'Fatal Vision' appeal hangs on marshal

Jimmy Britt doesn't know if Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald stabbed and beat his own family when they were killed in 1970.

"Only he knows if he committed those crimes," Britt, 67, a retired deputy federal marshal, said in an interview on the wide porch of his rural Apex home.

Despite his ambivalence on MacDonald's guilt or innocence, it is Britt who breathed life into the former Fort Bragg doctor's decades-long fight to be cleared in the murders of his wife and daughters. Britt called up Wade Smith, MacDonald's defense attorney at the 1979 trial, last January and told Smith that he saw a federal prosecutor threaten a witness before that witness testified at the trial.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit is expected to rule today whether Britt's recollections of a conversation that took place more than 26 years ago are grounds for MacDonald to appeal his convictions in the murders of his pregnant wife Colette, 26, and their daughters Kimberly, 5, and Kristen, 2, said Hart Miles, MacDonald's Raleigh-based attorney.

Britt, who spent 22 years with the U.S. Marshals Service, said in an affidavit made public a month ago that he saw then-federal prosecutor Jim Blackburn threaten to charge a witness with murder if she testified that she was at MacDonald's home the night his family was killed.

Blackburn disputes Britt's accusations.

A moral obligation and a belief that MacDonald did not receive a fair trial are what drove Britt to come forward, he said.

MacDonald is in federal prison serving three life sentences for the Feb. 17, 1970, murders depicted in the best-selling book and television miniseries "Fatal Vision."

MacDonald has consistently proclaimed his innocence, insisting that he and his family were attacked by a group of hippies who broke into his home. MacDonald described seeing a woman with long blond hair and a floppy hat carrying a candle and chanting, "Acid is groovy. Kill the pigs."

Britt writes in his affidavit that Blackburn told Helena Stoeckley, believed by MacDonald supporters to be the woman in the floppy hat, that he would charge her with murder if she testified she was at the MacDonald home the night of the killings.

Stoeckley, a drug addict who died in 1983, told conflicting stories over the years but testified during the 1979 trial held in Raleigh's federal building that she wasn't in MacDonald's home.

Prosecutors skeptical

Federal prosecutors, in their recent response, dismiss Britt's claims. They indicate that other evidence presented in court was strong enough for the jury to convict MacDonald regardless of whether Stoeckley had testified differently.

Blackburn denied threatening Stoeckley and said Britt was not in the room when he spoke with her.

"He wasn't there, he was never there," said Blackburn, now a motivational speaker who lost his law license in the 1990s when he was convicted of stealing from clients.

The revelation last month left Britt, a Johnston County native, fielding calls from MacDonald's supporters across the country and at least one critic who told Britt "you better be careful of what you're doing."

The retired lawman turned down requests for interviews from several television network news programs, "Good Morning America" and CNN's "Larry King Live," which offered to fly him to New York for the taping of the show, Britt said.

Britt prefers to stay in his Apex home, where his black toy poodle Katie stays close by his side. Unfinished bird houses lined up on his porch show the progress of the woodworking hobby he took up in his retirement.