Fatal Vision (Paperback)

by Joe McGinniss (Author) "On May 31, 1963, from her mother and stepfather's apartment overlooking Washington Square in New York City, Colette Stevenson, who was twenty years old and..." (more)
Key Phrases: icepick wounds, icepick holes, blue pajama top, Fort Bragg, Bernie Segal, Castle Drive (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A study of a brutal multiple murder and its bizarre aftermath focuses on Jeffrey MacDonald, convicted in 1979 of the murders of his pregnant wife and two small daughters. Book available. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Signet (August 1, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451165667
• ISBN-13: 978-0451165664
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #22,080 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the classics of the true crime genre, March 12, 2004

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This is one of the most sobering of true crime tales, and one of the most intriguing. Former Green Beret officer Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald (still in prison last time I checked) called the police early one morning to report that his pregnant wife and two young daughters had been murdered by a marauding gang of hippies shouting "Kill the pigs, acid is groovy" while he received some superficial wounds trying to fight them off.

Joe McGinniss who at the time was best known for his Nixon campaign book (The Selling of the President 1968) jumped on the case and made arrangements with MacDonald to follow him around and interview him. McGinniss has said that initially he believed MacDonald was innocent, but as he grew to know MacDonald, and as he sifted through the evidence he began to change his mind until in the end he believed along with the prosecution and the jurors that MacDonald had murdered his family. McGinniss reports all this in such a compelling manner that the reader is lead step by step to the same horrific conclusion (or at least most readers are). Also changing their minds about MacDonald were the wife's parents who at first refused to believe that he could have done something like this. Yet in the end they too were convinced.

Not convinced however were MacDonald's many supports including as I recall members of the Long Beach, California police department, many of MacDonald's co-workers, and a number of women who found the doctor very attractive.

All of this is interesting but what I think most fascinated McGinniss and what most fascinates me is an answer to the questions of Why did he do it? and How could any human being do something like that?

The most plausible theory (this is basically McGinniss's theory as well) to explain why he did it goes something like this: In a rage (possibly induced in part by amphetamine use) MacDonald badly or fatally injured one of his family. Rather than own up to this and face the consequences he had the "fatal vision" (thought to have been conjured up in part from an Esquire Magazine article or in remembrance of the Mason family murders) of acid-crazed hippies breaking into his home and attacking his family with him in heroic defense. To make this work he would have to kill everybody except himself and construct a crime scene that would support his story. The prosecution and McGinniss careful show how MacDonald's crime scene construction failed. Readers interested in forensic science will find this aspect of the book absolutely fascinating, even if not entirely convincing.

But to convict a man of murdering his family based on circumstantial evidence especially when the motive is not another woman, or money, but is instead merely a desire to hide what at worse would be manslaughter, seems quite a stretch for any jury, or so MacDonald apparently figured. But what went wrong was not only the evidence, but his personality.

As McGinniss spent time with MacDonald he came to realize that Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald was not like other people. He was charming and very bright but there was a cold aspect to his personality, what in autism is called a "lack of affect." Obviously he was not autistic, or perhaps his is a form of autism. Anyway, according to the current psychiatric wisdom, such a person is called a psychopath or a sociopath. The words mean approximately the same thing, that is, a person who values only his or her own life and welfare, a person who has no real feelings of warmth for others, a person who has no compunction about taking the life of another if he or she can gain from it and get away with it.

The compelling psychological argument for me (and perhaps for the jury that convicted him) is that ONLY such a husband and father could have done that. The fact that he fit the psychopathic personality type was what led to his conviction as much as the forensic evidence. I should add that even though over the years there have been tips about, and bizarre manifestations of, possible hippy suspects, MacDonald has remained the only real suspect.

But did he do it? This book makes a powerful case that he did. Followers of sensational crimes such as the Jon Benet Ramsey case or the current case of Scott Peterson (reported as "laughing and joking" with his attorneys in court today as I write this) will see similarities here. In the Jon Benet case there is the sense of an attempt to cover up some violence inflicted on a member of the family because somebody (probably the mother) lost her temper, while in the Scott Peterson case there is the phenomenon of the sociopathic personality to explain an otherwise unthinkable crime.

