Out of all the evidentiary and procedural twists and turns, I asked Silverglate to name the one that bothered him the most about the MacDonald case. Like Wade Smith, Ive been struck by how many people speak of absolute certainty about what happened that February night over 40 years ago. He continued to work as a doctor and moved to California. It implicates us all. Silverglate believes that Jeffrey MacDonald has been railroaded, and that this railroading exposes disturbing trends in our federal criminal justice system. WS: Its an enormous problem. After 3 a.m. on Feb. 17, 1970, dispatchers at Fort Bragg received an emergency call from the MacDonalds 544 Castle Drive address. He told authorities that hetried to fight off the attackers but was wounded and eventually collapsed in the hallwaylater regaining consciousness and discovering his family had been killed, according to the new FX docuseries A Wilderness of Error.. But there is a reasonable doubt, and because there is a reasonable doubt it is absolutely clear that he should be set free. Sadly, the family wouldnt survive the next year. But in the years that followed the gruesome murders, Kassab drastically changed his opinion of his surgeon son-in-law and became one of MacDonalds fiercest adversariesleading the charge to have MacDonald tried for three counts of murder in the case. Together, the manuscripts provide a detailed look into nearly a century of one familys history in Syria and the United States, as well as a rich insight into the social fabric and workplace challenges faced by early immigrants. Use census records and voter lists to see where families with the Kassab surname lived. Colettes sister-in-law Vivian Pep Stevenson told the outlet that Colette knew of the affairs and was growing tired of the infidelities before she died, at one point lamenting, I dont want to do this anymore.. Tragically, the comparisons to the Sharon Tate killing were striking. Kassabs unwavering support of his son-in-law also began to crumble as Kassabwho worked in telephone sales for the Quality Egg Co.began to question MacDonalds account of what happened. Vietnam-era Fayetteville was not sleepy Raleigh in the 1980s. Then, meet Christopher Scarver the man who killed cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. 741 Immigration & Travel. LP: Then why did MacDonald, the emblem of law-and-order, the Green Beret, become a suspect? The one hardly anyone sees, but that rages, nonetheless. Jeffrey MacDonald, a Princeton-educated Green Beret doctor with no history of violence and a sterling record, butchered his pregnant wife and two young daughters using a knife, ice pick and club. 1,169 Birth, Marriage & Death. But there was no evidence that had ever taken place. Shes haunting this case. They hoped to get a confession, but she stated firmly that she had never been inside MacDonalds home contrary to previous claims she purportedly made to defense attorneys during witness hearings. Then, if someone draws your attention to certain details, suddenly the picture transforms into the profile of an old woman. He was troubled by MacDonalds apparently cavalier attitude about the brutal murders on an appearance of "The Dick Cavett Show. But just what changed Kassabs mind about the man he once called a nice, presentable young man?". He looked angry on the stand. Judge James Fox, a close friend of Dupree's and quite elderly himself, has taken over and has dismissed appeals. ". Sign up forOxygen Insiderfor all the best true crime content. Picture #2. When Jeffrey MacDonald came under suspicion for savagely killing his pregnant wife and the couples two young daughters, one man rushed to publicly support him: his father-in-law Freddie Kassab. Allard Lowenstein supporting MacDonalds claim that the Army wrongfully accused him and were trying to cover up their mistake. 741 Immigration & Travel. He drew on his previous knowledge of MacDonald, who he had met years earlier while courting Colettes mother, Mildred. MacDonald had only one stab wound, which the hospital surgeon later described as a clean, small, sharp incision that made his left lung partially collapse. This was about 31% of all the recorded Kassab's in USA. The social justice movement is now involved; the Innocence Project, a prestigious nationwide network dedicated to exonerating the wrongfully convicted, has worked strenuously to overturn MacDonalds conviction. On the evening of the murders, Jeffrey MacDonald had taken his kids to ride the pony he had bought them, fed them dinner while their mother took a night class, and put them to bed. The couples youngest daughter, 2-year-old Kristen, had a total of 33 stab wounds. Thinking that he could never reveal it? Good potential for the future, so therefore we saw nothing wrong with them getting married, Kassab once said of his son-in-law, according to the docuseries. MacDonald claimed the mysterious blonde woman who oversaw the murders was wearing a floppy hat and high-heeled boots and was holding a candle while chanting, Acid is groovy. But then I felt uneasy. A neighbors dog and MP guards securing the MacDonald property. He claimed they chanted, Kill the