Trials of Walter Ogrod: The Shocking Murder, So-Called by Thomas Lowenstein

The bad 1988 homicide of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn surprised the voters of Philadelphia. Plucked from her personal entrance backyard, Barbara Jean used to be came upon useless lower than and a part hours later in a cardboard television field dragged to a close-by highway cut down. After months of research with out robust leads, the case went chilly. 4 years later it was once reopened, and Walter Ogrod, a tender guy with autism spectrum illness who had lived around the highway from the relatives on the time of the homicide, used to be introduced in as a suspect.

Ogrod bears no resemblance to the composite police cartoon in keeping with eyewitness money owed of the guy wearing the field, and there's no actual facts linking him to the crime. His conviction was once dependent completely on a confession he signed after thirty-six hours with out sleep. "They stated i may pass domestic if I signed it," Ogrod advised his brother from the jailhouse. The case was once so vulnerable that the jury voted unanimously to acquit him, yet on the final second—in a dramatic court declaration—one juror replaced his brain. As he waited for a retrial, Ogrod's destiny used to be sealed whilst a infamous jailhouse snitch used to be planted in his telephone block and provided the prosecution with a moment intended confession. hence, Walter Ogrod sits on loss of life row for the homicide today.

Informed by means of police documents, court docket transcripts, interviews, letters, journals, and extra, award-winning journalist Thomas Lowenstein leads readers in the course of the proof of the notorious Horn homicide case in compelling, compassionate, and riveting type. He finds explosive new proof that issues to a condemned man's innocence and exposes a bigger underlying development of prosecutorial misconduct in Philadelphia.