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Serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades stalked the highways of Texas in his mobile torture and death chamber. . Colettes brother, Bob Stevenson, agreed reluctantly to appear in the series, but the experience was visibly painful, his face often streaked with tears. The crime-scene errors cast doubt on the prosecutions case that summer when the Army conducted an Article 32 investigation, a trial-like hearing used in the military justice system to determine whether to court-martial a service member accused of a crime. The initial report of the killings was the top story in The Fayetteville Observer that afternoon: Officers Wife, Children Found Slain At Ft. Bragg. Longtime crime reporter Pat Reese wrote that Colette and the children were apparently murder victims of a ritualistic hippie cult.. Jeffrey and Collette MacDonalds Romance and Marriage. I believe Marc thinks Jeffrey is guilty, Morris told me in a phone interview earlier this month. who hammered home the point by including gruesome crime scene photos . HARROWING crime scene photos from the campsite where Gabby Petito was found dead have been revealed as her autopsy found her to be strangled.Photos sh. Ted Bundy crime scene photos [GRAPHIC] Although it's debatable when notorious serial killer Ted Bundy began his murderous spree, it's widely-known that he raped and killed numerous women throughout the 1970s. The first reconstructions will be based on the February 17-20, 1970 CID interviews with Jeffrey MacDonald, and on the same interview(s) as described in Fatal Vision (p. 35). The Army charged MacDonald with the homicides of his wife and daughters on May 1, 1970. The crime-scene and autopsy photos of Colette and the children are gruesome and bloody. Kristen also lay in bed. (1) Copying low-resolution, low-quality JPEG images from the internet, images which had already lost enormous amounts of unrecoverable original pixel data; Or you copy the images onto a thumb drive and transfer them that way. Over the objections of MacDonalds lawyers, the prosecutors had articles from Esquire magazine about the Manson murder case in California read to the jury. Chris Watts Killed His Family After Weeks of Planning. There was just so many things, so many things that contaminated that crime scene, he said. 544 Castle Drive, Fort Bragg, North Carolina: The Fatal Vision Murder House: . Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. Using the diagram that appears in Fatal Vision, I have created a 3D computer version of the Jeffrey MacDonald apartment at 544 Castle Drive, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Among other atrocities, Manson disciples murdered actress Sharon Tate in California on August 6, 1969 and wrote Pig in blood on the front door. The perpetratorswhy dont they kill him? I think if I did that, Scott, I would give a lot away, Smerling said. Parole was denied then, and the U.S. Parole Commission said MacDonald must wait 15 years for reconsideration. kendall jenner vogue covers total; how to remove creosote stain from concrete; m715 hardtop for sale; trucks for sale mobile, al under $5,000; city winery donation request Jeffrey MacDonalds Article 32 investigation ran from July 6 to Sept. 11. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. MacDonald remained a suspect as the investigation continued. We would get out and walk up to the front porch and walk around the back.. His condo had parking out front for his sports car and was on the water in the back to accommodate his 34-foot yacht. Utility Room. The presiding officer decided to see for himself. Colette MacDonalds family originally believed that Jeffrey was innocent. Oscars Best Picture Winners Best Picture Winners Emmys STARmeter Awards San Diego Comic-Con New York Comic-Con Sundance Film Festival Toronto Int'l Film Festival Awards Central Festival Central All Events We are aligned on certain things, and were not aligned on other things.. MacDonald said he fought the intruders. While MacDonald maintained his innocence, the murders became the subject of two books "Fatal Vision" and "Fatal Justice" and a movie. That poster also provided a link to an image which illustrated that even greatly magnifying a portion of the JPEG image showing the ball of Colettes foot provides no usable detail with regard to ridge lines or other such things, primarily because the original crime scene images which had been posted online were created as low-resolution JPEG images, rendering them useless for analyzation of the type FrmrCSI claims to have done. But McGinnisss work had prompted ethical questions, which Janet Malcolm dissected in her provocative and influential 1989 book The