The Trail Went Cold - Episode 421 - Marilyn Reese Sheppard, Part 3

The Trail Went Cold

Robin Warder

True Crime, Tv & Film

4.5 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

July 4, 1954. Bay Village, Ohio. 31-year old Marilyn Reese Sheppard is bludgeoned to death inside her bedroom and her 30-year old husband, Sam Sheppard, is injured after claiming he was attacked by an intruder. Since Sam was known for conducting extramarital affairs, police believe that he fabricated the story and was responsible for killing his wife, so he is charged with Marilyn’s murder. After being convicted at what is described as “The Trial of the Century”, Sam receives a sentence of life imprisonment, but there is great concern about the sensationalistic and biased media coverage surrounding the case. Sam spends nearly ten years in prison before his conviction is overturned and after the case makes it all the way to the United States Supreme Court, he is granted a second trial and winds up being acquitted. Decades later, Sam’s supporters attempt to posthumously exonerate him by presenting evidence that points towards another suspect, but the crime remains shrouded in mystery. To commemorate the nine-year anniversary of “The Trail Went Cold”, we will be releasing our very first special three-part episode about one of the most controversial murder cases of all time. In our previous two episodes, we covered Sam Sheppard’s two criminal trials and his posthumous civil trial and this week on Part Three, we will conclude the series by analyzing and breaking down the case. Additional Reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Sheppard https://famous-trials.com/sam-sheppard/ "The Wrong Man: The Final Verdict on the Dr. Sam Sheppard Murder Case" by James Neff "Dr. Sam Sheppard on Trial: The Prosecutors and the Marilyn Sheppard Murder" by Jack DeSario and William Mason https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/sheppard/ https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetailpre1989.aspx?caseid=300 “The Trail Went Cold” will be appearing at the AdvocacyCon, taking place at the Indianapolis Marriott East in Indianapolis on March 28-30, 2025. To get a 10 % discount on tickets, please use our specialized promo code, “TRAIL10”, by visiting https://www.advocacycon.com/. “The Trail Went Cold” is on Patreon. Visit www.patreon.com/thetrailwentcold to become a patron and gain access to our exclusive bonus content. The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote. All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The Hello everyone and welcome to part three of our special nine-year anniversary episode of The Trail
0:41.0	Went Cold. I'm your host Robin Warder, and today we're going to be presenting the conclusion
0:46.3	of our first ever three-part series, which covers the 1954 murder of Marilyn Reese Shepard.
0:52.9	Over the past two weeks, we've released parts one and two,
0:56.3	which outlined all the facts of this case, and if you haven't heard those episodes yet,
1:00.1	I suggest you go back and listen to them, since I'm going to be discussing a lot of information
1:04.2	that I previously shared. To provide a brief recap, 31-year-old Marilyn Rees Shepard was the wife
1:10.5	of a prominent 30-year-old
1:11.9	physician named Sam Shepard. The couple lived in Bay Village, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland,
1:17.5	alongside their seven-year-old son, Sam Shepard Jr., who went by the nickname Chip, and Maryland
1:22.7	was four months pregnant at the time. During the early morning hours of July 4, 1954, Maryland was bludged into death
1:30.0	in her bed, and since he had fallen asleep the previous night, Sam claimed he was lying on a daybed
1:34.8	downstairs and was awakened by the sound of his wife screaming. When Sam ran upstairs into the bedroom,
1:41.0	he said he was knocked unconscious, and after he woke up, he saw what he described as a
1:45.8	quote-unquote, bushy-haired intruder fleeing the house. Sam chased this intruder outside onto the beach
1:51.9	alongside Lake Erie and got into a scuffle with them, but was knocked unconscious again. Well, police
1:57.7	suspected that Sam killed Marilyn and fabricated this entire story about the intruder,
2:02.8	particularly after they learned that he had been conducting an extramarital affair with a young
2:06.8	woman named Susan Hayes, a former lab technician who had worked at his family's hospital.
2:12.3	After Sam went through what was described as the trial of the century, he was convicted of
2:16.8	Maryland's murder and received
	...

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