Further reading for The Papin Sisters & Sam Sheppard:

The Papin Sisters (Oxford Studies in Modern European Culture)

Mockery Of Justice: The True Story of the Sheppard Murder Case

Info

This episode starts off with old school sister murders Christine and Lea Papin. Set in 1926 France, the girls, whose home life was rather sad and sinister in and of itself, were sent to work for the Lancelin family. The family consisted of Rene, a retired solicitor, his wife Leonie and their youngest daughter Genevieve.

On the night of Feb 2, 1933 Monsieur Lancelin returned home from an evening out to find his house dark, the only light on appeared to be in the Papin sisters room. The doors were all locked from the inside so he could not get in, seeing as his wife and daughter should have been home he became suspicious and went to the local police to get help.

Once police were able to enter the home, they found the lifeless bodies of both Leone and Genevieve. They had both been stabbed, bludgeoned and had their eyes gouged out. Thinking an intrudor had done this, the police anticipated finding the Papin sisters had met the same fate. As they made their way to the girls room, they found the door locked once a locksmith was able to open the door. The girls were found alive, and in bed, nude with a bloody hammer in a chair nearby and they immediately confessed to the murders.

Their trial and imprisonment set the stage to look at the treatment of housemaids at the time as well as the mental and how it played into the murders.

Did Sam Sheppard murder his wife??

On the night of July 3, 1954 Dr Sam Sheppard and his pregnant wife Marilyn had friends over to watch a movie. Sam fell asleep in living room, and Marilyn saw the friends out and tucked their first child into bed before going to bed herself.

According to Sheppard in the early hours of the morning he was woken from his sleep by cries from his wife. He ran upstairs to their bedroom to see a white form that knocks him unconscious. When he came to, he took Marylin’s pulse only to find she was dead, then ran downstairs to see the intruder again running out the backdoor towards the lake.

Sam followed this person down the lake front where they fought, and he again was knocked unconscious. When he came to this time he called an neighbor to come over right away, when they go to the bedroom, they find Marylin bludgeoned to death. She had been hit 35 times, 27 in her head and she barely recognizable.

As his trail proceeds lots of dirty little secrets are exhumed, leaving you questioning if he was an innocent victim or if he had more to do with the murder then he let on.

Episode 55

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