Journalist and the Murderer. (Smerling has devoted an entire companion podcast, Morally Indefensible, to this fascinating subplot, though Malcolm did not agree to be interviewed for the series or the podcast.) MacDonald's wife and two . FBI crime scene diagram of 544 Castle Drive, Fort Bragg. In a 2012 book, the influential documentarian reinvestigated the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, convicted of the 1970 murder of his wife and children. Paul Woolverton. Interesting.The truth is that enlarging any scan via some zoom tool will indeed show the pixels that make up the image. And with that, one of the biggest true-crime rabbit holes of the past 50 years enters the hall of mirrors, if such a thing is spatially possible. Between six and eight officers arrived at roughly the same time. MPs were traipsing in and out of the house rather casually. When officers arrived at 544 Castle Drive, where MacDonald had lived since the previous August with his wife of six years, . It landed on its side. Out-of-towners rarely ask about the case nowadays, said John Meroski, president of the Fayetteville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. Writing A Wilderness of Error was Morriss quixotic attempt to dislodge the case from public perception. Everyone went gun crazy. MacDonald was discovered alive next to his wife with non-life-threatening wounds on his face and torso, a collapsed lung and a mild concussion. It definitely had a resonating kind of an effect from a high-profile standpoint.. Morris was friends with one of MacDonalds attorneys, Harvey Silverglate, and Morriss dissatisfaction with McGinnisss and Malcolms books led him to 544 Castle Drive on Christmas morning, 1991. Former Army captain and ex-surgeon Jeffrey MacDonald who is serving three life sentences for the high-profile slaying of his pregnant wife and two young daughters more than 50 years ago is once again seeking his freedom. At least 6 dead, dozens injured in massive pileup on Illinois I-55. You can download ACDSee at: http://www.tucows.com/preview/194958.html. They let the garbage collectors empty the MacDonalds trash cans before they could be examined for evidence. (8) Supposedly overlaying this low-quality image on top of his prior low-quality and wrongly-sized image, and Original low-resolution JPEG crime scene photo(Body of Colette MacDonald in the master bedroom). The photographer focused on a few key details, like a tilted painting on the wall, disheveled . He had been given no knowledge of any change in status regarding the apartment.". Although the 3D reconstructions of the murders have not yet been created as of this writing, you can view these accounts now at http://www.themacdonaldcase.com/3D/html/accounts.html. NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images. Perhaps most tellingly of all, however, when his analysis had been completed, despite his claim that the results of the analysis showed that there was an 80% possibility that a bloody footprint in the hallway was Colettes and not MacDonalds, and claiming that If you would like to see the picture I have after doing what I stated tell me how to upload it. Never miss a story by signing up for the newsletter now. Both of her arms were broken, as though she had been defending herself. It was released by authorities in 1984 . . MacDonald had claimed it had been ripped off while struggling with the intruders and he used it to ward off blows. This alone, of course, is more than enough to negate any analysis FrmrCSI claims to have done. Dining room. Working with the Fototeka photo digitation service and the US National Film Archive, the pictures were Continue reading "Bloody Brutal . This was done by scanning the diagram and then overlaying interior and exterior walls, doors and furnishings. MacDonald, whose story was told in the bestselling true-crime book Fatal Vision by late journalist Joe McGinniss, has a hearing Thursday afternoon in the Eastern District of North Carolina to determine whether his motion for compassionate release will be granted. Soon, MPs were on their way. He first became eligible in 1991, but he didnt have a parole hearing until May 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice said. This is a work in progress. Jeffrey MacDonald, 26, 6th Special Forces, was reported in satisfactory condition late this morning at Womack Army Hospital where he is being treated for multiple stab wounds. Diagrams of 544 Castle Drive, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Though we may not often think it, crime scene photography plays an important role in documenting history. But the crime-scene photos show her upper body covered with a towel a signal that evidence was moved, writes