Fatal Vision (69 page)

"Did Colette have any reason to be jealous?"

"If she did she never mentioned it to me, sir. Okay? That's as fair as I can be with you. She might have been the type of woman that felt that way and would not discuss it with his parent. I do not know."

"Whether justified or not, did Colette think she had any reason to be jealous of Penny Wells?"

"Sir, you're asking me something that I have never heard discussed."

"Well, I'm going to ask you specifically: when Jeff was up there about September or October when Jay had this problem which caused him to be hospitalized, did Jeff have an occasion to look up Penny Wells, spend any time with her?"

"If he did, sir, it was without my knowledge."

"All right, now, on February 17 and in the days immediately thereafter, did you question your son in any way about any of the details of what had happened inside that apartment?"

"No, and may I emphasize that I was the mother of a young man whose wife and children were murdered and my concern was to give solace and to try and help him bear this agonizing burden. I did not question him."

"You stayed down there during that entire week?"

"Yes, sir, but my time was not always spent with Jeff. I had a few other things that I had to take care of."

"What things are you referring to?"

"Well, I got a telephone call from Mr. Hayes, and he said that Jay wanted to talk to me. And I spoke to Jay on the telephone and Jay sounded like he wasn't himself again, as though he might have been having one of those things that the doctors called a flashback.

"And he asked me, 'Mom, tell me what is happening?' And I told him and he sounded like he was a little disjointed, and I said to him, 'Wh
ere are you now?' And he said, I
am with Billy.' And I asked Jay if he would be kind enough to let me speak to Billy, which he did, and I said to Billy, 'Jay sounds ill.' And Billy said, i am afraid to tell you, Mrs. MacDonald, that he really is not well again and I honestly don't know what to do.'

And I said to Billy, 'You know the hospital that he went to before and my only request is that if you feel he is not manageable, perhaps they will be able to help. Undoubtedly, it is a flashback, or to your knowledge, has he done anything stupid, like taking drugs again?'

"And Billy said, 'It is possible, I don't know. But he is getting messages out of the TV again, which is one of the symptoms of his trouble before.'

"And I said, 'Well, the messages he is getting today from the TV are very real, but I am sure that he can't keep them in perspective.' So I said, 'Billy, I can't be in two places at the same time and right now I really feel as though I cannot leave North Carolina.'

"So I asked Billy, 'Can you talk to him and see if he will voluntarily go with you back to the hospital?' And Billy said, 'Okay, I will try, Mrs. Mac' And I believe he called me back later that night to inform me that they had been successful in convincing Jay, not with ease, that he should return to the hospital.

"The next day, late that night after having visited Jeff, I got this message that I would have to call the hospital because something was wrong with Jay. So I called and they assured me—now this was probably close to midnight on the 18th, as I recall—that Jay was sound asleep. He had been tranquilized and he was fine.

"And I told the people on the phone that I was confused because the message indicated there had been some trouble. And they said, 'Well, Mrs. MacDonald, there was trouble earlier.' Apparently during the night he awoke and he did not know where he was, and he became very deranged and he put his fists through the window and said that he needed to get out and he had to get down to see what was going on. But they said they gave him heavy dosages of Thorazine, and it tended to quiet him down and now he was resting and in fact fast asleep."

"How long did Jay remain in the hospital? Isn't it true that he was at the funeral service?"

"Yes, that was because our family has this marvelous friend, Mr. Robert Stern, from New Hope, Pennsylvania, and when he heard Jay was in difficulty, he contacted a doctor in Bucks County and explained the situation and arranged for private, follow-up care, and for Jay to live with his family, because he had known Jay almost all his life, and the next day it was arranged for Jay to be released in his custody when it was decided that Jay was now manageable, and Mr. Stern took Jay from the hospital down into the Village to remove his clothing from the place where he was staying and took him back to Bucks County, to his own home.

"On the following day Mr. Stern felt it was imperative that Jay be present at the service, so that his presence would support the family and so there would be no conjecture as to why the brother was not there. So he flew down in his company plane, bringing Jay, and then went back on the plane to Bob's home.

"The day after the internment in Long Island, I drove to Bucks County and spent probably a good part of that day talking with the psychiatrist who Mr. Stern had arranged for, trying to establish some background and then I drove back on down to Fort Bragg."

"Now, after Jeffrey was released from the hospital, did you and he have occasion to take a short trip together?"

"Yes, as I recall the wife of his commanding officer met me one day in the lobby of the place where I was staying and suggested that I take him to the seashore for a bit, just for a few days' recovery.

"I asked Jeff if he would like to go and he said yes, and we did go. And he just walked the seashore and we picked up shells and had breakfast. And I remember just driving around seeing the countryside and trying to restore. But on my honor I never probed. I could not ask questions. I felt that other people had."

"You didn't probe and he didn't volunteer, right?"

"That's correct."

"Now, after the charges were dropped," Woerheide said, "why didn't your son remain on the East Coast? Doesn't he have connections on the East Coast?"

"Yes sir, in a sense, but they are almost all painful. His father is gone, his grandmother is gone, his wife and children—primary— are gone. Even his house is gone. There is nothing there."

"But isn't it strange that he moved from one edge of the continent all the way out to the other?"

