Murder: True Crime Stories - UNSOLVED: The Murder of Marilyn Sheppard 2

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy follows the investigation, trial, and decades-long legal battle that came to define the murder of Marilyn Sheppard. Within days of her death, the Cleveland press had turned her husband into a public villain, with newspapers openly calling for his arrest and conviction before any charges were filed. The trial that followed was a spectacle, and when the verdict came down, almost no one was surprised. But that was only the beginning. What followed was years of appeals, a Supreme Court decision that would reshape how American courts handle media influence, and a second trial that left the country more divided than ever. More than seventy years later, the question of who really killed Marilyn Sheppard has never been fully answered.Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder: True Crime Stories to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped at once ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios

Hi listeners, it's Carter. Before today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories, I want to tell you about another podcast I am hosting. I know you'll love. Crime House and A&E are teaming up on the podcast version of the famous true crime series, The First 48. Each week, I'll take you inside a landmark homicide case, the interrogations, the dead ends,

and the breakthroughs in the critical first 48 hours. listen to and follow the first 48 every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. This is Crime House. In the summer of 1954, a doctor named Sam Shepard told police he'd woken up to find his pregnant wife, Marilyn, beaten to death in the house they shared in Ohio. Sam said, an intruder did it, but almost no one believed him. What followed was one of the most notorious murder cases in American history and one of the first to be tried in the headlines. The papers reached their verdict long before the jury did. Whether they got it right is something people still argue about today.

Was Sam Shepard a cold-blooded killer or an innocent man who was ruined by a story that was too good to pass up? decades of legal battles never fully settled it but along the way the case would change the way America thinks about a fair trial the one thing that's never been up for debate is that Marilyn Shepard was murdered in her own home and that somewhere in all the noise the woman at the center of it all was nearly forgotten people's lives are like a story there's a beginning a middle and an end, but you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is murder, true crime stories, the crime house original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every

Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the crime house community. Please rate, review, and follow the show. And for early, add free access to every episode. Subscribe to Crime House Plus. You'll get part one and part two at the same time, plus exclusive bonus content. To join, go to Crimehouseplus.com

or tap try free on the Murder True Crime Story show page on Apple Podcasts. Please note, this episode contains discussions of suicide. Please listen with care. This is the second of two episodes on one of the most infamous cases, in American history, the murder of 31-year-old Marilyn Shepard. On the morning of July 4, 1954, when she was four months pregnant, Marilyn was beaten to death in her own home. Investigators narrowed in on a suspect almost immediately, but finding justice proved to be harder than anyone expected. Last time, I told you Marilyn's story, the lonely childhood that left her longing to be

chosen and the rocky marriage that Sam's affairs kept threatening to pull apart. By the summer of 1954, the two of them finally seemed to be turning a corner, but they never got the chance to see it through. Today, I'll explain what happened once authorities arrived at the Shepard's home that 4th of July. It wasn't long before investigators narrowed in on Sam as their prime suspect, but that was only the beginning. Even after the jury handed down a verdict, lawyers and judges and the media would argue about the case for decades, and in the end, no one would really know who to blame. All that and more coming up. By the time the sun came up on the morning of July 4th, 1954, the Shepard House on Lake Erie was crawling with people. Patrollman Fred Dr.

Drinken was the first officer on the scene. He arrived around 6 a.m. and found 30-year-old Dr. Sam Shepard in his downstairs den. Sam was shirtless in holding his injured neck. The mayor and the mayor's wife were on either side consoling him, and they had been the ones to call the authorities after Sam called them first. Sam told Drin' what had happened. He said a bushy-haired form had broken in and attacked his wife, 31-year-old Marilyn. Sam heard her calling out for him, so he jumped up from where he'd fallen asleep on

the daybed downstairs and rushed to their bedroom. There he saw the form standing over Maryland in the bed. Sam said he fought with them but was knocked out. When he came to, he ran outside and chased them down to the lake. Sam tried to fight again, but the form got the best of him and knocked him out cold. When Sam woke back up on the beach, he was wet and missing his shirt and watch. Dranken was a little confused listening to Sam described the intruder. He asked Sam what he meant by form. Sam said the two knockouts had left him confused, and now he couldn't remember the gender of the attacker.

