48 Hours - Jeffrey MacDonald: Time For Truth

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

This classic episode of “48 Hours" reports on the 1970 murders of U.S. Army Doctor Jeffrey MacDonald’s pregnant wife and two young daughters. MacDonald has maintained that a group of crazed, drug-fueled hippies broke into his apartment and murdered his wife Collette and daughters. It took the U.S. government nine years to make its case against him, but in 1979, a jury convicted MacDonald of three counts of first-degree murder, a conviction based entirely on circumstantial evidence. "48 Hours" correspondent Bill Lagattuta reports. This "48 Hours" episode last aired on 3/17/2007. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. With a 48 Hours Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts, you can enjoy uninterrupted ad-free episodes of all your favorite 48 hours podcasts for just $2.99 a month. Subscribe today.

It is an enduring mystery of our generation. On the Army post of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, some bizarre murders took place last night. That night comes into my thinking all the time. It was a very traumatic night. What I remember are very brief snapshots. I remember first awakening on the couch and hearing my wife, and I could hear her screaming for help. I remember after this fight with the assailants,

I remember coming to on the floor in the hallway, and I walked down the hallway towards the master bedroom where I found my wife and she was very brutally murdered. I can remember going to each of my daughters and trying to resuscitate them. to resuscitate them. Those are the things I remember. This was such a brutal crime scene that it defied imagination.

And it certainly defied imagination that a father of these people could have done it. There was no other killer in that house but Jeffrey McDonald. He knows it and I know it. I saw four people. I saw three males at one time. And I had glimpses of what had to be a female.

I know what happened that night and I'm not guilty. This is a great tragedy for our legal system. This is a great tragedy for our legal system. Dr. Jeffrey McDonald's wife and two children were murdered nine years ago. Today, a jury convicted him of the crime. I was deeply disappointed at their verdict. How could the jury have done this? How could they have done this?

I believe that I'd been falsely accused and falsely imprisoned. We died in that trial from starvation of fairness. There's so much evidence that was suppressed at the trial by the government. My opinion is that Dr. McDonald was framed. I believe that the truth has a way of finally coming to the surface. You think you found the answers to this case? Oh, I definitely found the answers to this case. My hopes are to be legally vindicated, walk out of prison a free man.

Jeffrey McDonald, time for truth. It was 1989 in Titusville, Florida. Kim Halleck said she and her ex-boyfriend Chip Flynn were kidnapped and attacked at gunpoint. Kim fled the scene, but Chip didn't make it out alive. Did you kill Chip Flynn? No, ma'am. Crosley Green has lived more than half his life behind bars for a crime he says he didn't commit. I'm Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours, and of all the cases I've covered, admit. I'm Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours, and of all the cases I've covered, this is the one that troubles me most, involving an eyewitness account that doesn't quite make sense. A sister testifying

against a brother. They always say lies. You can't remember lies. A lack of physical evidence, and questions about whether Crosley Green was accused, arrested, and convicted because he's Black. Just because a white female says a Black man has committed a crime, we take that as gospel. Listen to Murder in the Orange Grove, the troubled case against Crosley Green, wherever you get your podcasts. Hotshot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty, her specialty representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new

podcast Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. Put about a thousand miles on the car every week. Three times a week this woman

makes the 140 mile drive from her home outside of Washington DC to visit an inmate at the Cumberland Federal Prison in Western Maryland. There's no fun in doing this, but at the end of my journey I can let out a sigh of relief when I see his face. I just feel better inside. Her name is Catherine, and she's the newest woman in Jeffrey McDonald's life. Catherine is my wife. She's the most remarkable person I've ever met. They were married in 2002, in prison,

23 years after McDonald was found guilty of the murders of his first wife and two children. I think had anyone asked me, would you get married in prison, I would have said definitively and loudly no, of course not. And yet we did get married. He's just so warm and he's so kind and so smart and that love of life,

I think that's something I really gravitated to. He still has it, even though he's been in prison all these years. But I do know who I am and what I believe. Good. Catherine McDonald makes her living running a small school for aspiring young actors. This, I believe, is Jeff's first aid kit from when he was in the Army.

