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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.
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Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. And I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
It is morbid. It's a Monday afternoon morbid because Monday morning was spent doing some cool ass shit.
Take it away. I don't even know how words are coming out of my mouth currently.
Nor do I. We got to talk to Tobias Forge from Ghost.
And it was so fun. He is so fucking lovely.
It was a blast. We laughed. We cried. We talked about Jack the Ripper.
We healed Satan. He's got a real, like... solid theory that made me want to go back into my research and look a little further into someone.
So I'm going to do that. I'm not sold yet.
He's like a very, very intelligent human being.
Yeah, he truly is. It was like really, really cool just to sit and listen to what he had to say.
We talked about the music. We talked about horror.
We talked about all kinds of stuff. Halloween.
He answered a ton of your questions. Yeah, I think we ended up doing some, like, eight or ten, like, really close to ten.
Yeah, because we had only originally, you know, we were going to have him pick a few because we just didn't, you know, we wanted to make sure we had enough time for everything.
And, like, he was comfortable. Yeah, and that he was comfortable answering everything.
And he... He picked up way more. So that was like totally him.
And it was awesome. Really cool of him to do.
He gave us a ton of time, like two full hours of sitting down chatting.
Literally. It was great. And that was... It was everything I hoped it would be.
That was him like taking the time to do that while he's currently on tour.
Like we, I think we were looking... He was at the venue.
He was at the venue. And I think he's done something like three or four shows the past like couple of nights.
Oh. Oh, yeah. And then he has a show tonight and then like a bunch following in the coming days.
Yeah, he had one last night and tonight.
So that was just like between there, which we can't say enough how thankful we are that he took the time to do that and took like way over the allotted amount of time that we were going to do.
Yeah, we were only supposed to have like 60 minutes.
Yeah, and he just kept going and we kept going.
So it was a lot of fun. And I'm going to float around for the rest of my life now.
So that's fun. And then tonight we're going to be at Trixie and fucking Katya's.
Trixie and Katya. Where I'm going to shit my actual pants.
So that'll be cool. So it's a great day.
What a great Monday. It's a great. I know.
It does not feel like a Monday right now.
No. And we're coming off of a really cool fucking weekend.
Yeah. Because so many of you guys came to Elena's book signing.
Guys. Let me tell you, I think that I'm still just like in a, in a, I'm in a space level.
Yeah. At a space level. Because so many of you came out to Barnes and Noble for the book signing.
Not only that, you all waited. Yeah. Which I appreciated so much.
I get to say this because it's not about me.
People lined up literally like hours ahead of time for Elena to sign their book.
And the line was around the fucking building.
It blew my mind. It continues to blow my mind.
She's a celebrity. Oh, my God. No. Oh, my God.
That is an untrue statement. You're like, I'm a runner.
No, I just like, I can't even describe to you how much I appreciate all of you.
We got to chat with all of you. We got to take pictures.
Like, we actually got to have, like, time with all of you and, like, really talk to you.
It was so fucking cool. I'm not kidding you.
I was, I'm still on cloud nine about it.
Like you were all so nice and so sweet and so awesome and so beautifully weird.
And it was just like, I was like, fuck, this is cool.
Like what a kick in the ass to be like. I want to put out 85 episodes right now and I just want to write like 55 books just to like give you all the content ever because you're just so sweet.
We just love you. Really, it was so great.
And also on top of that, you're all fucking amazing to each other.
I know everybody in line was being so nice to each other.
So kind, making friends. And then we also found out we met one person, Ash, Ashley.
Yes. Ashley with two E's. Ashley with two E's, yes.
And we found out that all of you guys were trying to help figure out a way to get her to the book signing.
Yeah. Because she had, like, a lot going on.
I won't get into it. Yeah, she had some family stuff in it.
And she was so fucking lovely. And her baby.
She showed me a picture of Bailey, too, that she made.
That she did amazing. Like, and you guys all helped her.
You were all like... You were helping her get towards the front of the line, I saw, because she had a young child with her that had been waiting forever and was so patient.
He was so cute. He really loved Elena. Oh, my God.
I'm usually the baby whisperer in this family, and that baby...
He was not feeling me. I got him at a bad time.
He was a twin. Maybe that's why he knew a twin mom.
That's true. That's what it was. He could feel the twin vibe.
It's true. But you guys were so amazing.
Even the Barnes & Noble employees were like, I just want to let you guys know that you're listeners in the coolest community I've ever seen.
They were so kind to each other. They were so sweet.
They were kind to us. So respectful. You guys fucking killed it.
And it was so nice because sometimes you got to get off the fucking internet.
And actually see real life. And see real people.
Because seeing people in person, you were like, oh, here you are.
Like, this is who it is. Like, this is who our content is for.
Exactly. These are the people I want to give.
I just want to give you guys everything.
And I want to make you happy. And I want to make you...
And just like feel great thing. Like I just was like, man, I just want to make everybody's day right now.
I just want to give you 55 episodes all at once.
It was so cool to see that. It was a big, big kick in the pants in the best way possible.
I was so proud of you. Thank you. All right, gross.
I'm just, I'm grateful to you guys. I really am.
Yeah, we both are. Big way. It's like a really big dream come true.
And it's been like a long time coming, this book.
I know. Now you got to get to the second one.
I know. Now stay tuned, guys. is it a continuation or is it a completely new book i don't know inquiring minds will find out when it's time but for now we have a podcast to do we sure do and you're here for it so i'm here and and you're here i'm here i'm floating i'm floating away from the tobias high you're here and then like you're here you're here you're here you guys you're here you're here you're here is becoming one word you're here you're here what do you think that means I don't know.
I don't know. I'm on, I'm tired. I'm on a space level.
I'm not even on a space level. I'm on a space level.
Level. There you go. That's how I feel right now, to be quite honest.
You want a Pumptini? I ran downstairs. I ate like a pickle and cheese sandwich.
I was so excited. Yeah. I was trying to figure out what the fuck you were eating.
Oh, yeah. I would have eaten anything at that moment.
I was just so happy. It looked like rotisserie chicken.
No. In a sandwich. That must have been the... I don't even know.
It was the cheese. I was just like, what is she eating?
All right. Well, all that to say that today we're going to talk about a super crazy case.
It's like sort of old timey, but it's got weirdly current feels to it.
And you might know it because it's pretty famous.
It is the Sam Shepard case. Hey, yo. Have you heard of it?
I have heard of this one. I don't know a lot about it, though.
Honestly, I didn't either. I saw like a few years ago, Ryan and Shane cover it on BuzzFeed Unsolved.
Oh, my God. I love it. I love Ryan and Shane.
I love them so much. I also feel like we are their female counterparts and we've heard that before.
Yeah. A lot of people say that. When you start getting into them, you're like, oh shit.
Like, wow. Yeah. Like there it is. I think you're, are you Ryan?
No, I'm Shane. You're Shane. Yeah. Okay.
I get people confused. I'm bad at names.
I'm like, are you Ash? Who are you? But anyways, I saw them cover it and I was like, oh, that's cool.
And then I've always had it in the back of my mind.
And then finally I sat down and started researching it myself.
There you go. So let's talk about Sam Shepard.
He was born the day after you, not the same year.
So he's a Capricorn born December 29th, 1923.
So just a little bit before you. It was only a couple of years.
Yeah, just a few. Yeah. He was born to parents Richard Allen Shepard and Ethel Shepard.
Weirdly, a lot of Ethels in this story. I love an Ethel.
