Jeffrey MacDonald Murdered His Pregnant Wife and Two Little Girls, Then Blamed “Hippies”

 

Jeffrey MacDonald Murdered His Pregnant Wife and Two Little Girls, Then Blamed “Hippies”

Colette MacDonald was 26 years old and pregnant with her third child. Her daughters, Kimberley, 5, and Kristen, 2, were asleep inside their Fort Bragg home.

Before the morning of February 17, 1970, all three were dead.

Colette had been brutally attacked. So had both little girls.

The only surviving member of the family was Colette’s husband and the girls’ father, Jeffrey MacDonald, an Army doctor and Green Beret captain.

MacDonald told investigators that a group of intruders had broken into the house and attacked his family. He described three men and a woman in a floppy hat who, he claimed, carried a candle and chanted, “acid is groovy; kill the pigs.”

Investigators did not ultimately believe him.

The case became an extraordinary, years-long fight for accountability. The Army initially charged MacDonald, but those charges were dismissed after an Article 32 hearing. Colette’s stepfather, Alfred Kassab, refused to let the case disappear and pushed for further investigation.

In 1979, more than nine years after Colette, Kimberley, and Kristen were killed, a federal jury convicted MacDonald of their murders.

He received three consecutive life sentences.

MacDonald has maintained his innocence for decades and has repeatedly challenged his convictions through the courts. Those efforts have not overturned them.

More than half a century later, the case still generates books, documentaries, arguments, and theories.

But underneath all that noise are three names:

Colette. Kimberley. Kristen.

A pregnant woman and two little girls were murdered in their own home.

They are the reason this story belongs in The Accountability Archive.