But the real bombshell came from Coroner Gerber, who flatly said the murder instrument had been ‘a two-bladed surgical instrument with teeth on the end of each blade.’ The coroner claimed to see the impression of the weapon on Marilyn’s bloodstained pillow. The weapon, Gerber insisted, was a plaster cast cutter, fourteen and a half inches long, of stainless steel with cutting handles and a ‘powerful jaw, serrated and grooved.’ Dr. Sam owned such an instrument, Gerber insisted.
Despite heated defense objections, color photos of the pillowcase were passed around the jury. To me, it was just a Rorschach blot, and might have just as easily suggested a lobster’s claw as a surgical instrument.
The coroner downplayed Dr. Sam’s July Fourth injuries and said he ‘appeared normal and had no difficulty talking,’ his pulse strong, blood pressure fine. On cross, Corrigan had his own medical objection: Why hadn’t Marilyn Sheppard’s body been thoroughly examined for signs of sexual assault? Had Gerber ignored the prowler/rapist theory because he was biased against Dr. Sam from the start?
The lead homicide detective, Robert Schottke, read a statement Sam Sheppard made early on in which he denied having an affair with Sharon Kern. His wife, Sam had said, became ‘insanely jealous’ when he bought a wristwatch for Miss Kern. Marilyn also accused him of having other affairs, Sam admitted, though he considered the marriage ‘ideal’ after his wife grasped that a doctor comes in contact with many women.
Sam had said it was ridiculous to think he would kill his wife, that he’d devoted his life to saving lives, and besides, he loved Marilyn.
A medical doctor who examined Sheppard at the request of the coroner on the afternoon of July Fourth found him conscious and alert. The only injuries the doctor noted were a swelling over the right cheekbone and temple, and a black eye. He was dismissive of the more severe diagnoses at Bay View Hospital, revealing the contempt felt by doctors about osteopaths, and the shared belief that the Sheppard clan closed ranks around Sam to protect him in the days following the murder.
When ‘the other woman,’ Sharon Kern, appeared at the courthouse, newspaper and television photographers swarmed. She was a pretty, rather thin brunette, in a black dress with a white Peter Pan collar, her hair short and bobbed. The former Bay View Hospital lab technician—she wore little or no makeup and looked pale—confirmed a sexual relationship with Dr. Sam lasting over two years. They would make love in Sam’s car and in an apartment he kept at Bay View Hospital. He’d spoken of divorcing Marilyn. He loved Sharon. He gave her a ring.
But he’d also told her that he still loved Marilyn, if more like a sister than as a wife, and feared his father would not approve of divorce.
Finally, as the Sharon/Sam relationship continued on its steady course to nowhere, the lovely lab tech had quit at Bay View Hospital and moved to California. But Sam had seen her there last March, where for a week she shared a room with him at the home of a doctor friend of his. After Sam went back to Bay Village, the two lovers briefly corresponded. But no talk of divorce, she said.
Sharon and Dr. Sam did not look at each other while she testified—not so much as an exchange of glances.
Cross-examination of ‘the other woman’ was swift and brutal, ending with Sharon being asked if, during their intimate relationship, she was always aware Sam was a married man.
She said yes.
The defense began by calling Stephen and Richard Sheppard, who depicted their younger brother as a devoted husband and model citizen. Youthful despite his gray hair, the well-tailored, cool Stephen insisted his brother’s neck injury had been serious, and the absence of certain reflexes—which had been shrugged off by the prosecution’s doctor—signified brain concussion.
When he arrived at the murder scene, Stephen said the notorious corduroy jacket had not been folded neatly, but lay crumpled on the floor. And he’d found his brother sitting on the floor, murmuring confusedly, hands clasped behind his neck, in obvious pain. A quick examination revealed stiff tissues, tense muscles and ongoing spasms. His brother, he said, was cold, clammy, shivering, shaking.
On the way to the hospital, Sam had blurted, ‘How did this happen? My God, Marilyn’s dead! Why couldn’t this be me?’
