The Investigation

Transcript

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Speaker 8 Did red flags ever pop up that maybe there was some evidence that was being hidden?

Speaker 2 Certainly. Certainly.
You smelled a rat.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 2 Secrets, lies, corruption.

Speaker 13 The biggest part of this problem is the abuse of power.

Speaker 14 They've destroyed lives. It shocks the conscience.

Speaker 21 Tonight, inside the scandal that shook the city of Philadelphia, a stunning pattern of misconduct exposed in a 30-year-old case.

Speaker 24 Little girl's body was found in this TV box.

Speaker 7 This is a little girl taken off her neighborhood block.

Speaker 27 The haunting mystery of Barbara Jean Horne.

Speaker 28 There is no justice.

Speaker 29 We need to find out who did this.

Speaker 8 Didn't you feel like you were lifting the lid on something much bigger?

Speaker 26 Yeah, it was even worse than I thought it was. What they were hiding and what they knew.

Speaker 5 The Investigation.

Speaker 17 Welcome to Dateline, everyone.

Speaker 30 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 31 Murder was just the beginning.

Speaker 4 Tonight, an investigation into a cold case and the troubling secrets it revealed.

Speaker 33 Injustices deep inside Philadelphia's justice system.

Speaker 34 When Sharon Fahey was 21 years old, she lived in northeast Philadelphia and worked at a department store.

Speaker 4 But her greatest dream was to have a daughter.

Speaker 29 I only had a girl's name picked out.

Speaker 29 It's all I ever wanted. Was children.

Speaker 37 Shortly before Sharon gave birth, John Fahey entered her life and he became Barbara Jean Horne's stepfather.

Speaker 38 Did you consider her your daughter?

Speaker 10 Oh, yes.

Speaker 10 She was my daughter.

Speaker 28 I raised her as my own.

Speaker 10 The sweetest little girl that ever walked the face of the earth. She was.
She was his sweetheart.

Speaker 29 He was happy to be her stepfather. He would take care of her.

Speaker 39 In fact, John was the one who mostly stayed home with Barbara Jean while Sharon worked.

Speaker 2 July 12th, 1988 was one of those days.

Speaker 17 I know this isn't easy, but can you tell me how that day began?

Speaker 8 What was typical in your life then?

Speaker 29 I got up in the morning, got ready for work, kissed Barbara Jean goodbye.

Speaker 28 Sharon was at work. I was, you know, up with Barbara Jean in the morning, fed her a breakfast.
We played around in the house a little bit.

Speaker 4 John says he relives the details of that summer day in a never-ending loop, even now.

Speaker 28 I was in the house cleaning the refrigerator and, you know, Barbara had come in and asked if she could help and I said that's okay sweet you know you can go outside and just go outside and play and

Speaker 28 you know she hadn't come in for a little while so I went out to check on her

Speaker 28 and I saw her toys on the sidewalk

Speaker 10 I went something's wrong

Speaker 39 John says he thought Barbara Jean had simply wandered off he called for her no answer He began knocking on neighbors doors. No one knew where the little girl was.

Speaker 28 I called Sharon. I said, you need to come home.
I can't find Barbara Jane.

Speaker 27 At what point did you call police?

Speaker 28 I didn't call the police.

Speaker 45 I thought she would be right to hear.

Speaker 28 She's here somewhere.

Speaker 20 Tragically,

Speaker 37 she was.

Speaker 4 Just a couple of hours later, a neighbor made the grim discovery.

Speaker 25 The baby's lifeless body was found inside this cardboard television box.

Speaker 36 A detective broke the news to the Fahies.

Speaker 28 They said that they found Barbara Jane and that she was dead

Speaker 28 and then he accused me of murdering her.

Speaker 17 Just like that.

Speaker 28 Accused you. Just like that.
It was horrible.

Speaker 21 But not a surprise.

Speaker 43 He'd been home alone with Barbara Jean all morning and hadn't called 911 to report her missing.

Speaker 9 While police accused John, they did not arrest him and continued to investigate.

Speaker 36 They quickly found five eyewitnesses who had seen a man lugging the cardboard box.

Speaker 46 He walked across St. Vincent Street, set the box down as if to catch his breath, because it seemed like it was heavy.

Speaker 17 A sketch of the suspect was made.

Speaker 38 A white male, 5'6 to 5'8, 160 to 180 pounds, about 30 years old.

Speaker 50 This is a composite sketch of the guy that's wanted for yesterday's murder of a little boy.

Speaker 25 The neighborhood has been saturated with police all day and all night, passing out the composite drawing of the suspect.

Speaker 27 Dozens of detectives searched for leads as Barbara Jean's murder gripped the city for days.

