Overkill PT 2 54:17

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold, very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hey, Paul. Hey, Kate. How's it going? It's going well. Last week, we talked a lot about Jeffrey McDonald, and that was our first part, and now we're diving into part two. Okay. Well, you know, I've got a little bit of wine with me, so don't judge. I'm doing a little bit of day drinking right here, but I'm ready, and let's hear it. Good to know. I'll go fast.

So let's do a quick synopsis. So you have a 26-year-old Green Beret surgeon, Jeffrey McDonald, who has reported that his wife and his two children have been killed, multiple stab wounds, lots of overkill, blood in two different sections of the house, in the master bedroom and in the girls' bedroom. He has some injuries that turn out to be what I thought were serious, but seemed not as life-threatening as they could be.

The police are suspicious. He's charged with murder. And they begin investigating and putting together their case. And ultimately, the military prosecutors say, we don't have enough of a case. Some things have gotten mucked up that you and I could talk about later.

in a little bit. But good Lord, it seemed like a lot of information to me. But then you were saying that you weren't particularly impressed with some of it. Is that right? Some of the evidence against him? Well, at least with what we've discussed, you know, in the first episode, circumstantially, behaviorally, I believe that he is prime suspect. Now, evidence-wise, you know, the complexity of this case, if he is the killer, it's his house,

Him and his family have lived inside this house. So there's going to be reasons for a lot of the types of evidence that are often looked for, like let's say fingerprints. Well, finding his fingerprints in his own house mean nothing. So you end up having to really focus in

on the evidence related to the homicides itself. And can it be proven that with the evidence that he is the killer? That's the big question. And right now, I haven't heard of the evidence in this case that can suggest that. Well, let's talk about fibers, which I always look at a little askew because...

I don't know, it seems a little flimsy, but let me tell you what it is. So McDonald's wearing pajamas. He says that his pajamas have been sliced up. They find several threads of his pajama underneath and around Colette's body.

and in the five-year-old girl's bedsheets, and at least two of the same fibers in Kristen's area also. So fibers just around his wife's body in bed, none of that is applicable, I'm assuming, to hard evidence against him. No, you know, if these are just single fibers or several just strands of fibers, you know, he's already made statements. You know, he was laying on top of Colette's body. He's possibly...

manipulated her body during the resuscitation efforts, which could create the ability for some fibers to end up underneath her body. And it's his own house. You know, I don't know what kind of fabric these pajamas are, but are these fibers that would, you know, is a type of fabric that would shed these fibers? Or are we talking about actually cut pieces of fabric that are found?

But if it's just fiber evidence, right now, this is not a case that is going to be solved using fibers. And circumstantially, I think it's so easy to be able to come up with innocent explanations to dismiss the fiber evidence outright. Okay, tell me if this is innocent because now we're in the fibers I'm more interested in. They find one fiber from his pajamas.

underneath one of the little girl's fingernails. Now, how would that have gotten there unless it was defense? And this is one of the kids, it was Kimberly, the youngest one, who they said had some defensive wounds. So underneath her fingernail. Well, did she give daddy a hug before she went to bed? Okay. How much fiber are we talking about? You know, when I am looking at,

at trace evidence underneath fingernail clippings, or chances in 1970, they did what's called a scraping. They use a toothpick and go underneath there. We are talking about microscopic fibers. This is nothing that can be attributed to the defensive act when Jeffrey McDonald and his daughter, you know, they physically interact with each other. So I don't put any weight on that at all.

at all. I really like it when you put on the defense attorney hat. I think it's really helpful. I just would have thought, there's no way. How else would that have gone under her fingernail had it not been in some sort of a scrap with her dad defending herself? Well, you know, I wouldn't say what I'm doing is putting on the defense attorney hat. What I'm doing is I am trying to discern whether or not the evidence is true.

probative to determine who is the killer in this case. And a single fiber underneath the daughter's fingernail, for me, that is so trivial. I dismiss that outright. Okay. Here's more fiber stuff. There is, as I said, the fiber underneath Colette, on Colette, in the bed, under the fingernail of one of the girls. They find no threads. Any

anywhere else, including the living room where he says he was attacked. Doesn't the absence of threads also tell you something? Oh, we have a saying, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Okay. So this is where to draw any conclusions from fibers and the location of fibers in this type of situation doesn't indicate anything to me personally.

