ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 21, 1996 TAG: 9604230009
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SHARON COHEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
He slept through his mother's murder. Then, the nightmares came.
The little boy was tormented by harrowing images of his father - or himself - strapped in an electric chair. He believed he should die. ``It was my fault,'' he thought, ``that my mother was killed.''
This was Sam Reese Sheppard's childhood.
On a July morning in Ohio nearly 42 years ago, the 7-year-old was awakened and hustled down the hall past the bedroom where his pregnant mother lay dead, her face and hands bloodied, her skull fractured, her nose broken from a frenzied struggle.
His mother's slaying was horrible enough. But there was more: His father, Dr. Sam Sheppard, was charged with delivering the 35 vicious blows that killed Marilyn Sheppard. It was one of the most spectacular crimes - and one of the most sensational trials - of the buttoned-down 1950s.
Sheppard was convicted and imprisoned nearly 10 years before the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark decision, ruled that reckless media coverage had violated his rights. A second trial ended in acquittal.
The doctor regained his freedom, but couldn't rebuild his life. To some, he was the man who had gotten away with murder. His drinking escalated, his medical career collapsed and he died at age 46.
Now, 26 years later, Sheppard's 48-year-old son has set out to clear his father's name. He knows many authorities in Ohio remain convinced the doctor was not a wronged man; they believe all the signs point to him as the only possible killer.
But with new DNA testing techniques, old evidence and a possible suspect - an imprisoned murderer - Sheppard hopes to prove his father was unjustly incarcerated.
``This is not just some horrible little homicide that we can turn the rock over and forget,'' he says. ``Our family doesn't deserve to live in perpetuity with this wrongful conviction.''
``It's my obligation,'' Sheppard says, ``to pursue the truth and set the record straight.''
Before O.J. Simpson, there was Doctor Sam.
The Sheppard case didn't have the glamour of a famous athlete or glitz of California life-in-the-fast-lane, but it had all the tantalizing tabloid ingredients: a murder mystery; a handsome, pipe-smoking osteopath from a respected medical family; a mistress who had sex with him in his green Jaguar; and a brash young lawyer with blazing ambition - F. Lee Bailey, who, 30 years later, stood by Simpson's side.
It sounds like a Hollywood plot and, ultimately, it helped shape one: The Sheppard saga supposedly inspired ``The Fugitive'' TV series (later a movie).
``People have made millions of dollars, literally, over the bodies of my dead loved ones,'' Sheppard says with an edge to his voice.
These days, Sheppard, a Buddhist, anti-death penalty activist and unemployed dental hygienist, lives sparely in a rooming house in Oakland, Calif. A bachelor with closely cropped sandy-graying hair, blue eyes concealed by tinted glasses and an affinity for plain, dark clothes, he has long resigned himself to his notorious name.
``I never have and never will deny the connection, however much it hurts,'' he says. At times, he notes, people have blurted out: ``Are you the doctor who killed his wife? ... It has made it extremely difficult socially over the years.''
But he has gone public to lobby for his father in a legal campaign waged 2,150 miles away in a Cleveland court; the Sheppards had lived in suburban Bay Village.
Sheppard's attorney, Terry Gilbert, has won court permission to examine old files, autopsy reports, hair and other evidence and is focusing on one suspect: Richard Eberling, a murderer who washed windows in the Sheppard home.
``Our main goal is to exclude Dr. Sheppard as the perpetrator of the crime,'' Gilbert says.
He hopes to use DNA techniques not available 42 years ago to test a single drop of blood preserved from the crime scene to see if it matches a blood sample recently taken from Eberling.
Police never typed the trail of blood at the scene, but a defense criminalist at the second trial testified the pattern of the drops fits a bleeding person - not drops from a weapon or clothing. Dr. Sheppard had no open wounds.
What makes this quest unusual is that a top member of the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office - which tried Dr. Sheppard twice - believes the doctor was innocent.
``I don't think he killed his wife,'' says Carmen Marino, an assistant prosecutor. ``He was not prone to violence. You'd have to believe ... he batters his wife to death in the room next to where the child is sleeping. That's asking a lot.''
Despite that, Marino's office opposes Sheppard's claims.
``It's too old to make a conclusion,'' he says. ``I don't think there's enough evidence to declare anybody innocent.''
If a judge declares Dr. Sheppard innocent, his son could file a civil suit seeking millions of dollars for wrongful incarceration.
But others believe that's highly unlikely.
``There isn't anything that prosecutors haven't known for 30, 40 years,'' says David Doughten, a Cleveland attorney for Eberling, who declined to be interviewed.
Doughten says Eberling did not kill Marilyn Sheppard; he argues the son's campaign is a ploy to drum up interest in a book he recently co-authored.
``This is preposterous,'' Doughten says. ``It's good for publicity.''
Ohio Judge Michael Corrigan, whose father, John, prosecuted the second case and now suffers from Alzheimer's disease, agrees.
