Fatal Vision Read online

  And there was silence in the room and I probably broke out in a sweat, but I was just so furious that I just sort of stood there thinking I was correct and maintained my position and the surgeon didn't say anything.

  For the next two weeks he treated me as an absolute gentleman and finally sat me down and asked me if I wanted to be on the thoracic surgery service, which I thought was phenomenal. I thought he would throw me out of my internship but I had stood up to him because it just seemed so outrageous that he was physically abusing physicians who were assisting him. I just reacted and sort of pushed him back with my right elbow and he had hit me with his left elbow, and I said, "If you want me in here you'll have to treat me like a gentleman." And then he offered me a position on the service. I thought that was phenomenal.

  But the year, on the whole, wasn't filled with a whole lot of fun. We did have brief spurts, you know, nights out together. I remember one specifically, I think it may have been for my birthday, my brother Jay was taking us out, and he met us somewhere in Brooklyn.

  He was in his Cadillac and we had the Chevy and we made three or four stops at his Italian hangouts, and then we followed him for what seemed like miles and miles and miles and miles through side streets, and the neighborhood kept getting worse and worse.

  It started out industrial, then it was residential, then it got shabby residential, then it got tenement, then it got abandoned slums, and pretty soon we went, it must have been, half a mile through a slum in which there was nothing but abandoned tenements and these shells of cars that were up on cinder blocks or just down on the axles, no tires on them—they're colloquially referred to as "Brooklyn Foxholes" —when the shooting starts, everyone dives for an abandoned car.

  But we eventually came to this little side street and it was jam packed with cars that people were getting in and out of, and then there was a parking lot across the street and you'd pull up to this place and a guy was standing at the front door with a white shirt with no tie, open at the collar, and the sleeves were rolled up to his big biceps, and he took the car, talking in an Italian accent, and you went inside.

  Jay had already told me that it was a real place—that, you know, people did carry guns into the restaurant and the lot of the guys were heavy-duty Mafia types, and we went in and that's in fact what it was: Monte's Venetian Room.

  We were treated to this grand and glorious nine- or ten-course Italian meal with three or four courses of pasta, and it took all night, from seven-thirty till about midnight.

  And I can still remember, Colette and I were just stuffed, we couldn't move, we felt like gluttons, and then we had the ice cream and coffee—Coffee Paradise—where they put in some anisette and a twist of lemon peel while they strike a match at the same time and it all flames up and they drop the burned lemon peel in the cup.

  Jay and several of the Italian guys were ordering bowls of these noodles mixed with peas—shells mixed with peas— for dessert, and Jay proceeded to eat at least a quart of these noodles after, you know, after this incredible nine- or ten-course meal in which we had chicken and steak and fish and several orders of different type of pasta, and salads, and we had started off with a great big bowl of meatballs in the middle of the table, and everyone had a fork and you'd just spear a meatball and keep eating until this several gallons of meatballs were gone and all of these guys had their shirt sleeves rolled up and their pearl stickpins—they undo their tie and then cross their tie in front of themselves and put their stickpin through it so they can leave the collar open— and the women ail have beehive hairdos and minks, mink stoles around these sequined dresses. All this in Monte's Venetian Room, this little restaurant in the middle of Brooklyn, in the sleaziest area I've ever seen.

  * * *

  Occasionally we'd go down to Greenwich Village and just bomb around for the evening and sit at the different cafes and hear some of the folk singers, which was nice for us, especially because we had done it when we were at Princeton that last year, and it was already sort of reminiscing to get back to Greenwich Village, and we were decrying how it had changed

  Then antiwar people had taken it over and there were draft card burnings and red berets everywhere, when we were just out to have a good time for the evening. We weren't raging conservatives by any means, but we were middle of the road and we felt all the disruption was destructive of our country's ability to end the war with some honor in Southeast Asia.