He's attacked in this living room space. He's, per his statement, sleeping in this living room, presumably in these pajamas. He's put himself in this environment through innocent means, and yet they're not finding fiber evidence to even just establish the fact that he was sleeping in this living room. So this just suggests that they are reaching for

in terms of trying to interpret this fiber evidence. And again, I'm putting no weight whatsoever on that finding. Okay. So the threads don't matter to you. The fiber really doesn't add anything or detract anything from this case.

The fiber evidence doesn't add anything at all. If now there's pieces of fabric that are a result of the single stab wound that he had to his pajamas, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

You know, I would want to know, well, where is that evidence actually being located at? And it's so hard with fiber evidence because as we talked before in a previous episode about secondary tertiary transfers, you know, just him moving around.

could be picking up fibers from his own clothing that's now on the floor and he transfers it to a different location in the house. But there's nothing here that is causing me to go, okay, now I can sink my teeth into that evidence.

So one of the things that I think is interesting is they are trying to do that thing that the prosecutor in Texas has said, where you're gathering a bunch of pieces of circumstantial evidence that is unbreakable. It's just too much. It's too much, and a jury is going to look at it and say, this guy is guilty. One of the little pieces...

is a reconstruction of the fight. So Jeffrey McDonald says four people basically attacked him in his living room, stabbed him, that there was a big brawl. And the Army prosecutors had said during their hearing, listen, this living room seems pretty,

pretty well intact with the exception of a potted plant that had been tipped over, but that a coffee table was flipped on its side, that nothing had been hardly disturbed. Well, this is where, you know, right now we're talking physical evidence. Yeah. But this case is predominantly not a physical evidence case unless it was committed by these intruders. This case, if Jeffrey McDonald is the suspect...

And he was early on. So much about whether or not this case can be made resides in the interview of Jeffrey McDonald. And this is where I have concerns because now you have what I am going to assume from CID investigators who are not well-versed.

in an interview and an interrogation strategy with this type of case. And so they may not have done a thorough enough job accumulating all the statements of McDonald's to be able to determine

What he is saying doesn't match up with the crime scene, doesn't match up with the physical evidence, doesn't match up with his injuries. You know, maybe he ends up contradicting himself during the interview process. You know, all of this is so critical to

tease out a case as to whether or not they could prove, based on his statements, to corroborate and refute all the various statements he makes, could they actually make a case that the prosecutors would have been more comfortable with if a proper interview had been done. And it sounds like prosecutors weren't happy with physical evidence. Prosecutors couldn't make anything circumstantially based on the interviews that they did of McDonald's.

And that's a big miss. And we're coming back to just not enough experience with these investigators and prosecutors. That is what my guess is at this point in time. You know, we've alluded to that in terms of the physical evidence, but this case, the

is predominantly going to be residing upon, you know, the interview early on at McDonald. And my guess is that interview was not thorough or well-planned. Well, one of the mistakes they made was during this hearing, which was essentially to decide whether or not there was enough evidence to take him to trial, was that

you know, I'm showing you a photo of the living room and in the living room, you see that there's this coffee table that's been turned over on its side. Their argument was that if this was really a hand-to-hand combat with Jeffrey McDonald versus four hippies, that this room would have been wrecked and this coffee table looks staged on its side. So during the hearing, let me tell you this,

During the hearing, the Army prosecutor reenacted what Jeffrey McDonald claimed the fight was like, and he had the furniture in the courtroom. And when he knocked during this mock fight, when he knocked into the coffee table, the exact same thing happened. It ended up in the same place.

So that was a big fail. You know, this trying to show that what he was saying wasn't true in this particular instance was a big failure for them. And assessing the crime scene and the signs of a struggle, that is tenuous at best. You know, all you can really do is see what the signs of struggle are at the crime scene. Here I'm looking at the photo and I'm saying, okay, there's a coffee table that's been knocked over.

Now, extrapolating that out to, is this consistent with McDonald struggling with these four intruders? Three of them men who I'm going to make an assumption are relatively comparable. Each man intruder is relatively comparable to McDonald. And so he is, McDonald is just dramatically overpowered under this circumstance, right?

