All language subtitles for A Wilderness of Error - 1x02_track1_eng

Cbs news with walter cronkite.

Captain jeffrey macdonald
is a man under a cloud.

He lost his family
under horrible circumstances,

and he's fighting
for his honor.

His ordeal began last winter
at his residence

in fort bragg, north carolina.

Bob schieffer has the story.

It appeared to be
a grim rewrite

of the sharon tate murders
in california.

Macdonald told a bizarre story:

Three young men
and a woman had

attacked the family
for no apparent reason.

On may 1, the army
charged him with murder.

Finally, in late October,

the charges against the captain
were dropped.

Morris: Jeffrey macdonald

goes through
this article 32 hearing,

which was an extensive hearing.

It's...

A-a massive transcript.

Many, many, many
witnesses called.

Colonel rock says that

the charges are not true.

Schieffer:
The army has not
made public the report

of the investigating officer,
colonel warren v. Rock.

Meanwhile, the fbi
in north carolina

has notified
macdonald's relatives

that they are not
investigating.

-(phone rings)
-but still unanswered
is who did it.

Bob schieffer,
cbs news, new york.

Morris:
Jeffrey, I believe,
at that point,

is interested in--

however you want
to describe it--

putting this behind him.

Morris: Well, what's really
interesting about this case

is... That at that point,

you-you would think
it's over with.

It's just beginning.

The wife and two young
daughters of an army doctor

were found dead in their home
in fort bragg, north carolina.

Sam donaldson:
You may remember the crime
back in 1970.

One of america's most
sensational murder cases.

One of the most bizarre
murder cases.

Dan rather:
The most complicated
murder case

-in history.
-Macdonald says the murderers

were three men
and a woman shouting,

"acid is great.
Kill all the pigs."

it's a baffling story the more
you begin to look into it.

Jeffrey macdonald's life became
the subject of a book.

Barbara walters:
A popular miniseries.

A television movie
called fatal vision.

Reporter:
The best-seller
portrayed macdonald

as a cold-blooded killer.

Reporter 2:
Today, macdonald was sentenced

to three life terms in prison.

Man: Something really,
really bad happened here.

It was a miscarriage
of justice.

I cannot overcome fatal vision.

Morris:
What happens when a narrative

takes the place of reality?

It's almost as if nothing
really happened in history

unless it has been
recorded in a movie

or in a television series.

Woman:
A new book by acclaimed
author and filmmaker

errol morris
says that the case

may be more complicated
than previously thought.

Macdonald:
I did not hurt my wife
or my children.

Helena:
That evening I was wearing

a blonde wig and a floppy hat.

-Man: An innocent man
is in jail today.
-Mildred: The man is guilty

-as can be.
-I am innocent.

He's lucky I haven't
gone out and killed him.

Macdonald:
I am not that monster.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

keeler:
I was covering the town

of brookhaven.
Freddy and mildred lived

within the confines
of the town of brookhaven,

so I got sent
to cover the story.

I went into this house.
It was not

the kind of house
that I would, like, live in.

Everything looked like
it was from a museum store.

Mildred always said that

she liked beautiful things,
and she did.

I sat with the two of them
and heard them out.

(on recording): Okay, hi.

Keeler: Mildred was

sort of birdlike.

Very nervous.

She was a sort of frail-looking
person on the outside,

but she was
pretty steely inside.

Freddy, I could get along with
a lot better.

He was very solid.

He was in the army.
You know, he grew up in canada.

He was a paratrooper
and all this kind of stuff.

His name, as I understand it,

in arabic means "butcher."

we thought a bunch of hippies
had done all this.

We couldn't understand
why the government

wa-wasn't catching them.

Stevenson:
Freddy showed me
a pair of shoes.

He said, "bobby,
look at the bottom."

I've worn out the shoe leather
on these pair of shoes

creeping through the halls
of congress,

trying to garner support

for what needed to be done.

Freddy:
I accused the army

of every blunder that they made

in the original investigation.

And I personally delivered
a copy by hand

to every congressman and every
senator in the country.

(phone ringing)

keeler: Uh-huh.

I am asking the help
of congress,

and specifically
congressman lowenstein,

in the redress
of some of these grievances.

There's been an inexcusable
ineptitude in the conduct

of the investigation
by the army.

I think that we will have
a reopening of the investigation

into the murders of my wife
and two children.

