Nothing is clear cut whether it is a murder or a trial. There is emanating possibilities of who committed the crime, and what the reasoning was behind this horrific, world renowned murder. This life changing event occurred in the morning of July 4th 1954. The night before the murder nothing seemed out of place in the Sheppard family. Sam and Marilyn were cuddled up together, Marilyn sitting on Sam's lap my while having company over. The Sheppard family was very involved in their community and seemed to be the perfect family. After the company left Marilyn put her son to bed as she did every night, with the same rituals. That night Marilyn slept upstairs while Sam slept on the day bed downstairs. After everyone was asleep, that was the last of this perfect family. The murderer positioned Marilyn as if a position of sexual assault and after DNA testing it was confirmed. Marilyn Sheppard was raped and also bludgeoned to death. Two sets of semen were found inside this pregnant women. Her Skull was fractured, and suffered from several blows to the head. Looking at possible suspects, one individual sticks out from all the rest, Richard Eberling.
According to Terry Gibert and Cynthia L. Cooper from the Plain Dealer, Richard Eberling was never questioned in 1954 about the murder; even the employees who worked for him were unquestioned. After Sam Sheppard had been in prison for five years, Eberling volunteered to Bay View Police that detectives that they potentially might have found his blood in the Sheppard's home. Which was coincidental was the fact that the murderer knew he was bleeding and he had bled throughout the house. His alibi for the blood was that it was from a few days before the murder, but the interesting twist on this w...
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...empted home invasion. The injuries sustained by Sam, were high unobtainable from self injury. The fact that Eberling admitted to bleeding in the home and also burglarizing, made him a subject of interest to this case. Eberling stole Marilyn's ring, and other various items. However, the most interesting twist to the murder was the fact that everyone believed Sam committed the murder even before investigation. While, nobody ever suspected Eberling till years later even he had a strong affiliation to the family . Looking at all of this evidence, Richard Eberling stuck out and was the prime suspect. Everything in the case led to Eberling, he committed the murder, but his reasoning will never be known.
Works Cited
The Killer's Trail: The Story of Dr. Sam Sheppard."Nova. Dirs.Marian Marzynski and Joel Olicker. Narr. Liev Schreiber. DVD.WGBH, Boston: 199,2005.
We were presented with many facts that all pointed to Mr. Washburn as the murder. In the house all of the entrances were thoroughly inspected by authorities, and they found no sign of ransacking. “[They] examined all the locking mechanisms, all the doors and windows. In [their] opinion there was no evidence of any forced entry” (P.81). When police looked for fingerprints, “They were all of the Washburn family and the maid” (P.81). There was no trace of an outside party; somebody usually in the Washburn house committed the murder. While in the living room, an officer found a drop of blood. The evidence technician was called the next night to run some tests. “He sprayed the living room carpet with luminol. It is a luminous spray, and when it comes in contact with blood it illuminates” (P.82). To both men’s surprise the whole living room was illuminating. After spraying further the men found a trail from the living room through the kitchen to the garage. In the closet the men found a wet mop, which was tested for blood and also came back positive. Somebody tried to clean his or her bloody mess, and try to save himself. The physical evidence proves the killer was somebody who was familiar to the Washburn household.
Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your attention today. [Slide #2] I would like to assert that separation is not the end of a relationship. Divorce is not the end of a relationship. Even an arrest is not the end of a relationship. Only death is the end of a relationship. In the case of defendant Donna Osborn, her insistence that ‘“one way or another I’ll be free,”’ as told in the testimony of her friend Jack Mathews and repeated in many others’, indicates that despite the lack of planning, the defendant had the full intent to kill her husband, Clinton Osborn.
R. v. Lavallee was a case held in 1990 that sent waves through the legal community. The defendant, Lyn Lavallee was in a relationship with her partner, Kevin Rust, in which he would abuse her both mentally and physically. On the night of the incident, Lyn and her husband got into a fight, her husband pulled out a gun and told her if she didn’t kill him now he’d be coming for her later. When leaving the room, Lyn shot Kevin in the back of the head killing him instantly. She was convicted of murder, but when brought before the Manitoba Court, she was acquitted of the charges. An appeal was made to the Manitoba court of Appeal on the grounds that expert testimony should not be admitted as evidence in the courts. They argued that the jury was perfectly
Erick Larson wrote in Devil in the White City, “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing – I was born with the Evil One standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered in the world, and he has been with me since” (Troy, Taylor). This statement was a quoted confession from Dr. H. H. Holmes himself in 1896. Holmes was the first major serial killer in America, even though he came after many others in his time. Thomas Neil Cream, the Austin Axe Murderer, the Bloody Benders, and Jack the Ripper came before him. His name was originally Herman Webster Mudgett. He was born on May 16th, 1860 in Gilman, New Hampshire. He was raised by his mother and father, who was a wealthy and respected citizen for 25 years. As a boy, Mudgett was always in trouble and was well known in his community for his rather sociopathic behavior. He would show cruelty to both animals and other children. The only thing keeping hope to society was the fact that he was an excellent student. He later changed his last name to Holmes in order to pursue both his medical and criminal careers. He had many other aliases in which he would hide under and try to derail the cops from finding him (Juan, Blanco). Holmes was medically trained to be a doctor and received his degree from the University of Michigan. He was not just into insurance fraud scams. His evil doings included forgery, claiming to find the cure for alcoholism, real estate scams, and pretending to have a machine that turned natural gas into water. He was quite the ladies man, had many wives, whom often had become his victims. Many of his medical partners became subject to him, also. He once even had three wiv...
After contacting and interviewing all three suspects, we discovered the suspects killed the victim during a argument over a gun that had been used in an earlier robbery. Ballistics from a gun discovered in a inspection found one of the suspect suspects matched the weapon used in the shooting. The suspects were arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The case was closed and this concludes my summary of my
trial of two men for the 1971 murder of Helen Betty Osborne in The Pas Manitoba.
