Fatal Vision (74 page)

Toward the end of his testimony, when asked if he had any theories about what might have precipitated the murders, Kassab said, "That area is a dark area. Something happened that caused an argument. I believe that it was an instantaneous thing. He may have socked her and she may have picked up the hairbrush and hit him back. And that just sent him into a blind fury, to be hit by a woman.

"But nobody will ever know, because I assure you, Jeff MacDonald will never tell you."

There was, however, one person who was willing to try to fit together the pieces of the puzzle: Paul Stombaugh, chief of the chemistry section of the FBI laboratory, who had first been shown evidence pertaining to the MacDonald case in 1971.

In the summer of 1974, Victor Worheide and Brian Murtagh had again presented Stombaugh with the physical evidence collected at the scene and had asked for a more exhaustive analysis. Having obtained permission from Freddy Kassab, who had legal title to the cemetery plots in which Colette and Kimberly and Kristen MacDonald were buried, they had also asked Stombaugh to supervise exhumation and take hair samples from the head of each body.

Having done so, and having made microscopic examinations, Stombaugh determined conclusively that the blond hair found in the palm of Colette MacDonald's hand had—without question— been her own, and not that of a blond intruder.

Toward the end of the grand jury hearing—it was by now, in fact, January 15, 1975—Paul Stombaugh was summoned to Raleigh to report on his laboratory findings. He first summarized the results of his 1971 analysis:

—That there were forty-eight puncture holes in Jeffrey MacDonald's blue pajama top that could have been made by the icepick that had been found outside the house. Further, that the holes had been made when the top was stationary. None had the tearing at the edges which would have resulted from their having been made while the garment was in motion. Similar icepick holes in Colette MacDonald's pink pajama top had been made while that garment was stationary.

—That some of Colette MacDonald's blood had stained the pajama top before it was torn.

—That the cuts in all garments other than the blue pajama top had been made by the Old Hickory knife, despite the fact that it was the Geneva Forge knife MacDonald had said he'd pulled from his wife's chest.

Stombaugh then described the results of the more extensive analysis which he had just completed.

He had discovered, he said, that certain of the bloodstains on the Hilton hotel bathmat found on Colette's abdomen matched outlines of the Old Hickory paring knife and of the icepick, indicating that those two weapons, while bloody, had been laid temporarily—and perhaps even wiped—on that bathmat.

He had discovered also, he said, that certain of the bloodstains from the sheet found rumpled on the master bedroom floor matched the sleeves of Colette's pajama top, and that still others seemed to have been made by a pair of hands and by the bare left shoulder of an adult human being.

The implication, Stombaugh said—the inescapable implication— was that someone wearing Jeffrey MacDonald's blue pajama top (which had already been stained by Colette's blood) had covered Colette's body with that sheet and then had picked up her body and carried it.

Stombaugh stepped down from the witness stand and stepped to a slide projector. The room was darkened. A slide was displayed on a screen. In garish, awful color.

"Now, this is Kristen's room," Stombaugh said, his voice perfectly even and controlled. "And I'd like to direct your attention to this area right here, this is the top sheet on that bed, and it has a huge bloodstain on it. Yet there is no bloodstain underneath, on the bottom sheet.

"In reading the reports, it was reflected that the huge bloodstain on the top sheet in Kristen's room was Type A blood—is Colette's blood type. Kristen had Type O blood, and the rest of the blood in that room, the bulk of it, was Type O.

"Now, in examining this stain, it was not one that would have been put there just by somebody's hand. It's a huge stain, as you can see. An awful lot of blood flowed there. The only way you get staining such as this is from a steady flow right down onto it."

The lights came on, Stombaugh returned to the witness stand, and the multicolored bedspread, which also had been found rumpled on the master bedroom floor, was laid out before the grand jurors.

"At one time," Stombaugh said, "this had a very heavy flow of blood from a Type A person directly onto it. In fact, even today, there's a large cake of blood on this—a specimen of Type A blood.

"Now, if this bedspread had been placed down on the floor of Kristen's room, and Colette's body were lifted off the bed where she was bleeding, she would have bled directly on the spread. Then her body could have been covered with this sheet, and as the person lifted it up, he stepped on the blood in this bedspread.

"The spread, you see, is very heavy, and blood does not soak through it. It acts like a little bit of a well in there, and holds it. If he stepped in that and carried Colette's body out of this room, he would leave a bloody footprint."

There was a short silence in the grand jury room as this image lingered in the mind.

Then Victor Woerheide said, "In addition, you looked at Kristen's bedspread, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir, I did."

"That bedspread, it's been testified to, had marks of blood on it that were in the blood type of Kimberly. It's also been testified that there is Kimberly's blood type—Type AB—on the club. Can you offer a possible explanation of how the AB blood might have gotten on that bedspread?"

"Yes. This stain is not a result of direct bleeding. It's been a transfer of blood. In other words, a very bloody object having AB blood on it was placed here. It could have occurred by resting the club, in a bloody condition, on the bedspread."

"All right," Victor Woerheide said. "Now from your observations and the evidence that you studied, is it reasonable to say that there was a struggle involving a person wearing the blue pajama top in the master bedroom at which time the blue pajama top was torn? And is it reasonable to say that Colette MacDonald, having suffered an injury and bleeding, was in a position on the bed of Kristen MacDonald over near the wall where she bled directly on the top sheet of Kristen MacDonald's bed?"

