By Tom Lowenstein
Philadelphia City Paper
PART ONE

At the end of July 1988, there were two unsolved mur­ders of lit­tle girls in Northeast Philadelphia. Heather Coffin had been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed and mur­dered in 1987 in Frankford, and Barbara Jean Horn had been mur­dered on July 12, 1988, some­where near her house on Rutland Street, near Cottman Avenue. The police had a sus­pect in the Coffin mur­der, a 22-year-old named Raymond Sheehan, but had been unable to come up with enough evi­dence to charge him. Though they had no spe­cif­ic sus­pect, four wit­ness­es had seen a man car­ry­ing the TV box in which Horn’s body had been found. One of the wit­ness­es, David Schectman, told police he’d inter­act­ed with the man with the box for 11 min­utes.

On July 14, and again 11 days lat­er, detec­tives showed Schectman pho­to arrays. When they asked him if he rec­og­nized any­one as the per­son he’d seen car­ry­ing the box, Schectman picked out Sheehan.

Still, the police were unable to make a case against Sheehan in either mur­der. There was­n’t much evi­dence against him in the Coffin case, and in the Horn case, Schectman had also iden­ti­fied anoth­er neigh­bor­hood man as the guy he’d seen with the box.

The Coffin mur­der would remain unsolved for anoth­er 15 years until the sum­mer of 2003, when DNA tak­en from the crime scene con­clu­sive­ly linked Sheehan to the mur­der. He was arrest­ed, con­fessed, plead­ed guilty and was sen­tenced to life.

Sheehan has denied any involve­ment with the Horn mur­der, which remained unsolved for almost four years.

In April 1992, Walter Ogrod, who had lived across the street from Horn, signed a con­fes­sion to the mur­der. Ogrod, by all accounts, looked noth­ing like the man described by wit­ness­es. (Schectman, the key wit­ness, knew Ogrod by sight if not by name before the mur­der. He nev­er men­tioned him to police.) But Ogrod would sign a con­fes­sion to the mur­der. Afterward he claimed that it was coerced by detec­tives.

Ogrod went on tri­al in 1993, and 11 of the jurors believed his con­fes­sion had been forced. The last juror stood up just as the ver­dict was about to be read to say he did­n’t agree with it. The judge declared a mis­tri­al on the spot. In a recent inter­view, John Fahy, the girl’s step­fa­ther, said the judge told him that if it had been a bench tri­al — one with­out a jury — the ver­dict would have been guilty.

Two years lat­er, after the Superior Court had ruled 2 – 1 for a retri­al, Ogrod crossed paths in jail with John Hall, a noto­ri­ous jail­house infor­mant. Hall was known as ​“The Monsignor” because he’d heard more con­fes­sions than a priest. After that encounter, Ogrod’s fate was essen­tial­ly sealed. With Hall’s help, pros­e­cu­tors per­suad­ed a jury to con­vict Ogrod in 1996. He was sen­tenced to death.

Over the years, some pros­e­cu­tors came to dis­trust Hall. So have some reporters, most notably William Bunch, whose 1997 arti­cles in the Daily News raised seri­ous ques­tions about Hall based pure­ly on the sheer num­ber of cas­es he’d been involved in over the years. But only in one case, the November 1995 Center City jog­ger mur­der of Kimberly Ernest, had it ever been proven that Hall lied.

Until now.

Hall made up many sto­ries through the years, using them — and the sys­tem itself — to get out from under a lot of jail time by help­ing con­vict many defen­dants. There are at least four men in Pennsylvania and one in New Jersey doing time for killings based on sto­ries Hall now claims to have made up.

In fall 2003, Hall wrote a series of pri­vate let­ters — they were nev­er intend­ed for pub­li­ca­tion — explain­ing how he helped send Ogrod to death row. These let­ters, which were pro­vid­ed to City Paper, offer a dis­turb­ing, unprece­dent­ed glimpse, in Hall’s own words, of a mas­ter snitch in action, and a dis­turb­ing look at how will­ing dis­trict attor­neys are to use ques­tion­able snitch tes­ti­mo­ny to win con­vic­tions in high-pro­file cas­es.

If you lived in the Philadelphia area dur­ing the mid-1990s and read the papers, you’ve prob­a­bly heard of some of the cas­es Hall snitched in, or tried to snitch his way into.

The 1991 Parkway shoot­ings, in which one man was killed and two wound­ed out­side a restau­rant on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

The 1993 mur­ders of two 20-year-old clerks in a video store in Warminster.

The 1995 con­vic­tion of David Dickson for the 1984 mur­der of Drexel University stu­dent Deborah Wilson, a case that gained noto­ri­ety when details of Dickson’s foot fetish were made pub­lic.

And, the 1988 mur­der of Barbara Jean Horn, whose body was found in a TV box on St. Vincent Street.

Hall had a remark­able abil­i­ty to come up with exact­ly the infor­ma­tion pros­e­cu­tors need­ed at exact­ly the right time in the most dif­fi­cult, high-pro­file cas­es — cas­es with­out phys­i­cal evi­dence or eye­wit­ness­es; cas­es that had been unsolved for a while, cas­es in which shaky pros­e­cu­tion evi­dence had led to mis­tri­als and the chance that the defen­dant would walk free.

The pin­na­cle of Hall’s snitch­ing may have come in 1994 and 1995, when, in a lit­tle over a year, he snitched out defen­dants in five mur­der cas­es and sent one defen­dant to death row.

In December 1994, Hall was in the city’s Detention Center, fac­ing 25 to 50 years for charges relat­ed to a high-speed car chase and assault­ing an offi­cer. In the Detention Center, he met Ogrod, who was await­ing retri­al for the 1988 sex­u­al assault and mur­der of 4‑year-old Barbara Jean Horn.

The mur­der, front-page news in Philadelphia, had gone unsolved for four years. At Ogrod’s 1993 mis­tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tion had no eye­wit­ness­es or phys­i­cal evi­dence. What they had was a con­fes­sion shaky enough that the first jury had reject­ed it 11 – 1. In fact, Ogrod had come with­in a cou­ple of sec­onds of walk­ing out of the court­room a free man.

For the sec­ond tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors would need some­thing more. Hall need­ed to get out from under the 25 to 50 years. So he went to work.

