A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald [Hardcover]

Errol Morris (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 4, 2012

Academy Award-winning filmmaker and former private detective Errol Morris examines the nature of evidence and proof in the infamous Jeffrey MacDonald murder case

Early on the morning of February 17, 1970, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Jeffrey MacDonald, a Green Beret doctor, called the police for help.  When the officers arrived at his home they found the bloody and battered bodies of MacDonald’s pregnant wife and two young daughters. The word “pig” was written in blood on the headboard in the master bedroom. As MacDonald was being loaded into the ambulance, he accused a band of drug-crazed hippies of the crime.

So began one of the most notorious and mysterious murder cases of the twentieth century. Jeffrey MacDonald was finally convicted in 1979 and remains in prison today. Since then a number of bestselling books—including Joe McGinniss’s Fatal Vision and Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer—and a blockbuster television miniseries have told their versions of the MacDonald case and what it all means.

Errol Morris has been investigating the MacDonald case for over twenty years. A Wilderness of Error is the culmination of his efforts. It is a shocking book, because it shows us that almost everything we have been told about the case is deeply unreliable, and crucial elements of the case against MacDonald simply are not true. It is a masterful reinvention of the true-crime thriller, a book that pierces the haze of myth surrounding these murders with the sort of brilliant light that can only be produced by years of dogged and careful investigation and hard, lucid thinking.

By this book’s end, we know several things: that there are two very different narratives we can create about what happened at 544 Castle Drive, and that the one that led to the conviction and imprisonment for life of this man for butchering his wife and two young daughters is almost certainly wrong.  Along the way Morris poses bracing questions about the nature of proof, criminal justice, and the media, showing us how MacDonald has been condemned, not only to prison, but to the stories that have been created around him.

In this profoundly original meditation on truth and justice, Errol Morris reopens one of America’s most famous cases and forces us to confront the unimaginable. Morris has spent his career unsettling our complacent assumptions that we know what we’re looking at, that the stories we tell ourselves are true. This book is his finest and most important achievement to date.

Editorial Reviews

From Bookforum

Prosecutors, a judge, and a jury put Jeffrey MacDonald behind bars more than three decades ago for the murder of his pregnant wife and two young daughters. But according to Errol Morris, he’s been kept there by the power of narrative. Morris offers a thought-provoking argument against the power of storytelling, and in doing so, he elevates journalism above this allure, to a different, more noble place: the honest pursuit of truth. —Dan Kennedy

Review

"The literary equivalent of one of [Morris's] movies. It’s a rough-hewed documentary master class.... A Wilderness of Error upends nearly everything you think you know about these killings and their aftermath. Watching Mr. Morris wade into this thicket of material is like watching an aggrieved parent walk into a teenager’s fetid, clothes- and Doritos-strewed bedroom and neatly sort and disinfect until the place shines. ...He will leave you 85 percent certain that Mr. MacDonald is innocent. He will leave you 100 percent certain he did not get a fair trial... If this headstrong book doesn’t change your sense of the Jeffrey MacDonald case, I'll eat my Chuck Taylors."
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"Critics sometimes confuse great books with important books — exceptionally written literature isn't always the same as literature that can powerfully affect society. But A Wilderness of Error is both great and important — it's a beautifully written book, and it has the potential to change the way the country thinks about a justice system that has obviously lost its way."
—Michael Shaub, NPR

"Mr. Morris has produced a brilliant book about the vulnerability of justice to the preconceptions of prosecutors and the power of certain narratives to crowd out all others, even highly plausible ones. I strongly recommend this book."
—Wall Street Journal

"A Wilderness of Error is a beautifully produced book, with chapters set off by line drawings of crucial objects in the case: a toppled coffee table, a flower pot, a rocking horse. It’s reminiscent of the recurring images in 'The Thin Blue Line,' iconic and mysterious, always on the verge of revealing the secrets they stand for but never quite yielding them. Morris may geek out on minutiae and hypotheticals, but he is enough of an artist to convey that every crime scene is a dialogue between time, as it sweeps away the irrecoverable past, and the material world."
—Salon