author Errol Morris in 2012s A Wilderness of Error. Morris says MacDonald is innocent. Her hands were cut in what appeared to be defensive wounds. What is not in dispute is what happened at 544 Castle Drive in the early morning hours of February 17, 1970. It found MacDonald guilty of second-degree murder in the deaths of Colette and Kimberley and first-degree murder in the death of Kristen. Certain facts are agreed upon. Kelvin Culbreth, the radio executive, said he was a pizza driver in the summers when he was home from college. (Even disregarding everything else, that fact alone would make the original online JPEGs completely unsuitable for any kind of serious computer analyzation of the type FrmrCSI claims to have done.) In poking through the evidence, Morris, a former private investigator, decided that the crime scene had been horribly managed and the criminal trial rigged, as he put it, courtesy of a good ol boy network determined to secure a conviction no matter what.. They thought home invaders would have attacked MacDonald, the biggest threat, before attacking his wife and children, he said. Further, it was revealed that in February, 17-year-old Helena Stoeckley of Fayetteville, a drug-using police informant in the local hippie community, had made comments about the MacDonald case to the Fayetteville police officer she worked with. Debunking FrmrCSI's alleged "analysis" of the bloody footprints. A longtime resident said that when she was a teenager, she and her friends used to sit in front of the house to see how long it took before they became scared. MacDonald appealed but lost at the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018, and the Supreme Court declined this past October to take up his case. All Rights Reserved. Many people bought firearms, said Thompson, the WFNC news director. Lets do another test to be sure. Why are they killing the baby [Kristen]? Cooney asks. Jeffrey and Colette dated in high school on Long Island, New York and married in 1963 when she was pregnant with Kimberley. He has consistently proclaimed his innocence and, before the trial, invited McGinniss to collaborate on a book that he thought would support his position. And when they overlap, there are obvious inconsistencies and consistencies. Stoeckley later recanted that claim. A pregnant Colette MacDonald, 26, and her children Kimberley, 5, and Kristen, 2, were brutally attacked early February 17, 1970, at their home in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. JPEG compression is a "lossy" data compression method, meaning it results in loss of pixel information. Another blunder involved the woman with the floppy hat, author Errol Morris wrote in his book A Wilderness of Error, which contends MacDonald was railroaded and is innocent of the murders. Despite the fact that the print in the hallway was too big to be Colettes and that MacDonald had admitted the print was probably his (which it later proved to be), the poster came to the surprising conclusion that there was an 80% possibility that a bloody footprint in the hallway was Colettes. Crews will spend Saturday demolishing a Fort Bragg duplex where the gruesome murders of a pregnant woman and her two daughters occurred nearly four decades ago. It was Feb. 17, 1970, some 50 years ago. In 2006, a strand of hair from under 2-year-old Kristens fingernail could not be matched to anyone. His most serious wound was an ice-pick stab to his chest that partly deflated his lung. MacDonald isnt saying. Hallway. Photo via Pinterest. She owned a large hat and blonde wig but disposed of both after learning about the tragedy, according to court records. . Stunned by the verdict, MacDonald continued to appeal his case, vehemently insisting . 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Bodies of two missing teen girls and a registered sex offender among seven people found dead on Oklahoma property, Media blackout on the real cause of San Francisco crime, Police investigate break-in at slain Detroit neurosurgeons home, Doomsday Mom Lori Vallows hair found on tape wrapped around dead sons body: DNA expert. Down the hall from the master bedroom, 5-year-old Kimberley and 2-year-old Kristen were in their beds. (6) Supposedly making another transparency from the low-resolution JPEG image of the footprint(s) in the hallway; Years after his book was published, he acknowledges in the series that he still believes MacDonald is innocent but knows he cant absolutely prove it. McGinness portrayed MacDonald as guilty. Colettes stepfather, Freddy Kassab, was at first a staunch supporter of MacDonald, but then became convinced of MacDonalds guilt and crusaded for the case to be reopened. People still call the base, asking to see the