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Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In February 1970, the life of Jeffrey McDonald, a decorated U.S. Army officer and physician, was turned completely upside down.
That's because on one cold February night, his pregnant wife and two young daughters were brutally murdered inside their home while McDonald was asleep on the couch. Although he was attacked himself by the intruders, McDonald was somehow able to be the only survivor. Early into the investigation to find the McDonald family killers, it was suspected that the Charles Manson family may somehow be involved.
But as investigators uncovered more and more about the McDonald family murders, people were left wondering, was Jeffrey McDonald a grieving husband devastated by the loss of his entire family? Or was he a stone cold killer? Only the forensic evidence in the case would be able to decide.
This is Forensic Tales, episode number four. Jeffrey McDonald and the McDonald family murders. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that covers real, bone-chilling true crime stories with a forensic science twist. Some of the cases have been solved by the help of forensic science, while others have turned cold. The stories we cover each week send a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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Now, let's jump right into the story of that decorated U.S. Army officer and physician known as Jeffrey McDonald. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number four of Forensic Tales. The case we're covering this week on the show captured national headline news when the story first broke in February 1970. The story didn't just make national headline news because of how horrific the crimes were.
But because it was a case that also involved a decorated U.S. Army officer and physician, I'm talking about Jeffrey McDonald. Back in the 70s, Jeffrey McDonald was living a life that many would consider the all-American dream. He had a beautiful wife, two young daughters, and a baby boy on the way. He served his family. He served his country. He spent a life serving others.
Until one early February morning in 1970, his life would be turned completely upside down, shattering that all-American dream. Our story this week has a slightly different beginning than our last week's episode. In last week's episode, episode number three, we covered the case of Gary Ridgway, better known as the Green River Killer.
Ridgway's life didn't start on the right foot. He had a difficult time in school and even more trouble at home. Many of Gary Ridgway's childhood experiences actually shaped him into becoming a violent serial killer as an adult. But our story this week begins on a very different note. Jeffrey McDonald was born in Queens, New York on October 12th, 1943.
He was the second of three children and by all accounts grew up in a very loving and stable household. He attended high school in Long Island and was voted most popular and most likely to succeed in high school. In school, he was also the senior class president and captain of the school's football team. As a child and teenager, he was really seen as the quote, all-American superstar.
Right from birth, it seemed like he had everything going for him. He was Mr. Popular around campus, the most valuable player on the football team, and he also had the brains to match his athletic abilities. In school is where McDonald met his girlfriend, Colette Stevenson. Born just five months after him, Colette and McDonald were smitten with each other. They quickly became high school sweethearts.
After high school, McDonald received an academic scholarship to attend Princeton University, a university with an acceptance rate of less than 5%. Even though he was incredibly excited to be accepted at a university like Princeton, this meant that he'd be moving 100 miles away from Long Island to New Jersey, leaving his girlfriend Colette behind.
But being 100 miles apart from one another didn't break the relationship. In fact, in September 1963, when McDonald was a junior at Princeton, they found out that Colette was pregnant. So after finding out they're going to have their first child together, Colette and McDonald decided to get married and then welcomed their first baby girl, a girl they named Kimberly.
Just a few months after Kimberly was born, McDonald graduated from Princeton and moved their little family to Chicago so he could attend medical school at Northwestern University. Three years into medical school, on May 8, 1960, McDonald and Collette welcomed their second child, another baby girl they named Kristen. At this point in their lives, things were going really well for the family.
McDonald was just about to finish medical school. Him and Colette had two beautiful girls together. McDonald seemed to be checking all the right boxes in life. McDonald graduated from medical school in 1968, completed a couple internships before joining the U.S. Army in July 1969. As is the case with most military families, they didn't have a choice where McDonald was going to be end up stationed.
So that's when the family ended up moving to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. At the start of McDonald's military career, things were going really well. He was awarded the rank of captain and was assigned to the 6th Special Forces Group, where he worked as a surgeon. Things in McDonald's life seemed completely normal, up until one February morning in 1970. At 3.42 a.m. on February 17, 1970,
Fort Bragg 911 dispatchers received a call from the McDonald residence. The caller was heard saying, help, 544 Castle Drive, stabbing, 545 Castle Drive, stabbing, hurry. After that, the phone line went dead. Within 10 minutes, four Fort Bragg military police officers arrived at 544 Castle Drive, the McDonald's home.
