Yalonda M. James/The ChronicleEven though he is 75 and living in Oakland, separated by decades and miles from the scene of the crime, Sam Sheppard thinks about the trauma his family endured when he hears about executions, especially when one parent is facing death for charges of killing the other. He thought about trauma when he learned that Texas had executed Robert Fratta, an ex-cop found guilty of killing his estranged wife in 1994 in a murder-for-hire plot.
The murder and its aftermath reverberated through the entire Sheppard family. His father’s mother died by suicide in 1955; his father’s father died 11 days later. His dead mother’s father died by suicide in 1963. His father was granted a new trial in 1966 and acquitted of the crime, but died after just four years of freedom.
Once or twice, people suggested he change his name. He didn’t. People might have jumped on that as a sign he believed his father was guilty.The case hit the news over and over through a series of appeals that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and a new trial in 1966 — the one he refers to as the “fairer trial,” where his father was found not guilty. Hollywood revived it in a 1963 TV series and 1993 movie called “The Fugitive.” The TV series aired when his father was still in prison.
Sam Sheppard was in France at the time of his father’s funeral. He is not a violent man, but he worried he might have become one if he’d been there and saw TV cameras rolling as his father was lowered into a grave. When he came back to the U.S., he found his way back to his aunt and uncle’s, wound up catatonic, and checked himself into an institution.
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