pigs!Acid is groovy! and scrawled the word PIG on the wall in his wifes blood. How I Changed My Mind About the Jeffrey MacDonald Murder Case. MacDonald, bloody but alive, was next to his wife, who had been pregnant with their third child when she was stabbed 16 times with a kitchen knife and 21 times with an icepick. My wife and I can sit for hours and days and not talk to each other, but were both thinking, you know. The Kassab brothers both raised their families in Chester, where they also practiced dentistry. Marc Smerling thinks he has some idea. Eventually, after pressure from Colettes family, MacDonald was indicted and found guilty of the three murders on August 29, 1979. Make a one-time contribution to Alternet All Access, Who else is going to fight this thing if not me? Freddy Kassab said of his years-long quest to put his son-in-law Jeffrey MacDonald behind bars for killing his stepdaughter and two young granddaughters. These victims include Rachad Adra, who was killed and his four-year-old son injured, when a gunman with a high-powered weapon shot the wrong house in Thomastown in October 2015, and Khaled Abouhasna, who was killed in a shooting ambush six months earlier when he was mistaken for a ruthless standover man. And the physical evidence, the circumstantial evidence, just kept mounting against him and contradicting his story for events from that evening.. But his story crumbled under scrutiny and he was charged with killing his family. According to exclusive statistics from the armed crime squad, there has been a five-fold increase in non-fatal shootings in the north-west in four years and the region now sees almost two thirds of Victoria's non-fatal shootings. Recently, the Fourth District Court of Appeals ordered Fox to consider new evidence, and to examine all the evidence as a whole. Then he injured himself and set up the scene to make the crimes appear to be the work of intruders. This can drive a surge in shootings, and then be forgotten again just as quickly, said Detective Inspector Stephen Clark of the armed crime squad. But Im an optimist generally about our system of justice, and I hope that MacDonald gets a break. Waters rubbished that explanation. Theres a note attached. Ill be seeing him. Well, Bernie Segal told me that he never saw it.. Although Kassab didnt join the family until Colette was a teenager, he had always been close with his stepdaughter. But it wasnt until Kassab revisited the crime scene himself in 1972 that he finally believed that his son-in-law had been the killer. When Victor Worheide, who was a federal prosecutor, later became interested in the case at the urging of the parents of Colette MacDonald, the case was gone. But many of the major players now are either related to these families, or closely linked within the criminal milieu. I accused the Army of every blunder that they made in the original investigation, he once said, according to the docuseries. As if they had seen it with their own eyes. It is hard not to be shocked by the footage of Oueida's shooting. Colette had been stabbed 16 times and punctured 21 times with an ice pick, while 5-year-old Kimberley was killed by six blows to the head and eightto 10 stab wounds, according to a. Jeffrey MacDonald had also been at the home at the time, but he suffered only minor injuries compared to what his family endured. They grew to become serious forces, in part, because of failures by police to respond to the problem. Eventually, he turned on the man he had once so ardently defended. Even back then, if you polled Fayetteville folks, you might have found that a lot of people did not believe that he did it. WebThe Kassab family name was found in the USA in 1920. But even though Jeffrey MacDonald has spent decades behind bars, his case doesnt seem to be closed just yet. He is both a careful researcher and a profound investigator of the human condition. Almost all the of shootings in the north-west, one underworld source said, relate to those at the bottom of the criminal food chain. Kassabs suspicions deepened after he received a copy of a transcript of the Article 32 hearing and began to pore through the evidence himself. Wadea Kassab was born in Damascus in 1872 to an Orthodox family that had long and deep connections to British and American Protestant missionaries in Damascus and Beirut. His uncle, Salim Kassab, was a long-time assistant to, first, Lady Hester Stanhope and later to Elizabeth Bowen Thompson, who helped found British mission schools in Greater Syria. View all records. Materials provided by the families of Wadea and Aelyas Kassab. No particular families run any particular suburbs; they are all dealing, all the time, to whoever buys. Smerling is the director of the documentary series A Wilderness of Error, which examines the MacDonald case. The man is a fanatic.. What follows is the transcript of our conversation. Two years into MacDonalds undergraduate studies at Princeton, Stevens became pregnant. Since MacDonald was convicted of the murders in 1979, considerable evidence of his innocence has come to light. Now, it appears the Tibas are at war with everybody. Segal took up nearly