Jack Kelly writer
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THE SAM SHEPPARD CASE
(AmericanHeritage.com, November 16, 2006)
Forty years ago today, Dr. Sam Sheppard carried an
unloaded pistol in his pocket as he awaited the verdict in his
second trial for having allegedly bludgeoned his wife to
death. If convicted again, he planned to pull out the empty
gun and die in the resulting fusillade from courtroom guards.
Having spent 10 years behind bars, he said, “I wasn’t going
back.”
His case has been called “the country’s most enduring
murder mystery.” With its elements of wealth, violence, sex,
conflicting stories, and dramatic reversals, it riveted the
nation in the 1950s in a way that would not be repeated until
the O. J. Simpson trial 40 years later.
On the evening of July 3, 1954, Sam and Marilyn Sheppard
had dinner with a neighbor couple. Everything seemed
normal in their suburban home, which sat on the shore of
Lake Erie west of Cleveland. After dinner Dr. Sam, as he was
called, dozed off on a downstairs couch. His wife, four months
pregnant, and their seven-year-old son Chip slept upstairs.
At 5:40 a.m., Sheppard called a neighbor, Spencer Houk, the
mayor of the small community, and said, “I think they’ve killed
Marilyn.” Houk hurried to the house and found Marilyn
Sheppard half naked, her head severely beaten. Blood was
sprayed over the walls of the bedroom. Sam was shirtless,
his pants soaking wet, the side of his face bruised.
When the police arrived, he told them he had awakened to
hear his wife crying for help. Running upstairs, he had seen
the form of a man, who knocked him unconscious. He had
come to, heard someone downstairs, and chased a man out
of the house and down to the shore. There he had grappled
with a “bushy-haired intruder” and again been knocked out.
Regaining consciousness to find himself lying partly in the
water, he had returned to the house and called for help.
The investigation was quickly taken over by the county
coroner, Dr. Samuel Gerber. Having looked over the scene,
Gerber stated, “It’s obvious that the doctor did it.” He told
detectives to go to the hospital where Sheppard had been
taken and get a confession.
Gerber jumped to his conclusion for two reasons. First, it was
standard practice in domestic killings to target the husband.
Sheppard was at the scene of the murder and his story
sounded unlikely, so he automatically became the prime
suspect. Second, Gerber disliked the Sheppard family. Sam
and his two brothers and father were all doctors of
osteopathy, and they ran a 100-bed hospital. Gerber had
earlier vowed, “I’m going to get them someday.” Traditional
medical practitioners disdained osteopaths, the only other
physicians licensed to practice medicine and surgery.
Osteopaths took an idiosyncratic approach to health, basing
treatments in part on manipulation of the spine and other
bones.
Cleveland newspaper editors, who initially speculated that a
jewel thief or drug addict might be the culprit, quickly came to
share Gerber’s suspicion. Reports that Sheppard had hired a
defense lawyer were offered as evidence of his guilt. The
papers began to press the authorities for action. Headlines
like “Someone Is Getting Away with Murder” helped turn
public sympathy against the doctor.
Gerber finally held an inquest in a school gymnasium. More
than two hundred spectators, mostly housewives, filled the
seats. They laughed and hooted at testimony and cheered
when Gerber had Sheppard’s lawyer removed for trying to
have the outbursts noted in the record. Gerber questioned
Dr. Sam for five hours with no legal counsel present.
Sheppard unwisely testified that he was not a philanderer,
but prosecutors were able to produce a female lab technician
who swore otherwise. While the doctor’s love life fascinated
the public, no one could explain its relevance. Why would a
past affair provoke him to kill his wife?
After a process more salacious than forensic, Gerber issued
a “coroner’s verdict” that asserted that “the injuries that
caused this death were inflicted by her husband.” His
evidence for this conclusion? The unlikelihood of Sheppard’s
story, his failure to cooperate with police, and the fact that he
had “called in two lawyers.”
By July 30 the Cleveland Press, the most rabid of the local
papers, was demanding in a front-page editorial, “Quit
Stalling and Bring Him In!” That night, Sheppard was arrested.