Hall was 42 years old in 1994, with a crim­i­nal record stretch­ing back 20 years. His unas­sum­ing oval face, light-col­ored hair and intel­li­gent blue eyes made him look more like the lawyer or doc­tor that oth­er inmates often took him for than the career crim­i­nal and snitch that he is.

Hall was a jail­house genius who knew detec­tives and pros­e­cu­tors all over Southeastern Pennsylvania; he wrote com­plex legal briefs for him­self and his friends and long let­ters about how sweet life would be out­side. Out of jail he was a drinker, drug addict and car thief. Every time he got out, he’d steal a car or pass a bad pre­scrip­tion and get put away again with­in a mat­ter of days. Sometimes, he only last­ed a mat­ter of hours.

Then he’d write long let­ters about how depressed he was to be back in and how he was hoard­ing pills to kill him­self in case his cur­rent scheme to get out did­n’t work.

But Hall had a snitch­ing sys­tem, and it usu­al­ly got him out.

He’d approach an inmate, make friends with him and get him to open up about his case by offer­ing legal advice. Then he’d con­tact some­one in the out­side world to do some field research — maybe a detec­tive would give him infor­ma­tion from the inves­ti­ga­tion, or an asso­ciate would go to the library to gath­er news­pa­per clip­pings about the case or to the house of a vic­tim to talk to the fam­i­ly, or would even cre­ate some piece of evi­dence.

Hall would use the infor­ma­tion from the inmate com­bined with the field research to cre­ate details that it seemed only the killer could know, details he knew detec­tives and pros­e­cu­tors would want, and jurors would believe. When he had a sto­ry that sound­ed authen­tic, he’d have his lawyer present it to pros­e­cu­tors in exchange for con­sid­er­a­tion in his cur­rent case, a let­ter of sup­port to anoth­er dis­trict attor­ney or an appear­ance by a detec­tive on his behalf before a sen­tenc­ing judge.

In 1990, David Keightly, then an assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney in Montgomery County, wrote that Hall had ​“coop­er­at­ed ful­ly with the author­i­ties in a num­ber of very impor­tant mur­der pros­e­cu­tions” and had been a par­tic­u­lar­ly ​“fine wit­ness” in the pros­e­cu­tion of Ernest Priovolos, who was even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed of the 1986 mur­der of Cheryl Succa in Lower Moreland Township — a death that had been clas­si­fied an acci­dent until Hall came for­ward. Keightly, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by City Paper, was ​“very famil­iar” with Hall’s ​“exten­sive crim­i­nal record, and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his many con­vic­tions” and had ​“agreed with Mr. Hall that, in exchange for his coop­er­a­tion and tes­ti­mo­ny, I would noti­fy the author­i­ties of his coop­er­a­tion.“

A cou­ple of weeks lat­er he sent Hall a per­son­al note.

”[You are] a man of aston­ish­ing bril­liance, of keen intel­lect, and of trag­ic sick­ness,” Keightly wrote. ​“Thanks again, John.“

Keightly’s sup­port of Hall con­tin­ued years lat­er when, as a Montgomery County dis­trict judge, he wrote a let­ter to Hall’s ​“cur­rent sen­tenc­ing judge” urg­ing him to con­sid­er Hall’s ear­li­er coop­er­a­tion when decid­ing Hall’s sen­tence.

In 1991, C. Theodore Fritsch, then chief deputy dis­trict attor­ney of Bucks County, wrote to Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham, explain­ing that Hall had come for­ward ​“unex­pect­ed­ly” a few days before the tri­al of Michael Dirago for the mur­der of Yvonne Davi, whose body had been found near the Delaware River in Bucks County. Hall’s ​“unso­licit­ed coop­er­a­tion,” wrote

Fritsch, who is now a Buck County Common Pleas Court judge, had changed the case from one with a ​“rather slim” chance of con­vic­tion to a ​“strong one from the pros­e­cu­tion stand­point.” Hall became a ​“key wit­ness for the pros­e­cu­tion” and Dirago was con­vict­ed.

Hall’s coop­er­a­tion in the Davi case also prompt­ed Howard Barman, then deputy attor­ney gen­er­al of New Jersey (where Dirago was even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed because Hall’s tes­ti­mo­ny placed the mur­der on the New Jersey side of the bridge on which, he claimed, the vic­tim had been killed), to write that Hall was ​“a remark­able per­son” who, but for an alco­hol prob­lem, ​“would prob­a­bly be a sig­nif­i­cant mem­ber of soci­ety.“

Bristol Township Police Sgt. Thomas Mills — a police offi­cer who had orig­i­nal­ly worked the case — also wrote two let­ters of sup­port for Hall, one to a judge in Bucks County in 1993 and one (undat­ed) to Abraham, urg­ing lenien­cy in Hall’s open cas­es. Both Fritsch and Barman would write let­ters of sup­port again in the fall of 1994.

Details, details: In the Priovolos case, Hall made up a sto­ry about a stolen purse; in the Dirago case, a riv­et­ing account of the mur­der on the bridge, of the vic­tim gur­gling as she died.

Some pros­e­cu­tors, as report­ed in the Daily News, did­n’t believe Hall. A Philadelphia assis­tant DA whom Hall approached in 1991 with infor­ma­tion that the defen­dant in the Parkway shoot­ings, who was plan­ning an insan­i­ty defense, was actu­al­ly sane, found Hall to be ​“patent­ly incred­i­ble.“

In the case involv­ing the 1993 video-store mur­ders, pros­e­cu­tors decid­ed that Hall’s fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ry was­n’t cred­i­ble either. In ear­ly 1994, Hall tried to con­vince author­i­ties that he knew who was respon­si­ble for two 1981 mob-relat­ed mur­ders, but they believed his infor­ma­tion was a fab­ri­ca­tion, tak­en main­ly from news­pa­per accounts.

Back in jail in June 1994 after lead­ing police on a high-speed chase in a stolen car, Hall was supreme­ly con­fi­dent of his abil­i­ty to cut a deal and get out.

​“Nothing can stop him,” he wrote of him­self in the third per­son, as he often did. ​“Remember his busi­ness deals for Dave Keightly? That was a tough one, but [he] came through. He does come through. He has nev­er failed.” His plan involved a sto­ry for Joseph Casey, an assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney in Philadelphia, involv­ing a series of mob-relat­ed crimes, includ­ing sev­er­al mur­ders, that went back 15 years.

