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It was the kind of case hollywood can't get enough of. The way Dr. Sam Sheppard told the story, at about 4 a.m. on July 4, 1954, he heard his pregnant wife, Marilyn, yell "Sam!" from upstairs in their house in suburban Cleveland. Sheppard, 80, who had been dozing on the first floor, ran to her room and was knocked out from behind. When he came to, he chased a tall, "bushy-haired" intruder through the basement to the Lake Erie beach. Another struggle; another Sheppard knockout. When he woke up this time, the intruder was gone. Sheppard staggered inside, but Marilyn was dead, bludgeoned 85 times. The doctor was arrested and convicted after he couldn't explain why the alleged intruder left no fingerprints or any sign of forced entry. Twelve years later a 28-year-old lawyer named F. Lee Bailey convinced the Supreme Court that biased press coverage had prejudiced the jury. In the retrial, a forensics expert testified that there was blood in the house that didn't belong to either Sheppard, and the doctor was set free. The case became the basis for "The Fugitive" TV series and the movie. Until O.J., it was called "The Crime of the Century."
And like the Simpson case, the Sheppard story won't go away. Sheppard's son, also named Sam, has co-written a book alleging that his father was innocent-- something many still doubt. But young Sam's new "Mockery of Justice" does more than just defend the eider Sheppard, who died in 1970. With coauthor Cynthia Cooper, he thinks he's tracked down the supposed "bushy-haired" man (he became the "one-armed man" in Hollywood): Richard Eberling, the family's window washer. Now 66, Eberling is serving life in prison for altering a wealthy widow's will to make himself the beneficiary-then killing her in 1984. Though Cooper, who interviewed Eberling, did not ask him if he murdered Mrs. Sheppard (she says she was afraid of alienating him as a source), the authors amassed enough circumstantial information to persuade prosecutors to ask for a sample of Eberling's blood for DNA testing, which they will do this week. "I don't think Sheppard was a good suspect," says Carmen Marino, first assistant prosecutor in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. "I don't believe he killed his wife."
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Eberling passed a lie-detector test in 1959, but his own words may snare him now. During 40 hours of interviews with Cooper, he was startlingly knowledgeable about the Sheppard house on the night of the murder, down to the fact that blood didn't splatter on Marilyn's pink satin slippers because they were under her bed. While compiling the book, Cooper obtained a police report, dated July 23, 1954, that says police made a casting of a chisel-like mark found on a basement door. The report wasn't turned over to Dr. Sheppard's attorneys, who never could refute charges that no one forced their way into the house. To the son, it's a key finding. "I think it's nearly over," says Sheppard, who was a 7-year-old sleeping down the hall when his mother was murdered. Raised by an uncle and then sent to a military school, he's now an unemployed dental hygienist, a Buddhist and an anti-death-penalty activist.
The telltale clue may be a drop of blood preserved on wood removed from the Sheppards' basement floor. Sheppard wants its DNA compared with Eberling's. Forensic experts don't know if 41-year-old blood will prove fit to be tested. But if the blood samples match, Eberling has an explanation. He says he cut his finger working at the Sheppards' two days before the murder. He told that story in 1959, after police arrested him for stealing from his clients. Among the things found at his house was Marilyn's diamond ring. (Eberling said he lifted it from her sister-in-law, who got it after the murder--a sign of obsession with the case.)
Rings, blood, chisels--none of them means that Eberling killed Marilyn Sheppard, or that her husband didn't. The hook points out that Eberling is a tall, bald man who wore "bushy" toupees, and witnesses testified they saw a "bushy-haired" man near the Sheppard home on the morning after the murder. But wouldn't Dr. Sheppard-have recognized his own window washer? Maybe not. The authors also recount Eberling's troubled childhood (he was abandoned at birth), his criminal record and his knowing jailhouse hints about the case. Young Sheppard, now 48, believes that the blood will implicate Eberling. "Eberling's a pretty tortured individual," Sheppard told NEWSWEEK. "We can see how he wants to be relieved of this distress." Sheppard could just as well be talking about himself.
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