police posted a composite sketch throughout northeast philadelphia. we had hundreds and hundreds of tips. we worked a lot of hours on it. a $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of barbara jean horn s murder. but after countless tips and false leads, the case went cold. you always want to do the best for her and her family, and resolve it as quickly as possible. but unfortunately we didn t. four years would pass before barbara jean s case was reopened by a special investigations unit led by veteran detective marty devlin. detective devlin is this big hot shot philadelphia homicide detective. he s the hardest working guy. he never lets a case go. devlin and his partner began reinterviewing the fahy s neighborhood including a 27-year-old truckdriver named walter ogrod who lived across
car chase. he was soon moved to the philadelphia detention center where walter was awaiting trial. i believe the district attorney moved him there specifically to get information from walter, and he befriended walter. i spent a lot of time researching. i sent john everything that pertained to walter in the newspaper. and then john took all of that, and he formulated this story about the murder of barbara jean horn. when john hall was asked to testify in another case for rubino he passed walter s case to jay w oolchansky who was facg 30 years for burglary. they were making this plan. john said jay neetds to get out of here, he s in trouble. i m going to give it to him like it s his case.
arrest. walter, he didn t seem like a normal teenager. he just seemed it s hard to describe, like socially awkward. just very gullible. if we didn t have anything to do, we knew we could call walt up and say, hey, walt, you want to buy us a case of beer? and he wanted to please you and, you know, wanted friends, and and he d be like, oh, yeah, yeayea yeah, i ll do that. he s not stupid, but he has no common sense whatsoever. after high school, walter joined the army, but his difficulty with social interactions soon led to a discharge. he then moved across the street from barbara jean. after the murder happened, you know, years and years went by and they never caught the guy. ogrod s confession to beating 4 1/2-year-old barbara jean horn. one day the news came on and they flashed a picture of walt on the screen. i was like, oh, my god.
tied barbara jean to walter s basement, prosecutor casey presented the box she was found in and a replica of the pull-down bar. the problem is in the autopsy said that the murder weapon was probably flat, like a 2 by 4. so how could this pull-down bar possibly be the murder weapon? i just found the whole thing a little bit fishy. on the last day of trial, ogrod made an unusual choice and took the stand saying the detectives had coerced him into a false confession. ogrod testified, sir, i did not kill barbara jean horn. they told me what they believed happened. they kept putting pictures of a dead child in my face. after a while i was starting to believe them. there s no evidence to connect this guy to this crime that occurred, you know, five years ago except for this confession, and the confession is bogus. the jury deliberated for three days before reaching a verdict. the jury has come back. the slip gets handed up to the judge. the judge says have you reached
going home. i went through it again, and i knew i was right in my commission, that he was guilty and i was not going to let him go. what on earth could walter have said or done that could make a jury disbelieve a confession and a child murder. i needed to go sit and talk with him in person. i went out to waynesburg where walter is. it was the first time i had ever been in a prison, so that was a sort of out of body experience. you go through all this buzzing and beeping and steel doors, and there s walter. i looked him right in the eye, and i said, walter, did you kill barbara jean horn, and he looked at me, and he said no. and what i noticed fairly quickly was he was very concrete about things. i asked him what s it like being on death row? get up at 6:00. breakfast comes around 6:30.