Grand Jury


August 21, 1974

Testimony of Paul Connolly (CID)

I, Carolyn Y. Hall, being a Notary Public in and for the State of North Carolina, was appointed to take the testimony of the following witness before the Grand Jury, Raleigh, North Carolina, commencing at _______ on August 21, 1974.  All Grand Jurors were present:
Webmaster note: 
Next page missing from copy of document received.
Q  Where were you stationed at that time?
A  I was stationed at Fort Bragg.
Q  Do you remember receiving the call on the morning of February 17th?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Tell us about it.  Who called you and what did you do after you received this call?
A  It was about 0400 hours in the morning, I received a call from Bill Ivory, who was my partner while I was stationed at Fort Bragg.  Bill told me that he had a triple murder at Fort Bragg and requested my assistance.  I had been out late that night and I had a duty vehicle with me so I got dressed, ran out, got in the duty vehicle, got on the radio and, not going to the office or anything, but just receiving message from the MP station, went right to the apartment in the officer's housing on Castle Drive.  It was the home of Captain McDonald.
Q  Was that 544 Castle Drive?
A  Yes, sir, it was.
Q  Was that the Corregidor Court area of base housing?
A  Yes, sir, it was.
Q  Now, having arrived, to whom did you report sir?
A  Report to Bill Ivory.
Q  Did he give you any instructions, advice, or what did he do?
A  Well, when I first got there, there were some MPs, Medics, standing outside.  Major Poisson (?) was standing at the front door, securing the front door.  Bill Ivory was standing in the middle of the living room.  I went in, asked him what happened.  He gave me a brief rundown, stating that there had been three people killed in the house and another man that was injured who had already been taken to the hospital, said his name was Captain MacDonald.  He stated there was two young children, one in each of the first two bedrooms of the hallway and a woman, the mother was in the master bedroom to the rear and at this time I just took out my notebook and started recording and I walked through the house.
Q  Now, did you concentrate, when you first arrived there on any particular area of the house?
A  So, the minute I walked in I just noticed the living room, the position of some of the things in the living room, the coffee table was tipped over, magazines on the floor.  There was a flower pot and a flower laying on the floor.  There were some clothes as you went up the first two steps going down to the hallway, there were some clothes laying on the floor.  I went down the hallway, went to my left which is the room of a young female.  I figure at that time she was approximately a year and a half...a half to a year old.  She was lying in bed.  She had multiple stab wounds on the chest and neck.  I checked her.  I didn't touch her, I just looked to make sure there was no breathing and then went over to the next room to the second oldest girl, checked her, checked the room and then walked back to the master bedroom where I found the oldest woman.
Q  Now, was it obvious to you that these people were dead?
A  Yes, sir.  Each one had...I didn't stop and count but I know they had approximately twenty stab wounds in and around the chest and neck area.  They were all dead.
Q  Now, sometime thereafter did a Captain Neal come to the house?
A  Yes, sir, he did.  This was approximately fifteen or twenty minutes later.  Well, after I checked the bedrooms, I came back out in the living room.  I asked Bill what he wanted me to do and he said, just stand by, they had a doctor coming from Womack to pronounce them, to pronounce all the victims dead and he wanted me to accompany him through the house.
Q  All right.  Were you there in the living room when Captain Neal arrived?
A  Yes, sir, I was.
Q  What instructions were given to Captain Neal when he arrived and who gave these instructions?
A  When he came in I told Bill I was going to take the doctor through and Bill said, no, hold off a little bit that they were still photographing.  We waited for about, approximately three or four minutes and then the photographer came back and said he had photographed all the bodies and at this time we proceeded into the three bedrooms to check the bodies.
Q  What specific instructions did he have with respect to his looking or examining the bodies?
A  He asked, he told me and he also told the doctor not to touch any of the bodies unless it was absolutely necessary and then only to check to be sure there was no life.
Q  All right.  Which was the first room that Captain Neal went into?
A  We went to Kristen's room first.  This is the youngest child on the left, the left hand bedroom, as you walk down the hallway.
Q  Did you watch him when he was in the room?
A  Yes, sir, I did.
Q  What did you observe?
A  The doctor went over, he checked the girl's pulse, checked around, checked her neck and then he lifted the girl forward.
Q  Slightly?
A  Yes.  At this time, he was still checking and then he laid her back down and was looking at the stab wounds.  Bill again told him, he said, don't touch the bodies, just check to see if they're dead.  Don't move them.  He pronounced this one dead and walked out of the bedroom across the hallway into the oldest girl's room, Kimberly.  He walked up to the bed, he took his hand and just lifted up a little bit on the sheet and the blanket, he reached down and checked the pulse, he checked...I also believe he checked the pulse area of the throat and pronounced her dead.  He walked back into the master bedroom, he walked over and took Mrs.  MacDonald's hand and checked her pulse, walked around over the head and checked again the pulse underneath the neck and pronounced her dead.  At this time he was escorted out of the area.
