He looked pale and said he felt exhausted. He complained of frequent, severe headaches and of an inability to sleep. An armed guard was stationed outside his door to protect him from any attempts at further violence by the four intruders who he said had massacred his family. The chest tube used to re - expand his lung did not function properly, and it became necessary to insert a second tube. He was seen twice by a Green Beret psychiatrist, a major with a shaved head and a handlebar mustache. "Normal grief process continues," the major noted at the conclusion of his second visit.
On Thursday, February 26, his lung having healed without further complication, MacDonald was discharged from Womack Hospital and was assigned to a room in Bachelor Officers' Quarters. The armed guard that had been stationed outside his hospital room was withdrawn.
Upon hearing of this development, MacDonald's mother confronted his commanding officer. She demanded to know why the guard had been removed, particularly since, in an unsupervised BOQ room, her son would be in more danger of an attack by murderous intruders than he had been while hospitalized. She was told that law enforcement officials at Fort Bragg did not feel that her son was in danger.
'That makes it sound," Dorothy MacDonald said, "like you suspect Jeff may be involved."
The commanding officer assured her, without attempting to explain the contradiction, that her son was not considered a suspect. He said, in fact, that having just gone through such an ordeal, Captain MacDonald was now free to take some time off, and added that Mrs. MacDonald could retain her visitor's suite, in order to remain close to her son, as long as she wished.
That evening, Jeffrey MacDonald said he found his new room unbearably depressing. He said he could not yet cope with solitude. He spent the night on his mother's couch.
MacDonald, however, was indeed a suspect at that time. Even before his release from the hospital, military authorities—while continuing to refuse public comment (newspapers reported that a "shroud of secrecy" had enveloped the investigation)—had concluded that the young captain was the primary suspect in the murders.
In a report never publicly released, the Fort Bragg provost marshal expressed the opinion that "the accuracy, similarity, and location of the wounds strongly indicates actions of one individual with expertise on vulnerability—killing as rapidly and mercifully as possible without creating any noise."
He added the observation that all the knife wounds were "deep, and in a relatively small area of the bodies," and that there had been "no disfiguring and no sexual molestation," indices which, to him, pointed away from drug-crazed hippies, and toward the one man—husband, father, and physician with an interest in surgery—known to have been in the apartment at the time that the murders occurred.
The provost marshal's opinion was shared by Franz Joseph Grebner and the two CID investigators—William Ivory and Robert Shaw—who were working most exhaustively at the crime scene. The three of them, within days, had come to believe it highly likely that Jeffrey MacDonald had—for reasons unknown— killed his wife and children and had then—in an attempt to escape detection—staged a scene designed to make the murders look like the work of drug-crazed intruders, even going so far as to puncture his own lung in the process.
As early as Monday, February 23, the provost marshal had informed the FBI that they could cease their nationwide search for the four killer hippies. He said a preliminary consideration of the physical evidence did not indicate that any civilians had been involved in the commission of the crimes.
Nonetheless, pending laboratory analysis, the "evidence" against MacDonald was non - existent. Thus, at the beginning of March, when Dorothy MacDonald asked if she could take her son to the seashore for a few days of rest and recuperation, no one at Fort
On Thursday, February 26, his lung having healed without further complication, MacDonald was discharged from Womack Hospital and was assigned to a room in Bachelor Officers' Quarters. The armed guard that had been stationed outside his hospital room was withdrawn.
Upon hearing of this development, MacDonald's mother confronted his commanding officer. She demanded to know why the guard had been removed, particularly since, in an unsupervised BOQ room, her son would be in more danger of an attack by murderous intruders than he had been while hospitalized. She was told that law enforcement officials at Fort Bragg did not feel that her son was in danger.
'That makes it sound," Dorothy MacDonald said, "like you suspect Jeff may be involved."
The commanding officer assured her, without attempting to explain the contradiction, that her son was not considered a suspect. He said, in fact, that having just gone through such an ordeal, Captain MacDonald was now free to take some time off, and added that Mrs. MacDonald could retain her visitor's suite, in order to remain close to her son, as long as she wished.
That evening, Jeffrey MacDonald said he found his new room unbearably depressing. He said he could not yet cope with solitude. He spent the night on his mother's couch.
MacDonald, however, was indeed a suspect at that time. Even before his release from the hospital, military authorities—while continuing to refuse public comment (newspapers reported that a "shroud of secrecy" had enveloped the investigation)—had concluded that the young captain was the primary suspect in the murders.
In a report never publicly released, the Fort Bragg provost marshal expressed the opinion that "the accuracy, similarity, and location of the wounds strongly indicates actions of one individual with expertise on vulnerability—killing as rapidly and mercifully as possible without creating any noise."
He added the observation that all the knife wounds were "deep, and in a relatively small area of the bodies," and that there had been "no disfiguring and no sexual molestation," indices which, to him, pointed away from drug-crazed hippies, and toward the one man—husband, father, and physician with an interest in surgery—known to have been in the apartment at the time that the murders occurred.
The provost marshal's opinion was shared by Franz Joseph Grebner and the two CID investigators—William Ivory and Robert Shaw—who were working most exhaustively at the crime scene. The three of them, within days, had come to believe it highly likely that Jeffrey MacDonald had—for reasons unknown— killed his wife and children and had then—in an attempt to escape detection—staged a scene designed to make the murders look like the work of drug-crazed intruders, even going so far as to puncture his own lung in the process.
As early as Monday, February 23, the provost marshal had informed the FBI that they could cease their nationwide search for the four killer hippies. He said a preliminary consideration of the physical evidence did not indicate that any civilians had been involved in the commission of the crimes.
Nonetheless, pending laboratory analysis, the "evidence" against MacDonald was non - existent. Thus, at the beginning of March, when Dorothy MacDonald asked if she could take her son to the seashore for a few days of rest and recuperation, no one at Fort
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