But she has another job as well. Everything is just right here, just like it was yesterday, but it's like a lifetime ago. She's caretaker of the life Jeffrey McDonald left behind. of the life Jeffrey McDonald left behind. And this is our garage, which I can't park the car in because this is a very big part of our lives at the moment. She was instantly fascinated when she first read McDonald's story. Just massive work by just dozens and dozens of people over the years. The more she read, the more convinced she was of his innocence.

Eventually, she decided to write him in prison. We just became very close very quickly. She began visiting and we began, you know, looking back into the past and looking forward into the future. A future which, because of federal prison rules, has yet to include a honeymoon. It's an interesting picture. I love this one. It shows my husband's gallant side. People are fascinated by women who reach out to men in prison. You're one of those women. Is there something about you that had you go that direction in your life?

No, I think it's something about him. And that's that he doesn't belong there. He's innocent. Innocent or guilty, a quarter century in prison is an incredible waste for someone whose future was as bright as Jeffrey McDonald's. He made his mark early on. In high school, he was voted most likely to succeed. He went on to Princeton University and Northwestern Medical School, and then, at the age of 25, earned a captain's commission as a doctor in the Army's elite Green Berets. What I demand of myself is to capture the heart of his high school girlfriend, Colette Stevenson.

They were married while he was still in college at Princeton. You were married at what age? I was very young. It was 1963. Over the next seven years as their family grew, it appears that the McDonald's were well on their way to a seemingly perfect life. But in America, things were far from perfect. The year was 1970.

This was an era of shock and counterculture rage in America. Bernard Siegel, now a law professor in San Francisco, I am delighted to see so many of you here. was at the time Jeffrey McDonald's defense attorney. I was a lawyer for people who felt they were not represented by the system and who were outside the system. But in 1970, Jeffrey McDonald was, in fact, deep inside the system. Jeffrey, Colette, and their daughters Kimberly, age 5, and Kristen, age 2, were stationed here,

Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The time at Fort Bragg was actually our best time. It was the first time we had finances and could pay our own way, so to speak. It's easy to believe from these home movies taken on Christmas morning, two months before the murders, that the McDonald family didn't seem to have a care in the world. But at 3.33 a.m., February 17, 1970, all of that changed forever. What happened in the McDonald home that night is one of America's most enduring murder mysteries. The subject of a best-selling book, a sensational TV movie, a mystery story kept alive by its charismatic

leading man, Dr. Jeffrey McDonald. To help tell the story, we've recreated the McDonald apartment here in our studio. That's because the building no longer exists in this form, and unless you can see exactly where things were laid out that night and the morning after, you may not be able to decide for yourself exactly what happened. And so our story begins as Army MPs responding to a call for help arrive here and find McDonald's two young children dead in their bedrooms back there. And Captain McDonald himself, wounded and unconscious, here on the floor beside the body of his dead wife. I realized someone was breathing in my mouth, and I opened my eyes, and I could see a ring of military police helmets circling me.

You're taken away to the hospital. Yes. They finally brought in a doctor who I knew on the staff, and he is the one, I believe, who told me that Colette, Kim, and Chris were dead. And, like, it was, you can't accept something like that. It doesn't make any sense. In fact, that morning, McDonald wasn't the only one having trouble making sense of what happened. My gut told me that what he told the military police could not possibly have happened in that house. Bill Ivory was in charge of the investigation to determine exactly what did happen to the McDonald family.

I was a CID agent, which is the criminal investigator for the Department of the Army. We sent agents to interview him at the hospital. They had been told that he had been attacked by some hippies. It's a story that Jeffrey McDonald has not wavered from in 37 years. These really monstrous crimes were not committed by myself. What do you remember about the people you say attacked you? I saw four people. I saw two white males and one black male as they were assaulting me. One glimpse I saw what looked like a blonde female, and she had a floppy hat on. And there was a light under her face.

To this day, I don't know if she was holding a candle or it was a light. I heard a female voice say, acid is groovy, kill the pigs. Acid is groovy, kill the pigs. Yes. This was all happening simultaneously. I was being hit. There became a moment in time where all I was doing

was fending off blows with both my hands wrapped up in my pajama top. I suddenly had a chest pain. The right side of my chest hurt. Jeff McDonald was stabbed right in the center of his chest with an ice pick, puncturing his skin, puncturing the layers below. I required two surgical procedures to reinflate my right lung. I had some stab wounds and I had some blunt head trauma. But the attack on his family was considerably more vicious as revealed by their autopsies.

