The Trials of Walter Ogrod: The Shocking Murder, So-Called Confessions, and Notorious Snitch That Sent a Man to Death Row

The horrific 1988 murder of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn shocked the citizens of Philadelphia. Plucked from her own front yard, Barbara Jean was found dead less than two and a half hours later in a cardboard TV box dragged to a nearby street curb. After months of investigation with no strong leads, the case went cold. Four years later it was reopened, and Walter Ogrod, a young man with autism spectrum disorder who had lived across the street from the family at the time of the murder, was brought in as a suspect. Ogrod bears no resemblance to the composite police sketch based on eyewitness accounts of the man carrying the box, and there is no physical evidence linking him to the crime. His conviction was based solely on a confession he signed after thirty-six hours without sleep. "They said I could go home if I signed it," Ogrod told his brother from the jailhouse. The case was so weak that the jury voted unanimously to acquit him, but at the last second--in a dramatic courtroom declaration--one juror changed his mind. As he waited for a retrial, Ogrod's fate was sealed when a notorious jailhouse snitch was planted in his cell block and supplied the prosecution with a second supposed confession. As a result, Walter Ogrod sits on death row for the murder today. Informed by police records, court transcripts, interviews, letters, journals, and more, award-winning journalist Thomas Lowenstein leads readers through the facts of the infamous Horn murder case in compelling, compassionate, and riveting fashion. He reveals explosive new evidence that points to a condemned man's innocence and exposes a larger underlying pattern of prosecutorial misconduct in Philadelphia.

About the Author :
Thomas Lowenstein is the founder and director of the New Orleans Journalism Project, which works with advanced journalism students on stories related to criminal justice. He was formerly policy director and investigator at Innocence Project New Orleans, an editor at DoubleTake magazine, and a teaching fellow at Harvard. He has published nonfiction in the American Prospect magazine and the Philadelphia City Paper and was a grant recipient from the Fund for Investigative Journalism in 2004. Chris Andrew Ciulla, an Earphones Award-winning narrator with over 350 credits, is an on-screen actor, voice actor, host, boxing analyst, and radio personality. He has performed characters for the popular video game series Fallout and Mafia, and can be heard frequently voicing commercial campaigns. A versatile performer with over twenty-five years of experience, he produces original audio content under his own production banner, Leonardo Audio.

Review :
"A critically important work that rips the lid off the stew of secrets and lies hiding beneath what most think of as 'criminal justice.'" -- "Mike Farrell, author of Just Call Me Mike" "Journalist Lowenstein, whose own father was murdered when the author was a child...makes the argument that this is a case of a false confession and poor police work. Verdict: An important volume about how the criminal justice system does and doesn't function." -- "Library Journal" "Lowenstein is thorough as he analyses the evidence and passionate about trying to get justice for Ogrod." -- "Booklist" "Lowenstein takes readers through the convoluted twists and turns of this case as few true crime writers have ever been able to do." -- "James L. Trainum, former detective and author of How the Police Generate False Confessions"