"Morris’s thoroughly engrossing and exhaustively researched book is the product of more than two decades of work... As is nearly always the case in any Morris project, the character studies are magnificent, the attention to detail extraordinary, and the effect on the audience is dizzying, disorienting, and thought-provoking."
—The Boston Globe

"Morris has been researching the case for over two decades, and the result of his inquiries is a thorough and compelling argument for the incarcerated doctor's innocence, a sobering look at the labyrinthine justice system, and a feat of investigative perseverance."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; 1St Edition edition (September 4, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594203431
• ISBN-13: 978-1594203435
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Roger Ebert has said, "After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven't found another filmmaker who intrigues me more...Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini."

Morris' films have won many awards, including an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, an Emmy, the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, the Silver Bear at Berlin International Film Festival, the Golden Horse at the Taiwan International Film Festival and the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America. His documentaries have repeatedly appeared on many ten best lists and have been honored by the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review. His work was the subject of a full retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1999.

Morris has received five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2007, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a graduate student at Princeton University and the University of California-Berkeley.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

156 of 172 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very well done but will leave you with questions September 5, 2012

By Lori Hedgpeth VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Since 1985, I have had a long, twisting journey with the Jeffrey MacDonald case. It started with Fatal Vision, the miniseries, and progressed to Fatal Vision, the book about the case penned by Joe McGinniss. I followed those over time with The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm, Fatal Justice by Jerry Allen Potter and Fred Bost and Scales of Justice by Christina Masewicz. I visited various websites and read anything I could find about the case. Throughout the years my views on the case changed dramatically. I penned my changing thoughts here (at my book review site). In short, I believed MacDonald was guilty but something was off with the case, then there was a great chance that MacDonald was innocent and wrongly imprisoned and, finally, that MacDonald was guilty of the horrible crimes he was convicted of.

When I heard that filmmaker Errol Morris (he of the documentary The Thin Blue Line, which helped to free Randall Dale Adams, wrongly convicted of the murder of a Dallas police officer) had written a book in which he takes on the government's case against MacDonald, I knew that I had to read it.

I will admit that I went into this book deadset on MacDonald's guilt and mentally telling myself that no matter what Mr. Morris wrote in his book, I simply couldn't believe that MacDonald was anything less than guilty. Perhaps not exactly fair to Mr. Morris but given that the murders happened in 1970, MacDonald was convicted in 1979 and so much has been written about the case, both for and against MacDonald, it's not surprising.

If you are not well read or versed on the MacDonald case, A Wilderness of Error is probably not the place to start. Not because it's not well written - - because it is and Mr. Morris does a fine job of supporting his statements. But the book reads for someone already familiar with the background of the murders and the lengthy process in which MacDonald was brought to justice as the background of the crimes themselves is not nearly in-depth as the follow-up.

Mr. Morris excels at bringing to life Helena Stoeckley, the young hippie girl bearing a remarkable resemblance to one of the intruders MacDonald described to the military police following the murders, and who was to be the smoking gun for the defense during the 1979 trial. As Ms. Stoeckley herself was deceased by the time Mr. Morris began research for his book, he did interview family members, neighbors and people who knew and associated with her. She is presented both as a police informant living in Fayetteville's Haymount neighborhood (and hippie district), who partook in drugs and witchcraft and the sad, depleted woman MacDonald and his attorneys hung their hopes on.

Mr. Morris also shone a bright and unforgiving light on Colette MacDonald's mother and stepfather Mildred and Freddy Kassab. The Kassabs were presented in McGinniss' Fatal Vision as the martyred and heartsick family members who made it their life mission to bring their daughter's and granddaughters' killer to justice. Freddy Kassab, in particular, was the tenacious bulldog who grabbed ahold of Jeffrey MacDonald and wouldn't let go, joining forces with the government's prosecutors to see that his former son-in-law had his freedom taken away. The information that Mr. Morris outlined in his book, and supported by long-time friends of the family, is vastly different than the majority of what I have read and it did give me pause.

