Subject of ‘Fatal Vision’ Book Loses Appeal for a New Trial

Jeffrey R. MacDonald, whose murder case inspired the best-selling book “Fatal Vision,” on Tuesday lost his bid for a new trial.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that newly identified evidence raised by MacDonald’s lawyers “neither supports MacDonald’s account of the murders nor discredits the government’s theory” of how the killings occurred.

MacDonald’s wife, Colette, and their two daughters were clubbed and stabbed to death on Feb. 17, 1970, in the family’s home at the Ft. Bragg, N.C., Army base. MacDonald, a physician, was convicted of the crimes in 1979 and freed by an appellate court in 1980. But went back to prison in 1982 when the Supreme Court reinstated his convictions.

“I don’t know what to say,” MacDonald said in a telephone interview from a federal prison in Sheridan, Ore. “It’s outrageous. . . . It’s very tough to get justice in this country.”

In an 11-page decision, Judges David Russell, Francis O. Murnaghan Jr. and John D. Butzner Jr. said that the new evidence--hair, wool and synthetic fibers that MacDonald’s lawyers suggest back his claim that a gang of hippies killed his family--”simply does not escalate the unease one feels with this case into a reasonable doubt” of his guilt.