That sort of made sense, but Trinken still thought it was weird that Sam didn't just say intruder or stranger or attacker. But maybe Sam was just in shock and having a hard time stringing words together. Trinin filed it away for the time being. Leaving Sam with the mayor and his wife, Trinken braced himself and went upstairs. Trinken found Marilyn on her back in the bed. Her pajamas had been pulled off, leaving her exposed. Her face had been beaten so badly that she was nearly unrecognizable.

Blood covered the bed, the walls, and the closet doors across the room. Drinking took a deep breath. Then he kept moving through the house, seeing what other clues might have been left behind. In the hallway, Sam's medical bag had been emptied, its contents scattered across the floor. In the living room, trophies had been knocked off a shelf. In the office, every desk drawer had been pulled open. On first glance, it looked like a robbery. On second glance, something felt off.

The desk drawers had been pulled out almost. perfectly evenly, there was no sign of forced entry anywhere in the house. The few things that seemed to be missing, Sam's watch, his ring, his keys, soon turned up together, stuffed in a green canvas bag in the bushes behind the house. A real thief doesn't take a man's valuables than leave them a few feet from the back door. Drinkin didn't say it out loud yet. but he was already thinking it. Maybe it had been staged. When County Coroner Samuel Gerber arrived at 8 a.m., Trinkin shared his thoughts with him.

Gerber looked at the scene and agreed immediately. This was a domestic homicide, and Sam Shepard was responsible. As the county coroner, Gerber was an elected official with real authority here, He had the power to investigate a death and officially rule on its cause. Reaching that kind of conclusion was quite literally his job. The problem was he was supposed to investigate first, not walk in, decide Sam was guilty, and work backward from there. But Gerber was so certain about his theory that he cut corners with standard forensic procedures like fingerprint recovery. Gerber only did a superficial sweep because in his mind there was no point in doing more.

Sam's prince would have been everywhere in his own home regardless. He didn't think for a second that he might find someone else's fingerprints. He just let that potential evidence go uncollected. From the house, Gerber drove to Bayview Hospital, where Sam had been admitted and sedated for shock and neck injury. Sam was still groggy from the sedatives, but Gerber questioned him anyway. The interrogation lasted ten minutes, then Gerber collected Sam's clothes for further testing. On the left knee of Sam's pants, he saw a large blood stain,

the kind someone might get from kneeling in blood. Later that day, Gerber told a detective exactly what he thought. Sam Shepard had killed his pregnant. wife. Other investigators would soon reach the same conclusion. Cleveland City Police and Bay Village detectives all cycled through Sam's hospital room that afternoon. They weren't subtle about where they stood. One of the detectives looked Sam in the eye and straight up told him, quote, I think you killed your wife. Sam didn't crack. He just kept saying he loved Maryland. But Sam, Sam also understood what was happening.

He knew he needed someone in his corner who wasn't looking at him the way the detectives were, so he got a hold of a big-time criminal defense attorney named Bill Corrigan. And by the end of the day, Corrigan was sitting at Sam's bedside. There would be no more unsupervised questioning. Meanwhile, the Shepherd home was sealed off and preserved as evidence. Sam and Maryland's son, seven-year-old ship who had slept through, the entire night, was picked up by his aunt and uncle. Marilyn's body was taken to the morgue.

The medical examiner placed her time of death at around 4.30 a.m. The autopsy confirmed that she'd been four months pregnant. Follow-up tests confirmed the child was, in fact, Sam's, that ruled out an early theory that Sam might have killed Marilyn over a pregnancy that wasn't his. Instead, investigators soon learned that Sam was the one who'd been cheating. Nancy Ahern, one of the friends who'd been with the Shepherds the night before Maryland's death, told police that Sam had been seeing a woman from the hospital, someone he'd been involved with for a while. Apparently, it was a bit of an open secret.

Just like that, police had a motive for why Sam might kill his wife. He wanted her out of the way so he could be with his mistress. When asked about it, Sam denied everything. He loved his wife, he was innocent, that was all he had to say. Initially, the local press took Sam at his word and reprinted his version of events about the intruder. The whole thing was a tragedy and Sam was the grieving husband. But that sympathetic coverage didn't last long. Within days, information about the investigation began to leak to the press, and suddenly they had a very different opinion of the doctor.