"Yes, sir, and I'd like to point out one other thing in that regard. If I can have the pajama bottoms?"

Victor Woerheide removed Colette MacDonald's pajama bottoms from a plastic bag and handed them to Paul Stombaugh, who displayed them to the grand jury.

"The only injuries Colette MacDonald suffered," he said, "were from her waist up. She had no injuries from her waist down. Now, what puzzled me was how her pajama bottoms—the front of them—got so much blood down on the legs. And according to the laboratory report this is all Type A blood, her own blood.

"It's direct bleeding and it's a lot of bleeding, and we have two places where we find this type of thing. One is the top sheet of Kristen's bed and one is on these.

"This would indicate to me—due to the fact that this bed is only thirty-six inches wide—that Colette MacDonald was probably knocked across the bed, up against the wall, and fell forward, causing the blood to drip down onto the top sheet and onto the pajama bottoms."

Stombaugh moved on to the next order of business, removing a large photograph from an envelope.

"This," he said, "was a photograph taken at the time of autopsy, and it shows the damage to Colette MacDonald's chest. If you'll notice—I guess the people in the back can't see too well—we have twenty-one icepick wounds.

"According to the autopsy report she suffered twenty-one icepick wounds to the chest. They were deep and penetrating. In studying the wounds, we see a group of five in her right chest and a group of sixteen in her left chest area. Now, in studying the pictures of Colette as she was found on the floor, we see that she has this blue pajama top draped over her."

In refolding Jeffrey MacDonald's pajama top "exactly" as it appeared in the crime scene photographs, Stombaugh said, it was observed that the forty-eight icepick holes in it could have been made by twenty-one thrusts of an icepick and that those twenty-one thrusts seemed to be in alignment with the twenty-one icepick holes in Colette MacDonald's chest—sixteen on one side and five on the other—indicating strongly that she had been stabbed with the icepick after the blue pajama top had been laid across her chest.

"Now, we can't say positively this happened," Stombaugh said. "We're pointing out this is a possibility. It could have happened. Because all the holes are accounted for, and we did come up with the same number and the same locations."

"Now, Mr. Stombaugh," Woerheide said, "on the basis of your analysis of the physical evidence that you have referred to here today, have you developed any theory of how all these things fit together? What happened that night?"

"Some events," Stombaugh said, "I guess, we'll never know. But it would appear to me that the fight started in the master bedroom. I believe Dr. MacDonald probably struck his wife in the face with a fist, knocked her down. This would cause the blood to start flowing. She probably had a bloody nose, and through a struggle there, this is where her blood got onto his pajama top before it was torn.

"Kimberly might have awakened, due to the screaming, and come up and tried to help her mother. He might have pushed her aside, and—this is just supposition on my part, but I feel probably this club—I imagine it could have been kept in the utility room which is a very short distance from this bedroom.

"I sort of suspect, possibly, Colette might have picked this club up and socked Jeffrey with it, which could account for the bump on his head.

"He was a bruiser, so he took the club away from her and went to swing at her and probably—accidentally or on purpose— struck Kimberly on the side of the head with it, causing her to bleed, and this would account for the AB blood found near the entrance to the room.

"In the doorway here, in the rug, it had soaked through pretty much, indicating someone had lain here bleeding a good bit.

"When he did that, I think our little bent knife comes into play, because this is the type of knife that's very dull, and the type a lot of people, including myself, keep around for painting because it makes a good thing to scrape paint with when you drop some on the floor.

"I think this was near the club in the utility room and I think Colette grabbed it and attacked Jeff with this thing, possibly causing the little cut in his left abdomen. That cut was slight and was made with a tearing action. A knife such as this would do that.

"And when she did that, he leveled her with this club. Then things, I think, sort of quieted down, because I believe Colette undoubtedly had to have been unconscious at that time.

"I think he picked Kim up, carried her into her bed, and, due to the AB blood spatters on the wall, I believe he hit her again with the club and killed her.

"While this was going on—or possibly before that—I think Colette came to, came into Kristen's room, to protect the only child that is not dead, and he caught up with her in there and really let her have it with the club again.

"This possibly is where both her arms were broken, because they're defense wounds, and she was knocked across to the wall, and we know that she was here at some time in order to have bled this much here.

"I guess he kind of got himself oriented, picked up the bedspread and the blue sheet from the master bedroom and carried them back into Kristen's room, reached over and picked up Colette.

"Now at this time his pajama top had been torn, but it probably wasn't too bloody, and I believe all the blood that's on the pajama top—the bulk of it—got on there when he reached across the bed and picked her up and put her down on this bedspread.

"Then he covered her with this sheet, and, having blood on him—fresh blood, wet blood—and also on his hands, he reached down, picked her up, carried her back into the master bedroom, where she eventually was found.

"After that, he probably went to the kitchen, and he could have been bleeding by this time from the cut in his abdomen, and he got the rubber gloves and picked up the Old Hickory knife, and went back in and did the job on the rest of them, and ended up with the icepick on Colette.

"I think when he put her body down is when he took his pajama top off and threw it across her body. Then, I believe, he put the bathmat down next to her and put each weapon down on
the bathmat as he was finished using it, and then as he left, he put the bathmat on her body, and went out the back door, and threw the knife and icepick out."

"In regard to some of the specifics," Victor Woerheide said, "all we can do is speculate. And," he said to members of the grand jury, some of whom had begun to embellish or expand upon Stombaugh's theory, "your guess is as good or better than mine.