To sell that sto­ry to the author­i­ties, Hall had a new lawyer, Marc Frumer, a young guy who had recent­ly left the Philadelphia DA’s office and gone into pri­vate prac­tice. Hall wrote to an asso­ciate that he trust­ed Frumer to han­dle the ​“sales­man and pub­lic rela­tions” respon­si­bil­i­ties and to not ​“let on what [Hall] is up to.” In anoth­er let­ter, Hall wrote that, ​“At times, [Frumer] admits that I am teach­ing him things. Not about law, but about pro­ce­dures out­side the sys­tem.

On Aug. 2, 1994, Hall signed a prof­fer of coop­er­a­tion with Casey to pro­vide the mob infor­ma­tion to pros­e­cu­tors. Hall wrote to an asso­ciate that he and Frumer were con­vinced that the case would make Frumer impor­tant in legal cir­cles, that his fees would sky­rock­et, and that ​“the tabloids will fol­low with wal­lets” of which Frumer would get a per­cent­age. In his let­ters, Hall writes that Frumer told him that ​“because these are Mafia mat­ters, you should look the part. So I’ll get you a dou­ble-breast­ed suit. Like John Gotti wears.” (Frumer referred all ques­tions for com­ment on this sto­ry to the District Attorney’s office.)

Later in August, Hall was trans­ferred from the city Detention Center to Bucks County. While there he took care of a neat lit­tle piece of busi­ness: get­ting an inmate to sign a 23-page affi­davit con­fess­ing to sex­u­al­ly assault­ing a young girl. Hall read the inmate his Miranda rights and even had him sign a Miranda waiv­er — some­thing Hall only need­ed to do if he were work­ing for law enforce­ment. Did Hall’s Aug. 2 agree­ment with Casey mean he was, tech­ni­cal­ly, work­ing for law enforce­ment? Or was Hall just being a jail­house lawyer, over­play­ing his own impor­tance? The answer to this ques­tion has impor­tant impli­ca­tions for what hap­pened in the Ogrod case.

By the end of September, Hall’s team was work­ing well. He wrote to his research asso­ciate, ​“I do require those clip­pings for con­clu­sion. I know you will do your work, as always,” and added, ​“with Marc, we get gifts, swift and sure.“

In December, Hall was trans­ferred back to the Detention Center to face the 25 to 50 years, a charge stem­ming from the high-speed chase. He knew that with his record he’d need anoth­er big case, maybe even a few big cas­es, to get sprung free.

Hall approached Walter Ogrod, who he called ​“a big goofy guy who gave the appear­ance of being some kind of men­tal defi­cient.” Frumer had also rep­re­sent­ed Ogrod’s broth­er — Frumer’s father had also done some legal work for the Ogrods a few years ear­li­er — and Hall told Ogrod that Frumer had asked him to check up on him.

Hall would lat­er tell a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor work­ing for Ogrod’s defense that he first thought of inform­ing on Ogrod when Casey, the Philadelphia assis­tant DA with whom Hall had signed his prof­fer of coop­er­a­tion in August and who had pros­e­cut­ed and very near­ly lost the first Ogrod tri­al, asked him about the inmates he had con­tact with at the Detention Center.

Both Hall and the assis­tant DA who would pros­e­cute Ogrod at his sec­ond tri­al deny that Hall was moved to the Detention Center in December specif­i­cal­ly to tar­get Ogrod. But what­ev­er the par­tic­u­lars of how and why Hall end­ed up talk­ing to Ogrod, there he was, need­ing a deal to get out of prison. During the time Hall and Ogrod were housed in the same block at the Detention Center, an appeal of Ogrod’s was denied, 2 – 1, by the Pennsylvania Superior Court. It was around then that Ogrod began talk­ing to Hall about his case.

​“Ogrod dis­cussed his legal strate­gies with me often and in detail,” Hall wrote lat­er. ​“I had enough to pro­ceed against him but I need­ed more. Ogrod did­n’t know about par­tic­u­lars, and [I am] a stick­ler for details.“

Hall had his asso­ciate out­side the prison mail him news­pa­per arti­cles about the case, but they were too gen­er­al, so Hall went back to Ogrod to ​“probe deep­er for details and got most­ly every­thing I need­ed from him. Then I kept notes. Eventually I assem­bled those notes into a com­pos­ite sum­ma­ry and then an elon­gat­ed account and his­to­ry of the events lead­ing up to the inci­dent, the inci­dent itself, and the after­math.“

Hall’s detailed, sick­en­ing ver­sion of the Horn mur­der had, he explained years lat­er in a let­ter, ​“the District Attorney … sali­vat­ing. … They had pre­vi­ous­ly pro­ceed­ed on a sim­ple state­ment by Ogrod of admis­sion that he killed the lit­tle 4‑year-old girl. My account was replete with details and chronol­o­gy. [Ogrod] would burn on my recount­ing of the facts.“

On Jan. 6, 1995, Hall sat down with two detec­tives he knew from pre­vi­ous snitch­ings and laid out a sto­ry he claimed Ogrod had told him. It con­tra­dict­ed what Ogrod had alleged­ly told police in 1992 and was, giv­en the tes­ti­mo­ny of the wit­ness­es in the case, impos­si­ble.

But it helped put Ogrod on death row and Hall back on the street for a while.

Rutland Street in Northeast Philadelphia is one way and nar­row, lined with brick-front­ed row­hous­es so small and close­ly packed that neigh­bors can hear each oth­er through the walls. The cars parked along the right side of the street leave just more than enough room for motorists dri­ving north to pass by.

In July 1988, Barbara Jean Horn and her par­ents lived at 7245 Rutland St. The lit­tle girl’s best friend in the neigh­bor­hood, a 6‑year-old named Charlie, lived with his par­ents and sis­ter across the street at 7244, Walter Ogrod’s house.

Charlie’s par­ents, Charles ​“Sarge” and Linda Green, were drinkers and partiers. Sarge, who died in 1993, had been in the Marines in Vietnam and had a crim­i­nal record of assault and drug charges dat­ing back to the ear­ly ​’80s. He stood 6‑feet tall, maybe 300 pounds, with a pony­tail and tat­toos cov­er­ing his arms. A motor­cy­cle-gang mem­ber, he was liv­ing on dis­abil­i­ty pay­ments, mak­ing a few extra dol­lars as a tat­too artist work­ing out of the base­ment of the house and, said some neigh­bors, deal­ing drugs.