On July 8th, four days after the murder, the Cleveland Press fired the first shot. The paper ran a story accusing the Shepard family of shielding Sam from questioning and interfering with the homicide investigation. The assistant prosecutor was quoted directly saying he'd never seen such flagrant stalling from a family with this kind of influence. And that influence was real. The shepherds were osteopathic royalty. Sam's father had built Bayview Hospital and the family still ran it. The same standing that once made Sam untouchable in Bay Village was now turned against him. proof in the public's eyes of a powerful family closing ranks to keep one of their own above the law.

The man behind the decision to run the story was 56-year-old Louis Selzer, the paper's editor. He was known around the city as Mr. Cleveland, and the nickname wasn't ironic. If the Shepherds wielded power over Bay Village, Seltser wielded power over an entire city. He had decided, very publicly, whose side he was on. And that was only the beginning. The next day, the paper reported that Sam had refused to take a polygraph test. Sam pushed back, saying he and his family weren't stalling. Since the murder, he'd been given instructions to rest and not undergo intense questioning.

He was just following doctor's orders. a doctor who happened to be his big brother, Stephen. That detail didn't help his case. So to avoid further PR damage, Sam showed up the next day at the sheriff's headquarters. Apparently he had found the strength to deal with their questions. Investigators didn't waste any time. They had one big thing they wanted to talk to Sam about. His affair with Susan Hayes.

the lab technician he'd met at the hospital. But while Sam had shown up at the station, he had no intention of answering those questions truthfully. He denied the affair telling officers that he and Susan were just friends. Nobody believed him. As investigators tried to build a case around Sam, the Cleveland Press grew impatient. To editor Seltser, it seemed like,

They had their suspect, so what was the holdup? After two and a half weeks of no progress, Seltzer's paper published a front-page editorial that practically screamed its headline in all caps. Why no inquest, do it now, Dr. Gerber. The paper was calling for Sam's head on a stake, and its provocative headlines were rallying the public to the cause. It wouldn't be long before authorities Cave to the pressure.

By late July in 1954, the Cleveland press had been hammering the Shepard case for weeks, and on July 21st, the paper finally got the thing it had been demanding an inquest into Maryland's murder with 30-year-old Sam Shepard called in to answer for it. The addition hit in the morning, and by that afternoon, coroner Sam Gerber had scheduled one,

to begin the very next day. He booked a Bay Village school gymnasium as the location to accommodate the crowds he thought might show up. Gerber was right to anticipate a huge audience. On July 22nd, hundreds of people packed into the gym, shoulder to shoulder. Sam arrived still wearing his neck brace. Whispers went out throughout the gym about whether he was legitimately injured or faking it to try to get sympathy. Sam took his seat alone. Gerber barred his attorney, Bill Corrigan,

from sitting beside his client. Instead, Corrigan had to watch from the stands like everyone else. The inquest lasted three days. Throughout it all, Sam was oddly composed, detached in a way that rubbed people the wrong way. When Gerber asked whether he had run or walked when he chased the intruder to the beach, Sam replied, quote, I can't give you a specific recollection. I proceeded as rapidly as I could. It was an answer that technically said something while saying nothing at all, and exactly the kind of statement that made people distrust him. Gerber went on to ask Sam about Susan Hayes. Sam kept denying the affair. Gerber kept pushing, getting more and more specific.

He asked about the trip Sam and Marilyn took to California in March of 1954, just four months before her murder. On that trip, they had split up. Marilyn went off with her girlfriends while Sam was supposed to stay with his own friends. Instead, he spent the week with Susan. Gerber had so many details. It was hard to explain away, but Sam just kept repeating his moniker. that he and Susan were nothing more than friends.

The inquest brought a brief pause to the media crusade, but even that didn't last the week. When nothing seemed to happen, the Cleveland Press started publishing headlines demanding Sam's arrest. Just like with the inquest, the paper's pressure produced results. On the night of July 30th, police arrived at Sam's parents' home where he was staying

and arrested him under suspicion of killing his wife. For the next two days, detectives grilled Sam for a total of 22 hours, but he never broke. They still couldn't get a confession out of him. Despite that, a grand jury convened in August. Prosecutors brought them no physical evidence tying Sam to the murder, but plenty that was circumstantial. There was the mayor who said that Marilyn had once described Sam to him as a Jekyll and a hide. And then there was Susan Hayes. The prosecutor flew her out from California to testify.

