The Innocents (1964)
by Edward D. Radin

Excerpt from Chapter 6 on

Clifford Shephard
and C. Elizabeth Lester

... The detective was a hard-working, conscientious officer and he was genuinely fearful that this excited woman [a mugging victim] would mistakenly identify anybody he asked her to view. It probably never occurred to her that honest citizens also can be found in a police station talking to a detective. She thought I [the district attorney] was a criminal and quickly transferred that viewpoint into an erroneous identification.

This is not so far fetched as it sounds. It is precisely what happened to Clifford Shephard, and it led to two false imprisonments and a fifteen-year struggle to clear his reputation.

In April, 1935, Shephard was forty-nine years old, a man of impeccable reputation and integrity, who managed fund-raising campaigns for churches. He boarded in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, with Mrs. C. Elizabeth Lester, a widow with several children.

On April 18, returning home from work, he found his landlady distraught and close to tears. She had been notified to come to police headquarters. Mrs. Lester had shopped for groceries earlier that week and had paid the six-dollar bill by check. Her bank had returned it to the store stamped, "Insufficient funds." Instead of notifying Mrs. Lester, who had been dealing at the market for years, the grocer filed a complaint with police. In going through her checkbook stubs, Mrs. Lester discovered she had made an error in subtraction that had caused her to believe she had enough money on deposit to cover the check; actually she was short just thirty cents. Shephard assured the woman that she was worrying needlessly, that her records showed there was no intent to defraud, and since she had made a deposit to her account since then, the check would be honored by the bank. He accompanied her to headquarters in North Plainfield and, as expected, the matter was easily settled.

As Shephard stepped out of the office, two men were standing in the corridor and one of them pointed to Shephard and yelled, "That's the man." Just then Mrs. Lester also came out, and the same man promptly called out that she was the woman. The man was a New Brunswick store owner who eighteen days earlier had received a bad check. Three other merchants in that town had been fleeced the same day. They also identified Mrs. Lester and Shephard as the couple who had given them the checks.

Within days merchants from many different areas in New Jersey also identified the bewildered pair. With so many charges in different counties piling up against Shephard, it would have been useless for him to seek bail – bonding fees would have been prohibitive – and so he remained in jail for seven months awaiting trial. In addition to fifteen character witnesses, many of them ministers, Shephard also presented proof through a repairman that he was having his car fixed many miles from New Brunswick when some of the forged checks were being passed. However, the jury preferred the evidence of the four positive eyewitnesses, and both Shephard and Mrs. Lester were found guilty and sentenced to serve nine additional months in the county jail. One of the storekeepers had brought his young child to court on sentencing day and, as Shephard was being led away, boasted loudly, "I never forget a face."

Officials from other jurisdictions in the state were vir­tually jostling in line to get Shephard and Mrs. Lester when they completed their sentences. They were taken to Essex County, where five merchants in East Orange identified them as having passed worthless checks. The second trial was a repetition of the first, with one exception: the defendants this time waived a jury trial, hoping that a judge might be less influenced by eyewitnesses and might give weight to the facts they presented. It didn't matter; the judge found both guilty. Shephard this time was sentenced to eighteen months. Because Mrs. Lester had young children, she received only a nine-month sentence.

When Mrs. Lester completed her second term, her personal nightmare ended and she was allowed to return home undisturbed. But other officers were waiting for Shephard. There was an eager group of Plainfield merchants, all identifying him. While these cases were being presented to the grand jury, however, an alert juror noted a discrepancy that had escaped the attention of the investigators. All these checks had been passed while Shephard was in jail serving his previous sentence. The grand jury refused to return an indictment and Shephard was released. One of the jurors became interested in Shephard's plight and suggested to him that he seek the aid of the Burns International Detective Agency, which represented the American Bankers Association in running down forgers.

H. A. Crowe, manager of the criminal division of the agency, studied the checks for which Shephard had been convicted and recognized them as the work of Eugene Sullivan, known as the Phantom Forger, who with his wife, Theo Vern Sullivan, had been passing hundreds of worthless checks all over the country. Police had been seeking him for ten years.

Shephard returned with this information to the officials who had sent him to jail, but there was no interest. Besides, Sullivan was still being sought, and they indicated that nothing could be done until Sullivan had been caught and admitted the crimes.

That day came in February, 1939. Crowe notified Shephard that Sullivan was under arrest in Wisconsin. When Sullivan heard of the charges on which Shephard had been convicted, he remarked, "You got a bum deal." In the presence of a detective and the warden of the prison he duplicated the signatures that had appeared on the fake checks and also signed a confession admitting that he and his wife had been responsible for the crimes.

Shephard returned to New Jersey and filed an application for a pardon; it was rejected without explanation. For years after that others joined in the fight for Shephard, but each time the pardon request was turned down without explanation. A newspaper reporter finally became interested and presented the information to Governor Driscoll. The state constitution had been revised, and the old pardons board, accused of being part of the political machine, had been replaced by a new board of three men. The governor directed the new board to investigate Shephard's case. On June 14, 1950, New Jersey finally issued an unconditional pardon to Shephard. During all those years since his release, he had found no business firm willing to trust him because of his criminal record, and he had been reduced to working as a handy man, mowing grass, shoveling snow, and working as a porter in a tavern. Beyond the fact that he and Sullivan were tall, there was no other resemblance. Mrs. Lester and Mrs. Sullivan were not doubles, either. Mrs. Lester also received an unconditional pardon. The state legislature later voted to pay $15,000 to Shephard for the false imprisonment that had destroyed his career. He was sixty-four years old when he finally was cleared.