  Actually, I was reasonably right-wing, I sort of believed what the president said and thought that the citizens of the country had a duty to do what was ordered by the president. I guess I'd been raised that way. My father always felt that it was not only your duty but your right to join the service and go fight for your country, and it never seemed like a bad thing to me. If there was an undeclared war, it was only because of some left-wing liberals in Congress that didn't have the sense to see what my father had seen and what the other fathers saw and what all of us could see: that Vietnam needed defending and we were the ones who should be helping to defend it.

  This was, of course, at the height of the war, and the doctors were being drafted either right after their internship or during or after their residency. Most people were trying to stay out, but Colette and I were not having a good year. I wasn't home much and when I was I was tired and cranky and Colette was tired and cranky'and we didn't have sex as much and there was a lot of pressure—on both of us, on the marriage, on the children—and sometime during the middle of that year I gradually came to the realization that I didn't mind the idea of going into the service.

  There was no question about the fact that Colette was unhappy about my decision but there was never any argument. It was kind of strange, I actually looked forward to the challenge of something new. I kind of looked at it as an adventure, whereas Colette saw it as, ah, somewhat of an abandonment of the family, and, um, a year without me and a chance for me getting killed and the whole bit.

  At the time, this didn't bother me at all. What did sound good was a year or two away from the high pressure environment that I'd been in "for the last five years, four of medical school and this horrendous year of the internship.

  I was exhausted from the year, there's just no question, and Colette was exhausted physically and mentally from coping with the two kids and too small an apartment. There was a little tension in the air. Not tension, but uneasiness, about me going into the Army, there's no question about that. Colette was definitely uneasy. She was uncomfortable. She would rather I didn't go in the Army.

  I had, I think, about fifteen days between the end of internship and when I had to report to Fort Sam Houston, and Colette and I took a vacation, you know, to get away from the year that we had just had and try to sort of remeet, you know, retouch base with each other as we were heading towards the, um, the Army.

  It was not in the Bahamas, which was where we had gone a couple of years before. It was somewhere in the Caribbean more distant than the Bahamas. I want to say Aruba but I can't be sure of that.

  We'd had a wonderful, a very warm time in the Bahamas. There, we dug for clams and we snorkle-dived and we made love on the beach, and I clearly remember going to the casino, Colette and I being a little young, and neophytes at the time, and a little uncomfortable in the glittery atmosphere of this small casino in Nassau.

  But this second trip was a different style. We were sort of, you know, I was exhausted from the year, there's just no question, and Colette was exhausted physically and mentally from coping with the two kids and too small an apartment, so we spent time just recuperating. It was a, you know, a quieter type of trip.

  We just sort of had nice breakfasts and late lunches, and we had long slow dinners with, with wine. We walked around a little bit, we toured the island, and it wasn't very—a very pretty island. I—I think it was Aruba. Anyway, it wasn't very pretty. We had a nice time but there was a little tension in the air. Not tension, but uneasiness, about me going into the Army, there's no question about that.

&n
bsp; Colette was definitely uneasy. She was uncomfortable. She would rather I didn't go in the Army. But she also respected me, you know, for sort of joining up at that point, making a firm decision, being the, you know, the leader of the family and deciding it was a better time to take the break

  now that we had had this very tough year, and that—might as well go in and get it over with. But it was also unsettling. I mean, you know, her husband and the father, um, of her children would be leaving for, you know, indeterminate period of time, so, you know, it was uneasy.

  9

  It was 9:30 A.M. Trucks were grinding by outside an open window. A radio on the desk next to Grebner's was tuned to a pop music station. Grebner informed MacDonald that he had the right to remain silent and the right to request an attorney, and that, even if he chose to answer questions, he would retain the right to stop at any time. Grebner added, however, that what MacDonald did say could be used against him in any future judicial proceeding.