Yeah. I mean, fuck yeah. Let's go. Who doesn't love an Ethel?
Now, Sam was the youngest. He had two older brothers.
And his mother, Ethel, was actually from Paris.
She was a teacher. And his father, Richard, was a doctor who founded the Bayview Hospital in Cleveland.
Okay. Okay. Now, the hospital was in a very ritzy area, often referred to as an elite suburb.
So this was like a pretty well-off family.
I mean, dad's a doctor, so, you know. But Sam was honestly like a really pretty normal kid growing up.
He went to high school at Cleveland Heights High, and he did really well there.
He got all A's and B's. And when he wasn't busy playing sports, he was also involved in student government and actually served as class president for three years.
Look at this guy. I know, he like did it all.
Somehow he balanced that with being a year-round athlete, running track, and playing both basketball and football.
Jeez. And he was not only so good at school, not only so good at student government, but so great at these sports that there was a couple of schools in Ohio that were already scouting him like really early on. and offered him some nice scholarships.
Damn, look at him. But he turned most of those scholarships down because he didn't want to pursue anything really sports-wise.
His goal was that he really wanted to follow in his father's footsteps, much like his two older brothers had, and become a doctor.
Okay. So his father and his brothers were osteopathic doctors.
Oh, wow. And later Sam would follow in their footsteps, but then even further down the road, he became a neurosurgeon.
Oh, no big deal. So he is a smart lad. Yeah.
Now, he decided that the best way to follow in his father's footsteps would be by enrolling at Hanover College, which is in Indiana.
And there he would do the majority of his studies.
And then he also did take some extra classes on top of his course load at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
And then somehow he ended up in Los Angeles when he finished his degree there.
And that was at the Los Angeles Osteopathic School of Physicians and Surgeons, which now is the University of California, Irvine.
Oh, okay. They decided to shorten it up a little bit.
Now, once his degree was complete, he did do an internship at the L.A.
County General Hospital, and later he had a residency there in neurosurgery.
Jeez. So he just, like, went to fucking school.
He schooled. He schooled so hard, motherfuckers wanted to find him.
He's a scholar. He's a scholar. Now, he did all of that while he was still dating a girl that he'd gone to high school with.
Oh, wow. And she was a beauty. Her name was Marilyn Reese.
And both of them enjoyed really just like kind of like going out together, being active.
Like they were not socialites, but they had that feel to them, you know?
Like they were that kind of couple. They specifically loved golfing, water skiing, and very much loved hosting a nice party together, just hosting company.
So Marilyn also taught Bible classes at the local Methodist church.
And on February 21st, 1945, Sam and Marilyn were married in Hollywood.
But they didn't stay on the West Coast too much longer because Sam ended up getting a job at his father's practice back in Cleveland.
Now, by that time, Sam and Marilyn were expecting their first child together, a boy who would be named Sam after his father.
So Marilyn and Sam, they were super happy to be moving back to Bay Village to be closer to the family.
And Sam specifically was really, really proud that he was going to be father to the first male grandchild.
Okay. Because, you know, boys are a big deal.
I was going to say, all right. It's good to have goals.
It's the 50s. So, you know, whatever. So they bought a beautiful home together right along the shore of Lake Erie, which like beautiful area.
And once they moved back, Sam got right to work.
And by all accounts, he was very popular at the hospital and he was really, really good at his job.
Everybody he worked with enjoyed working with him.
They all called him Dr. Sam because at that point there were so many Dr. Shepherds that they had to kind of differentiate.
That's kind of funny. Yeah. Like I would love Dr. Sam.
Dr. Sam. I want to have a Dr. Sam. Yeah, Dr. Sam just sounds like a chill guy.
Yeah. And Dr. Sam's patients, they all felt well cared for.
He worked on hundreds and hundreds of patients throughout his career.
And when he wasn't working on his patients at Bayview Hospital, he would actually head over to the family's private practice, which was in Fairview Park.
And not too far from the hospital. But, you know, he's practicing on different patients in different locations.
He's just really going at it. He's going for it.
And even when he wasn't working at either practice and he was able to be home, he was still usually on call for emergencies.
Yeah. So he's working a shit ton. And this was the case.
He was at home for emergencies on July 4th weekend back in 1954.
That was the weekend that Marilyn, his wife, would be brutally murdered.
Oh, no. In their home. Now, it was supposed to be a great weekend for this family and their friends and neighbors because every year Marilyn and Sam would put on a big 4th of July party and they would host everybody in the neighborhood at their home.
They'd cook out, relax, play games, you know, a 4th of July party.
And so Marilyn had spent most of the 3rd with Sam Jr., who they called Chip.
Oh, stop it. So cute. He was seven years old at this time.
She and Chip were kind of getting things together for the party and Sam had to go in and do like a little bit of work, but he came home right around dinner, which was perfect because Sam and Marilyn were actually hosting their neighbors for dinner that night, Dawn and Nancy Ahern.
So the couples ate dinner together with their kids.
Once they were finished, Marilyn was like, I got to go put little Chip to bed.
And Donna Hearn actually brought their kids home and left them in bed and then went back to the Shepherds to watch a movie in their living room.
Okay. Like such a weird thing to think about now, but back then, very normal thing to do.
Yeah. Very quiet neighborhood where everybody knows everybody.
So wild. Kind of neighborhood where you leave your door unlocked if you're home.
Yeah. Like Sam said, when me and Marilyn were home, our door was unlocked.
Yeah. We locked our door when we left, but we weren't at home.
But if you were in the house, there was no reason to.
Yeah. Wow. And that night, just for context, I believe they were watching the movie Strange Holiday.
Oh, okay. I've never seen it. I don't know that one.
I looked it up. It's old. It's old. It's old.
It's got some years on it. So they were watching that old movie.
It's long in the tooth. Yeah. Back then it was probably exciting.
Yeah. Also back then there was only two channels.
Whoa. Like I was reading some source and it was like they picked a movie on one of the two channels available.
Oh damn. Can you fucking imagine? A world?
Who was talking to us about having two channels?
Somebody was talking to us about that recently.
Who was that? And that's all I could think about.
Oh, my God. No, they were not talking to us.
No, they weren't talking to us because it just popped into our head at the same time.
We were watching interviews of Tobias to, like, figure out, like, what we wanted to do for ours.
Oh, my God. And it was Tobias. I said he was, like, we only had two channels.
He was not telling us. He was telling someone different.
What's that called? Like a parasocial relationship?
We just had a parasocial moment. Oh, that was a real parasocial moment.
That's really funny though. My apologies, everybody.
It was like of the time. Sure. It was topical.
That's what I was trying to say. Yeah, there you go.
All right, let's move on from that. Let's move on from that humiliating thing.
No, that's not humiliating. So, yes, they were watching the movie Strange Holiday, having a great time.
Marilyn was sitting on Sam's lap. They, like, shared a couple kisses.
Like, the Ahern's were like, yeah, they seemed super in love.
Adorable. Yeah, like, nothing seemed amiss that night.
Wow. And at some point, Marilyn moved off her husband's lap, and he moved over to a daybed that they had in the living room, and he ended up falling asleep while they were watching the movie.
Okay. The movie ended around 1230, so technically we've now approached the July 4th hour, and the Ahern's headed home to get some rest before they plan to come back for the July 4th festivities.
Now, as she saw them out, she was like, peace out, see you later on.
Marilyn heads upstairs to go to bed, and she just leaves Sam sleeping on the couch, which I don't think it was, like, a weird thing.
I think he was just sleeping and, like, she wanted to go to bed.
