Timehost: Hello and welcome to this evening's TIME chat. We're joined by Sam Reese Sheppard, the son of the man at the center of one of the most famous legal stories of the century: the Dr. Sam Sheppard murder trial. Even though Dr. Sam Sheppard was ultimately acquitted, he spent 10 years in prison. By the way, the Sheppard case inspired the television series and movie "The Fugitive" -- although the elder Dr. Sheppard never ran from authorities. His murder trial, however, captivated the national media for more than 50 days. The murder of Mrs. Sheppard has never been solved, but Sam Reese Sheppard believes he may have the evidence to prove another man's guilt, and thus exonerate his father once and for all. We also welcome Mr. Sheppard's attorney, Terry Gilbert.
Welcome gentlemen...
Terry Gilbert: : It's good to be here.
Sam Reese Sheppard: Greetings.
Timehost: Mr. Sheppard, to begin, can you tell us where your attempts to clear your father stand today?
Sam Reese Sheppard: Yes. We are now awaiting an Ohio state Supreme Court decision to enable us to have a civil hearing. We have extensive evidence on our primary suspect. I believe the question now is: who murdered my mother?
Timehost: to fill in some of the details of the case, your father
served time for the murder before being acquitted in a retrial. If he has been acquitted, why are you still pursuing legal action? What exactly are you suing for?
Sam Reese Sheppard: He served 10 years for a crime he did not
commit The second trial was a fair trial. I do not call it a second trial. I call it a fair trial, as opposed to the first trial, which was an unfair
trial, a Roman holiday. I therefore believe that our system does not have a word for failed trial, and that is where the American public does not realize that our criminal justice system sometimes makes mistakes.
Terry Gilbert: In 1995, we initiated a legal action which
seeks a declaration of innocence from the trial court. We
must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Dr. Sheppard did not commit the murder. After obtaining that declaration, we would be able to get reparations from the state for the ten years of wrongful imprisonment. The acquittal at the fair trial did not eliminate the prejudiced mindset of the people of Cleveland and elsewhere that Dr. Sheppard was guilty and simply got off because of the slick tactics of a young lawyer named F. Lee Bailey. So we need to get the legal system to go beyond the original acquittal in 1966 and to affirmatively proclaim his innocence and that he was wrongfully imprisoned.
Mr_chatmeister asks: For many years, you said nothing about your father--what caused you to speak up?
Sam Reese Sheppard: Upon the death of my father, our family and myself were emotionally and financially exhausted. I decided that I needed to put my own personal life in order. I worked very hard doing that -- until the United States began executing people in 1977. At which point I began to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder in relation to the terror I felt as a 7-year-old child when the state of Ohio wanted to execute my father. At that time, I spoke out publicly for alternatives to the death penalty, about the inhumanity, the futility, of the death penalty, and for serious prison reform, knowing full well that the Sheppard case would be reawakened once I risked being a public figure again. Since that time, I have offered to facilitate the solving of this crime to the best of my ability, but I cannot finance it. Therefore, because of the notoriety of this case, my co-author Ms. Cooper, my friend and lawyer Terry
Gilbert, our investigating agency AMSEC, and Dr. Tahir have worked courageously pro bono, probably to the tune of three million dollars, would be my guess. Our family, from day one, has only sought the simple truth in this matter.
Skeptic998 asks: I hear you, Mr. Sheppard, are very involved in the anti-death penalty movement--is it difficult given the fact that so many states seem to be on a fast track to more executions? How will you ever sway public opinion against the death penalty?
Sam Reese Sheppard: Yes , it is difficult. The machinery of death is in place. We are likely to see many hundreds of executions in the next few years, unfortunately. But I believe the American people will finally wake up to the political smokescreen that the death penalty is, because the death penalty has been
used by unscrupulous politicians in the politics of division and the
politics of fear. I have just returned from the state of Wisconsin, which
has bipartisan support to keep the death penalty out, and to be a death
penalty-free state. There is much to learn about this issue. The death
penalty symbolizes everything that is wrong in our society.
Blindmission asks: How were you able to restore a relationship with
your father after 10 years in prison.
Sam Reese Sheppard: I visited my father for the full ten years that he was in
prison, so we already had a deep and loving relationship, and
remembered our mother at those times. The difficulty after his release was
with society and was with the desperation that he felt he needed to try to
make up for lost time.
Montana_Born asks: Is the man that committed the crime still alive
and can he now be tried? My parents always felt your father was innocent.
