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Dr Sam Sheppard: Did the doctor do it?

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Legal caseHis wife was dead upstairs, but did Dr Sam have blood on his hands?

THE STORY SO FAR

When his pregnant wife was murdered, Dr Sam Sheppard told the police a mysterious intruder had done it. But was he lying?


THE CASE

It was 3 July 1954, a sultry evening in Bay Village, Cleveland, Ohio. Marilyn Sheppard, 31, was pregnant with her second child, and worn out with it.

Her husband, Sam, 30, was exhausted by his work. Known as ‘Dr Sam’, to distinguish him from the other doctors in the family – Dad Richard and brothers Richard and Stephen – he helped run an osteopathic hospital. While Sam was listed as a neurosurgeon, he was also skilled at emergency care.

And, even though his work had drained him, Sam told his wife and their house guests of that evening about the little boy whose life he’d tried to save the day before, after a car crash.

The guests left and, by midnight, Sam was asleep on the daybed downstairs. Marilyn went up to bed, where the couple’s 7-year-old son was already asleep.

But at 5.40am next morning, a frantic Sam phoned his friend, local mayor Spencer Houk.

‘My God, Spence, get over here quick!’ he cried. ‘I think they’ve killed Marilyn!’

When Spencer got there minutes later, he found his friend wandering around the house, shirtless and very confused.

‘I heard a noise upstairs,’ he gasped. ‘I went up, and…’

He told Spencer how he’d found a man with a bushy beard attacking his wife. The men had fought and Sam had chased off the attacker. But Sam had been knocked out.

He’d said he’d come round about an hour later, to find Marilyn’s dead body in a pool of blood on the bed. He ran to the next room and found their son still sleeping soundly.

‘I’d heard her shout “Sam!”’ he sobbed to Houk.

‘I think it was a robbery…’

There were signs of a scuffle in the bedroom. Sam’s medical bag was upturned, his drawers pulled open – had Marilyn disturbed an intruder?

Sam was taken to hospital, and his son to one of his uncle’s houses.

And the police started their investigation.

Local papers lapped up the sensational story. Doctor’s Wife Is Murdered; Beaten, He Tells of Fight With Intruder, read one headline. Doctor’s Wife Murdered In Bay; Drug Thieves Suspected in Bludgeoning, ran another.

The Sheppards were young, good-looking. The story was a news editor’s dream.

But was it no more than that – a story?

Had Sam Sheppard lied about what had happened in the small hours of that July day? The police had doubts about what he’d told them.

Marilyn had been found face-up in bed, her breasts and pubic area exposed. Dozens of deep gashes ran across her face.

Blood was spattered over the walls of the bedroom. But there was little missing from Sam’s overturned doctor’s bag. The desk drawers had been pulled out neatly and there was no sign of forced entry to the house.

Suspicions soon fell on Sam Sheppard himself.

He hadn’t been able to give investigators a good description of the bearded intruder. And he couldn’t say what had happened to his shirt.

Had he murdered his wife Marilyn?

‘I loved my wife,’ Sam cried, when police interviewed him.

Sam certainly had opportunity to murder Marilyn. But detectives were about to turn up something even more damning. Friends said that the couple were deeply in love, but rumours said otherwise.

A college classmate of Sheppard’s, had recently been a house guest of the couple. He testified Sheppard had told him he was thinking of divorcing Marilyn.

And then there was the matter of Sam’s affair with a nurse, Susan Hayes. A matter Sam denied.

‘We were nothing more than good friends,’ he insisted.

But, when Susan Hayes was questioned, she claimed rumours of an affair were true.

Sam was arrested and, five months later, went to court for the murder of his wife. The trial lasted six weeks.

Now it was time for the jury to decide – had Marilyn been murdered by a bearded intruder or was Sam Sheppard lying?

Had the doctor killed his wife in the hope of a new life with the nurse who might have been his lover?

Now go to page 2 for the verdict

The post Dr Sam Sheppard: Did the doctor do it? appeared first on Chat.


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