Jeffrey MacDonald & 1972 Durham triple murders same killers theory

The following text is taken from Journal Now and Yes Weekly. The sources are located at the bottom. There is much more to the case than what is posted, but I cut a lot out to keep the post a reasonable length. If you wish to understand the entire scope of this mystery, you're going to have to read the sources.

Case summary

Forty years ago, in a howling snowstorm that covered tracks and swallowed screams, three members of a family were killed in a brutal case that's still unsolved.

The three bodies were found crowded side-by-side, clothed, leaning across and into a filled bathtub, their heads in the water. There were rope marks around the necks of all three victims: Bryce Durham, 51; his wife, Virginia, 44; and their son, Bobby Joe, 18.

The bodies were discovered by a son-in-law and his neighbor.

The son-in-law told authorities that his wife's mother had called from the house and said three black men were beating Bryce and Bobby Joe Durham. Then the phone went dead.

Within weeks of the crime, authorities arrested four men — all white — who were later released for lack of evidence. The son-in-law later told investigators that he and his wife were listening to music when he answered the phone, and that Virginia Durham spoke in such low tones he could not be sure what she said (Journal Now).

Interview with investigator Charles Whitman

"Boone winter. It started snowing at about three o'clock that afternoon, and it got worse, and it got worse, and it got worse. At nine o'clock that night there was a good three inches of snow on the ground. It was still coming down fiercely. The winds were blowing and howling. I doubt seriously the next door neighbor could have heard anything going on. The wind was really howling. Had there been any shoe tracks or car tracks, they would have been covered up almost immediately.

"It was a Thursday night," Whitman said. "Of course the pivotal thing was the three bodies in the bathtub. If you come in the front door, and I think that's the door I came in, that's almost the first thing you would see after taking a couple of steps in, you see the bodies headfirst into the bathtub.

The victims were clothed, he said (Yes Weekly).

Interview with prior attorney general Rufus Edmisten

"I had thousands of hours I spent on the case, going over old leads, checking out this and that. This is one of the most mysterious cases in our entire history. The Durham case is so intriguing. Almost everybody is a suspect. All the theories in the world started piling up on that...the military. When something like that happens...every theory known to mankind will pop up. You go over it over and over again, and it defies anything I've ever encountered before in law enforcement because nothing ever came up after going over it over and over and over again" (Yes Weekly).

Theory 1: drugs

"I do not believe so. I've always believed that this was a contract killing," Edmisten said. "It was not a drug-addled person because as I recall they were all three hog-tied in military fashion, submerged in the bathtub. There had to be a number of people there to do it. It's one of the great mysteries of North Carolina" (Yes Weekly).

Theory 2: the military

"At the time that this happened there was a detachment of Green Berets going through ski training at Appalachian Ski Mountain between here and Blowing Rock" Whitman said. The victims were strangled with a rope, he said.

"Just about everything brought to our attention was purely speculative," Whitman said. "We had some people tell us that that was the way the Green Berets killed people in Vietnam" (Yes Weekly).

Sources

Journal Now - brief news article

Yes Weekly - includes theories and interviews with investigators

I Did it for Jodie - best but longest read, includes pictures

wiki wrote:
The murders

At 3:42 a.m. on February 17, 1970, dispatchers at Fort Bragg received an emergency phone call from MacDonald, who reported a "stabbing." Four responding military police officers arrived at MacDonald's house located at 544 Castle Drive, initially believing that they were being called to settle a domestic disturbance. They found the front door closed and locked and the house dark with no lights on. When no one answered their knock on the front door, the four MP's circled to the back of the house, where they found the back screen door closed and unlocked but the back door itself wide open. Upon entering, they found Colette, Kimberley, and Kristen all dead in their respective bedrooms.

Colette, who had been pregnant with her third child and first son, was lying on the floor of her bedroom. She had been repeatedly clubbed (both her arms were broken) and stabbed 37 times (21 times with an ice pick and 16 times with a knife). Her husband's torn pajama top was draped upon her chest. On the headboard of the bed, the word "pig" was written in blood.

