USED to place a lot of value on McGuiness, until he showed himself for what he is with the Sarah Palin (and I am NOT a Palin fan) business, renting the house NEXT DOOR in Alaska. Now I wonder how honest he was with McDonald.

Evidence at the trial showed that the children's blood was on the inside of MacDonald's glasses.

Unless he was the killer that is impossible.

I have never believed that MacDonald was proven guilty. The word of that pig McGuiness does nothing to change my mind.

"MacDonald did it" I am not allowed by the Lucianne staff to use the words to describe that statement and its author. Fascists and statists abound.

The pajama top that McDonald said he 'wrapped around his hand' to protect himself was shown to have been draped over his wife and an ice pick punctured it the same number of times his wife was stabbed.

Whether McGinnis is a pig has no bearing on the fact that McDonald killed his family.

#4 and #5. How in the world does an opinion that Jeffrey MacDonald is guilty of killing his family label a person as a "fascist and statist"?

I always believed that MacDonald did it and my belief had nothing whatsoever to do with publicity-grabbing Joe McGinniss, who is obviously still at it.

There is a special place in hell for McGinniss and those like him. Maggots.

(hit submit too soon)

Contending MacDonald must be not guilty because one loathes McGinniss is faulty logic at its worst.

Interesting point in the new book is a confession by a 'hippy girl' who says she and two others did it. And the prosecution hid the evidence. Of course I don't know if McDonald did it or not. Hope under the circumstances an innocent man was not convicted but will wait for this last gasp to play out. I do know that McGinnis is not to be trusted. He acts amazed that time was not easy on McDonald. Duh. That wonderment alone lets me know McGinnis is an a double s.

McGinniss is the psychopath. No feelings for others, no empathy. Rather a dolt with those remarks about how MacDonald looks and seems after 35 years in prison. Please!

Listening to McGinniss, it is clear that he was intimidated by this cool, handsome doctor with his military bearing. McGinniss looks like the guy who hangs out on the next bar stool. MacDonald would be a type he'd want to take down.

I still cannot believe that McGinniss tormented Sarah Palin and her family by moving in next door. Outrageous conduct by anyone's standards. Indeed a cruel psychopath.

Now it appears that he is back to feed off MacDonald some more.

PS. At the time I believed MacDonald was guilty. I don't even remember McGinniss from that period.

As I'm reading this article I'm saying to myself is this the same writer who did the smear job on Sarah Palin? Then, at the end of the article I discover yes, it is!

Same MO those many years ago. McGinnis is slime, real slime.

As to the former Green Beret, too bad for his family, too bad he hasn't one of those pro bono slick lawyers who use DNA for freeing the innocent, and too bad it still seems he whacked his family.

This is an ugly story, made uglier by the living players, especially McGinnis, a free man who seems to be a prisoner of his own greatness as a writer...yea, he's no giver of truths at all!

It seems that McGinniss may have tricked MacDonald into allowing him total access to his defense and the trial by pretending to believe MacDonald was innocent. We know what mendacity and evil intent McGinniss is capable of in the Palin matter.



The Journalist and the Murderer, written by Janet Malcolm and published in 1990, is about the relationship between journalists and their subjects, and explores the relationship between McGinniss and MacDonald as the subject of the author's thesis that, "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."

Malcolm maintained that McGinniss tricked McDonald—a claim that McGinniss subsequently responded to in the epilogue of a later edition of Fatal Vision. In a 2012 book, A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald, filmmaker and writer Errol Morris argued that many of McGinniss's claims about MacDonald are untrue and irresponsible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_R._MacDonald

Reading about the judge's actions during the trial (set forth in that Wikipedia citation) one does wonder if MacDonald got a fair trial.

There was blood UNDER a suitcase sitting next to the closet in the master bedroom as if MacDonald contemplated fleeing before he concocted the break-in story.

Excuse double post. If this had been today with Johnny Cochran on defense, I wonder if McDonald would have been released. Just a thought.

Why is Joe McGinniss even in the courtroom? Didn't he make enough money off MacDonald or is he back to milk it for some free publicity?

I worked at a Fed. Prison & Jeffrey McDonald was housed in the unit in which I worked. Before I knew who he was, I met him on the compound while walking to my unit. My first impression was that his eyes were cold & evil. Let me just say, he is a very manipulative man. I can't go into everything he's done while in prison, but I have no doubt he murdered his family.

