True crime? Errol Morris reexamines the evidence

Last Updated 11:59 a.m. ET

It was one of the most sensational murders of its time. In the early morning hours of February 17, 1970, at Fort Bragg, N.C., Colette MacDonald - four months pregnant - and her daughters, Kimberly, age 5, and Kristen, age 2, were savagely beaten and stabbed to death.

Husband and father Jeffrey MacDonald was severely injured as well, with 19 puncture wounds.

MacDonald told a bizarre story: Three young men and a woman had attacked the family for no apparent reason. But suspicion quickly focused on Jeffrey MacDonald - a handsome, Princeton-educated Green Beret Captain and emergency room physician.

MacDonald has always said he is innocent. But he was convicted and given multiple life sentences - a story detailed in the 1984 NBC miniseries "Fatal Vision."

It was based on the book by Joe McGinniss, and left little doubt that Jeffrey MacDonald had killed his family without remorse.

And yet . . .

"I believe him to be innocent," said documentary filmmaker Errol Morris. "Because no one has ever showed me any kind of convincing argument for his guilt. They just simply have not."

The fact that this man has taken up MacDonald's cause is significant. Morris - director of such films as "The Fog of War," and a winner of the MacArthur "genius" grant - is someone known for challenging what appears to be truth.

"Once you create a story, a narrative, and let's say it's a compelling narrative - it may not be a true narrative, but it's a believable narrative - it may be difficult or impossible to shed it,' Morris said. "What happens when all the fingers are really pointing at you saying, 'You're guilty, you're guilty, you're guilty, you're guilty, you're guilty'?"

Morris knows all about that. His 1988 film, "The Thin Blue Line," is credited with helping free Randall Dale Adams, a man who was wrongly convicted of murdering a police officer.

Morris even got Adams' accuser to confess he'd framed an innocent man.

"It seems like you just have this passion for maybe going after stories that are hard," said Braver. "This is not easy work."

"I like hard stories," Morris replied. "I like digging. Maybe I'm one of those people that's always turning over a rock and looking at what's underneath."

He turned his lens on the powerful . . . in "The Fog of War," his Oscar-winning portrait of Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara . . . and he embraced the oddball, in his provocative examination of pet cemeteries, "Gates of Heaven."

If Morris courts the image of an eccentric, don't be fooled. He is the hard-driving director of commercials - over a thousand - for everything from Miller Beer to Nike shoes.

He uses his profits to fund projects dear to his heart, like his multi-year study of the MacDonald case, now a 500-page book, "A Wilderness of Error."

"This is a story where the defense was forced to play with a deck of cards where most of the cards had been withheld, and it was just simply unfair," he said.

MacDonald has always maintained that four hippies entered his home, enacting what seemed to be a copycat version of the Manson Family murders, a series of grisly killings in California which had taken place just months earlier.

Morris says the explanation seemed too far-fetched for investigators, who failed to preserve evidence that might have supported MacDonald's story.

Morris writes that more than two dozen young, inexperienced investigators traipsed through the crime scene, moving furniture.

But in his narrative, Morris focuses on one person whose story actually backs up MacDonald's account.

Her name was Helena Stoeckley, a well-known drug user and sometime police informant in the Fort Bragg area. Until her death in 1983, Stoeckley repeatedly confessed that she and friends were in the MacDonald house the night of the murders, including during a 1982 CBS News interview:

Q: What door did you enter?
A: I walked into the master bedroom.
Q: While Dr. MacDonald was unconscious?
A: Yes.
Q: What did you see when you walked in?
A: Colette was sleeping on her bed.

In fact, one military police officer actually spotted a woman matching Stoeckley's description near the crime scene on the night of the murder.

Yet when Helena Stoeckly had testified at MacDonald's trial ...

"The case hinges on this woman's testimony, what she's going to say on the stand," said Morris. "And suddenly she can't remember anything. She becomes a blank slate."

It's one of the great mysteries of the MacDonald trial.

But years later, an important witness offered an explanation for why Stoeckly changed her story that one, critical time:

Morris recalled, "A guy comes forward, a Federal Marshal, and says, 'I was there . . . and the prosecutor threatened her and told her essentially to change her story, or he would indict her for murder."

"Why'd this guy wait so long to come forward?" asked Braver.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Morris said. "I take him at his word, that it had bothered him over the years and that he felt he should say something."

To this day, the prosecution denies that there was any threat to Helena Stoeckley. But the claim will be part of MacDonald's latest appeal, scheduled to be heard this month in federal court.

He will also ask the court to consider DNA evidence that was not available at the time of the trial.

Morris said hair was found under the fingernails of one of the girls that could not be sourced to anybody in the house.

"No one in the family? Not Jeffrey MacDonald?" asked Braver.

"Not Jeffrey MacDonald," Morris said.

And though Morris is confident of his conclusion that Jeffrey MacDonald was railroaded, he's ready to face some fire.

"This could be very controversial," said Braver. "Are you looking forward to that? Or do you feel like that's not something you want to deal with?"

"I dread it, and yet I look forward to it in this sense," Morris said. "What happened here - and I will use the moral imperative - what happened here is wrong. It's wrong. It's wrong to convict a man under these circumstances. And if I can help correct that, I will be a happy camper.

Author Joe McGuinnis says he stands by his judgment, that MacDonald is guilty.

The Justice Department still insists the right man was convicted.

Jeffrey MacDonald has been in jail for 30 years.

For more info:

• "A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald" by Errol Morris (Penguin)
• "A Wilderness of Error" (official website)
• Innocence Project: Amicus brief on Jeffrey MacDonald's latest appeal
• 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals opinion clearing the way for MacDonald's appeal (ABC Journal)