Human Rights
Volume 24 Number 3 Summer 1997
Presumed Guilty
Sam Reese Sheppard fights to clear his father's name in the other Trial of the Century
Interview by Vicki Quade
Before O.J. Simpson, there was Doctor Sam. The infamous Sam Sheppard case.
Sam Reese Sheppard was seven when his mother, Marilyn, was bludgeoned to death in their suburban Cleveland home, her head and hands left bloody, her nose broken. It was July 4, 1954. She was four months pregnant and had been felled by 35 vicious blows.
His father, Dr. Sam Sheppard, was accused of the brutal murder, based in part on persistent, inflammatory coverage by the local newspapers. He was the kind of target the public loves to hate--Sheppard was handsome, well-off, a doctor, and he had a mistress.
It was one of the most spectacular crimes and sensational trials of the 1950s. Sheppard tried to convince authorities that he had struggled with a bushy-haired man who had really killed his wife. In what was then called the Trial of the Century, Sheppard was convicted of murder. The trial was a circus, with a frenzied media covering it, presided over by a biased judge facing reelection.
Twelve years later, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the conviction, ruling that the original trial was a "carnival," contaminated by the media's "massive, pervasive and prejudicial publicity." In that appeal, Sheppard was represented by a young lawyer only a year out of law school--F. Lee Bailey. In a second trial later in 1966, Sheppard was acquitted.
The murder of Marilyn Sheppard served as the basis of the TV show, The Fugitive, in which Dr. Richard Kimble tries to convince authorities that a one-armed man really killed his wife. The show premiered in 1963, while Sheppard was still in prison.
Sheppard's acquittal did little to resolve the case. In fact, it left unanswered the most obvious question: if Dr. Sam didn't murder his wife, who did?
Working with Cynthia Cooper, a lawyer and journalist, Sam Reese Sheppard has tried to answer that question in a new book, Mockery of Justice: the True Story of the Sheppard Murder Case.
They believe that the results of new forensic tests commissioned by the authors using blood samples found in the Sheppard home and kept in a coroner's vault point a finger at a likely suspect--a window washer named Richard Eberling, who has maintained his innocence.
Eberling was arrested in the late 50s for burglarizing homes in suburban Bay Village, where the Sheppards lived, and is now serving a life sentence for the 1984 murder of an elderly Cleveland widow.
At the time of Marilyn Sheppard's murder, Eberling voluntarily told police that some of the blood at the crime scene could be his since he said he had cut his hand while washing windows at the Sheppard house a few days earlier.
However, Sam Reese Sheppard and Cynthia Cooper say in their book that Eberling didn't wash the windows that day--another employee had, which leaves open the question of how Eberling's blood could be at the crime scene.
Investigators apparently never tried to determine if Eberling's blood matched any samples found at the crime scene, according to the authors. Represented by Cleveland attorney Terry Gilbert, the authors succeeded in having Eberling's blood drawn for testing, in hopes of matching his DNA to the DNA in samples from the crime scene.
This is the oldest crime scene material ever submitted for DNA testing.
The test results of Dr. Mohammad Tahir are not conclusive because some of the samples were tainted, but there does appear to be at least one match to Eberling. The tainted samples do not rule out Eberling as a suspect.
Prosecutors in the original criminal trial had said the blood at the Sheppard home belonged to Marilyn, but these recent DNA tests showed that none of the samples match MarilynSheppard's blood.
Dr. Sheppard was not cut, so none of the blood could be his. Sam Reese Sheppard was raised by father's brother, and never gave up hope of finding out the truth of his mother's murder.
Dr. Sam Sheppard's freedom was marked by personal problems. An osteopath, he abandoned medicine after two malpractice suits. He remarried, divorced, and began drinking heavily. He took up professional wrestling, using the name, "Killer Sheppard." He died four years after his release from prison at the age of 46.
Ten years ago, Ohio instituted a declaration of innocence civil procedure. Sam Reese Sheppard was present in Cleveland last May at the first hearing in his long-awaited civil trial for a posthumous declaration of innocence for his father. If he wins his lawsuit, he could apply to the Ohio Court of Claims for $250,000--which is $25,000 for each of the 10 years his father was in prison, plus compensation for financial losses.
Sheppard is also an anti-death penalty activist with Amnesty, Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation, and Citizens Against the Death Penalty.
