A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald

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A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald

3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 · rating details · 392 ratings · 118 reviews

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 batte...more 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.
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Hardcover, 544 pages

Published August 28th 2012 by Penguin Press HC

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Mar 02, 2013 John Anderson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Errol Morris second major literary endeavor does more than build a case for the reversal of Dr. McDonald's conviction for his family's murder: It is a rumination on the misuse of evidence and the obsessive nature of finding the truth within a virtually limitless mountain of data. More impressively, it offers close to an entire history of the case, including its long life as a media obsession, to which, of course, this volume contributes. While McDonald's lack of culpability isn't completely esta...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Kacunnin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Errol Morris’s A WILDERNESS OF ERROR is an exhaustive look at the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case, which remains steeped in controversy after over 40 years. In August of 1979, doctor and Green Beret Captain Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two young daughters (the murders happened in 1970). I’ve been interested in MacDonald since I first heard about the murders. The case is fascinating . . . and infuriating. MacDonald claims a group of drugged-out hippies murdered...more Errol Morris’s A WILDERNESS OF ERROR is an exhaustive look at the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case, which remains steeped in controversy after over 40 years. In August of 1979, doctor and Green Beret Captain Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two young daughters (the murders happened in 1970). I’ve been interested in MacDonald since I first heard about the murders. The case is fascinating . . . and infuriating. MacDonald claims a group of drugged-out hippies murdered his family, Manson-style – he described one of the intruders as a woman with long blond hair wearing a floppy hat and boots. No evidence of intruders was found at the scene. Oddly, a woman very much like the one MacDonald described DID confess to being involved in the crime (multiple times and to multiple people), but the prosecutors refused to take her seriously (she was a drug addict, after all, and thus “untrustworthy”). But where does the truth lie? Is MacDonald guilty of this horrible crime, or has he been unfairly imprisoned for thirty-three years for a crime he did not commit?

I’ve read many, many books and articles about the MacDonald case, including Joe McGinnis’s FATAL VISION (which finds him guilty) and Jerry Allen Potter’s FATAL JUSTICE (which argues for his innocence). Both books are flawed; neither presents an overwhelmingly convincing case, and both McGinnis and Potter manipulate evidence in support of their theses. Errol Morris’s A WILDERNESS OF ERROR may be the best overall examination of the MacDonald case ever written. Morris argues neither that MacDonald is guilty nor innocent, but rather presents a devastating portrait of a corrupt justice system that unfairly convicted a man who might – and the word “might” is important – be innocent.

Morris’s thesis is that MacDonald was convicted because of a story, a story that worked to define him as a cold-blooded psychopath (in spite of multiple psychiatrists coming to the opposite conclusion) who “snapped” one night (for no apparent reason) and brutally slaughtered his family (without any prior history of violence or anti-social behavior of any kind). Once the military police, and later the prosecutors, bought into that story, nothing else mattered. MacDonald was guilty, and anyone suggesting the opposite was either lying or “unreliable.”

As Morris makes clear in this book, the original crime scene was appallingly botched, with evidence lost, damaged, or destroyed. Evidence that could have helped MacDonald’s defense team was kept from them for years, some until long after the guilty verdict. Witnesses were precluded from testifying. And too many people were acting out of a thirst for vengeance rather than a real determination to find the truth in what happened to MacDonald’s family. MacDonald had pissed off his in-laws and angered both the military (who presided over the first hearing back in 1970) and the prosecutors (who brought the case before a Grand Jury five years later). They didn’t like MacDonald. He was arrogant. He didn’t behave the way they all thought a grieving husband should. He had cheated on his wife. He bought a yacht. He was a jerk. He must be guilty.

I found Morris’s book to be a fascinating read. It’s full of detailed interviews with people involved in the case, snippets of trial transcripts, letters, journals, and other information, some of which I had never heard before. I didn’t come away from it believing MacDonald was innocent, but I did come away believing absolutely that he did not get a fair trial. Guilty or innocent, everyone in this country deserves a fair trial. Even if you believe MacDonald is indeed guilty, this book will shed light on the real flaws in a justice system that is more concerned with winning a case than it is with finding the truth.

