Richard Eberling - Additional Suspected Crimes

Additional Suspected Crimes

It was also during this time that Eberling's link to two other suspicious deaths came to light:

• George Eberling (1946), while being taken care of by Christine Eberling and Richard, it was discovered that he had ingested poison immediately before suffering his stroke, which had been left on his bed side nightstand.
• Barbara Kinzel (1956), Eberling's purported girlfriend, and a nurse at Sam Sheppard's Bay View Hospital, allegedly died when Eberling veered off a Michigan highway and slammed her Ford convertible into the back of a parked truck. Kinzel, who had cared for Sheppard immediately following the murder of Marilyn Sheppard, claimed that she felt Sam Sheppard was innocent based on the severity of his condition after the incident. After Kinzel's comments had been circulated in newspapers, Richard Eberling began calling on her and the two began to date. Eberling later claimed that following the accident that claimed Kinzel's life, he reached over and found her body crumbled on the floor in front of the passenger seat.

While no autopsy was performed on George Eberling, one was performed on Barbara Kinzel due to questions raised at the accident site. With the convertible top down at the time of the accident, and without there being a seat belt, there was the question on why her body wasn't thrown from the car. Eberling claimed that she had hit the windshield, but noted that there was no bleeding, internal or otherwise, anywhere on her body, nor was there evidence of safety glass found in her facial tissues as would be indicated in a case where an object would strike the windshield with the force that would have occurred in the accident. The coroner did note that her neck was broken along the second vertebra (as were Sheppard's and Durkin's). Speculations were made that Eberling had killed Kinzel to keep her quiet on Sheppard's innocence should a retrial be ordered. While it was Kinzel's car that was involved in the accident that took her life, Eberling made a healthy financial settlement from the company that owned the truck for his injuries sustained in the case.

While the evidence linking Eberling to these deaths was seemingly evident, no action was taken because of Eberling's death in prison on July 25, 1998, aged 68.

Legal actions that transpired following his death relative to any possible involvement in the murder of Marilyn Sheppard proved inconclusive.