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Thursday marks the thirty year anniversary of Jeffrey MacDonald’s conviction for murdering his wife and two daughters.  In 1970, an army doctor phoned 911 to report intruders had broken into his home and stabbed his entire family.  Though injured, the lone survivor was MacDonald.  Investigators immediately became suspicious since his story simply didn’t match the evidence. Causing further doubt in minds was a copy of that week’s Esquire magazine that featured the Tate murders and Charles Manson on its cover.  Since the MacDonald home had similar details, such as writing on the wall in blood, investigators believed it was an attempt to confuse authorities and another way for MacDonald to cover a crime he was already under suspicion of committing.

MacDonald was also a captain and a doctor in the U.S. Army.  Military hearings were held with no court martial and MacDonald was eventually honorably discharged.  His behavior then was similar to the Drew Peterson mindset that dominated nightly news programs in recent months.  He began a campaign that included several televised interviews, each one ending with MacDonald declaring his innocence and reminding the public that he was the victim; the one who had to now live without his family.  He even hired a writer to pen his autobiography as an attempt to convince that same public he could never kill his wife and two daughters.  Unfortunately, his chosen ghostwriter, Joe McGinnis, didn’t produce the final product MacDonald would’ve hoped for.  In fact, McGinnis decided, along with the majority of others in the legal and law enforcement fields, he was guilty and didn’t hold back his opinions in the best-selling book that emerged as a result of his own investigation.

Meanwhile, civilian authorities were moving forward in their own investigation and finally, after nearly a decade, police and the district attorney felt they had enough to take MacDonald to trial and on July 16, 1979, Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted of murdering his wife and two daughters.  Over the years, he exhausted all of his appeals and his lawyers say he won’t again be eligible for parole until 2020.  He’ll be nearing eighty, if, of course, he’s still living.

There are thousands of people who believe MacDonald is innocent.  Proof of that is the number of websites devoted to that theory.  Still, there are just as many, if not more, that exist as a reminder of the three people who didn’t survive due to the one man who was supposed to protect them.