On February 17, 1970, Green Beret surgeon Captain Jeffrey MacDonald called the Fort Bragg military police. When they got to his apartment, the police found MacDonald injured and unconscious and his wife Colette, and their two daughters, Kimberly and Kristen, murdered.
Once revived by the MPs, MacDonald reported that he had been asleep on the sofa and awoke to screams. According to him, there were three men in the living room, one armed with a baseball bat and another with a blade with which they attacked him. Behind the men, MacDonald reported that he saw a blonde woman carrying a flickering light and wearing a floppy hat. He said that she uttered the words “Acid is groovy. Kill the pigs.”
That night MacDonald was admitted to the intensive care unit of Womack Hospital with life-threatening injuries. In April, he was questioned by the Army as a prime suspect in the murders. In October, MacDonald underwent a pre-court martial hearing in which the charges were dropped. In 1974, a civilian court in Cumberland County began the process of hearing the case. Five years later, MacDonald was convicted of the three murders.