Speaker 53 Gentlemen Lou Incon is lying.

Speaker 39 Then weeks.

Speaker 54 It even got national attention when Unsolved Mysteries featured the case.

Speaker 56 Tonight, the Philadelphia Police Department needs your help in solving the brutal murder of a four-year-old girl.

Speaker 4 Hundreds of tips poured in.

Speaker 26 They got so many calls about one guy, they followed him for six months.

Speaker 21 When journalist Tom Lowenstein began investigating Barbara Jean's murder, he had no idea he he would still be at it 20 years later.

Speaker 26 There was another suspect who had been accused of a murder of another little girl about a mile away. They showed his picture to one of the eyewitnesses.
One of the eyewitnesses picked him out.

Speaker 4 But there wasn't enough evidence to make any arrests, and the case went cold.

Speaker 8 Was it frustration for you and Sharon that all this time had gone by and they still couldn't find the perpetrator?

Speaker 10 Yes, we were calling

Speaker 28 all the time.

Speaker 30 Four years later, Detective Marty Devlin and his partner took over the case.

Speaker 42 Devlin, who was known as Detective Perfect for his uncanny ability to crack the toughest cases, quickly arrived at an old suspicion, this time about both parents.

Speaker 29 They said that I knew that John did it and that I was protecting him. And I said, I know he didn't do it.
I would have already murdered him if I thought he did.

Speaker 28 I said, You guys are no closer to solving that.

Speaker 61 You were angry.

Speaker 10 I was pissed.

Speaker 35 I was pissed.

Speaker 28 You would think that after four years, there was some kind of progress,

Speaker 28 and there didn't seem to be any.

Speaker 22 But two months later, that suddenly changed when the detectives zeroed in on a new suspect, one whose name had never come up before.

Speaker 35 When you heard Walter Ogrod,

Speaker 3 what were you thinking?

Speaker 10 Who the hell's Walter Ogrod?

Speaker 44 Coming up.

Speaker 25 Are you in it?

Speaker 39 An arrest.

Speaker 29 Heartbreaking.

Speaker 29 I hated him.

Speaker 28 The only thing I could think of was get my hands around his throat.

Speaker 27 Who was Barbara Jean's killer? The search for an answer would uncover some long buried secrets.

Speaker 13 The biggest part of this problem is not just innocent mistakes. The biggest part of this problem is the abuse of power.

Speaker 28 To think that somebody would just

Speaker 28 purposely kill your child

Speaker 28 don't make sense.

Speaker 10 It just don't make sense.

Speaker 62 The killing of four-year-old father.

Speaker 42 When When detectives Marty Devlin and his partner took over the Barbara Jean Horne case in 1992, they decided to go back to Square One.

Speaker 26 They felt that Barbara Jean must have been killed on the block, very near to where she lived. Police arrived, and they decided to recanvas her.

Speaker 58 None of the neighbors had any new information, but the detectives learned that the man who lived across the street had moved across town the year after the crime.

Speaker 38 His name was Walter Ogrod, a single 27-year-old Philadelphia native who worked as an overnight bakery truck driver.

Speaker 26 They called him up and they asked him to come in as a witness. They said we're just talking to people in the neighborhood.
And he said, all right. And he went in.

Speaker 65 And told him he was going to go see the Philadelphia police about, you know, the murder.

Speaker 38 Ogrod's friend, Steve Mulvey, vividly remembers speaking with him that day.

Speaker 64 I said, you shouldn't go down there without a lawyer.

Speaker 66 I expressed that numerous times, maybe three or four times.

Speaker 55 Ogrod said he had nothing to hide and drove himself to police headquarters where he told the detectives he had no idea what happened to the little girl.

Speaker 18 But he also explained that he knew who Barbara Jean was because of his housemates, the Greens.

Speaker 26 He had asked these people to move into his house to help pay the rent. And the Greens had two children, one of whom, Charlie Bird, was Barbara Jean's best friend.

Speaker 17 Ogrod told Detective Devlin the same thing he told an officer hours after the murder.

Speaker 35 Barbara Jean had come to his front door looking for Charlie Bird a few hours before she went missing.

Speaker 42 It was a detail that Devlin didn't believe was a coincidence.

Speaker 22 He accused Ogrod of lying.

Speaker 54 That's when Devlin said Ogrod began to sob and a confession.

Speaker 18 came pouring out.

Speaker 26 Walter's confession was that the little girl showed up at his house in the afternoon looking for her friend. He grabbed her, took her in the basement.

Speaker 12 According to the confession transcribed by Detective Devlin, Ogrod lured Barbara Jean into his basement to play doctor.