Reporters traveled from all over the country to cover the trial.
Before the proceedings began, the trial judge startled the
popular newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen by telling her,
“He’s guilty as hell. There is no question about it.” The
investigation had been plagued by oversights. The press was
allowed to tramp through the murder scene; clues were
overlooked; examination of blood evidence was haphazard;
few fingerprints were taken.
The trial itself was a travesty. Prospective jurors’ names,
addresses, and pictures were printed in newspapers long
before they could be warned to avoid publicity. After a panel
was chosen, jurors were interviewed and photographed by
reporters. They were never sequestered and were exposed
to the publicity churned up both by local papers and by
national media figures like Walter Winchell. Clevelanders,
one columnist reported, discussed the case with “leer-glinted
eyes” and “drooling lips.”
One telling piece of evidence was the lack of blood on the
suspect. Anyone administering the beating would have been
thoroughly splattered, but Sheppard’s pants showed only a
single spot. Another was the fact that in spite of prosecution
claims that his injuries were fake or self-inflicted, a
neurologist determined they were real. Still another was the
trail of blood drops found through the Sheppard home. There
was evidence that Marilyn had bitten her attacker, yet Sam
had no open wounds that could account for that evidence.
These and other exculpatory facts, combined with the
prosecution’s entirely circumstantial case, called for acquittal.
After a 43-day trial and five days of deliberation, the jury
declared Sheppard guilty of second-degree murder. He was
immediately sentenced to life in prison.
“It was a verdict wrongly arrived at,” Kilgallen wrote, “and
therefore frightening.” Appeals failed. Refusing to confess in
exchange for an early parole, Sheppard remained in the
Ohio penitentiary for almost 10 years.
While he was behind bars, The Fugitive became one of the
most popular shows on television. The series, which ran from
1963 to 1967, featured a Midwestern doctor who was
wrongfully convicted of killing his wife, escaped from custody,
and hunted the real killer, a “one-armed man.” The parallels
to the Sheppard case struck many, though the writer denied
that the Cleveland murder had inspired the story.
In 1962 the young lawyer F. Lee Bailey took on Sheppard’s
case. He contended that publicity had robbed the doctor of a
fair trial. He won his case in federal court two years later. The
state appealed, and the matter reached the United States
Supreme Court in 1966.
In an eight-to-one decision, the high court ruled for Sheppard
and scathingly condemned the “carnival atmosphere” of the
original trial. Ohio prosecutors indicted him again. The
second trial lasted only two weeks and featured half as many
witnesses. Sheppard did not need to pull his pistol. He was
acquitted on November 16, 1966.
No one else was ever charged with the crime. Many,
including Ohio authorities, believed that Sheppard had
gotten off on a technicality. He tried to resume his medical
career, but he remained a notorious figure in Cleveland. Two
botched operations and malpractice suits crippled his ability
to earn a living. A second marriage failed.
In a twist as sad as it was bizarre, he became a professional
wrestler (always athletic, he had wrestled in prison). He wore
a white lab coat into the ring and took the nickname “Killer.”
His life spiraling downward, he drank himself to death in
1970. He was 46.
Even that was not the end. In the 1990s Sheppard’s son,
Samuel Reese Sheppard, sued the state of Ohio for his
father’s wrongful imprisonment. To win his case he had to
prove conclusively that Dr. Sam had been innocent. His
lawyer marshaled DNA evidence that was suggestive but not
decisive. He tried to prove that a window washer who had
worked for the Sheppards was the actual slayer. The man
had later been convicted of another murder and had been
found with two of Marilyn’s rings in his possession. But in
April 2000 the jury in the civil trial refused to declare Sam
Sheppard innocent.
Sheppard’s case stands as an object lesson about the
adversarial system of American courtrooms: Once locked into
a theory of a crime, prosecutors are sometimes more
interested in winning than in achieving justice. Coroner
Gerber’s initial impulse to “get” Sam Sheppard was reflected
in the prosecution of the case through the ensuing decades.
One question remains. In the half century during which the
murder has been talked about, written about, and
adjudicated, no one has answered it definitively: Who killed
Marilyn Sheppard?
