Sam Sheppard Case Still Captures the Imagination

The Sam Sheppard Case Collections of materials from 1954-2000 is a very popular online collection from C|M|Law. Since July 1, 2014, 37,546 documents have been downloaded. People from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia accessed the website. Also, people from 133 countries accessed the website. In addition to various crime scene photos, the most downloaded document is Marilyn Sheppard’s autopsy report which was downloaded 2,300 times.  Kudos to C|M|Law Library’s Technical Services for their continuing hard work in making this collection accessible.

Background on the cases and the collection:

In the early morning hours of July 4, 1954, Marilyn Sheppard was bludgeoned to death in her bed. Her husband Sam, a prominent Bay Village doctor, maintained that Marilyn was murdered by a bushy-haired intruder. He stood trial and was convicted for his wife’s murder amidst a media storm.

The media frenzy so tainted his case that the United States Supreme Court released him and ordered a retrial in the decision Sheppard v. Maxwell. At the 1966 retrial, Sheppard was acquitted. He died just a few years later.

In 1999, Sam and Marilyn’s son, Sam Reese Sheppard, unsuccessfully sued the state of Ohio for the wrongful imprisonment of his father. The documents collected and used by the prosecutor’s office in this trial are the basis of the collection.

The Sam Sheppard case materials were donated to the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.