Speaker 22 And when the little girl screamed, he hit her over the head with a weight machine pull-down bar.

Speaker 4 Then he found a box outside and disposed of her body.

Speaker 33 About six hours after the interrogation began, Ogrod signed each sheet of a 16-page 16-page statement.

Speaker 70 And he was arrested for first-degree murder and sexual assault.

Speaker 71 The news came on and they were saying that they had solved Barbara Jean Horn's murder. I was like, oh, wow, they finally caught the guy.

Speaker 22 Heidi Gould has known Ogrod since they were teenagers.

Speaker 15 Next thing I know, they're flashing a picture of Walt on the screen.

Speaker 25 Are you innocent?

Speaker 71 And Walt's in handcuffs.

Speaker 72 Did you want to confess?

Speaker 71 Walt's just not a violent person. He's like a gentle giant.
He would never hurt anyone.

Speaker 39 But to John and Sharon Fahey, Ogrod was the face of pure evil.

Speaker 8 What was it like to read those words to read that confession that he made?

Speaker 29 Heartbreaking.

Speaker 73 I hated him.

Speaker 63 It was hardly an open and shut case. Ogrod had no criminal record, no physical evidence linked him to the crime.

Speaker 54 He didn't resemble the sketch.

Speaker 4 He wasn't identified by a single eyewitness.

Speaker 39 And he'd immediately recanted his confession.

Speaker 25 The prosecution clearly told him that he was afraid of the men.

Speaker 73 Still, in 1993, Ogrod stood trial for murder.

Speaker 4 Prosecutors were seeking the death penalty.

Speaker 74 He let that poor little baby just lie there and die and then put her out in the trash. If that's not intent to kill,

Speaker 75 maybe I haven't seen it yet.

Speaker 42 The prosecution's case rested entirely on the confession.

Speaker 54 Ogrod took the stand in his own defense.

Speaker 67 He testified the detectives had wrung a false confession out of him.

Speaker 8 He makes the case that that confession was forced out of him, that he was coerced.

Speaker 19 Yes.

Speaker 8 How did you feel to hear him describe that story?

Speaker 10 Angry.

Speaker 28 I sat in that trial, and the only thing I could think of was getting my hands around his throat.

Speaker 72 And now the story of Walter Ogrod.

Speaker 41 The jury got the case and returned with a verdict.

Speaker 39 And when it did, John Fahey would be the one led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

Speaker 26 One juror stood up and said, I don't know how I feel about this.

Speaker 4 A crazy confrontation in that courtroom.

Speaker 28 There is no justice in murder. You're never going to find justice.

Speaker 10 Ever.

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Speaker 29 I just wanted him to be locked away forever.

Speaker 12 Sharon and John Fahey had prayed that the jury would find Walter Ogrod guilty, even though they knew nothing could bring back their little girl.

Speaker 10 In a murder.

Speaker 28 You're never going to find justice ever. Walter Ogrod's life doesn't equal Barbajean's life.

Speaker 41 But no one was prepared for what happened after the jury announced it reached a verdict.

Speaker 63 Journalist Tom Lowenstein wasn't in the courtroom, but says the transcript reads like a Hollywood drama.

Speaker 26 The jury came in and they sat down.

Speaker 25 The question still remains, what was the verdict of the court?

Speaker 22 The jury had voted unanimously and signed the verdict form.

Speaker 39 Not guilty. Walter Ogrod was moments away from going home.

Speaker 26 And the foreman stood up and said, you know, yes, we've reached a verdict, and literally opened his mouth to start reading it when one juror stood up and said, I don't know how I feel about this.

Speaker 50 And I knew I was right.

Speaker 59 Then that juror made a jaw-dropping announcement.

Speaker 50 I was not going to let him go.

Speaker 4 He changed his mind.

Speaker 72 One juror suddenly said he could not agree with that verdict.

Speaker 35 The judge immediately declared a mistrial.

Speaker 72 Walter Ogrod is not guilty. The victim's stepfather lunged in Ogrod's direction, setting off a wild confrontation.

Speaker 26 John Fahey launched himself out of his seat, over the barrier, got his hands very nearly around Walter's throat.

Speaker 28 And the next thing I know, he's been handcuffed.

Speaker 72 Court officers hustled out with John Fahey. Other officers, their hands on their guns, rushed Ogrod from court.

Speaker 39 John was never charged, and Ogrod was immediately sent back to jail to await another trial.

Speaker 17 The story once again was the buzz of Philadelphia.

Speaker 53 What happens if you go to trial and he's acquitted?

Speaker 28 I guess we'll get there when we get there.

Speaker 10 We'll see what happens.

Speaker 28 I don't think he'll be acquitted.

Speaker 37 It took three years.

