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The husband’s story was that he had fallen asleep on the living-room coach and had awoken to hear Marilyn screaming. He had rushed upstairs and seen someone dressed in white near his wife’s bed. Then he was hit from behind. When he came to, he found his wife was dead. Great Crimes & Trials s1e10: Dr Samuel Sheppard, BBC 1993
F Lee Bailey took over the case in 1961 and immediately applied his flamboyant talents. ibid.
Ten pounds of hogwash in a five pound bag. F L Bailey, summary statement
I think that she cried or screamed my name once or twice, during which time I ran upstairs, thinking that she might be having a reaction similar to convulsions that she had had in the early days of her pregnancy. I charged into our room and saw a form with a light garment, I believe, at that time grappling with something or someone. During this short period I could hear loud moans or groaning sounds and noises. I was struck down. It seems like I was hit from behind somehow but had grappled this individual from in front or generally in front of me. I was apparently knocked out. The next thing I knew, I was gathering my senses while coming to a sitting position next to the bed, my feet toward the hallway ... I looked at my wife, I believe I took her pulse and felt that she was gone. I believe that I thereafter instinctively or subconsciously ran into my youngster’s room next door and somehow determined that he was all right; I am not sure how I determined this. After that, I thought that I heard a noise downstairs, seemingly in the front eastern portion of the house. Sam Sheppard court evidence
New DNA evidence taken from the exhumed body of Dr Sam Sheppard provides the most compelling piece of evidence that he was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife in a trial that transfixed America more than four decades ago, and suggests strongly that the killer really was a ‘bushy-haired’ intruder, as Dr Sheppard claimed, a lawyer for the Sheppard family said today.
The murder, the O J Simpson trial of the 1950’s, entered popular culture by forming the basis for the television program The Fugitive and the movie of the same name.
Tissue samples taken from Dr Sheppard’s body, which was exhumed under a court order last fall, show ‘he is excluded as a donor’ of the blood found at the murder scene, Terry Gilbert, the lawyer, who represents Dr Sheppard’s son, Sam Reese Sheppard, said today. The New York Times online article 5th March 1998
January 22nd 1955: Paul Kirk arrived in the small town of Bay village near Cleveland Ohio … He was America’s most revered forensic scientist … The crime had taken place on July 4th the previous year … The convicted killer was her husband Sam [Sheppard]. She’d been beaten to death in her bedroom … The prosecution had revealed that Sam Sheppard had had an affair two years before … This was the story the jury chose to believe … He said he’d been woken from his deep sleep on the daybed by strange loud noises … The jury weren’t convinced … The crime scene was not properly secured … He [Kirk] was more and more certain that Marilyn had been struck by a man standing on her right holding the weapon in his left hand: Sam Sheppard was a right-handed man. Gabriel Weston: Catching History’s Criminals II: Traces of Guilt, BBC 2015