No, and it was also the 50s. Wasn't that the time when, like, people usually slept in separate beds?
Whoa. What? Yes. Oh, okay. It's just so funny that you said that.
Because I thought, so I thought when you were married that that was when you could start sleeping in the same bed.
No, I know. People kept sleeping in separate beds.
Yes. Because it was like, I think you weren't supposed to be in the same bed unless you were like trying to make a baby. well and that was it so it's like so i guess that wouldn't even matter because it's just like well you're not even sleeping in the same bed as me so i don't give a shit like sleep down here it's a it's in a different bed no matter what yeah exactly and they did um share a room yeah but they had single beds single beds yeah that makes sense it was just so crazy to me because i didn't realize that that was still a thing when you were married it's like ricky and lucy on i love lucy Yeah.
They're in separate beds. That thought is... Isn't that wild?
It's just a different time. That's all it is.
Yeah, of course. I just can't imagine not sleeping in the same bed as Drew.
Oh, no. I literally can't sleep when I'm not in the same bed as John.
Me either. So it's like that would just be...
I would hate that. I can do it. There's some times where Drew's not home at night, and I literally make a makeshift Drew with my pillows.
Oh, yeah. A makeshift Drew. And it still doesn't work.
Oh, yeah. We've been on vacation before, and it's been like two beds in one room, and we just push them together.
Yeah. And we'll sleep in them together because we literally can't sleep apart.
It's so wild. I'm like, what do you guys think is going to happen?
What's going to happen? It's going to happen if you guys sleep together just next to each other.
You're going to bone. Hot. You're allowed to.
You took vows. So anyways. You're allowed to.
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Some cases fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with.
I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice.
Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers.
Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to The Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.
So Sam's asleep on the couch. Marilyn goes to bed.
And Sam wakes up the next morning around – or that morning around 4.30 a.m.
And when he wakes up, it is to the sound of Marilyn like shrieking for him.
So he headed upstairs and he found a grisly sight.
And it is interesting that you said you would stay in the same – you would probably sleep in the same bed if you were trying to make a baby.
Because Marilyn was actually four months pregnant.
They had recently made a child. Oh, no. So –
It's very, very, very tragic. She was laying on the bed, her bed, and she had been brutally attacked.
There was blood absolutely everywhere. And as Sam was trying to make sense of it all, he looked up from the bed and he saw what he described as a white form with bushy hair standing over his wife's body.
Oh. So he tries to fight off this attacker, but he ends up getting hit like very hard in the neck and actually ends up falling unconscious.
Oh, wow. And when he woke up from that blow, he didn't know how long it had been, but he checked Marilyn's pulse, excuse me, and was able to determine that she was dead.
She had been killed. That's awful. So immediately he runs into Chip's room to make sure that like Chip is okay and hasn't been harmed by this attacker.
And Chip was fine and actually slept through the entire thing.
Wow. But as Sam was checking on Chip, he heard a noise coming from downstairs.
So he runs down the stairs and when he does so, he sees that this same bushy haired white form is running out the door.
So he runs after this person and he said he made it down to the shore of the lake where the two of them again got involved in a physical altercation.
And again, Sam was knocked out. Now, later he recalled that before he was knocked out, he lunged at the form.
And when he did so, he said, quote, "'I felt myself twisting or choking, and this terminated my consciousness.'"
So he's been knocked unconscious twice. Okay.
Now he wakes up this time and he's lying face down on the beach.
He does not have a t-shirt on anymore. Before he'd been wearing a t-shirt, now it was gone.
And he's also missing his watch. Okay. So he runs back home and he checks on Marilyn again.
Her pulse is still not there. And that was when he finally realized that he needed to call somebody for help.
But strangely enough, instead of calling 911, Sam calls the mayor, Spencer Hoke. who his family is friendly with the, and they live in the same neighborhood.
Um, and this was like the kind of leave it to beaverhood, a beaver neighborhood.
I think I mentioned where everybody was friends with one another.
Honestly, I like leave it to beaverhood.
Yeah. Right. I like that. That's actually my version of it.
I appreciate it. So Sam calls the, the, the mayor and the neighbor and he says, come straight to the house, please.
I think they've killed Marilyn. Okay. Now, something that bothers me a lot in this case is that it's never really brought up in the following trials that Sam referenced a group of people.
Okay, thank you, because I was like, they.
Like, they is a group of people usually.
Mm-hmm. What? And it's just never touched upon again that he said, I think they have killed Marilyn.
Yeah, because it's like... To me, that rings the way he says it in that time period, especially.
Exactly. Saying they would indicate more than one person.
Exactly. But it just never comes up again.
But he claims that there's just that one guy.
Just that one bushy-haired form. That one bushy-haired white guy.
At one point, he does say that there was two attackers, but that quickly goes away.
So it's like... Whenever the number of attackers fluctuates, I'm always a little sus.
Yeah. Little sus over here. I'm going to tell you right now, I don't know who did this.
And we're going to get into it in a minute.
It's unsolved to this day. I don't know who did this.
I don't know if I think it's Sam. I don't not think it's Sam.
I don't do think it's Sam. I don't not think it's the other people involved.
I don't do think it's them. It's wild. Huh.
All right. Yeah. I'm already like very intrigued and very like... scratching my chin right but that's the biggest thing for me was the they of it all yeah but anyway the mayor gathers himself and his wife esther and not like ethel but esther but esther and they headed over to sam and maryland's home so when they got there they found sam wearing a soaking wet pair of pants with a bit of blood on them no shirt and they said that his face was completely swollen and all bruised up Now, Esther went upstairs immediately while Spencer stayed downstairs to talk to Sam and find out what had happened.
And when Esther got upstairs, she saw that, again, there was blood all over the floor.
There was blood all over the walls. This was a grisly crime scene and all over Marilyn's sheets. and she saw Marilyn laying in her bed in a pool of her own blood that was heavily pooling around her head.
Okay. Marilyn was wearing pajamas. The pajama top was rolled around her neck, which exposed her upper body and chest, and her pajama bottoms had been pulled down slightly, not entirely exposing her, but enough to show a bit of her pubic region.
Okay. Now, her face was visible, and it was covered in lacerations and severe cuts as well.
Ooh. It would later be determined that she suffered 35 wounds.
Wow. Most of them, like a brunt of them, to her face and head.
That's just, and for that to happen when he's just asleep on the couch and the kid is just asleep in his bed.
And I'll mention it in a moment. I'm not sure quite when I mention it.
There was a family dog that didn't alert anybody.
Wow. Okay. So the manner of death was by bludgeoning, but the murder weapon would never be found.
Sam's desk in the room was open. All of the drawers had been removed, and there were all kinds of medical tools that had once been in his bag that were just strewn about all over the floor.
It looked like nothing was really stolen from this home.
It looked like somebody had tried to stage a robbery.
Yeah, like ransacked it to look that way.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, like super weird.
So meanwhile, downstairs, Mayor Spencer calls the police finally, as well as Sam's brother Richard to let them know what was going on.
So Richard arrived first, and as soon as he got there and saw Marilyn, he went to check the polls, and he was like, yes, she is dead.
And then the police arrived shortly after Richard, along with the coroner and Sam's other brother Steve.
Okay. Now, a weird choice... But the police allowed Sam to go with his brothers to the family practice so that they could treat him for a neck injury.
Okay. Now, by all accounts, his neck was injured.
Like, he did have an injured neck and it definitely did need to be treated.
But it's a weird move for them to let him go with two of his brothers.