Mr. Morris didn't appear to have a lot of communications with MacDonald himself and that, to me, is a shortcoming with the book. What small amount of communication he did have was saved for the conclusion of the book. He is honest in his presentation - - that MacDonald is unlikable, annoying and quite full of himself but a good doctor and some of his off-putting qualities make him a good surgeon.

Perhaps Mr. Morris' strongest argument for MacDonald lies within the weakness of the government's supposed shoe-in evidence. He takes on their pajama top experiment and invalidates their results, as well as their assertion that saran hair fibers found in a hairbrush at the crime scene were not those of one of the MacDonald children's dolls but had come from a wig. Helena Stoeckley owned a wig of the same color as those hairs found and during one of her confessions, claimed to be wearing that wig at the time of the crimes.

Despite my assertions that I would not be moved by Mr. Morris' writing, I was. He made a clear and concise argument that Jeffrey MacDonald did not receive a fair trial - - from Judge Dupree's relationship with the original prosecutor (his son-in-law) to inaccurate government tests that were presented as gospel to threats of prosecution given to Helena Stoeckley should she testify to being present at the crime scene and vouching for MacDonald's innocence - - and there was no shortage of reasonable doubt.

A Wilderness of Error did not change my stance on MacDonald guilt or innocence, however well written it was. And here is why. I can throw out all the evidence - - the blood evidence, the pajama top, the bedsheets, the fibers, Helena Stoeckley's confessions and recanting of same . . . but what gets me is the difference between MacDonald's injuries and those inflicted on his family. If a group of drug addicted hippies wanted to get even with MacDonald for ratting them out or not giving them drugs or whatever their reasoning may have been, wouldn't they have taken the largest threat - - MacDonald - - and eliminated him first? Why attack a pregnant woman and two little girls - - a 5 year old and a 2 year old - - before even addressing MacDonald? Why crush the skulls of a woman and a 5 year old and leave MacDonald with one bruise on his head? A bruise with no broken skin? Why would MacDonald have one clean cut to his chest when his wife and children suffered many? One daughter had over thirty stab wounds. Does it make sense to massacre two children who could never identify one intruder and leave behind the one person who could?

None of that makes sense to me and taking that into consideration, I can't believe MacDonald's story about hippie intruders. What I can believe though is that he didn't get a fair trial and guilty or innocent, everyone deserves a fair trial. So while I think he's guilty, he was wrongfully convicted and that's just not right.

For those of you out there that have a similar obsession with the MacDonald case, I would not hesitate to recommend A Wilderness of Error. If you appreciate true crime and are unfamiliar with the case, I would suggest some background research through one of the handful of sites devoted to the case on the Internet or reading Fatal Vision, Fatal Journey or Scales of Justice. (The Journalist and the Murderer is about Joe McGinniss' role in his relationship with MacDonald and resulting lawsuit and not about the case itself).

Very well done, Mr. Morris. You presented us with a well-written, thought provoking book and one that may expose the many missteps of the government to the public.

©Psychotic State Book Reviews, 2012

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not guilty, but not innocent September 27, 2012

By James K. Ashcraft

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In "A Wilderness of Error," Errol Morris turns his considerable documentary skill to one of the most widely discussed murder cases of the 20th century, in which Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted of killing his wife and two daughters in 1970 and received three consecutive life sentences. Morris is best known to me for his film "The Thin Blue Line," the story of Randall Adams, who was sent to Texas's death row for killing a Dallas policeman. Adams was released from prison largely due to that film's exposure of the rush to judgment of him and the identity of the real killer. If Morris could accomplish something like that in Texas, of all places, he has my great respect.

