since been discharged, the citizen's complaint was declared moot. The FBI refused to take on the case. Legal maneuvers Between 1972 and 1974, the case remained trapped in limbo in the Department of Justice as legal issues were raised and debated over whether sufficient evidence and probable cause existed for indictment and prosecution. On April 30, 1974, the Kassabs, their attorney, Richard Cahn, and CID agent Peter Kearns presented a citizen's complaint against MacDonald to US Chief District Court Judge Algernon Butler, requesting the convening of a grand jury to indict MacDonald for the murders. The following month, Justice Department attorney Victor Woerheide ruled the case worthy of prosecution. Grand jury On August 12, 1974, a grand jury convened before U.S. District Judge Franklin Dupree in Raleigh, North Carolina, to hear the legal proceedings. Seventy-five witnesses were called to testify. MacDonald was the first individual to testify at this hearing. His testimony lasted five days, during which he conceded that although he had publicly resolved to pursue all legal avenues following the 1970 dismissal of the murder charges against him, and to hire investigators, he had failed to do so. Nonetheless, he was adamant he had made his own efforts to identify the perpetrators and to locate Helena Stoeckley. He also claimed the numerous fabrications he had provided to the Kassabs and to sections of the media in the intervening years were to placate his in-laws, and that he had received more stab and puncture wounds to his body than recorded in contemporary medical records (which he blamed on malpractice). When asked by Victor Woerheide if he would submit to either a polygraph or sodium amytal test to verify his version of events, MacDonald read a statement prepared by his attorneys denying their request. Other witnesses to testify included surgeons on duty at Womack Hospital who had examined MacDonald and who testified that, aside from his punctured lung, MacDonald was "not in any great danger, medically", and that, save for a superficial stab wound to his upper left arm and abdomen, MacDonald had no other stab wounds to his body. A reporter who had covered the Article 32 hearing and who interviewed MacDonald after the charges were dropped also stated that, in his experience, individuals under the influence of LSD seldom become violent and that, by contrast, those who consume amphetamines frequently do. On December 12, a former chief of