Walter Ogrod, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was convicted and sentenced to death for the July 12, 1988 sexual assault and murder of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn. Horn's murder gained national attention as an unsolved crime. According to police, Ogrod confessed to her murder four years after the crime, but in 2020, the "confession" was recognized to be false. On June 5, 2020, Ogrod's conviction was vacated by the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, and he was ordered to be freed from prison. He spent more than two decades on death row.
Trials
In April 1992, Walter Ogrod, a neighbor of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn, confessed to luring Horn into his basement, attempting to sexually assault her, bludgeoning her to death with a metal object and then placing her body in a cardboard television box on nearby St. Vincent Street. In October 1993, Ogrod was prosecuted by the District Attorney of Philadelphia, Lynne Abraham, for the first time. The defense argued that Ogrod's confession had been coerced by the authorities. The jury was set to acquit Ogrod of the crime, but a juror announced that he did not agree with the verdict as it was being read, resulting in a mistrial. In October 1996, Ogrod again went on trial. He was convicted of her murder on October 8, 1996 and sentenced to the death penalty on October 9. The main evidence against Ogrod was jailhouse informanthearsay testimony that he had confessed to the crime. In December 2003, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed Ogrod's death sentence in an opinion by Justice Sandra Schultz Newman. In April 2004, that court denied Ogrod's application for reargument in an unsigned order, with Justice Thomas G. Saylor writing for the three dissenters.
Further developments
In April 2018, the new Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Krasner, revealed that Ogrod's conviction would be reviewed. In addition, a district attorney spokesman revealed that prosecutors would no longer try to prevent DNA evidence in the case from being tested, including fingernail scrapings from the victim. DNA testing was concluded in January 2020, with the results definitively excluding Ogrod as the source. In light of the new DNA test results, Krasner filed a motion to have Ogrod's 1996 murder conviction overturned, which was set to go before a judge on March 27, 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was delayed until June 2020. On June 5, 2020, Ogrod's conviction was vacated by the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, and he was ordered to be freed from prison.
Media coverage
The case was featured on a first season episode of Unsolved Mysteries, aired on November 16, 1988. As implied, at the time the case was unsolved, and there was not yet a clear suspect. In April 2017, a book by author Thomas Lowenstein, The Trials of Walter Ogrod, was published. In April 2018, a segment of the documentary seriesDeath Row Stories entitled "Snitch Work" aired, focusing on Ogrod's conviction and possible innocence.