Q  All right.  Now, you say he did slightly move the body of Kristen?
A  Yes, sir.  
Q  Did he move the body of Kimberly?
A  No sir.  He just reached down and touched the hand.
Q  Did he move the body of Colette?
A  No sir.
Q  Did you observe his using a stethoscope?
A  No sir.  I did not.
Q  Now, sometime thereafter, did medics come to remove the bodies?
A  Yes, sir, they did.
Q  Now, did you observe them when they moved the bodies?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Will you tell us about that?
A  They went into Kristen's room.  This was after we had outlined the bodies and everything.  They took the two girls and placed...
Q  When you say outlined the body, did you draw a line around Kristen's body?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Before they removed the body?
A  Yes, sir.  I also assisted in the outlining of Colette's body.
Q  All right...
A  The two girls were both placed on one stretcher and I went out with them.  I did not see them when they moved Colette.  I was not in the master bedroom.
Q  Now did you have any orders or instructions as to what you were to do at that time?
A  Yes, sir.  Bill asked me to accompany the bodies to Womack to recover all the clothing from the girls and the mother and if possible, interview the doctor.
Q  Did you do that?
Webmaster note: 
Page 10 missing from copy of document received.  Page 11 continues below.
Q  Oh, Captain MacDonald.  Did you have any conversation with the doctor who received the bodies?
A  With the pathologist, Yes, sir.
Q  Were you present there when they made their autopsy?
A  No, I wasn't.
Q  Now, after collecting the fragile evidence that you referred to, the clothing and various other things from the body, what did you then do?
A  I went upstairs and talked to Captain MacDonald.
Q  Where did you find him?
A  He was in the Intensive Care Ward in the new wing of Womack Hospital.
Q  All right.  Was he in a room by himself?
A  He was in a room but there was a nurse standing behind me at the door and there was a doctor standing along side the bed with him.
Q  Did you have any conversation with the personnel?
A  Yes, sir.  I talked to the doctor and the nurse.
Q  All right.  Tell us about that.
A  First of all I asked the nurse if it would be permissible to see him and she went in and she checked with the doctor, the doctor said yes.  I went in.  I asked the doctor if he was coherent, he said he was.  I asked the doctor if he could understand.  He said, yes he could.  He was all right.  He could understand the questions and give answers.
Q  Do you remember the name of the doctor?
A  No sir, I do not.
Q  What happened then?
A  I interviewed MacDonald as a victim.  The...
Q  Tell me personally, was he sitting down in the bed or was he sitting up?  Lying down or sitting up?
A  MacDonald was in a almost sitting position.  The bed was cranked up where he was almost sitting up.  He had a blue pajama top on, he had a sheet coming up to his waist.
Q  All right.  Was the blue pajama top closed or was it open?
A  It was open.  
Q  And how much of his chest did you observe?
A  I'd say approximately three inches all the way down from the chest to his stomach.
Q  And you could see his face?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  All right.  What observation did you make so far as his appearance was concerned?
A  He was coherent.  He didn't seem to be in pain.  He seemed to understand everything when I was talking.
Q  Well, did you see any marks on his face or chest?
A  He had slight reddening, slight reddening of the forehead, right over the right eye and he had a tube running down with a bandage over his stomach and these were the only marks I could see at this time.
Q  You didn't see any bandage at any other point than at the point of entry of that tube, is that it?
A  Right, sir.
Q  All right, now tell us about your conversation with him.  What did you say to him, what did he say to you?
A  I asked him if he could give us a better description of the people, the assailants in the house and to relate to me what actually happened.  At this time he stated that he was laying down in the living room on the couch.  He heard a scream, he heard his wife scream and woke up.  When he woke up there was four people standing in front of him.  There was a black man standing over him with a fatigue jacket on with E-6 stripes on it.  There was two men behind him, both about the same height as the first assailant, one had a mustache.  There was a third ...  fourth person standing behind the three men was a female, had long blond hair.
     I asked him if he could give me a better description, go into more detail on these people.  He stated that the male, the Negro, was approximately five foot nine, five foot eight or five foot nine, didn't have an afro, sort of medium hair, that the two men behind him were about the same size but he didn't get a good look at their faces.  He couldn't say what they actually looked like, one did have a mustache.
     I asked what kind of clothes they had on.  He said that the only thing he could remember was the black man on the fatigue jacket with the E-6 stripes on it and one of the white assailants had on a type of a red hooded coat.  I said, what do you mean a red hooded coat.  He said, something like football players wear, it's red, it got a hood on it, it comes up over the head.
