Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 548: Jeffrey MacDonald Part II - The Woman in the Floppy Hat

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Henry & Marcus are joined by Ed Larson of The Brighter Side podcast to conclude the story of family annihilator Jeffrey MacDonald, this week focusing on the complications of the trial, the mountain of evidence against MacDonald, and of course the mysterious Woman in the Floppy Hat.

Hey there dudes and do-dets, time to wax up your boards and go catch the big wave over at the LPN beach like it. Bingo! One night only at the Balboa Theater in San Diego October 20th, come and check out all of the cool cats and the crazy dog. And LPN, every show, the entire network, each one, poll-sating and grinding in front of you for your entertainment pleasure. We're all gonna catch the big guna.

And I'm talking about that big greasy guy. I'm talking about a wave. G--Ciri! It's Siri! Just so you know, it's gonna be inside of a theater. So when physical wetness you experience is your own personal body heat or the sweat of one of the performers, come and check it out. I'm certain if there's a podcast flavor you need on your tongue, we got the spoon for you.

Beach Blanket-O, baby. Come on, guys. Let's do that! That's when the cannonball is started What was that? Oh, yeah, man like we've been listening a lot of that like German music like that's the later on like And ladies like fuck filthy fishies Fuck Furious Yeah, fuck Fancy fishes locked

Furious I'm sorry, I can't even I couldn't do it. I I, I, let me do it, give me one more shot. Yeah. But, 50 fish is fuck, furiously. But, 50 fish is fuck, furiously. It's bad, 50 fish is fuck, furiously. Welcome to last podcast of Love, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Marcus Parks.

With me here is Henry Zabrowski. Welcome to Geigles. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Iles. I happen to see you coming. I've come to online to join us with the club. It's fantastic. I can't see your nipples. Unfortunately, you can't come in. It's only three in the morning.

I don't know why you think it's so early for you to be part of him. And of course, with us is Adlarson. Yeah. Yeah. Is that the extent of your German? Oh, yeah, nine. He doesn't do character. Yeah, I know.

Yeah, it all sound like me. Yeah, it's like, oh, you know, Germans, you know, it's upsetting. You're kind of like Harry Dean Stanton. Oh, well, thank you. But fat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fun. That's fun.

I want to bring up up top before we get into the meat of this story is that I started like, you know, obviously we do our normal sort of like set up. You know, we, we, we search and go into it and I finally found, I didn't know, like I started watching the entirety of the new, Errol Morris didn't direct it. Right. But he is the star of it. It is a new documentary called A Wilderness of Error. Oh, that's nice. So

Arrowmore, he's like, he's like me, went from behind the scenes behind the camera to the front. You know, and honestly, for a man who looks like if Stanley Tucci was, was cursed by a witch, right? He actually is really compelling on camera. And his whole thing is that he talks about the errors within fatal vision and the books that the all this based on and like why? Because I didn't fully appreciate as we're reading like, the vision being the main source we used for this series. Yes.

And I like, I didn't fully appreciate the like center of the labyrinth, like what this was, like how this like how much mystery and weird misconceptions were at play because when we are going through the outline of the show, like, you know, like we tried to like sum up the story, but then it's like, once you get past, you see why people get obsessed with this story and why this story is hold held people's attention for this long. I mean, it's it's that it has the amount of twists and turns and fuck ups and all that is like the staircase. Yeah.

Like I'm very surprised that the Jeffrey Donald story really hasn't gotten. Well, actually, I guess it has with the Earl Morris, but you know, young, Gary Cole. No, that's right. Of course, we'll get to that at the end of the show. Yeah, it seems like I didn't know idea how famous the story was. Yeah. You know, like, especially because it kind of like went away.

Like after we went to prison, everyone's like, oh, thank God, we don't have to think about that. He's like, done. Yeah, like I was all over the place in the 70s. It's a water cooler story. It's like one of those where it's like, everybody kind of talks about everybody's kind of got aside. And then you kind of find out at some point, and like, is there any such thing as objective truth?

Yeah. I think a lot of reasons why it wasn't more popular and have like a lasting power is he's just so boring. He is boring. himself. Yeah, here's a person he is boring. Yeah. That's why you got it. Honestly, again, I know you're trying to keep it straight in order to get yourself and through the appeals process, but change up the story every once in a while. Add some voices. That's what we do here. You know, I have been trying out acid as Groovy killed the pigs like all over town and Jersey Mike's is the only place acceptable.

They handed it to the police station. Get out of here. Wait a second. I arrested you before. So when we last left Jeffrey McDonald, the article 32 hearing convened by the army had ruled that no charges would be filed against him concerning the gruesome murder of his wife and two children. It's important to remember, however, that an article 32 hearing is not a criminal trial. Nor is it even a grand jury. Yeah, no one's got wigs on. No, they do not. That meant that

Jeffrey could still be charged by the state for the murder of his family, sure to strong enough case be brought against him. But Jeffrey, you wouldn't too worried about more legal trouble. Soon after the ruling came down, Jeffrey decided the army life was no longer for him. It was too painful to bear. I understand. They couldn't protect his family. Yeah.

God. And his failure. Oh, I wonder why via now. We've got to get to. If we can't save one child from three, please, tire hippies. So he applied for and received an honorable discharge. Um, I will say I did get a good email that I liked that said calling Jeffrey McDonald

to Green Beret is like saying a bat boy plays for the Yankees. Yeah. So he was not an actual like karate chop green beret. He was not, you know, dying a throat cancer style. Like punches guys like I remember he will. You know, you know, you find that guy. But there is also I did find another correction that we got about military police about how it's its own role.

Like you don't get bumped down a military police. It's a whole thing. It's just a lot of times younger guys do it. And the lot of times you have to actually test very highly on your exams to get a position in the military police. Interesting. Yeah, you choose military police. However, it is also even though you, I mean, we've all tested high on exams at one point

in our life, but I'll choose snitch. Yeah, man. You mean, if you mean like to fucking be in high, you're an example. But we've also chosen the path of least resistance. So a lot of these guys from what the email said, like, yes, they do have to score very highly, but it is also a position in which the men who may not want to do a lot of work end up being performing to our military police listeners. I support you. That's very nice.

It's good job. Next time you're on a military base, you'll definitely get like the extra heave ho. Yeah, I just like the challenge going. But it's at this point that Jeffrey's narcissistic personality tendencies truly began to show because the more likely reason behind Jeffrey's exit from the army was the fact that being the only survivor of a triple murder made him very popular. And Jeffrey saw this as a chance to play the victim to his wide of an audience as possible. So he became like the forest gump shrimp and boat of family annihilators. I mean, basically, yeah, I'm left.

Acting as his own agent, Jeffrey would write to various magazines and newspapers offering to tell his story. Oh my God. Oh yeah, it is Fuck this guy is shut up. Yeah, I got a story. I can show you exactly how my daughter was laying down But what's important to know is that for the most part, Jeffrey story was not about surviving a brutal triple murder. It was not about his family at all. Rather, Jeffrey story was that he was wrongfully persecuted by the army. He made it all about him. You know, that's what I didn't like about the Sully movie. You know, the movie about you know, Sully, like, was just about the trial and how he like got off of the trial and they were like, oh, isn't it fucked up that there was a trial? It's like, he crashed a plate. Yeah. It needs to be a trial.

Are you wanting to be more about the geese? Yeah. That would be incredible. Like Lee Horvey Oswald Goose who's sitting there writing his manifesto. We like these fucking planes. They're fucking birds. He's just go to sit up. He in like pies the common cause he had bands. Just man like, I mean, he said fucking sky pigs down. The Jeffrey did contact local papers in North Carolina, as well as the Los Angeles Times. But interestingly, he also contacted Esquire, which if you'll remember, was the magazine

that inspired Jeffrey's false claim that a man's in like cult had invaded his house and murdered his whole family. I gotta tell you what, Esquire, honestly, without you, none of this would have been possible. It is just amazing. I just gotta thank God Esquire magazine and these two family murder in hand.

I think I need to contact better homes and gardens. So, I'm gonna clean up a crime scene. I'm gonna say it's up to you. But perhaps the most bizarre and visible media appearance occurred on a late night talk show hosted by the highly underrated dick-cavete. You know, we're talking about this thing. Unbelievable interviewer, it's four-scup.

I know, I remember, I also remember, I did watch, level one of your, it's four scum. I know. I remember, I also, I did watch, I remember one time, it was like the night after Woodstock where you had all the, it was like all the hippies were there and they were like, hang around and he's like, so tell me you get, was it like to be a rock and roll or a life stuff? So you still got mud on your shoes and it was like, it's like, you know, they're all sitting down like smoke and cigarettes. They're on the floor and stuff. That was back before hippies fucking ruined every single thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they all turned into shit, but I got a bunch of dick cavities. We should watch sometimes. I'd love to come over, I got a bunch of dick cavities. You want to do like rails? And then we'll toss on the dick cavities, and we'll do some mescaline.

