On July 3rd, 1954, Marilyn Sheppard was murdered in her bedroom.
The wife of a prominent neurosurgeon, Marilyn Sheppard was bludgeoned to death in her own bedroom. Her husband, Sam Sheppard, claimed that he had fallen asleep on a downstairs couch and was woken up by the sound of his wife screaming. Sheppard said that, when he ran upstairs to the bedroom, he saw a bushy-haired man in the shadows. The man hit Sheppard, knocking him out. When Sheppard came to, he saw the man fleeing the house and chased after him. The two fought outside and again, Sheppard was knocked out.
The police did not believe Sam Sheppard’s story and, after days of headlines that flat out accused him of being the murderer, he was arrested and charged with murdering his pregnant wife. The press had a field day with the story and the trial was frequently described as being a circus. Sheppard’s case was damaged by the revelation that he had cheated on his wife multiple times. Contemporary accounts of the trial portrayed Sheppard as being cocky and arrogant. As the jury was not sequestered, they saw every tabloid headline about Sheppard. After deliberating for four days, the jury found Dr. Sam Sheppard guilty of murdering his wife. He was sentenced to prison.
Sheppard would stay in prison until 1966. During that time, his mother committed suicide, his father died of an ulcer, and his former father-in-law also chose to end his own life. Sheppard’s original attorney died in 1961 and his appeals were taken over by a young lawyer named F. Lee Bailey. In 1966, Bailey argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that Sheppard was denied due process due to the jury not being sequestered. The Supreme Court agreed and granted Sheppard a new trial. This time, with the flamboyant Bailey defending him, Sheppard did not testify and the defense focused on the lack of any real evidence that would suggest Sheppard had lied about the Bushy-haired Man. Sheppard was acquitted.
Today, if Sam Sheppard is remembered, it’s for inspiring The Fugitive, a show about a doctor wrongly accused of murder. (The show aired while Sheppard was still in prison.) The majority of online posts and articles that I’ve read about Sam Sheppard have always focused on the retrial and usually end with Sheppard leaving prison. It’s rare that Sheppard’s life after prison is discussed, That’s probably because it’s a very sad story.
Sheppard may have been acquitted but he had also just spent 12 years in prison and he came out a changed man. Sheppard tried to return to practicing medicine but his surgical skills had deteriorated to the extent that two of his patient died after he nicked an artery. Facing multiple wrong death suits, he resigned from the only hospital that had been willing to give him a job. He became a professional wrestler and was known as “Killer” Sam Sheppard at some of his matches. He was also an alcoholic. Less than four years after getting out of prison, he was dead at the age of 46.
1998’s My Father’s Shadow: The Sam Sheppard Story features Peter Strauss as Dr. Sheppard and Henry Czerny as his namesake son. The film alternates between flashbacks to Dr. Sheppard’s life and scenes set in the 90s that focus on his son’s attempts to definitively clear his father’s name. The film suggests that the murder was actually committed by Richard Eberling (John Colicos), who worked as a handyman and a window washer at the Sheppard home and who, when he was arrested for burglary several years after the murder, was discovered to have some of Marilyn Sheppard’s jewelry in his possession. In the 80s, Eberling was convicted of murdering another one of his clients. Eberling himself died in prison, the same year that this movie aired.
It’s a big story and My Father’s Shadow tries to do a lot in just 90 minutes. Sometimes, it tries to do too much. The flashbacks are occasionally a bit difficult to keep track of. Sam Sheppard’s son goes from being a military school brat to a long-haired hippy so suddenly that, from a narrative point of view, it’s a bit distracting. Overall, though, this is an effective look at an interesting story and it features two excellent performances from Strauss and Czerny. It may not be the definitive telling of Sam Sheppard’s story but it’s a good place to start.
