If you believe the Sam Sheppard estate, Richard Eberling is the answer to the whodunit that inspired "The Fugitive." The doctor's heirs are convinced that Eberling is the "bushy-haired" man who in 1954 slaughtered Marilyn Sheppard, doomed her husband to infamy and robbed their son of both his parents.

Of course, Ohio prosecutors disagree, saying Eberling is a convenient scapegoat for the doctor's own brutality. Both sides agree, however, that Eberling, who died in 1998, was a murderer and a thief who lived a strange life.

Eberling was born Richard Lenardic on the eve of the Great Depression. His mother, an unwed domestic, quickly abandoned him. He spent his childhood shuffling through foster homes around Cleveland. According to Cynthia Cooper's book on the Sheppard case, Mockery of Justice, Eberling was a troubled child who stole and lied constantly.

In 1946, when he was 16, he wanted to change his name to Eberling, the surname of his foster family. George Eberling, the head of the family, reportedly bristled at the idea of the boy adopting his name and barred him from doing so. Shortly after this, George Eberling died. Police at the time concluded he had taken the wrong medication, but the Sheppard estate contends this was the first of many possible murders linked to Eberling.

Eventually, he did change his name, and in high school, he started a window-washing business called Dick's Cleaning Service. The business grew and by 1954, many wealthy Cleveland families, including the Sheppards of Bay Village, counted on Eberling and his employees as handymen. The week before Mrs. Sheppard's murder, Dick's Cleaning Service washed the family's windows.

Eberling was never considered as a murder suspect in 1954. Police officers pointed the finger of blame at Dr. Sheppard within hours of the murder, and he was convicted within the year.

Two years after Marilyn Sheppard's death, Eberling and his girlfriend Barbara Kinzel were involved in a strange car accident in Michigan. Eberling, driving a convertible, told authorities he had swerved to avoid a truck. He had some minor injuries, but Kinzel, who had at one time worked for the Sheppard family, was dead. The truck driver told police his vehicle was no where near Eberling's and couldn't understand why the convertible had to swerve. The Sheppard estate maintains the accident was more likely a murder.

Eberling showed up on police radar again in 1959 when some of his cleaning service customers began complaining that he was stealing from them. Jewelry and cash went missing every time he came into their homes, they charged. Police hauled Eberling into a suburban Cleveland station where he confessed to robbing a number of families. Among the loot he was carrying with him at the time was a ring that had once belonged to Marilyn Sheppard. Eberling had apparently stolen it from her sister-in-law's home.

Police officers were surprised by his confession and more so by a piece of odd information he volunteered about the Sheppard murder. He told officers he had cut his hand in the Sheppard's home days before Mrs. Sheppard's death. The wound, Eberling allegedly said, had dripped blood throughout the house. Startled, the officers brought Eberling to the attention of Cuyahoga prosecutors, but they said they weren't interested. Eberling got a suspended sentence for the thefts.

In 1966, Eberling testified for the defense in the second Sheppard trial. He recounted cutting himself days before the murder and the doctor's attorney, F. Lee Bailey, used his testimony to explain how blood could have gotten on all three floors of the home.

By the time of the trial, Eberling had moved beyond his cleaning service. He had insinuated himself into the lives of a trio of well-off sisters from Cleveland, Myrtle Fray, Sara Belle Farrow and Ethel May Durkin, as a sort of companion. According to the Sheppard estate, all three women died violent deaths at Eberling's hands.

The first, the estate says, was Fray, 63, the youngest sister. She died in 1962 shortly after allegedly warning her sister to stay away from Eberling. Days after this alleged conversation, Fray was found beaten to death in her bed. The murder has never been solved. Eight years later, Farrow, 79, died in a fall down stairs at Durkin's home.

A nurse who worked in the Durkin home has testified that late one night in 1983, Eberling confessed that he had killed Marilyn Sheppard. Eberling had been drinking, and the nurse, Kathy Dyal said she did not take him seriously at the time. Soon after the conversation, she was fired.

A short time later, in 1984, Durkin died after a suspicious fall in her home. With Durkin's two sisters deceased, Eberling and his longtime companion, Oscar "Obie" Henderson III, inherited the bulk of Durkin's $1.5 million estate. Durkin's death was ruled an accident until 1987 when a Florida woman told police that she'd helped Eberling fake Durkin's will. In 1989, Eberling and Henderson were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

While in prison, Eberling contacted the Sheppards' only son, Sam Reese Sheppard, and made some cryptic comments to him that the estate maintains amounted to a confession. Eberling said he knew "the entire story" of the murder and knew that Dr. Sheppard was innocent. He also told Sheppard "your family has been with me a long time." Later, however, Eberling recanted these statements and he died without fully explaining himself.