History records it as one of the most sensational trials of the century, rivaling even the O.J. Simpson saga. It focused on Dr. Sam Sheppard, a handsome osteopath accused of killing his pregnant wife, Marilyn, at their lakefront home in the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village. He was convicted, but when courts later ruled he had received an unfair trial, he was retried and acquitted.
In many minds, Dr. Sheppard had gotten away with murder.
If public opinion has now changed - if more people have come to believe that early on July 4, 1954, Dr. Sheppard did not kill his wife - it is due largely to this: Eight years ago, the couple's only child decided he would no longer hide in the shadow of the Sheppard case.
This 2 1/2-week walk, scheduled to end Sunday in Cincinnati, is symbolic of Mr. Sheppard's efforts to vindicate his father. Seen in a larger context, it is another step in a 43-year odyssey that winds its way around his family's tragic past.
Walking stick in hand, he moves briskly, covering 15-20 miles a day. He wears a bright yellow shirt, olive pants, a black, broad-rimmed hat and glasses that darken in sunlight, shielding his piercing blue eyes. Anti-death-penalty slogans adorn his backpack and the 30-year-old support bus that follows him.
He's soft-spoken and articulate, and might well have been a doctor, like his father, grandfather and uncles. "But I haven't been able to afford it, emotionally or financially. I've had to work very hard on my life to stay sane."
Two years ago, he moved from Boston to Oakland, Calif., where he lives a Spartan life in an arts community. He never married. He has no car. He rides a bike. He practices Zen Buddhism.
One or two days a week, he works as a dental hygienist. The rest of his time is devoted to his father's case and social issues. He staunchly opposes the death penalty and is using the walk across Ohio to draw attention to that cause, also.
Early on Independence Day, 1954, he was 7 years old, asleep in the room next to his mother's when she was bludgeoned to death. A trail of blood led from her bedroom.
Of that morning, Mr. Sheppard said: "I remember the fear, the anguish and the pity on me; being awakened by a frightened adult (an uncle, Richard Sheppard) and ushered out of the house in a panic . . . to never have a home again, really."
Dr. Sheppard told investigators this story: He was asleep on a downstairs daybed when he heard his wife scream. He ran upstairs, and was knocked unconscious. When he came to, he heard a noise downstairs, then chased a bushy-haired intruder to the lakefront. They struggled, and the doctor again blacked out.
The slaying sent the press into a frenzy. Headlines blared, "Why Isn't Sam Sheppard in Jail?" and "Quit Stalling - Bring Him In." Editorial attacks continued through the trial.
With no physical proof to tie Dr. Sheppard to the murder, the prosecution's case relied on circumstantial evidence. Perhaps most damaging was that Dr. Sheppard had denied having affairs, but trial testimony showed otherwise.
"I think that's what destroyed his credibility," his son says.
The doctor was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
The story of murder in an upper-middle-class suburb gripped the nation. It inspired the 1960s TV series and 1993 movie, The Fugitive. But if anyone became a fugitive, it was Sam Reese Sheppard.
"I was frozen emotionally," he says. His feelings stayed bottled up inside. "I couldn't cry. I didn't cry for my mother for 20 years."
She was gone, and his father had been taken away. Within a month of his father's conviction, his paternal grandparents were dead, too. Ethel Sheppard committed suicide. Richard Allen "R.A." Sheppard died from a bleeding ulcer.
Young Sam lived with an aunt and uncle, Stephen and Betty Sheppard in Rocky River, just east of Bay Village. The relationship was tense. He attended high school at Culver Military Academy in Indiana. In 1964, after his junior year, a federal district court judge ruled his father had not received a fair trial, calling it a "mockery of justice."
Dr. Sheppard was allowed out of prison while his case worked its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the meantime, he and young Sam had some catching up to do.
"He wanted a 7- or 8-year-old son," Mr. Sheppard says. "I was just breaking out into manhood. So those emotions were like shooting stars passing each other."
In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the Sheppard case, which pitted the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press against the Sixth Amendment's right to a fair trial. Eight of nine justices agreed that Dr. Sheppard's trial had been derailed by "massive, pervasive and prejudicial publicity."
He was retried that year, this time with a flamboyant young lawyer named F. Lee Bailey handling his case. The jury's verdict: not guilty.
"We thought Dad would walk out of there, set up a practice and live happily ever after," Mr. Sheppard says.
But not guilty did not mean innocent in many people's eyes. "We couldn't go out to supper without being surrounded by people, or having people walk out on us screaming, 'Filthy wife murderer.' " Dr. Sheppard fought to regain his medical license, but lost it when publicity led to malpractice suits. He self-medicated for a painful slipped disk, and began drinking heavily. He died from liver disease in 1970, at age 46.
For almost 20 years after that, the doctor's son kept a low profile. "I didn't want to be known just as Sheppard's kid. I realized I needed to put my life together as best I could for myself, and let the case take care of itself whatever way it would."
