Review: THE WRONG MAN by James Neff

I was a toddler in a neighboring state when housewife Mrs. Marilyn Sheppard was brutally murdered in July 1954, leaving a seven-year-old son and a husband. Of course I knew nothing about it at the time, but in 1967 when the TV series "The Fugitive" debuted, I immediately became hooked on the story of a doctor wrongly accused of his wife's brutal murder, seeking justice and striving to clear his besmirched name. Associating this plot line with Dr. Sam Sheppard, I decided he too must be innocent but beleaguered by the disbelief of law enforcement and courts. Then when I began THE WRONG MAN and discovered Dr. Sam's personality faults (temper, philandering, an addictive personality), I changed my opinion and considered him guilty (for a time).

The lack of clarity and sheer failure to properly investigate may be equaled only by the investigation of the murder of Jon-Benet Ramsay in Boulder, Colorado in 1996. Too much belief in Dr. Sam's guilt and refusal to entertain other possibilities meant a near-railroading of Dr. Sam. Certainly no justice for Marilyn nor closure for her family was ever achieved.