In FX's "Wilderness of Error," Errol Morris revisits a 50-year-old murder that's still controversial - Salon

The story of Jeffrey MacDonald has been told over and over again since he was convicted of killing his family 50 years ago.

For years, there were a number of competing narratives that called into question both MacDonald's guilt and innocence — including documentarian Errol Morris' bestselling novel "A Wilderness of Error." .

This is a case that has captured the attention of a lot of high-profile journalists and investigators — Joe McGinnis, Janet Malcolm, Errol Morris, obviously — why do you think that is? .

I think he was intrigued by the same thing that Errol was intrigued by, and Errol only added to this, which is the way in which public opinion was so swayed by narratives in the movie, in the book, in articles.

I met with Errol about it and the first question I asked was, "Why don't you do this?" I mean, he's a great documentary filmmaker, especially with "Thin Blue Line." He's done amazing documentaries about crime and he kind of indicated to me that he had done a book about it and gotten it out of his system.

For whatever reason, he never saw it — people weren't really doing multi-parts when he wrote the book, but it also seemed too big for a movie. .

So, he wrote his book and felt like he had told his story.

So once Marc was interested, I said, "Marc, you've got to talk to Errol about this because he's got a lot more information than what was put in the book." Marc began talking to Errol, and I think it was Marc's idea because Errol was so fascinating on the topic.

Who do you think the audience for this story is now and what do you hope they learn from it? .

I think the audience for true crime tends to skew a little more female and perhaps a little older, and I don't think this will be any different than the general norms for true crime.

It's another take on how the way in which a story is presented — even if you use the facts — but the way you present the facts can very much change public opinion. 

I think there'll be a new audience who has never heard about this crime, never heard of anything to do with it, and they'll learn about how the story of that crime was told over the years by different people in different forms: books, articles, movies,  documentaries

And how each time the story is told, public opinion has shifted a certain degree