wet the bed, he flew into a rage, killing Kimberley and Colette. Then, to make it look like an intruder had broken in, he also killed his youngest daughter.

The prosecution came with several points that they felt pointed clearly to MacDonald being the killer. The pajama top was one of the most important clues. An FBI expert testified that when the pajama top was folded a specific way, the 48 holes lined up with the ice pick wounds on Colette’s chest. Additionally, the holes in the pajama top were all round, none were torn. The prosecution conducted their own experiment in front of the court, wrapping one of the lawyer’s wrists in a similar pajama top, while the other stabbed at it with an ice pick. This ended with several jagged tears in the fabric, not at all similar to MacDonald’s pajama top.

Finally, MacDonald’s fate was left in the jury’s hands. It took them six hours to come to a decision. MacDonald was absolutely shocked when they announced that he had been found guilty of second degree murder for the deaths of Colette and Kimberley and first degree murder for Kirsten. (I imagine this is because they believed he killed Colette and Kimberley in a fit of rage, then decided to kill Kristen to make it look like there was an intruder) The judge asked him if there was anything he wanted to say. MacDonald, in shock, said that he wasn’t guilty and he didn’t feel that the jury had heard all of the evidence. The judge sentenced him to the maximum sentence, three consecutive life sentences.

In July of 1980, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed MacDonald’s conviction, citing that his right to a speedy trial was violated with the nine year delay it took to bring him to trial. On August 22, 1980, MacDonald was released on a $100,000 bail and returned to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Long Beach, where he was hired as the director of emergency medicine. Throughout the next year and a half, appeals were filed and arguments were made, until the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that MacDonald’s right to a speedy trial had NOT been violated. He was rearrested on March 31, 1982 and his original sentence was restored. In January of 1983, Helenaa Stoeckley died of natural causes. Despite having never recognized her picture, MacDonald continued to claim that she was one of the intruders who had murdered his family. In March of 1991, MacDonald became eligible for parole, but did not apply, continuing to deny having murdered his family. In 1997, MacDonald and his team were given permission to test DNA on hair and blood evidence from the scene. Ding dong DOES apply for parole in 2005. During the parole hearing, MacDonald refused to admit that he was guilty, saying that he was “factually innocent”. His parole was denied.

In March of 2006, the DNA test results came back, finding no evidence of Helenaa or her boyfriend, Greg Mitchell, having been at the scene. They also revealed that a “mystery hair” found in Colette’s hand belonged not to an intruder, but to MacDonald. His DNA profile matched hairs found on the master bed and Kristen’s bed. Three hairs found on scene did not match the DNA profile of any MacDonald family members or suspects.

In 2007, MacDonald’s defense team filed an affidavit on behalf of Helenaa’s mother, where she said that Helenaa confessed twice to her that she was at the MacDonald house on the night of the murders. The next several years brought about many different court appeals, motions, and requests, all essentially ending with MacDonald remaining in jail and continuing to deny any involvement in his family’s murders. In 2002, he married his prison pen pal, Kathryn. She has done everything she can to bring attention to her husband’s case and the fact that she believes he is innocent. She even tweeted to President Trump, saying “Jeff is an honorably discharged Vietnam Vet. He is 77 and while eligible for parole since 1990, he has deferred b/c he will never dishonor his family by admitting to something he did not do…he is sick and I fear for his life due to COVID in the prison Petri dish.” President Trump did not acknowledge the tweet. This is one of the most widely discussed murders in true crime history. There are many rumors of evidence found on scene and surrounding the reported “intruders” that are unconfirmed, and there are MANY a rabbit holes to go down on this case. MacDonald is currently imprisoned in Cumberland, Maryland at their federal correctional institution.