Initially, the police officers thought they were responding to some sort of domestic violence in the house. When the call came in, the caller on the other end of the line didn't really provide them with much other than that there had been a stabbing inside the home. So the officers really didn't have much information about what they were about to walk in on.
Once they arrived at the McDonald's home, officers noticed that the house was completely dark. Not a single light was on. It almost looked like no one was even home. One of the officers went up to the front door and tried pulling on the handle, but discovered that the front door was locked.
Not able to get inside, the officer made several loud knocks on the door, trying to get anyone's attention who may be inside and may be in need of some help. But nobody came to the door. So another officer decided to go around the side of the house and see if there was a back door they could try.
As the officer got to the back door, that's when they realized the back door was closed, but the screen door was wide open. Armed with enough information from the 911 call that this was a possible stabbing, and now the officers are seeing that the back door screen is wide open, the officers believed that they had enough to make their way inside, that they weren't going to wait for someone to let them in.
And once the officers were inside the home, they made their way through the dark house room by room until they discovered something that stopped them in their tracks. There was a body. Upon entering the McDonald residence, military police officers quickly encountered McDonald's wife, Colette, lying on the floor of the master bedroom.
Officers quickly approached Colette and discovered that she wasn't breathing. She had no pulse. She was dead. When officers found her, Colette was lying on the floor with one of her breasts exposed from her nightgown. The injuries to her body were incredibly brutal. She'd been stabbed 21 times with some sort of sharp object and had 16 separate wounds to her neck.
Both of her forearms had been broken, suggesting that they'd become broken when attempting to raise her arms to protect herself. On top of her body, they noticed a bloodied and torn pajama top that had been placed over the chest area, and that next to her body there was a knife. It would later be determined that Colette was pregnant with a baby boy.
Next to his wife on the master bedroom floor, officers found Jeffrey McDonald. Just like his wife, he'd also been attacked, but somehow he was able to survive. Jeffrey McDonald was alive. And the first thing out of McDonald's mouth to the officers was to go check the children, that he heard his two young girls screaming.
The military officers immediately began making their way throughout the house. They had no idea if whoever the attacker was was still inside the home or what they were about to encounter. As the officers made their way from room to room, that's when they found two additional bodies, both Kimberly and Kristen McDonald. Colette and Jeffrey's two young daughters were dead.
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Colette, Kimberly, and Kristen all suffered brutal, brutal injuries. Five-year-old Kimberly was dead, tucked inside the sheets of her bed, and just like her mother, she'd been bludgeoned across her entire body, from head to toe, and had been stabbed in the head between five to eight times.
The blows to her body and head were so severe that whatever was used in the attack caused bruising in the brain, which would have led to a coma and then led to death. Down the hallway from five-year-old Kimberly, officers found two-year-old Kristen dead inside her bed. She'd been stabbed with some sort of sharp object 33 times across her chest, head, and back.
One of the stab wounds had penetrated her heart. At this point, Fort Bragg military police officers knew that this wasn't some sort of domestic disturbance call that they thought they were responding to. This was now a triple murder that left only one surviving member of the family, Jeffrey McDonald, the Green Beret surgeon.
McDonald was quickly rushed to nearby Womack Hospital, located on the military base just a few miles away. While McDonald was taken to the hospital, additional detectives and investigators arrived at the home to try and figure out who was responsible for such a brutal attack on this family. When investigators started looking around the master bedroom where Colette's body was found, two things stood out to them.
Number one was that torn pajama top found draped across her body. It was as if someone maybe tried to cover up this massive wound she had to her chest. And then the second thing was the word pig, P-I-G, had been written in blood across the wall just above the headboard of the bed. Now, if this sounds familiar to you, then you're right.
Us true crime people all remember Charles Manson. Charles Manson and his family members infamously wrote the word pig in blood across the wall of Sharon Tate's home back in August 1969. We remember that that night Manson family members brutally murdered Sharon Tate as well as her unborn baby and a couple of the house guests she had over that night.
And this happened just a few months prior to the murders at the McDonald's house. So right away, people were starting to connect the dots. When we saw the Manson family writing pig and blood, and then now at the McDonald's, we're seeing the same exact thing, leaving many to wonder, could these murders be somehow connected? Could we be looking at another Manson family murder?
