Word: shea
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...winter morning in 1959, the body of Airline Clerk Mary Meslener, 23, was found on a canal bank three miles from Miami International Airport. She had been shot once in the head. More than two months after the murder, Airman Joseph Shea, 20, waved a bloody shirt at his sergeant in West Palm Beach and vaguely insisted that he had done "something bad." Because Shea had been trying to fake a medical discharge, the sergeant was skeptical; because the Meslener murder was still unsolved, though, Shea became a potential suspect...
After questioning Shea, Miami Detective Philip Thibedeau could find no connection between him and the murder. Even so, Detective Patrick Gallagher soon obtained the airman's oral confession...
After Lie Detector Expert Warren D. Holmes said that his tests indicated Shea was innocent, the airman made another confession and this time signed it. Though Crime Lab Supervisor Edward D. Whittaker testified that Shea's shirt was splattered with his own B-type blood and there was only one spot of Mary Meslener's O-type, the confession persuaded a jury to find Shea guilty of first-degree murder and to recommend mercy...
Self-Accused. Now, six years later, a second jury has voted for acquittal-all because Detective Thibedeau, Polygrapher Holmes and Miami Herald Reporter Gene Miller spent their spare time tracking down evidence that cast deep doubt on his confession. For one thing, Roman Catholic Shea had apparently undergone agonies of guilt after fathering an illegitimate child in the Philippines: "I didn't want to live," he said. Even more important, Detective Gallagher admitted in nine hours on the stand at the second trial that...
Webster F. Williams Jr. '35 ex-captain and intercollegiate champion will head an epee squad which includes Giles Constable '50, associate professor of History, and James M. Roberts '60. Sophomores Harry Jergesen and Steve Shea and junior Brian Keidan will fence for the varsity...