A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald

✍ Scribed by Errol Morris

• Publisher: The Penguin Press
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: en-US
• Weight: 2 MB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 1101583835

✦ Synopsis

People associated with the case -- Prologue: 544 Castle Drive -- 1. A convincing story ; Lee Marvin is afraid ; Breaking the sound barrier ; A subtly constructed reflex machine ; The impossible coffee table ; Ten-hour drive ; The flowerpot ; The girl with the floppy hat ; No evidence ; Not true -- 2. Totally wrong ; Terrible, terrible, terrible idea ; Colonel rock ; A great fear ; Convinced in her mind ; The impossible coffee table, part II ; A losing proposition ; Media freak ; A conclusion could not be reached ; Mute witness ; I'm not a CSI guy ; A comb and a toothbrush -- 3. The jail cell ; Things do not lie ; Pigs on ice ; Forty-eight holes ; Target in motion ; California evil ; Troublesome psychopathy ; Round in circles ; Ace in the hole ; Wanted ; In my mind, it seems that I saw this thing happen ; The journey's end ; Unclearly trustworthy ; The four-legged table ; The slaughterhouse -- 4. The use and abuse of physical evidence ; A rounded picture ; Absolutely batshit crazy ; The sound of music ; A Satanic cult ; E-323 and Q-89 ; It wasn't a doll ; 1-821-3266 ; In bright red ; The almost inescable conclusion -- 5. Cops who came in from the cold ; Just be Jeff ; I can't talk about what I think ; A book story ; Eskatrol ; Essential integrity ; Delightfully blue -- 6. Before the law ; I know. I know. I know. ; Crumbs ; The morning newspaper ; The five percent ; Coincidences ; Gene Stoeckley -- 7. Two prisoners ; Flame-out ; Specimen 91A ; A black sky.;Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and former private detective Errol Morris examines the nature of evidence and proof in the infamous Jeffrey MacDonald murder case. In 1979 MacDonald was convicted of the brutal 1970 murder of his wife and two children, and remains in prison today. Since then a number of bestselling books, including Joe McGinniss's Fatal Vision, and a blockbuster television miniseries have attempted to solve and explain the MacDonald case. Here, Morris, who has been investigating the case for nearly two decades, reveals that almost everything we know about it is ultimately flawed, and an innocent man may be behind bars. In a reinvention of the true-crime thriller, Morris looks behind the haze of myth. Drawing on court transcripts, lab reports, and original interviews, he brings a complete forty-year history back to life and allows the reader to explore the case as a detective might by confronting the evidence as if for the first time.--From publisher description.