So after McDonald was transported to the nearby hospital, detectives from the Fort Bragg Police Department were already there waiting for him. Because he was the only member of the McDonald family to survive this attack, detectives knew that he was going to be a key piece of evidence to try and put together what really happened that night. One of the first things detectives noticed about McDonald was that his wounds were
He had obviously been attacked, just like Colette and the girls, but something about his injuries were different. The difference was that the injuries, well, the injuries seemed to be far less severe than the rest of his family. Either McDonald himself got extremely lucky that whoever did this took it easier on him,
Or there was some other explanation as to why he was the only one to survive. McDonald's injuries included several cuts and bruises across his body, fingernail scratches to his face and chest, a mild concussion, and the worst of it being a single stab wound to the chest that landed right between two of his ribs.
The stab wound to his chest was interesting for a couple reasons. Number one, detectives found it unusual that his wife and girls had been stabbed 20, 30, 20 times while he was only stabbed once. Number two, the emergency room doctor noted that the wound seemed to be clean and only measured 5 8 inches deep.
Again, much different than the type of stab wounds that the rest of the family suffered from. After the attack, McDonald spent about a week in the hospital before he was released. And after he was released from the hospital, that's when Fort Bragg detectives were finally able to sit down with him and ask him some questions about what he may have saw that night and to try and figure out who was responsible for murdering his entire family.
And once detectives sat down with him, this is what he had to say about what happened that night. McDonald said that on the night of the murders, he'd fallen asleep on the living room couch. He doesn't remember what time it was, but he said he fell asleep on the couch because their daughter, Kristen, had wet the bed that night. Kristen had been in McDonald and Colette's bed. He then said sometime after falling asleep,
He was woken up by the sound of Colette and Kimberly screaming. But before he could get his bearings, that's when he said he was attacked by three male intruders. He said one of the intruders was black and the other two men were white. He also said that there was a female with them who had long blonde hair, was wearing high-heeled boots, and wore a white flappy hat that covered most of her face.
He told detectives that while the three men were attacking him right there in the living room, the female that was with them was standing there holding a lighted candle and chanting over and over again, quote, acid is groovy, kill the pigs, end quote. Next, he said the three men started attacking him with a club and an ice pick.
Sometime during the struggle, he was somehow able to get his pajama top up over his head right down to his wrists in order to protect himself and basically use the top as some sort of shield from the stabbing. Then, after that, McDonald said he doesn't remember what happened.
That's because sometime while using the pajama top as a shield, he was knocked unconscious and didn't remember anything until he woke up sometime later and then the intruders were gone. After he woke up, he said he got up to go check on Colette and the girls. He went from room to room and found out that his entire family had been murdered.
As a doctor himself, he said he tried performing CPR on both of his daughters, but knew that he was far too late, that they were dead. He said when he got to the master bedroom where Colette was, he pulled out the knife that was still lodged in her chest. And that's when he put his pajama top over her chest in order to stop the bleeding.
offering an explanation as to why the pajama top was found placed over her body when the police officers arrived. The last thing he said he did once he realized these intruders had attacked him and then murdered his entire family, he ran to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialed 911. After McDonald was finished telling his story about what happened that night, something just didn't sit right with investigators.
They just weren't entirely believing every part of the story. And they were especially troubled by the injuries. Let's remember here. Colette had been stabbed over 20 times in the chest with an ice pick, stabbed 16 times with a knife. Both of their daughters had been stabbed 20, 30 times each.
And then McDonald, the only male in the house, somehow gets away with only a few cuts and a single stab wound to the right side of his chest. Well, if investigators were troubled by the disparity of injuries, they were even more troubled by the forensic evidence found inside the home.
Investigators assigned to the McDonald family murders tore that house upside down looking for any physical or forensic evidence either to back up McDonald's story or figure out what the truth was. One of the first places investigators collected evidence from was the living room. The living room where McDonald said the intruders attacked him while he was asleep.
The first thing they noted was that the living room showed very little signs that this was a room where a life and death type struggle took place in. That's because besides a coffee table being turned upside down and a flower pot being broken, nothing else in the living room seemed disturbed. Everything inside the room was in pretty good and normal condition.
The next thing investigators collected as evidence was something that was found all over the house. And that was tiny fibers belonging to that pajama top that McDonald had on that night. The same top that McDonald said he used as a shield. And the same top that was placed over Colette's body to stop the bleeding. Well, tiny fibers left behind from the pajama top were found throughout the house.