I'll probably just have tea. Yeah, I'll join you. I'll bring over my Earl Grey blend. You guys really are not six. Five years old. You should go to like I want to be ready for when I know. Yeah. Oh, great tea hot years later. Cavett would describe being chilled by Jeffery's glib tone during the interview saying that specifically his affect was all wrong. That was the word that Dick C Cavett used was affect.

He was making jokes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Cavett approached the subject with sympathy and gravity, but McDonald answered his questions with a tone in Cavett's words, like he was fucking Bob Hope,

but affable, relaxed. He played the tragedy for laughs to the audience, saying that he was watching a late night talk show the night of the murders. Give him, you know, you know, when you're, you know, performing and doing comedy and you give that like signal to the audience, like joke, laugh. No, I'm not a hack. No, I've never done anything like that.

I don't mug. No, I never mug. But yeah, he gave that signal. And they did laugh, unconsciousably, but they laughed. But after Cavett asked Jeffrey to describe the night of the murders, if it wasn't too painful, this is what Jeffrey said. I can skim through it briefly to get deep into it. Does produce a lot of like a motion on my part. Yeah.

And McDonald Ben claimed that he sustained 23 wounds in the attack saying quote, you know, some of which they were potentially fatal. I could have died very easily. I was in an intensive care unit for several days and I had surgery. You know, I had chest tubes in my chest. I can't believe how strong I was. Honestly, and that's how I knew how weak my family was. Did you know that I punctured my own lung with a scalpel?

Oh, oh, oh, no, what's so foolish about this claim is that it was so easy to disprove. Jeffrey didn't sustain anywhere near 23 wounds during the attack, and he didn't come anywhere close to death. I mean, it was barely a minor inconvenience.

He would have gotten a fucking, he would have gotten worse entries from getting into a fender bender in his car. Yes. But it was that hubris that need to be seen as the victim in all of this. That would lead to Jeffrey's inevitable downfall. If we look at narcissistic personalities, however,

we know they're extraordinarily talented at distorting reality. So it is quite possible that Jeffrey came to convince himself that something close to his story actually happened. Well, the thing I keep hearing, especially from Errol Morris and other people, you know, like people who talk about this case, which is you hear it a lot in family annihilation stories, which is mean like there's no way that man who loved his kids would have ever killed his children. Like, like, what's the motivation? Always, right? Like in every crime story, you're trying to figure out when you're doing a police investigation, you're trying to figure out why, because, you know, at the very end, that helps you kind of point to who did it, you know, like who could be around the

person who did it blah, blah, blah. But thing about a lot of family annihilations is that there is no real reason why. Like there is, yes, there are certain factors. But as we talked about last time, be a fucking man and leave. Yeah. Get a bus ticket. Some place else. Like there's so many ways to not do this thing. Obviously, and so now we know a lot more. Chris, bring up Chris Watts again.

He has doubt countless videos of him loving on his kids and being super sweet and being engaged and fake smiling and a bunch of Facebook videos and shit. But it's like in the end, like he just wanted a new life. Well, when they say like so many times, like there's no way that that man ever annihilated his family. They said about Jeffrey McDonald, they said it about Watts. What those people don't realize is that they knew a person that did not exist.

They knew that they met a fake guy. Yeah, that person was wearing a mask in those videos when they were talking to their in-laws and they were talking to their friends. They were wearing a fucking mask. You had no idea who that person was. You really sometimes it's, that is the ultimate issue with stuff like that, especially if you're close.

It's that you don't fucking, you don't know anybody. Yeah. Anytime an entire family is murdered. And I don't fucking know you, man. I'm coming for you. Well, hey, honestly, I appreciate that. But anyone like anytime an entire family is murdered and the father is there and he's fine, he did it.

I like it. I like it. I like it. I's like, he's single, every single time. Like, you know, either the worst pussy on earth or you did it. Yeah. You know, it's book, again, but I also will say motivation is important. Yeah. So I understand why, like if there is no motivation, it is extremely confusing. And you can see why he's totally innocent. So I see more of the mud in this, this week, but I'm still kind of firmly

on the Jeffrey McDonald's. I mean, the motivation is he fucking popped his wife too hard. And he was, and she was like, probably convulsing or some shit. And he's like, Oh, fuck, now I got to kill everybody. Yeah. Or I'm going to go to jail. You never got to, though. Again, you don't got to. You go like, she fell on my bat. Like just like say something else. But at the very least, Jeffrey's narcissistic personality disorder guaranteed that he would never take responsibility for his crimes ever. Still to this day, saying, nope, I didn't do it. Now, after the article 32 here and concluded, Jeffrey McDonald and his lawyer, Bernie Siegel, launched what can only be described as a publicity campaign

beligning the military bureaucracy, saying that they'd put a grieving husband through needless torture while the real killers ran rampant. I've never heard that before. I've never heard that. But then he did try to go get him, right? Isn't that true? Well, we'll get to that area in a second. Well, probably so they could keep the story straight

and control the entire narrative themselves. Jeffrey and his lawyer told Jeffrey's father-in-law, Freddie Kassab, to stay out of it, asking him to not participate in further interviews to assure that Jeffrey's interests were, quote, unquote, protected. Yes. Now, this set off a tiny little alarm in Kassab's head.

The first of many. He also thought it was suspicious that Jeffrey was so eager to relive such a horrific night over and over again with the press. And remember, this interest is brought on by Jeffrey McDonald's behavior. What he is doing is like, according to that documentary kind of really put the timeline, is that Freddie was like, he said, we talked him in the front, the first episode was being like, honestly, if I had another daughter, I'd want her to marry Jeffrey. You know, I mean, like he loved Jeffrey and they were there for him.

And it was the dick-cavid interview where they sat and he watched him. And it was when he was making a lap. He was making all the laughs and doing all the shit. You should have been broken. You should have been a puddle of a man. It's just a thing. It's also again, you can't tell someone how they're supposed to react, but every time that person on earth doesn't talk to another human again as long as they live if their family's murdered by a bunch of hippies. Just don't go and get caveted and make

a bunch of jokes about it. Yeah. And to that point, it seemed to Freddie that Jeffrey was far more interested in doing interviews than in finding the real killers. Most of all though, Freddie found it strange that the army didn't pick up the investigation concerning his step-daughters and granddaughters murders after charges weren't brought against Jeffrey. But what Freddie didn't know was that the army realized that there was no point in further investigation because they'd taken their shot and they'd fucking missed. Yeah.

And any other attempt to find the real killers would have been a waste of time and resources. They'd rather go away than look like fucking idiots. Yes. I mean, you know, it's a part of it. Yeah. But there were two goddamn detectives who wouldn't let it go. But we'll get to them later. And so Freddie Kassab decided that if the army wasn't going to look into it and Jeffrey wasn't going to look into it, Freddie was going to do it himself. I love it. He just fuck this guy got his got tired. He's got tired his daughter's dead. You know, his kids are these grandkids of that. He's got nothing to do. Yeah. To begin with, Kasab went to Washington, DC and delivered 500 copies of an 11 page letter to Congress requesting a proper investigation apart from

the article 32 hearing to find and prosecute whoever was behind the murders. Now after Jeffrey recognized that it would be very bad for him if his father-in-law looked into the case himself, he came up with a cinematic story that he hoped would satiate Freddy Cassab's curiosity. McDonald told his father-in-law that he got together with a bunch of other green burrays and they tracked down one of the foreign truters after torturing him for information. They then killed him and as McDonald put it at guy six feet under. It depends on the more. The theology is actually because some people might say he's a thousand feet above.

But I honestly, we looked into it and the terminology that he used, which I thought he was a like, he's like, one down, three to go. Yeah. Good God. And they're like, you know, him like smoking, and pretend meanwhile like, he was barely a green beret. He was just, he was just in the department. He was a doctor.

Wouldn't it be great if he went to prison for that fake murder? Yeah. Oh no! I mean, like, as you can see, this smiling cat was murdered by Jeffrey. And Jeffrey then emphasized that the brave green braze were on the trail of the other three and they'd take care of it. The green beret way without all that liberal, namby, pamby due process.

Yeah. Now Freddie sort of said he's like, all right, like he really believe him. But after he saw Jeffrey on the dick cabbage show, he changed his mind completely about his former son-in-law. See what Freddie noticed most was that Jeffrey made no call to help find the real killers during the interview, no plea to call the authorities if anyone had any information that might lead to their arrest. Even the fucking Ramses always remember to do that. Oh yeah, and he's, it's really like, it shows a lot about himself.

Yes. Because again, it was all just about like, this is being done to me. Everything's being done to me. Can you believe this tragedy? He didn't bring up the kids. He didn't bring believe this tragedy? He didn't bring up the kids. He didn't bring up his wife. He didn't bring up fucking anything.

