It doesn’t seem so long ago when original NCIS franchise star Mark Harmon left the series and was replaced by Gary Cole, whose run as Special Agent Alden Parker on NCIS presently encompasses more than 60 episodes and spans four seasons. Just as Harmon’s iconic portrayal of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS over 19 seasons redefined his acting legacy, Cole’s attachment to NCIS seems destined to overshadow his long and varied previous career.

Cole made his starring television debut in the acclaimed 1984 television miniseries Fatal Vision, in which he plays Jeffrey MacDonald, a real-life former Green Beret physician who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two daughters on a military base in 1970. The miniseries opens in the aftermath of the murders and then follows MacDonald’s decade-long, twisting legal odyssey, which culminated on August 29, 1979, when MacDonald was convicted of murdering his family and sentenced to life imprisonment.

In a precursor to Harmon’s captivating performance as real-life serial killer Ted Bundy in the 1986 television miniseries The Deliberate Stranger, Cole effectively portrays MacDonald as a man whose outwardly friendly appearance conceals bottomless deceptiveness. However, as The Deliberate Stranger primarily focuses on Bundy’s horrific crimes and eventual capture, Fatal Vision is most compelling regarding the elusive question of why MacDonald did it.

‘Fatal Vision’ Features One of the Most Celebrated and Disturbing Murder Cases

Fatal Vision, which is based on the best-selling 1983 true-crime book of the same name by Joe McGinniss, opens on the morning of February 17, 1970, in a darkened apartment situated on the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, as wounded Army Special Forces physician Jeffrey MacDonald, played by Gary Cole, frantically reports the murders of his pregnant wife, Colette, and two daughters, five-year-old Kimberley and two-year-old Kristen, during a phone call with Fort Bragg emergency dispatchers.

In subsequent interviews with investigators, MacDonald described a Charles Manson-like scene in which MacDonald claimed to have been asleep on the apartment’s living room couch before being awakened by Colette and Kimberley’s screams. MacDonald said that he was attacked and overwhelmed by four assailants, one female and three males, who then bludgeoned and stabbed MacDonald’s wife and daughters to death. On the headboard of the master bedroom, the word “PIG” was written in capital letters in Colette’s blood.

The phantom assailants were never caught or identified, while MacDonald’s injuries, bruises, cuts, and scratches were so minor in nature that they didn’t require stitches, in stark contrast to Colette, Kimberley, and Kristen, who were variously butchered with an ice pick, a kitchen knife, and a piece of lumber, which were all recovered outside the back door of the apartment, and had been wiped clean of fingerprints. Beyond MacDonald’s illogical story, the most damning evidence against MacDonald is the blood evidence, through which the movements of MacDonald and his victims can be traced on the night of the murders.

This evidence is especially telling regarding Colette, as while her body was found sprawled on the floor of her bedroom, her blood was found in Kristen’s bedroom, on the bed, and on one wall, with the clear implication being that the badly wounded Colette, who was stabbed 16 times with a knife and 21 times with an ice pick, entered the bedroom in a desperate attempt to save Kristen, who was stabbed 33 times with a knife and 15 times with an ice pick.

The Mystery of ‘Fatal Vision’ Is the Motive

One of the most interesting aspects of Fatal Vision is that while the evidence of Jeffrey MacDonald’s guilt is clear and convincing to any objective observer, MacDonald’s murder prosecution lacked the crucial element of motive. While a compelling motive for murder isn’t required to obtain a conviction, if the circumstantial and physical elements are present, juries find it difficult to convict a defendant of murder, especially first-degree murder, without the presence of a strong motive. The absence of a definitive motive explains why MacDonald, while having been convicted of first-degree murder in Kristen’s murder, was convicted of second-degree murder for the murders of Colette and Kimberley.

Investigators speculated that the murders were triggered by an argument between Colette and MacDonald over MacDonald’s supposed adultery and that this argument quickly escalated to violence, while Joe McGinniss’s riveting book Fatal Vision suggests that MacDonald may have murdered his family through an impulsive burst of psychotic rage that possibly resulted from MacDonald’s heavy consumption of amphetamines.

However, despite the ambiguity regarding motive, it only took the jury in MacDonald’s murder trial approximately six-and-half-hours to reach their guilty verdict, which was overturned on appeal in 1980, due to a purported constitutional rights violation, before being reinstated by the United States Supreme Court in 1982.

Gary Cole Plays Jeffrey MacDonald as If MacDonald Is Innocent

Like Jeff Bridges’ creepy performance as accused murderer Jack Forrester in the 1985 legal thriller film Jagged Edge, in which Forrester projects an abiding belief in his own innocence before being literally unmasked in the film’s climactic scene, Gary Cole interestingly chose to play MacDonald in Fatal Vision as if MacDonald genuinely believed in his own innocence, as seen with MacDonald’s bold decision to take the witness stand in his own defense.

MacDonald’s seductive power, which has attracted a legion of followers over the past 40 years, is brilliantly encapsulated in Joe McGinniss’s book Fatal Vision, which McGinniss entered into with MacDonald’s full cooperation until McGinniss became convinced that MacDonald was a narcissistic sociopath who indeed murdered his family and had utter confidence in his own ability to deceive everyone. Fatal Vision is currently unavailable to stream.