Colette suffered two broken arms, a fractured skull and was stabbed more than 30 times. Five-year-old Kimberly's skull, jaw, and nose were badly broken and her throat was severely cut. And Kristen, just two and a half, was stabbed repeatedly in her chest and back. The autopsy also revealed one last devastating detail. Colette was five and a half months pregnant with a son. One minute you're happily married, you're living in a secure army post, you're a Green Beret physician, and the next minute your family's dead and you're in a hospital, it doesn't make any sense. That's McDonald's version of what happened that night, and he tells a very compelling story.

I had a five-year-old and a two-year-old, both unbelievably beautiful girls. He's not a criminal. If I thought otherwise, I wouldn't be involved at all, and much less devote my entire life. And with that kind of support, Jeffrey McDonald did something he swore he would never do. In 2005, he applied for parole. It's possible they might consider the full record of my conduct, my behavior, my personality, how I've carried myself through 25 years of imprisonment. Look at that in conjunction with my record as a civilian.

But there are others who feel that Jeffrey McDonald is right where he belongs. that in conjunction with my record as a civilian. But there are others who feel that Jeffrey McDonald is right where he belongs. You're not buying it? No, I'm not buying it. All psychopaths, as I've said, are con artists, and he's one of the best. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing the best idea yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with

and the bolder risk-takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye? Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala? From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans, discover the surprising stories of the most viral products. Plus, we guarantee that after listening, As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts.

What's the first thing you saw? First thing I saw was the body of Colette McDonald. It's been more than three decades since Army criminal investigator Bill Ivory first set foot inside the home of Jeffrey McDonald. I saw a weapon over to the side in the position of her body. But the memories of that morning are still fresh. On the headboard of the bed, the word pig was written in blood. Jeffrey McDonald had told investigators that these brutal murders were committed by hippies who had broken into his house,

a story that in today's world seems a little tough to swallow. The intruders are generally described as hippie-type individuals. Peter Kearns, an Army investigator from Washington, D.C., led a follow-up investigation into the McDonald case, which included producing and starring in this film presentation of the evidence. A lot of G.I.s were using drugs then, and he had a job where he counseled them. If you were a physician, an Army physician, you were under orders to turn in drug-abusing patients.

So did you think that maybe this was somebody that had turned in? Sure. But the more closely investigators examined the apartment, the more closely they began to question McDonald's claims. There was no sign of any monumental struggle with him and three or four other people. Crime scene investigators will tell you the real truth is always found in the evidence. And the evidence that Bill Ivory and his team found in this apartment, they say,

tells a story very different than McDonald's. A story that points not to a group of hippies, but to a husband enraged. What do you believe really happened in that house? The theory that we come up with was that there was an argument. Something started in the master bedroom. He may have hit her first or she may have hit him first. A dull kitchen knife was found near Collette's body, but this was not what was used to kill the McDonald family. It was out there through back door, that investigators found what they believe were the three murder weapons.

An ice pick, a paring knife, and a 31-inch length of building lumber. This murder weapon was at one time a part of a bed flat on Kimberly's bed. It was about a two-by-two. That was finally grabbed on on and he started swinging. He just lost all control. We believe also the older girl was in the bedroom with them and got in the middle of the fight between them. He swatted back and hit her on the side of the head and dropped her to the floor. We know this because there is a large amount of her blood right at the entrance to the master bedroom. Because each member of the McDonald family had a different blood type,

investigators were able to follow the blood evidence like a trail of breadcrumbs left by the victims. He went and took the bedding off of that bed in the master bedroom and I believe he wrapped the older girl in that, getting blood on him from her and getting her blood on that sheet. The trail led them from the master bedroom back here to Kimberly's room, where investigators say McDonald placed his daughter's body back in her own bed. While he's doing that, his wife regains consciousness and goes to the baby's room and lays across her on the bed, obviously in an attempt to protect her.

