The many threads on this board show how strong people's feelings are about this case ... I respectfully submit that the pro- and anti-MacDonald people are both right -- partially. Here's my theory:

The DNA evidence - the hairs, including the pubic hair, and the finger and palm prints - clearly indicate that other persons were present and committed the murders. I don't see any two ways around that.

However, the fact that other people were there does not exonerate MacDonald, sadly. The murders of Collette and the two girls were, let's say, enthusiastic: it is not in keeping with the murderers' m.o. that they would then poke and scrape at Jeffrey in a half-hearted way before going home to bed all tired out. That's one strike against Jeffrey: why did he get off so easily? Another: why was his blood not in the living room? The killers didn't even draw blood there? C'mon. If they were anti-pig - he was the pig. Yet they lost interest in multiple stabbing when it came to him.

It seems clear that other people committed the murders, at least in part. But it also seems likely that MacDonald knew of the murders at the time and did not stop them --- his wife and girls must have screamed, his wife's instinct, even if they were estranged, would have been to yell for her husband to help --- if MacDonald had fought the intruders, as his wife apparently did, they would probably have reacted the same way and beat and stabbed the s--- out of him. But they didn't.

MacDonald heard the screams, did not fight the attackers, maybe tried to placate them, begged for mercy, perhaps even helped with the murders, in order to save his own worthless skin. Perhaps he was high at the time - let's hope so, to make him seem a little better as a person.

It's definitely plausible.

The many threads on this board show how strong people's feelings are about this case ... I respectfully submit that the pro- and anti-MacDonald people are both right -- partially. Here's my theory:

The DNA evidence - the hairs, including the pubic hair, and the finger and palm prints - clearly indicate that other persons were present and committed the murders. I don't see any two ways around that.

However, the fact that other people were there does not exonerate MacDonald, sadly. The murders of Collette and the two girls were, let's say, enthusiastic: it is not in keeping with the murderers' m.o. that they would then poke and scrape at Jeffrey in a half-hearted way before going home to bed all tired out. That's one strike against Jeffrey: why did he get off so easily? Another: why was his blood not in the living room? The killers didn't even draw blood there? C'mon. If they were anti-pig - he was the pig. Yet they lost interest in multiple stabbing when it came to him.

It seems clear that other people committed the murders, at least in part. But it also seems likely that MacDonald knew of the murders at the time and did not stop them --- his wife and girls must have screamed, his wife's instinct, even if they were estranged, would have been to yell for her husband to help --- if MacDonald had fought the intruders, as his wife apparently did, they would probably have reacted the same way and beat and stabbed the s--- out of him. But they didn't.

MacDonald heard the screams, did not fight the attackers, maybe tried to placate them, begged for mercy, perhaps even helped with the murders, in order to save his own worthless skin. Perhaps he was high at the time - let's hope so, to make him seem a little better as a person.

Perhaps MacDonald was in on the drug use and was doing it with them when something went wrong? Perhaps he was selling drugs to them and they didn't like the price and things went haywire? Perhaps they owed him money, he tried to collect, and this was their response? Perhaps he owed them money and this was their response?