Thank you.

Freddy:
If somebody kills your daughter
and two grandchildren,

are you supposed to sit back

and do nothing about it?

♪ ♪

good morning, everybody.

What we intend to do is take you
back in time a little bit

and discuss
the macdonald murder case.

Macdonald's father-in-law,
freddy kassab,

kept petitioning the army
and congress

to have the case reinvestigated,

pointing out that the government
screwed up the case

to begin with,
and that the real

perpetrators of the crime
could never be found.

And of course, at this time,
the kassabs thought

the real perpetrators
of the crime were the three gis

and the caucasian female.

That's when we came down
out of washington

to investigate
the investigators,

and why nobody
went after these hippies.

Pickering:
Late 1970, I was

informed that
I'd be going to fort bragg

to join
the reinvestigation team.

It's either we make the case
or we don't make the case.

And if we don't make the case,
then all the criticism

previously received
about our incompetence

to solve the murder--
we-we would bear that.

(phone ringing)

kearns:
We decided we had to get freddy
and mildred kassab on our side.

They're the ones
that wrote to congress

and said the army screwed up
this crime scene. We needed

the kassabs to shut up.

Just calm down,
let us do the investigation.

We'll find out who did it.

(phone ringing)

smerling: Why was freddy
recording all his calls?

He was suspicious.

Until freddy became
completely sure

who was on whose side,

he didn't trust them.

We identified at least

240 investigative leads.

And I had more
darned floppy hats

and boots
in that evidence room.

Let's take the first one,
helena stoeckley.

Gaddis:
In 1971,

I met helena stoeckley while...

Arresting her.

We were on patrol
one night in nashville.

We just happened
to see this woman.

She wore this black cape
with a red lining...

...A wig and a floppy hat.

She'd just sort of
float around.

I caught her

for possession of drugs.

On the way down to booking,

she said that she was
involved in a murder

in fayetteville,
north carolina.

And she goes into

telling us about
the jeffrey macdonald murders.

Helena described

the house to a t.

She knew how the doctor
was laying on the couch,

where the kids were,
what bedroom.

And she gave us names
of officers

that she had talked to
in fayetteville.

Kearns:
So we fly a guy in
from washington

to give her a polygraph.

They had polygraph operators
there, but we wanted

to use one
from our headquarters.

Brisentine:
I was the director
of the army's

crime record center, which...

Included polygraph.

And I was directed
by the commander of the agency

to conduct a polygraph

of helena stoeckley.

(on recording):
Do you remember cutting

or striking any member
of the macdonald family?

No.

Brisentine:
During our conversation,

she would tell me one minute

that-that she was there....

Yes.

...When the family was killed.

Do you know for sure
who cut or struck any member

of the macdonald family?

No.

And then the next minute,
she'd tell me,

"no, I-I wasn't there."

and she was going
in and out and, uh,

and then she said,
"well, I'm not really sure."

do you remember
being physically present

when any member of the macdonald
family was cut or struck?

No.

When she said,
"no, I wasn't there..."

...She scores a deception.

She's not telling the truth.

She didn't know
whether she was

there or not.

What we have here is a gal
who's screwed up.

You could never

call her a liar.

But you can't call her
as a truth-teller, either.

That's the best I can tell you.

Everybody forgets helena
stoeckley, as you get into here,

she was a doper.

Helena has confessed,

unconfessed, confessed,

unconfessed
and confessed.

Helena stoeckley
was not in the crime scene.

(phone rings)

pickering:
We would frequently meet
at the crime scene

and brainstorm
the whole scenario.

Walk through the house,
walk through the rooms

and talk about what we know.

Every time we pursued a lead,

it just turned us around
and directed us

back to jeffrey macdonald.

And the physical evidence, uh,
the circumstantial evidence,

just kept mounting against him

and contradicted his story
of events for that evening.

Kearns:
Now, remember
jeffrey was saying

an itinerant band of hippies
selected his house

and intended to kill him.

(whimpers) no. No, no!

Kimberly (echoing):
Daddy! Daddy!

Remember, in this crime scene
nothing was stolen,

there was no forced entry,
nobody smoked,

nobody lit a match,
nobody used any drugs.

None of this occurred.

Kearns:
Eventually,

you do start
to tunnel an investigation.

For those of you
in criminal justice,

don't ignore your evidence.