The theme of this book is similar - authorities focus on a single suspect, decide he is guilty, and develop tunnel vision that prevents him from receiving justice. No doubt that is what happened to Adams. But Morris is wrong in suggesting the same thing happened to MacDonald.

In the Adams case, a police officer had been senselessly murdered during a routine traffic stop. Everyone in the region, the police, the D.A., and the public, was out for blood. Adams was fingered for the crime (by the teenager who actually committed it), brought in for questioning and then arrested. He was a drifter, a nobody. He had no solid alibi, and he was old enough to receive the death penalty, whereas the real killer was not. For those bent on social vengeance, Adams was perfect.

MacDonald, on the other hand, couldn't have been a less desirable suspect for his authorities. He was a Green Beret captain, a paratrooper, a respected physician, and well liked by all of his peers and superiors. The crime occurred at Fort Bragg, so the Army was in charge, and it's inconceivable his commanders would have relished one of their rising stars going down for such a crime. If the cards were stacked initially, it was in MacDonald's favor.

It was only after extensively interviewing MacDonald that lower ranking Army investigators decided there was something very fishy about his story describing drug-crazed hippie home invaders, and brought that surely unwelcome conclusion to their superiors. After a hearing, the Army still declined to prosecute him, largely because its own inept crime scene personnel had badly compromised the physical evidence. Does that appear to have been a rush to judgment?

Morris has a lot to say about misconduct by prosecutors in MacDonald's civilian trial, which occurred years later, and there's no question that their performance was deplorable (one of those prosecutors has since been disbarred). The appeals courts have ruled that the prosecution's misdeeds did not affect the outcome of the trial; Morris disagrees, as do I. But believing the verdict should be overturned on legal grounds is one thing; believing an innocent man was convicted is another, and Morris makes the latter case - by implication if not by direct statement.

In fact, MacDonald's federal prosecutors found themselves in the same pickle the Army prosecutors had - the crime scene had been so contaminated that it was impossible to prove anything with the evidence it yielded, at least some of which seemed to be consistent with MacDonald's story. But they were convinced of his guilt, so they decided to cheat. They used only evidence supporting their case and illegally buried the rest, much of which has come to light during MacDonald's three decades in prison.

Now it's easy to raise eyebrows high at that, and Morris clearly finds it extremely damaging to the overall case against MacDonald. But he's ignoring the irony that it was MacDonald's own legal team who first demonstrated how forensically useless the crime scene was. They can't logically make that claim, and then claim that the physical evidence friendly to him is relevant. You have to trust all of that evidence or none of it. Not only that, but Morris's arguments assume that if there is any reliable evidence that the people MacDonald described actually were in his home, then MacDonald must be telling the truth. But just one alternate explanation for such evidence is that those people were in MacDonald's home earlier in the evening (or on a previous day) and departed peacefully, leaving MacDonald with four convenient and well remembered patsies. If Morris has considered this, he doesn't mention it.

With his focus on such shaky evidence, Morris ignores the powerful evidentiary area that began convincing people MacDonald was guilty in the first place - his own words. His account is simply not believable, in far too many respects to list here. For just one thing, his cartoonish description of the behavior of the "killer hippies" could easily be recognized as bogus by anyone with the slightest familiarity with late '60s counterculture. Morris also does not address the obvious question of why such people might brutally slaughter a woman and two small children, yet leave alive and relatively unhurt a robust adult male who represented their greater threat, had seen them, and could probably identify them. Or why MacDonald has never agreed to an independently administered polygraph examination, as anyone falsely accused of a crime most certainly would. If he were innocent, he would have begged to be so examined.