Right. Yeah. And, like, no police escort.
Like, of course, you need to go get treated, absolutely, but, like, we should have a police escort at all times?
Yeah, because you don't know what the hell's going on.
And what if you're going to figure out your story to get your story straight?
Exactly. And I'm not saying that's what happened, but it definitely could have happened.
You should take it into consideration at the very least.
Right, exactly. Like, that's a problem. Now, later that day, they were able to question Sam, and apparently they did so three separate times.
Yeah. And like I said, his first story was that there were two attackers, but then he, I think he said like he just got confused because of the blows to his head and really it was the one main guy that he saw.
Okay. He said it was a man with bushy hair and he was like a white form.
Okay. Now, similar to the JonBenet Ramsey case that we actually just talked about, this police department, the Bay Village Police Department, had actually never investigated a murder within the community.
Wow. So they called in backup from the Cleveland police, and they were able to get the county coroner involved in the investigation.
Now, the coroner got there about two hours after the mayor was first called, so a little before 8 o'clock in the morning.
And he was the one to finally be like, hey, everybody needs to get the fuck out of here.
Yeah. Like, smart man. Same kind of thing.
It's like, this is a crime scene. Yeah, like, please get out.
So a few hours into investigating the body and the scene, a couple of the detectives and the coroner himself were pretty sure that Sam Shepard at least had something to do with Marilyn's murder.
Yeah. Yikes. They were just trying to figure out why exactly he would kill his pregnant wife.
Yeah. Now, eventually, they made their way over to the Bayview Hospital to see what Sam's coworkers thought of him, and they were able to get the skinny on any potential marital issues or anything like that that might have been hiding beneath the surface.
But they turned up with nothing interviewing his coworkers.
Everyone at the hospital in positions above and below Sam only had nice things to say about him, his family. and the way he professionally operated.
And each person who gave a statement to the police was interviewed multiple times and never broke.
Just said the nicest things they could about Sam Shepard.
But still, the police were like, I just feel like there's something that we're not getting.
Like there's something here. And the whole thing was like, Sam's story was incredibly far-fetched.
He said he'd seen this intruder at least two times and had been involved in two altercations with him and all he could say that this was a man with bushy hair.
Like you would have at least a little bit something more you would think, but at the same time, he has been knocked unconscious twice.
Allegedly. So the detectives also noted that whoever this person was that if they did break in seemed to have a pretty good idea of the layout of this home.
And they had to have had some kind of key or like some known entry point because there was no sign of forced entry.
But on the same token, Sam said, we didn't lock the door at night.
Oh, yeah. When they're home. When we're home, we don't lock the door.
And he said, the door might have been locked, but I don't know.
Like, I know that I didn't lock it. Okay.
So it really could go either way there. It could go either way.
And like I said, it seemed to be a staged robbery.
And it also seemed to be a staged sexual assault.
Because like I said, nothing was missing from the home.
And then the way that Marilyn was positioned did suggest staging.
Okay. There wasn't any evidence of a sexual assault, but she had been exposed, like I had just said, and her legs were spread purposefully.
Now, something else that struck the investigators as odd, which like I said earlier, the family dog did not bark at all.
Yeah, that's bothering me. That's been bothering me this whole time.
No one reported hearing any kind of barking.
Sam didn't wake up to barking. He woke up to Marilyn.
So you would assume that this would have to be somebody that that dog was familiar with.
So just one day after Marilyn was killed, all of the newspapers in town were reporting on the story and everybody in town knew what was going on.
There were people now driving by the home constantly and even people stopping to take photographs of the home and get out of their cars and approach the home to get a better vantage point for their photo.
What the fuck? People are just like stepping all over this crime scene.
And it's like people are living there still.
Yeah. And there's a child that lives there.
Yeah, there's a seven-year-old. That just lost his mother and is about to lose his father.
Spoiler alert. So the first newspaper reports on Marilyn's murder had a somewhat sympathetic tone when it came to talking about her husband.
But as time went on and the police weren't getting any more leads in this investigation, the newspaper started to question a couple of things.
One, especially toward the end of July, they were questioning.
One, were the police capable of handling this investigation?
And they had called in for backup. So you're like, what are you guys doing out here?
Like, you got nothing? Two, did Sam have something to do with the murder?
And two B, was the fact that he had such a prominence within the community shielding him from being properly investigated?
That's what people thought. Now, as time went on, the newspaper articles started pointing to Sam as the culprit more and more.
And soon it would be near impossible to find a newspaper or media outlet that was not pointing the finger at Sam.
This became like a sensationalized thing where everybody was like, the husband did it.
Yeah. I mean, it's not looking great. No, it doesn't look great.
It's really not. But there was never really any real concrete evidence.
That's what I was just going to say. There isn't proof here.
There's like nothing. But there's not proof against it either.
Exactly. So it's like, there's really just nothing.
Exactly. You actually just like took my next sentence.
I'm sorry about that. No, no, it's fine.
It's funny. I literally wrote, the thing was, though, there was never any real concrete evidence that proved Sam Shepard was responsible.
But then there was another problem. There wasn't any evidence pointing toward anybody else either.
There we go. It's like you got nothing. And Sam's story was a weird story.
It's a weird story. It's changed a bit. Is it possible?
It changed a bit. It's weird that he doesn't know a lot of any more details about the guy after fighting with him twice.
Right. Yeah. It's like, it's weird that the dog didn't bark.
It's weird that there was no forced entry.
It's weird. It's all a little weird. But being the only suspect in the case, on July 30th, 1954, Sam was officially arrested for murder, and his trial was set for just three months later on October 18th.
Man oh man. Now there were so many people waiting to see how this trial went down.
They wanted every last detail and they were going to get it because reporters and photographers were let into the courtroom and their reports from the courtroom would actually be televised later on.
Oh damn. Newspapers got direct transcripts.
So they could print what happened in the courtroom word for word.
The names of the jurors that were selected were printed in newspapers.
What? There were photographers getting pictures of every last witness who was called to testify.
Oh, my God. wild and for that reason actually a lot of people refer to this case as being the oj simpson case of its time oh yeah i get that and in a weird turn of events oj simpson will also be mentioned briefly later oh look at that yeah great oh look at that so before that though the trial so right at the beginning of the trial there was a massive bombshell revealed dr sam shepard was having an affair.
Oh, I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I was literally going to say he's having an affair.
He doesn't want another baby. Yep. Oh. Not that he doesn't want another baby, just that he was having an affair.
Yeah, but it's like motive. Oh, yeah. Yep.
So he was having an affair with one of his lab workers, and it was not the only affair that he was known to have been involved in.
This particular girl, her name was Susan Hayes, and Sam had actually initially denied the affair during the inquest of this...
Uh-oh. But Susan was called to testify against him at trial, and she confirmed that, Lizzo, all the rumors were true.
Oh, no. And they were, in fact, having a relationship.
She even testified against Sam, like I just said, which only helped prove the prosecution's case more, that Sam was capable of lying.
Yeah. But then he took the stand himself, and he admitted to everything.
Now, one of his lawyers later on that ends up taking, like, another trial in the future... actually didn't put him on the stand in this later trial that happens because he was like, he wasn't a good, he wasn't, he wasn't supposed to be on that stand.
Like he didn't do himself any favors. No.
But back then there was this thing where if you did stay silent, it was consciousness of guilt.
So back then they were like, we had to put him on stand whether he was good at it or not.
Yeah, because otherwise it's just going to go straight to guilty.
