Crypt containing the cremated remains of Samuel Holmes Sheppard, Marilyn Reese Sheppard, and their unborn son.

Marilyn Sheppard was murdered in the Sheppard home in Bay Village, Ohio, in the early morning hours of July 4, 1954, while their seven-year-old son, Sam Reese "Chip" Sheppard, slept in a nearby room. Sam Sheppard was convicted of her murder on December 21, 1954. On June 6, 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the murder conviction. Sam Sheppard was retried, and found not-guilty on November 16, 1966.

Marilyn Sheppard was buried in a mausoleum crypt at Knollwood Cemetery in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, in 1954.

Sam Sheppard, who died on April 6, 1970, was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens in Columbus, Ohio.

During further court proceedings in September 1997, Sam Sheppard's body was exhumed. After testing, the body was cremated and the ashes inurned in the same mausoleum crypt at Knollwood Cemetery as Marilyn.

Marilyn Sheppard's body was exhumed in September 1999 for further court proceedings. At that time, Chip Sheppard learned that his mother had been pregnant at the time of her murder, a fact concealed from the Sheppard defense team. (The county coroner had retained the fetus illegally for a year after her death, and the unborn child -- held in a glass jar full of formaldehyde -- was placed in the Sheppard crypt in 1955.) Both the remains of the unborn child and Marilyn Sheppard were reinterred in the same crypte