Another major focus of Morris's journalistic attention is the pathetic, drug-addled Helena Stoekely, theorized to have been the "blonde with the floppy hat." The only thing about her that seems certain is that on the night of the murders, and most other nights, she was admittedly high as the sky on mescaline (significantly, she never mentioned taking LSD). She variously said she was not involved, was involved, thinks she remembers maybe being involved, had dreams about being involved, etc. And as any police detective knows, people who volunteer confessions of crimes most often are simply attention seekers. Morris asserts, probably accurately, that she was coerced by the prosecutors to recant in the trial, but it doesn't matter. She never had a coherent story to begin with. As a witness, she was useless, and I find it surprising that Morris takes her as seriously as he seems to.

Oh, and MacDonald claims Stoekely chanted "Acid is groovy, kill the pigs." That's interesting because 1) There has never been a confirmed case of anyone committing murder under the influence of LSD, and 2) In Stoekely's world at that time, anyone speaking the obsolete slang "groovy" would have caused everyone else to run for the toilets to flush their stashes. Not to mention that "..kill the pigs" is a thought completely unrelated to the first one, and the combination makes no sense if true, but all the sense in the world if MacDonald made it up to suggest a motive.

Renowned statement analyst Mark McClish has dissected the initial interviews and has no doubt MacDonald was lying, and statement analysis is acknowledged even by leading polygraph practitioners to be a powerful tool at least equal to their own. And of course if he was lying about who committed the crime, it's logical to assume he himself did, even with no physical evidence nor known motive.

Morris makes an excellent case that MacDonald did not get a fair trial, with which I agree. And the initial investigation truly was a "wilderness of error." But could Jeff MacDonald actually be innocent, as Morris suggests? Highly unlikely, in my opinion. I understand that Morris is providing a side of the story that may have been drowned out by the "Fatal Vision" media hype. But it isn't a convincing one.

41 of 46 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars NEW INFORMATION LET DOWN November 13, 2012

By MICAMAN

Format:Hardcover

LET ME START BY SAYING I WAS ONE OF THE FIRST MILITARY POLICEMEN IN THE MAC DONALD HOUSE THAT NIGHT. I ADMINISTERED FIRST AID TO MAC DONALD AT THE SCENE. I HAVE NEVER RESPONDED TO POSTINGS ON LINE, OR REPLIED TO LETTERS I'VE RECEIVED FROM PEOPLE FOLLOWING THIS CASE.

I WAS HESITANT TO BE INTERVIEWED BY MR MORRIS WHEN HE CONTACTED ME IN 2011. AFTER CHECKING HIS PAST WORK I WAS HOPING THAT HE MIGHT BE BRINGING SOME NEW INFORMATION TO THE SUBJECT. UNFORTUNATELY I'M DISAPPOINTED BY SOME OF WHAT I'VE READ. THERE ARE QUITE A FEW ERROR OF FACT AND STRETCHED CONCLUSIONS.

FIRST HE SAYS HE SPOKE TO ME AS I WAS HELPING MY SON CLEAN UP AFTER HURRICANE IRENE IN 2011..............PROBLEM IS MY SON DIED IN 1997 .

SECONDLY HE QUOTES TED LANDRETH THE PRODUCER OF THE BBC DOCUMENTARY AS SAYING I NEVER TOLD HIM THAT "I KNEW HELENA STOKLEY AND THAT THE WOMAN I OBSERVED EN ROUTE TO THE MAC DONALD HOUSE THAT NIGHT WASN'T STOKLEY"

THAT IS CORRECT.............THE PROBLEM IS I NEVER SPOKE TO LANDRETH FROM THE BBC. I ONLY SPOKE WITH BARBARA PRITCHARD AND CHRIS OLAGIATI OF THE BBC....NOT LANDRETH.

THERE ARE OTHER INCORRECT STATEMENTS I'VE NOTICED IN THE BOOK ALSO, BUT THE MAIN REASON I'M NOT COMPELLED TO RECOMMEND THIS BOOK IS THAT IT'S JUST THE SAME OLD MATERIAL THAT'S BEEN PRESENTED FOR THE LAST 42 YEARS,
NOTHING REALLY NEW.