Yeah. Kasab was also flabbergasted by Jeffrey's claim that he'd suffered 23 stab wounds. Kasab knew this wasn't true because he'd visited McDonald in the hospital right after the murders. He saw that Jeffrey had barely suffered a scratch. It was at this point that Kasab realized that the real killer have been sitting in front of him the whole time, lying from the word go and saying whatever it was that Freddie Kassab wanted to hear

to make Jeffrey McDonald not the killer. You know, you fucking puked. Yeah, it's like immediate. What's like, they showed in the documentary of him taking all the pictures down in the house, like all the, all the wedding pictures, every single thing with them and just like throwing in a big fucking trash bag, like cutting them out of everything. And then he did it the old fashioned Henry Zabowski research way, which I do miss sometimes. I miss smoking and reading, but he just sit down with his three packs a day, bottle of fucking scotch and let the scotch do the reading.

As soon Kasab obtained a transcript from the interrogation, the McDonald's had flubbed so badly and read all the inconsistencies that the CID investigators had pointed out once Jeffrey gave them enough rope to hang himself with. Kasab then requested and received the full investigation that had been conducted by the army. Again, even with the mistakes, Kasab found that the version of events that he had been presented by his son-in-law had been a total fabrication, and that the story that he had been wrongfully persecuted had been a bold-faced, narcissistic lie. It was at that point that Kasab realized that the person he thought he'd been close

with all these years, the person that he'd prized as a son-in-law, the person he'd defended in court, did not exist at all. At least not in this form, because especially when he realized that he was having on affairs. He was having multiple affairs. We'll talk about all that. We'll get all that shit. And so Cassabh began working directly with the authorities, reviewing reports and making notes where he could provide more accurate information and where he could sharpen certain details. With new blood in the investigation, Jeffrey was brought back in for questioning under the guise of finding the real killers. And he was there. And definitely it has nothing

to do with OJ Simpson. I imagine OJ Simpson being right next to him, being like, got done with his hurts like commercial. The first time in a ride. And like, you need help looking for real killers? I have a feeling. Well, specifically, the cops wanted to ask him about Helena Stokely, the burnout hippie that we mentioned at the end of the last episode.

Police had obtained a photo of Helena and tried to get Jeffrey to trip up on an about Helena Stokely, the burnout hippie that we mentioned at the end of the last episode. Police had obtained a photo of Helena and tried to get Jeffrey to trip up on an identification concerning the floppy-hatred woman. The floppy-hatred woman must leave. Jeffrey of course stayed slippery. He said, quote, I probably sound like I'm avoiding the issue, but not from the photograph. I can't do that.

There are a number of reasons. Assuming she was there, the conditions and the shortness of my being there, right? She was least likely for me to be able to identify. I would say that out of the four I saw, the four people, others, she's the least likely. I know I was seeing blonde hair, you know? For instance, it really does. When you look at the face, I would say not from this.

The nose looks really prominent here. It looks like you would remember that it was right away. You know, if you saw it, I just had the impression that I was looking at a much smaller narrower nose. It's very bulbous. It looks very prominent, but you know,

but I get a weird feeling. I get an uncomfortable feeling. Looking at her face, I just don't know. I feel bad for this woman. Just say, everybody's roasting her. Yeah, it is as a huge dose. The thing is, it's obviously crazy. Also in this documentary, Helena Stokely

is constantly talked as her face looked like it had been gathering years, five years in a bunch. You know, I mean, like, Jesus Christ. And you're like, you had a lot of miles on her. Yeah, 25 going on 80. I'm from North Korea. Now, Helena Stokely have been questioned literally hundreds of times by investigators, just like every other person who even approached to be appearance in the vicinity of Fayetteville

and Fort Bragg. But like everyone else, questioning Helena was just due diligence, and she, nor any of the others, were considered a serious suspect at any point. To highlight that fact, even after Stokely told a friend that she remembered being covered in blood the night of the murders. And her friend called the FBI, say, hey, Helena, my friend, Helena said she remembered being covered in blood the night of the McDonald murders. FBI said, okay.

Yeah. Thanks. We're a lightly thank you for the tip and didn't follow up because they knew Helena Stoke, we had nothing to do with that. She's just looking for attention. Yes, she's looking for attention and she's looking. She's one of those people pleasers. That's how people, and a lot of times

like people who make false confessions, that's how they're always described. Like this is a person that wants to please whoever's in front of them and they will say anything to gain the admiration, you know, the pride of the person sitting in front of them, especially if that person is an authority figure. When she was a known quantity to some of the local police because she was a police informant. So it's like a lot of what she did do is like she sold out all of her best friends.

She did a bunch of kind of shady shit. This entire story is about unreliable people. It's like, there are all of these people you cannot really pin down. And especially her because she was already kind of in and out. Like, she did tell her best friend in roommate. Like, you know, she did say her roommates and like, she borrowed Oblahn wig and a floppy hat. And there was like, all this kind of like weird mystery inside of the Helena Stokely

story. That's kind of really where wilderness of error is really like in on, you know, like Almoris is really concerned with the Helena Stokely story, which I do understand. Because it's the thing like why does she keep popping up? Why does she confess? We can't confess, we can't like, I don't know. At the very end, she kind of just said, I was sort of like kind of already involved in the police. So the everyone was kind of being like, Hey, don't be around this story anymore. You're unreliable. But then again, she's unreliable.

Do fucking us. I just don't believe that she had three friends. There were more like a team. There's a team, but she blamed it all on a guy named Greg Mitchell. That was a psychopath Vietnam that that she said that just couldn't turn it off. Yeah. Well, all that is to say the authorities were still laser focused on Jeffrey McDonald as was Freddie Kassab. Freddie soon flew to Fayetteville and met with a CID investigators who still wanted to help take McDonald down to guys named Jack Pruitt and Peter Kerr. Peter Kerr.

Mustering up an incredible amount of strength. Kasab went to 544 Castle Drive with the two investigators to recreate McDonald's steps, according to his testimony in the very unit where his stepdaughter and grandchildren had been killed. And imagining a man that is very similar to Mushnik from Little Shop of Horses. That what he looks like.

Oh, yeah, he's a fun guy. He looks like what I hope to be. I mean, Pinky Ring, got a good about a chain. He's a long island guy. He's a long island guy. He looks good. He looks good. But it's like imagining this like 50 year old long island but jeweled man doing a full

on Eddie Murphy style act out of the entire scenario. It must have been kind of fun. I mean, I hope they filmed it. I mean, that's good. Yeah. So we didn't mention it this last episode, but Jeffrey made two phone calls that night to emergency services. The first was to 9-1-1, but the operator told him that since he was on four bragg, he

needed to call those authorities for help That was just policy But Jeffrey claimed that in between the first call and the second call which occurred two minutes later there are records He looked outside for the intruders Checked on his wounds in the bathroom and washed his hands because remember There was no blood on either phone He said he then checked the pulses on three bodies that were all soaked in blood. He claimed to have attempted mouth to mouth resuscitation on his wife.

He claimed to have crawled to the kitchen, washed his hands again, then finally called the MPs with his weak performative message. And this all was supposedly done in two minutes. I mean, that's for day. Oh, if I ever, when I have a heart attack in front of you guys, no, cool, good mouth to mouth for at least three to four minutes. I'll be there. Yeah, press it.

Yeah, yeah. I'll make sure that your chest is good and crushed. Yeah. By the end of the process, just to make sure you're dead. I don't want to do that. I don't know how to do it. It's interesting because you could see, he left blood all over the sink, right?

They know they had blood over the sink. They had blood in the kitchen, outside where the circuitry gloves were, right, where he went and found it. But they don't have any, like, in between, there's no blood. Also, when he started doing the, like they asked a bunch of weird questions, right?

Like the lights were off in the room when the kids were in there, lying dead. So you need to tell me, so he'd go in, like they're like just kind of human things. So he would turn the light on. Do mouth-to-mouthers have presentations on the kids. First of all, then they were still found laying on their sides.

Why are they not on their backs? So then he'd leave. He shut the light off. Do you go back and forth between all these things? And then turn the light on and turn the light off to go back in? Is that what he's doing? And then with the wife, they said the same thing.

When he was doing the mouth-to-mouth, he said the same thing when he was doing the mouth, the mouth, he said, I can't do it because the wind is coming out of her chest. Bob, blah, blah. She had no chest wounds. So that's another weird ass like why you say in that then because that's not real either. Yeah.

And there's also the fact that the room was dark when he was supposedly woken up. And they try it out. It's like, okay, let's see like what it looks like in here when all the lights are turned off. And there's no way that he could have identified for a salience with the amount of detail that he identified them in a near pitch dark room.

And that's the thing, is that Cassabe and the investigators, they were suspicious about this flurry of activity. You know, especially considering the claims that Jeffrey was making about his own state of health at this time, 23 stab wounds. And so they attempted to run through those steps between the two phone calls several times and found that it was physically impossible to do so in just two minutes. Maybe it's because they're not the fastest man within 10 feet like you. You're quick. You're not fast. That's the idea. Yeah. Quick

ankles. I have good lateral movement. I don't need to do a long haul run. I just need to be as fast as possible to tire a man out until he murders me and then Natalie will complete the actual defending of herself. Because again, that's our rules. Your rule is to buy time. I know. I know. I'm in the human shield.