Stephen took full responsibility for keeping the coroner and police away from his brother for the four days after the murder, after initially allowing them interviews with no lawyer present. But Dr. Steve had clamped down, after seeing that every time anyone came in with questions, Sam would relive that terrible night and get agitated.
On the stand, Dr. Richard indicated Marilyn’s real jealousy was over her husband’s work and the demands it brought. Marilyn, he testified, ‘was very much in love with Sam, and Sam was very much in love with her.’ But being a doctor’s wife was difficult for Marilyn. Their arguments were limited to such banalities as with whose family Thanksgiving and Christmas would be spent, and Marilyn having a new dishwater put in while he was away.
The elder Sheppard brother insisted—despite what Mayor Dodge said on the stand—that any notion ‘Sam might have been connected with the crime never crossed my mind.’ Instead, he spoke of delivering the tragic news to Sam, who said, ‘Oh, God, no!’ and fell to the floor.
The climax came, of course, with Dr. Sam Sheppard’s own testimony. His story was by now familiar, and had more clarity than the aftermath, which Sam still had trouble remembering. For example, he had trouble ‘visualizing’ the Dodges coming to the house in response to his call. Or the police arriving, either, though he remembered his brother Richard telling him Marilyn was gone. And he remembered falling to the floor.
Attorney Corrigan asked him, ‘Doctor, have you in your lifetime ever submitted to sin?’
And Dr. Sam said, ‘I have succumbed to human frailties, yes.’
Mahon for the prosecution took the cross. He was prone to red-faced anger and indignant shouting. This didn’t work with Dr. Sam, who was quiet and composed and not apt to shout back.
But that self-control did cause a problem for Dr. Sam Sheppard. This was a defendant who spoke with care, and used high-flown language (describing his attacker as ‘a biped’). A certain lack of passion in him melded with an aloofness.
His wife had ‘lost her sexual aggressiveness’ after the birth of their son, he said. Nonetheless, he never considered divorcing her. When Dr. Hardmann suggested Sam should divorce Marilyn, Sam told him Marilyn was the finest girl he ever knew.
‘But sexual intimacy was painful to Marilyn after the birth of Chip,’ Sam said. ‘There was an extreme psychological factor based on prolonged labor and extreme pain.’
Mahon pressed the defendant about orthopedic wrenches. Sam said these were called brace adjustors, for use with post-surgery patients having back problems, and admitted carrying a pair of the tools in his car.
Don’t you think it’s strange, Nate, that neither the prosecution nor the defense pursued that line of evidence?
Then Mahon asked Sam if he’d injured himself ‘jumping or falling off the beach house onto the beach.’ Sam said that was impossible, and Corrigan objected to the question, saying there wasn’t a shred of evidence that his client’s injuries were self-inflicted.
As the cross-examination wound down, Mahon asked Sam about lying at the inquest regarding his intimacy with Sharon Kern. The defendant said, ‘I felt Miss Kern’s reputation justified that answer, sir.’
Asked why he had grabbed no weapon, knowing an intruder had assaulted Marilyn—weren’t there shotguns in the study? Sam said he’d never in his life gone after anyone with a gun.
On the stand, Dr. Sam had admitted to being a sinner, but in a none-of-anybody’s-business manner. And nothing had come out that directly connected him to his expectant wife’s killing.
The opening defense summation paraphrased something I’d written—that five months after her murder, the state did not know how Marilyn Sheppard was killed, or with what weapon and why. Yet the prosecution wanted this doctor sent to the electric chair on the flimsiest of evi
dence.
Corrigan got melodramatic, holding on to Sam’s hands and saying, ‘These are the hands the state would have you believe killed Marilyn Sheppard. Look at them. These hands. These hands that just a few hours before had worked with skill and devotion to save the life of a child.’
And he begged the jury not to see the affair between Sam and Sharon Kern as one of ‘evil intent, but of moral frailty.’ Dr. Sam had succumbed to sex, yes, but wasn’t sex the strongest lure in the human body?
Corrigan spoke of the police working in teams to interrogate Sam, giving him the virtual third degree, throwing pictures of his dead wife in his face. And the attorney concluded, rather desperately I thought, by reminding the jury the Christmas season was upon them, given us by God ‘to set man free and establish on earth the principle of freedom.’
