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Freddy Kassab thoughts about Jeffrey MacDonald and the "4 intruders"
From the files of Freddy Kassab, provided by Bob Stevenson and used with his permission
Translation follows the scanned pages
When I read the case the first few times, I was skeptical about the existence of the 4 intruders--as skeptical & unbelieving as have been almost all who have familiarized themselves [with] this material. But on rereading portions of the transcripts again last nite, I have now come over to the belief that, as MacDonald has kept insisting, there were indeed "4 intruders."
MacDonald's goals from the beginning to this day have been to impress, to prove his manhood, to con, to screw--whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted. Many men want a little bit of that kind of freedom, but the normal man, the normal man [with] a wife & a family, derives enough genuine & deep & lasting satisfaction from family life, that the balance between irresponsible "freedom" & commitment to his wife & his children--whom he truly loves more than he resents--allows him to forego that kind of self centered freedom, without too much "burden" or sense of entrapment. For MacDonald the balance tilted far to the other side--to the point where the resentment was volcanic, the love only paper thin. So there came to be specifically 4 people--not 7, not 2--who intruded most especially upon his "space," 4 people who got in the way of his being the macho celeb & playboy he needed to be in order even to feel alive. 4 intruders--three white, one black--just like MacDonald told us. Who were they? I can name 3 of them: Colette, Kimberly, Kristy. The 4th intruder--black not in skin but figuratively black: as yet unseen, dark, invisible--the half-grown baby that Colette was carrying, MacDonald's as yet unborn son, as it turned out to be--the 4th intruder.
In MacDonald's fatal blindness--blindness to the deep & genuine feelings that animate ordinary people & unite them to their loved ones--in his fatal blindness, he murdered the intruders, all 4, & making himself free at last! Free at last--to live out his image of the big shot, the glamour boy, the stud. This is the unbridled egomania, the wanton disregard for the feelings, even for the lives, of those who intruded most heavily upon his dreams--that Joe McGinniss quite correctly labeled 'pathological narcissism" in his book. And I am being flown out here 2500 miles to be asked is Joe McGinniss' interpretation/assumption a fair one! Well, my answer is that how MacDonald dealt [with] his family shows me that in one detail at least MacDonald was an honest man--for though he lied as usual [with] his mouth, [with] his brain he told the truth. Yes, there were 4 intruders in his life. And out of his pathological narcissism, he killed them. I do not know of a narcissism more pathological than this.
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