Barry Scheck, best known for his work on the O.J. Simpson case, cites the Sheppard civil suit as the most important precedent for seeing how the courts will handle DNA evidence and the new field of making restitution for wrongful imprisonment.
This interview, recorded in Chicago, was conducted by Human Rights Editor Vicki Quade.
Will you ever really clear your father's name or will people always assume he is guilty?
Through the poisoned atmosphere and the poisoned media coverage, some people will forever think that my Dad did it. No doubt about it. Part of the problem is the marketing formula.
Marketing formula?
Some people point to marketing formula as to why we don't have freedom of the press in this country. Marketing formula in the Sheppard case happens this way: Anytime after my Dad was wrongfully convicted in 1954 up to this present day, whenever my Dad is mentioned in the press it says, "Dr. Sam Sheppard, convicted wife murderer."
That's marketing formula. They don't say later, "Dr. Sam Sheppard, exonerated."
Well, they do. They say he was convicted because he was. That's a fact. It's also a fact that he was exonerated. Both are still true.
Right, okay. So that sells newspapers and is an unfair presumption that will last forever. Plus there is a huge body of misinformation out there. All of the information from the 1954 unfair trial. I say to lawyers we need a name for this unfair trial that happened in 1954. We call it a mockery of justice, a circus, a Roman holiday.
Is it the Mistrial of the Century?
I say that our legal system in this country is so arrogant we don't have a name for a failed event like that.
Some people call the O.J. Simpson case the Mistrial of the Century.
Right.
All this misinformation from 1954 is in the public domain. Anybody can tap into that information as if it were true. If people don't realize that it's propaganda, it's wrong, it's poison, they can promulgate it.
The public is now more aware of wrongful convictions. Are you finding more sympathy for this case?
Yes, I think that's true. A few entrenched people in Ohio will still feel that my father is guilty.
I'm sure it will be more than that. Okay. But I think nationally the case has shifted in a significant way.
You believe that a window washer, Richard Eberling, actually committed the murder. I thought the DNA tests were not conclusive and did not convincingly implicate Eberling. Isn't there room for doubt? Let me tell you the facts.
All right, but let me finish my question. Whether the tests implicate a suspect or not, they would appear to exonerate Dr. Sheppard. That's correct. If we go through the four pieces of evidence, there are three pieces of evidence contaminated--the wood chip in the basement, the drop of blood on my father's pants which we always thought was my mother's blood, and then there were the vaginal swabs taken from my mother. That was something hidden from us all these years. She was sexually attacked and that was never examined at either trial.
We now have evidence of sexual violation.
Each of those samples was contaminated by the people who held them, picked them up, handled them improperly. One spot on the back porch is a pure sample came out a match to the suspect. So why isn't the state of Ohio pursuing this?
Do you think Eberling committed the murder? How far are you willing to go?
Well, publicly, the man should be put on trial. He needs to be investigated. There's been no effort to investigate him other than our effort. We're private citizens. We don't have the power of the state to get in a forensic scientist.
Is that the next step?
We've been bending over backwards with these damn people for over two years. That's the story of the book. We've been cooperating with the prosecutors in a decent civilized way. And now they are entrenching themselves to put my father on trial in the civil case. He's been dead for 27 years. They're blaming the victim, still.
If they conduct an investigation, they admit they were wrong.
In the 10 years that Ohio has had the declaration of innocence civil procedure, how many cases have taken advantage of that?
Twenty-something, but they all settled.
None of those cases went as far as yours in pushing for a declaration of innocence?
Right. They were rape cases where the offender was excluded in the DNA tests. Pretty cut and dried.
This is cut and dried, too, but I think they're going to try to take apart Tahir and the DNA evidence.
Isn't that what happened in the O.J. Simpson trial? It looked like the DNA evidence was pretty strong, yet the defense attacked the messenger, not the message.
They resent the civil case because that was our mode of discovery. Even if the civil case was thrown out tomorrow, we were successful in getting that evidence tested and finding prosecutorial misconduct. We've been asking for a forensic psychiatrist to go in and debrief this guy. He's a complicated man, he's possibly a serial murderer, and we've been getting the runaround on that.
Sam, in looking at your background. You're a Buddhist.
Yes.
You never married.
Legally I never married but common law may be another question.
You were living in an Oakland rooming house.
I would call it an artist's colony. That's what I like to call it.
You were a part-time dental hygienist.
I still am. I own a guitar and a bicycle and that's about it.
What plans did your parents have for you?
