Fatal Vision Author Joe McGinniss 1943-2014

[Zoneboy]

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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.

McGinniss, who announced in 2013 that he had been diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer, died from complications related to his disease. His attorney and longtime friend Dennis Holahan said he died at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Mass.

Few journalists of his time so intrepidly pursued a story, burned so many bridges or more memorably placed themselves in the narrative, whether insisting on the guilt of MacDonald after seemingly befriending him or moving next door to Sarah Palin's house for a most unauthorized biography of the former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate.

The tall, talkative McGinniss had early dreams of becoming a sports reporter and wrote books about soccer, horse racing and travel. But he was best known for two works that became touchstones in their respective genres — campaign books ("The Selling of the President 1968") and true crime ("Fatal Vision"). In both cases, he had become fascinated by the difference between public image and private reality.

McGinniss was a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1968 when an advertising man told him he was joining Hubert Humphrey's presidential campaign. Intrigued that candidates had advertising teams, McGinniss was inspired to write a book and tried to get access to Humphrey. The Democrat turned him down, but, according to McGinniss, Nixon aide Leonard Garment allowed him in, one of the last times the ever-suspicious Nixon would permit a journalist so much time around him. Garment and other Nixon aides were apparently unaware, or unconcerned, that McGinniss' heart was very much with the anti-war agitators the candidate so despised.

The Republican's victory that fall capped a once-unthinkable comeback for the former vice president, who had declared six years earlier that he was through with politics. Having lost the 1960 election in part because of his pale, sweaty appearance during his first debate with John F. Kennedy and aware of his reputation as a partisan willing to play dirty, Nixon had restricted his public outings and presented himself as a new and more mature candidate.

McGinniss was far from the only writer to notice Nixon's reinvention, but few offered such raw and unflattering details. "The Selling of the President" was a sneering rebuttal to Theodore H. White's stately "Making of the President" campaign books. It revealed Nixon aides, including a young Roger Ailes, disparaging vice president candidate Spiro Agnew; drafting memos on how to fix Nixon's "cold" image and debating which black man — only one would be permitted — was right for participating in a televised panel discussion.

"If White was the voice of the liberal consensus, with its sonorous even-keeled wisdom, McGinniss was an emissary from the New Journalism, with his countercultural accents, youthful iconoclasm, and nonchalant willingness to bare his left-leaning political views," historian David Greenberg wrote in "Nixon's Shadow," published in 2003. "McGinniss sneaked in under the radar screen, presenting himself to Nixon's men as such an insignificant fly on the wall that they never thought to swat him away."

"The Selling of the President" was published in 1969, spent months on The New York Times' best-seller list and made McGinniss an eager media star. He quit the Inquirer and followed more personal interests. He wrote a novel, "The Dream Team," and the idiosyncratic "Heroes," a memoir that told of the breakup of his first marriage and romance with his eventual second wife, Nancy Doherty; and his failed quest for role models, among them author William Styron and Sen. Edward Kennedy.

In 1979, he was a columnist for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner when an argument without end was born: McGinniss was approached by MacDonald, a fellow California resident, about a possible book on the 1970 murders for which the physician and former Green Beret was being charged.

In the early hours of Feb. 17, 1970, MacDonald's pregnant wife and two small children were stabbed and beaten to death at the family's home in Fort Bragg, N.C. The date, location and identities of the victims are virtually the only facts of the case not in dispute.

MacDonald, who sustained a punctured lung and minor injuries, had insisted that the house was overrun by a gang of drug-crazed hippies that chanted slogans such as "Acid is groovy" and spelled "PIG" in blood on a bedroom wall, a murderous rampage seemingly inspired by the then-recent Charles Manson murders.

But investigators suspected otherwise, believing that MacDonald killed his family and arranged the apartment to make it appear others had committed the crime. MacDonald was initially cleared of charges, then indicted, then finally brought to trial in 1979. He was found guilty and sentenced to three consecutive life terms.

"Fatal Vision," published in 1983, became one of the most widely read and contested true crime books in history. McGinniss wrote not just of the case but of his own conclusions. He had at first found MacDonald charming and sincere but came to believe that he was a sociopath who had committed the killings while in a frenzied state brought on by diet pills.

McGinniss' findings weren't welcomed by MacDonald or by some of his fellow journalists. MacDonald sued in 1987, alleging that McGinness had tricked him by pretending to believe in his innocence, and he received an out-of-court settlement of $325,000. New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm cited McGinniss as a prime case of the reporter as a "kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse."

[isotope]

That's a shame, I'd heard McGinniss was very ill, so not a complete surprise, but still..

