Blast from the past

I'm blaming this on that Sam Sheppard book.

Finally finished it, by the way. Good read. I'm convinced that Dr. Sheppard didn't kill his wife. Little good it does him, nearly 40 years dead, three trials and 54 years after the fact.

Read the book if you're into such things. It's called "The Wrong Man" by James Neff, and is one fine piece of reporting.

And so I've landed back in the '50s these past few days, a place I've liked to visit since watching "Happy Days" as a kid. Yeah, I know that show is an illusion. This is my story. Let me dream.

I regularly watch "What's My Line?", the classic TV game show, which airs late at night on GSN. Currently airing episodes were originally broadcast in 1955. Things were better, things were worse, but one thing is undeniable: we were a more literate country then.

Take Bennett Cerf. There's no way an urbane publisher would appear on a TV game show today. They'd find some vapid blond celebrity instead. I seriously doubt if a well-known columnist like Dorothy Kilgallen would be included today, either.

Late last night, I watched a few episodes of that classic '50s comedy, "Ozzie and Harriet." I lost myself in its innocence, but was also intrigued by a few things.

People have an image of early TV sitcoms as being these neat little fantasies in which the father comes home, puts on a sweater, and solves the family's problems in 30 minutes. But, guess what? Ozzie was portrayed as a likable dolt, the joke almost always on him. He had no obvious source of income, and seemed to just hang around the house a lot. Oh, it was innocent, but David and Rick, the two sons, fought like all real-life siblings fight.

Rick was my favorite part of the show. He was a precocious kid in the early episodes, looking scrubby-clean in his crew cut. As a teenager, he became a real-life teen idol, and many of his songs were woven into the series. ("Stood Up" was the hit on the episodes I screened from Netflix last night.)

Of course, this notion of the 1950s as an suburban idyll overlooks the problems of the era -- segregation, repression, blandness, Communist witch hunts, a whole bunch of other stuff. Heck, the Sheppard trial tells you that. The good doctor was an adulterer, if not a murderer. Nobody was perfect in any era. Humans are basically always human. Just read Shakespeare.

But, it was a good place to land for a few minutes over the weekend. I don't care what you say, I still like that music better...

Long-ago mystery keeps Jake awake

So you sit down to read a little while and all hell breaks loose.

Plopped down into my recliner about 9 p.m. last night. Wanted to make a big dent in this Sam Sheppard murder trial book that's keeping me up late ("The Wrong Man" by James Neff).

Got all comfy. Worked my way through a few pages. Sam is in jail, the trial is about to start.

Then the phone rings.

So, I make it through one conversation, then the call waiting buzzer sounds. Off I go to conversation number two.

Then I smell a strange odor. I look up, and see smoke coming out of the top of my halogen lamp.

I think the thing is on fire, so I turn it off, and unplug it. "Nah," Dewayne Lawson says via Macon, Ga., "you've just got a fly in it."

Sure enough, I did. Didn't see it at first, but it was quite dead when I looked this morning. I'm chucking the lamp anyway. Gonna go get a LCD after work tonight.

Crisis averted, calls completed, I finally get back to the book.

The Cleveland prosecutors at the time were, according to the author, shameless. The local press didn't help much. The deck, shall we say, was very much stacked against the good Dr. Sheppard.

Even the late Dorothy Kilgallen, then a star columnist for Hearst and my favorite panelist on "What's My Line," missed a major scoop. Turns out that the judge, Edward J. Blythin, told Kilgallen during a private conversation before the trial began that Sheppard was "guilty as hell." What's even more amazing is that Kilgallen, a sharp reporter, didn't reveal this nugget until years later at a press banquet in New York.

Well, I got up to the point at which the prosecution rested its case. I'm eager to see how this goes from here, because right now, the prosecution's case seems totally based on hearsay and circumstantial evidence. I do know this: given the climate of the time, I can't believe that Sheppard wasn't granted a change in venue. Seems like the whole town wanted him to fry.

Anyway, I got to bed about 1:30, which wasn't too bad. Sadly, I had dreams that I was somehow caught up in the middle of the Sheppard murder.

I'll be glad when I finish this book. It's starting to consume my life.

A little case of murder...

If you want to get a good night's sleep, don't start reading an engaging murder mystery at bedtime.

Tried to wind down last night with "The Wrong Man," James Neff's fast-paced, well-written account of the infamous 1954 murder of Marilyn Sheppard in the small suburb of Bay Village, Ohio. And, I proceeded to become enthralled in the tale for the next 5 or 6 hours. So much for slumber.

Most of you know, or have heard about, the story. Dr. Sam Sheppard was a well-respected osteopathic surgeon in a small bedroom community near Cleveland. He was a town big shot, friends with the Cleveland Browns quarterback, (Otto Graham) and the village's mayor, a neighbor.

And it was to the mayor that a distraught Sam Sheppard called for help in the early morning hours of July 4, 1954. Sheppard claimed that an intruder had knocked him out twice a few hours earlier and bludgeoned his wife Marilyn to death. The crime scene was a blood bath.

Those who immediately arrived at the house were sympathetic. Sheppard, himself injured, was taken to his family's hospital. But the county coroner, no friend to the Sheppard family, judged the good doctor to be guilty almost from the get-go. Hot shot Cleveland detectives came to the same conclusion. Both quickly began leaking to the city's three daily newspapers.

Sheppard's forthcoming trial turned into a media circus, the O.J. Simpson trial of its day. Famed Hearst columnist Dorothy Kilgallen showed up to cover the trial, took up Sheppard's cause, and later said she was "shocked" at the resulting guilty verdict. (Kilgallen later revealed that the judge told her that Dr. Sheppard was "guilty as hell.")

After serving in prison for several years (Sheppard narrowly missed the death penalty by being found guilty of second-degree murder), a then-unknown lawyer named F. Lee Bailey took up the doctor's cause. His conviction was overturned and declared a miscarriage of justice. Another trial was ordered; a jury acquitted Sheppard of the murder in 1966.

Forever haunted by the experience, Sheppard died, of liver failure, in 1970. Reports claimed he'd become an alcoholic, drinking as much as two-fifths of liquor a day. His last years were spent unhappily as a professional wrestler.

I've only made my way through the first part of Neff's book, but it appears that the author is setting out to forever prove that Sheppard was indeed innocent. I'll file a final report after I finish the book. The trial became part of popular culture, reportedly inspiring the classic 1960s TV series "The Fugitive" and the later Harrison Ford film based on the series.

There's nothing quite like a little case of murder to get the blood boiling. Just don't delve into it right at midnight, that is, if you plan on getting any sleep.