He's the ropedo. He's the one that gets him tired and then I make them all finish. I'm throwing props at him. You know, I'm like hiding and that's why gold. My goal is to have places trap doors go underneath in a tunnel pop out on the other side. They don't know I'm all of here like roof. You know from look. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you're more like with the fact that you love a putting on his face.

By the way, how is work in the lolly pop kill? They're concerning the struggle Jeffrey had and the screams he claimed to have heard from his children. Here's another kicker. The McDonald's didn't live in a single occupancy home. What? They had upstairs neighbors who could hear the murmurs of normal conversations from the McDonald residents during just everyday conversation. So it would have been impossible

for the supposed struggles and screams to have gone unnoticed that night. It's different entrants though, right? Probably an interesting thing. I would imagine so. I don't know the full layout of the house, but I do know that they had upstairs neighbors. You can't get away with this shit,

but upstairs neighbors. I mean, unless you live in New York City where you are trained to ignore screams. Yes. You hear screams and hear stuff and you just kind of live in your own bubble because we're living in these apartments that have super thin walls. You hear every word that everybody says and you just learn that you have to, it's like that. It's the cause of America, but it's with your neighborhood. Yeah, well, and it's also just terribly annoying. Oh, yeah. You just have to get used to it. The people who lived above me and rid you of it, it was just like a bunch of children.

Yeah. There was a never-sign adult. There was like 20 children in that apartment. A 20 children, it would legally make up three adults. So if you can get someone in there and a full apartment, eventually they will get a lease. Now, the investigators in Freddie Kassab tested a whole host of Jeffries claims and found that none of them made sense. And by the end of it, all three were entirely convinced that Jeffrey McDonald had murdered his family. But since McDonald was now civilian, it was now in the hands of

the Justice Department, meaning that CID investigators, prudent and currants couldn't bring the charges back to the military authorities, bringing this case to the Department of Justice was going to take time and patience. But Freddie Cassab, using his best detective movie grimace, said quote, I'm only 52 years old. Besides, I got the patience of Job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh. That's a long book in the Bible. Hey, you read this Joe book. It's fucking sad. Now to strengthen the case, Prudent Kerns began investigating McDonald's background and found he was not the person that he had presented himself to be to those closest to him. See, Jeffrey not only cheated on his wife, but he actually dated the women that he cheated with. What a waste of time.

What's the point? No, I was just, he just wanted to. Yeah. It made him feel big because that was Jeffrey McDonald's whole thing, is that he had to feel mad. He had such a need to feel masculine at all times that he had to prove. It's like, oh, yeah, I can fuck whoever I want. And only that these women want to fuck me.

I can fuck this girl. I can fuck that girl. My fucking wife. She don't know shit. She's sitting back home. She's making me dinner. That's what a wife's supposed to be fucking doing. See?

He looks like he hums when he fucks. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh, John. Oh. Oh, completed.

Silence now. And he's got a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit Oh, completed. Silence now. Eddie's got a shirt on that says like, I, all the food wants me to eat it. Yeah, I didn't write it down. I'm like, you're fucking ass. Well, by the end of it, they'd found relationships with a nurse, a Swedish exchange student, a 16 year old babysitter, a 19 year old daughter of another colleague that he was, quote unquote, teaching to learn how to drive. Yeah, it was stick shift.

Oh, yeah, good. Well, I didn't murder my family. That's fun. That's fun. And he was fucking the wife of a special forces sergeant. The Jeffrey was supposed to be counseling for marital problems. Jesus Christ. Doesn't even look like a attractive man. No, Dr. Yeah, he's a doctor. They love doctors. People love doctors. Yeah. Yeah, they'd counts for a lot. Especially for some reason, it counted a lot more like in the 60s, 70s and 80s. He looks like one of the Nazis from the Blues Brothers.

Who's also discovered that immediately after the murders, immediately, Jeffrey began a sexual relationship with a civilian working at Fort Bragg, who said they had sex dozens of times before the relationship ended. The investigators also soon discovered the reason why Jeffrey had been taking the diet pills. Yes. And that's the one thing. Errol Morris, he believes that the eschatrol storyline is like too much.

Is it he thinks it's dubious? He's just one of those rates like where in fatal vision, he kind of puts it a lot of weight on the medication. Well, he waits until the end to really talk about the eschatrol. He doesn't put, he doesn't talk about it a ton throughout the narrative, but at the end, it's like, there's this thing like, okay, here's everything that eschatrol can do to you. But he was way more like, you know, they, I don't think it takes speed. Does it necessarily make you kill your family.

It doesn't necessarily. Sometimes it makes you make the musical New York New York because Martin Scorsese was a misstep and he said he did blame cocaine for the entire process. Well, I mean, I understand where Omooris is coming from because he's very concerned with justice, like the rule of the law, you know. So probably on him, Fedamines himself,

he's like, I get, you know, I get to be compared to this guy. I just had it. This is a guy who had like a fucking, who him and Werner Herzog, like, dared each other to go dig up Edgine's grave. Like, God, I love that. I just love Errol Morris, though. I love Errol Morris. Like, it's a, it's a heaven that movie is incredible.

Oh, yeah, he's unbelievable. Check out everything. Yeah, everything. But he's very much, you know, of the opinion of, there's right, there's wrong and he's very much, you know, of the opinion of there's right, there's wrong and there's the law, you know, and we'll get later to the trial. But he's also very much a believer in like the constitutional fact that every American is deserving of a fair trial, a fair trial. Yeah. It's a baseline. The baseline is you can walk in there and matter what anybody said you've done or what you could exonerate yourself if the evidence is there. That's the mark of a good documentariat. Yes, of course.

And I chew objectivity and we're not objective here. No, highly subjective. No, I'm going to use the word speculation a lot today. And I see what he's saying, like as the the amphetamines, the es-control, we are speculating when we're talking about this. Yes. We don't know for sure. We are speculating. We are extrapolating from the facts, but of course that wouldn't necessarily hold up in a court of law. Yeah, we're speculating that he put the mean in infetabi. You, thank you. That's really cute. That's really really cute. For this story, it's like hard to write a cute joke. Yeah, it is. It is. It's like how you can't kill a child with kindness.

Nope. Yeah. See, Jeffrey had joined the Fort Bragg boxing team and wanted to make weight. So he needed to drop pounds fast. Back before the murders, Jeffrey told his wife that he was doing so well, so quickly on this Fort Bragg boxing team that he was going to be sent to Russia to box the communist. One by one. I find the toilet paper line.

I had each one because I know they're weak because they got a shit and they're waiting to get it right now. I go over to the canned chicken line and I beat him up one by one because I know the a downgrade. This is years before Rocky IV, by the way, the thing is like, this of course was another lie and was most likely a cover for Jeffrey to spend an extended amount of time away from the family that he was beginning to resent even more after his wife's accidental pregnancy. Never forget. She was pregnant when he murdered her. That's right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I tried to forget it. Yeah. No, I am. I am letting you. Was that it? But that he was never charged with that murder. No, no, no. You know what? People aren't always charged with the murder of a fetus. Really? Interesting. Good to know. Good to know.

Yeah. Nice. We're all right. Yeah. Good to know. Yeah, nice. We're all right. Yeah. Ha. Another interesting clue as to why Jeffrey may have decided to annihilate his family came from the child's psychology course his wife, Collette, was taking at the time of the murders.

Investigators found her notes and found that she paid special attention to classes that focused on the development of narcissistic personalities. Collette wrote notes on how children respond and adapt to their environments, particularly how they can fall into denial and distortions of reality, which are two marks of a narcissistic personality. In other words, it seems as if puzzle pieces

were starting to fall into place for Collette when it came to her husband's behavior over the years. They should have burned the house down. No. Yeah, he really should have. Really good advice. That's really important. He can't rid everything very, very good.

But then of course, there's the neighbors upstairs. That's a problem. There's no need. What's it going to wear with it? It's going to kill fucking four people. Yeah, what's the matter? What's your own? They're going to smell the smoke.

They're going to run out. Yeah, yeah. And if not, and for a penny and for a pound pound, if you're gonna, if you're gonna stick a fucking ice pick into your toddler's neck nine times, what do you care about the people upstairs? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're just trying to save the lamps. Yeah, you're trying to get a security deposit back. When you put all this together, though, from Jeffries, obvious lie about boxing in Russia to Colette's newfound understanding of what Jeffrey was really like behind the mask. It's possible that a confrontation may have resulted in a murderous snap reaction.