This isn’t a perfect book. I was particularly bothered by the fact that Morris completely ignores MacDonald’s testimony during his trial in 1979, testimony that certainly hurt his chances with the jury (he was both angry and argumentative on the stand). He also spends a bit too much time on Helena Stoeckley, the drugged-out hippie who confessed to having been in MacDonald’s apartment the night of the murders. Stoeckley may or may not have had anything to do with this case (she died in 1983, so it’s doubtful we’ll ever know for sure), but her role in the case isn’t as compelling as the overall miscarriage of justice perpetrated by the prosecution. I grew weary of interviews about Stoeckley. It felt like overkill.

Additionally, there is only one very brief interview with Jeffrey MacDonald himself. I wonder why Morris didn’t spend more time with the one person who certainly knows what happened that night – whether he did the deeds himself or witnessed others doing them, he knows. It was frustrating not getting more from MacDonald himself.

Finally, there are way too many weird full-page graphics (a black page with a white telephone, another black page with a sandwich, another with two ants). I would guess that there are 30-40 such pages (maybe more). The pages are odd and unnecessary, and they significantly add to the size of the book.

Whatever its flaws, A WILDERNESS OF ERROR is an excellent examination of what remains a confounding mystery. I finished it in two sittings. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in this case. Be forewarned – this is a dense and fact-laden book, with little of the plot and melodrama found in “true crime” works like FATAL VISION. Morris assumes his readers have a basic knowledge of the case. And he is focused far more on detail than on story. That said, this is a compelling and revealing book. It will definitely make you think.
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Jan 02, 2013 Harry rated it 5 of 5 stars

rating: 4.5, but I'm gonna go ahead and mark this a five because people are being jerks to this book. Come on, you guys!

When I was searching for this book online I found an ebook for a dollar that was called something like "Serial Killers: Jeffrey MacDonald." I didn't realize while I was reading Errol Morris' new book about the case how much popular prejudice there was against Jeffrey MacDonald--a famous convicted murderer whose case has been highly-contested for over forty years--I just read th...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Will Ludwigsen rated it 4 of 5 stars

This case has always intrigued me, largely because there are so many people so emotionally invested in MacDonald's guilt or innocence (far more the former than the latter, it seems).

This book certainly doesn't solve the case (that's likely impossible now, given how the investigators and courts have so mangled the evidence, not to mention all the media attention), but it does make a compelling argument that it was badly bungled.

It's a terrible confluence of things -- an arrogant Army surgeon wh...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Karen Stinneford rated it 3 of 5 stars

After a V-E-R-Y slow start, Errol Morris makes a quasi-persuasive case for why Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald didn't receive a fair trial -- how the prosecution withheld potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense or how, if the defense knew about it, the defense was not allowed to present it as evidence.

But a fair trial is NOT the same thing as an acquittal.

As a long-time North Carolinian who followed the MacDonald trial in 1979 -- and who later wrote about the case when I was newspaper reporter...more After a V-E-R-Y slow start, Errol Morris makes a quasi-persuasive case for why Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald didn't receive a fair trial -- how the prosecution withheld potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense or how, if the defense knew about it, the defense was not allowed to present it as evidence.

But a fair trial is NOT the same thing as an acquittal.

As a long-time North Carolinian who followed the MacDonald trial in 1979 -- and who later wrote about the case when I was newspaper reporter in Fayetteville, where Fort Bragg is located -- I found it very interesting that Morris spends about five pages of his 515-page book examining the very damning blood evidence that convicted MacDonald of killing his wife and two daughters. Morris dismisses the blood evidence as not being valid because the defense wasn't given the opportunity to independently examine it -- adding that plus the crime scene was so contaminated that the blood evidence wasn't reliable. But he spends pages discussing one 22-inch hair found in the wife's hairbrush that cannot be attributed to the daughters' dolls or the wife's wig.

In short, because the crime scene was contaminated, Morris maintains that evidence is unreliable - except in those cases when it is potentially exculpatory. Even more simply put, Morris is, essentially, stating that only exculpatory evidence is reliable. And isn't that, fundamentally, the argument of everyone being prosecuted for a crime he or she doesn't want to go to prison for?

