livid. you ve got to understand, this guy is getting out and you are going to kill him before he gets out. get him treated. you are visibly angry now. i was visibly angry then, for and i am still angry now. as the weeks passed, from ogrod began to recover, called me from prison. my lungs felt like on june 5th, 2020, after 28 years behind bars walter ogrod finally had his day in court after an extraordinary effort from the da s office. his legal team and tom lowenstein he heard the de words he longed for. the judge vacated his conviction. his friends and family gathered in a parking lot near the prison. walter! i was sitting there like, pinch me, is this really happening?
vividly remember speaking with him that day. i said you should not go down there without a lawyer. i express that numerous times. maybe three or four times. walter ogrod said he had nothing to hide. and drove himself to police headquarters. he told the detectives that he had no idea what happened to the little girl. but he also explained that he knew who barbara jean was because of his housemates. the greens . he had have asked these people to move into his house, to help pay the rent. and they had two children. one of whom, charlie, was barbara jean s best friend. he told the detectives the same thing that he had told that hours after the murder. barbara jean had come to his front door, looking for charlie byrd.
campaigns came to an abrupt end. congressman allen was shot five times and critically wounded today. he was assassinated by of deranged former student. i was ten years old when my father was murdered. how did your father s death affect you as you grew up, as you became an adult? it made me really angry. for a long time. tom was devastated by his father s death, but inspired by his example of helping others, wanted to do the same. he became a writer focusing on the justice system, so when that letter from walter ogrod showed up, tom began to learn everything he could about the case. he had signed every page of the 16-page confession and you think oh wow, that is damning. and then you read that the first jury voted to acquit him. tom spoke with a dozen people who knew ogrod before he was arrested, none believed he committed the crime. there is no evidence
five years later, he met tom lowenstein. he just had to dig and dig, he was relentless. in 2004, tom wrote a lengthy two part series for the philadelphia city paper, which included everything that he had learned about ogrod s case. a series of attorneys took on that case pro bono. we had the benefit of a good bit of journalistic work that have been done by tom lowenstein. but to build a strong argument for an appeal, with rollins and his team would have to do their own investigation. there is no physical evidence tying mr. ogrod to this crime. how he has presented himself throughout was i am innocent, i did not commit this crime. it took them seven years, but by 2011 they had 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. how hopeful were you at that moment?
you were angry? i was pissed. i was pissed. you would think that after four years, there was some kind of progress. and it did not seem to be any. but two months later, that suddenly changed. when the detectives zeroed in on a new suspect, one whose name had never come up before. when you heard walter ogrod? what were you thinking? who the hell is walter ogrod? coming up! and arrest. heartbreaking. i hated him. the only thing i could think of was getting my hands around his throat. who was barbara jean s killer? they thought that she must have been killed on the block, very near to where she lived. the search for an answer would uncover some long buried secrets. you re looking at the actions of the prosecutor, or the police? both. the biggest part of this