Five-year-old Kimberley was found in her bed, having been clubbed in the head and stabbed in the neck with a knife between eight and ten times. Two-year-old Kristen was found in her own bed; she had been stabbed with a knife 33 times and stabbed with an ice pick 15 times.[3][4][5]

MacDonald was found next to his wife alive but wounded. His wounds were not as severe nor as numerous as those his family had suffered. He was immediately taken to nearby Womack Hospital. MacDonald suffered cuts and bruises on his face and chest along with a mild concussion. He also had a stab wound on his left torso in what a staff surgeon referred to as a "clean, small, sharp" incision that caused his left lung to partially collapse. He was treated at Womack Hospital and released after one week.[6]
MacDonald's account

MacDonald told investigators that on the evening of February 16, he had fallen asleep on the living room couch. He told investigators that he was sleeping on the couch because his youngest daughter, Kristen, had been in bed with his wife and had wet his side of the bed. He was later awakened by the sounds of Colette and Kimberley's screams. As he rose from the living room couch to go to their aid, he was attacked by three male intruders, one black and two white. A fourth intruder, described as a white female with long blonde hair and wearing high heeled boots and a white floppy hat partially covering her face, stood nearby with a lighted candle and chanted: "Acid is groovy, kill the pigs." The three males attacked him with a club and ice pick. During the struggle, MacDonald claimed that his pajama top was pulled over his head to his wrists and he then used it to ward off thrusts from the ice pick. Eventually, MacDonald stated that he was overcome by his assailants and was knocked unconscious in the living room end of the hallway leading to the bedrooms.[7]
Investigation

The army's Criminal Investigation Division (C.I.D.) did not believe MacDonald's version of events. As they studied the physical evidence, they found it did not seem to support the story told by MacDonald. The living room, where MacDonald had supposedly fought for his life against three armed assailants, showed little signs of a struggle apart from an overturned coffee table and knocked over flower plant.[8] Fibers from MacDonald's torn pajama top were not found in the living room, where he claimed it was torn. Instead, fibers from the pajama top were found under Colette's body and in Kimberley and Kristen's bedrooms. One fiber was found under Kristen's fingernail.[9] The murder weapons were found outside the back door. They were a kitchen knife, an ice pick, and a 3-foot long piece of lumber; all three were determined to have come from the MacDonald house. The tips of surgical gloves were found beneath the headboard where "pig" was written in blood; they were identical in composition to a supply MacDonald kept in the kitchen.

The MacDonald family all had different blood types — a statistical anomaly that was used to track what had happened in the apartment. Investigators theorized that a fight began in the master bedroom between MacDonald and his wife, Colette, who possibly argued over Kristen's wetting MacDonald's side of the bed while sleeping there. Investigators speculated that Colette probably hit her husband on the forehead with a hairbrush, which resulted in his head wound. As MacDonald retaliated by beating her with a piece of lumber, Kimberley — whose brain serum was found in the doorway — may have walked in after hearing the commotion and was struck at least once on the head, possibly by accident. Believing Colette dead, MacDonald carried the mortally wounded Kimberley back to her bedroom. After stabbing Kimberley (whose blood was discovered on the pajama top MacDonald said he had not been wearing while in her room), he went to Kristen's room, intent on disposing of the last remaining potential witness. Before he could do so, Colette — whose blood was found on Kristen's bed covers and on one wall of the room — apparently regained consciousness, stumbled in, and threw herself over her daughter. After killing both of them, MacDonald wrapped his wife's body in a sheet and carried it back to the master bedroom, leaving a smudged footprint of Colette's blood on his way out of Kristen's bedroom.[10]

C.I.D. investigators then theorized that MacDonald attempted to cover up the murders, using articles on the Manson Family murders that he'd found in an issue of Esquire in the living room. He then took a scalpel blade from a supply in the hallway closet, went to the adjacent bathroom, and stabbed himself once. Putting on surgical gloves from his supply, he went to the master bedroom, where he used Colette's blood to write "pig" on the headboard. Finally, he laid his torn pajama top over the dead Colette and repeatedly stabbed her in the chest with an ice pick. MacDonald used the telephone to summon an ambulance, discarded the weapons out the back door, and lay by the body of his wife while he waited for the military police to arrive.

On April 6, 1970, Army investigators interrogated MacDonald. Less than a month later, on May 1, the Army formally charged MacDonald with the murder of his family.[