At the end of the day, you have one wife and two daughters horribly overkilled -- and exhibiting violent defense wounds -- in a tee-tiny apartment surrounded by neighbors who didn't hear enough worrisome noises to call police. And you have an athletically fit father walk away virtually unscathed by comparison with nary a defense wound. That drug-crazed hippies could conspire to create a criminal "perfect storm" that resulted in the serendipitous and false prosecution of the sole surviving victim seems utterly ridiculous. Occum's razor maintains that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. The simplest solution is that the only person who wanted Colette, Kimberly and Kristen MacDonald dead -- and, for a short time, benefitted from those deaths -- was Jeffrey MacDonald. (less)

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Oct 05, 2012 Gloria Wolk rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: criminal-law

This is a powerful book. Morris interviewed people and perused legal files, letters, etc., and exposed the truth behind another wrongful conviction. Having read many such true stories (at InnocenceProject.org and similar websites), I knew after a couple dozen pages that this was another instance of corrupt prosecutors and a corrupt judge. And it just came adding up. Joe McGuiness, author of "Fatal Vision," believed in Jeffrey MacDonald's innocence until the jury's verdict. Then he knew he could...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Mary Frances rated it 1 of 5 stars

Poorly reasoned, lacking in substance, episodic and odd. Yes, that about sums it up. I've read a lot about this case, but more importantly, I am a lawyer who was once a criminal defense attorney. I've gotta say, this is one of the least convincing "exposes" I have ever read. Let's look at a few things- starting with the big reveal on DNA- there were 2 DNA samples that didn't match any known persons. Two out of many tested. One of those was a hair under Mrs. McDonald's fingernail. Ok, but Morris...more

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Sep 29, 2012 Gary rated it 4 of 5 stars

A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffery Macdonald by Earl Morris
New York: The Penguin Press
$29.95 - 524 pages

“He offended people that he went to Malibu and was running around in sports cars, that he wasn’t grieving appropriately. And I have seen a lot of people wh were convicted because they are jerks, not because the evidence merited it.”

I always thought he was guilty. Any doubts that I might have felt vanished after I read Joe McGinniss’ Fatal Vision. Jeffery had murdered his wife
and two...more

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Sep 25, 2012 Aengus rated it 5 of 5 stars

I saw this referred to as "an epistomological crime story", which is a pretty accurate description. Film maker Errol Morris investigated the trial and conviction of Jeffrey MacDonald, a Greeen Beret accused of murdering his wife and children, and attempting to cover it up with a cockamamie story about crazed hippies. What Morris discovered was that the crime scene was ruined by incompetent investigators, evidence was ignored or destroyed, and a woman who repeatedly confessed to being part of the...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Vegantrav rated it 5 of 5 stars

“It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.” –Maimonides

Was justice done in the conviction of a man for the murders of his wife and two daughters? Errol Morris, in his engaging investigation, A Wilderness of Error, builds a cumulative case with layer upon layer of reasons and evidence, a case that strongly indicates that there has been a grave miscarriage of justice in this case.

Captain Jeffrey MacDonald’s wife and two daugh...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Lori rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-crime, nonfiction, worth-every-minute

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...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: depressing, riveting, summer-2012, thought-provoking

I finished this book in less than a week, even though it's about 500 pages long. I bought it on the first day it came out since I read the other two books about the Jeffrey MacDonald Case (Fatal Vision and The Journalist and the Murderer) earlier in the summer and the case is still fresh in my mind.

This is a super quick read and a MUST if you've read in any detail about the MacDonald case. Everything you think you know about the case will be overturned. If you've read Fatal Vision, prepare to be...more I finished this book in less than a week, even though it's about 500 pages long. I bought it on the first day it came out since I read the other two books about the Jeffrey MacDonald Case (Fatal Vision and The Journalist and the Murderer) earlier in the summer and the case is still fresh in my mind.

This is a super quick read and a MUST if you've read in any detail about the MacDonald case. Everything you think you know about the case will be overturned. If you've read Fatal Vision, prepare to be slowly convinced that MacDonald's guilt is not nearly as certain as that book makes it seem. I started A Wilderness of Error pretty secure in my conviction that MacDonald was guilty, and while I'm still not convinced he's innocent I do think his trial was unfair and the investigation was botched from the beginning.

