Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) - Joe McGinniss, the adventurous and news-making author and reporter who skewered the marketing of Richard Nixon in “The Selling of the President 1968” and tracked his personal journey from sympathizer to scourge of convicted killer Jeffrey MacDonald in the blockbuster “Fatal Vision,” died Monday at age 71.

This is the case that refuses to die. Forty-two years ago, the wife and daughters of a handsome young Green Beret doctor, Jeffrey MacDonald, were stabbed and bludgeoned to death at the family home in military housing at Ft. Bragg, N.C. MacDonald, now 68, is serving three life sentences for the crime, which spawned a bestselling book, "Fatal Vision," a hit TV miniseries and decades of speculation over whether MacDonald is a sadistic killer or a victim of injustice. In federal court Monday in Wilmington, N.C., the case will play out once again with all its lurid details — drug-crazed...

So, how was the public convinced that MacDonald was guilty despite all of these “reasonable doubts”? Enter my old neighbor Joe McGinniss. MacDonald signed a contract giving McGinniss exclusive rights to his life story, and so McGinniss was given unprecedented access to the defense team – living with them, working with them, eating with them. But when the guilty verdict came down, McGinniss did a one-eighty on them. Apparently, falsely convicted men don’t make for good books. McGinniss decided it was a better story to agree with the jury. MacDonald wasn’t a sympathetic figure. He did himself no favors with...

Sleazy book author, Joe McGinniss and his publisher are currently being sued by Sarah Palin's lawyer. But this is not the first lawsuit against McGinniss. Jeffrey MacDonald, the former Army Green Beret and physician convicted of the bloody murders of his wife and two young daughters, won a $325,000 settlement Monday from the author (Joe McGinnis) who portrayed him as a killer in the book "Fatal Vision."

Sarah Palin announced on her Facebook page that Joe McGinniss, author of the infamous book Fatal Vision that chronicled the story of Jeffrey MacDonald, has rented the house right next door to hers. It seems he's chosen her has the subject of his next book. Lucky her. While she keeps the tone of her post upbeat and positive, it's clear she is disturbed to know that someone so hostile and antagonistic toward her is watching her and her family's every move. Since Palin published her post, the blogosphere has been all atwitter about this development. Many people find it creepy....

Up until now, one could merely have accused Sarah Palin’s stalker-biographer, Joe McGinniss, of unethical behavior, even journalistic malpractice. After all, McGinniss’ decision to move into a house just fifteen feet away from the family he is subjecting to hostile research struck even the hard-hearted as unusually crass and callous. It also famously prompted the construction of a fourteen-foot high screening fence by “first dude” Todd Palin, and elicited sympathy for the Palins from a number of usually less-than-sympathetic sources. But now McGinniss has outdone his already-gross behavior by telling The Today Show’s Matt Lauer that the Palin’s anguished response...

Jeffrey MacDonald, Green Beret Doctor Convicted for Slayings of Wife & 2 Daughters, Seeks New Trial In 2006, the appeals court ruled that MacDonald could seek a new trial in federal district court based on retired Deputy U.S. Marshal Jim Britt's claim that he heard prosecutor James Blackburn coerce Stoeckley into lying. Blackburn told Stoeckley she'd be charged with the crimes if she admitted to being in the MacDonald home the night of the killings, Britt said. Britt died in 2008, and Senior U.S. District Judge James C. Fox rejected MacDonald's bid for a new trial two weeks later. MacDonald's...

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- The hair of a former Army doctor convicted in the slayings of his wife and two daughters was found clutched in his dead wife's hand, according to long-awaited results of DNA testing made public Friday. Jeffrey MacDonald asked for the DNA testing in 1997, claiming it would bolster his argument that a band of crazed hippies killed his family in 1970. But federal prosecutors said Friday in a statement the testing did not find any DNA from either of the two women named by MacDonald as suspects. Both MacDonald's lead attorney, Tim Junkin, and his...