While under oath, she contradicted everything Sam had been saying. They were not just friends. They'd been having a full-blown affair. Sam had brought up the possibility of... of divorcing Marilyn more than once. Another investigator said they'd found evidence that Marilyn had refused to give Sam the divorce he wanted. The detective also said that the sheer number of blows to her face

pointed toward premeditation, a crime driven by rage, not panic, or, in other words, committed by someone she knew, not a stranger. On August 17th, despite a lack of physical evidence, the grand jury returned a first-degree murder indictment against Sam. And they'd been under a lot of pressure to reach that verdict, and the next jury was about to feel that same intensity. Sam's trial began in October 1954, just four months after Maryland's murder. It drew reporters from newspapers across the country.

Even celebrity journalists, like Dorothy Kilgallin, descended on Cleveland to report. She wrote that the case was so juicy because it was a true puzzle. You could believe Sam was guilty or innocent, and there was plenty to back up either side. All that publicity didn't bode well for the defense. Sam's attorneys tried to get the trial moved to. another county, arguing that there was no way they could get an impartial jury in Cleveland. But Judge Edward Blython said no. That meant the defense had a serious uphill battle. The judge may have overruled them, but there was no denying that the jury knew about the

case ahead of time. All but one member said they'd read about it or seen televised coverage. Throughout the trial, they weren't sequestered, so they heard all kinds of rumors and theories in the media that were never actually introduced in court. Sorting it all out in their heads must have been nearly impossible. One moment stood out as almost surreal. Deep into the trial, the radio and television star Walter Winchell, one of the most powerful broadcasters in the country, went on the air with a a bombshell. He said a woman in New York was claiming she'd secretly had Sam's child. None of it was ever introduced as evidence. But when the defense asked the jurors whether they'd heard the broadcast, two of them admitted that they had. Then, to make matters worse,

the Cleveland papers published the jurors' names in photos. If the verdict didn't go, the way the public wanted, everyone would know exactly who to blame. But noise isn't proof. Whatever the public had already decided, the state still had to make its case in court. The prosecution's argument was straightforward. Sam and Marilyn had been fighting about his affair. He killed her because of it. His story about a bushy-haired intruder was a lie. They came at from several directions. One witness testified that Sam had once told her a head injury was the easiest kind to fake. Another medical witness said Sam's neck injury was a possible chip fracture, but nothing major, implying that Sam was faking the severity of his injuries. Officers testified to

inconsistencies in Sam's account. Bloodstains found in the basement and garage, suggest that suggested the killer had moved through the house after the murder, which didn't fit with Sam's story of immediately chasing the intruder outside. Officer Drinkin, who'd been the first on the scene, told the jury there'd been no signs of a struggle inside the home, no forced entry, and no reports of prowlers in the neighborhood that night. Then came Coroner Gerber, the prosecution's star witness. Gerber testified that a bloodstain on Maryland's pillow looked like it had the impression of a murder weapon. He paused for effect, then told the jury that he believed it was the outline of a surgical instrument. Sam's lawyer was on his feet immediately objecting, but the judge

overruled him. On cross-examination, Corrigan suggested the imprint was simply the marks of wet fabric grumbling and then drying. But even if that was a valid alternative, the damage was already done. Gerber had planted the image of a surgeon standing over his wife with one of his own tools in hand. It was vivid and awful, even if it was only ever Gerber's interpretation. Then finally, 24-year-old Susan Hayes took the stand. She reiterated everything she told the grand jury, that she and Sam were having an affair, and there'd been conversations about divorce. But this time, she said all those things in a public trial with the whole world listening. So now it was clear as day. Sam had lied about his affair, which begged the question,

what else was he lying about? When it was the defense's turn, Bill Corrigan called. called 18 character witnesses. Two said they'd seen a bushy-haired man near the shepherd home the day of the murder. Corrigan pointed out that the crime scene had been extremely bloody, but apart from one small stain on Sam's pants, there was no blood on him at all. Corrigan also called Sam's brother, Stephen, and a team of doctors and nurses to speak to the true severity of Sam's injuries, but in the end, the only witness who really had a chance of saving Sam was Sam. He took the stand on December 9th and testified for three days. It didn't go the way his attorneys hoped.