They recovered fibers from underneath Colette's body in the master bedroom. Fibers were found in both Kimberly and Kristen's bedrooms, indicating to investigators that McDonald was wearing the top when he went into the girls' bedrooms and the master bedroom. This is a key piece of evidence because McDonald said he took the pajama top off while he was being attacked.
and didn't pick it up again until he placed it over Colette's body. He never mentioned to investigators that he put the top back on before checking on Kimberly or Kristen, or why fibers would be found underneath Colette's body. Investigators also studied the murder weapons themselves that were all left behind by the intruders.
Outside the back door of the home, they recovered a kitchen knife, an ice pick, and a three-foot-long piece of wood. The first thing they noted was that all three murder weapons were items that were found inside the home. They were all items that belonged to the McDonald's, which meant that the intruders would have gone into the home not carrying any weapons themselves, but
and would have had to rely on being able to find weapons from within the home to execute these murders. Next, the investigators looked at were a pair of surgical gloves that were found in the master bedroom beneath the headboard where Pig had been written in blood. It turned out that the surgical gloves were in identical composition to a supply that McDonald kept in his kitchen.
Either the intruders went into the kitchen themselves to go put on the gloves, or there was another possible explanation. About two and a half months into the investigation, Fort Bragg police officers felt like they had enough physical and forensic evidence that proved McDonald was lying. That the evidence didn't support his story about the four intruders,
So on May 1st, 1970, the army charged McDonald with four counts of murder. Because the murders took place on Fort Bragg military base, the case was charged in military court. McDonald was arrested and charged with murdering his entire family. Because the evidence in the case, well, the evidence just didn't add up to his story.
Here's what military police and prosecutors believed what really happened that night. Investigators believed that on the night of the murders, an argument broke out between McDonald and his wife, Colette. Possibly they started arguing over the bedwetting incident that happened earlier. Sometime during the argument, things escalated. Colette may have become so angry that she struck him over the head, causing the mild concussion he had at the hospital.
Next, investigators theorized that after being hit in the head, McDonald became angry and he started beating Collette, likely with that piece of wood they found next to the other murder weapons. While McDonald was beating Collette, Kimberly, one of the daughters, may have walked into the master bedroom after hearing her parents fighting. And then Kimberly was struck, possibly by accident,
by that piece of lumber that McDonald was using to hit Collette with. The reason why investigators felt confident that this part of the story happened was because Kimberly's blood and brain serum were both found in the doorway to the master bedroom, suggesting that that is the location of where she was first attacked.
Believing Colette was dead, investigators believed that McDonald then carried his daughter, Kimberly, back to her bedroom where he killed her, stabbed her over and over again, then placed her little body back in bed. By this point, he had already killed Colette, or so he thought. His daughter, Kimberly, saw the entire thing.
So now he felt like he had no choice but to kill everyone else. At some point after McDonald killed Kimberly and possibly before he went into the next room to kill Kristen, Colette regained consciousness. She was awake.
Investigators believe that that's true because Colette's blood was found on Kristen's bed covers and on one of the bedroom walls, which suggests to investigators that after being attacked, Colette woke up. She then tried to stop McDonald from killing the girls. One last thing that police and prosecutors believed pointed towards McDonald's guilt was
was the fact that everyone in the McDonald family had a different blood type, meaning not one person shared the same blood type, which in this case made it pretty easy for investigators to know exactly where each trace of blood and each piece of DNA came from throughout the house.
And when all was said and done, there was no third-party DNA or blood found anywhere throughout the home. Every trace of blood and DNA evidence could be linked to someone in the McDonald family. Once McDonald killed Collette, Kristen, and Kimberly, military police believed that McDonald tried to cover up his tracks by attempting to blame the murders on Charles Manson.
And to back up this theory, well, investigators recovered an issue of Esquire magazine right there in the family's living room. And that particular magazine just so happened to have an extensive article on the Manson family murders, providing McDonald maybe some inspiration he needed. Finally, the last thing investigators believe McDonald did before calling 911 that night was
was that he inflicted wounds on himself to make it appear that he'd been attacked along with the rest of his family. Four months after McDonald was charged with three counts of murder in military court, all charges against him were dropped. All charges against him were dropped on October 28th, 1970.
That's because the military received information that a woman, later identified as Helena Stokely, was being investigated for her involvement in the murders. Helena Stokely was a local drug dealer in the area who told several people that she was responsible for the McDonald family murders. That she was the woman he described in the living room wearing those high-heeled boots and white floppy hat.
