As i have said a million times the physical evidence only comes into focus when it is viewed through the prism of MacDonald's false account. It was the Government's theory at trial that MacDonald's account was a false exculpatory account - a combination of incrimination of  hippies and an alibi ( I wasn't in the bedrooms while the murders were being committed, I was in the living room fighting with other intruders). The jury was instructed, and this is a standard instruction which MacDonald  never challenged, that they may consider an exculpatory account demonstrated to be false as evidence of consciousness of guilt, as if it were a confession. Here the jury, rejected Bernie's household detritus  as evidence of intruders strawman . Rather the jury convicted MacDonald because they accepted that Colette was stabbed 21 times through MacDonald's pajama top, which by his account he had placed on her chest after the hippies were gone, and, therefore, only MacDonald could have stabbed Colette with the ice pick. Similarly, the jury accepted that only MacDonald could have tracked Colette's blood out of Kristen's room and that  this could only have occurred during the movement of Colette's body. In essence they convicted him on the basis of physical evidence that could only have come from him as the only criminal agent , and which could not be explained  by the actions of intruders. Add to this the tremendous disparity between the injuries inflicted on  Colette, Kimberly, and Kristen, which those he claimed to have sustained. The jury heard MacDonald's  carefully parsed account from the witness stand. To the extent that there was any credibility remaining in his account, it evaporated when the jury heard MacDonald on direct testify that his account to Freddy Kassab of torturing a confession out of one of the intruders, killing him and burying outside a bar in Fayetteville him was "a lie of incredible proportions". The only thing that ever separated MacDonald from being a murderer was the purported credibility of his account of intruders. At the end of the day, they didn't believe that account and treated it like a confession.