Wrong Man The Final Verdict on the Dr. Sam Sheppard Murder Case

Chapter 1 Their father's dream from the time the boys were little was to have a hospital and to have his three sons working with him. What happened, naturally, destroyed that whole thing. Darn near destroyed a village. -ESTHER HOUK, BAY VILLAGE NEIGHBOR Eve of Destruction early saturday morning, July 3, 1954, Dr. Sam Sheppard pulled his Lincoln into the parking lot of Bay View Hospital, housed in a huge, Georgian-style mansion built on the bluffs of Lake Erie. His family had bought the place several years earlier and had converted it into a 110-bed hospital. Dr. Stephen Sheppard, the middle Sheppard brother, pulled his car in just behind him. They talked for a few minutes about how they were going to celebrate the holiday weekend. It promised to be a beautiful day, with low humidity, a slight breeze off the lake. Steve planned to go sailing on his Raven-class racing sloop. Sam reminded him that he and Marilyn were having a cookout the next day for about twenty couples, the hospital interns and their dates. After a quick cup of coffee in the hospital cafeteria, the brothers split up and headed into separate operating rooms. It was shortly before 7 a.m. Even on a holiday weekend, the Sheppards tried to squeeze in half a day of surgery. Bay View, an osteopathic teaching hospital, had all the business it could handle. A little while later, less than a mile away, Marilyn Sheppard arose at the lakefront home where she and Dr. Sam lived. Her day was going to be just as busy as her husband's. She was still angry with Sam because he had volunteered to hold the intern party without first checking with her. This was not her idea of how to spend a family holiday. Sam would be out on their boat, water-skiing with the guests, leaving Marilyn, an expert skier, "getting the groceries and entertaining a lot of dull dry people who can't ski."1 She had to clean and shop and spruce up the yard and the boathouse while keeping an eye on their seven-year-old son, Sam, whom they called Chip. Also, she was four months pregnant, more tired and uncomfortable than usual. If Sam had just asked her first, she would have agreed to host the party without complaint because she truly wanted to be what her older sisters-in-law referred to as "a good doctor's wife"-an attractive, cheerful helpmate who could run the household like a quartermaster, manage the children, and make life easy for her ambitious, hardworking husband. She knew that Sam was obliged to the interns at Bay View, which relied in part on their low-paid labor for its success. In return, these doctors in training received invaluable education from senior doctors, such as Sam's father, Dr. Richard A. Sheppard, a highly regarded diagnostician who took referrals from all over Ohio. Even worse than getting stuck with the intern party, Marilyn had an unwanted houseguest to deal with-Sam's old friend from medical school, Dr. Lester Hoversten. Acting on his own, Sam had agreed to let Hoversten live with them a few days while he interviewed for a job at Bay View. Marilyn thought he was a pig. A couple of years earlier he had made a crude pass at her and she'd shut him down fast, not worrying about hurting his feelings. Just being around him put her on edge. He left his room a mess and was an inconsiderate guest overall. She refused to make his bed or even go near that bedroom. Hoversten thought of himself as a playboy, and made sexual passes at any woman who strayed within his gaze. Even though he was fourteen years older than Sam, they had gone through medical school together and had served as surgical residents at Los Angeles County General Hospital. The experience explained their friendship, the foxhole bonding of young doctors as they endured grueling hours at little pay under the intellectual hazing of senior surgeons, who themselves were famously condescending toward women. Hoversten was recently divorcNeff, James is the author of 'Wrong Man The Final Verdict on the Dr. Sam Sheppard Murder Case', published 2002 under ISBN 9780375761058 and ISBN 0375761055.