So with a possible other suspect involved who's admitted to being in the house that night, military police basically had no other option but to drop all charges against McDonald. A few weeks after the military drops their charges against McDonald, he's dishonorably discharged from the Army in December. After being discharged, instead of going on to live a quiet life,
He went on to make a number of television appearances where he talked all about his family's murders. Instead of staying quiet, he couldn't stop talking about the murders. On one of the appearances he made was on the Dick Cavett show, where he basically went on the show and cracked jokes the entire time. He made jokes about how poorly military police investigated his family's murder.
He wasn't really coming across as someone who just had his entire family murdered. So as the years went on, which years would go by, and McDonald kept talking about the murders, kept making television appearances, and kept making contradictory statements about what happened on the night of the murders, Collette's family became fed up.
Even though the military dropped their charges against McDonald, Collette's family believed he was guilty, that he was the one who killed his family. And they also didn't believe this Helena Stokely woman was telling the truth about her involvement.
So completely fed up with McDonald and wanting to seek justice for the family, in April 1974, four years after the murders, Collette's family flew to North Carolina to petition the civilian court to file charges against McDonald. Just because the military court dropped charges didn't mean that the civilian court couldn't hear the case.
It also didn't mean the court would be violating McDonald's right to double jeopardy. Military court and civilian court are considered separate from one another. They are separate sovereigns. So in April 1974, the court agreed to review the evidence in the case, and the court even agreed to convene a federal grand jury to hear evidence.
So in August 1974, a grand jury started hearing evidence about McDonald's involvement. And five months later, in January 1975, after hearing all the physical evidence, all the forensic evidence, the grand jury indicts McDonald on three counts of murder. The grand jury didn't believe his story. They believed he was the one responsible.
McDonald's case went to trial on July 19, 1979. At trial, the prosecution presented its case that heavily relied on the forensic evidence. One of the experts that the prosecution called to testify was the highly experienced FBI lab technician Paul Stombaugh.
Stambaugh provided incredibly damning testimony about that pajama top that McDonald wore the night of the murders. He testified that when the top was examined by the FBI, they noted 48 holes in the top. And they noted that Collette, McDonald's wife, had been stabbed 21 times with the ice pick.
Well, according to this FBI technician, when the pajama top is folded in a certain way, it's likely that the 48 holes could have been made by 21 thrusts of the ice pick, meaning McDonald would have taken off the top, folded it, placed it over Collette, and then used the ice pick to stab her 21 times,
creating 48 perfect holes in the top. The FBI technician testified that the stab wounds found on Colette's body were identical to the stab patterns found on the pajama top. Now, how does all of this tie into everything else?
Well, remember, McDonald said he took the top off while in the living room, while he was defending himself and using it as a shield. Well, according to the prosecution, he only said that to establish an explanation as to why the top had been stabbed so many times, when in reality, it was used to stab Collette.
Jeffrey McDonald's murder trial concluded on August 29, 1979, when he was convicted of one count of first-degree murder for the death of his daughter, Kristen, and two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Colette and Kimberly for murdering his entire family, including his unborn son.
MacDonald was sentenced to life in prison for each murder, life sentences that would be conserved consecutively. Following his conviction, Jeffrey MacDonald maintained his innocence, sticking to the story about the three male and one female intruders.
Even after Helena Stokely, the local drug dealer who admitted to being involved, well, she later on died and was eventually cleared as being a possible suspect. They had no evidence or no reason to believe that Stokely was ever in the home that night or that she was ever involved in the murders. Ultimately, McDonald appealed his conviction.
Over the years, McDonald appealed his conviction in 1980 on the basis that his right to a speedy trial was violated. He argued through his attorneys that his rights to a speedy trial were violated because the government took years to bring him to trial. Of course, the case went up to the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court found that his rights weren't violated and that he wasn't entitled to a new trial.
McDonald continued to fight for a new trial and maintained his innocence, claiming that he didn't murder his family. While in prison, he met and married his second wife, a woman by the name of Catherine McDonald, in 2002. And together, they have made several attempts at parole, to which all of them have been denied.
The case of Jeffrey McDonald and the murders of his entire family is a remarkable case where it comes down to the forensic evidence. The most interesting aspect to me is that this case was largely decided on the stab patterns found on Jeffrey McDonald's pajama top. Without forensic science, Jeffrey McDonald may have gotten away with killing his wife and two daughters.
Without skilled experts in the fields of DNA and wound patterns, our criminal justice system may have let a guilty man get away with murder. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio production.
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Please join me next week. We release a new episode every Monday. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
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