Wound Pattern Analysis, 1970/1979
On February 17, 1970, Jeffrey MacDonald phoned the police to report a stabbing. When police arrived, they found that MacDonald’s wife, Collette, and his two daughters, had been murdered. Collette, pregnant with her third child, had been clubbed and stabbed with two different weapons. Five-year-old Kimberly had been clubbed and stabbed, and two-year-old had been stabbed multiple times. MacDonald’s torn pajama shirt was laying on top of his wife’s body, and he was found with a number of relatively shallow stab wounds and a mild concussion.
MacDonald claimed that four individuals had entered his home and that he had awoken to his wife and daughter’s screams. He said he was attacked and left unconscious before the intruders killed his wife and children. Investigators were immediately suspicious. The evidence did not match up with MacDonald’s story. Fibers from the shirt he claimed to have had on were found under the bodies of his wife and daughter, and all of the weapons, as well the fingertip of a rubber glove, were found in the home.
MacDonald was charged in a military hearing, an Article 32 Hearing, in May 1970. Investigators hypothesized a very different scenario than the one described by MacDonald. They believed that a fight had begun between Jeffrey MacDonald and his wife, leading to her initial injuries. The older child may have been injured in the struggle. MacDonald went on to complete the murders, trying to stage a scene reminiscent of the crimes associated with Charles Manson. Nonetheless, the hearing concluded that MacDonald was not responsible. MacDonald was finally arrested after a continuing Justice Department investigation in 1975.
On the witness stand, an FBI technician showed the court how the torn and damaged pajama shirt had been damaged. In fact, when folded, the ice pick holes in the shirt perfectly matched the wounds on Collette MacDonald’s body. In addition, they showed that MacDonald’s story about the pajama shirt, in which he claimed to have wrapped it around his arms to defend himself, could not be true.
Today, wound pattern analysis, along with blood spatter and other forms of pattern analysis, is essential to the forensic investigation of crimes, including murder.