house, military officials said. And then I started thinking, Hey if anybody breaks in, he could have killed me with the hammer. So I put it back in the toolbox.. Will Jeffrey MacDonald Appeal Case in 2020? He was wearing only his pajama bottoms. To some, it sounded like a copycat killing modeled after Charles Mansons sadistic cult. In sum, after examination of FrmrCSIs images, and his comments about how he performed his alleged analysis, we find that this analysis seems to have consisted of the following: https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/jeffrey-macdonald-murder-case. On Feb. 17, 1970, Colette Stevenson MacDonald, 26, and her two daughters, Kimberley, 6, and Kristin, 2, were beaten and stabbed to death in their home at 544 Castle Drive on the Fort Bragg Army . The truth seemed more complicated than ever. I think the first night, I went to bed with a hammer under my pillow, she said. The home had been kept sealed while the case was pending. These 3D views will eventually be used in reconstructing Jeffrey MacDonalds various accounts of the night of the murders. MacDonald stirred and told the MPs to check on his children. Through the years, MacDonald and his defense team have blamed military authorities for not securing the crime scene and mishandling evidence. The now 76-year-old is serving three consecutive life sentences and is currently housed at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. A military police officer glimpsed a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat while driving to the MacDonalds' home at 544 Castle Drive, but that information wasn't acted on promptly, Morris noted. Thanks for contacting us. , The Murders on Castle Drive. They said MacDonald deserved a new trial for several reasons, including: A deceased U.S. marshal was reported to have said he drove Helena Stoeckley from South Carolina to MacDonalds trial in 1979 and she admitted being in the MacDonald home during the murders. He went to the MacDonald residence and kicked the table. 544 Castle Drive Crime Scene Photos; How Many Calories In 1 Litre Milk; Johnson City Swim Lessons; Bill Johnston Kalamazoo; Jeffrey MacDonald (pictured with his wife, Colette, and one of his two daughters, Kimberly) was convicted in 1979 of having murdered his family in 1970. Morris scans the room with a quizzical expression. This home, and 28 others, was demolished in 2008 to make room for more modern housing. Evidence of Guilt; Consciousness of Guilt; The U.S. Department of Justice and Army kept the apartment sealed from 1970 to 1981 in order to preserve possible evidence. Amid 50 years of uncertainty about whether Jeffrey MacDonald killed his family, there is no doubt his wife and two young daughters died in pain and anguish. You also receive detailed insights into each investigation with our cutting-edge tools, while our 3D re-creation of profiles elevates your access and knowledge of each story. One of the most important jobs of an MP is to preserve a crime scene to protect the evidence for the investigators, Culbreth said. MacDonald slaughtered his wife, Colette, and their two daughters, 5-year-old Kimberly and 2-year-old Kristen, on Feb. 17, 1970, in their Fort Bragg home. In the final episode of the new FX docu-series A Wilderness of Error, the influential documentarian Errol Morris steps onto the set of another filmmakers documentary. For a while, he played basketball with friends, then he stopped by his apartment to pick up his two little daughters. This was evidence, they said, that MacDonald staged the scene. They let newsmen, neighbors and others roam the front yard and backyard before the evidence was processed. This story has been shared 139,061 times. At 544 Castle Drive, Colette MacDonald, 6-year-old Kimberly and 2-year-old Kristen Jean were stabbed and bludgeoned to death on Feb. 17, 1970. No ridge lines are visible in the JPEG crime scene photo even athigh magnification (ball portion of Colettes footshown below): Apparently not realizing that the point of showing the image above was not to "see the foot," since in the crime scene photo we can see the foot already without any problem, and that the point was to zoom in to see the detail (or lack thereof) in the image he used in his alleged analysis, FrmrCSI responded to this by claiming that "If you would not have enlarged your picture you would be able to see the foot, if that is what it is. Jeffrey Robert MacDonald is an American family annihilator who, on August 29, 1979, was convicted of the 1970 murders of his wife and two daughters. These images now reside in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, part of an extraordinary historical document: a nearly 100-page album of unflinching