Fatal Vision

WILMINGTON, N.C. - Jeffrey MacDonald, a Green beret doctor convicted of the 1970 killings of his pregnant wife and two young daughters, was back in federal court Monday for a hearing on new evidence his lawyer says will prove that MacDonald is innocent. MacDonald, now 68, was granted the hearing based on defense contentions that newly tested DNA points to other suspects, and that sworn statements by a former federal marshal will show that prosecutors threatened a crucial witness whose testimony could have exonerated MacDonald.

Jeffrey MacDonald, Green Beret officer and physician, and Joe McGinniss, best-selling author, were constant companions in the summer of 1979, when MacDonald was on trial for killing his wife and two young daughters and McGinniss was researching a book on the murders. They lived together in a North Carolina fraternity house, with the rest of MacDonald's defense team, they often jogged together after court sessions and they commiserated together about the indignity of it all: the all-American soldier and family man on trial for murder.

Will every government program that has anything to do with sex get entangled in the social conservatives' domestic agenda? If that's the case, say a prayer for the millions more in Africa and the Caribbean who will die from AIDS. If a faction in Congress had its druthers, anti-AIDS money would be steered away from the groups that are effective but advocate methods that some conservatives find morally objectionable. What methods? Just about anything other than abstinence and fidelity.

After nearly six weeks, a federal court jury began deliberations yesterday on a $15 million fraud suit against author Joe McGinniss in a test that could establish new ground rules for American nonfiction writing. McGinniss is being sued for fraud and breach of contract over his best- selling book Fatal Vision, about Jeffrey MacDonald, an Army physician who was convicted in 1979 of killing his wife and two children at their Fort Bragg, N.C., home in 1970. "A verdict for MacDonald would be a verdict for censorship," McGinniss' attorney, Daniel Kornstein, said in a fervent closing argument.

On the surface, it appeared that Robert O. Marshall had it made: big house, big car, big-shot friends, a prosperous business, a beautiful wife and three fine sons. But beneath the veneer of success, Robert Marshall had problems. Two of his sons would soon be in college. His fondness for Atlantic City casinos had plunged him into debt. His socialite girlfriend wanted him to leave his family for her. And his wife, suspicious of the affair, had hired a private eye to tail him. How Marshall faced his problems, or whether he had a hand in trying to solve them at all, has scandalized his town, Toms River, N.J., for more than a year.

Saharra Fleming's world went blurry as she walked down the aisle in Willingboro High School's auditorium. Swaying, the senior almost landed in another student's lap. Senior Omari Allison tried to high-five a buddy. He missed. And classmate Travis Francis, groping on all fours for a set of keys, came up empty. "They weren't there - they went through my hands," the senior explained. They felt drunk. Or at least, they looked and acted as if they were drunk while wearing Fatal Vision, a set of silver goggles designed to simulate a 0.17 percent blood-alcohol level.

Prime time is unusually heavy tonight, what with a repeat of Fatal Vision, the premiere of a controversial telemovie and a surprising guest star on CBS's Cagney & Lacey. For mindless fluff, though, there's Supermodel of the World. EVENING HIGHLIGHTS SUPERMODEL OF THE WORLD (8 p.m., Ch. 29) - No, this isn't a TV show about a giant globe. It's a live competition in which women from 22 countries compete for a $250,000 modeling contract. America's representative will be chosen during the show's first half by viewers, who will phone in (for 50 cents a call)

Convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald is entitled to only $50,000 of a $325,000 settlement received from the author of a best-selling book about MacDonald, a California judge ruled yesterday. The rest of the money is to go to MacDonald's lawyer and to the two elderly grandmothers of MacDonald's murdered children. This latest chapter in the seemingly endless legal battles surrounding MacDonald was played out in a cramped prison conference room. Both grandmothers, aging and ill, were seated just feet from the man whom one of them despises as a killer and the other loves as a wrongly convicted son. MacDonald, a former Green Beret surgeon, was convicted in 1979 of the 1970 stabbing deaths of his wife and two daughters in Fort Bragg, N.C. "It's ridiculous that he should get any money for killing three people," said an angry Mildred Kassab, 72, the mother of MacDonald's wife, Colette, and grandmother of the MacDonalds' daughters.

A child actress who played a daughter of killer Jeffrey McDonald in the television movie "Fatal Vision" was shot to death with her mother and burned in an apparent murder-suicide by the girl's father, police said. Three bodies were found yesterday in the fire-damaged home of Jozsef and Maria Barsi, whose only child, Judith, 11, also starred the movie "Jaws IV: The Revenge" as well as numerous television shows and about 50 commercials. Coroner's officials identified the dead man as Jozsef Barsi, 55. Barsi, a self-employed plumber, apparently shot and killed his 48-year-old wife, Maria, and his daughter in the house, doused their bodies with gasoline and set them on fire before going to the garage and shooting himself in the head with a .32-caliber pistol, investigators said.