The prosecution’s wrap-up was a reiteration of all the unanswered questions, from how could the athletic Dr. Sam have been knocked out twice in one scuffle to why hadn’t the murderer killed Sam, too? All the unanswered questions, so many of them … but it all boiled down to Sam had done it because he was there.
The judge did his part in trying to nudge the jurors toward giving Dr. Sam the electric chair for Christmas. He explained how circumstantial evidence can be enough to convict—if a neighbor reported seeing George Washington walking away from your yard with an ax on his shoulder, and your cherry tree had been chopped down, that would be weighty circumstantial evidence in a charge against George Washington for chopping down that tree.
* * *
“By the end,” she said, “I wouldn’t have convicted Sam Sheppard of anything except maybe negligence in failing to keep his back door locked.”
“Twelve people disagreed.”
She laughed a little. “Twelve people tainted by the guilty verdict the Cleveland press already pronounced, again and again.”
I had a sip of my second gimlet.
Then I smiled and said, “If you don’t embarrass easily, I’ll compliment you on a remarkable performance. How could you remember all that, in such detail, two years later? I mean, I know it was a memorable trial, but—”
“I’ve been working on a chapter about it,” she said. “It’s all fresh in my mind.”
“Chapter in what?”
She’d been saving her latest pair of olives. She kissed one of them off its little spear and chewed and said, “I’m collecting and revising pieces I’ve written over the years—murder cases I’ve covered. Murder One, I’m calling it. Bennett is keen for it.”
“Bennett Cerf you mean?”
Cerf, the publisher of Random House, was another regular panelist on What’s My Line?
“I don’t mean Tony Bennett.” Her mouth made a wicked little smile; one might even call it sly. “So. You’re heading to Cleveland soon to do this pro bono job for Perry Mason’s daddy. Find out new things about the Marilyn Sheppard murder. Maybe solve it.”
Now I knew why she’d given me this performance.
“I am,” I said. “Would the girl reporter like to come along?”
CHAPTER
4
Just west of downtown Columbus, on Spring Street, the Gothic monstrosity known as Ohio State Penitentiary took up eight square blocks, like a nightmarish relic out of some other century, which is what it was. Behind its timeworn granite walls, with their expected glassed-in towers for blue-clad guards cuddling high-powered rifles, the prison housed five-thousand-some inmates—about twice its supposed capacity.
I pulled my rental Chevy into the front drive, past a guard booth, and into an unmarked spot in a small parking lot where a sign said: FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY. A trusty in khaki stepped from the booth with a clipboard and a frown. I flashed my Illinois private operator’s badge at him, and at a distance it passed muster, or maybe he just didn’t care, but in any case he returned to his hut.
I made my way up the stone steps of the administration building and into a lobby where visitors waited on benches at left and right for the short precious visits that had often taken a long dreary trip. At an information desk I was guided to a lieutenant’s office, where I presented my identification for a prearranged visitation with one of the institution’s most famous inmates.
Erle Gardner, with the help of Sam Sheppard’s attorney, William J. Corrigan (who I had not yet met), arranged the visit, which I’d made a requirement of my involvement in the renewed investigation into Marilyn Sheppard’s murder. I wanted to size Dr. Sam up. If he didn’t pass my inner lie detector, I would find something better to do with my time. Like make a living.
Flo Kilgore was not along for this leg of the journey. The plan was for her to join me in Cleveland in a few days—this was a Monday and she’d had her TV show last night and her column was due today. I’d flown into Port Columbus International Airport, and would drive the two-plus hours to Cleveland tonight, where a room was waiting at the Hotel Cleveland.
A guard with a billy in his belt escorted me past cell-block buildings through the large prison yard and its shops, water tower, vegetable gardens and baseball diamond. Our destination was the hospital, where number 98860 was lucky enough to be housed in the dorm. After moving past ancient brick structures, we seemed to be moving toward a new, modern one.
I automatically turned in that direction, but the guard said, “No! That’s the prison personnel offices. That one’s the hospital.”
