Pullquote:
Gunderson contends that the whole case against MacDonald was a government
conspiracy. He says Vietnam vet Mitchell had been smuggling heroin-with the
approval of Fort Bragg's top brass -by concealing it inside the chest
cavities of dead soldiers sent home from southeast Asia.

Will New DNA evidence free Green Beret
Killer?
Globe
July 15, 2003



A handsome young husband murders his pregnant wife and blames the bloody
crime on a satanic cult. It sounds like the story of Scott Peterson, who's
awaiting trial for the slaving of his wife Laci and their unborn son Conner.

But 33 years ago, an eerily similar set of circumstances surrounded Capt.
Jeffrey R. MacDonald, the former Green Beret and emergency- room dc doc
convicted of staughtering his expectant wife and the: two young daughters.
The sensational case captivated the nation's attention for years, spawning
the best seller Fatal Vision and a TV movie of the same name

MacDonald, 59, is serving a triple life sentence at the Cumberland Federal
Correctional Institute in Maryland. But the case is far from closed-thanks
to new DNA evidence.

MacDonald claims that four drug-crazed hippies invaded his Fort Bragg, N.C.,
home on the fateful morning of Feb. 17, 1970. While a blonde girl wearing a
floppy hat chanted, "Acid is groovy, kill the pigs," three men viciously
attacked him with a club, knives and an ice pick. He lost consciousness and
awakened to the nightmarish sight of his butchered fivemonths-pregnant wife
Colette, 26, and daughters Kimberly, 5, and Kristen, 2.

MacDonald suffered stab wounds and a punctured lung, but military police
arrested him, convinced he'd killed his family and staged the crime scene.
He was originally cleared, but when the crime went unsolved for years,
Colette's relatives pressed Raleigh, N.C., prosecutors for action. They did,
and MacDonald was tried and convicted of murder in 1979. He was released in
1980 after an appeal, but two years later the Supreme Court reinstated his
conviction and sent him back to prison.

"Jeff didn't get a fair trial," former FBI agent Ted Gunderson tells GLOBE.
"Evidence disappeared from the police locker, prosecutors didn't share
information with the defense as the law says they must and the judge
prevented the jury from hearing important testimony." Gunderson, now a
private eye who has worked for MacDonald since 1980, complains that the jury
never heard the confession of Helena Stoeckley, a colonel's daughter who
admitted to being the woman in the floppy hat. "I've got a signed affidavit
and filmed confession from her," Gunderson says. "Helena told me that the
killings were her initiation into a satanic cult led by her boyfriend Greg
Mitchell."

Gunderson contends that the whole case against MacDonald was a government
conspiracy. He says Vietnam vet Mitchell had been smuggling heroin-with the
approval of Fort Bragg's top brass -by concealing it inside the chest
cavities of dead soldiers sent home from southeast Asia.

"Then Mitchell and his pals would distribute the drugs on the East Coast,"
Gunderson says. "It was a huge operation." He adds that things went awry
when Mitchell and his cronies started sampling the product, fried their
brains and got into devil worshipping. And when they sought help for their
addiction at the base hospital, MacDonald turned them away and thus became a
target for their revenge.

"Jeff was framed so the drug trade wouldn't be exposed," Gunderson says. "It
was the worst investigation and trial I've ever seen."

Famed forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht also questions whether MacDonald
committed the crime.

"The original investigators botched the case and medical evidence was slim
to none," Wecht tells GLOBE. "Did Jeffrey MacDonald kill his family? My gut
instinct after meeting him andreviewing the material is no. But it's also
within the realm of possibility that he did.

"Still, there's something in my heart that makes me want to believe he could
not kill his own two beloved children. That's something only a true
psychopath could do."

MacDonald continues to deny his guilt and may soon get a chance to prove his
innocence now that Barry Scheck - the DNA expert on O.J. Simpson's Dream
Team - has joined his defense.

"DNA tests weren't available when Jeff was on trial, but Scheck has sent
numerous items from the evidence locker to the Armed Forces Institute for
Pathology for testing," MacDonald's lead attorney Harvey Silverglate tells
GLOBE. "If the results don't match Jeff, he'll either get a new trial or be
sprung from prison entirely."

But former prosecutor James Blackburn, who helped put MacDonald behind bars,
calls the conspiracy theory "ridiculous." "The satanic cult and drug
smuggling ring were just smoke screens the defense threw out to deflect
attention from their client," he declares. "When I see Scott Peterson's
attorney float the satanic ' cult theory and play to the media, it's all too
familiar. It didn't work for Jeffrey MacDonald, and I don't expect it will
work for Scott Peterson." - DAWNA KAUFMANN