Ogrod was 23 in 1988 and had lived in the house, which had been owned by one of his aunts since his father’s 1984 death, since he was 10. He often struck peo­ple as being slow or some­how weird. A psy­chi­a­trist who treat­ed him in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s report­ed that he showed some evi­dence what would lat­er be termed atten­tion deficit dis­or­der, and that he appeared to be ​“ego-defec­tive” — basi­cal­ly, lack­ing a nor­mal­ly devel­oped sense of self.

Later, the psy­chi­a­trist would explain to Ogrod’s defense lawyer that there was ​“no ade­quate label to describe” Ogrod and that he was not retard­ed, but did have a low IQ. In 1982, at age 17, Ogrod tried to join the Army Reserve, but after a cou­ple of weeks of basic train­ing he was deter­mined to be ​“unfit for enlist­ment” based on a pre-exist­ing con­di­tion. Army doc­tors diag­nosed him with ​“Mixed Personality Disorder man­i­fest­ed by extreme depen­den­cy, imma­tu­ri­ty … intrin­sic belief that he is dif­fer­ent than oth­er peo­ple, poor his­to­ry of social­iza­tion, poor abil­i­ty to han­dle stress” and not­ed that his ​“impair­ment for fur­ther mil­i­tary duty” was ​“marked” while his impair­ment for ​“social and indus­tri­al adapt­abil­i­ty” was ​“mod­er­ate.“

Ogrod’s younger broth­er, Greg, moved in with him for a while in 1985. Greg, who’s serv­ing up to 25 years for aggra­vat­ed assault, says he dealt drugs and threw par­ties that caused a lot of noise com­plaints and brought the police to the house. Walter was­n’t into drugs, so while the par­ties raged, he was usu­al­ly upstairs try­ing to get some sleep. In July 1986 a dis­pute between Greg Ogrod and Richie Hackett, a friend of Walter’s who had moved into the house and who, for many rea­sons — per­haps the most minor of which was that he did­n’t pay rent — Greg thought was tak­ing advan­tage of his broth­er, turned lethal.

Court records indi­cate that Hackett hired three guys to break into the house and kill Greg. The attack took place on the night of July 31. Greg sur­vived, bad­ly injured. Maureen Dunne, his 16-year-old girl­friend and the daugh­ter of a Philadelphia detec­tive, was killed. (Hackett and one accom­plice, who’d helped with the plan­ning, would be con­vict­ed of mur­der and sen­tenced to death the same week as the Horn mur­der; two accom­plices got life in prison.)

Greg Ogrod moved out after Dunne’s mur­der, so Walter took in a series of house­mates. The Greens, friends of a friend, moved in dur­ing the spring of 1987, agree­ing to pay $50 a week in rent, which they paid for about a month. The ongo­ing rent dis­pute was one rea­son their rela­tion­ship with Walter Ogrod was per­pet­u­al­ly strained. Often, it turned open­ly hos­tile.

In July 1988, every­one in the neigh­bor­hood knew the house at 7244 Rutland was a trou­bled place — par­ties, drug deal­ing and mur­der had giv­en way to the Greens’ bik­er par­ties.

The house was crowd­ed. The Green fam­i­ly, a friend of Sarge’s named Tom and Walter Ogrod lived there, not to men­tion Tom’s Great Dane and Ogrod’s Doberman; occa­sion­al­ly oth­er peo­ple stayed for var­i­ous lengths of time. According to neigh­bors and ten­ants from that time, the house were also filthy. There was a mat­tress on the din­ing-room floor. Dirt and dog hair was every­where. In the upstairs bath­room, the sink had bro­ken off the wall and was rest­ing on the floor.

On the after­noon of July 12, 1988, four peo­ple on St. Vincent Street, about a block south and half a block west of Ogrod’s house, saw a man alter­nate­ly car­ry­ing and drag­ging a box for a tele­vi­sion. The man dragged the box by a garbage bag that was stick­ing out of it, paus­ing some­times to catch his breath.

According to his inter­view with police that night, David Schectman was lean­ing against the tail­gate of his sta­tion wag­on, read­ing the paper and wait­ing for his kids to get home from day camp so he could take his wife to a doc­tor’s appoint­ment. When the guy with the box approached, Schectman asked what was in the box.

​“Oh, some old junk,” the guy said.

Schectman told him trash day was Tuesday.

​“Oh, I thought it was Wednesday on this street,” the guy said.

Then the guy picked up the box and start­ed up the steps to Schectman’s back yard.

Schectman told police he thought the guy was from the cor­ner church, and he told him, ​“that does­n’t go through.“

Moments lat­er, the guy tried to go behind Schectman’s house on the oth­er side, but Schectman said the man turned back when he saw him and a news­pa­per deliv­ery kid watch­ing.

Schectman told police he last saw the man at 5:23 p.m., when his kids final­ly got home. Three min­utes lat­er, as he left for the doc­tor’s, he saw the box on the curb. He told detec­tives that he inter­act­ed with the guy with the box for a total of 11 min­utes.

Records show that at 5:30 p.m., in 1409 St. Vincent, a cou­ple of hous­es west of Schectman’s house, Stan Zablocky had just start­ed upstairs to take his evening bath when his wife, look­ing out the front door, said that some­one had left a box in front of the house.

​“Oh, I’d bet­ter go out and see what it is before I take my bath,” Zablocky said.

A minute lat­er, he yelled, ​“There’s a baby in the box.“

His daugh­ter called 911 while he stood by his grue­some dis­cov­ery, mak­ing sure no one dis­turbed it.

The baby Zablocky saw was Horn in a fetal posi­tion on her right side. Her hair was wet. She had been beat­en to death.

The four wit­ness­es — Schectman, his wife, the deliv­ery boy and a car sales­man on the cor­ner of Castor and St. Vincent — all described the guy with the box as being in his late 20s or ear­ly 30s, 5‑foot, 6‑inches to 5‑foot 9‑inches tall, about 160 to 180 pounds. He had a tan and close-cut, dark-blonde or brown hair. A police sketch was dis­trib­uted through­out the neigh­bor­hood. Tips poured in to the police.

A search war­rant exe­cut­ed on the house from which the TV box had been tak­en, 7208 Rutland, turned up hand­cuffs, a video­tape of child pornog­ra­phy and a bil­ly club, a pos­si­ble match with the mur­der weapon.

Schectman would pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy two men — Raymond Sheehan in a pho­to ID and anoth­er man in per­son — as the man he’d seen car­ry­ing the box.