Keep an open mind,
but don't ignore it.

And when you get evidence
showing that it's macdonald,

you start going
after macdonald.

(fanfare plays)

announcer:
The dick cavett show!

(applause continuing)

cavett:
My next guest is
dr. Jeffrey macdonald.

(applause)

uh, I call you dr. Macdonald,
now, don't I?

That's right.
It's ex-captain. I'm a doctor.

Yeah, yeah, uh...

I hope this isn't
too painful for you.

Uh, I feel like
the-the journalist

who asks the gory question,
but, uh...

Smerling:
Jeff went on
the dick cavett show.

Do you remember
when he came on that show?

Yes.

Somebody called me to say

that he was gonna be
on television.

I don't remember.
I don't remember.

But I know I watched it.

Smerling: You remember
the dick cavett appearance?

I watched it, yeah,
I watched it.

It still, at times,
seems like a dream. It...

Uh, "nightmare"
is a very mild term, really.

Mica:
I was coming in off of duty,

and guy goes, "hey, macdonald's
on dick cavett now."

I go, "really?"

could-could you talk about

what happened on that...
On the night of, uh,

-on that night last February?
-Well,

um, I can skim
through it briefly.

-Uh, to get deep into it, uh,
-yeah.

Does produce a lot of, uh,
emotion on my part.

But, uh, very briefly,
my wife came home

and we had a, uh...

Before-bedtime drink, really.

And, uh, watched the beginning
of a late-night talk show.

(audience laughs)

then, um...

I saw that. I don't know

if it was the night he was on

or thereafter when freddy said,
"you got to see this, bobby."

I mean, the army has it set up
so that had I not

-had a high-powered, uh,
civilian attorney--
-mm-hmm.

Even despite the fact
that there's no evidence--

um, I might very well have
been in, uh, leavenworth,

in prison.

"my rights were violated."

not "my family was butchered."

help... Help get information.

Let the american public know.

Where are these investigators
now who did the original...

Well, most of them
have been transferred.

It's-it's the army way
of handling things.

If someone really fails up,
you either give them a medal

-or you transfer them.
-(audience laughs)

(applause)

his whole demeanor was, like...

(chuckles)

...Like it was
a stand-up comedy act.

What's this done to you?

Uh, do people
look at you and say,

uh, "how do we know
he didn't do it?"

I don't think
I'm being paranoid when I say

that there is certainly
a flavor of suspicion

in a lot of people's minds
and, uh,

some people pat you on the back

as if to say, uh,
"well, we know you did it,

but it's okay anyway."

stevenson:
Things weren't being
said right.

Inflections of the voice.

Macdonald:
And-and other people say,
"well, it's gonna be

"very hard to have patients
come and visit you

in the future, isn't it?"

uh, I was accepted...

I-I was stunned--

absolutely stunned--

that he-he didn't...

He wasn't even sad.

Your whole family
was brutally murdered

and you can go on a tv show?

It was like

he was talking about them
that they, you know,

were somebody else's family.

Cavett:
Not to mention the fact that

the, uh, perpetrators
of the crime

-are still free, then.
-Absolutely. There are at least

four people running around
who have, uh,

murdered three people.

It sickened me

and it enraged me.

Smerling:
And obviously, freddy had
a real reaction to that as well.

(short laugh)
visceral.

Cavett:
Fantastic story. I-I just,
I... Don't know what to say.

Yeah.
Wrenched his guts.

Macdonald:
It's been a hard year.

Stevenson:
That's why,

I guess, he had to demand
to see a copy of the article 32,

so he himself could
start to go over facts

and try to find the truth.

Freddy:
I kept putting up a fight,

that I wanted a copy of the
transcripts, and they wouldn't

give them to me, and macdonald
wouldn't give them to me.

He told me that the army
wouldn't let him.

Freddy:
When he got out of the army,

then I put up such a stink
that the army finally said yes,

they would give me
a copy of the transcript.

Stevenson:
He'd read the papers

at his little square table
and he sat there

and he chain-smoked
three packs a day,

day after day after day,

going over and over everything.

Freddy:
Page 38: "he stopped
mouth-to-mouth breathing

because air was coming
out of her chest."

kim had no chest wounds.

And why were both children
found laying on their sides

if jeff gave them
mouth-to-mouth?

