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Sam Sheppard Biography

Physician / Murder Suspect

Sam Sheppard was a young, successful physician in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. On 4 July 1954 his pregnant wife Marilyn was murdered, and Dr. Sheppard was soon arrested and charged with her murder. He maintained his innocence, claiming he'd wrestled with a "bushy-haired stranger," was knocked unconscious, and woke up to find his wife dead. He was convicted and spent 10 years in prison before his conviction was overturned on appeal. In 1966 he was retried and found not guilty. So much for freedom -- he spent his last years battling booze and appearing as "Killer Sheppard" in professional wrestling matches.

Extra credit: The Sheppard case is said to have been the inspiration for the TV series The Fugitive (1963-67), in which the wrongly-accused Dr. Richard Kimble hunted the mysterious one-armed man who had killed his wife. Kimble was played by actor David Janssen in the TV series, and by Harrison Ford in the 1993 feature film The Fugitive.

Dr. Sheppard appears in our Who2 loop on the movable deceased, Exhumation Celebration.