Well, she definitely called her parents at some point and said, oh, guess it was like a couple of weeks before the murder happened and said, can we come up and stay with you? And they said, it's not a good time. And so she obviously they did. You know, that fucking haunts. Oh they said, it's not a good time. And so she did, obviously they didn't. You know, that fucking haunts you. Yeah, the rest are lives. But they, so something was going on, but she, they didn't want any, we gotta remember,

this is the height of go along to get along. Yeah. This is 1970. Like this is before things started like breaking, it was still kind of like a hangover, a hippie culture that was mixed in with the 1950s. The hair, everybody looked like a fucking Labrador.ador, like it was all of the hair was bad, but that hair helped cover up a lot of crimes. So they think that people just thought they wanted things to be copacetic and they felt

it was embarrassing for people to know their personal issues. Yeah. Often, I don't know if it seems like it's one of those things, especially within family units. Well, Collette was a little more open with it. Like she would talk to people in her class, like, hey, there's something like they'd ask, like, hey, are you okay?

Because obviously, they knew obviously something was going on in her home. She's like, my husband's personality is changing. I don't know what to do about it. Yes. Or maybe it wasn't that his personality was changing. Maybe it was just that she was starting to see him for who he really was.

Maybe sick of him being an asshole. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But of course, all of this was only useful in building a psychological profile on Jeffrey. And that could of course only be used as speculation. Luckily for investigators, though, new avenues of forensic evidence were discovered. Inconsistencies were found in the ice pick holes of the pajama top. Those holes were neat where they should have been ragged. If you're fighting somebody and they're stabbing at you with an ice pick, they're not going to poke little neat holes. It's going to be rips.

Oh, there's a, there's a very famous scene in the movie that comes from the trial where they showed how those things could be made. So they did an act out, which again, there must be the funnest part about being a lawyer at all, like doing those act outs. Being like, we remember when they did it with Gwen Paltrow with the ski incident, when she tried, they would try to get her to get out. All of the other team was trying to get her to come out and be like, will you act out the scenario with us? And she's like, they pay me $15 million to do that. So she wouldn't do it. But they were at the pajama top around their arms. And they had another guy with an ice pick in the middle of the trial stab it at him with the ice pick and he showed number one

are their tears in it. But while he was fucking doing it, he stabbed the dude in the fucking arm during the representation. So you can see like he would have had some form of attack wound, some defense move. Yes, it's very interesting. Yeah. Well, also's very interesting. Yeah. Well, also they found rips in the victims clothing that were supposedly made by the dull knife. Those are all those also should have been messy.

They should have been ragged, but they were clean and they were sharp. Even more damning was Jeffrey's claim that he pulled a knife out of his wife's chest, which explained why his fingerprints were on the knife. It was soon proved that the knife had not been used to kill Collette, but it'd rather been used to murder Jeffrey's daughters. How did they know? Because every single member of the McDonald household had a different blood type. So they could look and see, they could check and see where every single blood. So they could map out the crime scene completely by where each blood piece of bloods better was.

It's got no research. Well, it's always being prepared. It's interesting because that was kind of a coincidence too, because at this time period, there's no DNA. There's none of that shit. You can't really. So the fact that they each had their own individual marker was like. It was incredibly lucky.

Yes. And on it went from the fact that Jeffrey's wound had own individual marker was like, it was incredibly lucky. Yes. And on it went from the fact that Jeffrey's wound had obviously been made by a scuffle to the pajama top that was found to have been spattered with callets blood before Jeffrey laid it on top of her blood soap corpse. Most disturbing, however, was the statement that came from Jeffrey McDonald's own sister, Judy. She said that Jeffrey became aggressive and angry when he didn't get his way and that Jeffrey was absolutely capable of killing someone if

he was provoked. Sometimes with sisters, you can't trust them because my sister got risk removed from our home because I was blamed for creating a toxic environment around the board game situation in the Zopraski household. I believe her guy you I I will go to family court. I'd show that I was undermined. All right, because she didn't understand the rules. No, and she didn't understand like, oh, you want to do your stupid thing where you base all your fucking bullshit in Australia and I can't get at you. Well, then you better. Oh, man, we all know

that you jerked off with the family computer. I had to. No, as did I. We're just like, I go, we all, yeah, we all jerked off with a family computer. See, I had my, I had stuff in my room. Hey, I had the Playboy channel. See, I, let's the thing. That's privilege. I actually, I mean, I had a whole, I mean, I had VHS tapes, multiple VHS tapes. I had magazines, but then that's the things that there was still like the lure of the internet because there's more. Oh yeah. I was already tired of all the stuff I already had.

I sure terrified. I took it off to the TV guy. Really? Oh yeah, anything. Which issue? I was remembering that Jenny McCarthy issue. Yeah. Yeah.

Well later, Judy McDonald would even testify against her own brother, adding that he was abnormally judgmental of others, reserving specific disgust for smokers and sloppy eaters. Oh, I think I didn't know. Hold him. Nearly 20 times. You hold it.

Don't. Jeffrey McDonald, however, didn't know that any further investigation was being done. He'd since moved to the upper east side of Manhattan and joined forces with a physician named Dr. Broadway. It's me. Hello, you have cancer. I hate a doctor with a nickname. I know. I don't like it.

You know, because that's why I always respected doctors is more. Oh, yeah. Because doctors is more he could have gone by Dr. Pimple Popper. He could have gone by Zitman. Dr. Z. No, doctors is more. Yeah. He's out there. He's going to fix your fucked up face. I think he went down for like tax evasion or something. Really? Yeah, I think doctors is more is like in pimple jail. He got popped. Yeah. So he didn't go out and blaze a glory like Barnes. Yeah. I look up doctors is more. I haven't thought about him in a long time.

Continue. Well, mostly, mostly Dr. Broadway treated actors and made house calls to quote provide tranquilizers for agitated actresses. Oh, he's terrified. Oh, no, I'll just read it right now. Jonathan says more. He retired in 2016 in order to study the Talmud full time. Oh, that's perfect.

It's actually really nice. That's really nice. Well, McDonald even became a bit of a socialite, entertaining people like the Countess, Christina Peiolozy, who lived off blood money squeezed from the people of South America as an ares to the United Fruit Company, one of the most evil corporations to ever exist. I know nothing about them, but I believe you. Thank you. United Fruit Company, I believe that is the company that basically went and took over all

of like inner Mexico and South America. It was more like Venezuela, like more central America, like you know, Central America. You know the term banana republic? Yeah. It comes from the United Fruit Company. It comes. You know where you get your knit belts? I love my knit belts. But yeah, it comes out like they basically took over and in tire country and enslaved a

bunch of people to pick bananas. It's now called Chiquita. Cool. Yeah. I love bananas. Yeah, I know it's all hard. It's all hard thing. Yeah. I'm fucking peel this microphone right now. Very expensive. Right? So we already took the headphones out of here. I don't know what happened. Yeah. I don't know what I don't know what happened either, but maybe on a future

side story's episode, we can get you. We can get you to do your new favorite monkey movie rundown because we haven't talked to you about monkey movies in a real long time. I imagine you got some new favorite. I love school, uh, school island. We're not going to do it right now. Not one big banana in the whole movie. You, you got him going. Look at Boka. I think it was caught. You know that that was a producer's note. You need to tell me we got this whole monkey film. Not one banana. How is eating? What is he doing? There's not one monkey bed. We're not going to see him smoke a cigarette.

We wouldn't just evil aerosols that he was inviting over. He had fucking Walter Cronkite come over to his house once. It's really because John Holmes same thing. A lot of like people are really into to I would say the term is transgressive culture. You know, like, idea of hanging out with something like that, especially the time is super like, ooh, not tea. I'm hanging out with him. Oh, did he kill his family? I don't know. Pass the Canapas. Oh, yum. He probably just wanted to be interviewed again. I mean, I think he was just angling. Yeah. Just like in the

nation. Like a potential. Well, put simply, Jeffrey MacDonald was spending just about as much time searching for the real killers as OJ Simpson spent while he was filming his long forgotten straight to video prank show juice. Hey, there's a lot of downtime on set. Yeah. All right. It is mostly hurry up and wait.

There's plenty of time to go look for killers, especially if it's within a 20 foot circle of a trail. You see recently, OJ said he has come back to Los Angeles because he's scared he'll run into the murderers? I guess that three stoogeous movie, he's gonna like bump into him, like they're gonna be holding a big plate glass. And then, who are the things gonna happen?

Perhaps the most heartbreaking episode though, just before Jeffrey's prosecution began, was when Jeffrey's mother Dorothy visited Freddie Kassab and his wife in February of 1972. Over the course of two hours, the Kassab slowly and patiently explained all the facts that proved her son had murdered his family. After listening in silence, Jeffrey's mother simply stood up, went home, and never spoke with the Kassab's again. It's a good mother.

Yeah, shutters up. Yeah. And soon after she moved out to California to be close to her Jeffrey, I think that my mom would literally fake evidence to get me out of her murder. Oh, for sure. And I'd be like, stop this. Yeah. She'd be like, I don't worry.