Exactly. I also wonder too, it's like I saw like a picture of his face all like swollen.
He was a doctor. Like he knows what's going to make something swell but not actually cause damage.
He does. There was damage done to him. There was damage.
There were doctors later on that commented that his wounds would be very, very difficult to self-inflict.
Okay. And doctors that said they doubted they were self-inflicted.
Okay. But the only thing that I will say on the contrary is that perhaps he got those while fighting with Marilyn.
Like maybe she fought back. But then people were like, she wasn't a large woman by any means.
And it would have been difficult for her to inflict such injuries.
Yeah. Looking at her, she's very tiny. Yeah.
But then it's like, or did somebody that you hired, did you ask them to also rough you up a bit?
Well, I don't know. I don't know. So he did admit that him and Susan very much had been in a relationship with each other.
They had actually recently spent five days with each other in a hotel in California.
Sir, you have a child. Yeah. And one on the way.
Yeah. And it was actually right around the time that Marilyn had gotten pregnant with their second child because it was four months before she was killed.
And she was four months pregnant. Okay, cool.
Now, he said that he'd been flirtatious with other women as well.
And all the affairs in his life all occurred because he and Marilyn, excuse me, were not having regular sex anymore.
That's always my favorite. Right. Is when it's like, well...
What else was I going to do? She's literally creating your whole last child for the second time in a matter of years.
Maybe she's a little bit tired. Yeah, it's tiring creating a human.
Creating life as I can only imagine would be just like a little bit tiring.
I've never been more tired in my life than I have been while pregnant.
And you're also probably not feeling as attractive as you once were.
It's hard. Your body's going through all these changes.
Your hormones are going crazy. You're not feeling...
Feeling well. Right. And that's not to say that you are not attractive, I think, like pregnant women are gorgeous.
No, but it messes with your head a little bit.
Because there's a lot of things going on.
Exactly. And you're more concentrated on keeping that little bean together and making sure that it's healthy than you are about like...
Hanky panky. Spicy time. Spicy time. Whatever you want to call it.
That's the thing. But he was like, okay, well, I'm going to have my affair.
Now, he made it seem and there were other people that made it seem like Marilyn was actually aware that these affairs were going on and kind of just like didn't look the other way.
Didn't want to talk about it. Exactly. Exactly.
And Sam explained to the jury that the reason he had lied about being involved with Susan Hayes at the inquest was actually to protect her reputation.
Not out of fear of making himself look bad or make it look like he had a motive to murder his wife, but he just wanted to be like, I was protecting her.
Okay. Which could be true, but I'm sure you also knew that it wasn't going to make you look great.
Yeah, exactly. But as far as the prosecution was concerned, this was the smoking gun that they needed.
But the defense kind of worked it in their own way saying like, yeah, Sam was having these affairs, but look, he was still with his wife.
Listen to the Ahern's. They were like, she was sitting on his lap and they were giving each other a kiss and like they were having a baby.
So yeah, he was having these affairs, but he didn't have any intention of leaving her.
Why would he kill her? Wow. Yeah. Wow, that's quite a defense.
It's quite a defense. Quite a defense. They're like, she sat on his lap.
So love. He had not straight up divorced her in the 50s, so... I mean... You know how it's going in the 50s.
Everyone's just getting divorced when this shit happens.
Oh, yeah. No one's staying together because they feel like they have to.
So, I don't know. I think it proves their case.
It's like... Case in point. Sir... No. Nor.
This is a Wendy's. Sir, this is a Wendy's.
This is a something. But the defense also, again, cited the lack of evidence against Sam.
Which they got. And they said, we don't even have a murder weapon.
Yeah, I can't even blame them on that one.
They really don't have a lot. But the prosecution called on the medical examiner who had performed Marilyn's autopsy.
I don't know if you want to hell yeah this man's.
You might want to hell yeah him now, but like don't do it too soon.
Okay. So he, this man, Dr. Sam Gerber, had performed the autopsy and he was called by the prosecution to testify about what he believed the murder weapon was.
He stated that although the murder weapon had not been found, he did believe that it was a surgical tool based upon a bloody impression found on Marilyn's pillow.
Oh. Looking at that bloody impression, you might be able to Google it if you feel like it.
Looking at that bloody impression, I don't know how you could say what made that.
Like, it's just a blood stain. It's just a big blob.
It's just a big blob. It's not my area of expertise, so maybe you could say a surgical tool made that.
But later, during a different trial concerning the same murder, the idea was also floated that the murder weapon could have been a lamp that was missing from the couple's bedroom.
A witness did testify in that trial that after he had repaired the lamp, he returned it to the couple and placed it on Marilyn's bedside table.
But at the time of the murder, no such lamp could be located and never has been.
Oh, like that lamp is just gone. Now, the prosecution in that trial, like that later trial, argued that the lamp could have been the murder weapon based upon the pillow stain mentioned in the first trial.
And those prosecutors argued that the U-shaped bow that was around the bulb could have mainly made the impression in blood on Marilyn's pillow.
All of that to say that I think your eyes could make up anything that would fit that impression in that pillow.
Like, I think you could be like, my sandal that I'm wearing right now was the murder weapon because look at that impression.
Yeah. I don't see it. I'm looking at it right now.
I'm not seeing the science behind that. But maybe I'm, I mean, I'm not, by no means am I an expert in that situation.
But it's like already we have multiple sets of eyes looking at this and saying they see different things.
And being like, hmm. I don't think anybody should be testifying about what the murder weapon is based on that stain.
Yeah. In my personal opinion. That's greenlight.com slash wondery.
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But throughout all the arguments made against him, Sam would not budge.
He maintained he had found Marilyn with the bushy-haired white-form attacker standing over her and that he fought off the attacker two times.
He was sticking with that story. Okay. And now he was sticking with just one person.
Yeah. But the jury was not convinced. And after two months of trial, on December 21st, they found Dr. Sam Shepard...
Guilty of second degree murder. He was immediately sentenced to life in prison.
Damn. The media went bonkers. They were already going bonkers.
But this night that the verdict was read, the Cleveland Press sold 30,000 extra copies of their newspaper.
Damn. And the entire city of Bay Village and just like the entirety of Ohio was completely shook.
Yeah. But Dr. Sam Shepard would not remain behind bars for the rest of his life.
He served 10 years and filed 11 appeals before finally winning one for a new trial.
Now, F. Lee Bailey, a young lawyer from Massachusetts, Yeah, I was just going to say, hey-o.
Was going to be the man to defend him in his new trial.
Now, F. Lee Bailey sounded familiar to you.
He's an incredibly famous lawyer who went on to represent the Boston Strangler and also sat on the quote-unquote dream team that defended O.J.
Simpson. Yep. We know that guy. He's a pretty good lawyer.
Yeah. He later said, though, that without the Sam Shepard case, his career might not have blown up the way that it did.
Wow. Yeah. I had no idea that started there.
Neither did I. I found it out in this research.
Look at that. And he maintains years later that Sam Shepard is innocent and says he would bet his life on it.
Wow. Yeah. So. So there's that. That's a lot for a lawyer to say.
I mean, I'm definitely not convinced that he is a killer.
I'm not convinced that he's a killer either.
To be quite honest. And when we get a, we're going to start to kind of get into like some other people here and like some other things that were found.
Mm-hmm. It starts to crumble a little bit.
It does. Yeah, because I'm just not convinced.
I see... I see... Because there's many things in here that make me go, huh, against him.
Like, I don't know about that. But then there's nothing compelling.