"At the time, you must remember, he was working very hard to get his life together, and he did work in New York for six months. And believe me, when you see what it is like to live in New York City, I don't think it is the ideal situation. It isn't a spot that either he or even Colette would have wanted to be. In other words, it was not their lifestyle.

"So when Jeff and I discussed it, I encouraged him to go. This is something that if you think will help restore your spirits because the sun does shine, and if the people are kind, and if you can be engaged in the work of your interest—why not?' "

"Well, it seems to me he might want to stay around to occasionally visit the graves."

"Let me tell you something. I don't even visit those graves. I did very consistently in the very early years but I found that after a while—first of all, the memory of the children—and that includes Colette, because essentially she was my child—the memory is very pure and very good and I would like to keep it that way. I don't mind putting flowers on the graves, but I don't want to enter into a competition."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Mr. Woerheide, I am not casting aspersions, but it is true that Mr. and Mrs. Kassab keep those flowers fresh and there are multiple baskets of flowers and they are never left to wilt or die.

"Their visits there are continuous but by the same token it seems like a show and I will tell you why. Beside those bodies lies the body of her husband and there is no tombstone or name commemorating him. This may sound harsh, and I pass no judgment, but as you know I am sure that man committed suicide and Mildred could not ever forgive this. As a result she will not honor him by even putting his name there." (This, as it happens, was not true. There was, and is, a marker at the grave of Cowles Stevenson.)

"Please let me clear some of these things up right now. The fact that there was a great deal of attention paid to the girls' graves was pleasing at first, and then I realized that in a sense it was symbolic, as though they were keeping alive more than the memory of the death of the children: it was mostly for attention to be brought to this thing.

"Now for the loss of three lives attention must be paid, but it seems to me not in this showy way. So I feel that if that is how they spend their time and since I, for about a year and a half, have felt that it would be impossible for me to continue visiting or meeting them on the basis that their attitude toward Jeff had changed, then you will have to forgive me when I tell you that I prefer to have the thoughts of my children in my mind rather than in flowers placed on a grave where there are already too many placed."

"That is very interesting," Victor Woerheide said. "Tell me, Mrs. MacDonald, why do you think the Kassabs, who were so supportive of your son, suddenly changed their mind about him?"

"In the dynamics of human behavior one has to stop and wonder why attitudes change. Now let me start from the beginning, as I see it."

"By all means, do so."

"Frequently, I have heard the story over and over again from both Mildred and her sister Helen that Mildred was the youngest and the prettiest, and therefore a lot of attention was paid to making sure that Mildred's life was filled with gaiety and good things. She was given the opportunity that the older sisters and the parents worked towards giving her and she herself was almost prepared to sort of be onstage.

"In all sincerity, the woman has had a tough time because there have been tragedies in her life. But every time something happened, it always seemed to—you know, she is a
little lady, but a very powerfu
l lady and the power is in that she shuts -out more. In other words, she has the power, I think, to change her temperament.

"Now what happens is that when her husband died—and this is foreign to my lifestyle—she was a lady who traveled in the more elite set in Patchogue. We were with other kinds of people. They were good people, from all walks of life, but Mildred was very selective about professional people.

"When her husband died, the concern in the family was for Mildred. So they gathered together and they sent her on a world tour of one year, and when she returned, they then established her in a hotel in New York for six months, and they gleefully talk about how she was set up in the best table in the dining room night after night to attract the attention of wealthier people, because obviously they would be in that vicinity.

"Now this is not hearsay. This is what is being told me over and over again. And eventually she did attract the attention of one Alfred Kassab, who is by all means a reasonably attractive man. His family was wealthy—he came from the South, as I understand—and he and Mildred were genuinely attracted to each other. I am not disputing that.

"And then they got married. And when they got married—and this was told me over and over again by that family—Freddy's mother was insane with rage and decided that she would cut him out of her will. And because of this, Mildred and Freddy— mostly Mildred—would talk incessantly to me about how they were going to work to declare his mother incompetent at the time of that will. Because they wanted their rightful share, and they were accustomed also, of course, to money.

"Again, this may sound a little too strong, but there were times, sir, in her conversation when everything looked very good and we were all together and there was no tragedy yet—there were times when my feeling was that their concern was much more for Jeff than for Colette.

"Mildred tended to apologize for Colette. I found her to be an entrancing girl. Sometimes she looked a little harassed, but it was mostly, I felt, that she felt she wasn't managing very well. I was aware of her faults and they made us understand each other better.

"But, by the same token, I really feel that one of the things that made everything okay in their eyes was the fact that Jeff was going to be a doctor. I have a feeling that they felt very well protected by the fact that there was going to be someone to lean on. Now that may sound severe, harsh, or whatever. But I honestly feel that when Jeff made the decision to move to California, that was the beginning of their disenchantment.

"Also, let me tell you that from day one, February 17th, when we arrived, Mr. Kassab made some really strong statements about how he was going to pursue this case down to the end of his days.

"And I realize that we all handle our grief and our anger in different ways, and this statement by itself is an understandable one, but by the same token he also feels he has to, like, prove this to his wife, who is the one behind him, like making the spitballs, and he is throwing them. I really think he has been pressured in this way."