In 1990, Assistant DA Casey, who has declined to com­ment for this arti­cle, would pre­side over a grand jury inves­ti­ga­tion of one of the res­i­dents of 7208 Rutland and one of the men Schectman had iden­ti­fied, but no indict­ments were forth­com­ing.

Walter Ogrod was a young-look­ing 23, 6‑foot‑1, 220 pounds, with black hair. He looked noth­ing like the police sketch or the descrip­tions giv­en to police and was nev­er a sus­pect up to that point. He was inter­viewed by police once, briefly, stand­ing in his Rutland Street door­way.

In ear­ly 1992, the unsolved Horn mur­der was turned over to the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), a divi­sion of the Philadelphia Police Homicide divi­sion set up to inves­ti­gate cas­es that had either gone cold or required too much man­pow­er for the reg­u­lar homi­cide detec­tives to deal with.

The case was assigned to two expe­ri­enced detec­tives, Martin Devlin and Paul Worrell. Devlin was known as one of the smartest detec­tives on the force; short and cocky, he sport­ed a han­dle­bar mus­tache, col­or­ful, Hawaiian-style shirts, and was known to refer to him­self as ​“The Golden Marty.” Worrell was tall, soft-spo­ken, more like­ly to wear a gray suit than any­thing flashy.

After review­ing the case file, Devlin and Worrell talked to Horn’s par­ents, John and Sharon Fahy. John says the detec­tives took him in one room and Devlin accused him of the mur­der. Down the hall, the cou­ple says, they pres­sured Sharon to impli­cate her hus­band. A few days lat­er the detec­tives explained to the Fahys that they’d need­ed to see what John’s reac­tion to that kind of pres­sure would be, and that they’d known when he left the inter­view room that night that he had­n’t been involved in the mur­der.

The Fahys insist­ed that there was no way Barbara Jean would’ve walked off with a stranger with­out scream­ing and that the mur­der had to have hap­pened across the street, inside 7244 Rutland.

On March 30, 1992, Devlin and Worrell went to see the Greens, who were liv­ing in Coatesville. (Ogrod and the Greens had been evict­ed from the house on Rutland in October 1989 by Ogrod’s aunt.) They talked to Sarge, who said he’d been home all day on July 12, 1988 (as had his wife, Linda), and not­ed that he did­n’t match the police sketch or the giv­en descrip­tions of the man car­ry­ing the box. Green’s daugh­ter told the detec­tives she’d got­ten home from the neigh­bor­hood swim­ming pool at around 2 p.m. on the day of the mur­der and had seen Ogrod leave the house from about 2:30 until 3 p.m. At the time, there was an out­stand­ing war­rant for Sarge’s arrest — in November 1988, he had beat­en Ogrod bad­ly, a fight had spilled out onto the street and been bro­ken up by John Fahy. Sarge had sub­se­quent­ly been con­vict­ed of sim­ple assault but had skipped his sen­tenc­ing — but he was inex­plic­a­bly not tak­en into cus­tody at the time of the inter­view.

On April 1, Devlin and Worrell went to Ogrod’s apart­ment in Glenside, a few min­utes’ dri­ve from Rutland Street. Ogrod was­n’t home, so the detec­tives left instruc­tions for him to call the fol­low­ing Sunday, April 5, after noon­time to set up a time to talk about the case.

On Saturday night and Sunday morn­ing Ogrod put in an all-night shift at his job, dri­ving a truck, deliv­er­ing bread to fast-food restau­rants in the Philadelphia area. By Sunday after­noon, when he went in to talk to Devlin and Worrell, he had­n’t slept in 30 hours.

Virtually every­thing that hap­pened in the Police Administration Building on that Sunday is a mat­ter of dis­pute.

According to the detec­tives, Ogrod agreed to come in for an inter­view at 6 p.m. but inex­plic­a­bly showed up at 3:45 and was signed into the Homicide divi­sion by Worrell. Devlin was out run­ning errands, and depart­ment pro­ce­dure required both detec­tives to be present for the inter­view, so Ogrod wait­ed until about 5:30 p.m., when Devlin returned.

The detec­tives insist they did­n’t view Ogrod as a sus­pect, only an infor­ma­tion­al wit­ness, and both would tes­ti­fy that Ogrod seemed nor­mal, not tired. Devlin would claim he did­n’t notice Ogrod’s speech imped­i­ment. The inter­view start­ed at about 6 p.m., with the two detec­tives talk­ing to Ogrod infor­mal­ly. Just before 6:30 Devlin start­ed writ­ing down the ques­tions asked and Ogrod’s respons­es.

According to the dis­put­ed con­fes­sion, Ogrod told the detec­tives Horn had come to his house some­time between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., look­ing for her friend Charlie and that, after let­ting her in, he’d gone upstairs.
Until that moment, the detec­tives had nev­er heard that Horn had been in any of the hous­es on Rutland Street that day. They asked Ogrod if he’d seen the lit­tle girl talk to Linda Green. He said he did­n’t know; the detec­tives found this hard to believe. If Green had been in the din­ing room, as Ogrod had said, he would’ve been able to see her from the front door when he let Horn in.

Devlin sensed that Ogrod was get­ting ner­vous. The detec­tive con­front­ed him. Ogrod began cry­ing con­vul­sive­ly. It was 6:50 p.m.

Worrell took Ogrod to the bath­room and got him a cup of cof­fee. According to the detec­tives’ tes­ti­mo­ny and the dis­put­ed con­fes­sion, when the inter­view con­tin­ued at 7:10 p.m., Ogrod said he had to tell them some­thing he’d nev­er told any­one before.

The detec­tives read Ogrod his rights and had him sign a sev­en-point waiv­er of his rights. He then con­fessed to the mur­der of Barbara Jean Horn. He said he took the lit­tle girl to the base­ment and asked her if she want­ed to ​‘play doc­tor.’ She did, so he took off her clothes and tried to force her to per­form oral sex on him. She start­ed scream­ing and he hit her sev­er­al times with the pull-down bar from his weight set. He stashed her clothes, washed her body in the laun­dry sink and wrapped her in a garbage bag. He took her out the back door and entered his garage, where he left her while he went back into the alley behind his house and found the emp­ty TV box. He put Horn in the box and was going to put her in a Dumpster just on the oth­er side of a fence that bor­dered the alley, but there were peo­ple there so he walked to the end of the alley and made a right, crossed busy Castor Avenue, and turned left, head­ing south. After a few steps he noticed how many peo­ple were around so he turned back, made a left on St. Vincent, put the box down, and alter­nate­ly dragged and car­ried it to where he left it on the curb. Then he went home. He did­n’t talk to any­one.