I got the ketchup. I don't worry. But even after investigators, prudent, Kernes presented a 3000 page report to the DOJ that included the pursuit of leads in 32 states, Vietnam, Okinawa, Germany, and Puerto Rico. And that's in addition to 34 lab reports, 699 interviews, 151 sworn statements, even after all that, the DOJ just sat on the case. But possibly the DOJ was reluctant to bring more bad press to the military while new testimonies were coming in at a seemingly constant basis concerning reprehensible behavior perpetrated

by a small number of soldiers on the battlefields of Vietnam. This is 1972. I mean, the troop wind down is still, like I think a year away, when they really started winding down troops and just started bombing the fuck out of Vietnam, all the time. But you know, it's about,

it's three years after me lie, people haven't quite forgotten about that yet. And you've got, you know, and you've of course got these vets to help these press conferences all the time. So the army does not want bad press. No, at all. And fuck it down with it.

Well, I mean, they're already dealing with it because it's also the first time anyone seeing televised evidence of war and seeing these things. So investigative reporters are showing these, the actual murders happen in corpses. They've never had this type of access before or the ability to show what really goes on in a wartime. And so on one side, you have the kind of the the jingoistic aspect of like our buzz are going to go out there and deal with it. And then you go actually see the evidence that it's just like extremely horribly complex. Macalb. The horror show that we're all in the middle also extremely disorganized. It was just it won't good. Yeah.

I mean, me lie was filmed. Yeah. It was one of the worst like war crimes ever perpetrated by, you know, the American military and it was filmed and the dudes were fine with it. That's how insane that type of shit was. And the second one was Avatar 2. Coming for you, Cameron. Finding no help in the DOJ, Kassab tried forcing their hand by going public with an extensive

interview to Newsweek. After still no action was taken, Kassab leaked information explicitly making Jeffrey complicit in the murders to the New York Daily News. With that, after various court battles, bad of the case back and forth York Daily News. With that, after various court battles batted the case back and forth because nobody wanted to touch it, North Carolina finally agreed to prosecute Jeffrey McDonald for all three murders after two years of trying to get this thing to trial. And in August, in 1974, a grand jury was convened. And that was, by the way, four years after the crime had occurred. Crazy. It takes that long.

Now, Jeffrey did not do well during his grand jury testimony. While it seemed as if the article 32 attorneys got knocked off balance by Bernie Siegel's stellar defense, the prosecution now had quite a bit more information on McDonald and they knew what was coming Trying to show Jeffrey's more temperamental side Prosecutorial attorney Victor war Heidi question. It's great name. Yeah, we're Heidi war Heidi You think they call them war Heidi Yeah, then he's gonna be like you all good dogs. I'm I prosecute you I prosecute you But if you was in the army, I'd that's how my life is. I prosecute you. I prosecute you.

But if you was in the army, I'd bet they called him Warthog. Oh, sure, yeah. He questioned Jeffrey about his relationship with his in-laws. McDonald, of course, said that they were out to get him because he was moving on with his life, calling Mildred Kasab Bazaar and Freddie an alcoholic fanatic. But after Jeffrey's tense testimony,

75 more witnesses took the stand who tore McDonald's story to pieces. The surgical resident at the emergency room where Jeffrey was treated so that he was not in shock at all that night. And his wounds were superficial and the so-called punctured lung was made by a clean, small, sharp incision done in such a way so as to not permanently damage or even seriously harmed along. And would you even fucking believe the guy didn't compliment me? Like how nice I had done that. Like because seriously, it's difficult to do. I had just killed my children.

I mean, yeah, what's the last time you poked your own lungs? A neighbor then testified that she heard Collette and Jeffrey arguing the night of the murder. They said they heard Collette say something to the effect of, what do you think I'm going to be doing while you're doing all this? Standing around here doing nothing? Now, this is pure speculation on my part, but I think the argument was about Jeffrey's lie concerning the nonexistent boxing trip to Russia. And Collette, using her newfound knowledge of narcissistic personalities, had finally had

enough of his shit. Unless you found out something about an affair, might have. Because there were several of them. So many of them. Next the prosecution brought in a Fayetteville newspaper reporter who was apparently an expert on drug terminology, drug culture, and trip behavior. It's good on cool cats. How loozyd hanging.

You catching madr drift. I'm currently on acid. It's like his eyes are just too hypnosis spirals. He started by saying that he couldn't think of a single head as they were called at the time. Yeah, they call themselves heads, these people who do acid. Yeah, he said they would never be quote, so uncool as to say the sentence acid is groovy. So you need to tell me that I'm fucking like, like a lit expert, like literally like a trail expert coming and being like, no one says groovy anymore. Yeah. It's hilarious. They really did. Like a guy who knew the youth culture. Furthermore, the reporter said,

quote, for people who are doing acid couldn't organize a trip to the toilet. Let alone murder three people. Dude, I remember taking acid going to Disney World, you know, like trying to, I just give people my money and hope I got ice cream back. You know, like, you can't do anything. Yeah, it's like, how many rides did you make it on? Oh, I, all of the,

I was the fuck about, I went back with another guy because he heard about how good of a time we had, and then he got the fear, and then I couldn't go on anything because it's a fucking trip, it's a multi-time. It really does, because also acid comes in waves, that you take it and it goes away, and you start tripping for a while,

then you kind of, you're like, is it over, and then it comes back. And every time it comes back, the worse you get at things like taxes, planning and alibi. You just want to have fun. That's it. That's all you want to do. I know we've met some mean.

We've met some crazy mean people on acid. Like I've seen some people get crazy on acid, but it's not an organized crazy. You don't immediately become the riddler. Yeah. The worst thing I ever did was try to free my roommates' dogs. Again, I don't even know from what? From the constraints of the house. Jesus Christ.

Her wild. They need to be free. They didn't want to go anywhere. They loved it. Yeah, you're just looking at you being like, you're on ass. You can't even see your own prison bars anymore, man. This is where my food is. My daddy's here.

Well, the cool expert closed by saying that LSD does not normally make people violent, but a drug that was amphetamine-based could certainly have that effect. And now that I have the attention to the court, I'd like to drop a little scat. Wow. Objection. Requests the scat he's stricken from the record. Do not bring those bongos in here. Can we actually read that back? It's not for skibbady dad.

Skibbady dad. It's a bad scat. He's doing bad scat. Skibbady scat. But once the grand jury heard from an FBI forensic scientist named Paul Stombaugh, the prosecution laid out what they believed was what really happened that night between Jeffrey McDonald and his family. The attack they surmised most likely began in the master bedroom.

There, McDonald struck his wife, Collette, during an argument, knocking her down and blooding her nose. During the ensuing struggle, Collette fetched the club from the utility closet and ineffectively struck Jeffrey, producing the aforementioned bump on the noggin. Quite quickly, Jeffrey rested the club from Collette's grip, but struck his daughter, Kimberly F. and then went to the gym to get her to the gym. And then, she went to the gym, and then went to the gym.

And then, she went to the gym, and then went to the gym. And then, noggin. Quite quickly, Jeffrey rested the club from Collette's grip, but struck his daughter, Kimberly first, splattering her blood in the doorway, and likely killing her instantly. And of course, they knew that blood was Kimberly's because every member of the Donald Household had a different blood type. But while Jeffrey was murdering his daughter, Collette went to the kitchen and grabbed the dull knife, but was instead beaten temporarily unconscious with the club. Jeffrey then picked up his daughter's corpse and took her to bed, where he beat her with the club even more.

Collette at this point may have regained consciousness enough to run to her toddler's room in a last-it-jeffered to save her last surviving daughter. But it was there that Jeffrey used the club again, breaking Collette's arms as she tried to defend herself. But after beating her most likely to death right then and there in front of her child, Jeffrey carried her back to the master bedroom and went to the kitchen. There, he put on the surgical gloves the family used to wash dishes. It's likely at this point that he caught his breath

and concocted his backstory. Still wearing surgical gloves, he wrote the word pig on the headboard, then removed the glove quickly, leaving behind the torn finger that we talked about in the last episode. Yes. But in order to sell it, and I mean really sell it, Jeffrey realized that he had to be the only survivor.

So he grabbed the ice pick and murdered his toddler last, then took the weapon to the other two corpses for good measure. Finally, he took off his pajama top and stabbed that with the ice picks to sell his story without thinking that there would be no wounds to match the holes. I think he just hoped that people would take his word for it. Yes. And they would like to see the holes. There are holes here. Yes. He then hooked most of the weapons out of the back door into the bushes, called

nine one one, called the MPs and laid down next to his dead wife as he waited to tell his story. We'll say though, at some point during this and a wilderness of error, there is like a little note that it's like, I don't know if they ever corroborated this, but the idea that this is where Helena Stokeley's like story is trying to like getting inserted into this whole thing, or she's trying to say apparently at some point that there was a phone call to the apartment during the murders and that she picked up the phone. There was a witness who said that he called like, and again, it wasn't ever entered into the trial, but there was a witness that said, I called a woman picked up a phone, giggled while hearing things were on the other line. He was

looking for Jeffrey McDonald's. We'll get to what she actually said, why she thought that he was involved in this, but it's just this weird thing where it's like, then there was no, but we never really got a call record. We never found an opening that was put into place. But then that's probably because there were some errors in the trial, but we'll get there. Yeah, we'll definitely get there. Well, after all that was laid out in court, Jeffered McDonald was brought back one more time at the end. So all the evidence could be laid out before him.