With the intruder theory, it is entirely possible the intruders could completely submit McDonald, no matter how hard he is struggling, and not have a lot of the crime scene itself being disturbed. Sure. Just because you have such a dramatic difference in terms of...

strength being levied. That's something that I always pay attention to. Can I discern a physical difference between the offender and the victim by taking a look at what was done to the victim and what's going on in the crime scene environment? So here, this is where, again, it comes back down to, did they have McDonald walk them through step-by-step the

what this combat was like. If he's saying, I was upright and we were moving around the living room and they kept pulling on me and they're hitting me and I'm hitting them back, and he's really showing that this was an ongoing fight and moved throughout the space,

then I would say, okay, well, this living room really doesn't look like you have five people fighting in it like that. But if his statement is they attacked me, they jumped on top of me, I was kind of upright. Next thing I know, I'm down, I've lost consciousness. I don't know what happened.

Then they just completely overpowered him, and you don't have the movement through the crime scene to account for, you know, disturbances to the furniture or the other objects that may be on shelves or hanging on the wall. Yeah, I agree. This was not the most reliable piece of evidence against him. So, you know, before, as they're sort of moving towards hopefully getting him to a trial, which they managed not to, unfortunately, by the end of this,

They go through what their theory is. So this is what they think happened. One of the girls had wet her bed and it upset Jeffrey. And, you know, this had happened earlier in the day, really irritated him. A friend of Colette and Jeffrey's had said that the two of them had acrimony for probably about the past month or so.

So they're trying to come up with this motive. What exactly happened? So the Army investigators say that Jeffrey McDonald got into a fight with Colette, an argument. She said something to him about the bedwetting that he needs to calm down about it. It turned physical. They think that Colette threw something at McDonald

perhaps a hairbrush. I don't know if that's from a physical injury that he had or what it was, but they just think that she instigated essentially something physical. And we don't know if, you know, is McDonald saying that this type of verbal and physical encounter occurred between him and Collette earlier in the day during early statements? No.

Perfect marriage, no fights ever. Okay. They're coming up with a theory. There must be some basis, you know, like the bedwetting. Did they see evidence of bedwetting? You know, not to get too graphic, but it is common for victims of homicide to lose... Yeah, their faculties, yeah. Their faculties, you know. So I fully expect possibly all three victims potentially had urine stains,

under them or on their clothing. So if they're just relying on the observation of, let's say, a urine stain in the bed, then that also underscores these are very inexperienced homicide investigators. Well, get ready to hear the rest of this theory. This is bananas to me. So McDonald is hit in the head or somewhere by Colette with a hairbrush,

Then McDonald's gets really mad and hits her with something a lot larger. They don't know what. They think that with all of this noise at three in the morning, Kimberly, who is the five-year-old, gets up and comes to the master bedroom. And this is the one with the blunt force trauma on her skull. She was hit with something accidentally, which could explain why the fluids from her brain were found nearby. Yeah.

I don't know. Even I, as a layperson, could tell that with the extent of the injuries on her head alone, crushing skull, that's not accidentally and that's not enough to spill brain matter in her parents' bedroom. You know, at least with what I'm seeing with the injuries to these two little girls...

Neither one of the girls really appears to have a head injury in which I would be expecting to see brain matter. I, of course, would want to know how they determined that this piece of tissue was, in fact, brain matter and how they are determining it's from the girls. Is it just on ABO testing?

Because even Colette doesn't appear to have depressed skull fractures with open brain exposed. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like Kimberly's the only option here. She had been struck in the head multiple times, such force that her skull had been shattered. Kimberly is on the ground in her mom's bedroom. McDonald is continuing to assault Colette until he thinks she's dead. He thinks she's dead.

He then kills Kimberly. He carries her back into her room. He kills her in the room. Then he kills Kristen. Colette regains consciousness and tries to save Kristen, the littlest girl who's being killed. And that's why Colette's blood is in the sheets. Yeah. You know...

I already kind of talked about, you know, the possibility of brain matter adhering to McDonald as he's, you know, going in and checking on his daughters and then coming back into the master bedroom. And I think that part of the issue is, again, they're speculating of how all of this happened because they're reaching for how do we convince a jury or a judge to

that this man could have killed his whole family. And that's really what this comes down to is that with the Jeffrey McDonald case, there had been family annihilators certainly before, but this was pretty stunning. This is where sometimes motive is the hardest thing to prove.