The detec­tives asked Ogrod if he’d ejac­u­lat­ed when he was assault­ing Horn; he said he could­n’t remem­ber.

They asked if he knew what ​‘ejac­u­late’ meant. He did.

Where had he stashed her clothes? He could­n’t remem­ber. Maybe in a crawl­space above the garage or in an air vent in the base­ment. He did­n’t remem­ber if he’d ever removed them from there.

When Ogrod start­ed say­ing he did­n’t remem­ber to every­thing they asked, they fig­ured the inter­view was over. At that point, they showed him a cou­ple of pic­tures of the TV box, of Horn’s body, just to make sure they were all talk­ing about the same lit­tle girl.

At tri­al, Worrell would describe the way Ogrod broke down and con­fessed as being like ​‘TV stuff.’ He said, ​‘You just don’t bring in a guy to talk about the time of day and he is giv­ing you this four-year-old case.‘

Ogrod read the state­ment Devlin had writ­ten out and signed every page. It was faxed to the charg­ing DA, a junior pros­e­cu­tor work­ing an all-night shift whose job was to sign off on charges, at 12:04 a.m. — just with­in the six-hour lim­it imposed by Pennsylvania law on police inter­ro­ga­tions.

At 1:30 or 2 a.m., Assistant DA Joseph Casey arrived to per­son­al­ly check every­thing over. Devlin and Worrell got a search war­rant for 7244 Rutland and went to look for Horn’s clothes; they did­n’t find them.

Ogrod was tak­en down­stairs and booked at 7 a.m. on Mon., April 6, 1992.

Ogrod’s ver­sion of his con­ver­sa­tion with the detec­tives starts hours ear­li­er, ends hours lat­er and shares with the detec­tives’ accounts only a few names of streets and peo­ple and a few key phras­es — things they con­tend he told them in the process of con­fess­ing and that he says they twist­ed.

At the first tri­al and in recent inter­views, Ogrod says he arrived at the Roundhouse that Sunday at about 1:30 p.m., and Worrell told him not to wor­ry about sign­ing in, that he’d only be there a short time. Ogrod said he’d always signed in when he’d come down, a num­ber of times, to talk about the Maureen Dunne case. Worrell remem­bered the case.

Upstairs, in Homicide, Ogrod wait­ed a cou­ple of hours. He tried to leave twice, telling the detec­tives he was tired and would come back anoth­er time. The detec­tives final­ly took him into the inter­view room, wrote down his basic infor­ma­tion and asked him some gen­er­al ques­tions about the case. After a half-hour, they said they were done and Ogrod got up to leave.

Ogrod says that Devlin stopped him, say­ing in a help­ful tone that they thought he might have killed the lit­tle girl and was block­ing the mem­o­ry.

The detec­tives showed Ogrod pic­tures of the TV box and Horn. They told him neigh­bors had seen him let Horn in the house that day, that he’d want­ed to have fun with her and had killed her and did­n’t remem­ber it.

Again, they showed him pic­tures of the dead girl. No, Ogrod told them, he had­n’t let her in the house.

They told him he seemed a lit­tle off, that he was sick and need­ed help, asked if he’d ever seen a psy­chi­a­trist. Ogrod said he nev­er would’ve hurt a lit­tle girl, that if he had he would’ve killed him­self.

According to Ogrod, who gave hours of inter­views for this sto­ry, when he told them he want­ed to make a phone call they said they’d put him in the hold­ing cell and ​‘tell all the nig­gers’ what he’d done.

Over the next few hours they kept at him with the pho­tos of Horn’s body and brought him cof­fee at least half a dozen times. They told him he might as well eat because they were going to be there all night and brought him a cheeses­teak, prod­ded him awake a cou­ple of times. They showed him a pic­ture of the Dunne crime scene that had his weight set in it.

After sev­er­al hours of pres­sure — eight, 10, maybe more; he does­n’t know because he was­n’t near a win­dow and, exhaust­ed, with no view of the out­side, quick­ly lost his sense of what time it was — and being told time and again that he was sick, that he’d killed her and was block­ing it from his mem­o­ry, Ogrod says he began to believe that he had done it.

He start­ed cry­ing.

How could I do that, he asked him­self, over and over.

The detec­tives drew up a map and told him to show them his route with the box. ​‘Picture in your mind you’re going this way,’ they’d say. When he got some­thing wrong they’d say, ​‘No, a wit­ness saw you here, start over.‘

The inter­view last­ed into the next morn­ing. Toward the end, Ogrod was hand­cuffed to his chair. They read the con­fes­sion to him, told him to sign every page and gave him the rights-waiv­er sheet. Ogrod told them he’d want­ed a lawyer all along and they said the state­ment was done, he should go ahead and sign the rights waiv­er and then he’d get his phone call. He signed. As he was tak­en down­stairs to be booked he could see that it was begin­ning to get light out­side.

Ogrod’s 1993 tri­al for the Horn mur­der revolved pri­mar­i­ly around the dis­put­ed con­fes­sion because there was no phys­i­cal evi­dence to impli­cate him. Fingerprints found on the TV box and the trash bag did not match his. No cloth­ing or blood was recov­ered from the base­ment of his house — which had nev­er been searched until four years after the mur­der. And, though one expert tes­ti­fied that he had iso­lat­ed a sin­gle sperm head in Horn’s sali­va, oth­er pros­e­cu­tion med­ical experts tes­ti­fied that there was no sperm head, only debris on a slide.

There was no oth­er evi­dence of a sex­u­al assault of any kind. Casey, the assis­tant DA, put the Green chil­dren on the stand to tes­ti­fy that Ogrod had made inap­pro­pri­ate com­ments to them on a cou­ple of occa­sions. None of these com­ments, how­ev­er, had been men­tioned to police at the time of the mur­der or at the time of Sarge Green’s 1988 arrest for assault­ing Ogrod.

Linda Green had told police on the day after Ogrod’s alleged con­fes­sion that she had been whol­ly unaware of Ogrod engag­ing in any such behav­ior until her daugh­ter men­tioned it to her that day.

