Family Vendetta

Guilty of a bizarre murder

The story he told was eerily reminiscent of the Sharon Tate murders six months earlier. As Jeffrey R. MacDonald, then a captain in the Green Berets, described the events, he woke up on a living room couch at about 3 a.m. on Feb. 17, 1970 to find his home invaded. Three young men and a woman holding a lighted candle chanted, "Acid is groovy! Kill the pigs!" The intruders beat and stabbed him, he said, and when he came to hours later he found the slaughtered bodies of his pregnant wife Colette, 26, and daughters Kimberly, 5, and Kristen, 2.

But for the past six weeks, after one of the longest delays between crime and trial in the history of the federal courts, a jury in Raleigh, N.C., listened to an altogether different story. MacDonald, prosecutors said, had flown into a rage during an argument with Colette and beaten and stabbed her and Kimberly. Then he cold-bloodedly stabbed Kristen in her bed. To hide his crimes, the prosecution charged, MacDonald wrote "Pig" in Colette's blood on the headboard of a bed and then stabbed himself. Last week the jury found MacDonald guilty of second-degree murder in the slayings of Colette and Kimberly, and of first-degree murder in the killing of Kristen. Judge Franklin T. DuPree Jr. sentenced Mac-Donald, now 35 and an emergency-room surgeon in Long Beach, Calif, to life imprisonment.

The verdict was a triumph for Colette's mother, Mildred Kassab, and her stepfather Alfred, both 58. Originally they believed MacDonald's story; Alfred Kassab had even testified as a character witness at 1970 Army hearings that cleared the captain. But the Kassabs quickly developed doubts and began what the husband openly called a "legal vendetta," importuning federal authorities to reopen the case. MacDonald was finally indicted in early 1975, but the trial was further delayed by a flock of appeals, including three to the Supreme Court.

The jurors who convicted MacDonald said later that the evidence at the scene did not jibe with his story. There was none of the defendant's blood in the living room where he said he was attacked, for instance, and FBI experts testified that the pattern and type of slashes in a pajama top did not fit MacDonald's account of the struggle. Defense Attorney Bernard Segal intends to appeal, partly on the ground that the long delay violated Mac-Donald's constitutional right to a speedy trial. The Kassabs professed not to be worried. Said Mildred Kassab:

"Now I can let Colette rest." sb

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.