And he followed her into that room. He began beating her more there with the club. That's evidenced by blood sprays that were on the wall and on the ceiling. What the investigators say happened next is what truly makes Jeffrey McDonald a monster in their eyes. They say after he killed his wife, Collette, and his daughter, Kimberly, he came back in here and stood to face his youngest daughter, Kristen, who was still in her bed. And then he killed her. And the only reason in the world that he killed her was because she was a witness. And she was old enough, she could say, I saw Daddy hitting Mommy. Daddy hitting Mommy. They say with his entire family now dead, in order to be believed, McDonald decided

he had no choice but to include himself in the attack. So he goes in and he puts a stab wound in his abdomen, collapsing a lung, which he knows how to do. Because he's a doctor. Sure. Now a victim himself, investigators say McDonald then went about setting a stage to fit his story of an attack by drug-crazed hippies. A story they discovered McDonald may have borrowed from some very recent history. story they discovered McDonald may have borrowed from some very recent history. You see the beginning of the ES on the Esquire magazine and it had articles in there about the Tate-LaBianca murders. The Manson killings. Yes. In the summer of

1969, just six months earlier, the nation was stunned by a series of brutal homicides in Southern California. Senseless crimes carried out by the cult-like followers of Charles Manson. This issue of Esquire magazine contained a detailed account of the murders. Investigators also found a finger smudge in blood along the edge of the magazine. While it could not be positively linked to McDonald, it worked with Ivory's theory of the crime. Do you think he went and looked up that information after he committed the crimes? Yes, I believe so. To get his story straight. Bill Ivory and his team's interpretation of the evidence pointed them to just one suspect.

The Army has charged Green Beret Dr. Jeffrey McDonald with the murders of his pregnant wife and their two young daughters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina last night. I was in the house that night. I know what happened. To me it was inconceivable that anyone could buy this hypothetical scenario. In fact, McDonald was right. After a three-month military hearing, the Army's official position was that, despite the significant efforts of their own investigators,

there was not enough evidence to court-martial Jeffrey McDonald. I was shocked because I knew that there was enough evidence to put reasonable suspicion in anybody's mind that perhaps this guy had done that. Did you figure it's over? Sure. Wouldn't any normal human being think it was over? Shortly thereafter, I received an honorable discharge. While the army seemed to be done with Jeffrey McDonald, the investigators still had no doubt as to who committed these crimes.

He's 100% guilty. There's no mystery to me. He knows he did it, I know he did it. But until they could prove it in a court of law, Dr. Jeffrey McDonald would remain a free man. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still a virgin. It just happens to all of them.

I'm journalist Luke Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+.

Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. When I first came to represent Dr. McDonald, I wondered to myself, is it possible that he murdered his family? It's the one question that has always haunted this case and everyone involved in it. Was Jeffrey McDonald capable of these brutal murders? I assumed that anyone who could kill his little children was not going to be an ordinary human being. And when you met him, what did you find? A remarkably appealing, likable young man.

Bernie Siegel defended McDonald when the Army tried and failed to indict him due to a lack of evidence. He was now a man who had no family, who wanted to try and start his life over again. And Jeffrey McDonald did just that. He headed west to Southern California. I had good days in California. I worked hard. I played hard. We'll need lab here for barb level and a CBC and a 660. McDonald found a new career in emergency room medicine and a new lifestyle, which included all the spoils of success.

With the Army's case dropped, Dr. Jeffrey McDonald might have simply faded from view. But McDonald himself couldn't seem to let it go. Apparently enjoying his newfound celebrity, McDonald continued to try his own case in the court of public opinion. My next guest is Dr. Jeffrey McDonald. On December 15th, 1970, McDonald appeared on the popular late night program, The Dick Cavett Show. I hope this isn't too painful for you. Where it became very clear McDonald was fast becoming his own worst enemy. My wife came home and we had a before-bedtime drink, really,

and watched the beginning of a late-night talk show. He knew how to do it, as they say in the talk show trade. He knew how to handle himself. Dick Cavett remembers well the night he was face-to-face with McDonald. His affect is wrong, totally wrong. My affect was, gee, find your wife and kids murdered. And even his answer to that was something like, hey, yeah, doesn't that almost sounding like Bob Hope? Very like Bob Hope.

There were people in the Army who wanted a court-martial, regardless of any evidence. I was angry. You were very critical, in fact, of the Army. I'm sure I was. Where are these investigators now who did the original? Well, most of them have been transferred. It's the Army way of handling things.

