Free Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives by Marilee Strong Page B

kids were virtual nonentities to them. Perhaps a
    child is the biggest threat imaginable to narcissistic men because they
    don’t want to share. They want to remain the center of attention.
    They want to be in control. They are like children themselves in their
    selfishness and grandiose sense of entitlement.

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E R A S E D
    Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonald, very much a narcissist in
    the Scott Peterson mold, seems to have been motivated by the same
    desire as Peterson for a free and unencumbered life when he killed
    his pregnant wife, Colette, and their two small children in their home
    on the Fort Bragg Army base in North Carolina in 1970.
    To this day he maintains that a gang of ‘‘drug-crazed hippies’’
    stabbed him and butchered and bludgeoned to death the rest of
    his family in a satanic rampage reminiscent of the Manson Family
    killings. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi believes that MacDonald staged
    the scene himself based on an Esquire magazine article on the
    Tate-LaBianca killings that was found inside the home—down to
    scrawling the word ‘‘pig’’ in Colette’s blood on the headboard of their
    bed as the Manson Family members did with actress Sharon Tate’s
    blood on the front door of her Los Angeles house.
    Although Colette’s family supported their son-in-law through a
    military inquest at which he was acquitted, forensic findings later
    convinced them of his guilt, and his wife’s stepfather hounded the
    Department of Justice until MacDonald was tried again and convicted
    in federal court.
    During the dozen years between the crime and MacDonald’s
    imprisonment for three life terms, the doctor completely transformed
    his lifestyle from dependable soldier and humble family man to
    swinging hedonist. Working in the private sector but free of medical
    school debts due to his military service, his income skyrocketed. He
    moved three thousand miles away to Southern California, bought a
    $350,000 beachfront condo, a Maserati, and a thirty-foot yacht, and
    dated a bevy of beautiful women—enjoying precisely the kind of
    lifestyle Scott Peterson probably imagined for himself after he got rid
    of his inconvenient wife and child.
    As little feeling as Scott seemed to have about his ‘‘missing’’
    wife, he had even less concern about his unborn son, whom he and
    his wife had decided to name Conner. I don’t believe Peterson felt
    anything for his son except for the pressure of a ticking clock as
    his birth drew near. In every interview he gave to reporters after
    Laci’s disappearance, he had to be prompted even to mention his
    unborn son. In his taped conversations with Amber, he never refers
    to Conner as his baby, only as ‘‘Laci’s baby.’’
    Even when Amber asks him directly if Conner is his child, he
    refuses to say. I believe he did not think of the baby as his, but
    not because he thought Laci was cheating on him or that anyone

    The Dark Triad
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    else could have been Conner’s father. He simply felt no emotional
    attachment whatsoever to his child.
    In reality, Scott Peterson was a fertilizer salesman with a glorified
    title who was running a failing start-up business that was not per-forming up to the expectations of the parent company. He was living
    in humble Modesto in a modest home, a married man with a baby
    on the way. With that baby would come a new set of responsibilities,
    new demands on his time, and an inevitable change in lifestyle, which
    was contrary to every fantasy he had of his life.
    In his mind, he was someone very different. A star golfer. A
    successful entrepreneur with a collection of homes and condos. A
    footloose, irresistible ladies’ man. A guy who could swan around
    Europe, partying with imaginary French friends, who could pick up
    his life at a moment’s notice and do as he pleased, as he portrayed
    himself to Amber, and who could expect that woman to trust him
    implicitly even if he lied to her about everything that mattered.
    He could