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Still, Bailey made a point of asking one witness whether Marilyn had ever given him a key. No, said ex-Bay Village Mayor J. Spencer Houk, the next-door neighbor who was among the first on the scene of the crime along with his wife, from whom he is now divorced. Bailey also deflated the idea that Sheppard's own wounds were "self-inflicted;" Not so, testified the doctor who examined him after the murder; Sheppard's spinal column was actually fractured. Bailey also brought out the fact that police had not even considered Sheppard's injured back when they accused him only six hours later.
Unsolved Mystery. As for the weapon, which was never found, Coroner Sam Gerber no longer sensationally called it a "surgical instrument" that left a distinct imprint on Marilyn's pillow. Gerber now admitted that he had "hunted all over the U.S." for such an instrument, to no avail. Then came Bailey's crusher. University of California Biochemist Paul L. Kirk, a noted criminologist, testified that a blood spot in the murder room came from neither Marilyn nor Sheppard, but from a third adult who was present that night. Moreover, said Kirk, the blood drops that flew off the weapon, which could have even been a flashlight, splattered on the walls in a pattern showing that the slayer was a left-handed person with the strength of a woman rather than a man.
Not only is Sheppard righthanded, Bailey pointed out, but if he had beaten Marilyn with the weapon, "he would have crushed her skull like an eggshell." Impressed by the prosecution's inability to shake Bailey's theory, the jury needed only one day (v. five days in 1954) of deliberation to acquit Sheppard last week—leaving Marilyn's murder more of a mystery than ever.