Episode 86 (Finishing Hold)

the memory palace

Nate DiMeo

Radiotopia, Publicradio, History, Natedimeo

4.8 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2016

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Do you live in Toronto? Chicago? Milwaukee? Minneapolis? How about L.A.? Come see the Memory Palace live this May.

SPOILERS BELOW

A Selected Bibliography * Dr. Sam: An American Tragedy by Jack Harrison Pollack * Summer of Shadows: a Murder a Pennant Race and the Twilight of the Best Location in the Nation, by Jonathan Knight, a very readable popular history book that pulls off a maybe-ill-advised trick of balancing the story of the Sheppard case with the Indians 1954 season surprisingly well. * Endure and Conquer, Sam Sheppard and F. Lee Bailey's version of things, written in 1966. Agenda aside, it's a fascinating read. Especially his account of the prison years. * Murder, Culture, and Injustice: Four Sensational Cases in American History, by Walter Hixson. * "Dr. Sam Sheppard The Ex-Convict who Revolutionized Professional Wrestling," from The Wrestler, May, 1970. * The bulk of the details from the last section of story are pulled from contemporary newspaper articles from the Mansfield News-Journal, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Dover Daily Reporter, The Escanaba Daily Press, the Detroit Free Press, the Nashville Tennessean, The Tyrone Daily Herald, and The Washington Post

Music * We hear a snippet of Runaway by Ólafur Arnalds up top. * Then Debut by Christopher Ferreira. * A bit of Saturday Evening from Tomasz Bednarczyk * Ralph Van Raat plays John Adams' China Gates. * The recurring flute piece is Wasser-Wunder from Tibor Szemző and Group 180 * Deadmau5 plays Invidia. * Lawrence English plays Watching it Unfold. * The radio snippet is a bit of a cheat. It's from the World Series from that year. Only broadcast I could find from '54.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the memory pass. I'm Nate Demetow.
0:05.4	There are two ways to interpret the story.
0:08.2	And it's your call, which way you want to go. I can't help you choose.
0:14.2	He murdered his wife, or he didn't.
0:19.0	Sam Shepard met Marilyn Reese at Cleveland Heights High. She was a senior. He was a junior.
0:25.6	And they were beautiful.
0:28.0	She went off to Skidmore College. He went out to California to med school.
0:32.7	And they found they couldn't be apart.
0:35.2	And they were married in 1945. All post-war promise. They had a son that called them Chip.
0:42.1	And they settled down back home in Ohio, in a house by the water.
0:47.1	Living what they had grown up believing was the dream.
0:50.8	On the eve of the 4th of July, 1954, the Indians came in the radio.
0:56.9	Some day early fireworks flashing over the Cleveland skyline,
1:01.0	shimmering red and blue in White Opholic Geary,
1:04.8	a picture postcard of mid-century middle America.
1:10.0	Tack it to your wall and see it there. That perfect house in the lake,
1:16.8	a perfect family, on a perfect mid-summer's night.
1:21.4	Because it's the last clear picture we're going to get,
1:24.0	they were entertaining that night. Their neighbors came over for dinner and drinks,
1:29.6	and left it some reasonable hour. Then the shepherds watched a movie on TV for a while,
1:34.8	until Sam nodded off, and Marilyn put Chip to bed, and then herself.
1:43.9	And either Sam went upstairs and brutally murdered Marilyn while their sons left.
	...

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