LOS ANGELES -- Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald said little Wednesday as he was handcuffed and escorted back to prison because of a Supreme Court decision to reinstate his murder conviction in the 1970 slayings of his wife and two young daughters.
MacDonald, a former Green Beret who has been practicing medicine at St. Mary's Hospital in Long Beach, Calif., was taken into custody by FBI agents at his home about an hour after the decision was handed down.
'I don't really want to say anything right now,' MacDonald said, his hands cuffed in front of him.
'They didn't have any right to revoke my bail,' he said in an angry outburst before getting into the FBI car.
Stephen Shea, a friend of MacDonald, drove by just before the doctor was taken away. Shea appeared to be near tears as he approached MacDonald and asked, 'What can I do?'
'I don't know,' MacDonald said. 'Sorry.'
His lawyer, Bernard Segal, said MacDonald, 38, was 'stunned' by the Supreme Court ruling and had not been informed that a federal judge in Raleigh, N.C., had revoked his bail.
'I was talking to him on the telephone this morning when the FBI took him into custody,' Segal said from his office in San Francisco. 'We were talking about the question of what would happen with bail when we heard a loud rap at the door.
'It was so loud I could hear it over the telephone,' Segal said. 'The FBI was there to arrest him.'
Segal said he would make another appeal for bail in the next two or three days, pending appeal of 13 alleged trial errors.
MacDonald's secretary, Barbara Gallagher, said the doctor called her just before he was arrested.
'He told me to be strong. Can you believe that?' she asked. 'He told me to be strong. Everyone here is in shock. We can't believe they actually took him back to jail.'
Deputy Marshal Tom Chumley said MacDonald, a Green Beret captain at the time of the murders, would remain indefinitely at Terminal Island prison in the Los Angeles harbor area until it is determined where he will serve his murder sentence.
'As bad as I felt about the Supreme Court decision, I was absolutely devastated to think a judge in North Carolina should presume to make a decision to revoke bail without allowing us to be heard,' Segal said.
Segal said U.S. District Judge Franklin Dupree Jr. revoked the bail.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down a ruling that had found MacDonald was denied his right to a speedy trial because five years had lapsed between the time of his arrest by the Army in 1970 and his indictment by a federal grand jury in 1975.
MacDonald steadfastly maintained his innocence through the long years of court battles. He claimed claimed drug-crazed hippies burst into his Fayetteville, N.C., home and stabbed his family to death in the early morning hours of Feb. 17, 1970. MacDonald sustained stab wounds, including one that collapsed his right lung.
MacDonald was convicted by a federal jury in Raleigh, N.C., and sentenced to three consecutive life terms for the murders of his pregnant wife, Collette, and young daughters, Kristen and Kimberly.