Casey was hard-pressed to present any oth­er sup­port­ing evi­dence for the detec­tives’ ver­sion of the con­fes­sion.

Every fact in the con­fes­sion that is sup­port­ed by evi­dence — for exam­ple, that Barbara Jean was killed by blunt trau­ma to the head, that she was found with wet hair in a TV box — had been known to the detec­tives before they set foot in the inter­ro­ga­tion room with Ogrod. While it is pos­si­ble that phys­i­cal evi­dence in the case was lost in the four-year lag between the mur­der and Ogrod’s arrest, it is strik­ing that the things he sup­pos­ed­ly told police that only the killer could know (the sex­u­al assault, the pull-down bar, the wash­ing of the body) are either unsup­port­ed by any oth­er evi­dence and offer pos­si­ble but unproven expla­na­tions for some­thing the detec­tives already knew.

Instead, there is no evi­dence of sex­u­al assault oth­er than the one dis­put­ed sperm cell, which the pros­e­cu­tion con­tend­ed did­n’t exist. Horn was killed by blunt trau­ma, but the alleged weapon, the pull-down bar, was nev­er recov­ered. Her hair was wet when she was found, a fact any alleged con­fes­sion need­ed to address, but a thor­ough exam­i­na­tion of the sink in which Ogrod sup­pos­ed­ly washed her body — which includ­ed tak­ing apart the drain to test for traces of blood — turned up noth­ing.

Although at the time of the Ogrod inter­view Worrell and Devlin had been work­ing on the Horn case for a cou­ple of months in the same office as a detec­tive who had worked the Maureen Dunne homi­cide — and the Dunne case, being the mur­der of a cop’s daugh­ter, was well-known to all the detec­tives in the SIU — Worrell tes­ti­fied that only after Ogrod was booked did he and his part­ner find out there was a pho­to­graph of Ogrod’s base­ment that showed the Dunne crime scene and Ogrod’s weight set. Because they had­n’t known there was a weight set in the base­ment until they saw that pic­ture they could not, there­fore, have plant­ed the idea of the pull-down bar as mur­der weapon in Ogrod’s state­ment.

Ogrod tes­ti­fied, going through the alleged con­fes­sion line by line to explain how exhaust­ed he’d been dur­ing his inter­view with the detec­tives, how they’d twist­ed what he said when they wrote down his state­ment, how they had pres­sured him into con­fess­ing to a crime he had­n’t com­mit­ted.

On cross-exam­i­na­tion, Casey would jump on an aspect of Ogrod’s tes­ti­mo­ny that, he said, was proof Ogrod knew some­thing only the killer could know. Ogrod tes­ti­fied that he’d read in a local paper, the Northeast Times — one of sev­er­al news sources he’d read or seen about the case — that the guy car­ry­ing the TV box had tried to put it in a Dumpster. Casey then called the reporter who had cov­ered Horn’s mur­der for the Northeast Times to tes­ti­fy that she’d nev­er men­tioned the Dumpster in any of her sto­ries.

He did­n’t call any of the wit­ness­es who saw the man car­ry­ing the box, and when Ogrod’s lawyer did, Casey worked to dis­cred­it their orig­i­nal state­ments to police because those descrip­tions did not match Ogrod.

The tri­al last­ed eight days. After eight hours of delib­er­a­tion, the jury indi­cat­ed that they were dead­locked. The judge told them to try again.

The next day the jury informed the judge that they’d reached a unan­i­mous ver­dict and assem­bled in the court­room. The crier asked if all 12 of them had agreed to a ver­dict and the fore­man said they had.

As the crier began to read the ver­dict, juror No. 2 blurt­ed out, ​‘No.

​‘Wait a minute,’ some­one in the crowd yelled.

​‘I don’t agree with the ver­dict,’ the juror said.

The judge imme­di­ate­ly declared a mis­tri­al.

Horn’s father vault­ed the low rail­ing between the gallery and the defense table, knocked a bailiff sprawl­ing, and punched Ogrod. He was wres­tled down by more bailiffs. Ogrod was tak­en out of the room.

The jury had vot­ed 11 – 1 for acquit­tal.

The hold­out juror, a replace­ment, lat­er told a reporter that the tes­ti­mo­ny about the news­pa­per arti­cles had con­vinced him of Ogrod’s guilt. The juror he had replaced told reporters she would’ve vot­ed ​‘not guilty.’ The jury fore­man, express­ing a doubt many of Ogrod’s sup­port­ers have as to whether he was capa­ble of giv­ing the kind of flu­ent, well-spo­ken con­fes­sion that Devlin wrote down, would tell reporters, ​‘There’s no way that man gave that con­fes­sion.‘

Coming in next week’s City Paper, mas­ter-snitch John Hall tracks down Walter Ogrod, set­ting in motion a tri­al that would land the sus­pect on death row, where he remains today. In let­ters writ­ten from prison, Hall explains how the snitch­ing sys­tem works and how he helped put Ogrod behind bars. Can DNA from the Heather Coffin mur­der clear Ogrod of the Horn slay­ing, or will he spend the rest of his days behind bars? And hear what Ogrod had to say recent­ly dur­ing a series of exten­sive jail­house inter­views.


PART TWO, Published June 24, 2004

(City paper note — The DA’s Office reit­er­at­ed their stance on Ogrod’s guilt after last week’s CP cov­er sto­ry.)

In 1993, Walter Ogrod had come with­in one vote — one sec­ond — of being acquit­ted of the 1988 mur­der of 4‑year-old Barbara Jean Horn, a crime for which he had signed a writ­ten con­fes­sion a year ear­li­er. Horn’s mur­der had stunned the city. So did Ogrod’s now-dis­put­ed con­fes­sion and his near-acquit­tal.

By the time he went to tri­al again in 1996, the case against him would be bol­stered by a sto­ry fab­ri­cat­ed by a career jail­house infor­mant — and Ogrod would be sent to death row.

It’s hard to imag­ine what the near-defeat at the first Ogrod tri­al must’ve been like for Joseph Casey, the assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney who’d pros­e­cut­ed the case, and his fel­low ADAs. A crowd of peo­ple from the District Attorney’s Office had been in the cour­t­house in 1993, expect­ing to see a hard-fought vic­to­ry when the mis­tri­al was declared, after which the lit­tle girl’s step­fa­ther jumped the rail­ing and tried to get at Ogrod.