  The microphone lay eighteen inches from Jeffrey MacDonald's right elbow, which rested on the edge of Grebner's desk. Ivory and Shaw sat silently. The majority of their waking hours since February 17 had been spent inside 544 Castle Drive. Both men had gazed deeply into the wounds that had been inflicted on Jeffrey MacDonald's wife and children. For the rest of their lives, both would carry with them visions of what they had seen. Both men, like Grebner, were by now convinced that Jeffrey MacDonald was the murderer. This was their first close look at him.

  MacDonald glanced up at the ceiling, he glanced down at the floor. He cleared his throat, he looked past Grebner's shoulder, out the window. He said he understood what Grebner had just told him and that he was willing to answer any questions the agents might have.

  "All right," Grebner said. "Just go ahead and tell us your story."

  MacDonald cleared his throat again and began. He spoke quickly, with little inflection, as he described for the first time, formally, on record, the details of his struggle with the intruders.

  MacDonald did not yet know how much—or what—the CID knew. He was not yet aware of the story the physical evidence had told. And so, on this first Monday morning of April 1970, he could not realize that the account he was about to render would stick to him like tar for years afterward, in all its messy, inconvenient detail, despite his many attempts to cleanse himself of it as his understanding of the physical evidence, and its implications, increased.

  "Let's see, Monday night my wife went to bed and I was reading and I went to bed about—somewheres around two o'clock, I really don't know, I was reading on the couch and my little girl Kristy had gone into bed with my wife.

  "And I went in to go to bed and the bed was wet. She had wet the bed on my side so I brought her in her own room and I don't remember if I changed her or not—gave her a bottle and went out to the couch, 'cause my bed was wet, and I went to sleep on the couch.

  "And then the next thing I know I heard some screaming—at least my wife but I thought I heard Kimmy, my older daughter, screaming also, and I sat up. The kitchen light was on and I saw some people at the foot of the bed [sic].

  "So I don't know if I really said anything or I was getting ready to say something, this happened real fast. You know, when you talk about it, it sounds like it took forever but it didn't take forever.

  "And so I sat up and at first I thought it was—I just could see three people and I don't know if I—if I heard the girl first, or—I think I saw her first. I think two of the men separated sort of at the end of my couch and I keep—all I saw was some people, really.

  "And this guy started walking down between the coffee table and the couch and he raised something over his head and just sort of then—sort of all together—I just got a glance of this girl with kind of a light on her face. I don't know if it was a flashlight or a candle but it looked to me like she was holding something. And I just remember that my instinctive thought was that, 'She's holding a candle. What the hell is she holding a candle for?' But she said—before I was hit the first time—'Kill the pigs. Acid's groovy.' Now that's all—that's all I think I heard before I was hit the first time and the guy hit me in the head. So I was knocked back on the couch and then I started struggling to get up and I could hear it all then. Now I could— maybe it's really, you know—I don't know if I was repeating to myself what she just said or if I kept hearing it, but I kept—I heard, you know, 'Acid is groovy. Kill the pigs.' "

  MacDonald's voice was sharp, his sentences running together. His words had the sound of dice rattling in a cup.

  "And I started to struggle up and I noticed three men now and I think the girl was kind of behind them, either on the stairs or at the foot of the couch behind them. And the guy on my left was a colored man and he hit me again, but at the same time, you know, I was kind of struggling. And these two men, I thought, were punching me. Then I—I remember thinking to myself that:—see, I work out with the boxing gloves sometimes. I was then. And I kept—'Geez, that guy throws a hell of a punch,' because he punched me in the chest and I got this terrific pain in my chest.

  "And so I was struggling and I got hit on the shoulder or the side of the head again and so I turned and I—I grabbed this guy's whatever it was. I thought it was a baseball bat at the time. And I had—I was holding it. I was kind of working up it to hold on to it.

  "Meanwhile, both these guys were kind of hitting me and all this time I was hearing screams. That's what I can't figure out. So, let's see, I was holding—so, I saw the—all I got a glimpse of was some stripes. I told you, I think, they were E-6 stripes, there was one bottom rocker, and it was an Army jacket, and that man was a colored man and the two men—other men—were white, and I didn't really notice too much about them.

