"I was convinced of Dr. MacDonald's guilt after reading "FATAL VISION" many years go. I have maintained an interest in the case and came across the mention of "FATAL JUSTICE" on your website. Having completed it, I am quite simply amazed, astonished, horrified and sickened by the handling of your case and the evidence. Also, as a writer (I was a newspaper staff reporter for 12 years) I am deeply disappointed in Joe McGinniss. His distortions of the case and of Dr. MacDonald as a person, and the ensuing damage is immeasurable in the court of public opinion. I am convinced that Dr. MacDonald did not kill his family and I am truly saddened by the treatment he has received over the years. You should know, sir, that it is possible for opinions to change concerning your case and incarceration, and that good people who believe in real justice and the merits of new evidence, now matter how long it takes for it to be obtained, are ready to fight for the truth and what is right. Take care and keep fighting."
-Steve Smyth, Jr.
Millbury, MA (Posted at: http://www.themacdonaldcase.org/Letters.html)
http://educate-yourself.org/lte/jeffmacdonaldandvictimsofSEE27aug08.shtml
August 27, 2008
--- Original Message -----
From: R. Haines <pilgrimz@comcast.net>
To: Ken Adachi, Editor
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Subject: J. McDonald
Mr.Adachi:
I just finished Fatal Vision today. I can only come to either of two conclusions: either Jeff McDonald is a cold blooded killer, or no more cowardly man ever put on the Green Beret. Why did he lie and exaggerate his wounds? Here he is in this terrific fight to save his family and when he gets to the hospital all his vitals are absolutely normal. When I found your page I was simply sad for you. He should have been put to death years ago.
You do that because you're the sort of clown who thinks nothing of condemning a man to death based on the DIALOG presented in a NOVEL written by a paid literary prostitute who, to avoid being sued by his book publisher for the recovery of a QUARTER MILLION dollar book advance, simply reversed his story line from what originally was going to be an innocent Jeff MacDonald wrongly accused by overzealous, incompetent, and corrupt Army CID investigators to a GUILTY and psychotic Jeff MacDonald who suddenly turns into Jack the Ripper one night and slaughters his entire family, despite the fact that the man is a loving father and caring medical doctor who had never caused harm to anyone in his entire life.
Because you're a clown, suffering from a real bad case of Stupiditis en Extremis (SEE), you probably don't know that McGinniss was ASKED by MacDonald (about a year before the trial) to write his story from the beginning of the frame up by the Army CID starting in the early morning hours of Feb. 17, 1970 and continuing until the EXPECTED ACQUITTAL at MacDonald's trial in August 1979. But because the Army, FBI, Department of Justice, and a CORRUPT Judge and a corrupt North Carolina prosecutor worked hand in hand with each other to RIG the trial and frame MacDonald, he was declared guilty. Now McGinniss has a problem.
He had already worked on the book for almost a year in which an innocent MacDonald was the victim of a frame up. But his publisher tells McGinniss that he wants his $250,000 advance back because he knows that he's not going to sell too many books about an innocent Jeff MacDonald when MacDonald had just been convicted to three consecutive life terms for murder (despite the minor fact that he's totally innocent of the charge). So McSlimeball puts on his thinking cap and makes a NEW DEAL with his publisher. He takes another 3.5 years to finish the book and rewrites the whole thing with a BRAND NEW PLOT: Dr Jeffrey MacDonald magically turns into a combination of Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Freddy Kruger in a single night and the rest is history: Rave reviews, book publishing parties, dozens and dozens of TV appearances, radio talk shows, massive coverage in every magazine and newspaper in America, and TONS of money-- to be followed by MORE TONS of money when they do the TV movie.
Is life Good or what?
Now there are, however, a few glitches in this otherwise wonderful Cinderella story. McSlimeball somehow forgets to mention to Jeff MacDonald that he changed the plot from a railroaded Jeff MacDonald to a Psychotic Killer MacDonald. So while Jeff MacDonald is sitting in prison from 1979 to 1983, McSlimeball visits him routinely--and routinely encourages MacDonald (and MacDonald's mother) that the book is going to make all the difference in his case when it comes out.