crime photos from the dawn of the 20th century. Note how in the crime scene photo (below left), Colettes toes are visible, but when FrmrCSIs image is overlaid on top, the toes disappear, running off the edge of the photo, because the aspect ratio is incorrect and the foot has been made quite a bit longer than it actually is: Cropped section of original crime scene photo, Same photo with FrmrCSIs image as an overlay. When the MPs first arrived, one of Colettes breasts was exposed. The house remained a crime scene for nine-and-a-half years and remained boarded up for 14 years in all, The Fayetteville Observer reported in 2000. In this era before DNA evidence, investigators used the different blood types of the MacDonalds and their children, and where their blood was found throughout the apartment, to convince the jurors that MacDonald had moved from room to room to commit these killings. Where: Airs first on the FX network every Friday at 9p.m., then streaming on Hulu the following day. Colette was often left alone to raise the girls and the marriage experienced rough patches, her mother Mildred Kassab testified in a September 1974 grand jury hearing. Fox ruled against MacDonald in 2014. , The Fayetteville Observer. . when he saw a crime scene photo of 2-year-old Kristen. On March 3, he refused the Moderna vaccine although he suffers from chronic kidney disease, high blood pressure and a history of skin cancer, prosecutors said. That was just one of the many pieces of evidence. 544 Castle Drive was a three-bedroom apartment, about 1,000 square feet, where Captain Jeffrey MacDonald lived with his pregnant wife, Colette MacDonald, and their two young daughters. What's so unbelievable about all of this is that Archie actually convinced a group of friends that killing 7 people would bring baby Craig back from the dead! He thought it unusual that a woman would be out in the rain shortly before 4 a.m. When MacDonald awoke, he saw two white men, a black man and a white woman in the living room with him. until MacDonald's conviction in 1979. This account of the MacDonald murders and their aftermath is drawn from court documents, newspaper archives, the true-crime books Fatal Vision, Fatal Justice and A Wilderness of Error, and the memories of people who lived here. As investigators descended upon the apartment, one of them picked up a camera and photographed the scene. Given the recent Manson murders and then this, the pawnshops were all selling out of rifles and handguns, he said. For researchers of the murders of Colette, Kimberley and Kristen MacDonaldDebunking FrmrCSIs alleged analysis of the bloody footprints. 1970: Smerling is the director of the documentary series "A Wilderness of Error," which examines the MacDonald case. MacDonald started a new life in California as an emergency room doctor, purchasing a luxury condominium, a sports car and a yacht. An analyst from the FBI gave extensive testimony about the blood patterns, holes and rips in the bedding and in MacDonalds pajamas. Jeffrey MacDonald lay face down, his head on Colettes shoulder or chest. He had a respite in 1980 when the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that his right to a speedy trial had been violated and he was released from prison that August. MacDonald had been a physician for a Green Beret unit at Fort Bragg. There is a padlock on the front door and steel bands bar the windows . Families began living in it again. But wait, theres more. "This was against the law and done without Dr. Mac Donald's consent. Anyone can read what you share. He had not been there since Christmas of 1969. The call for help came shortly after 3:30 on a Tuesday morning. This house, located at 544 Castle Drive on Fort Bragg, NC, is the residence where Jeffrey MacDonald lived with his family. We're working to give you the tools, stories, and technology that will help shine a spotlight on victims and their stories. He used the same club to bludgeon Colette repeatedly, breaking both her arms as she fought to defend herself, wrote Assistant US Attorney John Harris in a motion opposing his release. Colettes stepfather, Freddy Kassab, relentlessly lobbied authorities to keep the investigation alive. When the images are side by side, we can see that FrmrCSI did not know how to size his image correctly, resulting in his image having lost its aspect ratio (correct width for the height of the image). It was all really interesting to me at that point, he said. For now, MacDonalds next chance for freedom is parole. They said they repeatedly knocked it over to try to recreate the fight conditions that MacDonald described and it always landed upside down on the floor. The jury convicted MacDonald August 29, 1979 on three counts of murder. 