On Thanksgiving evening, November 27, 1992, Sergeant Kenneth Mathison and his wife Yvonne drive their 1988 tan Ford van along Route 131 in Hilo, Hawaii. The rain is pouring down and before he knows it, Kenneth Mathison is awaiting police assistance as he cradles his wife’s dead body in the back of their van. Mathison, a sergeant of 25 years with the Hilo Police Department was allegedly informing his wife, a maternity nursing professional at the Hilo Medical Center, that he was being investigated in his second paternity suit. According to Mathison, when Yvonne heard the news, she jumped from the passenger side of the van. While he was looking for her in the blinding rain, Mathison purportedly ran over his wife. He then carried the body into the van and secured it with yellow rope in the back before attempting to find help. Will the forensic evidence support Mathison’s account of that fateful evening?
Sue Grafton once stated: “Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right.” This is clearly the thought the Boulder Colorado police conceived in the case of little beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. As many have observed from the onslaught of media coverage, the day after Christmas 1996, six year old Jon Benet Ramsey was found buried under a white blanket, bound, beaten, and strangled to death in the wine cellar of their Boulder home. With such a strikingly rare and glamorous story of a six year old beauty queen dead, who was a part of a “perfect American upper-middle class family”, combined with a lack of a lead and ever mounting suspicion piling up against the parents it was no surprise to find that it was fuel to the media and soon stories sold and became a matter of competition between the press. So, like wildfire, this heart-breaking story spread, stretching across the nation, shattering the souls of the world. News broadcasts, magazine and newspaper articles, and television specials all shaped and molded peoples perceptions of this beautiful child’s murder, especially her parents, John and Pasty Ramsey’s involvement or lack there of. The police and FBI’s merciless quest to connect Jon Benet’s murder to her parents, seemed to cause the them to overlook important evidence, or at the very least dismiss suspicious findings that would otherwise send red flags to investigators. There are many contributors as to why this case remains unsolved including lack of investigative expertise, failure to protect valuable evidence, and focusing too much on the parents as suspects but, ultimately, the over involvement of...
Convicted for the murders of his wife and two kids, thirty-four years ago, Dr. MacDonald still endures the agony of being accused of killing his family. Even after twenty-four years of imprisonment and several unlawful court hearings, additional documentation continues to up hold Dr. MacDonald’s testimony.
In 1994, Byron de la Beckwith was convicted of murdering civil-rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963. Then, just last year, the FBI reopened the 1955 Emmett Till case after finding that as many as 10 more people may have been involved in his abduction and murder. And now Killen will likely go to prison for the rest of his life for his part in the brutal 1964 murders of civil-rights activists Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney.
Investigative Reports: Inside the Killer's Mind. Perf. Arthur Shawcross. A&E Television Networks, 2000. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
Buckman, Adam. “Following Footsteps of a Killer.” New York Post (Nov. 2002): 124: Proquest. Web. 28 Feb. 2014
On August 20th, 1989 Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their parents inside their Beverly Hills home with fifteen shot gun blasts after years of alleged “sexual, psychological, and corporal abuse” (Berns 25). According to the author of “Murder as Therapy”, “The defense has done a marvelous job of assisting the brothers in playing up their victim roles” (Goldman 1). Because there was so much evidence piled up against the brothers, the defense team was forced to play to the jurors’ emotions if they wanted a chance at an acquittal. Prosecutor Pamela Bozanich was forced to concede that “Jose and Kitty obviously had terrific flaws-most people do in the course of reminding jurors that the case was about murder, not child abuse” (Adler 103). Bozanich “cast the details of abuse as cool, calculated lies” (Smolowe 48)...
This case started on July 25, 1984, with the death of a nine year old girl by the name of Dawn Hamilton. The story plays out as follows: Dawn approached two boys and an adult male that were fishing at a pond in a wooded area near Golden Ring Mall in eastern Baltimore, Maryland. Dawn asked the boys to help her find her cousin, they declined the adult male however agreed to help her look. This was the last time anyone saw Hamilton alive. Hamilton’s body was found to have been raped, strangled and beaten with a rock. The police collected a boot print at the scene and DNA that was found in Hamilton’s underwear. The police also relied on the witness testimonies and line-ups, which in this case was the photo array. With the five eye witness testimonies and a tip the believed to be suspect was found. Kirk Noble Bloodsworth a prior U.S. Marine with no prior criminal record was taken into custody and charged with intentional first degree murder, sexual assault and rape. Bloodsworth was basically convicted on the eye witness testimonies. The state requested the death penalty. Bloodsworth was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. (BLOODSWORTH v. STATE, 1988)
While reading the case about Mr.Hossack 's murder i saw the wife, Mrs.Hossack, as innocent at first. The children all claimed that the two did not argue for over a year, so why would she kill him now verses a year ago? When the youngest child, Ivan Hossack, came to the stand and "told his story in a straight, unhesitating manner" it made it easier for me to believe in Mrs. Hossack 's innocence. The child even said that he saw his mother aiding his father when he called out for help. If she had been the one to swing the axe, why would she help him and risk getting in trouble? Most importantly, if he was conscious and talking, why wouldn 't he say who to murderer was? He could have easily identified his wife in the dark after being married for over twenty years, and yet he didn 't identify who had tried to kill him. Dr. Dean first stated that the axe did not hit the speech portion of the brain, so he could have been conscious and yelling out for his wife. Dean later stated that the fatal blow from the axe would have left Mr.Hossack unconscious. The murder weapon had blood on in and apparent hairs stuck to one side; "Prof. John L. Tilton of Simpson college... was unable to say definitely that the hair had been