An Interesting Post From Buster ::

I had no idea that Buster had ever had any involvement in this story which has always interested me!

Each of us has various benchmarks in our life. The night of Feb. 17, 1970 was a miserable night. The temperature was in the mid thirties and it had misted and drizzled all evening. It was not a night for man, beast, or fowl to have been outside. I had reported for work at seven a.m. and I knew that Lieutenant Joe Paulk had been the base duty officer for the last sixteen hours. Joe was writing feverishly. I assumed that the weather was so bad that he had an easy night so I said, "I bet you had an easy night." Joe never looked up and the room became quiet and then Sargent Sal Salvatore looked at me and said, "Well Lt. Beckham if you think two young children and their mother being murdered and a Special Forces Captain being in the hospital with stab wounds is an easy night, then Lt. Paulk had an easy night." At 3:50 a.m. Lt. Paulk was on routine patrol he received a call to head to a family housing area. He and the other military police entered to find Collette McDonald and her two daughters, 3 and 5 years old beaten and stabbed to death. The word "Pig" was scrawled in blood on a wall. The father, Captain Jeffrey McDonald, had multiple wounds in his chest and stomach. After McDonald was revived by mouth- to- mouth resuscitation, he described an attack by four intruders: three men and a blonde woman who wore a floppy purple hat. Another Lieutenant and myself quickly drove to the McDonald house to see if we could be of any help, but we also quickly found out that this tragedy was being handled way above our pay grade. While I never was a player in this terrible ordeal, I did know the players. I have followed this story through conversations, personal relationships, television specials, and books for forty years. As background, I had reported to Ft. Bragg as a Second Lieutenant on Jan. 2nd 1970 and was assigned as a platoon leader to C Company of the 503rd Military Police Battalion. The 503rd was a top notch outfit and it was also a mobile unit which means we would be flown to Washington D.C. to protect the Pentagon during the big student anti-war protest. One of my platoon sargents is in the famous picture of a female protester putting a flower down his gun barrel as he stood with a fixed bayonet. If you recall the early 70's were a challenging time. The unpopular Viet Nam war had not started to wind down, the army and soldiers were called 'baby killers' and often spit upon. There were some buddies who would go to college campuses to see girl friends and they would hide their sticker decals so that their car would not be vandalized. All of the military services were having huge racial and drug problems, but the army had more problems due to the high number of draftees. The Viet Cong had made easily available drugs to the in country G.I's, such as 70 to 80 % heroin versus 20% on American streets.Many of the drug dependent soldiers would report back to military camps to finish their military time obligation. We would often have to work in the stockade and you could take a bite out of the hate in the air. These times provided huge learning curves for me. Captain Jeffrey McDonald's wounds were not as deep or severe as those inflicted on his family members. Within days he became the prime suspect and hired a Philadelphia law firm to represent him. The entire ordeal was a public nightmare for the Army, especially coupled the strong anti war sentiment. The abbreviated aftermath of the Capt. McDonald story is well chronicled. He has been in prison since Aug. of 1979. McDonald had left the army and through the efforts of his former father-in-law, McDonald was found guilty of first degree murder in a civil trial. McDonald's father-in-law had initially been his biggest champion and had continually publicly blasted the military administration through the press. In 1983, Joe McGinnis published "Fatal Vision" which is the story of McDonald's trial. McGinnis had access and interaction with McDonald and his attorneys and his original thought was to show how the drug induced hippies had slaughtered the McDonald ladies. "Fatal Vision'' was later published as a television miniseries. In 1990 Janet Malcolm wrote "The Journalist and the Murderer'' which further cemented the belief that an overworked amphetamine influenced doctor killed his family. There recently has been published another book by noted author Errol Morris entitled,"The Wilderness of Error" which says that McDonald may be innocent. There never has been established a true motive for the murders. There was no estrangement between the couple and there was no lucrative insurance contract, plus other facts. In 1970 a military court had dismissed this case for lack of evidence. There are a lot of intricate stories weaved into this intricate web. It will be interesting to see what will become of this publication. Thank you for your attention.