Grandfather wrote:

This video is not too long (28 minutes) and does a very good job telling the story of a family annihilator in South Africa.

https://youtu.be/XzzP1ui_aGk


I noticed several parallels to the JRM case.

1. Family appeared normal and happy from the outside.

2. Young, good looking and charming killer.

3. Happened in a secure, gated community with cameras and security patrols, similar to a military base.

4. Told a story of an intruder / attacker that killed his family. Black man.

5. His family had severe axe wounds. Deep axe wounds that split their skulls open. His were scratches. Superficial.

6. His wound appeared to be self inflicted. 3 or 4 parallel scratches across his mid section from left to right. Just what you would expect if a right handed person did it to themselves.

7. It was blood evidence that convinced the police, and eventually the jury that his story was false. He claimed to be hiding in the bathroom while his other family members were attacked by the intruder. But blood splatter from his family members was all over his clothing.

8. He had a period of freedom, several months, before he was arrested and convicted.

9. Several family members remain loyal to him. They say he had no motive, so he couldn't have done it.

10. He has a loyal wife, that he met while he was still free, after the murders, but before his arrest. She remains loyal and very much in love. She says she never asked him if he did it, because she knows he could never do anything like that. He likes to help people and even hates to see animals suffer.

There are differences of course. This murderer was an adult son who killed his parents and sibling.  But there are many similarities.

What do you think?

Good catch Grandfather. Kudos.


Yes, appears to be similar in many ways. You could add;

11. Delay in calling for help.

12. Cold and unaffected call to emergency services.

13. Claimed to have lost consciousness.

One glaring difference; there was a survivor, his sister Marli van Breda. She survived, but has retrograde amnesia.

Horrible crime. Maybe he’s a meth-head?


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Breda_murders

Last edited by TexasPoet (10/30/2022 6:30 pm)

I hate that Breda is serving his sentences concurrently!

Hi Grandfather, I agree with you 100%, I believe cm took this drug over a long period of time, in conjunction with lack of sleep, Kristen bed wetting caused him to go into a rage.

Early 1983, roughly around the book’s publication, Mike Wallace revealed to MacDonald what McGinniss was up to:

Mike Wallace (narrating): Even government prosecutors couldn’t come up with a motive or an explanation of how a man like MacDonald could have committed so brutal a crime. But Joe McGinniss thinks he’s found the key. New evidence he discovered after the trial. Evidence he has never discussed with MacDonald. A hitherto unrevealed account by the doctor himself of his activities in the period just before the murders.

Joe McGinniss: In his own handwriting, in notes prepared for his own attorneys, he goes into great detail about his consumption of a drug called Eskatrol, which is no longer on the market. It was voluntarily withdrawn in 1980 because of dangerous side effects. Among the side effects of this drug are, when taken to excess by susceptible individuals, temporary psychosis, often manifested as a rage reaction. Here we have somebody under enormous pressure and he’s taking enough of this Eskatrol, enough amphetamines, so that by his own account, he’s lost 15 pounds in the three weeks leading up to the murders.

Wallace: Now wait. According to the note which I’ve seen, three to five Eskatrol he has taken. We don’t know if he’s taken it over a period of several weeks or if he’s taken three to five Eskatrol a day or a week or a month.

McGinniss: We do know that if you take three to five Eskatrol over a month, you’re not going to lose 15 pounds in doing so.

Jeffrey MacDonald: I never stated that to anyone and I did not in fact lose fifteen pounds. I also wasn’t taking Eskatrol.

Wallace (reading MacDonald’s note): “We ate dinner together at 5:45 PM. It is possible I had one diet pill at this time. I do not remember and do not think I had one. But it is possible. I had lost 12 to 15 pounds in the prior three to four weeks in the process, using three to five capsules of Eskatrol Spansule. I was also…”

MacDonald: Three to five capsules for the three weeks.

Wallace: According to this.

MacDonald: Right.

Wallace: According to this.

MacDonald: And that’s a possibility.

Wallace: Then why would you put down here that…that there was even a possibility?

MacDonald: These are notes given to an attorney, who has told me to bare my soul as to any possibility so we could always be prepared. So I…

Wallace: Mhm. But you’ve already told me that you didn’t lose 15 pounds in the three weeks prior…

MacDonald: I don’t think that I did.

Wallace: It’s in your notes. “I had lost 12-15 lbs. in the prior 3-4 weeks, in the process using 3-5 capsules of Eskatrol Spansules.” That’s speed. And compazine. To counteract the excitability of speed. “I was losing weight because I was working out with a boxing team and the coach told me to lose weight.” — 60 Minutes

One of McGinniss’s exclusive contentions was that MacDonald had murdered his family because he was high on Eskatrol. Or, as he wrote in Fatal Vision:

It is also fact that if Jeffrey MacDonald were taking three to five Eskatrol Spansules daily, he would have been consuming 75 mg. of dextroamphetamine — more than enough to precipitate an amphetamine psychosis.