And you don't have to have motive or prove motive in order to prove homicide or to prove murder. So motive is something that is comforting to have. But there are times where no matter how thorough the investigation, the only person that knows why is the killer. And in this case, maybe there was outside relationships happening.

financial difficulties. He may have been just dissatisfied living a family life. Who knows why it'd get up there. But at a certain point that night, he twists off on Colette with a club and then proceeds to kill everybody else in the house. The family annihilator idea behind this story and why we're talking about one of the things that's so interesting about it is that

that the John List story had not happened yet. That happened in 1971, and this takes place in 1970. This is pre-us knowing about Bundy. You know, this is pre-behavioral science unit. This is all sort of fresh for people. So it was stunning that this man who was middle-class, pre-

professional in the military that this had all happened. I think people found it very hard to believe. So you could see the army scrambling to gather evidence, more than a thousand pieces of evidence in this case. Yeah, and that's a lot of evidence. Now, is that all collected out of the crime scene?

I believe so, but it could be fibers. It could be there was so much blood. There's blood droplets. Who knows what they're counting as physical evidence, but a thousand pieces of evidence is what they say. You know, that speaks volumes to me too. And this is going to probably be different than what most people would expect. You think, oh, they got a thousand items of evidence. They must have done a very thorough job.

Right.

I have worked massive cases. I've worked a case in which I had, what, five, six bleeders inside a 6,000 square foot house. And these bleeders are running all over the place. We had the father was killed. And then the gangbanger who came in was also shot and killed, two people dead. And we didn't come close to having a thousand items of evidence. I'm looking at these crime scene photos and...

And yes, it's going to be a big case, but I'm not going to have a thousand pieces of evidence. So this is where it's okay. Whoever's processing this scene is not doing it right. So I tell you this theory that I told you I thought was a little bananas, just because I want you to understand why what then happens next happens. This seems like a prosecution team in disarray, and their theories to me don't make sense today. No. No.

No, and let me just clarify. Collette, after she reportedly has been bludgeoned, stabbed with both a knife and an ice pick, regains consciousness and goes into Kimberly's room, transfers her blood, and then goes back to the master bedroom where she succumbs to her injuries. Is that the prosecution's theory? Yes.

Well, what I think they are saying happened is that he beat her. He thought that was going to do the job. And then she gets up, she bleeds from whatever trauma she got from being beaten, bleeds in Kristen's bed, and then goes back into the bedroom, and that's where he stabs her with the knife and the ice pick. That's what I think they think happened. Okay. Which makes a little bit more sense. I just, I couldn't tell. It's hard to know from Colette's injuries from the club

if that was enough to cause bleeding? Because I know you said sometimes it just depends on where it is and at what stage it's in, whether there's excessive bleeding or not. And would she have really transferred blood into Kristen's bed based on just being beaten by a bat? So, you know, part of assessing, okay, Colette's movements. Now, this is where if she has

lacerations to her scalp as a result of the blows from the club. And she's also now got two broken arms warding off this thing. She goes upright and then walks into the daughter's room. Well, you're going to start to see blood flows going with gravity. And so these blood flows will start flowing with gravity. And it's possible that you would also have a dripped trail. The scalp has

it bleeds a ton. And if she's got multiple scalp lacerations, she likely is going to be leaving a trail in addition to having a lot of downward flows on her clothing. Her shirt is thoroughly saturated with blood as a result of the stab wounds. And I'm seeing a fair amount of blood

underneath her head in the position as found. But I'm not seeing anything to indicate that she has blood flows and telling me that she went upright after she received these blows to her scalp. Yeah. I would dispute that. I believe that the transfer of blood from Colette happened in a different way. Well, what the prosecutor says is that once he killed the whole family, McDonald took Colette's body back to the master bedroom. So they're saying...

Right, I know. Paul's shaking his head. You guys can't see it, but he's shaking his head. No, I agree. It makes no sense. It doesn't seem like the site of the murder for her happened in that bedroom. It makes no sense. All three of these victims were killed in the locations found...

and did not move from that location or were not moved from that location. The two girls are killed where their bodies are found in their rooms and Colette was killed at that location in the bedroom. I'd be interested if there was any blood spatter on the surrounding furniture, walls, the carpeting, which I just can't see clearly

with the photos that I have access to. God, you would think between a knife and an ice pick and a club that there would be like cast-off or something, right, sprays. Well, most certainly with multiple blows to the head, there's a good likelihood that some of those blows would land where there's that pooled blood source. And now you'd get some cast-off spatter. And then, you know, with the stabbing with both the ice pick and the knife,

Cast-off does occur. It's an absolutely real thing, but it's not something that is always going to be readily apparent. You know, it depends on is there a recording surface to document the cast-off? Because when you stab with a knife to a point, let's say you do multiple stab wounds, and now the knife is coated in blood. Right.