Wilderness of Error is nowhere near as literary and grippingly well-written as Fatal Vision, nor as eye-rollingly painful as The Journalist and the Murderer. Errol Morris thinks both books are misguided products of opportunism, laziness and sometimes just pure idiocy, and he mostly sticks to the facts. The book goes so quickly because only about half the book is Morris's actual writing; the rest is comprised of interview transcripts and direct quotes from evidentiary materials. He is for the most part presenting the evidence in its purest form and leaving the reader to decide what to think.

I say "for the most part" because Morris does introduce his own opinion. He has to - in order for the reader to understand all the confusing pieces of evidence he's pulled together from all corners of the case, he has to interpret it for us. He makes some claims that I don't find completely credible, like that Ken Mica was lying to himself and everybody else when he said that the woman he saw on the street was not Helena Stoeckley. I also think he gave undue weight to the statements of some witnesses who cast doubt on the characters of anti-MacDonald people, such as the Kassabs, while not giving any space to the people who don't like MacDonald. He says that the main problem with the MacDonald case is that the authorities decided within days that MacDonald had done it because they didn't like him, and after that no amount of evidence to the contrary could sway them. However, he prints a good amount of defamatory statements against the Kassabs and the members of the investigation team and the prosecution, without going the other way.

I understand that this may have been his intention -- he may have decided that enough had been said about MacDonald's guilt and he would look at it solely from the other side. But I still thought he wasn't being completely fair.

It was interesting that Morris avoided going into detail about MacDonald's personality and motivations in life. He only spent a few pages talking about his own conversation with MacDonald, and offered almost no commentary on it - just an excerpt from the transcript. The only discussion of MacDonald's personality revolved around other people's perceptions of it and how those colored the handling of the hard fact and evidence in the case. I thought that was a fresh and important take, but so much of the case centers on MacDonald's personality that I would have at least liked to know what Morris himself thought of him.

I appreciated that Morris hated Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer as much as I did, for the exact same reasons (in fact, the exact same PASSAGE - check out my review to see). Malcolm makes a completely incoherent argument to begin with, but when she refused to read the evidence she lost all her credibility in my eyes.

This is an excellent investigation and absolutely worth your time if you already have an interest in the MacDonald case. I have no idea what my experience would have been like had I not already read Fatal Vision and The Journalist and the Murderer. It probably would have been really confusing. The Journalist and the Murderer is not worth reading, but I think Fatal Vision includes a lot of good background on the case, even though it will leave you with a biased (and possibly completely wrong) leaning toward MacDonald's guilt. Maybe at least read the Wikipedia entry on the case before delving into this one.

Finally, I agree with Morris on one point. I think I still believe Jeffrey MacDonald is guilty because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate - a man who has spent his life since February 17, 1970, when he was 26 years old, imprisoned (physically, emotionally, through public opinion) for a crime he did not commit.(less)

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Nov 11, 2012 sam rated it 3 of 5 stars

If history teaches us anything it's that if you are ever charged with a crime you did not commit you want Errol Morris on your side. He got one murderer exonerated in "The Thin Blue Line" and now takes on the Jefferey Macdonald case. Morris was obsessed with the case for years before even starting this book and the detail shows. And what detail it is. No brief true crime paperback (complete with lurid crime scene photos in the center) is this. No, this is 500 pages of precise and painstakingly c...more

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Oct 08, 2012 Shirley rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't read many true crime books, I think this is my second and The Innocent Man by John Grisham was my first. As far as true crime goes, A Wilderness of Error was a very interesting read. From descriptions of the crime scene, sketches of the scene, interviews with witnesses and lawyers, A Wilderness of Error entices one to question the integrity of the prosecution that sent MacDonald to jail. Errol Morris is convinced of his innocence and this true crime book does a good job of portraying the...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Jens Amundsen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Book proves that sometimes the most degenerate and vicious lying psychopath criminals are the prosecutors and judges.

Superbly written expose of the wrongful and fraudulent conviction of Jeffrey MacDonald.

Interesting how ...

Colonel Rock and then the General in charge of U.S. Army criminal proceedings against MacDonald found, respectively, as a matter of fact AND law that the murder charges were FALSE and INSUFFICIENT.