Sam had always been very clinical in his descriptions, and it showed. He didn't say he saw things. He visualized them. He didn't find Marilyn hurt or dead. he found her in a bad condition. The intruder wasn't a man, but a form. For a man whose wife had been beaten to death in her bedroom, he sure sounded like he was dictating a report about a stranger.

The trial lasted a total of nine weeks. The jury was sent to deliberate on a Friday. They came back on Tuesday, December 21st. Just over five months after Maryland's death, they had made a decision. 30-year-old Sam hadn't planned on killing his wife, so he wasn't guilty of first-degree murder, which required premeditation,

but he was guilty of second-degree. Judge Blythin sentenced Sam to life in prison with the possibility of parole in a decade, although the likelihood he'd ever be granted his freedom was slim, for Sam, life as he knew it was over. But he refused to go quietly. He was going to fight the court's decision with everything he had. In December, 1954, a jury found 30-year-old Sam Shepard guilty of his wife, Maryland's murder.

The ink was barely dry on that verdict when Sam's world collapsed even further. Within a month of his sentencing, his mother died by suicide. In her note, she said she could not go on without her husband, who was on death store himself. Eleven days later, Dr. Shepard Sr. died of cancer. Sam knew that his parents had been devastated by his conviction, but to lose both of them so quickly, one right after another, must have been incredibly hard to deal with. They had been his supporters. Now they were gone, and he was alone in prison.

Sam's sentencing had satisfied the witch hunt, drummed up by the Cleveland Papers. Now that he was locked up, it seemed like the world had moved on. But there was one person who couldn't let it go. A California forensic scientist named Dr. Paul Kirk. He started working with Sam's defense. fence and managed to get his hands on enough materials from the case file to run additional tests. According to his findings, he believed there was a third person in the room, like Sam said. He also believed that based on the patterns of the blood splatter, the killer was left-handed.

Well, that was great news for Sam, who was right-handed. Three months later, a new piece of evidence surfaced in Sam's favor. One of his old neighbors had been out swimming in Lake Erie, and they'd found a dented flashlight near the shore. Could that have been the missing murder weapon? Sam was trying to appeal the court's decision during that time, and every little piece of contradictory evidence helped, but until there was something much bigger, no appeals court was going to overturn his conviction.

Sam had to wait four long years before there was another potential big break. That happened in November 1959 when a man named Richard Eberling was arrested for larceny. The Shepherds had actually hired Eberling as a window washer for their Lake Erie home before Maryland's murder. After he was arrested, authorities searched his home and found. found a ring that had belonged to Maryland. Eberling insisted he wasn't a killer, just a thief. But then he volunteered something startling. He said his own blood might be inside the shepherd house.

He claimed he'd caught himself removing a storm window a couple of days before the murder and dripped blood as he moved through the home. If that were true, it meant investigators in 1954, had blood evidence from someone other than Sam, and may have overlooked a suspect entirely. It was the first suggestion that maybe, just maybe, Sam had been wrongfully convicted. By then, Sam was in his mid-30s and had been trying to appeal his conviction for years without any success. When his lawyer, Bill Corrigan, passed away in 1961, it gave him a chance to reset. Sam hired a new, young, and aggressive lawyer named F. Lee Bailey. Bailey would go on to represent a host of famous clients, including Patty Hurst and O.J.

Simpson. But Sam was one of his first big cases. The first thing Bailey did for Sam was file a habeas corpus petition, arguing that the publicity of the first trial violated Sam's constitutional rights to a fair trial. If they couldn't overturn Sam's conviction on the evidence, then Bailey was confident they could get it thrown out on the technicality. Then Bailey got a gift. At a a press event in New York, he crossed paths with Dorothy Kilgallan, the same columnist who had covered the 1954 trial. She told him about a conversation she had never forgotten. She said that back during jury selection, Judge Blython had called her into his chambers and apparently a little starstruck, asked Kilgallin for her autograph. Then, in nearly the same breath, he

offered his private verdict on a case the jury hadn't even heard yet. According to Kilgallon, he said, quote, it's an open and shut case. He's guilty as hell. By the time Kilgallin went public with that story, Blytheon had been dead for years and couldn't confirm or deny a word of it, which is exactly why the state insisted her account be thrown out. But the claim was staggering all the same. that the judge had made up his mind about Sam's guilt before the jury was ever seated.