  "And so I kind of struggled and I was kind of off balance 'cause I was still halfway on the couch and half off, and I was holding on to this. And I kept getting this pain either in—you know, like sort of in my stomach and he kept hitting me in the chest.

  "And so I let go of the club and I was grappling with him and I was holding his hand in my hand and I saw, you know, a blade. I didn't know what it was, I just saw something that looked like a blade at the time.

  "And so then I concentrated on him. We were kind of struggling in the hallway right there at the end of the couch and, then really the next distinctive thing, I thought that—I thought that I noticed—I saw some legs, you know, that—not covered. Like I saw the top of some boots. And I thought I saw knees as I was falling. I saw—saw some knees on the top of boots and I told, I think, the investigators, I thought they were brown.

  "The next thing I remember, though, was lying on the hallway—at the end of the hallway floor, and I was freezing cold and it was very quiet and my teeth were chattering and I went down and—to the bedroom'

  MacDonald's voice suddenly weakened and his cadence slowed.

  "And, ah, I had a—I was dizzy, you know, I wasn't really, ah, real alert, ah, and I, ah—my wife was lying on the—the floor next to the bed, and there—there was a—a knife in her— upper chest.''

  He was sobbing his words now, rather than speaking them, and trying repeatedly to clear his throat.

  "So I took that out and tried to give her artificial respiration but the air was coming out of her chest, so . . . umm ... I went and checked ... the kids . . . and, ah . . ."

  There was a long pause as MacDonald wept. Grebner and Ivory and Shaw waited in silence. The loudest sound in the room was that of an up-tempo Al Hirt trumpet on the radio.

  "... And they were, ah . . . had a lot of, ah . . . blood around. So I went back into the bedroom and I—by this time I was finding it real hard to breathe and—" He sighed deeply. "I was dizzy. So I, ah, picked up the phone and I, ah, told this asshole operator that it was, ah—my name was Captain MacDonald and I was at 544 Castle Drive and I needed the, ah, MPs and a doctor and an ambulance and she said, ah, 'Is this on post or off post?'—something like that. And I started yelling at her. I said, ah—finally I told her it wa
s on post and she said, 'Well, you'll have to call the MPs.'

  "So I dropped the phone and I went back and I checked my wife again, and now I was—I don't know. I assume I was hoping I hadn't seen what I had seen or I—I was starting to think more like a doctor.

  "So I went back and checked for pulses. You know, carotid pulses and stuff. And I—there was no pulse on my wife and I was—I felt I was getting sick to my stomach and I was short of breath and I was dizzy and my teeth were chattering 'cause I was cold. And so I didn't know if I was going—I assumed I was going into shock because I was so cold. That's one of the symptoms of shock—you start getting shaking chills.

  "So I got down on all fours and I was breathing for a while and then I realized that I had talked to the operator and nothing really had happened with her. But, ah, in any case, when I went back to check my wife I then went to check the kids and a couple of times I had to—thinking that I was going into shock and not being able to breathe.

  "Now, I—you know, when I look back, of course, it's merely a symptom, that shortness of breath. It isn't—you weren't really that bad. But that's what happens when you get a pneumothorax, you—you think you can't breathe.

  "And, ah, I had to get down on my hands and knees and breathe for a while and I went in and checked the kids and checked their pulses and stuff. And, ah—ah, I don't know if it was the first time I checked them or the second time, to tell you the truth, but I had all—you know, blood on my hands and I had little cuts in here and in here [pointing to his midsection], and my head hurt, so when I reached up to feel my head, you know, my hand was bloody, and so I—I think it was the second circuit 'cause by that time I was—I was thinking better, I thought. And I went into that, ah—I went into the bathroom right there and looked in the mirror and didn't—nothing looked wrong. I mean there wasn't really even a cut or anything.