FBI director AND FBI fingerprint expert stated McDonald murder scene "BUNGLED...more

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Oct 09, 2012 Chris Ingalls rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading a book written by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris is pretty much what you would expect. It's not written - or designed, for that matter - the usual way. The book is separated into many different chapters and sub-chapters, and veers off into unusual and unexpected avenues. Not unlike an Errol Morris documentary.

The book is about Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret officer who was arrested and convicted for murdering his wife and two young daughters in the early morning hours of Februar...more

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Sep 16, 2012 Jenna rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was mildly obsessed with "Fatal Vision" as a teenager. I probably read it three or four times between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. I picked it up for the first time off the community bookshelf at the motel we were staying at in Florida for summer vacation. The first thing that attracted me was that it was a big, thick paperback. I was (and am) a voracious reader. Finding a book long enough, that I could really sink my teeth into, was a treasure! Secondly, I was drawn in by the descripti...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: recent-reads

In February of 1970, Jeffrey MacDonald, Green Beret and physician, phoned for police. He was beaten, stabbed, disoriented and his family in danger. When MPs arrived, they found a bloody crime scene: MacDonald barely breathing, his wife and two girls killed.

MacDonald described to the police, to the best of his ability, his assailants. What follows, became a nightmare.

MacDonald has been in jail for some thirty-odd years for a crime he claims he didn't commit. What Morris has done here is compile...more

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Oct 06, 2012 Zohar - ManOfLaBook.com rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

A Wilderness of Error : The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald by Errol Morris is a true-crime non-fiction book about the MacDonald Trial. Jeffrey MacDonald, former Captain in the Green Berets, a medical doctor, Princeton graduate, father and husband was convicted for murdering his family in 1970.

17 February, 1970 – a brutal murder takes place in the early hours of the morning in Fort Bragg, NC. When the police arrive they find a pregnant wife and two young daughters brut...more A Wilderness of Error : The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald by Errol Morris is a true-crime non-fiction book about the MacDonald Trial. Jeffrey MacDonald, former Captain in the Green Berets, a medical doctor, Princeton graduate, father and husband was convicted for murdering his family in 1970.

17 February, 1970 – a brutal murder takes place in the early hours of the morning in Fort Bragg, NC. When the police arrive they find a pregnant wife and two young daughters brutally murdered. The man of the house, Jeffery MacDonald is harmed but not dead and accuses drug crazed hippies in the crime.

After trials and tribulations where no evidence were found to specifically point to Mr. MacDonald, he was convicted in 1979. Since then the case has been a topic of books, movies and many blogs.

Errol Morris has a career full of interesting and thought provoking movies including “The Thin Blue Line” which freed Randall Dale Adams from after being wrongfully convicted for murder and sentenced for life, as well as the academy award winning documentary “The Fog of War”.

I had a chance to revisit “The Fog of War” in the past few weeks, knowing I would be reading Mr. Morris’ book, the documentary has very little narration and relies on interviews, but somehow is curiously interesting. In his book, A Wilderness of Error, Mr. Morris employs much of the same style, a lot of interesting documentation and interviews with little narration in between.

The premise is an interesting one, unlike many of the most famous dramatizations of the tragedy (including 60 minutes segments and the book & 1983 TV movie “Fatal Vision”), Mr. Morris does not set out to prove or deny Mr. MacDonald’s innocence of guilt, but rather that he has not gotten a fair trial. At the time of this post, Jeffery MacDonald is still in jail and for over 40 years has been filing appeals.

The book will leave the reader leaning towards the belief that MacDonald is innocent, but absolutely sure that even if he isn’t, he did not get a fair trial. At some point I had to put the book down (only to pick it up a few moments later) because it made me physically ill and disgusted. The amount of fabrications, suppression of evidence and flawed analysis are astounding and very saddening.

Much like others of its kind I read, A Wilderness of Error is scary. The government decided that someone was guilty, together with an overzealous prosecutor and willing judge they did everything they can, including refrain justice and hide evidence, in order to stick someone in jail and damned be the Constitution.

