Dr. Sam Sheppard
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On
July 4, 1954, the wife of a handsome young doctor, Sam Sheppard, was
brutally murdered in the bedroom of their home in Bay Village, Ohio, on
the shore of Lake Erie. Sheppard denied any involvement in the
murder and described his own battle with the killer he described as
"bushy-haired."
Did Sam do it? It's rare for a murder mystery to endure for over
half a century. Almost always, if the the mystery is not fully
resolved at the trial, subsequent admissions, previously uncovered
clues, or more sophisticated forensic tests reveal what the trial did
not. Not so with the Sam Sheppard case. Facing two
different juries, twelve years apart, Sam Sheppard was found guilty by
one jury, not guilty by the next. Even over the past few years,
partisans continue the debate. In 2001, a book on the Sheppard
case concluded that Sam was clearly innocent. Two years later,
another book on the case argued just as forcefully that the first jury
got it right: Sam was guilty as charged.
Apart from the large unanswered question of guilt, the Sheppard case
deserves to be considered among the nation's most famous because it
produced a landmark U. S. Supreme Court decision on fair trial rights
and launched the career of a flamboyant young defense attorney named F.
Lee Bailey. [CONTINUED]
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