Bailey put it straight into his petition. But the fight over Sam's conviction was no longer confined to the courts. It was spilling out into the world again. In 1963, the TV series The Fugitive debuted. It was a drama about a doctor wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, hunting for the real killer while being chased across the country. The show was widely believed to be based on Sam's case, even though its creator denied it. Whether it swayed public opinion directly is hard to measure, but something was shifting.

More people were beginning to ask whether Sam had gotten a fair shake. That wasn't the case for Maryland's father, Thomas Reese, who always believed Sam. was guilty but in 1963 Thomas died by suicide by then the murder had hollowed out both families Sam's parents were already gone his mother to suicide just after the conviction his father weeks later now Maryland's last parent was gone too there was no one left to speak up for her about a year later in July 1964, a federal district judge weighed in on the habeas corpus petition. He overturned Sam's conviction on due process grounds, calling the 1954 trial a mockery of justice. He cited the newspapers

that had openly demanded Sam's arrest, the coverage that had reported incriminating details never introduced in court, and a jury that had been left exposed to all of it without protection. Just like that, 40-year-old Sam was a free man. Almost immediately, he married a German woman named Ariana. She was a pen pal who had started writing to him from overseas while he was still incarcerated. They'd gotten engaged after she came to visit him in prison. Unfortunately for the lovebirds, Sam's freedom was still up for debate, and soon a new appeals court overruled the latest decision, reinstating Sam's original conviction. Sam couldn't believe it. He was just being yanked back and forth, but Bailey told him

they weren't done fighting yet. They would appeal Sam's case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Until the nine justices weighed in, Sam was allowed to remain out of prison on bail. In June, 1966. It was the Supreme Court's turn to rule on Sam's case, and once again, they reversed the previous decision. They agreed with the initial appeal ruling, calling the 1954 trial a carnival in which the judge had failed to shield the jury from media contamination. It was a landmark decision. Shepard v. Maxwell that set precedent for future due process complaints. The court made it clear that judges were responsible for balancing the First Amendment's freedom of the press with the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a free trial.

With that, it seemed like Sam's conviction was officially overturned. Except the way the law worked, he could be retried in Ohio since the same. the conviction had been thrown out rather than reverse to an acquittal. And within two days, Cleveland prosecutors announced they planned to do just that. The second trial began in October, 1966. The atmosphere couldn't have been more different from the first time. The new judge made sure to keep his courtroom orderly and by the books. The prosecution largely abandoned the strategy

that had worked for them during the first go-round. Susan Hayes didn't take the stand. Coroner Gerber didn't bring up his theatrical claim about the surgical instrument impression. Instead, the state centered its case on a single forensic expert who testified that blood spots found on the rim of Sam's watch were spatter, not transfer,

the kind of blood pattern that could only have gotten there if Sam had been swinging the murder weapon. As for the defense, Bailey didn't put Sam on the stand. He brought in his own forensic expert instead. They argued the watch stains came from contact transfer, the kind Sam might have picked up checking Maryland's pulse. Bailey also leaned on Paul Kirk's forensics from years earlier that a third person had been in that room, the real killer,

and the blood spatter showed that person was left-handed. Sam wasn't. This time, the jury took it all in, and they acquitted 42-year-old Sam. Sam walked out of his second trial, a free man. He was also, by most accounts, a broken one. He went back to medicine, but prison had taken something from him that couldn't be restored.

his surgical skills had deteriorated. He also started drinking heavily and taking barbiturates. During his brief return to practice, two of his patients died, and both of their estates sued him for malpractice. Between the lawsuits and his drinking, his career as a doctor, was finished. Then his new wife, Ariana, divorced him after he allegedly cheated on her. His relationship with his son Chip, who was now 19, was strained and distant, with nothing left of his old life.

45-year-old Sam took a hard pivot and turned to a new career as a professional wrestler. Sam debuted as a wrestler at the Akron Armory in Ohio, teaming up with a pro named Hoss Strickland. Sam went on to marry and quickly divorce Strickland's daughter. As a wrestler, Sam developed a new person. Jonah, despite years of swearing he was innocent, he chose a nickname that played into everyone's worst assumptions. He called himself Killer Shepherd.