# # #
(AmericanHeritage.com, November 16, 2006)
Forty years ago today, Dr. Sam Sheppard carried an
unloaded pistol in his pocket as he awaited the verdict in his
second trial for having allegedly bludgeoned his wife to
death. If convicted again, he planned to pull out the empty
gun and die in the resulting fusillade from courtroom guards.
Having spent 10 years behind bars, he said, “I wasn’t going
back.”
His case has been called “the country’s most enduring
murder mystery.” With its elements of wealth, violence, sex,
conflicting stories, and dramatic reversals, it riveted the
nation in the 1950s in a way that would not be repeated until
the O. J. Simpson trial 40 years later.
On the evening of July 3, 1954, Sam and Marilyn Sheppard
had dinner with a neighbor couple. Everything seemed
normal in their suburban home, which sat on the shore of
Lake Erie west of Cleveland. After dinner Dr. Sam, as he was
called, dozed off on a downstairs couch. His wife, four months
pregnant, and their seven-year-old son Chip slept upstairs.
At 5:40 a.m., Sheppard called a neighbor, Spencer Houk, the
mayor of the small community, and said, “I think they’ve killed
Marilyn.” Houk hurried to the house and found Marilyn
Sheppard half naked, her head severely beaten. Blood was
sprayed over the walls of the bedroom. Sam was shirtless,
his pants soaking wet, the side of his face bruised.
When the police arrived, he told them he had awakened to
hear his wife crying for help. Running upstairs, he had seen
the form of a man, who knocked him unconscious. He had
come to, heard someone downstairs, and chased a man out
of the house and down to the shore. There he had grappled
with a “bushy-haired intruder” and again been knocked out.
Regaining consciousness to find himself lying partly in the
water, he had returned to the house and called for help.
The investigation was quickly taken over by the county
coroner, Dr. Samuel Gerber. Having looked over the scene,
Gerber stated, “It’s obvious that the doctor did it.” He told
detectives to go to the hospital where Sheppard had been
taken and get a confession.
Gerber jumped to his conclusion for two reasons. First, it was
standard practice in domestic killings to target the husband.
Sheppard was at the scene of the murder and his story
sounded unlikely, so he automatically became the prime
suspect. Second, Gerber disliked the Sheppard family. Sam
and his two brothers and father were all doctors of
osteopathy, and they ran a 100-bed hospital. Gerber had
earlier vowed, “I’m going to get them someday.” Traditional
medical practitioners disdained osteopaths, the only other
physicians licensed to practice medicine and surgery.
Osteopaths took an idiosyncratic approach to health, basing
treatments in part on manipulation of the spine and other
bones.
Cleveland newspaper editors, who initially speculated that a
jewel thief or drug addict might be the culprit, quickly came to
share Gerber’s suspicion. Reports that Sheppard had hired a
defense lawyer were offered as evidence of his guilt. The
papers began to press the authorities for action. Headlines
like “Someone Is Getting Away with Murder” helped turn
public sympathy against the doctor.
Gerber finally held an inquest in a school gymnasium. More
than two hundred spectators, mostly housewives, filled the
seats. They laughed and hooted at testimony and cheered
when Gerber had Sheppard’s lawyer removed for trying to
have the outbursts noted in the record. Gerber questioned
Dr. Sam for five hours with no legal counsel present.
Sheppard unwisely testified that he was not a philanderer,
but prosecutors were able to produce a female lab technician
who swore otherwise. While the doctor’s love life fascinated
the public, no one could explain its relevance. Why would a
past affair provoke him to kill his wife?
After a process more salacious than forensic, Gerber issued
a “coroner’s verdict” that asserted that “the injuries that
caused this death were inflicted by her husband.” His
evidence for this conclusion? The unlikelihood of Sheppard’s
story, his failure to cooperate with police, and the fact that he
had “called in two lawyers.”
By July 30 the Cleveland Press, the most rabid of the local
papers, was demanding in a front-page editorial, “Quit
Stalling and Bring Him In!” That night, Sheppard was arrested.
Reporters traveled from all over the country to cover the trial.