WILMINGTON, N.C. - Jeffrey MacDonald, a Green beret doctor convicted of the 1970 killings of his pregnant wife and two young daughters, was back in federal court Monday for a hearing on new evidence his lawyer says will prove that MacDonald is innocent. MacDonald, now 68, was granted the hearing based on defense contentions that newly tested DNA points to other suspects, and that sworn statements by a former federal marshal will show that prosecutors threatened a crucial witness whose testimony could have exonerated MacDonald.

IT DIDN'T HAVE to end like this. It shouldn't have ended like this. Arturo "Thunder" Gatti, perhaps the most beloved boxer ever to have plied his trade in Atlantic City, is dead at 37 - possibly at the hand of his wife. "An unspeakable tragedy," Gatti's longtime promoter, Kathy Duva, said. "It's a horror. " Added Ken Condon, the Harrah's Entertainment Consultant who kept bringing the hugely popular Gatti back to Boardwalk Hall: "I don't think we'll ever have a fighter like Arturo Gatti here again.

Will every government program that has anything to do with sex get entangled in the social conservatives' domestic agenda? If that's the case, say a prayer for the millions more in Africa and the Caribbean who will die from AIDS. If a faction in Congress had its druthers, anti-AIDS money would be steered away from the groups that are effective but advocate methods that some conservatives find morally objectionable. What methods? Just about anything other than abstinence and fidelity.

It has been the subject of three decades of court proceedings, two books, and a mini-series. But as early as next month, the long, twisting case of Jeffrey MacDonald - the Army surgeon serving three life sentences for killing his wife and two daughters in 1970 - will be played out yet again in perhaps its most important venue: a DNA laboratory. After a two-year legal fight, lawyers for MacDonald this spring won the right to extensive DNA testing on hair and other samples that were culled from the crime scene in North Carolina - and locked away for nearly 20 years.

I can think of no finer wedding toast than this: "May you or yours never be the subjects of a made-for-TV movie. " The words "based on a true story" may be magnets for an audience that can't seem to get enough of other people's tragedies, but seeing those stories played out for other people's entertainment can't be anything but painful for those who lived them. Starting Sunday, a notorious Philadelphia case - the 1977 murder of Holly Maddux by hippie guru Ira Einhorn, who became an international fugitive - gets the four-hour miniseries treatment in NBC's "The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer.

Saharra Fleming's world went blurry as she walked down the aisle in Willingboro High School's auditorium. Swaying, the senior almost landed in another student's lap. Senior Omari Allison tried to high-five a buddy. He missed. And classmate Travis Francis, groping on all fours for a set of keys, came up empty. "They weren't there - they went through my hands," the senior explained. They felt drunk. Or at least, they looked and acted as if they were drunk while wearing Fatal Vision, a set of silver goggles designed to simulate a 0.17 percent blood-alcohol level.

Death row inmate Robert Marshall testified yesterday that his attorney didn't adequately represent him when he was convicted eight years ago of having his wife killed at a Garden State Parkway rest stop. Not only did Cherry Hill lawyer Glenn Zeitz not do a good job, he lied as well, the Toms River man claimed in Atlantic County Superior Court in a hearing that he hopes will lead to a new trial. Marshall said Zeitz did not tell the truth when he testified here Tuesday and earlier this month that he had prepared properly for the six-week murder case that spawned a bestseller and television movie.

Joe McGinniss was a young newspaperman in Philadelphia when he began the book that made him famous. "The Selling of the President 1968" took a long, sobering pass at Richard Nixon and the image makers who invented his persona. The book was distinguished not so much by profundity or its writing, but by the meticulous and tireless nature of its reporting. McGinniss had managed to ingratiate himself with the Nixon people and had been given amazing access to his subjects. I am thinking now of one evening when I saw McGinniss on TV after the publication of "The Selling of the President.

Screenwriters get their ideas in strange places and sometimes by taking a fresh look at the most famous court cases. Meredith Baer, whose script for Nothing but the Truth will be filmed by Constantin Costa-Gavras, says the inspiration for her thriller came from the Fatal Vision murder case. Author Joe McGinniss initially contacted Jeffrey MacDonald with the idea of proving him innocent in the murder of his family but wound up asserting the physician's guilt. The book became a bestseller and a hit mini-series.

In the communist world, they used to be vilified as a capitalist money- making machine. But now, the Rolling Stones are as much in fashion as democracy and profit in the Eastern bloc. During the weekend, the Stones attracted a crowd of 110,100 who braved a summer downpour in Prague to hear the band belt out "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and other rock classics. "What's a little acid rain between friends," quipped lead singer Mick Jagger. Shortly before the performance, the Stones were received by Czech President Vaclav Havel at Hradcany castle.