This time, McDonald was hostile and it times sarcastic, defending the life he led after the murders, while also making sure that everyone knew that he had a lot of sex all the time. I've stopped a lot of women. And it doesn't mean anything to me. It is never meant anything to me. It's been very easy for me my whole life.

I haven't chased one girl in California and I must have slipped the 30s since I've been there because I didn't spend the rest of my life, you know, praying on the graves, you tell me I don't love my family and that means I must have killed them. That's not true So I just said I didn't kill Kale And I didn't kill Kimmy and I didn't kill Christy and I didn't move Kale and I didn't move Kame and I didn't kill Christie and I didn't move Collette and I didn't move Kimmy And I didn't move Christie and I gave them out the mouth Breathing and I love them then then and and I love them now and you can show shove your fucking evidence right up You're fucking ass that is direct quote he told them you in his own grand jury hearing you can shove all your fucking evidence Right up your ass.

And the lawyers were like, God, it's just like when you're defending yourself from killing your family, don't talk about how much fucking you do. I know. Well, he can't help it. Hey, it's just like, he's like, I'm a father for a reason. Yeah. No, he just, it's that need, that need to show his masculinity at all times. And he has, and when he has a platform to show it,

and if he, because that's the thing, he wanted, he wanted to work his masculinity into his explanation of like why I didn't cry over the grapes. I moved on with my life. You wanna know how I moved on with my life? I fucking all these chicks, you wanna hear about all these fucking chicks? I fucking, I fucking awesome.

If you're so masculine, you should have killed at least one of the murderers. Yeah, you would have killed the men. Yeah. Yeah, go out and kill a hippie, drag him into your home. Yes. At least have like a bloody knuckle or something. Something.

Well, I think that with that, it's like Jeffrey McDonald's masculinity wasn't tied to physical violence. It was tied to sex. Like it was all tied to how many women he could get and how gay he wasn't. That's how you know you're straight. Did they refine the scalpel?

No, it was a disposable scalpel. And remember the throughout all the garbage. Yeah, they didn't, yeah, they didn't fucking, that garbage came. You know, I've got against the military police, but explain it to do. Well, that was what of the CID. It was like a lot of things involved in here. It just seems like, yeah, it was just a, uh, Tony cooks.

Yeah, too many cooks. And I would imagine a lot of lucky loads, a lot of lucky loads. Yeah. And with that, Jeffrey McDonald was indicted on three counts of murder. He was soon after arrested by the FBI as he was stepping off his new boat with his new girlfriend, a woman named Joy, the McDonald described as quote, the most sensual woman I've ever seen since Rosalind Carter. But even so, it still took four more years of appeals, reviews, and motions before Jeffrey Strauss was set in July of 1979,

following almost an entire decade of freedom and slight celebrity. The hardest part now was finding the jury. Out of all the people contacted, 81% had already heard about the case, which was incredible considering how at the time, only 80% of Americans could correctly identify the president. That's the president right there. That's a potato with a hat on. Oh, no. Who would I vote for then?

Carter was forgettable though. I love him, but he's, you know, uh, Ford. Now that's a forgettable president. I love him, but he's, you know, uh, Ford. Now, that's a forgettable president. Oh, who? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, Ed is having problems with memory.

Yeah. It's not been good. I'm honestly pretty concerned. He's sundowning in the afternoon. Well, it's also 1979. There were a lot of presidential shakeups between 1970 and 1979. Yeah. Nixon, who resigned and then you had Ford coming in and there was an election that

was Ford versus Carter and then it was Carter and there's all the 70s were a busy time. A lot of people had a lot of shit on their mind and most people were just trying to stay alive because there was so much violence. And lots of dials. A lot of dials which led to more violence. Yes, yes. That's a great waste. Yeah.

That's why you can't thrift. Yeah. I can't thrift. It's a fact that it fits you. Nothing is built for us men. Like for 1994, 1995. Right, we literally, it was all like, how why is everybody so skinny? Well, you gotta go to like Tennessee and thrift.

You can't thrift in LA. Yeah, there's nothing for us. You gotta go where the big guys are. Yeah. And also you guys are talking about thrift in like 2001 for 70s clothing. You go thrift and now it's all shit that was born when we were in. I saw a loony toon's t-shirts. Yeah. My god. My god time is screwed. Yeah. No, it's like 80 bucks for a t-shirt of like bugs, money in the Tasmanian devil with a backwards hat and backwards pants with our arms crossed. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know, child. I would love to

get my hand on some Zubas though. What are Zubas? Zubas, the Zeebra Strait pants. Oh, yeah. They're back. Are the Zubas are back. Yeah. They're back. No, do they are catering to us 40 year olds hard. Look at me. I'm dressed like an evil child. Now the trial was shaky, not least because the original prosecutor had died of a heart attack. Yeah, you know, war, war, high 80, he died of a heart attack. It happens to him a 10 year trial. Yeah. And he'd been replaced by a 34 year old attorney named James Blackburn who would never try to murder case. Great. But as opposed to the article 32 hearing, Bernie Siegel could no longer steamroll the process. And this is kind of where Errol Morris has some problems.

And I kind of agree with him on this because the judge put his thumb down heavily on the side of the prosecution. There's a lot of issues in the trial. So he basically, so what had happened was it seemed, was at some point, there was an argument between the judge and the defense. And once that happened, he said, fuck him. And then sandbagged him. They got every single like every single time

a objection against the defense was like, he let it go. He did everything. He also cut down on their closing statements. every single like every single time, every objection against the defense was like, he let it go. He did, he did everything. He also cut down on their closing statements. He did a bunch of weird shit that like, so at the time I can, now I can see why what Errol Morris is really saying a lot in the documentary is that they left a lot of shit out. Like, and yes, it is still sort of overwhelming.

The evidence against Jeffrey McDonald, but he didn't necessarily get a fair trial. They just wanted him in prison. Well, yeah, because they, they've been chasing this for a fucking decade. It was just like when they threw O.J. and jail for the fucking trophies. It was they back up. It was the, it's what we were embarrassed. We look like idiots. Fucking lock them up.

Yeah, we're going to get them now. Yeah, essentially. And now it's hello Twitter world. Hey, the two to world. It was actually almost kind of like in the pocket political takes. He's like pro abortion, obviously. Yeah, I mean, he says kill the whole mother. It's incredible. Bernie seagulls attempts to discredit FBI examiner Paul Stomboff failed. Because that's the other thing too is like, yeah, he didn't get a fair trial, but Bernie

kind of bifted at the same time. It all, it just, you know, yeah, it was time. And when Bernie tried to have the issue of S. Quire with Lee Marvin on the cover, stricken from the record, large excerpts from the issue were instead read to the jury. Likewise, a hypnosis session with Jeffrey that had been edited into a 90 minute tape was not allowed in court, even though it contained extremely detailed descriptions of each attacker down to the length of the floppy hats. Brim. Oh, length of the brim. Yes. 15 to 20 inches across if you're wondering. Oh, what's the girth?

into 20 inches across if you're wondering. Ooh, what's the girth? What is football game? Well, because then he's showing, look how detailed this is. Look how detailed my memories are. Yeah, but that's too big. It is too big of that. It's a huge hat. It's a huge hat.

20, a 20 inch brim is incredibly long. It's not a hat you wear to a murder. I mean, no, it's like, you know, it's a hat you wear to a to Coachella. Yeah. Yeah, no, no. It's floppy. I mean, no, it's like, no, it's a hat you wear to a to Coachella. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, it's floppy. It's big dumb, stupid floppy hat. Really, the only net trust no bitch with no floppy hat, man.

I am my own experience is the floppy hats. Whoa. What happened? Yeah. I'm not gonna say, okay. No floppy hats. I like floppy hats. You're allowed.

You're fine. I got a public. But that's really nice. Bucket hats aren't floppy ads. I like floppy ads. You're allowed. You're fine. I got a public. That's really nice. Bucket hats aren't floppy ads. I'm not floppy if you have fun. Technically they're under a structured hat genre. They really are. Mm hmm.