If someone really fouls up, you either give them a medal or you transfer them. Watching the show that night, Colette's family was extremely disturbed by McDonald's appearance. Colette's older brother, Robert Stevenson. All he spoke about was how his rights had been violated. I don't think he once mentioned about, let's get the murderers, my family's been killed. But I remember him grinning like a Cheshire cat. Colette McDonald's stepfather, Freddy Kassab, who had at first sided with McDonald in his defense, was so incensed at his son-in-law's behavior that it became the seed of an obsession to bring him to justice.

that it became the seed of an obsession to bring him to justice. When I was faced with the evidence, put together with what I knew, what he had told me, nothing fit, absolutely nothing fit. He sat around a table that I still have at home, where you can see the elbow marks as he smoked packet after packet of cigarettes, trying to decide how this happened, drawing the diagrams, plotting it with the Xs where the bodies were, the differing blood types.

His whole story of what happened in that house is a lie. If there was no Freddy Kassab to raise hell, he'd got away with it. Realizing the government had no plans to indict Jeffrey McDonald, Kassab joined forces with Army investigator Peter Kearns, and together they took matters into their own hands. It wasn't until Freddie and I went from New York down to Clinton, North Carolina, to swear out a citizen's arrest. That's when the federal government got off their dumb to go and then get an indictment in a grand jury. On January 24th, 1975, Jeffrey McDonald was arrested once again, this time by the federal government. Had Jeff gone away to a small desert island and never been heard from again, the government

wouldn't have brought him to trial. Wade Smith, one of the top trial lawyers in North Carolina, was chosen to partner with Bernard Siegel. Their defense strategy was a simple one. Is it possible for a person to live a good life and all of a sudden, in one moment, slaughter and mutilate his children, stab his wife many, many times, and then live out his life and have nothing like that happen again? And it suggests to me a reasonable doubt about whether he did it in the first place. My God, I may be representing an innocent man. When his trial finally began on July 16, 1979, Dr. Jeffrey McDonald had little doubt what the outcome would be.

I'm not going to be found guilty. During the next six and a half weeks, 60 witnesses testified. Hundreds of items were placed into evidence. And three verdicts were read. When you heard those words, guilty, guilty, guilty, what did you think? I couldn't believe it. Almost a decade after the murders of Collette, Kimberly, and Kristen McDonald, the United States government was satisfied that justice was finally served. The sentence and the decision of the jury,

we feel, vindicates us completely. Mr. Jim Blackburn. And he called me one day and he said, Jim, we've got this case we want you to help us try. Former Federal Assistant D.A. Jim Blackburn is still asked to talk about the most important trial of his career. And the Justice Department thinks

we're going to probably lose the case. That's why they've asked me to ask you. What made you think that you could win this case when the Army had said he's innocent? We didn't think we would win this case. I thought it would be almost impossible. But Blackburn and his co-counsel Brian Murtaugh achieved the impossible, convincing the jury that there was no one in that apartment that morning except Jeffrey McDonald. He told a story of the hippie intruders. Total fabrication. It is totally contradicted by the physical evidence. And since all the evidence was found in the McDonald home, the prosecution brought the jury here to the crime scene, which nine years later

remained untouched to see for themselves. The strength of our case always was very simple. The physical evidence, the scientific evidence, his statements, that was our case. It was a considerable amount of information that seemed to be overwhelming the jury. Then the prosecution did something with a piece of evidence that made every juror sit up and take notice. It had to do with the pajama top, just like this one, that McDonald was wearing that night. Remember, he says he was asleep here on the couch when he was attacked. During the struggle, he says, the pajama top was pulled over his head and that it somehow became entangled in his hands and that he held it up in front of him to fend off the deadly blows of the ice pick. But the prosecution maintained all along that the pajama top itself told a very different tale.

You maintain that if Jeffrey McDonald were telling the truth, he'd be dead. And the pajama top would be shredded. Yes. If you fold that pajama top, you will see that there are 48 non-tearing holes in that pajama top. There are 21 ice pick holes in Collette's chest that form a pattern. Blackburn and Murtaugh explained to the jury that this was clear proof that McDonald's story was a lie. That, in fact, he covered his wife's body with the pajama top and then repeatedly stabbed her through it with the ice pick.

It is beyond any rational understanding of why this would be done by a killer. Why would McDonald do it? For Bernie Siegel and Wade Smith, time has done little to ease the frustration they encountered trying to defend McDonald, even with something as basic as a request to examine the evidence. The government's response is, Dr. McDonald is not entitled to see this evidence now because he didn't ask for it in time. I didn't know whether to cry or to laugh. They say you weren't playing fair. Well, they lost at sour grapes.