Speaker 20 In 1996, Ogrod stood trial for a second time.

Speaker 57 The first trial ended in a hung jury.

Speaker 22 This time, a different prosecutor named Judy Rubino was in charge.

Speaker 37 And two weeks before trial, she dropped a bombshell.

Speaker 26 Here comes Judy Rubino. to say that, oh, Walter is confessed in jail.
There's another confession.

Speaker 26 A jailhouse snitch had come forward to say ogrond had admitted again that he killed barbara jean but the story the snitch told went even further about why ogrond committed the crime the story was that walter ogrod had fallen in love with barbara jean's mother sharon who lived across the street so walter decided that if he murdered barbara jean the police would blame john fahey and when john fahey was taken away sharon would be so upset and distraught she would come to walter and then that would be it they would fall in love.

Speaker 17 Prosecutor Rubino argued that this delusional fantasy was the true motive. Details Rubino said that Ogrod didn't originally share with detectives.

Speaker 24 He was not telling the police the entire truth. He was trying to make it as good for himself as he could.
And when he was in the prison, he wasn't doing that, and he was sort of bragging.

Speaker 39 Ogrod's lawyer said both confessions, which didn't match each other, were suspicious.

Speaker 53 I think it's frightening when you have two opposing contradictory versions, especially from a jailhouse snitch who just coincidentally happens to come out of nowhere.

Speaker 26 Walter's lawyer's theory was that since the two stories at the two trials are so diametrically opposed, that's reasonable doubt.

Speaker 23 A possible death sentence.

Speaker 10 But it didn't work.

Speaker 23 A jury found him guilty.

Speaker 41 This jury found Ogrod guilty and sentenced him to death.

Speaker 10 It took eight years and two juries to convict 31-year-old Walter Ogrod of murder.

Speaker 24 If one jury's is stupid, doesn't mean that the next one has to be.

Speaker 28 He's an animal. He's got no remorse for what he's done at all.

Speaker 29 I'm just glad that he'll be in jail and he won't get out to hurt another child.

Speaker 27 At last, the Fahies had the verdict they'd hoped for.

Speaker 28 He's held responsible. All that mattered was that he'd never get the opportunity to do it again.

Speaker 29 I wanted him dead. I did.

Speaker 70 But Tom Lowenstein was about to embark on his own investigation into Barbara Jean Horne's murder, and he would soon be faced with a difficult question.

Speaker 33 What would Sharon and John think if it turned out neither jury had heard the real story?

Speaker 23 That prison snitch who helped secure the verdict, someone was about to snitch on him.

Speaker 26 I was like, all right, well, he lied about Walter Ogrod. And she said, yeah, I know he did because I helped him do it.

Speaker 41 Walter Ogrod had been on death row for five years when he heard from another inmate that journalist Tom Lowenstein was writing a book about the death penalty.

Speaker 4 So Ogrod sent Tom a letter imploring him to investigate his case.

Speaker 32 At first, Tom had no interest in helping the convicted murderer of a four-year-old.

Speaker 26 I was just like, I can't do this. The idea that me being in touch with someone who did that might offer them any kind of hope or happiness in their life was repulsive.

Speaker 10 If you follow that rule, you're very likely to.

Speaker 2 But it wasn't in Tom's DNA to turn away.

Speaker 54 Tom's father, Allard Lowenstein, was a United States congressman and a leader in the fight for civil rights.

Speaker 85 We showed in 1968 not that we couldn't change America through elections, but that we could change America through elections.

Speaker 4 He was a tireless campaigner all through Tom's childhood.

Speaker 73 But on March 14th, 1980, his campaigns came to an abrupt end.

Speaker 47 Former Congressman Allard Lowenstein was shot five times and critically wounded today in his home.

Speaker 17 Allard Lowenstein was assassinated by a deranged former student.

Speaker 26 I was 10 years old when my father was murdered.

Speaker 8 How did your father's death affect you as you grew up and as you became an adult?

Speaker 26 It made me really angry

Speaker 26 for a long time.

Speaker 17 Tom was devastated by his father's death, but inspired by his example of helping others and wanted to do the same.

Speaker 12 He became a writer, focusing on the justice system.

Speaker 17 So when that letter from Walter Ogrod showed up, Tom began to learn everything he could about the case.

Speaker 26 He had signed every page of a 16-page confession and you think, oh, wow, geez, that's damning. And then you read that the first jury voted to acquit him.

Speaker 4 Tom spoke with about a dozen people who knew Ogrod before he was arrested.

Speaker 54 None believed he'd committed the crime.

Speaker 71 There's no evidence connecting him to it.

