For the first time in the 46-year history of the Marilyn Sheppard murder case, the state took the position Friday that the bludgeoning death of the 31-year-old doctor’s wife was actually a matter of manslaughter.
The statement was made by Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Steve Dever, who was urging Common Pleas Judge Ronald Suster to back off an earlier ruling that barred the state from using testimony about an affair between Dr. Sam Sheppard and a lab technician.
Dever said that if allowed, he can bring in evidence to show that Sheppard’s sexual escapades, which angered and humiliated his wife, created an atmosphere for “an instantaneous eruption of events” that resulted in her July 4, 1954, slaying.
According to Dever, the state will not suggest her death was a premeditated act but rather that it was “an act of domestic violence . . . an act of manslaughter, a spontaneous event.”
Without such evidence, the state may be hard-pressed to knock down a claim by Sheppard attorney Terry Gilbert that Marilyn Sheppard was the victim of a sadistic sexual killer.
The Sheppard wrongful imprisonment trial, which is to begin its sixth week Monday, is the result of an attempt by the Sheppards’ son, Sam Reese Sheppard, to identify his mother’s true killer.
In Dever’s arguments, the state also appeared to be abandoning its long-held position that Sheppard had faked injuries to support his account that on the night of the murder he had been attacked and knocked unconscious by the same bushy-haired intruder who killed his wife.
In developing his domestic violence theory, Dever said Sheppard’s injuries “clearly indicate that he was involved in a fight that night” but that those injuries were more likely caused by his wife than a bushy-haired intruder.
Earlier in the trial, on cross examination of witnesses presented by the Sheppard team, the state suggested that X-rays of Sheppard’s injuries may have been switched or misdiagnosed at a hospital run by Sheppard, his two brothers and their father–all osteopaths.
Sheppard, who died in 1970, was spared execution by a jury that found him guilty of second-degree murder in one of America’s most sensational courtroom dramas–a drama that was fueled by the affair that Sheppard at first denied, but ultimately admitted, with Susan Hayes.
Evidence of the affair was not used in his 1966 retrial when he was acquitted after spending 10 years in prison.
Sheppard attorney Gordon Friedman, who deposed Hayes in California earlier this year, told the court that Hayes, now in her 70s, said Sheppard visited her in March 1954, but at the end of the visit it was clear that the affair was over and she never saw him again.
Dever argued, however, that the affair was not really over because the two had exchanged four letters after that. He said that Marilyn Sheppard found out about it and wanted one of the letters as a basis for divorce.