Cast off happens on the upswing because that's when the centripetal forces and you have all the blood coming out of the wound. It gets flung off the knife up onto a wall. But then on the downward strike, generally the blood has already been flung off. You're not going to see more blood

of being flung off during the downward stroke. So it's usually on the upward. - Right. - But where you see cast off is usually on vertical surfaces, because if there's no vertical surface nearby, imagine these blood drops that are flung up into the air. What do they do? Well, they just arc down and they just look like blood drops on the carpet or on the floor. So that's where I'm looking at these crime scene photos

And none of these photos are done in such a way to properly document the blood pattern. So somebody like myself can have confidence in that, oh, I should be seeing this or I'm not seeing that. So I can now render an opinion. Basically, I'm seeing some contact transfers and I'm seeing some blood pooling. And it's like, yeah, you know, at least with what I can discern, they're killed right there. All three of the victims are killed where they were found.

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while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.

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Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android. So their theory is not matching up with the evidence that you're seeing is what it sounds like. No, it's not at all. I think they are getting information probably from ABO testing on, you know, these various bloodstains and where they were located in the house.

And they're trying to come up with a scenario to account for the location of those bloodstains or this brain fluid is what they're calling it, but not taking into account that the other blood pattern evidence, the injuries really reflect much better what is going on in terms of how this homicide was committed.

I don't think it's going to come to a surprise to anybody that Jeffrey McDonald maintained his innocence throughout this whole hearing. And his defense attorney called into question all of this evidence and said it was pretty much ridiculous that Jeffrey McDonald was an exemplary employee and proud military and all of that. And

And now we have a problem because of the way the investigation was done. I'm hesitant to list off all of the bad things that happened forensically here, but we'll continue because this is very familiar. The crime scene wasn't properly sealed. So 25 people had stomped their way through it.

Law enforcement hadn't stopped the garbage men from collecting the contents, so any evidence that Jeffrey McDonald had thrown away, clothing, anything, had been discarded and was now in a landfill. The ambulance driver had stolen McDonald's wallet from the crime scene, and the pathologist never bothered to get the girls' fingerprints before they were buried.

Oh, boy. I mean, it's just like unreal. It's like Keystone Cops. And there were multiple pieces of evidence that were lost or stolen, including that fiber found under Kristen's fingernail. And some of Colette's skin, you know, that came from under her fingernail and even the bloody footprint. Just an incredible amount of bad things that happened on this case. Yeah, you know, and that just really underscores a very inexperienced

investigators, CSI, they need to come up with a mechanism to be able to pull in true experts. Just the crime scene processing. At this day and age, the FBI has their evidence response team, the ERT, and these are typically, they're very highly trained individuals who

But back in the day, you know, they were begging me to go out to homicide scenes because they don't get called out to that. That's not what they investigate. And they needed the experience. And so even the FBI's ERT, which I think would be a better resource than, you know, CID here at Fort Bragg.

You know, they're not necessarily going to be the go-to people to process a complex case like this. So, I mean, that is a big lesson. And the Army learned that lesson, too, because ultimately there was a good enough argument from McDonald's defense attorney where there's just not enough evidence. And...

Are you scratching your back? I am. I've got a back scratcher right here that hangs on my desk because I do not have the shoulder mobility to be able to reach and scratch my back. And when my back itches, it drives me nuts. Okay. Well, scratch away, Paul. Whatever gets you to concentrate on this case. So...

The defense attorney poked holes in this whole case. They gave up. The CID gave up and he was released. He was dishonorably discharged. And he was let go to go and live his life with no concrete answers as to who killed his wife and his children. And his in-laws, Colette's parents and family stood by him the whole time. Nobody believed that this guy was capable of that. And these four hippies...

who supposedly came and killed everybody in his family except for him, sort of dissolved into the ether. And he went off just to go do whatever he wanted to do. So, you know, this was not the end of the story, but we'll pause at this part of the story because, again, this is something that was a case that,

You're right. Had the right questions been asked and the right experts been brought in, this was a case that I would assume from your opinion, being one of those experts who could have been called in, you know, were you a little bit older that you think this would have been a case that a DA, a good DA could have really sunk his teeth into? Yeah, no, absolutely. I think if the investigation had been done right from the very beginning, if the crime scene had been processed right, documented appropriately,

You know, the right interview tactic had been used that a case against Jeffrey McDonald could have been made back in the early 70s for sure without having to resort to DNA testing or anything that is what today we would be expected to use to try to resolve some of these questions.