Speaker 43 Many, like Heidi Gould, told Tom if anyone could be easily manipulated into confessing, it was her friend, Walter.

Speaker 71 You could tell that He was a little bit different,

Speaker 71 like socially awkward.

Speaker 54 Tom decided he'd heard enough doubt that he needed to meet Ogrod himself.

Speaker 65 What were your initial impressions of him?

Speaker 26 It was a tiny bit like talking to Rainman.

Speaker 26 You know, he couldn't express feelings to me, but he knew all the facts. And I thought he's like the Asperger's kids that my friend works with.

Speaker 57 For Tom, meeting Ogrod in person changed everything because the man sitting across from him seemed incapable of conveying the words and emotions that Detective Devlin claimed he did in the confession.

Speaker 8 That supposedly verbatim admission just didn't match up with the guy you had been face to face with.

Speaker 26 Yeah, the story that the detectives tell about Walt's confession is that they never interrupted him.

Speaker 26 You know, he just poured out his heart to them and started crying and said to them, Officers, give me a moment. You don't know how hard this is for me.
I never meant to kill that little girl.

Speaker 26 For me, that was the moment it clicked that not only had they dictated a story to Walter, they had dictated a frame of mind that he's not capable of.

Speaker 4 But remember, prosecutors alleged Ogrod hadn't confessed only to detectives, but also to a prison snitch.

Speaker 1 Tom learned the snitch was so prolific, he had a nickname.

Speaker 26 The snitch was a guy named John Hall, who was known as the Monsignor because he'd heard more confessions than a priest.

Speaker 7 John Hall was a career criminal who had been used as a witness by prosecutors in the Philadelphia area in at least a dozen murder trials, often receiving leniency in exchange for his testimony.

Speaker 26 He just had this knack for getting put next to defendants in old homicide cases where the DA didn't have enough evidence.

Speaker 26 And somehow, miraculously, every time that happened, John would produce a confession from that person and he would give them convictions.

Speaker 39 Tom called Hall's house.

Speaker 11 And his wife answered.

Speaker 26 And I thought, she's not going to talk to me, right?

Speaker 39 Wrong.

Speaker 34 Not only did she talk, she could not have been more blunt.

Speaker 26 I said, I'm calling about John Hall. And she said, yeah, he lied in 20 or 30 cases.
And I was like, all right, well, do you think he lied about Walter Ogrod? And she said, yeah, I know he did.

Speaker 26 And I said, how do you know he did? And she said, because I helped him do it.

Speaker 42 This is Phyllis Hall.

Speaker 69 She says her husband, who has since passed away, had his snitching schemes down to a science.

Speaker 86 Didn't bother John at all putting someone on death row because of what he got out of it.

Speaker 20 Shortly before Ogrod's second trial, Hall was moved to the same cell block.

Speaker 4 At the time, he was facing a 50-year sentence for assaulting a police officer.

Speaker 33 Days after meeting Ogrod, Hall asked his wife to find information about Barbara Jean Horne's murder.

Speaker 86 I went to the library in Philadelphia, and they have all the newspapers, so I would get him copies.

Speaker 39 Hall then used those articles to learn about the case so he could create a confession that sounded plausible.

Speaker 26 I had the notes that he made of the Ogrod case. I had it all right in front of me.
How he made it up, I found a library printout of a newspaper article about the Barber Jean Horn case.

Speaker 17 Hall also shared the fabricated story with another snitch.

Speaker 86 He gave the story to another inmate, Jay Walchansky, like he got the story from Walter, but Walter and Jay never communicated together.

Speaker 4 Both snitches went to prosecutors claiming they each heard the same story from Ogrod, but only Wolchansky testified.

Speaker 17 Hall wrote to his wife that prosecutors told him they'd been using him too much.

Speaker 27 Now, all these years later, Tom was convinced Ogrod had been railroaded by both police and prosecutors, which made what he had to do next especially difficult.

Speaker 65 You took your suspicions to Barbara Jean's family.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 26 From the beginning, that was always looming for me. If I had shown up at my door asking about my dad, I would have slammed the door and told me to get lost.

Speaker 26 I wouldn't have talked to someone about the guy who killed my dad.

Speaker 38 But Sharon and John agreed to hear him out.

Speaker 29 John and I met with him, and he told us a lot of the different things that were not right.

Speaker 29 He felt.

Speaker 28 He claims that Walter's innocent and he got a bad deal, and you know, the police did it on purpose. It was accidental that they coerced, whatever.

Speaker 28 I've never wavered on Walter's guilt.

Speaker 10 Never.

Speaker 4 Tom hadn't convinced the Faheys, but his next stop would be an even tougher audience.

Speaker 7 The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.