Like, I knew I could have... This could be written in fiction, that affair.
Like, of course there's an affair. Of course the doctor's having an affair with the lab tech.
And of course his wife is pregnant. Everybody was having a fucking affair.
And it's like, of course he is. And it's like, as soon as you said she was pregnant, I was like, he's having an affair.
Yeah. I just knew it. I just knew it. I don't know why I just knew it.
And it's like, it all seems to fit in there.
But when you really look at it, there's nothing.
Yeah. Like there's nothing. There's nothing really against him.
No, not at all. The only thing you can really sit there and go, I'm a little curious about this is the dog thing.
The dog thing for sure. And the no forced entry, but that's even hairy because they don't even know if the door was locked.
And with the dog thing, my thought is that the dog, because the other theories of who possibly could have done this, the dog knew those people.
Knew who that, and that was the other thing, like wasn't alarmed.
Yeah. Or they came in with something for the dog.
Yeah. I mean, fucking the Golden State Killer used to do that.
Yeah, to quiet the dog down. Yep. All right.
So, F. Lee Bailey was able to bring Sam's original trial to the Supreme Court and argued that because of the immense amount of media coverage before and during the trial, Sam never had a fair shot at a fair trial, which is the truth.
No matter which way you slice it, they printed the jurors' names.
That's wild to me. And, like, there was, he said the original trial judge, Judge Edward Blythein, had not made any attempt to shield the jury from the media.
And because of that, there was some doubt whether they'd convicted Sam because of what they read in the paper or because of what was presented at trial.
That's so tainted. It's so tainted. So tainted.
Exactly. So the Supreme Court agreed. They actually voted eight to one with eight members in favor of getting Sam a new trial.
Oh, wow. So that tells you a lot. Yeah, it does.
And again... There's no evidence against him.
That's the thing. It is by no means proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Exactly. And that's what you should be looking for, and that was not proven here.
Not at all. So his conviction was overturned on June 6, 1966, and lack of evidence was cited as the main reason for overturning of the sentence, and a new trial was granted.
Man. So in the original trial, the medical examiner, like we were just talking about, Dr. Sam Gerber, testified under oath that he believed that murder weapon was a surgical tool.
And he said he knew this because of the bloody impression on Marilyn's pillow.
So in the second trial, F. Lee Bailey, as he's cross-examining Dr. Gerber, says, would you please tell the jury what surgical instrument you see impressed in that pillow?
What surgical instrument do you see? And Gerber responded that he could not name the tool because he didn't know what it was.
And he'd spent many years trying to figure out what that could be, but he still did not know the answer.
So he's like, I know for sure that's a surgical tool.
That's as far as it goes. I cannot tell you which one it is, but I am 100% positive it's one that I don't know exists.
You can't even take a stab at that? Could it be because it's something else?
Because it's a blade that you haven't seen that isn't a surgical tool?
And could it be that you just knew that he was a doctor and you were like, oh, I'll just say it's... Confirmation bias?
Exactly. Because I'm looking at it right now and I'm like, what surgical tool is that?
That's the thing. I stared at that blood spot, blood stain for like hours.
Like while I kept going back to it while I was writing this whole thing and just being like, I don't even know what I see.
I just see a blood stain. Yeah, I just see a blood splat like just... And you see the void place where like her head was.
Yep. And I don't see a surgical tool. No.
And like... you think he just like stamped it down that's the thing like set it down in blood no i don't think that's how that happened at all but he didn't realize that in that moment he had screwed himself because effley bailey you know in a more lawyer lawyer e type jargon was like uh dude in the original trial you said a surgical tool was the exact murder weapon yeah but now you have no idea what killed maryland and nothing to prove it was a surgical tool like that's ha ha So he like basically fucked the entire argument within that.
Yeah. Just one statement. But then he said Bailey had a whole theory about who he thought the actual culprits were.
Okay. Culprits. Which. I was just going to say I like that they killed Marilyn.
And I'm not saying these people did. I'm saying that's what Sam said when he called.
And also like just that was something that Sam had said at some point.
Exactly. Exactly. So it does bring it back a little bit.
So Bailey argued that the actual culprits. were mayor spencer and his wife esther whoa he suggested that spencer hawk and marilyn were having an affair and that esther had caught on to it the night that marilyn was killed bailey suggested that marilyn had signaled spencer to come over knowing that sam was asleep and that they could maybe have a quick rendezvous that is bold as bold as What Spencer and Marilyn didn't realize, Bailey said, was that Esther was on to them.
And on this particular night, she followed her husband over and caught them maybe doing something.
When she caught them, she lost her shit and attacked Marilyn.
And F. Lee Bailey believed that it was with a fire poker. okay that that was the weapon in a blind raid she beat maryland and left her bleeding out on the bed and when she came to and realized what she had done she and spencer basically wanted to cover this up because he's the mayor yeah and like can't have that happen and somehow they were able to get sam to follow along with their plan stage the home is robbed and the fight ensued between sam and spencer Either.
It's very far-fetched. I don't know about that one.
Now, the whole theory goes that perhaps that's why they were there when the police showed up and why Spencer was the one to call the police in the first place.
Yeah. Right? There's that. He, Spencer, was not looked into as a suspect either because one, he's the mayor, and number two, he also had a police background himself.
Now, to further prove this point, Bailey showed evidence that pointed out that the real killer was left-handed.
And this came up in the original trial. They said the killer was left-handed, which like, you know, you could kind of say that.
You kind of like, it's a little. Left-handed can be a little easier to prove because it's like the, usually not the dominant hand.
Yeah. So it's like when that, when it's like clear that it's a left-hand, it's more like, hmm.
And they said that they said like, it's definitely the killer's left-handed.
Esther was left-handed. And Sam was right-handed and a neurosurgeon.
Like there's a lot of evidence that he used his right hand.
And there was evidence that the Hawks had a fire in their fireplace recently, the morning that Marilyn was killed, despite the fact that it was warm.
It's July and it's the middle of summer.
Bailey said that this was so Esther could burn her bloody clothes.
Now, he finally argued it had to have been a woman that killed Marilyn because none of the blows were fatal.
Marilyn had bled out. And he said it was either a woman that killed her or a young boy, most likely, in his professional opinion.
I don't agree with that. Yeah. I think that's a little sexist.
It's a little sexist. It was also the 50s.
Women can kill people. It happens. They can deliver a fatal blow.
I mean, should we talk about Catherine Knight?
Yeah, like let's not do that. I mean, like Kelly Cochran?
Yeah, there's some gnarly ladies out there.
So that was his theory. I think that theory is a little far-fetched.
It's like a lot of people would have to sneak into the house past Sam.
The dog wouldn't have barked because he did know those two people.
But it's weird to think that she would call Spencer over just because... Sam was asleep.
Sam's sleeping on the couch. Like, that is the boldest move I have ever heard of.
Yeah. And it's like, I don't know about that.
And then... somehow Sam went along with part of this.
Like, none of that makes sense. That's the thing.
I don't see Sam. That is my biggest thing with this theory is I don't see Sam being like, oh, you were fucking my wife and then we were going to cover up her murder together.
Like, No, I don't think so. My wife and my unborn child.
Right. And the only thing I can see, and I'm not saying this is the case, I'm just saying it makes more sense that the wife, Esther, went in and did this by herself and then called her husband.
Yeah. Like, found out about the affair, went to the house.
Sam's sleeping. She goes up there. She attacks Marilyn.
Yep. And then she calls Spencer to be like, I fucked up.