``This case has been visited and revisited every four or five years since 1954,'' Corrigan says. ``From the perspective of access, motivation, ability committed the murder.''
Sam Reese Sheppard, called ``Chip'' as a boy, still has fond childhood memories: learning to swim, talks with his dad, and walks with his mother along the beach of Lake Erie, in back of their Dutch Colonial home atop a bluff in Bay Village.
All that was shattered Independence Day 1954, with his 31-year-old mother dead and his father the suspect.
His father told police he had been napping downstairs in the predawn hours when he heard his wife's desperate cries - ``Sam! Sam!'' He said he ran up the stairs and was knocked out from behind. When he came to, he said, Marilyn Sheppard was dead, her pajamas were pulled above her breasts and below her knees.
After hearing a sound downstairs, the doctor said he saw a figure running toward the lake, gave chase and struggled with the man until he was knocked out again on the beach. He described the assailant as a ``bushy-haired intruder'' - which later became a one-armed man on ``The Fugitive.''
Police were suspicious: There were no signs of forced entry, the doctor wasn't wearing a T-shirt he had on that night, he refused to take a lie detector test and he was caught lying about an extramarital affair.
The media pounced fast with accusatory headlines: ``Quit Stalling - Bring Him In,'' ``Why Isn't Sam Sheppard In Jail?'' ``Getting Away With Murder.''
His son, who had moved in with an aunt and uncle, was shielded from much of that - he didn't even attend his mother's funeral to avoid cameras in his face. But he still remembers catcalls in school and elderly women ``who would just grab this poor little orphan waif and cry and slobber over me.''
Dr. Sheppard's nine-week trial captivated the nation as prosecutors tore into his vague account. The coroner said Marilyn Sheppard probably was killed with a surgical instrument, but none was ever found. And there was conflicting testimony about whether Dr. Sheppard's wounds were superficial - and self-inflicted - or serious.
He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Within less than a month, he faced even more devastating news: His mother shot herself to death and his father died. And in 1963, Marilyn Sheppard's father fatally shot himself.
Dr. Sheppard served nearly 10 years in prison before a judge freed him, saying he was denied a fair trial.
Two days later, he married a flamboyant German divorcee he had been corresponding with while in prison, whose stepsister was married to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Two years later, in 1966, the Supreme Court ruled Dr. Sheppard's trial was tainted by ``massive, pervasive, prejudicial publicity'' and that the news media created a ``carnival'' atmosphere in court.
Jurors, for example, were not sequestered and there were numerous false media reports, including one by Walter Winchell that a woman arrested in New York was Dr. Sheppard's mistress and had his illegitimate child.
In his second trial, Dr. Sheppard, represented by Bailey, was acquitted.
But prison had taken its toll.
``He walked and talked and dressed like a convict,'' his son recalls. ``He was this crude, weightlifting guy who thought in kind of devious ways.''
Still, he says, father and son sustained one another.
``Dad would not have survived if he hadn't had a son,'' he says. ``If he had been executed, certainly I wouldn't have survived. ''
Dr. Sheppard fought to win his medical license back, but soon there were malpractice suits, a failing marriage and, in the end, a shabby practice in a motel.
``It was just kind of a cruel joke,'' Sheppard says. ``He knew a lot of people were just seeing him as some curiosity.''
Dr. Sheppard, who began drinking heavily, took up wrestling, adopting the name `Killer Sheppard.'
``That was kind of an act of despair, cynicism,'' says his son, who recalls his father visiting him in college in Boston, his life's possessions jammed in a car.
``I wished that I could offer him to move in with me,'' Sheppard says. ``He was just so notorious and brought in so much heat that we really couldn't live together. That was excruciating. I reached the point where I had to protect myself from him for my future.''
Shortly after, his father told him: ```I'm going to be dead soon. I don't have anything to live for.'''
``I agreed,'' Sheppard says. ``His self-respect was gone. His spirit was finally broken.''
Sam Holmes Sheppard died in 1970. His son did not attend his funeral, to avoid the media's ``shark frenzy.'' But he visited his gravesite later. The initials V.Q.P. - Latin for Vincit Qui Patitur - are etched on the tombstone. Father and son had signed their letters to each other that way.
It means ``He Who Endures Conquers.''
A single drop of blood on a wood chip taken from the third basement stair.
Chisel marks on a door.
A murderer with detailed knowledge of the Sheppard home.
Cynthia Cooper, a journalist who co-authored ``Mockery of Justice: The True Story of the Sam Sheppard Case'' with the doctor's son, thinks these are pieces of a puzzle that could vindicate him.
Cooper accumulated 20 cartons and 2,000 computer files of material in six years of research. She and Sheppard also enlisted the help of AMSEC, a private Virginia-based investigative agency that interviewed witnesses and prepared a 170-page report that concluded Eberling was the No. 1 suspect.
``The evidence can only point you toward him,'' says Don Lowers, AMSEC's chairman.
It's true Richard Eberling has a troubled past.