MacDonald, naturally, is expecting the book to help pave the way for his appeal and eventually acquittal, so he gives McSlimeball full access to all of his files, property, friends, relatives, etc. Whatever McSlimeball asks for, McSlimeball gets because McSlimeball is Jeff MacDonald's good buddy and confidant whose blockbuster book is going to help him win his appeal and they're all going to celebrate together with champagne and caviar at the MacDonald victory celebration following his exoneration and acquittal.
That's, at least, what Jeff MacDonald was expecting to happen. However, on the day that the book came out, Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes JUST HAPPENED to have arranged an interview with Jeff MacDonald in prison-- and with cameras rolling-- caught the stunned look of shock and horror on MacDonald's face when Mike Wallace broke the news of McSlimeball's NEW PLOT to him.
After airing the 60 MInutes interview, MacDonald starts to get a flood of hate mail -similar in brilliance to your comments- from the first generation of Fatal Vision SEE sufferers and those lobotomized by the well-advertised TV movie.
Jeff MacDonald has said in virtually every interview that he's ever given that he can't ever hope to get out from under the avalanche of negative conditioning and guilty conclusions created by McSlimeball's novel and the TV movie because there are just too many dim-witted people in this country who have been stricken by the same SEE affliction that blinds you to the truth.
So in heartfelt sadness for all victims of SEE,
I am Sincerely Yours, Ken Adachi
***
---- Original Message -----
From: R. Haines <pilgrimz@comcast.net>
To: Ken Adachi, Editor
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008
Subject: Re: J. McDonald
Thanks Ken, yes I am stupid scum. What can I say. Now I can see why you ask others to 'keep it civil'. By the way,there was a trial, He was found guilty. But of course when you can fling around "McSimeball" and such who needs facts. How grade school. He had no wounds that he could not have inflicted himself. Not one shred of evidence was presented by Bernie or anyone else that there was any intruders on Feb 17. Why was not this tough Green Beret either killed or at least severely wounded? "Acid is groovy', how lame. If you have to resort to name calling, it just shows you don't have a lot of facts to back you up. But, that's just me 'the clown' so never mind.
R.H
***
Hello Robert,
I didn't say you were scum. Your ignorance and stupidity is plainly evident in your uninformed replies and fact-less accusations. You know nothing of this case and make that apparent with every word you write.
In Fatal Justice, Bost and Potter reviewed the hospital report of McDonald's admittance examination which revealed 17 stab wounds and three blunt traumas to the head. He underwent emergency surgery that morning at Womack to re-inflate his lung which had collapsed due to one of the stab wounds to his chest area. It's a real trick Mr. Moron (a.k.a. "clown") to stab yourself 17 times and club yourself to the point of being found unconscious and breathing with only one lung.
And I am being civil. I might have resorted to calling you names --which took a mighty effort to resist-- but I felt it was better to simply stick to the facts: you're a boob.
Joe McGinniss: "I'm not convinced that it actually happened."
Fourteen years ago, Joe McGinniss's best-selling book, Fatal Vision, depicted MacDonald as guilty. McGinniss theorized that MacDonald had abused diet pills, had suffered a violent amphetamine psychosis, and in a fit of rage, had murdered his family because one of the children wet the bed. The book and the pursuant movie convinced millions that this actually occurred. Yet, in a sworn deposition on October 30, 1986, McGinniss, incredibly, admitted he did not personally believe his own theory. He explained, under oath, that he had introduced the diet pill theory as a dramatic device in his "new journalism" where the story is more important than the facts. When asked why he said that he'd learned MacDonald had ingested an overdose of diet pills (which he had not learned at all), he said he hadn't wanted to give his readers the same old "rehash of the trial."
McGinniss finally revealed his true feelings about his central theory, the theory that had made him rich, and had convinced millions of people that MacDonald was guilty. Under oath, during hard questions by MacDonald's attorney, he admitted, "I'm not convinced that it actually happened."
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