Speaker 84 Frankly, it shocked me as to some of the evidence that was in that file.

Speaker 59 A new legal battle begins.

Speaker 39 Walter Ogrod is about to fight for justice.

Speaker 17 Did you kill Barbara Jean Horner?

Speaker 55 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 4 After meeting Walter Ogrod, Tom Lowenstein was convinced that he was an innocent man.

Speaker 49 So Lowenstein contacted the Philadelphia DA's office and told them what he'd found.

Speaker 35 He says they didn't seem interested.

Speaker 26 I had hard evidence and it just, it got no substantive response at all.

Speaker 4 Ogrod was arrested in 1992 when he was 27 years old.

Speaker 4 When he sat down with me in 2020, he was 55.

Speaker 65 Did you kill Barbara Jean Horton?

Speaker 83 No, I did not.

Speaker 83 I did not do anything to her child at all.

Speaker 65 Did it shake you up a little bit that a child had been killed in your neighborhood?

Speaker 10 I shook everyone up.

Speaker 83 Because

Speaker 83 you could just basically still have your doors open.

Speaker 38 A long time went by, and then 1992, they wanted to talk to you.

Speaker 83 Yes. They stopped by my home, my apartment.
I wasn't there, so they gave a card to my landlord.

Speaker 36 When Elgrod came home from working an overnight shift, he'd been awake 30 hours, but still agreed to come to the precinct for an interview.

Speaker 83 And he says, we believe that you killed her you block it in your mind we're going to help you get it out you know your memories and if you and we don't care if it takes all night and the next day what was your reaction yeah i try to get out many times i lock the door sometimes they uh will handcuff me to the chair did you ask for a lawyer at some point yes and they said we'll get one when we're done

Speaker 36 Ogrod says Detective Devlin took the lead and fed him details of the crime.

Speaker 83 They kept on taking pictures of Barbara Jean's body and put it right in my face, like so.

Speaker 83 And say, remember, this is what you did. This is what you did.
You killed the child. We're going to do everything you can to help you remember it.

Speaker 83 And he said, this is what you went this way and you went here. Now I need you to do exactly what I just showed you so I could say you did it.
And Devlin was the one creating everything.

Speaker 65 And you're going along with us.

Speaker 83 I'm like, out of it. I'm like, what's going on around here?

Speaker 17 He says he repeated what Devlin wanted him to say and then signed the confession because he was exhausted and afraid.

Speaker 49 By the time he was put in a holding cell, he'd already recanted.

Speaker 23 But it was too late.

Speaker 22 Did you realize what had just happened?

Speaker 83 When I started getting like a little more conscious and all, I mean, yeah, I started like, what the hell did I just do?

Speaker 4 But remember, years later, prosecutors claimed Ogrod had confessed again to that jailhouse snitch.

Speaker 27 What was it like to hear in court this story that you had somehow killed Barbara Jean to get close to her mom?

Speaker 83 I'm like, where the hell did they kill this crap?

Speaker 36 But it was enough to convince the jury that Ogrod was guilty and deserved to die.

Speaker 17 Did you look at the jury?

Speaker 83 Yeah, and they're like, they stone-faced.

Speaker 83 They're like, yeah, we want to just get rid of you.

Speaker 17 Ogrod was shipped off to death row.

Speaker 22 Five years later, he met Tom Lowenstein.

Speaker 83 He just had to dig and dig. He was relentless.

Speaker 68 In 2004, Tom wrote a lengthy two-part series for Philadelphia's City Paper that included everything he'd learned about Ogrod's case.

Speaker 44 A few months later, a team of attorneys led by Jim Rollins took on that case pro bono.

Speaker 84 We had the benefit of a good bit of journalistic work that had been done by Tom Lowenstein.

Speaker 4 But to build a strong argument for an appeal, Rollins and his team would need to do their own investigation.

Speaker 84 There was no physical evidence tying Mr. Ogrod Ogrod to this crime.
And how he has presented himself throughout was, I am innocent. I did not commit this crime.

Speaker 42 It took them seven years, but by 2011, they'd amassed thousands of pages undermining the prosecutor's case, including affidavits from snitch John Hall and his wife Phyllis laying out the scheme against Ogrod.

Speaker 8 How hopeful were you at that moment?

Speaker 84 We were hopeful because we believe there were more than sufficient grounds in that petition for some court to grant relief.

Speaker 21 But prosecutors vigorously defended their conviction.

Speaker 37 Years passed while Ogrod remained on death row.

Speaker 4 As the convicted killer of a four-year-old girl, he says he was often beaten by both inmates and officers.

Speaker 54 By now, Tom had been hard at work on a book about Ogrod's case, and it was published in 2017, the same same year that the city elected a new district attorney, Larry Krasner, a firebrand former civil rights lawyer.