Mr. Bailey had helped young Sam get into Boston University. "He was kind of a surrogate father. He had plans for me to become an investigator and a lawyer and join his firm. That was all very nice and flattering, but it's not my personality."
After three years, Mr. Sheppard dropped out of BU. He protested the Vietnam War. He wrote music and poetry, and found work cleaning airplanes. He met a woman and moved with her to Maine, but the relationship dissolved when "she had to have a kid and I couldn't handle it."
He moved back to Boston and got a dental-hygiene degree. But for reasons he didn't understand, his life was unraveling. "I began to (experience) a lot of emotional turmoil."
It came to a head in 1982 when he saw a newspaper photo of two children waiting outside a Texas prison. Their father, Charlie Brooks Jr., was inside, awaiting execution by lethal injection.
Mr. Sheppard says he saw himself beside those kids. He thought back to the newspaper headline: "State Asks Death Penalty for Dr. Sam." (The jury, however, had convicted him of second-degree murder, thus sparing him a death sentence.)
"I finally figured out that I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder," Mr. Sheppard says.
He became active in a group for families of murder victims; he joined several anti-death-penalty organizations, including the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and Amnesty International.
"I found a place for my voice," he says. "I found a place to talk about my experience, people I could talk to. And I began to find extended family, in a sense."
By 1989, he was ready to speak publicly against the death penalty.
"Part of the crisis for me was knowing that the moment I stepped on a public platform, I was open game. Public attention has killed my father and grandfather and grandmother. So I knew it was a risk."
But going public also put the Sheppard case back in the spotlight. Soon he was being contacted by people willing to help. Among them: Terry Gilbert, who became his Cleveland attorney; and Cynthia Cooper, a New York writer who co-wrote with Mr. Sheppard the 1995 book Mockery of Justice, now out in paperback.
Later, AMSEC, a Middleburg, Va., investigative firm, came into the picture, as did Mohammad Tahir, a forensic DNA expert in Indianapolis.
All have played a role in reinvestigating the Sheppard case. "I figure at least $2 million has been spent on this investigation, pro bono," Mr. Sheppard says.
Early this year, Dr. Tahir's DNA tests showed that the blood trail leading from Mrs. Sheppard's bedroom was not her blood; in 1954, police believed it came from a dripping murder weapon.
Dr. Sheppard's defenders say the blood was from Marilyn's attacker, whom she presumably had bitten. Two of her teeth, yanked out of her mouth, were found on her bed. Police in 1954 paid them little attention. So whose blood is it?
Richard Eberling's, perhaps? He is the Sheppards' former window washer, presented as the chief suspect in Mockery of Justice, the book by Mr. Sheppard and Ms. Cooper.
Mr. Eberling is in prison for the unrelated murder of a Cleveland woman. He has denied killing Marilyn Sheppard.
When Dr. Tahir ran tests on Mr. Eberling's DNA, it displayed rare characteristics consistent with the blood trail, but Dr. Tahir stopped short of saying it was a definitive match.
Dr. Tahir also ran tests on two vaginal swabs taken from Mrs. Sheppard. He found semen from more than one person on the swabs, with one sample displaying characteristics similar to Mr. Eberling's DNA.
"We have evidence my mother was raped," Mr. Sheppard says. "The whole implication of a sexual attack on my mother was . . . never investigated."
Also this year, a long-lost bloodstain sample from Mrs. Sheppard's wardrobe closet turned up; it had been collected in 1955 by a forensic specialist hired by the defense. The sample is now being analyzed, as are DNA samples from Dr. Sheppard, whose body was exhumed Sept. 17 from a Columbus cemetery.
Mr. Sheppard is convinced the DNA tests will show that the blood at the murder scene did not belong to his father. When the doctor was questioned after his wife's murder, he showed no signs of extensive bleeding.
More than a family's reputation is at stake. Mr. Sheppard has filed a civil lawsuit seeking a court to declare his father innocent. If granted, Mr. Sheppard could seek perhaps as much as $2 million in damages and compensation from the Ohio Court of Claims. A trial is scheduled for January.
"Money will never repay (the loss)," he says.
If he benefits financially, he says he would buy health insurance, which he hasn't had for years, donate some money to the aunt and uncle who raised him, to his mother's family and to the group coordinating his walk, Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
"I'll do anything I can to facilitate the solving of this case, short of ruining my life," Mr. Sheppard says. "I feel a responsibility to my family. I feel a responsibility to history . . . to the truth."
He started his walk across Ohio at the suburban Cleveland cemetery where two weeks ago he placed his father's cremated remains next to his mother. The trek has an end, here in Cincinnati. And maybe the Sheppard case will end some day, with a judge declaring his father innocent.
"That's speculation," Mr. Sheppard says, "and I long ago learned not to speculate on a tomorrow which may never be."
