"What we say and do here will be heard in all the states of the Union," cried white-haired Defense Attorney William J. Corrigan. Day after day, some 50 reporters crowded into a stuffy Cleveland courtroom to cover the case of Dr. Samuel Sheppard, on trial for the murder of his pretty, pregnant wife, Marilyn. Last week, after 30-odd long and often tedious trial days, the prosecution closed with a dramatic scene, the testimony of Sam's former mistress, Susan Hayes.
"Why Kill Her?" Slim, graceful Susan Hayes dressed carefully for her appearance. She wore a black wool dress with a prim white collar; she used very little makeup. She was the 31st witness against Sam Sheppard. and her testimony was supposed to supply the motive.
The attorneys, often strident and harsh, were gentle with Susan, but their questions were in plain English. She told of her affair with Dr. Sam, beginning in 1952, when she worked in the Bay View Hospital run by Sheppard's family. "I was a lab technician, and he was a doctor," she said, as though explaining everything. Their relations continued at fleeting moments until last March, when he took her to the home of a friend in California for a week. Did they share the same bed? the prosecutor asked. She said faintly: "Yes."
He had spoken of divorce, she said, but had never made her any promises. "I remember him saying he loved his wife very much." she testified, "although not so much as a wife." After 76 minutes, she left the stand. For the defense, one of Sheppard's attorneys argued that Susan's testimony suggested no motive for the murder of Mrs. Sheppard: "He certainly didn't have to kill her to get Susan Hayes. He had her whenever he wanted."
"My God—Marilyn's Dead." Sam's brother, Dr. Stephen Sheppard, was the first defense witness. He related that at a family party on July 2, two days before the murder, Sam and Marilyn Sheppard had talked about the baby they expected. As he spoke, Sam Sheppard, usually grave and composed, bowed his head and sobbed.
When told of the murder, Dr. Stephen said, he rushed to his brother's house and found him lying on the study floor: "I thought he was dead. I noted that he was bare from the waist up. That's all I recall. I touched him on the shoulders. He moved." Upstairs, he said, he found Marilyn dead on the bed. "She was mercilessly and terribly beaten about the head. She was unrecognizable, except in profile." When taken away to the family hospital. Sam Sheppard "was mumbling incoherently to himself." Once he said: "My God—Marilyn's dead!" Later, he blamed the murder on a burly, bush-haired intruder with whom he had struggled futilely.
Assistant County Prosecutor John J. Mahon, who has sent more people to the electric chair than any other prosecutor in Ohio, has tried to make his case with technical detail: drops of blood, grains of sand, eight strands of hair and other minutiae which demonstrated that Sam Sheppard could have committed the murder. The defense will call more than a score of witnesses in an effort to indicate that he did not.