Errol Morris is an American film director of documentaries and former private detective. His documentaries have repeatedly appeared on many ten best lists and have been honored by the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review. Morris has received five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship. His 1998 documentary The Thin Blue Line is considered the best and most influential documentaries ever made. “A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald” reexamines the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret physician accused of killing his wife and two daughters in their Fort Bragg home on February 17, 1970 and convicted on that crime on August 29, 1979. MacDonald has been in federal prison since 1982. A five-part television documentary true crime series based on the book will premiere on FX on Friday September 25, 2020.

In “A Wilderness of Error,” Errol Morris examines the nature of evidence and proof in the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case.  According to amazon, on the morning of February 17, 1970, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Jeffrey MacDonald called the police for help.  When the officers arrived at his home they found the bloody and battered bodies of MacDonald’s pregnant wife and two young daughters. The word “pig” was written in blood on the headboard in the master bedroom. As MacDonald was being loaded into the ambulance, he accused a band of drug-crazed hippies of the crime.

Errol Morris has been investigating the MacDonald case for over twenty years. “A Wilderness of Error” is the culmination of his efforts. It is a shocking book, because it shows that almost everything we have been told about the case is deeply unreliable and crucial elements of the case against MacDonald simply are not true. It is a masterful reinvention of the true-crime thriller, a book that pierces the haze of myth surrounding these murders with the sort of brilliant light that can only be produced by years of dogged and careful investigation and hard, lucid thinking.