Dedication

I wish to express deep appreciation and great admiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Paul Leland Kirk.

This story, while a creation of imagination, is based on known facts of the Sam Sheppard murder case as documented through court testimony and the words of criminalist Dr. Paul Leland Kirk in his unpublished manuscript, “The Dr. Sam Sheppard Case,” written by Dr. Kirk and Alys McColl during the 1960s.

Dr. Paul Leland Kirk was hired by the Sheppard family to provide an impartial investigation of the murder of Mrs. Marilyn Sheppard. All scientific comments and conclusions attributed to Dr. Kirk and Mr. Sherlock Holmes throughout this story are based on Dr. Kirk’s unpublished manuscript – bringing visibility and credit to Dr. Kirk’s investigation into the death of Mrs. Marilyn Sheppard and her killer . . . the killer who got away with murder.

Prologue

It is my hope that this story will heighten public awareness for police and prosecutorial misconduct. Evidence strongly suggests that Dr. Sam Sheppard was wrongly convicted due to the prejudicial behavior of the Cuyahoga County Coroner, Cleveland detectives and the prosecutorial team. Please see Author’s Notes to understand the prevalence and serious impact of prosecutorial misconduct in this country. Finally, as Dr. Sam Sheppard’s niece, and as someone who knew and loved him, I always believed he was innocent of this murder. However, I wanted my belief to be based on more than a personal opinion. I researched the facts and wrote this story — based on all the indisputable physical evidence — to prove to myself, and to anyone else who cares, that Sam Sheppard could not have murdered his wife.

Read the complete novella, published as a series of posts on this blog.

An Omission of Epic Proportions

Sherlock Holmes Investigates the Murder of Mrs. Marilyn Sheppard

This much we know for certain: Mrs. Marilyn Sheppard was found bludgeoned to death in her bed on July 4, 1954. Her husband, Dr. Sam Sheppard, a young osteopathic neurosurgeon, told a wild tale of a bushy-haired intruder. He never wavered from his story of events and always maintained his innocence, but he was accused, tried and convicted. A second trial 10 years later set him free, but the truth of this unsolved murder has never been proven.

In this intriguing mystery, a time warp enables Dr. Watson to bring Sherlock Holmes together with Paul Leland Kirk, the expert criminalist who first conducted an unbiased investigation of the Sheppard murder in 1955. Holmes is skeptical — after all, Dr. Sheppard’s story of a bushy-haired intruder seems preposterous — until Holmes is presented with physical evidence that was repressed or considered insignificant during the trial. The evidence points to three other suspects, a window washer, an Air Force major, and an outraged neighbor, all of whom had opportunity and motivation for a sexual assault upon the victim.

The author of this novel, niece of Marilyn and Sam Sheppard, builds her story on authentic scientific research and expert analysis documented in an unpublished manuscript co-authored by Paul Leland Kirk in the 1960s. Readers can follow Sherlock Holmes’ deductive reasoning and use their own logic to review the unvarnished facts of the case and decide for themselves who murdered Mrs. Marilyn Sheppard.

Images from the book are presented here for closer examination. Read the complete book over a series of posts on this blog.

The first floor layout of the Sheppard home