Eekind’s Reviews > Fatal Vision > Status Update

The New Yorker piece does sound deranged but it is so bizarre to have McGinniss use the 1989 authors note to tear Malcom limb from limb. Thankfully only some of it is blatantly misogynistic. Most of it is “I was literally on trial for libel for reporting facts a defendant didn’t like and you another journalist are cherry picking facts from that case to make me look obsessed with MacDonald” and he’s not wrong

Okay but the prosecution closing argument was crazy good

"But don't ever forget that perhaps the greatest crime of all was committed 2000 years ago and the night before Christ was betrayed, Judas Iscariot would have had twelve of the best character witnesses this world has ever known, to have said he couldn't have done it. But you know that he did".

The whole section where MacDonald writes to McGinniss about hypothetically leaving his lawyers waiting on the operating table while he waits for their insurance to clear as like a refutation of them not providing him bail information in a timely manner. This is deranged why would. He write this also HE WAS THE DIRECTOR OF AN ER how did he not get his license revoked on this anecdote alone

Literally MacDonald had all the money he could want from his wealthly friends to fund a high end defense team that told him all he had to do was not be petulant to the Prosecutor while he was on trial for the murder of his wife + five and two year old children and he couldn’t even do that. Misogyny is a hell of a drug

I get that it was in a section where MacDonald was screaming incoherently at the Grand Jury, but McGinniss lampshades him getting served at work? After he had been made DIRECTOR OF THE EMERGENCY SERVICES DEPARTMENT IN LONG BEACH, CA?!?!? McGinniss needed to be on the scene, I need to know the workplace drama of a Dept Head getting served at court summons for murdering his family five years previously

Did they not document personality disorders in the mid 70’s because the psychologist for the Grand Jury keeps saying MacDonald isn’t pathological but he has a authority complex where he wants to be seen as an authority, he’s a simp to people he sees in authority to him, is derisive to people he sees as lower to him to the point of narcissism. This just sounds like the opposite of Oppositional Defiant Disorder

Still long in the tooth but at least we’ve gotten to the part where the Kassabs no longer think he’s innocent. I was getting sick of ever letter being mad about clearly fictions hippies. Also, MacDonald painting himself as everything but literally Job while the Kassabs are actually in cloistered mourning and only leaving the house once a day to leave flowers at their daughter and granddaughters graves :(

I did Google this case to double check some info, it’s wild that there was a whole controversy about McGinniss coming to the conclusion that MacDonald was guilty by the end of this book. Like, MacDonald literally created a shaggy haired man story that got debunked time and time again after his court martial got dropped…it’s not biased to look at the evidence and realize Macdonald is a liar that’s just sense

The way another Dr Jeffrey Macdonald is accused of murdering his wife like two days ago and it’s gonna make it hell trying to Google this case to double check details from the audiobook

This dual memoir taped confessions verbatim section is doing me no favors. The amount of Umms and circular statements really just fluff up the page count in an uninteresting and alienating way. Obviously, a suspect trying to paint themselves as a victim is going to do this song and dance to avoid accountability but this is like levels beyond just having Jeffrey R Macdonald MD seem like an asshole based on his own txt