48 Hours - Jeffrey MacDonald: Time For Truth

This classic episode of “48 Hours" reports on the 1970 murders of U.S. Army Doctor Jeffrey MacDonald’s pregnant wife and two young daughters. MacDonald has maintained that a group of crazed, drug-fueled hippies broke into his apartment and murdered his wife Collette and daughters. It took the U.S. government nine years to make its case against him, but in 1979, a jury convicted MacDonald of three counts of first-degree murder, a conviction based entirely on circumstantial evidence. "48 Hours" correspondent Bill Lagattuta reports. This "48 Hours" episode last aired on 3/17/2007. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+.

Duration: 42m
Broadcast on: 16 Nov 2023
Audio Format: other

With a 48 hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts, you can enjoy uninterrupted, ad-free episodes of all your favorite 48 hours podcasts for just $2.99 a month. Subscribe today. It is an enduring mystery of our generation. On the army post of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, some bizarre murders took place last night. That night comes into my thinking all the time. It was a very traumatic night. But I remember our very brief snapshots. I remember first awakening on the couch and hearing my wife, and I could hear her screaming for help. I remember after this fight with the assailants, I remember coming to on the floor in the hallway. And I walked down the hallway towards the master bedroom where I found my wife, and she was very brutally murdered. I can remember going to each of my daughters and trying to resuscitate them. Those are the things I remember. This was such a brutal crime scene that it defied imagination, and it certainly defied imagination that a father of these people could have done it. There was no other killer in that house, but Jeffrey McDonough, he knows it 9/0. I saw four people. I saw three males at one time, and I had glimpses of what had to be a female. I know what happened that night, and I'm not guilty. This is a great tragedy for our legal system. After Jeffrey McDonough's wife and two children were murdered 9 years ago, today a jury convicted him of the crime. I believe that the truth has a way of finally coming to the surface. My hopes are to be legally vindicated, walk out of prison a free man. Jeffrey McDonough time for truth. Put about a thousand miles on the car every week. Three times a week, this woman makes the 140-mile drive from her home outside of Washington, D.C. To visit an inmate at the Cumberland Federal Prison in western Maryland. There's no fun in doing this, but at the end of my journey, he can like let out a sigh of relief. When I see his face, I just feel better inside. Her name is Catherine, and she's the newest woman in Jeffrey McDonough's life. Catherine is my wife, she's the most remarkable person I've ever met. They were married in 2002, in prison, 23 years after McDonough was found guilty of the murders of his first wife and two children. I think had anyone asked me, would you get married in prison, I would have said definitively and loudly no, of course not. And yet we did get married. He's just so warm and he's so kind and so smart and that love of life, I think that's something I really gravitated to. He still has it, even though he's been in prison all these years. But I do know who I am and what I believe. Good. Catherine McDonald makes her living running a small school for aspiring young actors. This I believe just first aid kit from when he was in the Army. She has another job as well. Everything is just right here, just like yesterday, but it's like a lifetime ago.

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