Speaker 53 Of the Office of the District Attorney of the City of Philadelphia.

Speaker 4 Krasner immediately poured resources into a conviction integrity unit to investigate claims of innocence and hired Patricia Cummings to run it. Ogrod's case was among the first her team reviewed.

Speaker 81 We started that endeavor by hiring experts that had no affiliation with the case. We just said, here, take a look at what we've got.
Tell us what Barbara Jean can tell us about how she died.

Speaker 39 According to the confession, Ogrod hit the little girl over the head with a weight bar.

Speaker 63 At trial, prosecutors argued those blows were the cause of Barbara Jean's death.

Speaker 38 Did the science support that?

Speaker 81 The science did not support it.

Speaker 4 And she says the original prosecutors should have known it.

Speaker 81 We learned that the prosecution actually had evidence from an expert back at the time of trial that suggested that Barbara Jean did not die of the injuries to her head, which is what the jury heard.

Speaker 81 Instead, one of the experts said that the likely cause of death was asphyxia.

Speaker 31 That was just the beginning.

Speaker 38 Her team determined the jury was given false, unreliable, and incomplete evidence.

Speaker 27 And even worse, prosecutors failed to disclose evidence favorable to Ogrod, including a personality profile from their own experts, concluding Ogrod is a person who is easily manipulated.

Speaker 84 Frankly, it shocked me, and I think it shocked some other people as to some of the evidence that was in that file that was not turned over.

Speaker 4 When I spoke with Cummings in the spring of 2020, she told me it was time to act.

Speaker 8 So what are you asking the court to do?

Speaker 81 We are asking the court to vacate the conviction because we believe that the conviction as it stands is a gross miscarriage of justice.

Speaker 27 It's an extraordinary admission rarely heard from a prosecutor.

Speaker 81 In a case where you say we got it wrong and not only did we get it wrong, we think this person is innocent, that ought to concern, scare anybody.

Speaker 36 But would it be enough to free Walter Ogrod?

Speaker 14 Coming up, I found another case where another man is claiming that he is innocent.

Speaker 7 A detective under fire.

Speaker 39 And behind bars, Walter Ogrod's life is in danger.

Speaker 84 I said, You're going to kill him before he gets out.

Speaker 43 You're visibly angry now.

Speaker 84 I was visibly angry then, and I'm still angry now.

Speaker 17 Walter Ogrod's road to death row began in an interrogation room with Detective Marty Devlin.

Speaker 26 Detective Marty Devlin was known in the department as the golden Marty and Detective Perfect.

Speaker 59 But Ogrod is far from the only one to allege that Detective Perfect didn't always play by the book.

Speaker 14 The first time I heard about Walter Ogrod's case was when I was working on another wrongful conviction case involving the Philadelphia Police Department from the exact same time period.

Speaker 63 Amelia Green is a civil rights attorney.

Speaker 14 I thought what Mr. Ogrod's saying happened to him is exactly what happened to my client.

Speaker 4 The year before Ogrod's arrest, Green's client, Tony Wright, also signed a confession to murder and also insisted it was coerced.

Speaker 23 And just like Ogrod, the person who transcribed that confession was Detective Marty Devlin.

Speaker 14 He said that Mr. Wright's confession was a straight-up transcription of what Mr.
Wright said, just as if it was being tape recorded.

Speaker 68 DNA proved Wright was innocent and in 2016 he was exonerated.

Speaker 40 He filed a civil lawsuit which compelled Devlin to sit for a videotape deposition.

Speaker 14 And at that deposition we put his story to the test.

Speaker 75 Are you ready, Mr. Devlin? Yes.

Speaker 42 As another detective read Wright's confession, Devlin was asked to transcribe it, just like he said happened in the interrogation room.

Speaker 88 Went over to Miss Tallie's house on Nice Street. Way too fast.

Speaker 10 Her front door.

Speaker 88 Way too fast.

Speaker 24 He could barely keep up.

Speaker 14 He couldn't keep pace at all. And at a certain point, he just gave up.

Speaker 74 I like just barged into her house.

Speaker 88 It's way too fast. It's just way too fast.

Speaker 14 It just corroborates that the confession was completely fabricated.

Speaker 27 Devlin declined our request for an interview.

Speaker 22 In 2018, Tony Wright settled with the city, which admitted no wrongdoing, for nearly $10 million.

Speaker 14 I kept looking into Devlin, and I found another case from the exact same time period where another man is claiming that he is innocent.

Speaker 5 In fact, Devlin worked several other cases along with other detectives and prosecutors where false statements sent innocent people to prison.