Crazy it as sounds, Joe, spending forty years in a Maximum Security Federal Penitentiary tends to age a person. What a dolt.

McGinniss' stalking of the Palin family was creepy beyond belief. Maybe MacDonald will get a chance to show McGinniss his trusty ice pick in the hereafter.

I remember this case vividly and can't ever forget the viciousness of the murders and those poor sweet children who were killed in such a heinous manner. The mind boggles that another human being could do this to innocent babies. As a young mother myself at the time, it was particularly disturbing and I spent many nights thinking about the last moments of their lives. As human beings we want justice for the innocent but whether it is served in this life or not, it will be served in the next.

I remember this now and never thought he was guilty and still don't. Some one person has determined he had 'cold eyes' - not a very good way to assess a human being. Being in prison when you did not do the crime just might be a reason for those eyes being cold and irate for being jailed for nothing.

Well, #16, Cochran got one guilty man released, I guess MacDonald could have been #2. So, what's your point?

As for McGinniss trashers, I'm not sure why Palin's dislike of Joe MacGinniss means Jeffrey MacDonald is innocent. Two + Two will never equal Five.

Gee, if I say I think O.J. did it, does that make me a fascist and a statist?

I find it hard to believe that a random pack of hippies would leave MacDonald alive yet brutally murder his wife and children. It doesn't pass the smell test.

The new book makes a decent case according to several articles I've read.

And Joe McGinness's involvement with the prosecution and his continued self-enrichment on the back of this case cause even more suspicion.

A lot of people who know McDonald had no trouble believing he did it. There's something to that. But I have a huge problem with suppressed evidence. If it's ignored once, it could be ignored at any time.

#25, McGinniss's book was written after MacDonald was convicted. I'm not aware that McGinniss had any connection to the original prosecution. Are you?

When McGinnis moved next to the Palins -he exposed himself as a slime.
Suppression of evidence is itself a crime.
If the prosecution did this - the verdict should be overturned.
I remember the Manson murders- those women did his bidding.
The crazed hippies were a real scourge.
Bill ayers allegedly used rape to,condition his acolytes.
McDonald's military positionncouldmhave indeed made him a target.

McGinniss evaluating MacDonald as a psychopath...

A case of connatural knowledge? (Or, more familiarly, takes one to know one.)

Whether Mc or Mac is the worse villain in this (or whether both are equally contemptible), there's more than enough human tragedy in the various players in this case to go around the world twice.

I read an huge amount of stuff about this case. MacDonald's father-in-law was the driving force in the prosecution of MacDonald. That and the FBI guy that investigated and arrived at the same conclusion as the father-in-law who pushed him to investigate.

I despise that smirking slug mcginiss, but go online and visit Robert Stevensons website on the McDonald murders. He was Colette's brother. The actual case files, crime scene and unedited autopsy photos show an absolute rage killing which appeared to occur in the master bedroom. Don't forget the folded pajama top.

I believed at the time, and still do, that MacDonald did it.

#13, et. al.: He was NOT a "Green Beret." He was merely a medical-type assigned to Special Forces, and so was permitted to wear the Beret, even though he never went through Qualification, never *earned* the Beret. That "former Green Beret" crap has bugged me for 40 years.

He may have been permitted, by assignment, to wear the Beret, but he wasn't one of us. As the saying goes, "Just because you find a mouse in a cookie jar, that don't make him a cookie."

At the time, I did not believe McDonald was guilty. Hubby and I stationed at Fort Benning a little before that time and knew the area well. One major question for me is the fact that it was such a brutal murder, the children stabbed over and over, how could a father and a doctor (trained to help) do that! Then after I read the book, I said reluctantly that I guess McDonald was guilty. When I saw the author stalking Sarah Palin, I wondered if perhaps he had helped sway the jurors. Don't believe his book was finished at the time of the verdict, but McDonald and McGinnis had parted ways when McDonald realized McGinnis had tricked him. McGinnis is a jerk and I would not buy any book from him ever again. About McDonald, don't know whether he did or didn't.

Hope everyone knows that McDonald could have had parole if he had admitted the murders, he wouldn't, so there he stays.