The name was either a horribly distasteful joke or an insight into who he really was. Either way, it was a harsh fall for a man who had once been a prominent, respected doctor. But his time as a pro wrestler didn't last. long either. In April, 1970, Sam collapsed in his kitchen, vomiting blood. By the time, medics were called to the scene, it was too late. They couldn't revive him. Sam had died of liver disease at the age of 46. But the story didn't end there. Nearly two decades later, in 1989, Sam and Maryland's son, Chip, began a public effort. to solve his mother's murder and clear his father's name. His relationship with his father may have

been strained, but Chip was now 42, almost the same age as his dad had been when he died. For Chip, it had become about the family's legacy. Chip believed another man was responsible for his mom's murder, Richard Eberling, the shepherd's old window washer who had stolen in one of Maryland's rings. Remember, decades earlier, Eberling had been arrested for theft, but in 1989, he was convicted of a much worse crime. The murder of an elderly widow he had befriended as part of an insurance scheme. For Chip, it was proof that Eberling was capable of extreme violence.

Eberling seemed to stoke the flames, telling various interviewers, around that time that he knew more than he would say about the Shepard case. Then, according to one of Eberling's cellmates, he confessed to killing Maryland. But that confession would never be tested in court. Eberling died in prison in 1998. Chip wasn't done, though. He had already taken the state to court, a civil suit against both the county and Ohio, filed on his father's behalf for wrongful imprisonment.

Later, the law would change so that only the person imprisoned, not their family, could bring that kind of claim, but for the moment, the suit went ahead. Chip and his legal team built their case around Eberling as the true killer. They suggested that the murder followed an attempted sexual assault that Marilyn had tried to resist. This time, the family had something Sam's lawyers never did. DNA.

Sam's body was exhumed so a forensic scientist could re-examine the old blood evidence with modern testing. His conclusion was striking. The blood from the murder scene wasn't Sam's, which suggested someone else had been there. according to the forensic scientist, Eberling couldn't be ruled out as the source. It sounded like the proof Chip had spent years chasing, but under cross-examination, it came apart. The samples were decades old and degraded,

and the state's experts argued the genetic markers the forensic scientists found were so common that thousands of people could have matched them. In the end, the DNA named no one. Beyond all that, the prosecution's position hadn't changed in 46 years. This was a domestic homicide. Sam had not wanted his wife's pregnancy, so he'd killed her, plain and simple. After 10 weeks, 76 witnesses, and decades of frustration on both sides, the jury returned a unanimous verdict. Chip had failed to prove that his father had been wrongly imprisoned.

It was the third jury to weigh in on the case in nearly half a century, and it was also the last. The first had convicted Sam, the second had set him free. This one only found that Chip hadn't proven his father was innocent, which isn't the the same as proving him guilty. But that distinction didn't do much to comfort Chip. He'd set out to clear his dad's name once and for all. Instead, the case closed the way it had always lived. Unresolved.

The murder of Maryland Shepard and the case of Dr. Sam Shepard has been an enduring mystery since the 1950s, but in all the legal wrangling, it's easy to. to lose sight of the real victim here. Marilyn. All the trials, appeals, the TV show. None of that was really about her. It was about Sam and the legal system.

About media and fairness and constitutional rights. Those are all important things. But somewhere in the decades of legal back and forth, the woman at the center of it all got buried the second time. Marilyn wasn't a plot point in some crazy story. She was a person, a woman who deserved more than she got. She was 31 years old with her whole life ahead of her, but she never got to find out how it all unfolded

because someone murdered her in cold blood and got away with it. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story of a new murder and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House original, powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcast.

Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your murder true crime stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get both parts of every story dropped on Tuesday, completely ad-free, no waiting for part two, plus ad-free and early access to every show across Crime House and bonus episodes every month. To join, go to Crimehouseplus.com,

or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of the murder, True Crime Stories page. We'll be back on Friday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pratsowski, Alyssa Fox, Alex Burns, Cassidy Dillon, and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening. I'm Lindsay Cormack, host of Government That Doesn't Suck with Greg Jackson from History That Doesn't Suck, a narrative history podcast about the American institutions that you'll never look at the same way again. Listen to and follow Government That Doesn't Suck, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi listeners, it's Carter. Before today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories, I want to tell you about another podcast I am hosting. I know you'll love. Crime House and A&E are teaming up on the podcast version of the... the famous true crime series, The First 48. Each week, I'll take you inside a landmark homicide case, the interrogations, the dead ends,

and the breakthroughs in the critical first 48 hours. Listen to and follow the First 48 every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.