You're talking about the ones that look like, you know, they got the string underneath and stuff like that. And they're, and they're, and they're two, they're just too big. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like the greeter at the nursing home. I can't wait. Hi, do you bring fish? Let me check your penis. Really, the only new thing that the defense was allowed to bring to court was a guy named James Milney, who claimed to have seen the foreign trutters the night of the murders. Ultimately, though, that wasn't enough. What finally swayed the jurors were the interrogation tapes, in which Jeffrey came off as cocky, arrogant,

petulant and dishonest and thank Christ for that because much like the Casey Anthony case, some of the jurors were leaning towards innocent because they said that most of the prosecution's evidence was quote too confusing. Yeah Yeah, because it's spun out of a bunch of weird lies. Yeah. And it's, again, it's the, it's both a sign of a good lawyer and a sign of a bad lawyer. Like that's a good idea. So you have to keep their attention. They were talking about the one thing that the judge was doing too was not taking any

breaks. So the jury was like fall in a suite. They were like, they were sitting there because he just wanted to get this fucking done. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, that's all, you know, that's what happened. The Casey Anthony case is like once the story, once the jurors came out and they talked to the jurors, like one of them said, like the defense told a better story. Cares. Exactly. That's what it is. That's the whole point of a trial.

Lives are great stories. You know, like fiction is wonderful. But it can be very, you know, like truth is boring a lot of time. In the end though, it was Bernie Siegel himself who choked when it came to making the case. Instead of a grand performance like Johnny Cochrane's, if it doesn't fit, you must acquit closing statement. Bernie rambled for three hours and didn't even discuss the specific points of the defense is argument. Yeah, the other lawyer was pretty salty in the arrow Morris's documentary,

because he was talking basically how he's like, I was supposed to close. Yeah. Like essentially, but then this guy blew the light. And then he just said, you've already wasted three hours and 10 minutes, so you're 15, you're three hour and 15 minutes. And then the prosecution, they said, you know what, we'll give them 10 minutes of our time, which then make the prosecution look even better. And then the last dude had to come out of a hole trying to just trying to do a big wrap up. And he was just because he did a thing. He's like, you know, they say it takes 20 minutes to save a human life. Let's see if I can do it in 10 like I was like his opening life. Oh my. And so after a seven week trial,

Jeffrey McDonald was found guilty of second degree murder in the deaths of Collette and Kimberly, while his youngest artist murder was deemed first degree because the jury felt that it was a calculated act designed to support the cover story. Consequently, the judge sentenced McDonald to three life terms in prison served consecutively, which is the harshest possible sentence under federal law.

Now incredibly, Jeffrey Macdonald was released on bail in 1980 after an appeals court decided that his constitutional right to a speedy trial had been violated because of the two-year gap between the Army CID report in 1972 and the grand jury in 1974. The waters were further muddied by the return of Helena Stokeley, who was now saying that her friends had murdered the McDonald family because Jeffrey refused to supply methadone to a sex and drug satanic cult unimaginatively titled The Black Cult.

Oh, okay. When did someone finally shut her up? This is like the last, when she fucking died of hepatitis. Yeah. That was it. That's when she, that's when they finally stopped bringing her back. Well, she had a lot of, it was just weird, right? Because that's again, Aero Moris brings it up.

She just keeps coming back and keeps coming back to the story. The way she positions this, she says that apparently Jeffrey McDonald was a guy that was trying to shut down heroin use on Fort Bragg by making a petition that people that come in and out of Fort Bragg need to be checked for track marks. It was just like, holding, I don't know if that's, apparently that was a thing, but I don't know. You know, I mean, again, it's just muddy, muddy, muddy, muddy shit. Yeah. Well, they, and also she said that that cult was still active and they committed 13 more murders since that night.

Yep. And they were, it was all in the basement, the World Trade Center September 10th, 2001. Well, you know, this is during that, this, during, of course, like when the satanic panic was just beginning, this is especially when sat this during, of course, like when the satanic panic was just beginning, this is especially when satanic cults were like a big thing. This is the whole, like, you know, son of Sam shit, you know, where people were saying that the process church, the final judgment had been behind the son of Sam murder. So, you know, when people said the word satanic cult, certain assholes, certain idiots would listen. Yeah, they were ready to go.

Yeah. And then remember, so between this, so they immediately were going to file a appeal and that's when fatal visions dropped. That's when the TV movie came out about his story. And so like that kind of decimated anything that he would do after the fact, which then would he would lament and scream about for the rest of his life. Yeah. Meanwhile, Jeffrey moved to California, bought a $200,000 condo at the Mammoth Mountain ski resort and traded in his Maserati for a jaguire. Where did he get all those money? I don't know.

Yeah, he's a doctor. I keep forgetting. Yeah. Yeah, he's a doctor. He's a doctor. Four tongue depressors. You can make a hundred grand. But thankfully, 18 months after Jeffrey was released, the Supreme Court ruled that his right to a speedy trial had not been violated. Jeffrey was sent back to jail Court role that his right to a speedy trial had not been violated. Jeffrey was sent back to jail where he suggested that if a biopic was ever made, he should be played by Robert Redford. Yeah.

However, there was no biopic. There was a TV mini series made. And Jeffrey was instead played by the fantastic Gary Cole, probably best known for the role of Bill Lumberg in office space. I did. Yeah. I'm going to need you to murder your wife. Let me see.

Can you see the TPS burden? Because of not murder your family. I love Gary Cole so much. He was the voice of Harvey Birdman, his wife, Birdman attorney at law. He was amazing and deep. Gary Cole incredible. Inoxid of the park every time. I guarantee he lives in this neighborhood. I saw him at Ralph's no shit. Yeah. Oh my God. I didn't say anything though. No, you can't say I know you

Know you do you know me? I'm still on the lookout for Henry Rollins. I know he shops at our Ralph's you got to be careful All right, because he'll steal your fucking wife Do you think people accidentally call him Gary Coleman? Oh Just like I'm sick of getting his mail To this day though Jeffrey McDonald true to the narcissist nature Refuses to admit any sort of guilt any sort of responsibility 52 years later. But Jeffrey McDonald is done. Appeals are no longer possible. So it is absolutely positive that

Jeffrey McDonald will be held responsible for his crimes, whether he believes he deserves it or not. And he will rightfully die alone in prison. Damn. Wow, be careful. Be careful, don't kill your family, you might get punished just the same. Yeah. All right, that's the worst part of this. So, but honestly, I mean, this country, you can't even get away with that anymore.

You think he's popular in prison? I would imagine he's a massive asshole. Yeah, they should make him be a doctor. I feel like there's people are probably still going up to him and like, what's this? Yeah, I got this pro. What's this? I mean, he might like if someone gets shivved, he might, you know, like powder him up or something,

like bandage him up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He gets some good, good grace is in at the end of the L.I. He just something good. How is he still alive? This was all so long ago. He's just one of those fucking people, man. Is it his 80s or something?

Yeah, let me see exactly how old he is. 79. Yeah, 79. He's still talking to someone who's on Larry King, like four years ago. We're done. Yeah. Um, if you would, you want to do some plugs? We did this with the end. Okay. We got more serious coming up. We got fucking spooky season coming up. We're not getting spooky quite yet. Quite. Yeah. We got a big series coming up next week that you guys are going to be really excited about. We're going to be covering a spree killer that you guys have been asking for for a long

time. Wow. They're so excited. Spree killer. And then if you want, if you're in the Atlanta area, right, I'm going to be doing this little dinner party that I'm hosting. I don't quite know yet what I'm inviting people to a dinner party. Oh, it is a, it's a bit ATL Donner party.com.'m inviting people to a dinner party. Oh, it is a event atl. Donner party dot com

It's called the Donner party. We're gonna have cannibal based food This is real okay, it's October 11th. It's a Mata Atlanta go check it out So what it mean by cannibal based you're gonna eat people no, it's gonna be shaped like people Very nice if I just don't eat anymore eyeballs, they're bad for you. They're bad for you. It's really bad for you. No, it's not like, it's gonna be less adventurous. It's more just what the shape like.

Like I know we've talked about like being the organ meat boys, that we're gonna go out and like have fun with organ meats. And that's fun. Yeah, no eyeballs though. No, it was bad for me. So it's gonna be like a burger shaped like a foot. It's a long story. You gotta be the whole.

It's gonna be a lot of meatloaf. story. You gotta be a lot of meatloaf. Yeah, I just say a lot of meatloaf. You could shape a meatloaf in anything. It's more than meatloaf. Yeah, I'm gonna check it out. All right, I'll also come to the LPN Beach Blanket Mingo October 20th, San Diego, the Balboa Theater. I'm very excited for this.

It's gonna be a Naya. I'm very excited. Please come to that. I think there's still some tickets left, right? Oh yeah, something like that., I think we were almost sold out Come on, let's go get real close. We're getting your tickets now. Yeah, get those tickets, right? Check it out check it out baby Kale say to whoa Be good to yourselves. Yeah, hell-gain everyone. Yeah, hell me

If you got us if you got a fucking second I didn't kill my family. Good job. Yeah, good job. It was on the pipe. Yeah. You gave your dog, in fact, you gave your dog, but bleeding pills this morning. I had to. Good job.

Was it... Asplitting for how many times it bit me this weekend? No, no, the car me's fine. Oh, okay, good. Stay away from that dog. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com. you