My whole family's plan was for us to run the Cleveland Clinic, a world famous health organization like the Mayo Clinic. That was my grandfather's dream and he was well on his way to building an organization like that with his three sons. I wanted to be a doctor. I still do want to be a doctor. That was our family dream.
What happened in this case was there was a political division between the osteopathic doctors (DOs) and the MDs. And there is anecdotal evidence that they went after our family because they didn't like these DOs messing around with their power base.
Plus my grandfather was a compassionate man who gave medical help to prostitutes in downtown Cleveland and was resented for that sort of thing.
My Dad was kind of a hot shot. He was 33, doing neurosurgery, making a lot of money, he was very glamorous. So there was a lot of resentment of that, too.
Did he have a mistress?
He did. I don't like to dwell on it. It's a detail of the case. But my parents had an open marriage. My Dad and my Mom were best of friends. F. Lee Bailey said they proved adultery and convicted for murder.
That's the point that killed my grandmother, my father's mother. It was a serious factor in her suicide that her darling youngest son had betrayed his wife. My Dad in his gentlemanly manner at first denied having the affair, not only to protect his mother but the reputation of the woman. We're talking about different times in terms of sex and values.
You're against the death penalty.
In all cases.
I lost my mother in July of that year, which was trauma that wasn't dealt with. It was unresolved, untreated so to speak. These days there is psychological treatment for kids. I encourage that. There needs to be more research and exposure to the public about those resources.
I turn around by Christmas time five months later, the State of Ohio is asking a jury to condemn my father to death. That's a great Christmas present to give a seven-year-old kid.
I began to have nightmares that Dad was electrocuted, that I should be electrocuted. I also had survivor's guilt: Why wasn't it me?
I could pick up the emotions of the adults around me.
That's one reason I haven't had kids. It's hard enough to hold my own life together let alone have responsibility for young kids.
Even after 40-some years
. Sure. People say, "Why so long?" Talk to a Vietnam veteran and ask why their lives have been shattered.
You have your father's name. Was there ever a time when you thought you should change it?
No. I never changed my name because we knew if I did it would be another nail in the coffin of the guilt the media could point to.
Nobody ever sat me down as a kid and talked to me about my mother's death, in any realistic terms. It took me 20 years to cry for my Mom. When I was a kid I would have these crying jags that would come out of nowhere. I didn't know what they were and I was punished for crying. Years later finally it clicked and I cried for her at last.
For me, things changed when Gary Gilmore was executed in this country. I began reliving some of that horror of the seven-year-old child in terror. I was fortunate enough, educated enough to know what was going on. So I had to speak out against the death penalty.
Had my Dad been of another socio-economic class and unable to afford the appeals process, clearly he could have been executed when I was 12 or 13.
Your father's case lead to important changes in the way our trials are conducted--fair trial/free press rules, jury sequestering, and banning cameras in the courtrooms. Yes. I think cameras should be in the courtroom generically, not commercial cameras. I think there should be videotaping for the courtroom and then those could be edited later for commercial use.
Did you watch the O.J. Simpson trial?
Just bits and pieces. It was too close to home.
Have you contacted the Simpson children?
I don't have those kinds of resources available. I hope those kids have the opportunity to have psychological counseling with no agenda, with just the kids' best interest in mind.
You were able to spend some time with your father after he was acquitted.
Well, I visited him for 10 years while he was in the penitentiary. On and off I spent time with him. My Dad was an American prince. He had life on a golden platter. He had a good intellect, he was athletic.
He came out a hardened convict, but I salute the guy. He had not been broken in prison like so many people are.
The prisoners stood and cheered as he walked out of prison.
Didn't you etch initials on his tombstone?
V.Q.P., which is Latin for He Who Endures Conquers. That became our motto, it's how we signed our letters to each other. V.Q.P.
He had made those arrangements. In the last few months of his life, he knew he had been finally broken. Those were his so-called wrestling days. He couldn't be a physician anymore. He had lost his self-respect. He was destroyed. The last time I saw him, we knew he was dying.
What are you hoping to get out of this case?
Well, I think there are a lot of people who should be paid for their work. I'd say there is about $2 million owed to various people.
I thought the most you could receive is $25,000 a year for 10 years?
That's from the state for the wrongful incarceration, but we're also talking about a loss of wages, the destruction of a life, the amount of work that has been put in by a lot of people on this case.
--Interviewed by Vicki Quade
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