I didn't know what I was doing. Like, help.
But at the same time, still, I don't think...
Sam isn't going to go along with covering this up.
Unless he was scared into it somehow. I mean, these are both very prominent people in the community.
We have a neurosurgeon and the mayor of the town.
That's true. And is there something going on with the affair that he's having that he's like...
Some people say that Marilyn knew. I don't know.
I'm not sure. I mean, that's all hearsay.
So who knew? That's all hearsay. It's very messy.
It's so messy. Very messy. So I don't know.
Maybe I guess I could see that being the case more with like how you laid it out and then Sam going along with it because he was scared into it.
But it's all still shaky. And then also if there are three people in the house trying to figure out this whole thing and like one of them has to beat Sam up.
Yeah. Chip is going to wake up. That's the other thing.
I forgot about that. I'm glad you pointed that out because I didn't even think of that.
He was in the next room. Yeah. What the fuck?
And slept through it. Right. That's the thing.
What happened here? So Esther and Spencer Hawk were never determined to be the ones responsible for the murder of Marilyn Shepard, but Sam Shepard was found not guilty during his second trial and was free to go.
Holy shit. But when he returned home, things were... terrible i mean yeah he'd lost everything of course his wife was gone his son was a teenager now and had been raised by his brother so he missed out on all of that over the years both of his parents had passed away his dad got really sick after he'd been convicted and then his mom actually ended up ending her own life oh wow she shot herself holy shit because she had lost her husband because of all of this and also kind of felt like she'd lost her son to the prison system Now, on top of that, returning to medicine was also an incredibly difficult feat because he hasn't practiced in 10 years.
He's just been sitting in prison. And people are going to have to put their trust in a doctor that was convicted of his wife's brutal murder.
Exactly. Even though he was acquitted. And they did, but his skills were not as good as they once had been, which actually led to malpractice suits and the death of one man.
Oh, no. He killed somebody accidentally by severing their iliac artery.
I think that's how you say it. The iliac artery supplies the blood supply to major organs in the lower region of the body, like all the pelvic organs.
Yeah. So he was dismissed from his duties as a surgeon after that.
And then he took a bit of a detour from the medical side of things and went down a completely different path.
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He went by the name, the Killer Shepherd.
Probably not a great name to choose if you want people to think that you're like, not a killer.
Okay, I'm back to being like, Sam, what the fuck?
Sam, what the fuck, exactly. I'm back to being sus about Sam.
Exactly. That's weird as fuck. But people said that it was like a caricature.
Yeah, that's still weird as fuck. It's a weird thing to do.
You went to prison and lost your son because you were convicted of brutally murdering your pregnant wife.
Yeah. You got lucky enough to get acquitted.
Mm-hmm. And your response to that is to name your character the killer?
It was not a good choice. Even if you're not guilty, you're a fucking asshole.
You're an asshole. And at this point, he had begun drinking heavily, and there was also... people that were suspicious that he might have had a problem writing himself prescriptions.
So I, it's fucking weird, but I can also, like, it's not okay no matter which way you cut it, but I can also see that he probably wasn't making the best decisions at this time because his brain was fogged with...
Potential drugs and alcohol. That's a big bad decision.
It was a big bad decision for sure. Absolutely.
His wrestling career did not last very long.
And actually in the later years of his life and during this, he began drinking very heavily.
Probably trying to numb a lot of the pain that he'd gone through over the years.
Or if he was guilty, some of his demons.
Yeah. He ended up dying on April 6, 1970 from liver failure and a wet brain, which is also known as Wernick encephalopathy, which is a condition that comes from a massive amount of long-term alcohol consumption.
And he was 46 years old. Wow. 46 years old.
46. That's so young. A lot of people, including F. Lee Bailey, think that he did something on top of what was going on with the liver failure and the wet brain to end it.
To make sure it was over. Just because everything had gone to shit.
Because if he was innocent, he came out to nothing.
He came out, he had lost everything. Like his whole life was gone.
He couldn't even practice medicine anymore.
And what an unbelievable tragedy if that's all around.
Exactly. If that's the case. Exactly. So to this day, Marilyn, like I said in the beginning, Marilyn Shepard's murder has never been solved.
There's been one or two other suspects, though.
The first, and this is a good suspect in my mind.
This is, I don't know positively, but this is the suspect that I... scratched my head the most over.
So this man is a window washer who worked at the Shepard home and a handyman worked at their home on multiple occasions.
His name is Richard Eberling and he had taken a particular liking to Marilyn and didn't really see Sam all that often because Sam was usually at work while Richard was at the house and He commented on Marilyn's appearance later and said she was – or excuse me.
He said, oh, she had that California look, tight little brief shorts and a very little blouse.
She was immaculate, all in white. And he just kind of – like the way he said it was just like –
You're like, what are you doing, dude? Yeah, like you're sizing her up.
All you're talking about is like her tight little outfit.
She was immaculate. Yeah, it's like weird.
So years after Marilyn was killed in 1959, Richard was arrested for larceny.
And during a search of his home to turn up anything else that he may have larcened. a cocktail ring that belonged to Marilyn was found in his possession.
Oh. Yeah. And as he was being held on the larceny charges, the police talked to him about Marilyn's murder, and he commented that he did know about an obscure basement entryway into their home, into the Shepard's home.
Oh. Now, when he got out of prison for the larceny charge a few years later, he went on to work as a nurse for a woman named Ethel Durkin.
Richard later killed and was convicted for the murder of this woman.
What? And months prior to killing her, he had constructed a new will in which a good portion of her money was left to him.
He actually called the police after she was killed and told them that she'd fallen on her face in the kitchen and that he was her nephew.
But then they got there and they were like, she didn't just fall on her face.
Like, she's been here for a while. What the?
And so there was an insurance investigation done and it proved that he was the one to murder her.
Wild. He's a good suspect. Oh, we're not done, girlfriend.
Already. He was convicted of forgery, theft, and aggravated murder in July of 1989.
And actually, many people believe that he was also responsible for the death of Ethel's sister, Myrtle, years prior to this.
What? She seemed to be onto the fact that he was scheming her sister.
And in May of 1962... She was found brutally murdered in her bed.
Now, Myrtle and Marilyn's murder scenes were so eerily similar.
I actually found court documents that lay out the similarities between the two.
And there are 12 points between the similarities.
One, both women were killed between 2 and 4 a.m.
Two, both bodies were found semi-nude and had their pajamas partially pulled from their bodies.
Both were primarily beaten to their head and face.
Both crimes resulted with much blood spatter to the curtains and surrounding wall area.
In both cases, the murder weapon was never found.
There was evidence in both cases that the murderer may have cleaned up after himself.
Mm-hmm. Both victims were white women. A blunt instrument was used in both killings.
Both women lived on the west side of Cleveland.
There was no obvious sign of a break-in in either case.
Both women suffered broken noses and black eyes from their beatings.
And after each killing, Richard Eberling insisted that a woman was responsible for each murder.
Whoa. Yeah. He pointed the finger toward Esther, the mayor's wife, and thought that it was her who had killed Marilyn.
And then in the case of Myrtle, he said that a person dressed in woman's clothes had committed the murder.
Hmm. So though he was, and just, we're not even done with this man yet.
Though he was not arrested in connection with Myrtle's murder, he was arrested for Esther's murder.
And when he was, some interesting and incriminating information came out as far as the murder of Marilyn Shepard was concerned.
What? What? What? Now, when Eberling was being interviewed, he was asked why his blood would have been found in the Shepherd home.