They just lost. Equally frustrating was what McDonald's team discovered when they focused on the investigation of the crime scene itself, which they still consider a model of incompetence. Twenty-seven different people marched through the crime scene, destroying a great deal of what was potential evidence there, without a doubt. Was the crime scene destroyed? No. Was it bungled?

No. Was it done perfectly? Absolutely not. Regardless of the condition of the crime scene, the defense believed they had something that would clear McDonald once and for all. An eyewitness to the murders. The mysterious blonde woman in the floppy hat. Perhaps the central figure to the story from the beginning of the case up to that moment. Her name was Helena Stokely.

The daughter of a retired Fort Bragg colonel and an unlikely savior for Jeffrey McDonald. Dr. McDonald should be free. Fort Bragg Colonel and an unlikely savior for Jeffrey McDonald. Dr. McDonald should be free. Just 18 at the time of the McDonald murders, Stokely lived at the center of the Fayetteville drug community. I lived on the street for 10 years. Her story was astonishing, that she believed she was actually in the McDonald house that night. We had to struggle with the door.

With a group of friends, all drug users, who killed the McDonalds. I had a floppy hat that I used to wear all the time. I had on boots that night, and as a joke, I put on the blonde wig. In fact, an MP, Ken Micah, testified that while responding to McDonald's call for help, he saw someone fitting Stokely's description, standing on a corner not far from the McDonald residence.

Our dream was that after five weeks in this trial, Helena would come. Helena would at last tell a story, and she would tell it to a jury. But that's not what happened when she was called to the stand by the defense. Her basic testament was she didn't know where she was that night. Just the four-hour gap between midnight and 4 p.m., she claimed to have a lapse of memory. It's absurd. So she lied on the stand. She lied about whether she remembered what was going on, but she lied out of a defensive need to protect herself. She knew the government was looking at her.

I think that Dr. McDonald was framed. Following the trial, Ted Gunderson, former chief of the Los Angeles FBI office, was hired by McDonald's team to search for any evidence which could be used for an appeal. People that were with me that night were members of the cult. Alina said that she was there, she was chanting, acid is groovy, kill the pigs. I chanted, acid is groovy, kill the pigs. Gunderson eventually convinced Stokely to go on the record,

which she did in this 1982 60 Minutes film. And I lit the candle. When she told you that story, did you believe her? Yeah, you know why I believed her? Why? Because she said that she tried to ride the rocking horse in the small bedroom. I went into another room, backed against a hobby horse. And she tried to get on it, and she couldn't because the spring was broken. And the spring was broken. Why would that be significant? Because the only people that knew that spring was broken on the rocking horse was the family,

the McDonald family. But that may not be true. These photos, recently obtained by 48 Hours from the Department of Justice, seem to show that all of the springs on the toy horse were intact. Once again, the courts chose not to believe Helena Stokely and McDonald's early appeals were denied. In 1983, at the age of 32, Stokely died of cirrhosis of the

liver. But the question of her involvement in the McDonald murders is still very much alive. The bottom line is Helena Stokely and some friends of hers, including her boyfriend, came into my house that night and murdered my family and left me unconscious. And how do you know that she and her friends were the ones? Because they said so. Because I saw them there. Because there is evidence tying them to the crime scene. Evidence the defense didn't even know existed. Evidence that would give McDonald one more chance at freedom prison is difficult for everyone.

It's very difficult for the guilty and it's very difficult for the innocent. Innocent. It's a word tossed around a lot behind prison walls. But for Jeffrey McDonald, it's the only word that ever mattered. My focus for all these years has been to prove my factual innocence and walk out of prison with my head held up. McDonald has desperately held on to that goal since 1979. But with a new wife and a new life waiting for him on the outside, McDonald is knocking on a different door to freedom, parole.