Well, as I said, Colette's parents had stood by Jeffrey. But as the years went on, they became more convinced of his guilt. The police weren't particularly that interested in pursuing four mysterious hippies when they really believed that McDonald did it. But they started to become curious as...

Colette's family started to pressure the police to investigate further. So the police said, okay, well, we really do need to investigate some of these instances of people who might have taken some strong political stance. And they start talking to first responders who had gone to the McDonald House.

And they end up finally talking to one and said, listen, Jeffrey McDonald says that these four people came, including a woman in a big floppy hat. Did you see anybody like that in the neighborhood? And the first responder said, yes. There was a young woman, blonde, with a floppy hat standing near the road that night that he responded to the house saying,

And it was a woman named Helena Stockley, and she was described as a local drifter who was known to abuse hard drugs. This is a real person. Who he's describing is a real person who existed, who described herself as sort of the hippie type and who used hard drugs. Okay, so do the investigators track her down?

They do. And one of the things about Helena is that she frequently used drugs and it was sort of a constant state for her. So she essentially said, listen, I'm around here all the time. You know, I know I fit this description and sort of hems and haws for a little bit. And then as they press her...

She says that, yes, I was high on hallucinogens a lot, but I do remember being in his house and I remember kind of having a grudge against him. So she starts unspooling this information while constantly contradicting herself. And she was currently on drugs while being interviewed by the police.

So a woman who says, yes, I think I was in the house and maybe I was responsible for this. I mean, it just seems weird, doesn't it? Well, yes and no. There's many cases, you know, many cases that never get any public notoriety in which you run across individuals like this during the course of the investigation and you have to resolve them. So she's making statements. Oh, I do remember being in the house. I was high on drugs. And of course, her state of mind based on her intoxication is,

something that has to be taken into account. You still get a statement from her because chances are, if she's such an abuser of drugs, she's probably more cognizant under the influence than when she is off the drugs and going through withdrawals. So you get a statement and then if it's significant enough, my initial line of inquiry, if she says, I remember being inside the house. Okay, describe what you remember. Yeah. Okay, I want to know, does she have specific memories

memories with details that I can correlate inside the house. And then, you know, if she does, then it's like, okay, she's an important, minimally a witness, if not a suspect. Now it's going to be, I need to get her clean to where now let's get a statement when she's sober and see how that correlates if possible.

But we've got three others that she reportedly is with. Does she make any statements about the two white guys and the black guy that supposedly also came into the house? Vague, vague stuff. I mean, nothing that people had read about it. This was a case that had been in the news for a long time. Nothing specific. And she couldn't point to anybody else.

I think the police, everybody felt like this was just very unreliable. She wasn't sure what was happening. Everything she said contradicted itself. But it was odd. And that's what I wanted to get back to is, do you think that he spotted her in the area, made note of it? So this was very premeditated because they're not saying this is premeditated. The prosecutor was saying, our big argument, he snapped.

And that was it. Can it be both ways? Can it be planned but not premeditated at the same time? Well, I think it can be both ways in terms of was this premeditated by McDonald to eliminate his family and stage it to look like hippies came in? That is a possibility.

It's also a possibility that he ends up in a moment of rage, killing Colette, and now realizes, I've got to kill everybody else if I'm going to be able to get out of this without being thrown in custody for the rest of my life. His statement, as I brought up early on,

of how detailed he describes this woman. Her name, what's her last name? Stokely? Stokely. Stokely. You know, the fact that she's in the area, the ambulance driver sees her that night. Okay, and that's significant. He's placing somebody who matches a description of what McDonald's saying, one of the intruders look like. Near the road is what he specifically says, near the road.

But she's somebody in the area all the time. Right. So this is somebody that McDonald likely has seen on prior occasions. Now, for a premeditated crime, he could have seen her and go, okay, this matches sort of this idea I have to kill my family based on the Manson type of scenario. She looks that part. So she's going to be one of the people who came in to kill the family. But he also could have just...

twisted off that night, no pre-planning, but now in a retroactive staging, he's going, there's that weird woman. She's going to be one of the acid heads. And he had seen her enough to be able to describe her to the detail that he did.