I originally thought that MacDonald was guilty and I still do, but I admit there is some doubt. Whether that doubt is "reasonable" is for you to decide. The jury has already decided. Someday there may be another trial. If so, that jury will decide. You might also want to read the "answer" to this book, Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders (1992) by Jerry Allen Potter. Or go to the various Websites. I think you'll discover, as I did, why we have trials by jury in which both sides present their arguments. Just hearing one side seems so convincing until you hear the other side.

Bottom line: one of the very best true crime reads, the book that made McGinniss's career and helped to end MacDonald's: one of the classics of the genre.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Justice plods along, but in the end gets to wet its teeth, March 21, 2006

By	Schtinky "Schtinky" (California) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

'Fatal Vision' has to be my favorite true-crime story, partly because of the compelling way McGinniss leads us through the long process of catching Dr. MacDonald, and the cold brutality of MacDonald himself. If there was a store for Psychopaths R' Us, Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald would be in the front window.

On February 17th, 1970, pregnant Colette MacDonald and her two young daughters, Kimberly and Kristen, were brutally murdered in their own home. Left alive was Colette's husband, Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald, to tell a Manson-like story of home invasion resulting in the slayings. There was a man with a knife, a woman in white boots holding a candle while chanting "acid is groovy", and "Kill the pigs" written in blood on the headboard. MacDonald sustains a superficial puncture wound in his chest.

Colette's parents, Freddy and Mildred Kassab, were devastated and rushed to MacDonald's side. There was nothing but sorrow for this young man who, in one fell evening, lost his entire family.

But MacDonald's continuing stories of that fateful evening didn't hold water, and the more he talked, the more suspicions began to mount around him. Freddy, once his staunchest supporter, suddenly turned on him and became MacDonald's most bitter opponent. Too many people begin to suspect that there were no home invaders that night, only MacDonald, alone with a family he had come to resent.

MacDonald went on about his life, free at last of the burdens of the family that he felt had been weighing him down, to become a successful doctor in opulent Huntington Beach, California. But his past would continue to haunt him, as those who realized his guilt refused to give up. MacDonald was finally convicted and sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison.

Joe McGinniss brings the tale of the MacDonald murders into vivid, breathing life. His account of the murders, investigation, and trials are dramatic and so real you can feel them. McGinniss was approved by MacDonald himself to write an account of the murders, though MacDonald later tried to pull him off the project when he saw that McGinniss would be writing the facts and not just an overblown account of MacDonald himself and fawning for his innocence as many in Huntington Beach did.

Included in the gripping account are floor plans of the murder house, transcribed recordings from MacDonald where his own words are put to the page, love letters from Colette to Jeffrey, and five pages of photographs. Honestly, this is one of the best books I have ever read, and I strongly recommend it to readers of all types of genre, not just true crime fans. Enjoy!

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant--I'd Give It Ten Stars If I Could, December 18, 1999

By A Customer

Joe McGinniss is one of the two or three greatest writers of the century. Although many contend that McGinniss's book is "biased" I firmly believe he began with a "blank slate" and only later came to the conclusion that MacDonald was guilty.(And to MacDonald supporters who contend that McGinniss is "persona non grata" is the literary world--check out his latest, published by Little, Brown & Co.) I rarely read a book more than once, but I've read Fatal Vision time and time again. McGinniss is absolutely perfect in the way he lets MacDonald himself create his own darkly monstrous character with his own words. This is the ONLY book that ever really scared me. McGinniss's enormous talent takes us inside the mind of a convicted murderer like no one ever has before or since and the result is a revelation horrifying beyond belief about the dark side of the human soul. The only thing in the book I don't buy is the diet pill theory, and McGinniss lets us know this is his own theory and we are free to accept it or not. I don't and believe instead that MacDonald simply has a vicious temper when out of control and he certainly was out of control on the night of February 17, 1970. Why? We'll never know. McGinniss does a brilliant job of presenting the facts surrounding the murders and subsequent trial without ever letting them become dry and boring as many true crime stories are. But it is the characterization of Jeffrey MacDonald that sets this book apart from all others. Even if you firmly believe in MacDonald's innocence, I'd still urge you to read "Fatal Vision." It can teach all of us more than we'll probably ever need to know about writing. The best true crime book ever written and one of the top five books of the century. Unforgettably perfect.