The Jeffrey MacDonald case is one of the most horrifying—and controversial—murder cases of its time, with chilling echoes of the Manson Family’s “Helter Skelter” killings: a handsome, Ivy League–educated Green Beret Army doctor accused of brutally stabbing and clubbing to death his pregnant wife and two young daughters in the middle of the night. MacDonald was eventually convicted and is serving three consecutive life sentences.
Perhaps no one is better qualified to address these questions than Joe McGinniss, who was first drawn into the story in 1979, when he began work on what became the definitive account of the case, Fatal Vision.
Forty-three years after the murders, the debate around that verdict lives on. MacDonald, now a gray-haired sixty-eight-year-old, continues to attract supporters, most recently acclaimed filmmaker Errol Morris, whose recent book casts doubt on the conviction. The ruling on MacDonald’s latest motion for a new trial is due in early 2013, but as McGinniss makes clear in his new E-Book, Final Vision: The Last Word on Jeffrey MacDonald, his guilt is undeniable.
Joe McGinniss is the author of twelve books, including The Selling of the President, about the marketing of Richard Nixon during the 1968 campaign, and a bestselling trilogy of true-crime books: Fatal Vision, Blind Faith, and Cruel Doubt.