     I said, well how about the girl.  He said, well the girl had a brown floppy hat on and he said he thought she had a mini dress and dress on.  I said, well how do you know this.  He said, well, when I tried to get up the black man hit me with a club and knocked me to the ground...excuse me, he said he with a baseball bat.  He said, I went to the ground and when I looked over I could see a lot of skin between the boot and the upper material on her leg.  He said, so I thought she had on a mini dress or shorts.  I asked him, what color boots.  He said, well, they were black, he said, but not really black, they were brown leather but they were so wet that they appeared to be black and he said, they were all wet, the water was just dripping off of them and I said, well, what do you mean by this and he said, well it looked just like they walked in out of the rain and the water was just running off of them.
     So I asked him to go back now and go through the sequence of events of what happened.  He said, well when he heard the scream he woke up and when he woke up he saw these four people standing in front of him.  He said the girl was standing in the back, he thought she had a candle.  She was stating acid is groovy, acid and rain, acid and rain, kill the pigs.  At this time he tried to get up and when he did, the black man hit him on the head with the baseball bat.  I said, well are you sure it was a baseball bat.  He said, well, I'm not sure but when I reached up and took hold of it, it was round and it was slippery, you know it had blood on it.  He said, I fought him and I reached out and I punched him.  He said, no I didn't punch him, I grabbed his face and when I grabbed his face I got hit in the side, a real sharp pain.  He said, I thought somebody punched me but now I realize this is when the guy stuck me with the ice pick..  not the guy, this is when he stuck me with the ice pick.  He said, I wrestled with them and the next thing I knew I wrestled into the hallway and then I passed out.
     He said he woke up a short time later, he looked down the hallway and saw his wife laying in the middle of the room.  There was a knife sticking out of her chest.  He went to her, he reached down and took the knife out of her chest.  At this time I stopped and said, what did you do with the knife.  He said, I don't remember.  He said, I reached down, I gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.  He said, at this time, I heard a gurgling sound, you know, a gurgling sound, someone like, like you have in your lungs or something in your lung.  He kept saying this over again.
     At this time he started to show a little bit of emotion.  He had showed no emotion up until this point and he said, I went to Kris's room, and at this time he started to cry.  He cried for maybe sixty seconds or two minutes.  He said, I went to her and she was laying there and she was gurgling, you know.  Again, he emphasized, you know what gurgling is, you know, you have a hole in the lung, you have blood.  He said, I reached down and I pulled her up and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.  At this time he just stopped.  He wouldn't talk any more about Kristen.  He just stopped.  He didn't say he put her back down.
     Then he said, then I went to Kimberly's room.  He said, and she was dead and then he started going on about making a phone call to the operator.  He said he dialed, called the operator and that she would not accept the complaint until she had his name and social security number and he kept going on about this two or three times and so at this time I went back again into the getting a better description of the assailants.
Q  Do you recall anything else he told you on this occasion?
A  Well, there's one thing that struck me funny was that when I went to the house I saw footprints leading out of the youngest girl's bedroom and they were barefooted they were not boots or shoes, they were footprints of a bare foot and I asked, MacDonald if any of the people were in bare feet and he said, no, they were all in shoes or something on.  I asked him about this and he said, well, when I went to the bed, maybe I stepped in the blood then.
Q  Did he make any effort, apart from the description he gave of the boots, to describe the type of shoes the intruders were wearing?
A  As I recollect, he might have said they were tennis shoes.
Q  All right.  Do you recall any other thing that he said to you at the hospital on that occasion?
A  No.  it's just that he didn't want to talk about the youngest girl.  He would talk about the wife, he would talk about the oldest girl, he just didn't want to talk about the youngest girl.
Q  Now, did you get the impression that when he talked about the gurgling sound that he heard while he was in the master bedroom with his wife that he was sort of carried away in any sense of the word?
A  Well, like I said, this part of the story he didn't want to talk about.
Q  But this was the something that came out spontaneously?
A  Right.
Q  When he was describing the incident that night?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  And once he got into it, after a certain point, he refused to discuss it any further?
A  Right.
Q  I have Ivory Exhibit #24 here, can you tell the Grand Jury what that represents?
A  This is the picture of the youngest daughter, MacDonald girl, Kris, as she was, as she appeared when I first went in the room at the house.
Q  That was before Dr. Neal came in?
A  Yes, sir.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  Will you mark this as Connolly Exhibit #1.  The next will be 2, the one after that will be 3, and so on.