Stevenson:
His thought was that he was
yet collecting data,

that he didn't have
his mind made up.

It's the time of suspicion.

(line ringing)

kearns:
Now, freddy at that time--

he was doubting...
Starting to doubt macdonald.

But still, he was on his side.

Freddy:
It was the top sheet.

Freddy:
Page 38:

"from master bedroom,
he went to kim's room.

He did not put lights on."

why would a father--
especially a doctor--

going into a room where his
child was so brutally injured,

not put the lights on
to try to treat her?

Stevenson:
It was totally systematic.

A line-by-line examination of

"says this over here,

"article 32...

That didn't work."

well, we're going back
through the reinvestigation,

and we found that

all the weapons
came from the house.

Kearns: We say that

the piece of wood
was in the master bedroom

and had a utilitarian use.

The footstool was broken,

on her side.
We maintain

that he used
that piece of wood there

to shore up
that side of the bed.

Subsequent laboratory
examination has proven that

at one time the murder weapon
was a part

of that piece of wood
used as a bed slab,

as is shown
in these photographs.

I mean, gosh, if it

looks like a duck,
it's got webbed feet,

it quacks, it goes in the water

and it's got feathers,
it's a duck.

Freddy:
Yeah, yeah.

Stevenson:
You know, all of these things

contribute to a person's
overall feelings

and understanding
about what may be,

and once you feel
what something may be,

that's the thread you grab
and you start pulling on it

till you unravel
the damn sweater.

Somers: Captain macdonald,
did you have any occasions

to go to texas?

-Macdonald: Yes.
-Somers: When?

Macdonald: It was on a weekend
in December 1969.

I was the medical coverage

for a jump of special forces
medics in training.

Somers: And where did you stay
while you were down there?

Macdonald:
At a motel.

Somers:
On that evening in texas,

did you have
a female companionship?

Macdonald:
Yes, sir.

Somers:
And did you have

sexual contact with this woman?

Macdonald:
Well, I-if you can
define the term,

I can answer that.

Somers:
Did you have any type of sexual
contact with this woman?

Macdonald:
Yes.

Somers:
Has this type of sexual
activity ever been repeated

during your marriage

with someone
other than your wife?

Yes, sir.

(line ringing)

kearns: Freddy kassab has now
given us information,

okay, in 1971.

And he called me one day,
and he says, "peter,

check and see if macdonald's
got a broken arm."

I said, "freddy,
what's this all about?"

stevenson: Freddy and I

were in his living room,

and he played
a recording for me.

It was kind of a-a...
"I've been going out

"with green beret killer squads

"looking for the murderers.

"we found one

and I took care of it."

kearns:
Now, macdonald said
during this altercation,

he suffered a busted arm.

Well, unbeknownst to macdonald,

we have a surveillance on him.

Macdonald was out in california
at this time, out of the army.

-Host: Yes.
-Kearns: We have people
inside the hospital

and we have cid agents outside,

and we're surveilling him
24 hours a day.

-But we took him
and put him to bed.
-Host: You found out

-that he was lying.
-(stammers)

he was doing the best operations

with two arms that anybody else
was doing.

But what this is
is not evidence.

But it shows you the type of guy
you're dealing with.

If he's gonna lie
about this stuff--

there's only on reason,
by the way, to lie about it--

that's 'cause he committed
the murders.

There's no other reason
for him to lie.

Kearns:
All right.

Macdonald knows that if he can
freddy off the back,

get freddy to shut up,
maybe the army will just

let this die a natural death,
which he thought it was doing.

But freddy kassab
was not that dumb.

Freddy:
With agents, I was
allowed in the house

to reconstruct the murders

from his story of what happened
in that house that night.

Kearns:
Once we got
mr. Kassab to come down

and go through the crime scene

and opened up our records

to him-- no holds barred--

then he saw we weren't lying.

Freddy:
Drug addicts,
running crazy in that house,

killing, don't leave

one single clue in the house.

There is not one drop of his
blood in that living room.

How does a man get stabbed
and not bleed?

Reich:
I was at the kassabs' house.

We sat at the table

and freddy had copies

of the reports from the army.

He kept saying to me,
"there's so many

inconsistencies here.
There's just--

there's so much wrong."

and he said, "I know
in my heart that he did this.

He did this."

interviewer:
Did the two of you come to
this conclusion together?