Speaker 32 convictions that have been overturned.

Speaker 59 And on August 13th, 2021, Marty Devlin and two other former homicide detectives were indicted by a Philadelphia grand jury, accused of making their own false statements in the Tony Wright case.

Speaker 50 Martin Devlin is charged with two counts of perjury and two counts of false swearing for false testimony.

Speaker 57 In a statement, Devlin's attorney said he is innocent.

Speaker 23 and that Devlin has spent 50 years fighting for justice for victims of crime.

Speaker 13 You're looking through a keyhole at a much bigger picture. This is a slice of a much bigger problem.

Speaker 68 District Attorney Larry Krasner says the Tony Wright case is hardly unique, that a culture of corruption has existed for decades.

Speaker 21 In just three years, his conviction integrity unit has helped free 27 people, all victims of official misconduct.

Speaker 31 His office is investigating dozens of other cases.

Speaker 56 You're looking at the actions of the prosecutor or the police.

Speaker 61 Both.

Speaker 13 The biggest part of this problem is not just innocent mistakes. The biggest part of this problem is the abuse of power.

Speaker 4 In February 2020, Krasner's office, together with defense attorneys, did something rarely seen.

Speaker 27 They filed a joint motion asking the court to vacate Ogrod's conviction.

Speaker 26 It's unbelievable. They came up with 160 stipulations with the defense of things that had gone wrong.

Speaker 33 For nearly 30 years, Sharon Fahey hated Ogrod.

Speaker 59 But after meeting with prosecutors from the Conviction Integrity Unit, she became furious with the people who put him away and heartsick for the man she now believes is innocent.

Speaker 8 This is a man you wanted to die, and now you're saying you want him free.

Speaker 39 Yes.

Speaker 29 Once I had all the facts, I in my heart believe

Speaker 29 that

Speaker 29 he is the wrong man and he did not do this.

Speaker 27 Sharon and John are now divorced in large part because of the stress and sadness of Barbara Jean's murder.

Speaker 38 What do you make of the fact that the prosecutor, the defense, and Sharon all believe that Walter Ogrod is innocent?

Speaker 39 Maybe he is.

Speaker 28 Maybe he isn't.

Speaker 10 I don't know.

Speaker 60 But Sharon took it upon herself to write a letter to the judge asking for Ogrod's release.

Speaker 29 I didn't want him to die behind bars.

Speaker 39 But suddenly, that was a real possibility.

Speaker 17 COVID-19 was rapidly spreading inside the prison, and Ogrod began showing symptoms.

Speaker 38 Jim Rollins filed an emergency motion demanding Ogrod be taken to an outside hospital.

Speaker 18 A judge granted it, but the prison defied the order.

Speaker 35 Rollins called the facility livid.

Speaker 84 I said, you got to understand.

Speaker 26 This guy is getting out.

Speaker 84 And you're going to kill him. Before he gets out.

Speaker 84 Get him treated.

Speaker 82 You're visibly angry now.

Speaker 43 I was visibly angry angry then, and

Speaker 84 I'm still angry now.

Speaker 4 As the weeks passed, Ogrod began to recover and called me from prison. My lungs felt like brains to a wet sponge.

Speaker 17 On June 5th, 2020, after 28 years behind bars, Walter Ogrod finally had his day in court.

Speaker 4 After an extraordinary effort by the DA's office, his legal team, and Tom Lowenstein, he heard the words he'd longed for.

Speaker 9 The judge vacated his conviction.

Speaker 48 His friends and family gathered in a parking lot near the prison.

Speaker 3 I was sitting there like pitching me because

Speaker 66 it's really, yeah, he's really getting out today.

Speaker 78 I think I'm like in a state of shock.

Speaker 51 I'm so hyped up now. I mean, I can feel the pulse and my heart, everything racing right now.
And it's been like that since I walked out, so it's going to take a while.

Speaker 18 What do you hope for him now?

Speaker 84 I just want him to be happy.

Speaker 22 Walter Ogrod filed a civil suit against the city of Philadelphia and several police officers, including Detective Devlin.

Speaker 33 In 2023, the party settled for a total of $9.1 million.

Speaker 38 though the city did not admit to any wrongdoing.

Speaker 9 Meanwhile, police have reopened the investigation into Barbara Jean's murder.

Speaker 5 Tom Lowenstein has investigated the little girl's case longer than anyone.

Speaker 23 It's a journey he's grateful he took.

Speaker 26 When Walt got out on June 5th, you know, there is that sense of like my dad saying, you know, that notion of being useful and doing something useful in life. And I definitely, that day felt useful.

Speaker 41 That's all for now.

Speaker 30 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 33 Thanks for joining us.