(CONNOLLY EXHIBITS #1 through #12 MARKED FOR IDENTIFICATION)

Q  (Mr. Woerheide): Mr. Connolly, to your knowledge were you the first CID Agent to interview MacDonald?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  So the statement that you have just recounted was the first, let's say, official statement that he gave to an investigator of the CID?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  And to your knowledge, had any FBI Agents interviewed MacDonald prior to the time that you interviewed him in the Womack Hospital?
A  No Sir.
Q  So apart from any spontaneous statements that he made to MPs, medics, either in the house or on the way to the hospital or in the hospital the interview which he gave to you was the first official account he gave to an official investigator?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  I have a series of photographs.  They've been marked as exhibits and the numbers will be on the backs and the first series I have here are both color and black and white individual footprints.  They seem to be, both of the left and the right, although, I think they're more on the left, the left footprint than the right footprint.  Now, will you refer to these and refer also to the photograph of the room.
     All right, Connolly Exhibit #12 is this floor plan of the house that you've seen before.
     MacDonald Exhibit #10 is the diagram that's posted on the easel.  Ivory Exhibit #24 is a general picture of the room.  Now, referring, to all of these things, can you describe these pictures to the Grand Jury and tell us where the footprints are located?
A  Yes, sir.  This, going in here (pointing to the easel), here's the bed the youngest child was lying in.  On the side of the bed away from the body, the body was back up, but there was a smear of blood on the side of the bed as if some of the blood had gone down and somebody had taken their hand and was rubbing it back and forth almost like this water painting you see the kids messing with.  Also on the floor was a pool of blood, then there was the rug which you can see here with a little hit of blood stains on it, was sitting right here in front of the bed and just as you went off of the rug, in this vicinity in here, there was some bare footprints on the floor which were made in blood.  There was a, I believe it was the right footprint was here and the left one was up here toward the door.  This is the left footprint which you can see the door facing right here so it would approximately be right up in here.  I believe this is the right footprint leading away from the bed.

COURT REPORTER:  Mr. Woerheide, would you like to identify these exhibits by number for the record?

MR. WOERHEIDE:  All right.  The exhibit, first referred to, both of these appear to be right footprints, is that correct?  The first of these is exhibit #5, Connolly Exhibit #5 and the other one is Connolly Exhibit #4.

MR. CONNOLLY:  Here is this one, black and white which shows it better, the footprint of the right and the left foot as it is going out the door and from a distance they figured the guy was probably about, between five nine, five ten and six foot because of the span from one footprint to the other.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  And do these show markings made to identify the location of the footprints?
A  Yes, sir.  These markings will be from your lab report.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  That exhibit that he just referred to is Connolly Exhibit #3.

MR. CONNOLLY:  This other one here, this is the right footprint with the...which is marked also by board number for the lab analysis so they could tell which board it came from and where the blood was at.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  All right, that's Connolly Exhibit #2.  I take it, these were photographs that were made before the marks were placed on the board for the purpose of exact location.
A  Right.  These were taken that morning.
Q  This shows the right footprint in relation to the rug and the door, is that correct?
A  Yes.  This was shot from the hallway, going into the bedroom.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  That's Connolly Exhibit #1.