all the time in the critical period for closing remarks and left only a few minutes for co-counsel Wade Smith, an eloquent native North Carolinian who understood the jury. LP: What has this case revealed about the flaws in our judicial system? MacDonald invited author Joe McGinniss to write a book about the case before it had reached a verdict. "There was a young kid that was shot, and he's paralysed from the chest down for the rest of his life. At some time before 3.30am someone brutally attacked the MacDonald family in their home at 544 Castle Drive on what was then the open military base of Fort Bragg. Judge Fox is also a good man. The now 76-year-old is serving three consecutive life sentences and is currently housed at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland . MacDonald said there had been a stabbing and begged for an ambulance. The shootings can be over particularly petty reasons, not just the drug trade: women, a perceived slight, or, increasingly, a prison feud. WebIt is reported Ms Kassab entered Syria last year and that her husband, known as Sam, died on the border of Turkey in 2013. MacDonald had no history of violence or temper. Freddy Kassab had inserted himself into the 1970 military hearing and made himself the center of a media circus, holding news conferences and firing off letters to members of Congress. At the time, Kassab still believed the real perpetrators of the crime had been the four hippies that MacDonald said had broken into the home. There were fibers from a blonde wig that matched the description of Helena Stoeckley. We reconstructed the murders using what McDonald said. The writer had full access to the trial, and appeared sympathetic. At one stage last year, there was only one of the six Chaouks, father and sons, that were alive and free. Grieving mother Mildred Kassab weeps for her daughter while being escorted into JFK Memorial Chapel to see her buried. Wade Smith: Its a very spooky case. Jeffrey MacDonald had also been at the home at the time, but he suffered only minor injuries compared to what his family endured. Soldiers corpses arrived at Fort Bragg stuffed with heroin. It all was intruders. As the only survivor, MacDonald claimed that a mysterious blonde hippie oversaw three male intruders who slaughtered his family. Ron DeSantis and Florida's Doctor Antivax, 'The maths are hard': Marjorie Taylor Greene mocked for not understanding what 'seized' means, Marjorie Taylor Greene garners few sympathizers after claiming she was 'attacked' in a restaurant, 'Thats weaponization': Dem smacks down Jim Jordan for ignoring Trump DOJ corruption, 'Toxic sludge': Paul Ryan torches Tucker Carlson when questioned about Fox News' election coverage, 'Liar, liar': Joe Biden amuses crowd with quip about Marjorie Taylor Greene, 'Really unacceptable': FBI shredded following new watchdog report, 'Im not gonna yield!' Colette was relieved to find out her husband would not be stationed in Vietnam and the whole family was overjoyed to learn she was pregnant for a third time. Investigators identified at least 240 leads in the casebut the evidence continued to point back to the MacDonald. Bettmann Archive/Getty ImagesRep. Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Since adapted into a documentary series of the same name directed by Marc Smirling, the project aims to detail how much evidence Morris believes was lost, mismanaged or glaringly unreliable from the start. Mr Oueida has been overseas for most of the time since the attack, predominantly in Lebanon and Dubai a haunt for a string of Australian organised crime figures. But, soon after MacDonald moved to Long Beach, California to continue his career at St. Mary Medical Center, and the tide turned once more. Friends since grade school, he and Colette Stevens began dating as teenagers, and grew serious during college. Next, the defense decided to call the suspected blonde woman Helena Stoeckley as a witness. Helena Stoeckley confessed many times that MacDonalds willingness to turn heroin addicts in to the police infuriated local drug dealers. 6,889 Family Trees. But there was, including wax drippings (MacDonald insisted that one of the intruders carried a candle), fibers, and hairs that did not belong to the household or family members. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Waters rubbished that explanation. Jeffrey MacDonald was arraigned in May 1975 and pleaded not guilty. Oh, yes. WebWe found 33,440 records for Kassab last name. It has witchcraft in it. Abdul Tiba has eight sons, aged from their 50s to their 20s. "We're concentrating on the actions of the shooter, because what happens to the victim is outside our control the line between a non-fatal shooting and a murder is wafer thin. The family moved to Chicago after MacDonald was accepted into Northwestern University Medical School. Often, the spouse turns out to have committed the murder, so its not surprising that the case turned to McDonald. This was about 31% of all the recorded Kassab's in USA. The Tibas, Haddaras, Chaouks, Kassabs, and Kheirs are north-west Melbourne's version of the Five Families, the major players in the New