Fatal Vision (99 page)

Jeffrey MacDonald remained in solitary confinement at Butner for six days. He wrote me a letter every day, sometimes more than one a day.

I knew my Mom was strong but she surprises even me. What an incredible person to pull it all together and be so optimistic so soon after the crushing defeat. Someday when this is over I hope I can return just part of her love and caring.
...

"Its strange how 48 hrs. can alter your perspective so much. If you had asked me Wed. AM would I accept a victory through the court of appeals, I would have laughed at you.

Now I am pleading for my lawyers to argue the best case ever in front of 4th Circuit in order that I may win a more hollow victory than anyone ever previously guessed I would accept. Like Lenny Bruce said—when it's
your
ass-hole they are pouring hot lead into,
then
tell them you'll withhold secrets from the enemy (& not before). Of course I'll accept a 4th Circuit victory. It will be more difficult to face my friends than it would have been with a victory last Wed at 4:45 p.m.—but I'll do it. I hope my friends accept it—and the rest of the world that thinks I got off on a technicality will have to wait for your book. If they won't read your book, fuck them. Then they are worse than the jury. I can't get my mind off the tear-stained faces. Why couldn't they have had the courage to vote the way I'm sure the majority felt in their gut—proof of guilt was
not
beyond a reasonable doubt.
...

Have you ever been strip-searched? You strip naked and they look in your ears, armpits, mouth. The guard says 'Lift it up,' and you lift first your penis, then your scrotum. You then turn around, bend over & spread your cheeks. You then lift up each foot so the guard can see the bottoms of your feet. After they search your clothes, shoes, socks & underwear you put it all back on. It's always slightly sweaty because either you're on the way to a visit and are anticipating the pleasure/pain of it—or you are coming from a visit and are suffering from the new-each-time separation from the real world.

I can now think of Colette & Kim and Kris and not go crazy. And I can separate Colette from Bobbi. And I can even squeeze Sheree in there and not confuse it all. But 12 tear-stained-faces keep intruding. The foreman's voice keeps me awake. Couldn't the son of a bitch have found 'reasonable doubt'?
...

In the first moments that foll
owed the jury's announcement of
its verdict, Franklin
T
. Dupree,
Jr., had denied Bernie Segal's
plea that MacDonald be permitted
to remain free on bail pending
appeal. The judge had said, ho
wever, that he would consider a
written motion to that effec
t. Segal filed such a motion on
September 4. . ' *

The next day, with Dupree not yet having ruled on the request, the process of transferring MacDonald from Butner to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island, California, was begun.

Despite the ominous sound of its name, Terminal Island was, under the circumstances, as desirable a destination as MacDonaid could possibly have hoped for. A low-security institution on the outskirts of Long Beach, just fiften minutes from St. Mary's Hospital and less than half an hour from his Huntington Beach condominium, Terminal Island did not, as a rule, house individuals convicted of homicide. In fact, of the more than five hundred inmates, MacDonald would be the only one serving a life sentence.

It was not, then, Terminal Island itself that was objectionable from Jeffrey MacDonald's point of view: it was the means by which he would get there. Early on the morning of September 5, MacDonald was placed aboard a Bureau of Prisons bus to begin the long journey west. Unlike Greyhound or Trail ways, the federal prison transport system did not offer express service to the coast. A prisoner would ride the bus to wherever its next stop happened to be. There, he would be held—for hours, days, or weeks—until the next leg of his journey could be scheduled.

MacDonald's first stop was the federal penitentiary at Atlanta. From there he wrote to me on Thursday, September 6, expressing (among other sentiments) his displeasure at his attorneys' decision to permit his transfer while the bail question was still under consideration by Judge Dupree.

Fucking lawyers are a pain in the ass. They charge you coming & going and for all their little expenses, lose goddamn cases when they shouldn't be lost, promise you the world all the while, and don't know shit about what they are doing. They operate like mail order physicians. The whole profession sucks. . . . Every prisoner along the way fell over laughing when they heard I
could
have stayed at Butner until the bail was settled. Everyone in the system knows the single
worst
thing about the prison system is the method used for cross
-
country transfer: up at 4
a.m
., into bus at 5:30
a.m
., chained & manacled (ankles, waist & wrists) & drive to next prison. It may take 4 hrs. or 14. No one cares. You stay in chains the whole time (ankles, wrists & waist) so if the bus overturns you can burn to death instead of escaping. The bus is caged, barred, partitioned & has 3 hacks (guards). You can't have
anything.
No shoelaces. No contact lenses. No books, magazines. If you want to pee, you struggle down the alley in chains, spend 10 minutes getting your fly open & pee down a big hole in the back of the bus. Holding tank, but no chemicals of course. The coffee runs out at noon, so from noon until 9:45
p.m
. you get nothing. The sandwiches are bread & 1 (I mean
one)
slice of corned beef 1
W
wide, or bologna. If the air conditioner breaks, tough. (No windows to open.) Each night you spend 2 hours getting photographed & fingerprinted at some Federal hovel, and then get put in Solitary. No possessions at all. No books, letters, watch, contacts, deodorant.

Every guard & prisoner at Atlanta knew I was coming. The prisoners were OK—every guard said. 'Keep your fucking back to the wall—Don't let anyone next to you. Some crazy mother-fucker will kill you here for a headline,' and on & on. By the time you get to Solitary you're begging for a single cell—and then you find out some inmates ('walk-arounds') have keys to the cells & walk in every once in a while to 'check things out.' You can't beat the son of a bitch to a pulp for scaring the shit out of you because you don't want Thorazine & a strait jacket. It's clear that you're being measured & if you're cool & handle yourself OK you suddenly get a bar of soap or a cup of (real) ice water through the foot slot. Or the dude across the hall tells you which hack to watch out for. Or someone says, 'He's the Green Beret who got screwed—leave him alone.'