MR. CONNOLLY:  This is shot just as you go inside the door showing the footprint as it came off of the rug.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  And that would be the left footprint, I take it.

MR. CONNOLLY:  Right.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  And this Exhibit #10 is another.

MR. CONNOLLY:  This is another way that they marked each one of the boards so they could compare with the blood for the lab.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  Could you tell us whether the boards were actually cut out of the floor?
A  This I don't know.
Q  Is this a close-up footprint o...
A  This is a close-up footprint of the left foot, just measuring, showing the inches in scale.
Q  Now, can you tell us whether this transparency is a duplicate of the photograph which you just showed to the Grand Jury which is your Exhibit #6?
A  As you can see, it matches right over the footprint which was taken by the photograph.
Q  All right.  Now you have a known footprint of the left footprint of Captain MacDonald taken on February 25, 1970.  Can you tell me whether he was foot printed and a print made?
A  Yes, sir.  He was and you will notice that these prints here will match almost perfectly, except for down here you don't find any of the curls and everything of the ridges of the foot, because when you step down in your normal weight, your arch will stay up, but this here where the ridges come all the way down and the form of the foot could be caused when a person is carrying a heavy weight, your body pushes down on your feet and just like your hand, you take your hand and lay it like this here, you won't get the indentation of the middle of your hand, but if I lay my hand like that and he comes along and hits me on the top of the hand, it pushes clown and you get the full imprint of the whole hand.
Q  And when you juxtapose one right over the other, you get a perfect match, is that correct?
A  Right.
Q  Could you give us an approximation of the time you saw Captain MacDonald?
A  Yes, sir.  It was about 8:30, between 8:00 and 8:30 that morning.
Q  What did you observe so far as his own personal reactions, did he seen to be alert?
A  He was very alert.
Q  He was responsive?
A  Yes.
Q  Was there any question in your mind that he was aware of his circumstances at the time?  A.  No sir.
Q  Did he appear to be under the influence of any drugs that might affect his mental ability?
A  No sir.
Q  Now, besides the observation you made when you first entered the room and was just seeing the top of his pajama ajar for about three inches, did you discuss with him his wounds, did he show you anything?
A  Yes, sir.  We were talking about the assault he said, and I guess this is when he stuck me with the ice pick.  He opened up his shirt like this here and he pointed down to where the tube was running into his bandaged area.
Q  And what did you observe in that location?
A  This was...it had a...
Q  Adhesive plaster over it?
A  Right.
Q  Now, when he opened his pajama top like this, baring his chest to you, what other marks did you see?
A  He had a mark coming from the top of his shoulder here right down to about, I'd say the breast area, right here.
Q  Now, was that bandaged at all?
A  No, it wasn't.
Q  Did it have any medication on it that discolored it?
A  No.
Q  And you could see it plainly?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Now, from your experience, what sort of a mark would you say that was?
A  Scratch mark.
Q  What sort of a scratch mark?
A  If you're fighting with somebody and you reach in and grab him and if the person pulls away fast enough you don't get a solid scratch mark but a sort of, like a shimmy.  The marks are very small at the top and as they came down towards the middle of the line of marks, they began to get a little bit wider and little bit longer and there was a break between the, each little mark but there was a perfect row.
Q  So it appeared to you to be a mark that might have been made by a fingernail?
A  Right.
Q  And, you say you observed one lump on his forehead.  Did you observe anything else about forehead.  Did you observe anything else about his face?
A  I didn't observe a lump.  I observed a little reddening like...I didn't see any lump and he pointed to this area with his hand.
Q  Did he complain about having a headache?
A  No.
Q  Were his eyes normal?
A  It is hard to say because he had started to cry that one time.  They were Just a little bit glassy but as far as his speech, there was no slur in his speech.  He was very coherent.  I never had to repeat myself.  He was sitting up.  He wasn't laying down.  He didn't appear to be in pain.
Q  Now, at the time, were you concerned to identify the intruders he told you had assaulted him and...
A  Basically, when I went to the hospital, I was told that this man was also very critically injured, that I might not be able to get in to see the man.  I went to the hospital and I talked to him under the...to find out a better description of what actually happened in the house and get a better description of the assailants so they could be put out on the, to all the patrols.