What I absolutely loved about this book is that Mr. Morris does not take prisoners, play favorites or gives leeway to his fellow reporters and authors. He refutes Janet Malcolm’s book “The Journalist and the Murderer” which examines this case, tears apart Stone Philips interviews about the case (they were edited to put words in people’s mouths), asserts that Joe McGinniss’s book “Fatal Vision” is more fiction than fact, and devastates 60 Minutes journalism integrity (for example, a confession that could have cleared MacDonald was left on the cutting room floor).

While the writing is not very elegant and a bit bumpy at times, I found A Wilderness of Error overall to be inspiring and headstrong. While I don’t think this book will sway anyone who believes Mr. MacDonald is guilty, it does bring forth the realization that he did not get a fair trial which everyone deserves.

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com (less)

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Nov 01, 2012 Chad Post rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love this book. It's really intriguing, although I suspect it's different--more shocking, or something--for people who were aware of the MacDonald murders back when they happened, or who at least have watched the "Fatal Vision" mini-series or read the book.

But that's the thing--although this book is primarily a refutation of the circumstances surrounding Jeffrey MacDonald's conviction for murdering his wife and two daughters, it's also about the way we build narratives and then interpret all...more

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Oct 17, 2012 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Errol Morris dissects the case against Jeff MacDonald and strongly rebuts the conventional wisdom about this once-infamous murder. He essentially works a cold case, revisiting existing evidence and court testimony, and adds to the canon his own interviews of most of the living primaries involved in the case. While he doesn't uncover a bombshell or any definitive evdience that would reverse the many rulings against McDonald, he does thoroughly and systematically document the many faulty aspects o...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Gayle rated it 5 of 5 stars

Having read McGinnis' Fatal Vision, reading this book was a logical choice for me. I was familiar with Mr. Morris reputation, but this book is the first of his that I have read. After reading Wilderness, I am no longer so sure of Dr. MacDonald's guilt. Yes, he still comes off as arrogant, but is that not a logical reaction to being falsely convicted of the murder of your family when you know damn well that you did not do it?

Too many other leads were not properly investigated, and even after rea...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Susan Labudde rated it 5 of 5 stars

I could not finish this book, but highly recommend it. Author documents how an innocent man was convicted of murder, and what is astonishing, and depressing, and why I couldn't finish, is that the defendant wasn't the victim of one bad egg. Rather, a whole series of men, mostly, decided he was guilty and that they would ignore evidence, hide exculpatory evidence, try to strong arm witnesses into changing stories, etc, cut every corner and lie every lie to put this guy away. Even the FBI lab spec...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Justin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Originally, Errol Morris wanted to translate his interest in the Jeffrey MacDonald case into a film; since Morris is reckoned (by me, at least) as one of the world's greatest living filmmakers, that is not a surprise. What is somewhat surprising is that he was unable to obtain financing for the project--no one saw an angle for a movie, because everyone knows that MacDonald did the murders. But how does everyone know that, and why ?

As it turns out, cinema's loss has been true crime's gain. Morr...more Originally, Errol Morris wanted to translate his interest in the Jeffrey MacDonald case into a film; since Morris is reckoned (by me, at least) as one of the world's greatest living filmmakers, that is not a surprise. What is somewhat surprising is that he was unable to obtain financing for the project--no one saw an angle for a movie, because everyone knows that MacDonald did the murders. But how does everyone know that, and why ?

As it turns out, cinema's loss has been true crime's gain. Morris, of course, has a storied history with real-life crime, notably his film The Thin Blue Line , which resulted in the exoneration of Randall Dale Adams, falsely convicted of murdering a police officer. But with Wilderness, Morris has something else in mind: where The Thin Blue Line took a permutational approach to crime scene reconstruction that resembled a sort of hyper-Rashomon, Wilderness instead uses the MacDonald murders (and Jeffrey MacDonald's conviction and subsequent appeals) as a pretext for a rather practical, invigorating epistemological exercise.

How do we know what we know? Can anything be known to a certainty? What is the threshold at which accumulated coincidences can be said to tilt (and indeed, test) claims of veracity? What effects do the passage of time have on memory and perception? Morris puts to good use his skills as a former private detective to sort out the wheat from the chaff, shedding light on these questions (if not definitively answering them). At one point in the text, Morris, exasperated, says with concise profundity that "We live in a world of false leads."