York mafia. After reading the full transcript of his Article 32 hearing, the Kassabs were convinced that MacDonalds story didnt add up. The chanting blonde, meanwhile, had not been found. The family claims his body has never been found. To realize he had done it, and Colette loved him, and when you sit back and picture in your minds eye what happened that night, with him attacking, and I know from the autopsy reports what was done to the two children, you cant help but visualize in your mind, though we dont talk about it, Freddy Kassab told The Washington Post in 1984, just as the popular mini-series Fatal Vision, which depicted the crimes, was airing across the country. Waters rubbished that explanation. According to her, they wanted to teach MacDonald a lesson and rough up his family the night of the killings. In a 2011 press release, the Innocence Project stated:. Wadea and Aelyas Kassab are both buried in Pennsylvania. The couple sued MacDonald in 1987 to try to prevent him from profiting from Joe McGinniss book Fatal Vision, which served as the inspiration for the mini-series. When a terrible crime is committed, society comes together to find someone to blame and to pay for the collective sense of violation. In 1989after Freddy Kassab had been diagnosed with emphysemahe decided to videotape his arguments against MacDonalds release and arranged for the tape to be played, if necessary, in front of a parole board after he died, according to the Orlando Sentinel. To dislodge an idea reinforced by a popular book and TV phenomenon would be hard enough, but to add the sickening sense that the wrong man has been paying is nearly unthinkable. 959 Census & Voter Lists. It is a misconception that the battles are over territory. Every time we pursued a lead it just turned us around and directed us back toward Jeffrey MacDonald. Or maybe theres something else at work: Picture #2 is even more awful to see than Picture #1. Brian Murtaugh says, Sure, Ill give it to him. I would have told the jury that it doesnt make sense. WebIt is reported Ms Kassab entered Syria last year and that her husband, known as Sam, died on the border of Turkey in 2013. Smerling is the director of the documentary series A Wilderness of Error, which examines the MacDonald case. This collection is a part of a larger collection that has been divided into more specific collections. His wife Colette and his children have also been forever denied these things -- but not, I have come to believe, by the man who is currently serving three consecutive life sentences. Appearances didnt help MacDonald, either. Thereafter their lives ran close and parallel courses. MacDonald had been just a teenager at the time and was dating Colette, his high school sweetheart. I have read transcripts, articles, books, opinions, blogs, and bizarre rantings about psychopaths on Joe McGinniss Web site to help me more clearly see the picture of the MacDonald case. When the show was over, I retired to the security of my bed, safe from unpredictable evils. Born Jeffrey Robert MacDonald on Oct. 12, 1943, in New York City, the fledgling doctor grew up in Patchogue, Long Island. WebThe Kassab family name was found in the USA in 1920. WebIn July 1974, a Federal judge acted on a citizen's criminal complaint by Kassab and others, by putting the case before a grand jury. Although Kassab didnt join the family until Colette was a teenager, he had always been close with his stepdaughter. Desperate to save his family, he said he fought back until they stabbed him and beat him unconscious. He holds dual bachelor's degrees from Pace University and a master's degree from New York University. Marc Smerling thinks he has some idea. Please try again later. Mr Oueida has been overseas for most of the time since the attack, predominantly in Lebanon and Dubai a haunt for a string of Australian organised crime figures. Wherever you see the label psychopath," you could almost substitute monster or vampire youre talking about an unnatural person who does not behave according to normal human rules, and with that label, you can believe anything of them. Ive got the patience of Job.. However, critics of the book say that while it paints an emotional picture of a man wrongfully tried by the media, it cherrypicks evidence and largely ignores the physical evidence that led to MacDonalds 1979 conviction. When we were walking out of the house, I was warned that convicting MacDonald wasnt going to be that simple, Kassab said. We even came back at night so we would have the same lighting conditions as the night of the murders. It frustrates police that low-level gangsters without a shred of integrity jut their chins out and shake their heads in a misplaced attempt at honour when asked who shot them, despite, in many instances, being maimed for life. WebIn 1971, his father-in-law, Freddy Kassab, became progressively suspicious of MacDonald and sought formal reopening of the case. Then, in 2012 Jeffrey MacDonalds most famous defender, filmmaker Errol Morris, was so intrigued by the case that he wrote the 500-page book A Wilderness of Error. 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