Freddy:
No. It took me about six months

to convince mildred.

I held out till the last ditch.

I wouldn't allow myself
to believe it.

Because it made it that...

So much worse that it was he

instead of strangers.

The simple fact of a person

being in your family,
that you knew him,

makes him blameless.

He couldn't possibly do it.

Host:
Was colette happy?

Mildred:
She appeared to be.

Colette never gave me any idea
to think that

she didn't love him deeply,

and he wasn't the most wonderful
person in the world.

But this whole thing
was a sham,

this happy life
that I thought colette had.

Reich:
Colette wrote to me about
being pregnant again,

and worried about it.

Without spelling everything
all out.

She indicated they had problems

in the letters.

You know, he was off
having a good time.

Stevenson:
My mother always
blamed herself.

That if only,

"if only I had
listened differently...

I could have
made a difference."

reich:
Mildred told me

colette wanted to come home
with the kids

to stay a while, and...

Mildred told her
it wasn't a good time.

So, she didn't go home.

And that was in February,

right before she died.

So...

Smerling:
That must have been hard
for your mom.

More than hard.

She came to mortally hate him.

Mildred:
I never get over that anger.

Just wanting to...

Be able to hurt him back

as badly as he hurt them.

Keeler:
Freddy was not gonna quit.

He had biblical levels
of persistence.

Stevenson:
Once he believed

that macdonald was guilty,

he was unswerving.

It was like a...

A white line
going down the road

into infinity,
and he followed it.

Reich:
I remember freddy saying to me,

June... I'm gonna get him.

♪ ♪

mike wallace:
Jeff macdonald, wanting to put

the whole tragic episode
behind him,

moved to southern california.

He joined the staff
of st. Mary hospital

in long beach and before long,

he was director of
the department

of emergency medicine here.

How you doing?
I'm dr. Macdonald.

Morris:
Jeffrey macdonald broke off

from his in-laws, the kassabs.

He moved to southern california
and started a new life.

Reporter:
He owns a luxury
waterfront condominium,

a 40-foot yacht,

and is the first honorary
lifetime member

of the local police
association.

Do you think someone
is after you?

Do you think it is
a personal vendetta against you?

I think that,
uh, the easy answer

is to jump and say yes.

Mr. Kassab, are you conducting
a personal vendetta

against dr. Macdonald?

Well, yes. I-I...

But I-I don't think
that's wrong.

Morris:
Freddy kassab had this

vein of fury.

At first, it was anger because

jeffrey was being prosecuted
at all.

I don't believe anybody
in this country

will believe that.
That a sane man would do this.

And then later,
convinced of jeffrey's guilt,

he went after him.

Freddy:
He killed colette
and the children,

and he should pay for it.

I hate him with a passion.

He's lucky I haven't gone out
and killed him!

Morris:
He became this champion

of jeffrey's guilt.

Kearns:
We wrote our report in 1972,

and I gave it
to the justice department.

We told them to seek prosecution
of jeffrey macdonald.

And the justice department
kept saying, "no...

We can't get a conviction."

kearns:
Freddy says, "peter,

"the justice department
isn't gonna do anything.

"I've got a new york attorney

"to swear out
a civilian complaint

arrest warrant for macdonald."

my wife and I went down
to north carolina

on April 30,

and filed and swore to
a criminal complaint

charging macdonald

with three counts
of first-degree murder.

Kearns:
Most people don't know

that if somebody's
done you wrong,

and the police department
or the district attorney

won't help you, you can go
before a federal judge,

as a citizen, and say,
"this guy killed people,

and I want you
to do something about it."

if you got evidence, now.

Jarriel:
What will it take
to satisfy you in this case?

A trial. Definitely.

Nothing short of a trial.

Reporter 2:
Dr. Jeffrey macdonald
says he is innocent

of the charge that he killed
his pregnant wife

and two children.

Dr. Macdonald told reporters
what his defense will be.

Simply a restatement
of the facts, um,

even as the government
knows them,

and has already restated them.

There's no evidence against me.

I would put it differently.

What would
convince me, ultimately,

that jeffrey macdonald

is guilty or innocent?

If you asked me--
you haven't asked me,

but if you asked me,

am I certain that he's innocent?

I'm not.

Do I believe he's innocent?

I do.

Captioned by
media access group at wgbh
access.Wgbh.Org