The Fatal Vision Podcast

Most of this episode isn't about the book. Billy spends the first half on his sister's triplets, who just graduated eighth grade, and on the ceremony speeches he sat through. He's sure the principal's remarks were written by ChatGPT. He can't prove it, and he admits the problem might be his own head. The after-party was at a bar called Fogarty's, where the DJ played too lou...

Asked what became of the "real killers" he'd sworn to hunt since 1970, Jeffrey MacDonald produces some Fayetteville bars and a chair he once kicked out from under a man. Pressed to name his actual crimes, he counts three: he became a doctor, he rebuilt his life, he moved to California.

Part Four. The Days of Affliction. What Jeff was up to between February 1970 and the grand jury subpoena was: working "sixty or seventy or eighty hours a week" (not hard by his standards), becoming a well-known instructor in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, somehow finding eight uninterrupted hours to walk around the LA Auto Show three separate times before ordering a Citroen SM Maserati...

Freddy stops asking. On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Army's original accusation, Freddy and Mildred Kassab walk into the Raleigh chambers of Chief Judge Algernon Butler and file a citizens' complaint charging their former son-in-law with three counts of murder. There is no breaking MacDonald news. There is, however, a release date. It's LIFE.

Jeffrey MacDonald was living in an exclusive area of Huntington Beach, working through the local talent pool, and was a conservatively mod dresser...not a real swinger. Fred Kassab was now threatening to swear out a murder complaint if the government wouldn't. Plus: Marky Jack's four-star review that ruined our week. James's six-month-stalled FOIA appeal against the FBI for the April 6...

Freddie Kassab writes Jeff, signing off "we can't and won't until whoever did this is punished." Jeff writes back with a vigilante fantasy: he's been flying all over the country hunting the hippies he says killed his family, broke his hand on the last trip, and just needs a publishing advance to finish the job. Then Jeff's mother Dorothy turns up at the Kassabs' door,...

Jeff embarks on luxury vacations before relocating to the West Coast, the last move he would ever make before hitting the FCI Freeway. Live call in from Christine Dana of My True Crime Obsession. James and Billy discuss Thomas Merton, Bob Keeler and Billy's robust work ethic.

"It was no single thing. It was everything."This episode works through the forensic audit Freddy conducts in private before anyone else will take the case seriously. Years before the grand jury, years before the 1979 trial, Freddy Kassab quietly assembles the spine of the case against his son-in-law, using only Jeff's own words

Colette MacDonald was writing in her notebook the night she died. Notes from a child-psychology class on defense mechanisms, psychosexual development, megalomania, compulsion, and the denial of reality. The last clinical term she recorded before buying milk and driving home was a profile of a personality type defined by grandiosity, hyperactivity, and the unshakeable belief that everyone loves the...

In a child psychology class on the evening of February 16, 1970, Colette MacDonald raised her hand and described what was really happening inside 544 Castle Drive. Her husband Jeffrey, she told the room, had decided that their two-year-old would sleep in the marital bed. Colette would sleep on the couch. The class offered advice. She smiled and nodded. She was killed that night. In this episode, J...

MacDonald charmed everyone he met at Fort Sam Houston. The army nurse who dated him for two weeks before she even asked if he had a wife. The stewardess with the "outstanding body" who was ready to pack up and follow him back to Fort Bragg. The Swedish exchange student. The blonde named Mary. The motel manager's party crew.

Jeff McDonald told the world his wife was proud of the Green Berets. That they were both pro-war. That she was happy. In this episode, the people who actually knew Collette speak. Not one of them backs him up. Collette's sister-in-law describes a woman whose father killed himself when she was eleven. Anti-war. Against violence. So private about her marriage that she'd never let anyone see a crack....

Billy and James break from their usual programming to update you on developments in the past week, where a MacDonald Defender presented the Pardon Czar with a farcical request for a compassionate release of the triple murderer. Featuring a reading, in full, of Bob Stevenson's (Colette's brother) powerful letter to the 2005 parole board on the continuous damage MacDonald reaped and will rea...

James and Billy break down how Helena Stokely learned to stop worrying and love issuing false, vague confession-like statements and then immediately retracting them.

Billy and James journey onward through the text, engaging with the biography of Helena Stokely, the suspect revisionist accounts of Prince Edward Beasley, and talk candidly about the MacDonald Defenders lurking in the wings. Listener questions are asked and answered in the final segment.

Billy and James throw on a livestream to start Chapter 2, in which Jeff begins his brief flirtation with the New York City jet set before the reinvestigation snares him into two depositions with Pruitt and Kearns. Live Q and A follows.

In this episode, we see Jeff's Dick Cavett appearance again...this time, through Freddy Kassab's eyes.

James and Billy are back after a holiday break! In this section, Jeff tries to get Freddy off his back and names a possible suspect: Willie the Witch.

In this episode, Jeff starts seeking publicity for his case and has an appearance on Dick Cavett that he would come to regret.

James and Billy dive back into the book with a close reading of the first half of Part 2, Chapter 3. In this chapter, Jeff starts keeping a diary and embraces his newfound stardom. Questions? Comments? Info about the case? Hit us up at fatalvisionpodcast@gmail.com. Fatal Vision YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@jamesmcginniss1012

In another livestream, James and Billy play and react to newly unearthed tapes.

In this live episode, James and Billy discuss breakthroughs in their research into this case.

MacDonald takes the stand in the Article 32 hearing and he somehow remembers new details about what happened on the night of the murders.

In this episode -- sure to be a favorite for MacDonald defenders -- Bernie Segal confronts Bill Ivory about a woman named Helena Stoeckley. Questions? Comments? Information about the case? Write us at fatalvisionpodcast@gmail.com; and follow us on Substack for updates on all things Fatal Vision: https://fatalvision.substack.com/p/writers-in-residence.

James and Billy provide a crucial update on MacDonald's health and whereabouts before getting back into the text.