Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Real-Life Villains
Disclaimers
Real-Life Villains
Search
User menu
Talk
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Murder of Marilyn Sheppard
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
===Murder and Investigation=== On July 3, 1954, Sam and Marilyn Sheppard entertained neighbours at their home for dinner and watched the movie ''Strange Holiday''. Around midnight, Sam Sheppard fell asleep on the couch and Marilyn saw the neighbours out. At 5:40 am the following day, Mayor Spencer Houk, a personal friend of the Sheppards, received a phone call from Sam Sheppard in which Sheppard said "My God, Spence, get over here quick! I think they have murdered Marilyn!". He and his wife Esther rushed over to the Sheppard house to find Sam in his study shirtless and holding his neck in a state of pain. Marilyn was found dead in the bedroom, lying on her back with her pyjamas partially removed, beaten beyond recognition. An autopsy determined she had died around 4:30 am from blunt force trauma and was four months pregnant. There were no signs of forced entry in the house. Sam Sheppard told police that he had been woken up at around 4:30 by Marilyn shouting his name and had run up to the bedroom to find her being attacked by a "bushy-haired white form" who struck him over the head, leaving him briefly concussed. He had come round a few minutes later and pursued the killer down to Lake Erie, where the killer knocked him out. He woke up to find he was missing his shirt and watch. The watch, alongside several other items missing from the house, was found in a bloodstained canvas bag in the shrubbery. The ensuing investigation was a media circus, with the ''Cleveland Press'' taking it upon themselves to see Sam Sheppard convicted and running several headlines calling for his arrest. Police focussed on Sam's alleged affair with lab technician Susan Hayes. Under media pressure, coroner Samuel Gerber held an inquest which pronounced a verdict of murder. Gerber noted at the inquest that wounds on Marilyn's body appeared to have been inflicted by a surgical instrument, which Sam Sheppard had access to in his job as a neurosurgeon. Sam Sheppard was arrested on July 30 and charged with the murder of Marilyn Sheppard. At a highly publicised trial, medical expert Charles Elkins testified that Sam Sheppard had suffered injuries to his head and neck consistent with the alleged attack by the killer and that Marilyn had lost several teeth during the attack, suggesting she had bitten her assailant, whereas Sam had no bite marks or open wounds on his body. He also only had one spot of blood on his clothes despite the large amount of blood at the scene and three witnesses testified to seeing the "bushy-haired white form" in the area on the morning of July 4. Despite this Sheppard was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Summary:
Please note that all contributions to Real-Life Villains may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see
Real-Life Villains:Copyrights
for details).
Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)