Q  All right.  In the course of this questioning, did you question him along the line of getting as close a physical description of the facial features of the assailants as possible?
A  Yes, sir,, but he couldn't, wouldn't actually...Every time you started talking about this here, he would wander off.  He wanted to talk about something else.  The telephone operator wouldn't accept the call and things like this here.  He never gave me a good description of any of the assailants.
Q  Is it fair to say, to a certain extent, he was evasive in responding to your questions?
A  As far as the assailants, the description of the assailants, Yes, sir,
Q  Now, did you specifically ask him to describe the incident that occurred in his house in chronological order?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  And did he do it?
A  Well, what I just told you is what he told me.
Q  He would start to and then he would got to a certain point and jump to something else?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  And particularly when he got to the point of Kristen and the gurgling...
A  Right, he didn't want...
Q  ...and being in her room that's when he would change the subject?
A  That's right
Q  Now, Captain MacDonald has stated that he had various puncture in the upper part of his chest and the abdomen, did you notice anything in the way of puncture wounds?
A  The only marks I saw I saw from both shoulders down, the only marks I saw on his chest other than the one taped area, was these marks and I would estimate between nine, ten, twelve, thirteen, from here down to here which were in a perfectly straight line, I mean, you know, as you would draw a line.  They weren't zigzagged, it wasn't one here and one here but it came down in a perfect line and they were very superficial, they were not deep wounds.
Q  If he had any puncture wounds, such as wounds made by an ice pick, they were not bleeding, they were not covered by any bandages?
A  No.
Q  Did you participate in the questioning of MacDonald on April 6th?
A  No sir, I did not.
Q  How long did you continue to work in the house collecting and preserving physical evidence?
A  After I talked to MacDonald, I went back to the house because there was just a couple of things that didn't jive to what he told me that I wanted to see for myself.  I went back to the house and one thing was the baby bottle of Kristy.  He claimed that when he went in he heard her gurgling, he reached down picked her up.  Well, when I went there, it appeared the baby bottle was almost in the crook of her hand and I just couldn't see where a person would pick the baby up the bottle wouldn't have fallen and this just didn't ring true.  The next thing that bothered me was, he claimed to have reached down and pulled the knife out of her chest.  Well, when I looked at the knife that morning, I didn't pick it up, I just looked at it, I didn't see any blood on it, so this was the second thing.  And the third thing was, I had looked in the area where he stated these four people had assaulted him were that the water was just running off of them and I said before I hadn't seen any water.  So I went back, I bent down, I took my hand and laid it on the floor.  I asked Bill Ivory, I said, has anybody marked here, has anybody cleaned up this area, there is supposed to be water here somewhere.  He said, nobody has touched that area and it was completely dry.
Q  Are you the one that recovered the knife that was lying in front of Colette's dresser on the floor?
A  No sir.  I helped circle that stuff when I came back but I did not recover the knife.
Q  But at the time, you had looked at it carefully?
A  I looked when I went back the second time and the only blood I could see or what resembled blood was a little brown stain on the tip of the knife and this to me just didn't make sense.
Q  The main part of the blade had apparently been wiped clean?
A  Right.
Q  Now, after checking these things out that bothered you, because it didn't jive with your recollection of the scene with the version of what happened as given to you by MacDonald, did you continue to work in the house?
A  I briefed Bill Ivory on what I had been told, what MacDonald had told me, what I had seen at the hospital and then I went downtown and worked with the Sheriff's Department.
Q  Now, over the next several months, did you continue to work on this investigation?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  What did this work consist of?
A  Well, I worked with the Interagency which is a drug team in Fayetteville consisting of the Sheriff's Department, Police Department, S.F.I.  and C.I.D. at Fort Bragg along with the liaison police downtown and we hit people all night long for about two or three nights there and then from there on, any time we got a telephone call in, we went out and we just talked to people, we rapped with them, most of the guys I worked with knew most of the hippies, where they hung out, the farm out an 301 which is a big crash pad.  These places were just hit continuously, day after day after day and...
Q  Did this go on week after week and as a matter of months?
A  Right.
Q  And, was it a practice during the course of the investigation by the various agents that were involved, to make photographs of people who might answer the vague description given you by MacDonald?
