A Wilderness of Error

Starred review from September 24, 2012
Even readers who begin this mesmerizing and disturbing book convinced of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald's guilt in the 1970 murders of his wife and young daughters in Fort Bragg, North Carolina will emerge with serious doubts about his culpability and the fairness of his trial. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Morris, whose 1988 film The Thin Blue Line led to the freedom of a man wrongfully accused of murder, is well-equipped to sort through the reams of evidence amassed over the years; yet despite the volume of testimony and physical evidence, he makes crystal-clear how mistakes made by the responding military officers contaminated the crime scene, and how fact-finders were repeatedly misled about the circumstances of the killings. While the brutality of the murders is disturbing, what is even more troublingâand what Morris makes distressingly evidentâis the possibility that MacDonald "had been made to witness the savage deaths of his family and then was wrongfully convicted for their murders." Morris has been researching the case for over two decades, and the result of his inquiries is a thorough and compelling argument for the incarcerated doctor's innocence, a sobering look at the labyrinthine justice system, and a feat of investigative perseverance. Illus.

March 1, 2012

The Academy Award-winning director of films like The Thin Blue Line, Morris bravely goes where others have dared to go before--namely, Joe McGinniss in Fatal Vision and Janet Malcolm in The Journalist and the Murderer. Morris investigates the mystery surrounding Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret doctor convicted of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters in the 1970s, and concludes that he may be innocent. Bound to be in demand, especially with all that promotion.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 28, 2013
Morris provides an exhaustive study of the infamous murder case involving Jeffrey MacDonald, a military doctor who was convicted, perhaps wrongly, of the brutal 1970 murders of his pregnant wife and two small children. From the beginning, MacDonald claimed that “four hippies” broke into his home, attacked him, and killed his family. Morris examines everything related to the MacDonald case, from the vicious murders and the initial—some say sloppy and biased—investigation that lead to MacDonald’s 1979 conviction, to MacDonald’s present-day claims of innocence from his prison cell. This audiobook clocks in at over 14 hours, and it’s easy to imagine it coming across as a dry recitation of facts and statistics in the hands of another narrator, or being presented with an over-the-top sensational reading, but John Pruden keeps his narration simply and believable while delivering a mountain of trial evidence, testimonies, and interviews. And this ultimately makes for a more compelling listen. A Penguin hardcover.