I'm sitting in the VIP suite in Solitary. Some porno king just vacated it. I'm in a long line of celebrities to get this cell. I don't know what to make out of this insanity. Tomorrow at 4
a.m
. I'll get awakened—I'm going to Texarkana jail, by bus. I was lucky, they said. Usually you have to wait at least a week for the Texarkana bus. The inmates say it takes up to 3 months to cross the country unless you're 'top priority celebrity' status. Can you dig it? A celebrity because I got railroaded by a N.C. judge & jury for something I didn't do
9
.5
years ago.

The next day, Judge Dupree reaffirmed his denial of bail, stating, "While it is true that this defendant is a well established professional man and has never heretofore failed to meet all court appearances, the situation with which he is now confronted is far different from that which has heretofore obtained. As a highly skilled physician, the defendant presumably would have no difficulty in finding employment in any one of the many countries of the wqrld which do not have extradition treaties with the United States, and the temptation to seek refuge in another country would certainly be great indeed."

Not yet informed of Dupree's decision regarding bail, MacDonald wrote to me from Texarkana:

I'm going nuts waiting to hear about bail. No news in Atlanta and now nothing here for 2 days. You'd think that lawyers that spent $200,000 losing a case could spend $5 on a telegram to Texarkana with some news. IF I ever get out of jail, I hope to Fuck One of them gets shot or in a car accident & comes to my emergency room. We'll discuss fees first, then I'll disappear for a while and let them watch a clock on the wall for a while. Then I'll slowly institute treatment, stopping every now & then to wait for more money. Gradually, they'll realize that this could take years. Every time they get uptight, I'll give them the option offered me: continued flow of money for unknown treatments that are not necessary, or
I
can sign off the case and they are free to find another Dr. I'd
love
it.

MacDonald remained in Texarkana for another ten days. Then he was bused to El Reno, Oklahoma, and then to El Paso, Texas, from where he was finally flown to the Long Beach airport, arriving on September 27, in chains. He wrote to me two days later from Terminal Island, terming it "reasonable—decent food, exercise, no harassment from guards & only subliminal violence. It's still prison. But bearable."

He then wrote: "It is very strange to sit on my bunk in prison (for Christ's sake!) and see Long Beach harbor. The ships, the sailboats, the breakwater—downtown Long Beach and the seagulls and pelicans. I see it all through (a) bars, (b) wire fence, (c) barbed wire with razor-type barbs. I am so near to my home, my friends, my work, but in truth light years away. . . ."

He continued: "I'm trying to get over some mild anterior shin splints from running on concrete in prison sneakers. My clothing box has arrived from home & I now have my Etonics. I'm also lifting weights.
..."

He then mentioned—saying he would supply more detail later— "Notoriety upon arrival. Press attempts to see me. Everyone aware of my arrival." And continued:

Support continues to pour in & has really been phenomenal.
I
still am getting letters from N.C. citizens who apparently were/are outraged by the judge & jury's actions. People here in Long Beach have been just super. The job is still mine at the hospital. The staff is behind me, and hundreds of people from all over are offering money, time, letters, etc. etc. It makes me feel good. . . .

On October 5, 1979, Bernie Segal asked the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond to overrule Judge Dupree's denial of bail.

On October 12—MacDonald's thirty-sixth birthday—friends and former colleagues from St. Mary's rented an airplane to fly over the prison, trailing a sign that said,
happy birthday rock—
"Rock" being the nickname he had acquired in the emergency room in tribute to his coolness and steadiness under pressure.

Oral argument on his motion for bail took place before a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit court on November
6.
Ten days later, the appeals court upheld Judge Dupree's denial. The following week I flew to California.

"In all the orthodox psychoses," Hervey Cleckley has written in
The Mask of Sanity,
"there is a more or less obvious alteration of reasoning process or of some other demonstrable personality feature. In the psychopath, this is not seen. The observer is confronted with a convincing mask of sanity. All the outward features of this mask are intact; it cannot be displaced or penetrated. . . . Examination reveals not merely an ordinary two-dimensional mask but what seems to be a solid and substantial structural image of the sane and rational personality. . . . The observer finds verbal and facial expressions, tones of voice, and all the other signs we have come to regard as implying conviction and emotion and the normal experiencing of life as we know it ourselves and as we assume it to be in others.
...

"Only very slowly and by a complex estimation or judgment based on multitudinous small impressions does the conviction come upon us that, despite these intact rational processes, these normal emotional affirmations, and their consistent application in all directions, we are dealing here not with a complete man at all but with something that suggests a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly.

"So perfect is this reproduction of a whole and normal man that no one who examines him in a clinical setting can point out in scientific or objective terms why, or how, he is not real. And yet we eventually come to know or feel we know that reality, in the sense of full, healthy experiencing of life, is not here."

* * *

I rented a car at the Los Angeles airport and drove to Long Beach.

On that hot and cloudless Saturday morning in June, when I had driven down this same San Diego Freeway en route to my first meeting with Jeffrey MacDonald, I had been listening to an FM music station. Just as I had finally found his condominium and had located a parking space, a song ended. It was a song I had never heard before. The disc jockey, a woman, said, "I don't know why I decided to play that. It hadn't been programmed. Something just came over me and made me do it." As I was turning off the ignition, she gave the name of the song. It was "Psycho Killer, Qu'est-ce que c'est?" Those were the last words I had heard before meeting Jeffrey MacDonald for the first time. All summer long I had been telling myself it was only a coincidence, nothing more.