walt is just not a violent person. he s like a gentle giant. he would never hurt anyone. but to john and sharon, walter ogrod was the face of pure evil. what was it like to read those words, to read that confession that he made? heartbreaking. i hated him. it was hardly an open and shut case, walter ogrod had no criminal record. no physical evidence linked him to the crime. he did not resemble the sketch. and was not identified by a single eyewitness. and he immediately recanted his confession. still, in 1993, ogrod stood trial for murder. prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. he let tjat baby lie there and die, and put them in the trash. if that s not intent to kill then
but only one of them testified. prosecutors told him that they had been using hall too much. now, all these years later, tom was convinced that ogrod had been railroaded by both police and prosecutors, which made what he had to do next especially difficult. you took your suspicions to barbara jean horn family. from the beginning, that was always looming for me. if i ve shown up at my door ask my dad, i will slam the door and told him to get lost. but sharon in john agreed to hear him out. john and i met with him, and he told us a lot of the different things that we re not right, he felt. he claims that walter s innocent and that he got a bad deal, and the police did it on purpose, it was accidental, that they coerced him, whatever. i never have wavered on walter s guilt. never. tom had not convinced the
maybe i haven t seen it yet. the prosecution s case rested entirely on the confession. walter ogrod took the stand in his own defense. he testified that the detectives had run a false confession out of him. he makes the case that the confession was forced out of him. he was coerced. how did it make you feel to hear him describe that story? angry. i sat in that trial. and the only thing i could think of was getting my hands around his throat. the jury got the case. and returned with a verdict. and when it did. john would be the one lead out of the courtroom in handcuffs. a stunning announcement from the jury box, leaves both sides in disbelief. coming up! the foreman stood up and said 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. a crazy confrontation in that courtroom.
hall whose nickname was because he had heard more confessions than a priest. john hall was a criminal who had been used as a witness by prosecutors, often hicks receiving leniency in exchange for us testimony. he just had this knack for, where the da did not have enough evidence. and somehow, miraculously every time that happened, john produced a confession from that person and he would give them convictions. tom called hall s house, and his wife answered. and i thought, she is not going to talk to me, right? wrong, not only did she talk, she could not have been more blunt. i said, i m calling about john hall. and she said, yeah he lied in 20 or 30 cases. i said do you think he lied about ogrod and she said yeah. i said how do you know, and she said because i helped him. she said he had astonishing to seems down to a science. it didn t bother john at all. shortly before ogrod second trial, hallways moved the same cell block. at the time, he was facing a 50 year senten
i can t find barbara jean. at what point did you call police? i did not call the police. i thought that she would be right here. she s here somewhere. tragically, she was. just a couple of hours later, a neighbor made the grim discovery. the baby s lifeless body was found inside this cardboard television box. a detective broke the news to the family . they said that they found barbara jean. and that she was dead, and he accused me of murdering her. just like that? accused you? just like that. it was horrible. but not a surprise, he had been home alone with barbara jean all morning. and had not called 9-1-1 to report her missing. while police accused john, they did not arrest him and continued to investigate. they quickly found five eyewitnesses, who had seen a