A  Yes, sir.  In fact there was one group that was picked up three times one night.  They were photographed and fingerprinted three times.
Q  Now, were all these photographs and fingerprints referred to in the course of the investigation?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  In other words, when you got a set of fingerprints, did you check them against the unknown prints that were in the house?
A  Well, it was turned over...I can't actually say this because I didn't do it.  I know the prints were taken by both State Bureau of Investigation and Sheriff's department and turned over to investigators.
Q  Well, a number of allegations have been made with respect to the investigation and you were not specifically mentioned, Mr. Connolly, although certain of your associates, particularly Mr. Ivory, Mr. Grebner and Mr. Shaw were mentioned but it's been alleged that the C.I.D. did not follow-up leads furnished by neighbors that voices of at least two men and a girl were heard going in the direction of MacDonald's backyard, immediately prior to the murders, do you have any comment to make on that?
A  Well, the only thing I can say on this here is that even for about five or six months after that, we got some of the most, I mean, we got calls that this one girl thought she was a witch and that she did this and that and we ran leads that were coming out our ears.  Even though we knew, we, you know, we actually felt our self, it wasn't true, we still went out on them.  Every single call that came in, we saw a girl with one girl had blond hair and two G.I.s was up on the other side of Smithfield, someplace and we sent guys up there and we rode around for two days up there and nothing.  Everything that came in, people went out on.  In fact we went to one house, which is kind of funny, there was a young girl, I think she was junior or senior in high school and we went to talk to her because she had long blond hair and she wore it in a pony tail.  When we got to see her, her hair was gone.  They had cut their hair off.  All the girls in Fayetteville with blond hair at that time were cutting their hair.
Q  One of the allegations is, C.I.D. Agents failed to interview MacDonald before he was a suspect to obtain a coherent story.  I think you already answered that.
     C.I.D. Agents failed to determine the seriousness of MacDonald's wounds on the impossibility of self-inflicting such wounds.  Did MacDonald say anything to you about the seriousness of his wounds or did you talk to the doctor there about the seriousness of his wounds?
A  Well, I talked to the doctor.  This was only a couple hours after he had been injured and the doctor told me he was all right, he was coherent, he understood everything and like I said, the only wound I actually saw...I didn't see the wound.  The only place I actually saw that he really could have had a serious wound was under the bandage but he was still sitting up.
Q  Did he manifest any trouble in breathing?
A  No.
Q  One of these allegations is very general in nature and says, C.I.D. agents recklessly represented to the Staff Judge Advocate and Colonel Kane that a thorough investigation had been conducted which in fact was not true.  Do you have any comment to make on that?
A  Well, all that I can say is that I know that I, with the man that was given us from the Sheriff's Department, were working eighteen hours a day and this went on for about two or three months and every other agent was on the road at least close to sixteen, seventeen, eighteen hours a day.  Every known place that these hippies crashed at was hit and they weren't hit one time, they were hit two and three and four times, just kept picking people up.  This was not only by the C.I.D., it was by the State, the state Bureau sent people in here.  The Sheriff's Department turned loose all their detectives.  The police department turned loose all their detectives.  It was really a good effort on everybody's part.
Q  Well, let me ask you this.  Were you getting cooperation or resistance from the hippie colonies?
A  They were helping us.  They had signs all over Fayetteville.  If you know anything about it, let the fuzz know.  Get them off our back.  Like I said, they were tired of it.  I'm serious, they had a big sign right down by the...in the middle of Fayetteville Square down there, you know, help the fuzz, get 'em off our backs because they were really burning them and they were tired of it.
Q  Just a couple of final questions.  Is your appearance now comparable to your appearance in February of 1970?
A  No.
Q  How has this appearance changed?
A  I didn't have a mustache.  My hair was much shorter.
Q  And what sort of work are you engaged in now?
A  I'm working covert narcotics.
Q  You're an undercover agent?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Does that account for your slightly unmilitary appearance at this time?
A  It's a lot better than it was a month ago.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  I think I've covered as much as I care to with him.  I could show all the pictures I have and he could identify them again but I don't think you want us to do that.  They were all put in through Mr. Ivory, as you know.

