The Case of Dr. Sam

In Hearst's Los Angeles Herald & Express, the headlines at first called him DR. SAMUEL SHEPPARD. Then the name was shortened to DR. SHEPPARD. By last week it was simply DR. SAM or just SAM. He needed no further identification. The same thing happened in other papers. For the last month the case of Dr. Samuel Sheppard, the Cleveland osteopath charged with murdering his pregnant wife TIME, Aug. 30), has been the biggest murder story in the U.S. press since the rial of Bruno Hauptmann in 1935. Said Herald & Express Managing Editor Herbert H. Krauch: "It's been a long time since there's been a murder trial this good."

Competing Managing Editor Ed Murray of the crime-loving Los Angeles Mirror disagreed: "The case has mystery, society, sex and glamour, but as a day-in-and-day-out story, it has been duller than dishwater." Many another newsman raised the question: Is the Sheppard case worth the space U.S. dailies are giving it?

Rare Opportunity? Even before the trial got under way, some editors decided was going to be the biggest crime story in years. Publisher William R. Hearst Jr., who has been trying to jack up his ailing chain, saw the trial as a rare opportunity. He ordered a task force dispatched to Cleveland, led by Sob Sister Dorothy Kilgallen (TIME, Nov. 15), Handyman Bob Considine and Cartoonist Burris Jenkins Jr. (for courtroom sketches). Scripps-Howard followed suit with its own crew, including Inspector Robert Fabian of Scotland Yard, who, repelled by the Hollywood-like atmosphere of the trial, wrote icily: "In the staid atmosphere of the Old Bailey, this would not have been allowed." Even the conservative New York Herald Tribune sent a specialist: Margaret Parton, whose literate, low-keyed reporting, the first such crime reporting she has ever done, was probably the best on the trial. Newsmen, assigned to the story by papers all over the U.S., filled almost every spectator seat in the courtroom.

But to date the trial has been disappointing. Reporters tried to pep it up by calling Dr. Sam "the Romeo of the rubbing table," got their doctors mixed by describing his extramarital girl friend, Susan Hayes, as the "orthopedic wench." "For an osteopath," commented the New York Post on Dr. Sam's calm courtroom demeanor, "he hardly moved a muscle." Headlines promised BOMBSHELL DUE AT TRIAL TODAY and NEW SHEPPARD SEX ANGLE HINTED. But no bombs burst, no angles materialized.

Not Enough Holler. To stave off courtroom boredom, newsmen covered each other. A columnist for the Cleveland Press, which is devoting at least two full pages a day to the trial, reported that Scripps-Howard Correspondent Andrew Tully, wheezing and coughing with a cold, made such a racket that Dr. Sam's brother, Stephen, turned to him in annoyance and said: "Drop dead." Replied Tully: "I can't. I've got to stay around for the hanging."

Many readers apparently were as bored as the reporters. Newsstand sales of papers rarely showed an increase. Complained a Denver newsstand operator: "Sure I read about the trial, but there ain't much holler in the stories."

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