Morris' aim in Wilderness is not to prove MacDonald's innocence--the passage of time, death of witnesses, corruption of evidence, and the logical impossibility of proving a negative would make such an aim futile--rather, it is to demonstrate quite plainly that a) MacDonald did not get a fair trial, b) the totality of the evidence does not meet the burden of proof required in American criminal cases, c) there is a disturbing tendency among people to arrive at a conclusion first, selecting only those facts which fit the preconceived thesis, and d) in this tendency, skilled (or clumsy) public relations often plays a decisive role in shaping premature conclusions.

On all four of those points, Morris makes a convincing case. While the issue of whether or not Jeffrey MacDonald actually murdered his family is the lurid, obvious mystery that has made folks like Joe McGinniss very rich men, it is not really the pertinent issue of Morris' book. Ultimately, the MacDonald case comes down to a battle between induction and deduction. Reasoning inductively, it is relatively easy to take any single piece of evidence and work out a scenario where MacDonald is guilty. But in findings of fact, as well as in scientific enquiry, the deductive method must be given preference if the conclusions are to be valid, testable, and therefore reliable; in examining the totality of the evidence, a much more convincing range of conclusions suggest themselves, conclusions that can better withstand the scrutiny of honest examination and cross-examination.

That Jeffrey MacDonald is innocent is only probable; that the Federal prosecutors did not meet their burden of proof in convicting him in 1979 is an indisputable certainty.

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Oct 08, 2012 Wanda rated it 2 of 5 stars

I knew and worked with Jeffrey MacDonald. He came to my wedding. He was a compassionate and caring physician and a wonderful colleague. The man who I knew was not the man portrayed in Fatal Vision, and my husband and I never were persuaded that Jeff committed these murders. After reading this book, we are even more upset that invesigative ineptitude, insanity (his "folie a deux" suffering in-laws), prosecutorial misconduct and the mendacity of witnesses resulted in the destruction of this admira...more

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Oct 16, 2012 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

The information presented in this book was thought-provoking. Reading about evidence excluded from a trial that a jury should have been able to weigh for themselves always makes me feel a bit sick, but here, it made me feel a lot sick. I want to believe in our criminal justice system. To have a system that works we need prosecutors with integrity. Is Jeffrey McDonald guilty? I don't know. Did he get a fair trial? Absolutely not--in more ways than one. As for my mediocre rating here, I found the...more

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Sep 30, 2012 Nicolemauerman rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is a look at the Jeffery McDonald case. The author examines testimony from witnesses who were suppressed in the original trial and evidence that was never presented or that is dubious. I didn’t know much about this case and I didn’t feel like Morris really gives a good enough background to determine if McDonald is really innocent or guilty. I also found this book a tad boring. Maybe it wasn’t that I had enough background information, but I felt like Morris spent so much time on certain...more

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Feb 19, 2013 Jesse rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2013

Really an impressive feat--transposing the Errol Morris style of documentary making over a book, successfully, containing so much more information than could be in a 90-minute movie, and yet coming out the end of it without a perfectly clear picture, in spite of everything. This makes a great companion piece to Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer, which I enjoyed a few years back but of which didn't recognize the faults (its self-congratulatory intellectualism, disconnected from the...more

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Nov 22, 2012 Charles Salzberg rated it 2 of 5 stars

Morris is a wonderful documentarian but as a writer, I'm afraid he's mediocre. There's no doubt that after reading this amazingly well-researched book, the reader will come to the conclusion that Jeffrey MacDonald, accused of the gruesome murder of his wife and two young children, did not receive a fair trial, but instead of using compelling narrative, Morris just piles on a series of interviews and transcriptions to make his case. This makes for a wonderful legal brief, but if the reader is loo...more

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Feb 03, 2013 El_kiablo rated it 4 of 5 stars

As with any Errol Morris project, the book starts off with an interesting hook and then proceeds through a series of twists and turns that are unpredictable and at times shocking. The one problem is that in the forty years that the Jeffrey MacDonald case has been in the courts, certain things have happened over and over again, so there are times when you're reading information which seems a bit redundant. (The fact that Helena Stoeckly confessed to seven different people is telling, but hearing...more

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