Koblentz Is Sadistic, Dr. Sheppard Charges

Plain Dealer Bureau

WASHINGTON, D. C. Dr. Sam Sheppard charged before a Senate subcommittee yesterday that Maury C. Koblentz, Ohio's top penal official, was a sadist and personally responsible for evil conditions in the state's prison system.

Responding to a question from Sen. Thomas J. Dodd, D-Conn, chairman of the Senate judiciary subcommittee, as to whether he had encountered any sadism among officials during his ten years in prison, Sheppard blurted:

"Mr. Koblentz is sadistic."

Later when Dodd asked how prison conditions could be improved, Sheppard immediately suggested the removal of Koblentz as the commissioner of corrections in Ohio.

Sheppard, who spent 10 years in Ohio prisons after being convicted of slaying his wife in 1954, a conviction later overturned, appeared here to testify in a Senate investigation into juvenile deliquency.

ALTHOUGH HE WAS questioned as to the effects prison life had on young offenders, much of Sheppard's testimony dwelt on brutality he had encountered in the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus.

At one point he offered to bare his back to the subcommittee and display scars that remain from rubber hose beatings that Sheppard asserted were administered by prison officials.

Sheppard testified that Koblentz had him punished for his efforts to gain a retrial through his family and his lawyer, F. Lee Bailey.

"He (Koblentz) told me he could not stand the publicity any longer," Sheppard said. “I was handcuffed, my legs chained and I stood for six days without food or water in solitary confinement.

"When I got out I made an unfortunate comment and I was put back for three more days."

"THIS IS AN UTTER LIE," Koblentz said. "Sam Sheppard has lied in the past and he is lying now and the records will bear out that his allegations are not based on fact.'

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Koblentz said records showed Sheppard had only nine infractions in his entire stay in the Ohio penal system. He said Sheppard spent only two days in a correctional cell.

Sheppard told the subcommittee that homosexuality was rampant at the penitentiary and that many sex deviates held top inmate jobs within the prison.

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"I saw younger men being attacked by the older cons,' he said, "When I saw it happening in my presence I tried to prevent it when I was able."

Sheppard described how he "sucker punched" one inmate to protect a young man from being abused, striking the man so hard that the attacker still "must not be able to talk right.”

HE TESTIFIED THAT prison officials let one man bleed to death in solitary confinement despite Sheppard's pleas that the man needed medication.

On another occasion, Sheppard said, Associate Warden Marion J. Koloski displayed no concern over an inmate's life after he had been stabbed in a homosexual dispute.

"Keep him alive long enough so the other man will not get first degree," Sheppard quoted the warden as saying. Sheppard called the penitentiary a “crime college” and said the prison's atmosphere destroyed men rather than helped them.

"As a result," he said, "I don't ever want an ex-con as my next door neighbor even though I know how to handle them."