So I can't differentiate which way at this point in time, but I think both are possibilities. But this is where, for me, this all just goes towards the staging aspect. He is picking out somebody that he's probably seen on many occasions coming and going as he goes into work and comes back to work or is just out and about.

One of the things that I think is really interesting also about this case, I forgot to tell you conveniently, is that at the crime scene, the police had found a blood-soaked Esquire magazine with a story about Sharon Tate and the Manson murders that had happened just a few months ago. Oh, well, there you go. So this feels very pre-planned. This feels very pre-planned. Yeah. Jeffrey McDonald is free, but Clemson...

Colette's parents are really pressuring the CID to take it to court. And it goes through a whole lot of legal rigmarole where it ends up going into federal court and they take it to a grand jury who chooses to indict him for the murder of his wife and two children. This is nine years later. This man has been walking free for nine years until 1979. Now,

He is going on trial, which he had never been on before. There was just a hearing and that was it to evaluate the evidence. So this is a brand new thing for Jeffrey McDonald.

And I think this is an interesting disclosure. This is what convinced the in-laws. It sounds like Jeffrey McDonald and his wife and their friends have come forward and said over this time period, he was having multiple affairs. Colette was very unhappy. She had either asked him for a divorce, but they were heading for divorce. Absolutely. When all of this happened.

So do you believe in triggers? Is this a trigger? Her demanding a divorce is what it seems like happened. Well, it could be for sure. And when we get into taking a look at when we have these interpersonal crimes where we have the offender and the victim know each other, have an intimate relationship together, oftentimes the crime occurs as a result of separation.

something that really fractures the emotional state of that intimate relationship. So if she is now approaching him for divorce and he is now feeling slighted in some way, I'm not good enough, and he flies off in a fit of rage, that is entirely a possibility.

But, you know, we've had these conversations is that the stable individual under these circumstances would be more of, okay, let's talk about this. We're going to get a divorce. Let's get a divorce. Yeah. You don't go off and kill your entire family. Right.

You know, so there's obviously an issue that McDonald internally has just as a person to fly off in this fit of rage like this and just brutally kill his wife and two young girls. Well, there's a little pin at the end of this that I'll tell you. So Jeffrey McDonald...

goes on trial, 75 witnesses come forward. These extramarital affairs are revealed. There's the evidence. And it just seems clear to this court that he is guilty. He is convicted of killing all three of them, Colette and Kristen and Kimberly. And he is sentenced to three life sentences in North Carolina. One of the things that I think is interesting is as these appeals come up, he's still alive. He's still there. He's alive. Oh, okay. And he's around. And...

As these appeals come up, he in the past has clung to the idea of Helena Stockley, the woman in the floppy hat. This never goes anywhere. She's now long gone. And nothing has resolved itself. He is there. He has maintained his innocence. He has said that when he comes up for rebuke,

parole when, and I think the last time was 2020, when he comes up for parole, if he is forced in order to go free to, of course, parole boards want to hear repentance, and yes, I did it. He said, I'll never do that. I'd rather spend the rest of my life in prison. But

How do you feel about that, about people who I think it's pretty clear he's guilty, who still say, I would rather sit and rot in prison? Is that a disillusion? Is he trying to convince himself or does he care so much what other people think that he refuses to admit to something? Yeah, you know, well, it tells me he still has hope.

He has hope that he will be set free. And so he's never going to make an admission to the parole board and have, even if it's to help him actually get out, but to have this stigma of being a family killer. He doesn't want that for whatever his internal reasons are.

So he believes that, you know, by being able to take a look at what I would consider to be very suspect evidence, you know, with further DNA testing, that he might be able to have his innocence proven. When I looked this up before we got on to talk about the case,

From a forensic standpoint, it looks like back in 2011, the defense was pursuing like three hairs to do DNA on. Yeah, and a fingerprint that was never matched to anybody who could have been the Maytag repair guy. We have no idea. I mean, come on. Yeah, and this is where I think...

