Mystery & murder! The best detectives find out whodunnit
Read our cold case file and see if you correctly predicted the killer’s identity…
What turns people to crime… or more chillingly, murder? In our 12-page mini-mag we introduce our three writers-turned-detectives. best ’s finest enquiring minds will rake over every clue and claim of a cold case and then decide whodunnit and was justice served? Also, we look at what drives people to murder. Revenge? Love? Money? And why when some couples meet does it light the fatal fuse for evil…
On the morning of 4 July 1954, residents of upscale Bay Village, Ohio, should have been celebrating Independence Day, but instead, the mood was sombre and the city’s citizens were concerned. The Cleveland police had been notified of the gruesome death of a young woman.
Marilyn Reese Sheppard was just 30 years old, and married to renowned surgeon, Dr Sam Sheppard. She was a mum to their seven-year-old boy, Samuel, who was known to friends and family as Chip. She was also four months pregnant with their second child.
Just the night before, Sam and Marilyn had been entertaining neighbours at their house, but after a busy shift, Sam had fallen asleep on a daybed downstairs in the family’s fashionable lake-front home. After seeing their friends out, Marilyn had put Chip to bed, and taken herself off to sleep.
But sometime in the early hours, Sam had supposedly been woken by the sound of his wife screaming. He’d rushed to the bedroom, where he claimed to see an intruder bent over his bloodied wife, before he was knocked unconscious.
When he came to, Sam had heard the impostor downstairs and gone to confront the approximately 6ft-tall, bushy-haired man. Sheppard chased him outside the house where he was, again, he told the police, knocked unconscious.
When he next regained consciousness, he was shirtless and partially submerged in the lake. He rushed back to the
house, where thankfully, Chip had slept through the ordeal, but Marilyn was dead.
At 5.40am, Sam called Spencer Houk, his neighbour and the Bay Village mayor, who arrived at the crime scene with his own wife before the police were informed. Four minutes later, the emergency services arrived at the property.
It was a devastating scene. Poor Marilyn was barely recognisable, due to the severe head trauma she’d endured. She’d been bludgeoned to death. Her pyjama top had been pulled up to expose her bare chest and her pyjama bottoms were around her ankles, with one side completely removed from her leg.
Police officers initially assumed it was a home invasion that had gone terribly wrong. Sam’s brother, Stephen – also a doctor – arrived at the scene and escorted Sam to hospital to have his wounds tended to. A short time later, at 8am, the Cuyahoga County coroner –
Sam Gerber – arrived and was surprised to find no signs of a forced entry. There was no murder weapon either, but after following blood trails, outside in a bush, a bag was discovered with Dr Sheppard’s bloody watch, fraternity ring and key.
Suspicion quickly changed from robbery to a domestic murder. Marilyn’s time of death was estimated between 3am and 4am. Gerber went to the hospital to question Sheppard, who refused to be interviewed on doctor’s orders. Only his doctor was Stephen Sheppard – his brother.
When he was eventually spoken to, a lack of remorse was noted and soon, rumours of Sam’s infidelity began to circulate. The case quickly garnered huge press interest and a public inquest was requested, which was held at a local high school.
Family and friends were quizzed about Dr Sheppard’s character and his marriage. Sam’s lawyer, William Corrigan, was ordered to sit in the audience away from his client, while Gerber acted as both judge and jury. Sheppard denied having an affair with a former lab technician named Susan Hayes, and the Cleveland press demanded the doctor be forced to admit his crime. He was later arrested for Marilyn Reese Sheppard’s murder.
‘Rumours of Sam’s infidelity began to circulate’