FOREMAN:  Does any member of the Grand Jury have any questions of Mr. Connolly?

JUROR:  I was just wondering.  Mr. MacDonald said something about the road blocks, that you had roving road blocks or something like that, would you comment on that?

A  If I remember correctly, at the time the biggest gripe at the time was that we didn't have enough military MP patrols on the road to cover Fort Bragg.  Fort Bragg is a wide open post.  You could put a hundred patrols out and you're not going to seal off Fort Bragg.  If you know Fort Bragg and you've you lived in that area any amount of time, you can put out a hundred patrols and I'll get off that post and you'll never know I was on it.  It's impossible to secure.  You've got federal highways going through there, you've got state highways going through there and there's no gates, no chain link fences and there's just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of paths used by the military when they go on maneuvers.  Now, they were stopping cars all over the place.  Now, as I said before, it was the best joint effort I've ever seen by both the civilian community police force, the state police force, F.B.I., everybody.  They were checking airports, bus terminals, everything and that's all I can tell you as far as road blocks are concerned.

JUROR:  Why would you pick up the same group three times in one night and fingerprint and photograph them?

A  I didn't pick up the same group three times but what I'm saying is we picked them up and we left one area which is the Dunkin' Donuts, we left and went down the road and when we came back, the S.B.I. was picking up a group we had just dropped off.  I mean, these guys were really working, I mean, they hit everyone they knew, informants were offered money and everything.

JUROR:  Mr. Woerheide, didn't Mr. MacDonald state to us, or Dr. MacDonald state to us, that when he was in the hospital before someone went up there, I thought he said Mr. Connolly, I don't know.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  No, he didn't mention Mr. Connolly by name.

JUROR:  He said the man that interviewed him at one time.  He didn't ask the doctors anything.  Nobody commented to him about how his wife and children were.  I was thinking he said the first person that came in there that was not medical, he had asked them, who was it at that time had told him his children were dead.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  Well, as I recall, when he arrived at the hospital and he talked to one of the attendants, not the agent, and he would ask, where are my wife and children, have you brought them here to the hospital, how are they, and the first response that he received was, they're all right, don't worry and then later some doctor said, well, haven't they told you yet and he said no and this doctor told him they were dead.  He was not referring to any conversation with Mr. Connolly.

JUROR:  I was thinking I distinctly understood him to say that it was not a doctor.  That's what was in mind.  I was thinking it might have been him because I wondered why a doctor wouldn't tell him.  I don't remember.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  Well, let's ask Mr. Connolly.  Did you discuss with him whether or not his wife and children were still alive or whether they were dead?

A  No, he never asked me and I never mentioned it.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  As a matter of fact, he told you spontaneously that he went into Kimberly's room.

A  He said he checked and they were dead.

JUROR:  That's the thing that made me ask, the fact that he was up there asking everybody else and then he was telling you...

A  The only one he didn't say was dead was the youngest girl, Kristen, and like I said, he wouldn't talk about her for some reason.

JUROR:  Somewhere along the way you mentioned, and I failed to follow completely, a piece of skin, I think, around Kristen's hand or you mentioned something and then I didn't follow...

A  Well, I said that some of the obvious things when they took them into the morgue was a piece of skin, I believe, was on the small finger of Colette by the fingernail.  There was hair on the hand.

JUROR:  Did you say there was anything on the body of one of the children?

A  There was something that looked like a blond curl, right here on the, I believe it was the youngest girl's stomach.  It was attached with blood right to the stomach here.

JUROR:  One strand?

A  Oh no.  It was a curl.  You know, like you would cut of a curl for a souvenir or something.  It was a small curl.  It could have been, I don't say it was hair but it was blond and looked like hair.  I don't know what the lab came up with.

JUROR:  That was with blood?

A  There was blood on it.  Well, there was blood on her stomach and it was attached right to the stomach.

FOREMAN:  How large was that piece of skin that you observed on the fingernail?

A  I'd say about a little over a quarter of an inch long, less than a sixteenth of an inch wide.

FOREMAN:  Do you know what happened to that piece of skin?

A  I do not.  I know it was collected and put in a vial.

FOREMAN:  The hair was also taken?

A  Yes, sir.

FOREMAN:  How many times did you talk to Dr.  MacDonald that day?

A  Once.

FOREMAN:  Thank you.