He nodded to a dilapidated four-story affair nearby.
The best you could say for the hospital dormitory was that it had plenty of windows; otherwise it was brick walls, creaky wood floors and hospital beds that looked like they dated to the Civil War. But the patients did have bedside tables and—for those who were mobile, and not using bedpans—toilet facilities. That, of course, wasn’t the case for the exposed commodes of seven-foot-square cells designed for two and inhabited by four in cell-block buildings nearby.
The guard escorted me to the far end of the long narrow dorm, where a broad-shouldered figure—in hospital whites—was seated with his back to me. You know—a biped.
Sam Sheppard glanced back at us and smiled tightly as he got to his feet. He was smoking a pipe. About my height and in his mid-thirties, he had boyish features on a rounded square face with a dimpled chin and high forehead, his short dark hair thinning slightly. Already I could tell he didn’t blink much.
The guard took a position at the opposite end of the ward, which was only half full, the beds nearest us empty. We had more privacy than could be expected.
The convicted wife killer extended his hand and we shook; his grip was firm and perhaps tried a little too hard. Under those whites, which made him look like the doctor he used to be, was a fullback’s build, the short-sleeved shirt revealing muscular arms.
“I’m pleased to see you, Mr. Heller.”
His voice was higher-pitched than I’d expected.
“Pleased to see you, Dr. Sheppard. Is it all right to still call you that? Doctor, I mean.”
“Not only all right, but proper. They can take away my license, but not my medical pedigree. Sit. Please.”
A wooden chair was waiting opposite where he again sat himself on the side of his bed.
“I’m very pleased that Mr. Gardner has taken an interest in my case,” he said, with a pipe-in-hand gesture. “And I’ve read about you in some national magazines, so I’m obviously grateful that you’re offering your investigative skills.”
I rested an ankle on a knee. “Well, this is a preliminary meeting, Doctor. So far I’ve only committed to taking this meeting with you.”
The puckish smile went well with the boyish face. “Perhaps you should call me ‘Sam,’ or ‘Doc,’ as most people around here do.”
“All right, Sam. And it’s ‘Nate.’”
He sucked smoke from his pipe, held it in a few moments, let it out. “You need to make your mind up about me. That’s only natural. I can tell you about that night, that morning I should say, if you like.”
“Mr. Gardner had a fair
ly thick file for me to go through—newspaper clippings, magazine articles, excerpts from trial transcripts. So I’m familiar with your story.”
“It’s not a story,” he said, but there was no edge to it. Maybe a bit of whine.
“Only you know that for sure,” I reminded him. “The only other witness to the crime is dead.”
I was trying to blindside him but it didn’t work.
Very coolly, he said, “No. At least one other person knows—the real killer. Or perhaps there were two of them.”
I nodded. “You did tell your friend Marshall Dodge that ‘they’ killed your wife.”
He nodded, pipe in hand. “And I often find, when I try to talk about the incident, that the pronoun ‘they’ jumps to mind.”
That stilted, slightly pedantic way of phrasing things had hurt him badly in court.
“We’ll get to that,” I said. “My understanding is we don’t have the usual visitation time limit.”
“That’s right. Mr. Gardner is now officially one of my attorneys, if only as a formality. That enables you, as his investigator, to spend as much as an hour with me. Of course, I’m on call, and might be needed in surgery, for some emergency. So we should keep that in mind.”
“It sounds like you still are a doctor, and not just because you hold a degree. Like you’re on staff.”
“I’m afraid,” he said, “the only degree I hold behind these walls is for Second Degree Murder. Technically, I’m a male nurse, making beds, folding linen, mopping up, checking pulses, preparing surgical packs. But in reality I’m still a surgeon.”
“Is that legal?”
The puckish smile again. “I doubt I’ll be thrown in jail for it. When I first took this position, which pays a generous one dollar a week for sixty-hour days, I was limited to administering anesthesia. But then the visiting physicians started requesting my assistance during surgery. And taking consults with me beforehand. Soon I was put in charge of the postoperative division, since the doctors here only work during the day.”
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