"Fatal Vision" remains the best true crime book I've ever read. For what its worth, I always thought his encouraging MacDonald to believe that he was writing a book that that would prove MacDonald was innocent WAS a breach of ethics...but when you are talking about a guy who killed his entire family in cold blood, the term "ethics" is relative.

RIP - and he died with MacDonald still wasting away in prison, which is good.

[MegtheEgg86]

Originally Posted by isotope

"Fatal Vision" remains the best true crime book I've ever read. For what its worth, I always thought his encouraging MacDonald to believe that he was writing a book that that would prove MacDonald was innocent WAS a breach of ethics...but when you are talking about a guy who killed his entire family in cold blood, the term "ethics" is relative.

I always thought it was a breach of ethics, too, and Lord knows I think Jeff MacDonald is a murderer and precisely where he needs to be. I still think the best course of action would be to have been honest with MacDonald up front. Nobody but Joe McGinniss can ultimately say why he chose to do what he did, however. I can see a concern that MacDonald's support machine could have a hand in eventually getting him released from prison assauging the degree of ethical and moral gravity involved with McGinniss's dishonesty. If the intent was to just embarrass or irritate MacDonald, then that's an entirely different animal. But there again, only Mr. McGinniss knows.

I am sorry to hear of his passing.

[Tighthead]

Blind Faith and Cruel Doubt were both very good true crime reads.

[TheCars1986]

Always thought McGinniss did initially think that MacDonald was innocent, which was why the letters appeared that way. But, we'll never know because you can't believe a word MacDonald has ever said.

[MegtheEgg86]

Originally Posted by TheCars1986

Always thought McGinniss did initially think that MacDonald was innocent, which was why the letters appeared that way. But, we'll never know because you can't believe a word MacDonald has ever said.

Yep.

[Awsi Dooger]

I have no respect for McGinniss because he was an inept handicapper who got the MacDonald case wrong and dragged millions of simpleton suckers along with him.

To this day, that case remains one of the great litmus tests, IMO. I use it in Las Vegas all the time, to separate conventional wisdom dopes from sharp and insightful. It's remarkable how the best handicappers in town believe in MacDonald's innocence while the standard slobs insist he's guilty. Once at the Hilton I asked the guys on the radio panel about that case. They were the top six in the annual high dollar NFL handicapping contest. Every one of them believed in MacDonald's innocence.

Lots of other cases would be more valuable to solve due to the number of people impacted. But for sheer joy in smothering billions of ignorant words and assertions, I'd like nothing more than for the truth to emerge in this case. I'd certainly bet quite heavily on it, although not to the 100% certainty like Richard Floyd McCoy as DB Cooper.

The only problem would be that so many people would be proven brutally incorrect they might have to rethink their entire values system, if only briefly.

[isotope]

Originally Posted by Awsi Dooger

To this day, that case remains one of the great litmus tests, IMO. I use it in Las Vegas all the time, to separate conventional wisdom dopes from sharp and insightful. It's remarkable how the best handicappers in town believe in MacDonald's innocence while the standard slobs insist he's guilty.

Standard "slobs" = FBI, CID, MacDonald's Father in Law, a jury of twelve, some of the most learned appeal court judges in the country, the victims family, the EMTs who attended the scene of the crime on the night of the murder...

Originally Posted by Awsi Dooger

Once at the Hilton I asked the guys on the radio panel about that case. They were the top six in the annual high dollar NFL handicapping contest. Every one of them believed in MacDonald's innocence.
.

These experts have correctly handicapped every single NFL game they've ever covered have they? Never once called it wrong? Ever?

. This is a criminal case - an entirely different kettle of fish to calling the under/over in a Browns v Ravens game. The physical evidence speaks and it is deafening: MacDonald is a baby killing sociopath - who will, quite deservedly, die in jail. Whether Jimmy the Greek and the rest of the boys out in the desert think thats fair or not is a matter of complete irrelevence.

[Zoneboy]

Originally Posted by isotope

Whether Jimmy the Greek and the rest of the boys out in the desert think thats fair or not is a matter of complete irrelevence.

That would be a good idea for an UM episode...

Resurrection Handicapper.

[MegtheEgg86]

Originally Posted by Zoneboy

That would be a good idea for an UM episode...

Resurrection Handicapper.

[TheCars1986]

Originally Posted by Awsi Dooger

I have no respect for McGinniss because he was an inept handicapper who got the MacDonald case wrong and dragged millions of simpleton suckers along with him.

Let's do some math. McGinniss's book was published in 1983. MacDonald was convicted of the three murders in 1979. Ergo, his book had no bearing on getting MacDonald convicted, nor did he "handicap" it in any way.