2023 Capitol Broadcasting Company, Inc. NCHSAA board will consider policy allowing high school athletes to profit off NIL, Six Harris Teeters impacted by threats Monday, Protesters rejecting, supporting Johnston Co. commissioner gather at Monday meeting, Park service finds trash, debris with Navy markings washing ashore at Outer Banks, Triangle, NC-linked businesses remain relatively quiet on LGBTQ bills in General Assembly, NC Senate Committee debates bill on trans athletes in sports. Th emore you enlarge the picture the more the picture will pixelate. It tends to happen if a television movie about it has played or if there is court activity, he said. Chief Judge Terrence Boyle is scheduled to hear arguments from both sides but MacDonald, 77, will not be in court. Marc Smerling thinks he has some idea. U.S. district court and 4th Circuit Court of Appeals judges rejected requests for a retrial in 2014 and again in 2018. DNA testing from three hairs found at the crime scene could not be matched to anyone, lending credence to MacDonalds home-invasion claim. These colorized versions of vintage black-and-white crime scene photos reveal a unique perspective on the murders, mobsters, and mayhem of decades past. August 27 - Four hours later, travel bloggers driving through Grand Teton National Park drive past the couple's van "abandoned" on a dirt road. The man dropped the phone, but the line stayed open. . His pajama top was on Colettes body. On Jan. 11, MacDonald tested positive for the virus without experiencing any symptoms and called the results a false positive. The five-part series, produced by . The wound that he had was nothing compared to what they got, Hodges said. Military police entered by an unopened back door and found the physician alive, lying on the floor near his wife in their blood-splattered bedroom. Google Maps says it takes 11 minutes to walk from that corner to 544 Castle Drive. The Davidson County Sheriff's Office has released photos of the Corbett home taken the night Jason Corbett was bludgeoned to death in his bedroom. Bundy admitted to killing 36 women, but experts think the numbers reach into the hundreds. He repeatedly appealed the conviction and currently proclaims his innocence. . Then you manipulate the photos so that one is on top of another. Both versions of Fatal Vision were wildly popular, helping cement MacDonalds guilt in the public mind. Again it was raining, the whole area is muddy as hell, Thompson said. As much as the MacDonald case captivated the country, with its publicity in national magazines, major newspapers and on television, it also became part of the culture of Fayetteville. Sometimes he passed the house while making deliveries. Stoeckley was known to have worn a blond wig, boots and a large floppy hat. In fact, it would be worse than the image(s) he started with, because of the loss of aspect ratio in Colettes foot, and because of the degradation, interpolation and anti-aliasing (resulting in smoothing of pixels) that occurred when he did his image processing.Regarding FrmrCSIs comment about thumb drives, thumb drives would have little or no bearing at all on such computer analyzation, since they have no more ability to recover original lost information in an image than any other device.Finally, it should be noted that as of this writing, FrmrCSI has produced none of the supposed photo transparencies he claims to have made, nor did he provide any detailed information regarding the type of printer, scanner and software used in his analysis. He cannot reasonably expect that prolonging his risk by declining vaccination will be rewarded with a sentence reduction.. (Durst was arrested and is still awaiting trial.). Stoeckley also told a Nashville police officer she thought she witnessed the MacDonald killings. MacDonald was born on October 12, 1943 in Jamaica, Queens (New York) and raised in a poor neighborhood on Long Island. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. The man who dialed the operator relayed a desperate situation. The magazines cover story was about the Manson murders. To the extent that any risk remains, he has voluntarily assumed it by rejecting the risk-mitigating measures offered to him, wrote Harris. The Harpers were originally founded as The Harpers at Twilight in 324 DR deep in the Elven Court woods, and the members included human, elf, and half-elf warriors, rangers, druids, thieves and mages. Jump directly to the content. In 2012, MacDonald finally got a new hearing. Homepage > 544 castle drive crime scene photos . Chuck Hodges, the son of former CID investigator John Hodges, said when he was growing up, visiting relatives asked about the case and the house at 544 Castle Drive.