A Wilderness of Error : : the Trials of Jeffrey Macdonald

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / True Crime / Morris, Errol	4-week checkout	Due 05-21-2024

Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and former private detective Errol Morris examines the nature of evidence and proof in the infamous Jeffrey MacDonald murder case. In 1979 MacDonald was convicted of the brutal 1970 murder of his wife and two children, and remains in prison today. Since then a number of bestselling books, including Joe McGinniss's Fatal Vision, and a blockbuster television miniseries have attempted to solve and explain the MacDonald case. Here, Morris, who has been investigating the case for nearly two decades, reveals that almost everything we know about it is ultimately flawed, and an innocent man may be behind bars. In a reinvention of the true-crime thriller, Morris looks behind the haze of myth. Drawing on court transcripts, lab reports, and original interviews, he brings a complete forty-year history back to life and allows the reader to explore the case as a detective might by confronting the evidence as if for the first time.--From publisher description.

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Devil in the Details submitted by ekjensen on August 2, 2014, 9:21pm If you love CSI style crime shows, read this book from cover to cover on how the details of the crime studied in this book are delivered by the author. Amazing, frustrating, and prejudicial by all the players involved in the case and related trials.

well written submitted by Jackie77 on August 16, 2015, 9:31pm Good book. I am still undecided on whether or not the dr committed the crime...its more pointing towards him not being the culprit. But then again..we may never know.

Tough one submitted by joanhull on April 22, 2016, 4:36pm This is a very good book. Two other good reads on this case are, Fatal Justice and The Jounalist and The Murderer. The AADL has them both.This is a tough case, and I too am leaning in the direction that he did not do it. This is a tragedy. A ruined life.

Enjoyed this submitted by jibkidder on June 23, 2022, 8:56pm I'm a sucker for true crime stories, and this is a well done one. In recent Morris documentary films, I've been annoyed by his experimentation, and I couldn't really be more pro-homo-ludens in general, and am appreciative of formal innovations he has introduced into the medium in his earlier work, I guess I'd say, he may have become weighed down by his own persona in a manner similar to Herzog. But this book does not at all annoy me in the way his recent films or his NYT stuff does. I guess I wish he'd author more books these days!