Sensational Sharpe case comes to end

WENHAM — One of the most tragic and bizarre murder stories ever to jar the North Shore came to an abrupt end Monday night, when Richard Sharpe was found dead, hanging from a bed sheet in his cell at the state prison in Norfolk.

A prison spokesman would not call his death a suicide, saying an investigation is underway.

Sharpe was convicted in 2001 of murdering his wife, Karen Sharpe, in front of her brother and other witnesses, while the couple's two young children, Alex, 5, and Michael, 7, were in another part of Karen Sharpe's Wenham home.

He was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for shooting his wife with a high-powered rifle on the night of July 14, 2000.

The case drew national attention when Sharpe admitted to a nearly lifelong habit of cross-dressing, caused, he said, by an abusive father.

That was hardly the only peculiarity that would emerge in the days and even years after the shooting.

Wenham police Patrolmen Jon Gray and Donald Woodbury had the graveyard shift that Friday, a night that seemed normal and quiet until 11:45.

A call came into the Hamilton-Wenham dispatch center of a shooting at 19 Hull St. in Wenham. Police radio frequencies came alive as cruisers from Hamilton and Beverly, which was also notified by the Hamilton dispatcher, raced to the scene.

"We were told the person was still in the house, with a gun," he said yesterday.

Gray recalls a tense and chaotic situation as officers from neighboring towns began arriving. Not knowing whether the shooter was armed or if he was in the house or outside, the officers were concerned for their own safety, Gray said. But they were also desperate to get into the house because they'd been told the shooting victim was badly injured.

"We basically rolled the dice," Gray said. Gambling that if the shooter was inside, he wouldn't be able to make them out in the darkness, Gray said he walked up to the front door and went in.

"It was pretty chaotic," Gray said. "Her brother was leaning over her, and there was a lot of screaming and shouting."

Things were just as confused outside, where officers were tensely searching the woods for the shooter. At one point, one officer called out to another nearby, "Was that you that just jacked your shotgun?"

Some of the police response was delayed by the first oddity in the case. Due to a misunderstanding between the Hamilton-Wenham and Beverly dispatchers, Beverly officers initially went to 19 Hull St. in Beverly, a little more than a mile from Karen Sharpe's home.

Sharpe fled immediately after firing the fatal round, and while one acquaintance predicted the Gloucester dermatologist was clever and would be hard to catch, he was found just 28 hours after his wife's death, in a motel room in Tuftonboro, N.H. He was registered under his own name.

The Sharpes were engaged in an acrimonious divorce, and Karen Sharpe, 44, had left her husband at the time of the shooting. She claimed he had abused her and their daughter, Shannon, for years.

Richard Sharpe, 54 at the time of his death, was formerly a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty who ran several businesses outside his medical practice and parlayed his earnings into millions in the stock market.

News outlets nationwide picked up the story when photographs of Sharpe wearing slinky dresses and fishnet stockings were widely published after his arrest, and his wife said in affidavits he stole her birth control pills in an effort to enlarge his breasts.

At trial, a psychiatrist testified Sharpe suffered from a multitude of psychiatric disorders, including intermittent bouts of uncontrolled rage, caused by his father's abuse.

But prosecutors said Sharpe carefully calculated his actions before the killing so that he would appear insane and later faked symptoms of mental illness to impress psychiatrists and the jury.

They also contended Sharpe had financial motivation for the killing, fearing that if his wife divorced him, he would lose his fortune — money that came mostly from his very successful laser hair removal business.

Also pointing to prior planning, the prosecution said Sharpe stole a gun from a friend the night of the killing to make it look like a heat-of-the-moment decision, then used another gun he obtained before that night to shoot his wife. Neither weapon was ever found.

He attempted to tap into an $835,000 IRA fund established for his children but was denied access to it.

A fellow inmate also accused Sharpe of offering him $1 million to help Sharpe escape. That money was in a trust fund for the children, but a restraining order prevented Sharpe from raiding it.

In the summer of 2001, at the same time Sharpe was sending letters of contrition to his oldest daughter, Shannon, saying he'd give anything to have the family back together, he was attempting to evict her from her apartment in his Gloucester home.

In November 2001, there was an allegation of jailhouse abuse by Sharpe that halted jury selection for several hours while he was examined at Lawrence General Hospital.

Sharpe was sentenced to a life behind bars that same month, but continued to be a newsmaker.

He tried to hang himself in his cell when he was at the state prison in Walpole in March 2002.

In 2007, a jury cleared him of charges he and another inmate plotted the murder of Robert Weiner, the prosecutor who put Sharpe away.

Wenham police Chief Kenneth Walsh was a sergeant at the time of the shooting, and normally would have worked the shift. Instead, he was visiting family in California, and watched the drama unfold on national television.

He said the Sharpe case, along with societal changes, led to changes in the way the department responds to any call. For one thing, cruisers are now equipped with rifles, rather than the shotguns they once carried.

"People seem to generalize about small-town policing — 'It's Wenham, nothing ever happens there' — Well, guess what? It does."

Mark Smith, a partner in the law firm that represented the three Sharpe children, said he has had no contact with them in recent years. He hopes their father's death will bring some closure for them.

"I would hope they can find some peace going forward," Smith said. "I hope they're all doing well."

Material from The Associated Press and The Salem News archives was used in this report.

Photos

Richard Sharpe testifies in Superior Court in 2001 about the activities leading up to the death of his wife, Karen, during his murder trial in Lawrence. Sharpe was found dead in his cell on Monday. File photo