Fatal Vision was a very popular book by a well-known author who made friends with the defendant and his lawyers in a brutal murder trial. When the book came out it told the story of the author becoming convinced the Army doctor Jeffry MacDonald was guilty. The Doctor was found guilty in his trial.
Fatal Vision in addition to being a bestselling book became a TV mini-series. But the author Joe McGinniss later settled a lawsuit admitting fraud, the book was dishonest. The settlement required the details to be kept secret however.
Finally a new hearing is to be held on the case after decades of questionable misconduct by many branches of the legal system.
Q&A from the defendants POV.
Another researcher on the case:
The unexpected conviction of MacDonald, however, changed everything for McGinniss. He now had the problem of a book publisher -who had already given McGinniss an advance of $250,000- that now wanted his money back because he didn't anticipate selling too many copies of a book that portrayed McDonald as a nice guy who was wrongly accused, when the newspaper headlines following the trial blasted MacDonald as the most heinous monster since Jack the Ripper. So McGinniss made a little deal with the publisher-a quiet little deal. He would re title the book from Acid and Rain to Fatal Vision and also restructure the plot from an innocent Jeff MacDonald being railroaded by vendetta driven prosecutors to a guilty Jeff MacDonald, Psychotic Killer of the Century (see how easy it is to fix these things when you have a garbage can in lieu of character and integrity?)
December 2005 - Larry King transcript - case reopened as U.S. Marshall testifies prosecutor threatened witness to withdraw confession..
Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders
BTW, people who know something about this case become very passionate. But they divide like in politics about either this brutal murderer abusing the court system or the court system abusing an innocent man. I had read the original articles years ago and thought the doctor's story sounded fishy except there was no motive for him to kill his wife and kids. Now with more facts I know there were some drug addicts who confessed to the murders. Because of their prominent families and some official corruption a prominent doctor was likely railroaded into prison.
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