|
.
Articles » DNA Fingerprinting
A Second Chance at Fate
Angie Hu
Jeffrey MacDonald has a second chance at fate. Nearly two decades ago, MacDonald was charged and found guilty of three notorious murders; his pregnant wife, Colette, 26, and their daughters, Kimberly, 5, and Kristen, 2. Also known as the "Triple Murder Case", the hidden physical evidence and tampering of potential trace evidence have left a remarkably biased and unfair verdict in the trials of 1979. During this period, his side of the story was unaccounted for. For the past 20 years, he has been behind bars for all but 18 months. Through a vigilant supporter, Harvey Silverglate, the unveiling of hidden physical evidence, and the revolutionary DNA, Jeffrey MacDonald may finally redeem his marred reputation and seek ultimate justice.
To the government, the answer is as simple as it is chilling. From the start, Army investigators and federal prosecutors have maintained there was clear evidence that MacDonald acted alone. Either in a failed suicide attempt or to deflect blame, prosecutors said, MacDonald stabbed himself in the side, collapsing a lung, and inflicted other injuries on himself, then trashed the apartment to make it appear he had battled with intruders. The jury agreed, as did millions who read "Fatal Vision" by Joe McGinniss or saw a television movie based on the book.
From the start, and to this day, MacDonald told a far different story, no less chilling but more complicated. MacDonald said Colette went to sleep before him that night, and later found their daughter, Kristen, who wet their bed. He said he carried the sleeping toddler to her bed, then went to the living room and fell asleep on the sofa. MacDonald awoke to the screams of his wife and older daughter and found three men, two white and one black, standing over him. He rose to fight, but they cut and stabbed him, then beat him unconscious. Before he blacked out, he saw a woman wearing what appeared to be a blond wig and a floppy hat. Carrying a flickering light, possibly a candle, she chanted, "Acid is groovy. Kill the pigs."
A decade after the trial, investigators had found an unidentified hairbrush at the murder scene containing blond synthetic wig hairs. Colette MacDonald did not own such a wig. Also intriguing to MacDonald supporters are brown hairs from different sources found under the fingernails of the two girls. "The point is, if there is hair and it's not from the family or me, and it's not from an investigator who was working over that crime scene, I think the government's case is in serious trouble," MacDonald said. "Believe me, if they had shown in 1970 that brown hair was mine, it would have been their prime piece of evidence. When it wasn't mine, they first lost the hair report, then tried to change it." Also a list of suppressed evidence compiled by Silverglate are black wool fibers found on the murder club and on Colette MacDonald's mouth that matched nothing found in the house. Trial prosecutors characterized the fibers as having come from MacDonald's pajamas, but that assertion was false, and MacDonald partisans suggest they came from the real killers. Investigators also found fresh wax drippings, seeming to support MacDonald's vision of a candle-holding hippie woman, which did not match any of the candles in the MacDonald's home. Silverglate and MacDonald also lament what they call the strange disappearance of a piece of skin investigators found under his wife's fingernail.
New hope has emerged for MacDonald. His Boston-based defense team has persuaded a court to order DNA tests on 15 key exhibits, primarily hair samples that were taken from the crime scene. Most were discovered, long after his conviction, by MacDonald's defenders poring over prosecutors' records. Among the most explosive evidence not included at the first trial, MacDonald and his lawyers say, is a short brown hair found in Colette MacDonald's left hand. The hair was tested against MacDonald's and found not to be his, but the jury was told it was too small to test. Now cut into four tiny pieces, it will be included in the DNA tests. The laboratory will take the evidence provided by the FBI and use both Nuclear and Mitochondrial DNA testing to determine if the hair and fiber samples contain Jeffrey MacDonald's DNA.
The Locard Exchange Principle states that when a criminal (or anyone else for that matter) comes into contact with an object or person, a cross transfer of evidence occurs. In order to accurately gather evidence, the crime scene must not be disturbed, and evidence must be carefully removed and classified before being transported to the lab for examination. Fatal Justice, written by two independent investigators as a compelling repudiation of "Fatal Vision" the movie, extensively chronicled the actions taken by the Army's Criminal Investigative Division (CID) investigators. Statements from several people involved with the case proved that the MacDonald crime scene was poorly secured.
Although he keeps himself as busy as a caged life allows, what occupies him is working on his case. MacDonald has read thousands of pages of government files and prosecution notes released to him and volunteer investigators under the Freedom of Information Act, and he has an encyclopedic memory of the details. According to the Boston Globe of August 29, 1999, page A1, National Section, Jeffrey MacDonald passionately states, "I'm going to keep fighting my case. The DNA is very, very important, but if I don't win on DNA this year, I'm going to win on something else, sometime."
|
www.themacdonaldcase.org
http://members.aol.com
/katnkevin/crime.htm
|