It hadn't been found in the Shepherd home.
They were doing that classic. They were doing that classic thing.
And he commented that two days before Marilyn was killed, he had cut his hand while he was working.
Interestingly enough, during the forensic investigation, there was a trail of blood that was looked at.
And one of the people investigating the scene said that it seemed like somebody had cut their hand and that it was a trail of blood bleeding from a hand.
Oh, damn. Just like based on the way that it looked.
Now, like I said, his blood had not been found in the home when they asked him that question.
But later, testing would be done after Chip had his parents' bodies exhumed because he believed, he was like, my father is innocent and he still believes that his father is innocent.
I'm starting to believe his father is innocent.
So he had the bodies exhumed. The DNA samples taken from Marilyn and Sam Sr. were compared to blood samples found at the crime scene and it was determined that there was a third party's blood found in the spatter on the closet door in the bedroom of the home and And a third party's blood found on the blood spatter on the pants that Sam had been wearing that night.
Wow. Yeah. There was also a massive blood stain on the closet door that did not match Marilyn or Sam's blood.
Now, Eberling technically could not be identified as the source of that blood, but he wasn't able to be ruled out.
They said they couldn't rule it as him and they couldn't rule it without him.
But a DNA expert, Dr. Muhammad Tahir, stated that only one out of 42 people have a DNA profile consistent with the blood stain on the closet door.
And Richard Eberling has that DNA profile.
Get the fuck out. And his blood was later determined to be the source of a blood stain found on the back porch.
But they couldn't do anything about it because he'd worked there.
And he said he cut his hand. This is like, we're not done.
I'm so convinced already. He's believed to have committed five other murders, including this one that he was convicted on.
One of the murders he's believed to have committed is that of Barbara Kinzel.
She was a young woman who actually worked as a nurse under Sam at the Bayview Hospital.
She was the one to treat Sam for the injuries that he suffered after fighting off Marilyn's attacker.
Stop it immediately. Barbara came out and was talking to multiple news outlets and said she did believe that Sam was innocent and that there was no way he could have inflicted those injuries on himself and she doubted that even Marilyn could do it.
So many newspapers actually used her quotes like you can literally find them.
Yeah. In their reportings on the murder.
Yeah. And after those comments were made public, Richard Eberling started calling on her and asking her to go out on dates with him.
So they did go on multiple dates together and kind of started began dating.
They did hit it off. But then a strange car accident took Barbara's life.
Huh. eberling was driving they were driving a convertible car together and he told police that there was a truck coming so he had to swerve out of the way to avoid being hit later that that truck driver would argue that his vehicle was nowhere near eberling's vehicle and that he actually was confused why he had swerved like that he was like oh like what the fuck is going on with this guy So the responding officers were shocked because Barbara's body hadn't been ejected from the vehicle and the convertible top was down and she wasn't wearing a seatbelt. but her body hadn't been ejected from the vehicle.
Eberling said that she hit the windshield, but she didn't suffer any type of bleeding, internal or external, and there was no glass found in her facial tissue like you would expect there to have been if she hit the windshield with that force.
Even stranger, it was determined that her neck was broken along the second vertebrae.
So was Marilyn Shepard's neck, and so was Ethel Durkin's neck.
Broken along the second vertebrae. Come on.
So the common belief is that Eberling murdered Barbara because she knew something about Marilyn's murder that he didn't want getting out there.
Unfortunately, he was never convicted. He was only convicted of Ethel's murder and he died in prison in the 80s.
Now some argue that during Sam Shepard's second trial, Eberling was actually there at that trial and Sam had no response to seeing him.
Like he just walked right by him and people were like, if he was the bushy haired attacker, Sam would have yelled out and said that.
Well, yeah, but what if he was bald at that time?
I was literally just doing a shaved head motion.
He was bald at that time, and he actually was bald, but was known to wear toupees.
Like, known to wear toupees. So maybe he just wasn't wearing one at the second trial because all of the newspapers had reported that Sam had cut off a bushy-haired attacker.
Yeah. this is compelling as yeah i don't i don't know what happens but but that one's a pretty pretty compelling suspect there's one other suspect i'm just gonna say it because he's there but like it's kind of like some of the guys that you mentioned for jack the ripper yeah you just gotta throw it out people say this but like i don't think so there's a man named major james call um a retired fbi agent named bernard connors thinks that he's the culprit Major James actually used to be in the Air Force, but went AWOL the year that Marilyn was murdered.
And that year marked the start of his killing spree.
He would break into a victim's home when he knew everybody inside was sleeping, and then he would kill them by beating them with a crowbar.
Damn. That could have been it. But the most compelling piece of evidence against him is a scar on his left index finger that looked like it may have been the result of a bite.
And if you remember, it's believed that Marilyn bit her attacker.
He was questioned about the murder when he was apprehended, but he maintained his innocence.
And that was really like... he was in that area killing people and he had that scar.
Yeah. But that was it. That's really all they had.
For me, Richard Eberling is definitely... He seems like a pretty decent suspect for this case.
Yeah, he definitely does. Wow. And that is the case of Marilyn Shepard's murder.
Damn. Still to this day has never been solved.
Weirdly enough, I didn't hear Richard Eberling's name brought up in like a lot of sources.
And then finally I found it in one source and I kind of started like going down a rabbit hole.
And then like if you, you know how you like type one thing into Google and you'll get all these like hits that are just like, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. And then you kind of type something else and you get all this stuff.
Yeah, it opens up a whole floodgate. When I found Richard Eberling, it opened up, it like parted the Red Sea.
Oh, yeah. It was crazy. Damn. Just the fact that he was involved in that weird murder of the nurse that treated Sam for his injuries.
Yeah. And just like said to multiple people that he had killed Marilyn and that he fought her husband.
And that she bit the hell out of him. And she bit the hell out of him.
And there was evidence to prove that like, or to at least think that she may have bit her attacker.
And then like the second vertebrae, three people that he is like questioned in their murders.
That's wild. And then his blood is there.
But then there was a civil case later on, I believe it was early 2000s, that like Chip and Sam's brothers brought forward because they were like, it's very clear that our father and our brother is innocent and we would like to have his name cleared.
It didn't end up happening. Okay. Like that he wasn't cleared.
But they brought up like the bloodstains and everything and how there was a thing.
They didn't even say like, that's Richard Eberling's blood.
They were just like, there's a massive bloodstain that doesn't belong to my parents or my brother or his wife.
Doesn't that prove something? No, the prosecution said in that case where like.
We don't know when that bloodstain was made.
That could have been made, like, years earlier.
You think there was just bloodstains all around the house?
You think there was a massive bloodstain on the closet that was just, like... They were just, like, yeah.
Like, yeah, the guy we bought this house from just bled everywhere all the time.
Yeah, just bled all over the place. Really?
Come on. Like, come on. But, yeah. Wow. Still unsolved, but... But, like, think what you will.
Just kind of. Sort of. Just in a way. That... was quite a case and poor maryland i know jesus and she she gets lost in the story it does it's really hard to find a lot of information about like who she was yeah that's sad yeah but man i'm you know what i'm not convinced that sam did it at all no and there's some other suspects that look better eileen i mean he's dead i lean toward the richard theory for sure yeah but not not 100 i'm not 100 on either yeah i lean towards that theory yeah And right now I'm feeling like Sam is innocent.
Yeah. Well, let us know what you think. Yeah.
What do you guys think? And we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you bleed around your house because someday that might get fucked up in a trial.
Yeah. Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
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