I would never go before the parole board if it required any sort of admission of guilt. They have assured me that is not the case. He's not going to admit remorse for something he didn't do. I think it would be fair to say he's sorry that he couldn't save his family. I know he feels that way. But what's changed is that he's thinking of me, that I'm out here waiting. He understands that if he does not admit his guilt, it will probably harm

his opportunity for parole. I just got a letter from Brian Murtaugh. We just got the additional funding for the DNA. Tim Junkin and his partner John Moffitt are the latest in a long line of lawyers who've been enlisted without pay to continue McDonald's fight. The whole government case is a house of cards. In the years following the trial, using the Freedom of Information Act, new evidence was discovered in the government files that had never seen the light of day. There was wax found in places in the apartment

that didn't match any of the candles found in the apartment that didn't match any of the candles found in the McDonald apartment. There was skin under the fingernail of Colette McDonald that was not turned over to the defense lawyers. Black wool fibers found on the bloody murder weapon, which the government, despite all its efforts, couldn't match to any fabrics in the McDonald apartment. And one piece of evidence in particular seemed to be the needle in the haystack McDonald had been desperately searching for. There was a blonde 22-inch wig hair or wig hairs

found at the scene that the defense attorneys were never told about. It's a synthetic hair they say is too long to match any of the children's dolls in the house and therefore could only have come from a wig. Was it Helena Stokely's wig? It's evidence that clearly relates to McDonald's innocence, that supports his innocence, and the jury never heard about it. I'm innocent of the charges and have always been innocent. More appeals were filed based on this newfound information. In fact, McDonald's case has been appealed to the United States Supreme Court more than any other in history. But as far as the courts were concerned, one hair and a few fibers were not enough to get McDonald a new trial. You can't keep lying forever. You can't keep saying something is black when it's white.

something is black when it's white. In May of 2005, with his appeals exhausted, Jeffrey MacDonald, with his wife by his side, finally met the parole board. I was seated at the end of this long table. I got to look straight and direct at him. Robert Stevenson represented his sister's family at the hearing. I said to him, my joy in you, Mr. McDonald, is that you are the complete sociopath that you are, and that you're never going to admit what you did, and that I'm going to have the pleasure of knowing that you're going to stay here in rotten jail for the rest of

your life. You despise Jeffrey McDonald. Beyond comprehension. Also at the hearing, a voice Jeffrey McDonald probably assumed he would never hear again. McDonald has never shown any remorse. In 1989, Fred Cassab, my stepfather, had made a tape knowing that he was in ill health and might not survive too long. I want to be sure that he serves out his sentence the way it should be served out. I don't want him walking around the streets. Once again, Freddie Kassab's efforts would help keep Jeffrey McDonald behind bars. The board's official decision? Parole denied. But Jeffrey McDonald is not beaten yet, and maybe never will be.

In January 2006, a federal court of appeals granted a motion filed by McDonald's attorneys to present new evidence. Testimony from retired U.S. Marshal Jim Britt, who claims that he was there in 1979 when Helena Stokely told prosecutors that she was involved in the murder of McDonald's family. He heard Helena Stokely tell Jim Blackburn that she had been in the murder of McDonald's family. He heard Helena Stokely tell Jim Blackburn that she had been inside the McDonald apartment, that they were there to acquire drugs, and then specifically and emphatically remembers Jim Blackburn saying to her,

if you testify to the things that you've just told me, I will indict you for first-degree murder. And once on the stand, Stokely indeed denied any knowledge of the McDonald murders. Did you ever threaten to prosecute Helena Stokely if she were to tell the jury that she was there? No. Never came up. If the court accepts the testimony of Marshall Britt as true, then James Blackburn committed a fraud on the court. A stunning accusation,

and McDonald's lawyers charge that Blackburn's own history gives it credibility. In 1993, Jim Blackburn, working as a defense attorney, pled guilty to charges unrelated to the McDonald case, charges of embezzlement and fraud. He resigned his law license and served three months in state prison. So if the system works correctly, all of this evidence taken together, I think, should entitle Jeff McDonald to a new trial. We're at a point in this case now where I think it's a... there's a legitimate possibility

that I will be winning this case. And I think that there will be a time in the hopefully fairly near future where I can begin really rebuilding a life with Catherine. He just continues to fight very methodically, very thoughtfully, but very patiently. And that's how we go about our lives until that day, you know, happens.

But I know that it will. I know that he'll be back, and he'll be back. That's why when someone said to me the other day, Will this ever end? Sure. It'll end for me when I'm dead, or he's dead. Do you believe that one day you'll leave prison? Yes. How sure are you of that?

Oh, I'm sure of that. I'm positive of that. I've never wavered on that. I've had bad days, bleak moments. But I'm sure of that. In 2020, citing poor health, Jeffrey McDonald applied for compassionate release. His request was denied, and he is appealing that ruling.