Before the proceedings began, the trial judge startled the
popular newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen by telling her,
“He’s guilty as hell. There is no question about it.” The
investigation had been plagued by oversights. The press was
allowed to tramp through the murder scene; clues were
overlooked; examination of blood evidence was haphazard;
few fingerprints were taken.
The trial itself was a travesty. Prospective jurors’ names,
addresses, and pictures were printed in newspapers long
before they could be warned to avoid publicity. After a panel
was chosen, jurors were interviewed and photographed by
reporters. They were never sequestered and were exposed
to the publicity churned up both by local papers and by
national media figures like Walter Winchell. Clevelanders,
one columnist reported, discussed the case with “leer-glinted
eyes” and “drooling lips.”
One telling piece of evidence was the lack of blood on the
suspect. Anyone administering the beating would have been
thoroughly splattered, but Sheppard’s pants showed only a
single spot. Another was the fact that in spite of prosecution
claims that his injuries were fake or self-inflicted, a
neurologist determined they were real. Still another was the
trail of blood drops found through the Sheppard home. There
was evidence that Marilyn had bitten her attacker, yet Sam
had no open wounds that could account for that evidence.
These and other exculpatory facts, combined with the
prosecution’s entirely circumstantial case, called for acquittal.
After a 43-day trial and five days of deliberation, the jury
declared Sheppard guilty of second-degree murder. He was
immediately sentenced to life in prison.
“It was a verdict wrongly arrived at,” Kilgallen wrote, “and
therefore frightening.” Appeals failed. Refusing to confess in
exchange for an early parole, Sheppard remained in the
Ohio penitentiary for almost 10 years.
While he was behind bars, The Fugitive became one of the
most popular shows on television. The series, which ran from
1963 to 1967, featured a Midwestern doctor who was
wrongfully convicted of killing his wife, escaped from custody,
and hunted the real killer, a “one-armed man.” The parallels
to the Sheppard case struck many, though the writer denied
that the Cleveland murder had inspired the story.
In 1962 the young lawyer F. Lee Bailey took on Sheppard’s
case. He contended that publicity had robbed the doctor of a
fair trial. He won his case in federal court two years later. The
state appealed, and the matter reached the United States
Supreme Court in 1966.
In an eight-to-one decision, the high court ruled for Sheppard
and scathingly condemned the “carnival atmosphere” of the
original trial. Ohio prosecutors indicted him again. The
second trial lasted only two weeks and featured half as many
witnesses. Sheppard did not need to pull his pistol. He was
acquitted on November 16, 1966.
No one else was ever charged with the crime. Many,
including Ohio authorities, believed that Sheppard had
gotten off on a technicality. He tried to resume his medical
career, but he remained a notorious figure in Cleveland. Two
botched operations and malpractice suits crippled his ability
to earn a living. A second marriage failed.
In a twist as sad as it was bizarre, he became a professional
wrestler (always athletic, he had wrestled in prison). He wore
a white lab coat into the ring and took the nickname “Killer.”
His life spiraling downward, he drank himself to death in
1970. He was 46.
Even that was not the end. In the 1990s Sheppard’s son,
Samuel Reese Sheppard, sued the state of Ohio for his
father’s wrongful imprisonment. To win his case he had to
prove conclusively that Dr. Sam had been innocent. His
lawyer marshaled DNA evidence that was suggestive but not
decisive. He tried to prove that a window washer who had
worked for the Sheppards was the actual slayer. The man
had later been convicted of another murder and had been
found with two of Marilyn’s rings in his possession. But in
April 2000 the jury in the civil trial refused to declare Sam
Sheppard innocent.
Sheppard’s case stands as an object lesson about the
adversarial system of American courtrooms: Once locked into
a theory of a crime, prosecutors are sometimes more
interested in winning than in achieving justice. Coroner
Gerber’s initial impulse to “get” Sam Sheppard was reflected
in the prosecution of the case through the ensuing decades.
One question remains. In the half century during which the
murder has been talked about, written about, and
adjudicated, no one has answered it definitively: Who killed
Marilyn Sheppard?
# # #