I really want to speak to this because what do those hairs mean to the case? I can go into anybody's house and find foreign hairs. How many times have you had other people over to your house? People that either you're friends with or people that come into your house for one reason or another, like you said, the Maytag repairman. So unless that hair is from a location that is significant,

And to give just a very blunt example, if I've got a foreign hair that is wrapped up in, let's say, a sexual assault victim's pubic hair, now that hair is significant. If I have a hair that I collected off the carpet from a tape lift and it doesn't match anybody in the house, it means nothing to me, at least to prove that, in this case, his innocence is

This is where, when I'm assessing this case, I want to go after evidence that is core to the actual homicide. And what is that? That is those weapons. That's going to be the club, the knife, the ice pick. And in this day and age, if I've got the intruder theory...

going on, there's a chance that I would be able to find foreign DNA on those items that could possibly be used through genealogy to identify who that person is and then investigate it as to whether or not they had the method, the means, the motive, the opportunity to be able to commit this crime.

The defense is, they always, and this is their job. You know, they are going after evidence that they think is going to prove their client's innocence because they have confidence it's likely not going to come back to their client. But no, let's petition the courts to allow further testing to go after the actual instruments of homicide and see is there somebody else on these instruments that does not come back to Jeffrey McDonald or the family. If there is, now the defense has an argument against

to say somebody else could be the one responsible for killing Collette and the two girls. Well, I find Jeffrey McDonald continuing to be an odd person to look into. He is 78, and he has petitioned several times to be allowed release under the Federal Compassionate Release Law for people who are older than 70 to get out of prison under certain circumstances.

And then he has withdrawn a couple of these requests. So we have no idea what he's thinking. You know, he's 78 and he's serving these sentences.

He has such an ego that he requested decades ago a book to be written about him, and he contacted a guy named Joe McGinnis, who's a really great journalist, to write a book, and it was a book called Fatal Vision, and it was turned into a TV series. And ultimately, someone asked the author, what do you think of Jeffrey McDonald, the man who contacted you and said, write my life story? And he called him a narcissistic sociopath who would never have a good relationship with women again.

And he was self-centered and just a miserable person. So, boy, when your biographer says that about you, it's time to reflect on some things in life, I think. And Jeffrey McDonald is doing nothing but reflecting, I'm assuming, in prison. And with what, you know, I'm seeing on this case, he is rightfully in custody for this quadruple homicide. And I would hate to see him be released unless...

there is compelling evidence that I would have confidence that would prove his innocence. And right now, I don't see how that's ever going to be found with what I know about this case. Well, you and I often don't talk about people who are still alive, these suspected killers, convicted killers who are still alive. So this has been an interesting one. And the 1970s, I will admit, it's not my favorite time period to work in, but this is

been really interesting, just the intersection between the military and the government and that someone would, if we're going to assume he's guilty and I do, that someone would use something in culture as effectively as he has just to set up a crime scene based on

very specifically on the Manson family murders that happened and just where this all fits into history has been really interesting. It's been an interesting road to go down with you. Yeah, and that's where it's a great example of, you know, when you do have an intelligent offender and they want to get away with a crime, you have to be able to recognize how...

they will stage a crime scene. And this is where when I'm taking a look at this case, it just speaks to being staged. And as I mentioned at the top, is that where do people turn to to learn how they should stage a crime? Yep.

And it is, it's her pop culture. And he's got a magazine in the house that is now talking about the Manson family. And there you go. You know, for me, that's like, okay, I know exactly where he got his information from. It was something within the house. In this day and age, it'd be off the computer. And whether he planned it ahead of time or in a fit of rage, he killed Colette and then decided, I need to make this look like

the Manson family murders, but I believe that's what he did. But he created some reasonable doubt in there, which has been one of the more interesting cases that I've read about recently. So I am now going to go get in my car and finish up my Kenny Loggins extravaganza, and I'm going to follow it up with Wham. What about you? You going to go drink more kava? Wham? Ha ha ha!

Do you know Wham? You have to know Wham. Of course I know who Wham is. Oh, okay. Sorry. So think about the era when Wham was big and I'm listening to hard rock. Wham was like the archenemy, right? I could not walk in with the group of people that I knew and say, oh, I just listened to Wham. No way. We could not be friends, Paul. We could not be friends at the time.

All I listened to was Way Out with the Little Def Leppard in there. Well, next week will be another really good case, I'm sure. So go get some rest and clear your mind and go have a good walk in the mountains and then I will see you next week. Sounds good. Thanks again. ♪

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Ryo Baum. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our art

work is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.