In 1989, he was convicted of murdering and forging the will of Ethel Durkin, a wealthy widow who left him about $750,000. Her 1984 death was ruled an accidental fall but, after her body was exhumed, it was determined she had been struck in the head.
In a strange twist, one of Durkin's sisters was beaten to death in bed - similarly to Marilyn Sheppard. That case was never solved.
Cooper conducted 10 interviews and exchanged dozens of letters about the Sheppard case with the imprisoned Eberling. ``He started making a lot of bizarre statements indicating he had pretty personal knowledge about the murder and details other people didn't have,'' she says.
He once told her: ``The Sheppard answer is in front of the entire world. Nobody bothered to look.''
Cooper says he also told her the murderer was a woman Marilyn Sheppard knew - the same story he told Sheppard's son when they met in 1990.
Doughten scoffs at his client's accounts. ``He's an old guy,'' the lawyer says. ``He loves the attention.''
But this isn't the first time Eberling's name has surfaced in the murder. He was questioned in 1959 when he was arrested for stealing jewelry from homes, including rings identified as belonging to Marilyn Sheppard. It was determined they were taken from the home of Richard Sheppard, the doctor's brother.
Eberling told police then that he had cut his finger and dripped blood at Sam Sheppard's home while washing windows four days before the murder. He passed a lie detector test. (Cooper says the validity of that test was discounted in the late 1980s.)
One of Eberling's workers also contradicted his story, telling Dr. Sheppard's son in 1990 that he - not his boss - washed windows at the home that day.
Even if scientific tests determine Eberling's blood matches the spot on the wood, Doughten, his attorney, says that proves nothing because the evidence was in the Sheppard family's possession for decades and there's no way to determine it wasn't contaminated.
``No court is ever going to admit this,'' he says.
But Cooper says this case doesn't turn on blood alone. She says a source gave her a police report the defense didn't receive originally that suggested a fresh tool mark on the basement door at the Sheppard home - contradicting the prosecution argument that there was no break-in.
And a second former Eberling worker also told an AMSEC investigator Marilyn Sheppard had caught Eberling trying to steal.
Marino, the current prosecutor, rejects suggestions authorities botched the investigation, but says ``there was too much pressure on them to focus on one person only. Other suspects that would be looked at today were ignored.''
As for Eberling, Marino says his ``mental aberrations certainly make him a strong suspect.''
Though Marino believes Dr. Sheppard was innocent, many authorities still believe his original conviction was warranted.
Corrigan, son of the former prosecutor, says it doesn't make sense that Dr. Sheppard would struggle with his window washer and not recognize him or that an assailant would run onto a beach.
``In order to believe this theory, you have to come to their conclusion that Richard Eberling has to effect his escape by swimming to Canada,'' Corrigan says.
He also doubts an intruder could climb the stairs undetected right next to where Dr. Sheppard slept. (His son says his father was a heavy sleeper). And Corrigan believes the murder clearly was a ``crime of passion'' - corresponding with a marital squabble - not greed, befitting Eberling's burglary pattern.
Corrigan says he resents implications that his father tried to prosecute an innocent man, though he understands - and even respects - Sheppard's efforts.
``The guy's a pitiful soul,'' Corrigan says. ``I feel nothing but empathy for him. [Dr.] Sam Sheppard not only ruined his life - he killed his wife - but he also ruined his son's life.''
Sam Reese Sheppard is consumed by two causes: fighting for his father and protesting the death penalty.
Last year, he walked 1,600 miles from Boston to New Orleans to protest capital punishment. He also works with activist groups, including Amnesty International and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Though he finds purpose in his work, his life will forever be shaped by that summer night four decades ago.
``People talk about closure and healing,'' he says. ``That's a lot of bull. I lost my mother and my father and that's not going to go away. ... The pain and the anguish isn't going to go away. I'm not going to miraculously get up tomorrow some kind of whole person.''
Sheppard thinks a solid case has been built to prosecute Eberling, though he won't go as far as saying the convict killed his mother. And while he thinks the evidence already demonstrates his father's innocence, he won't predict the outcome of his legal challenge.
``I don't invest my emotions in that kind of hope anymore,'' he says. ``We've been disappointed again and again in terms of trying to discover the truth. I have to live for today and accept what's here today and see how it goes.''
LENGTH: Long : 290 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. ``People have made millions of dollars, literally,by CNBover the bodies of my dead loved ones'' - Sam Reese Sheppard. color.
2. In 1989, Richard Eberling was convicted of murdering a wealthy
widow by striking her in the head. In a strange twist, one of the
woman's sisters was beaten to death in bed - similarly to Marilyn
Sheppard. That case was never solved. 3. Sam Reese Sheppard, called
``Chip'' as a boy, still has fond childhood memories. Shown here at
age 2, five years before his father (right) was convicted of
murdering his mother (left). 4. The trial had all the tabloid
ingredients: a murder mystery; a handsome, pipe-smoking osteopath
from a respected medical family; and a mistress. 5.Richard Eberling.