Terry Gilbert: : The likely suspect in this case is a man
named Richard Eberling, who is currently serving life imprisonment for
murdering another woman in 1983. He was a window-washer at the Sheppard
home, and was never interviewed as a potential suspect in 1954. Five years
after the conviction and imprisonment of Dr. Sheppard, Richard Eberling was
arrested for numerous burglaries in the area, and was found to have two rings of Marilyn Sheppard, which were stolen
from the home of Dr. Sheppard's brother. At the time he was in custody, he
was asked whether he knew anything about the Dr. Sheppard murder case. He said, without any prompting from the
police, he offered a statement that he had bled throughout the house after
cutting himself on the window. Despite that admission, authorities ceased
any further investigation because Dr. Sheppard had already been convicted,
imprisoned, and was appealing his conviction, and it certainly would have
been an embarrassment to reopen the case at that time. We as a team
investigating this case did not learn of this until a few years ago, after
fighting to obtain the police files that had been concealed for 40 years. That information prompted a more thorough investigation of
Richard Eberling, which has led to at least one person who came forward and
would testify that Richard Eberling had confessed to the murder. That's in addition
to eyewitnesses on the scene who identified someone in the vicinity of the
house, who looked like Mr. Eberling, his long history of severe mental
problems, false alibis that he has given, his knowledge in every detail
about the house and the rooms in the house, along now with the explosive DNA
evidence, which demonstrates that his blood was part of a trail that only
the killer could have deposited. That creates a strong case against him.
susieguest_48bc11732 asks: Keep fighting for what is right....
Both: We will.
Anna_rose97 asks: Mr. Sheppard, I lived in Bay Village and saw the
police pictures. I find it hard to believe that the Mayor and his wife were
not suspects. What do you think?
Sam Reese Sheppard: The mayor and his wife were suspects at the
time of the fair trial. Fire tongs were discovered buried out in their backyard,
which people hypothesized could be the murder weapon. But as we explain in
our book, part of the metal in those tongs is not old enough to be from the
time of the crime.
Fireandice_911 asks: Your father sold lots of newspapers for the now
demised Cleveland Press...do you believe a "free press" should have such
privilege to ruin lives for profit?
Sam Reese Sheppard: This is a tough question. The Cleveland
Press saved themselves from bankruptcy the summer of 1954 in order to
conduct business for the next twenty years or so. This is wrong, and immoral. I
do not believe in censorship, but I believe we already have censorship in
what is called marketing theory, namely the only information we get in
mainstream media is for profit. Hopefully, the internet might be able to
break down this barrier.
Soapsforever asks: how does the rest of your family feel about you
still fighting this awful fight?
Sam Reese Sheppard: : I would say it's a difficult fight. Our
family had been shattered, but we now are more united, and the remains of my
family and the majority of my mother's family are glad to know the truth
about a horrible crime.
Prof_Phun asks: What kind of support have you received from the
people of Cleveland? Do the people believe Dr. Sheppard is innocent?
Terry Gilbert: I'm here in the thick of it all, in Cleveland, so let me answer that one. After the
announcement last week, the worldwide attention on Cleveland and this case
launched an explosive amount of reaction. Some polls were done which showed
that about 60 percent of people in Cleveland thought the prosecutor should
reopen the case, which is fairly remarkable for a town that has been in a
state of denial for so many years. But we have a long way to go. The current
editorial director of The Plain Dealer, the only newspaper, has been waging
a campaign of disinformation against us. For example, now that we have been
able to show, through DNA testing, that Dr. Sheppard is excluded from being
the killer, for the first time in all the years that this case has been
discussed, theories are floating around that Dr. Sheppard hired Eberling to
kill his wife, which is ludicrous, and slanderous. But it shows the length that some people will go to deny
the Sheppard family the justice that is long overdue.
Stevebgood asks: Did the TV show depict your father correctly in
anyway?
Sam Reese Sheppard: "The Fugitive" TV show and Hollywood movie
are spin-offs. In Hollywood, they knew a good story when they saw one. In those days,
there were no contracts for true stories. Hollywood saw that wife murder
sold, that the Doctor business sold, that the issue of innocence with a looming
execution upped the drama. My dad was not quite hateable enough to receive a
death sentence. He was wrongfully accused of second degree murder. Hollywood
changed that detail. My dad's phrase was "the bushy-haired intruder." Through documentation, we know the original script called
for a red-haired man. The lawyers threw the script back to the script
writers and said, "This is too close to the Sheppard case." Thus was born
the one-armed man. And the movie was a further spin-off.
Sawyercrack17 asks: I hope you can prove your case. At least you could
clear his name. But do you think your father would want you to go through this
again?
Sam Reese Sheppard: Certainly, my father would not want to see
me destroy myself in this business, as so many people in our family have
been destroyed. I try to take good care of myself, but we are fighting the
good fight, and the truth is powerful.
Timehost: Mr. Sheppard, we need to wrap up in a minute, but I want to
ask you about yourself for a minute ... How do you handle the spotlight and the criticism
you are dealing with? How has your involvement in Buddhism helped you to
survive these ordeals?
Sam Reese Sheppard: Meditation helps. Exercise helps. Trying
to keep some type of balance helps. My life has changed a great deal over
the past few years, and we shall see where it goes.
Timehost: Thank you for joining us this evening. If you have any
concluding remarks for our audience, feel free to share them now.
Terry Gilbert: I'd like to thank all the people who
participated. And I'd like to remind them that this is not the only case
in America where the legal system has gone awry. We are hopefully using this
case, because of its high profile, to get the American people to realize
that in the age of law and order and increased punishment, and cutbacks on
the rights of the accused, there are a tremendous number of unnamed
casualties languishing in prison who have no recourse, and we cannot lose
sight of the importance of protecting the innocent.
Timehost: Mr. Sheppard, do you have a final comment?
Sam Reese Sheppard: Thanks to everyone...and I hope to chat
again sometime soon.