Sure, there had been prob­lems with the case. The wit­ness descrip­tions of the man car­ry­ing the box in which the lit­tle girl’s body had been found did­n’t match Ogrod. There was no phys­i­cal evi­dence tying him to the crime. But, Ogrod had signed a 16-page con­fes­sion. The two detec­tives, who had cracked the case by get­ting Ogrod’s con­fes­sion near­ly four years after the mur­der, had even won an award from the pres­ti­gious Vidocq Society for their work.

How could a jury have reject­ed a signed con­fes­sion in the mur­der of a lit­tle girl?

After the mis­tri­al, Ogrod’s lawyer filed an appeal based on a claim of dou­ble jeop­ardy, argu­ing that because the ver­dict had come in — a juror announced as the ver­dict was about to be read that he did­n’t agree with the deci­sion — Ogrod had been acquit­ted and there­fore could­n’t be tried again. The appeal would wind its way through the court sys­tem dur­ing the next cou­ple of years.

In December 1994, in the city Detention Center, Ogrod was approached by an intel­li­gent-look­ing inmate who car­ried a legal fold­er and had a lit­tle portable TV he claimed his lawyer had got­ten for him. His name was John Hall, known as the ​“The Monsignor,” a jail­house infor­mant who was in the mid­dle of a year­long run dur­ing which he’d snitch out five mur­ders. Hall’s lawyer, Marc Frumer, who had recent­ly left the District Attorney’s Office and gone into pri­vate prac­tice, was also an attor­ney for Ogrod’s broth­er.

​“He approached me,” Ogrod said in a recent inter­view, ​“and said Marc [Frumer] asked him to check up on me, and so on.“

As Ogrod recalls, right around the time he met Hall, his appeal was denied. He said he talked to Hall about his case, insist­ing on his inno­cence. They also hung out some­times with Jay Wolchansky, a 33-year-old for­mer drug addict and alco­holic with a crim­i­nal record that includ­ed about 15 con­vic­tions for bur­glary, theft, forgery and escape.
Wolchansky had been released from prison in ear­ly 1994 after serv­ing close to five years for bur­glary and parole vio­la­tions and, with­in a few months, had been arrest­ed on a vari­ety of charges.

​“I played cards and check­ers with them. They seemed all right at the time. They’d tell me stuff Marc Frumer told them about my broth­er,” Ogrod says. He adds that he did­n’t talk to Wolchansky about his case too much. ​“I told him I’m inno­cent and all. I just said I’m inno­cent and all.“

According to let­ters that Hall wrote from prison, Wolchansky insult­ed Ogrod, and Ogrod ​“did­n’t real­ly like him.” He also wrote that Ogrod ​“nev­er talked to” Wolchansky about his case.

By the end of December, Hall was putting his snitch­ing machin­ery into action against Ogrod.

In a 1996 talk with a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, Hall said he was prompt­ed to do so by a con­ver­sa­tion he’d had with Casey, the assis­tant DA. From there, he com­bined details learned from Ogrod with news­pa­per arti­cles to cre­ate a bizarre ver­sion of the Horn mur­der. He wrote up two drafts and sent them to Frumer, his ​“sales man­ag­er” who would present the sto­ry to the author­i­ties to get Hall out from under the 25 to 50 years he was look­ing at for assault­ing a police offi­cer.

Frumer referred ques­tions for com­ment to the District Attorney’s Office. Casey declined to com­ment.

According Hall’s sto­ry, Ogrod had planned Horn’s mur­der for months — even fail­ing in two ear­li­er attempts to abduct the lit­tle girl — because he was in love with Sharon Fahy and need­ed to get her hus­band, John, out of the way. Hall’s ver­sion of the mur­der main­tained that Ogrod thought John Fahy had a broth­er on death row for mur­der­ing a young girl with an exten­sion cord, so his plan was to stran­gle Horn with an exten­sion cord, which would nat­u­ral­ly lead the police to arrest John. (There is a Henry Fahy on death row for such a crime; John Fahy says he is not relat­ed.)

In Hall’s sto­ry, on the day of the mur­der, Ogrod stashed an exten­sion cord, garbage bag and gloves in his base­ment, lured Horn inside and raped her. But when he reached for the exten­sion cord it was gone, so he beat her to death and put her in a trash bag. When Ogrod got to where he’d intend­ed to leave her body, there were peo­ple around so he hid the bag behind some bush­es and went back to the alley behind his house.

Ogrod found an emp­ty TV box and car­ried it to where it was even­tu­al­ly found, retrieved the bag with Horn’s body in it, wait­ed for the street around the box to be clear of peo­ple and cars, dumped her in the box and walked away, accord­ing to Hall’s sto­ry. Ogrod even stopped on his way home to ditch the gloves and garbage bag in a Dumpster.

As for the guy seen car­ry­ing the TV box, Ogrod — accord­ing to Hall — did­n’t know who that was because he’d only car­ried the emp­ty box in one hand and had­n’t gone by where those wit­ness­es had been any­way.

Hall’s Jan. 6, 1995, inter­view with detec­tives includ­ed a final ver­sion of the alleged sex­u­al assault. Hall had orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten that Ogrod ​“raped” the lit­tle girl — that Ogrod forced oral sex and ​“tried to enter” Barbara Jean, but she was ​“too small.” But accord­ing to med­ical tes­ti­mo­ny at both tri­als, there was no evi­dence of attempt­ed pen­e­tra­tion, and Ogrod would be acquit­ted of rape by the sec­ond jury.

Hall told the detec­tives that he could not ​“in good con­science remain silent” and ​“see the mur­der­er of an inno­cent girl go free.“

Meanwhile, Hall devel­oped a friend­ship with Wolchansky who, he thought, was a nice kid who need­ed help to get out. So, as he explained in a let­ter years lat­er, he ​“gave” Wolchansky the Ogrod sto­ry and intro­duced him to Frumer, the attor­ney.

On Jan. 23, Wolchansky wrote a let­ter to Casey say­ing that Ogrod was talk­ing all the time about how he mur­dered Horn and that, as the father of a daugh­ter who was rough­ly Horn’s age had she lived, he could not sit by and allow Ogrod to go free. He fol­lowed this with a five-page let­ter to District Attorney Lynne Abraham, using strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar lan­guage to that which Hall had used in his let­ters about the Ogrod case to his attor­ney. Wolchansky’s sec­ond let­ter includ­ed Hall’s details about the case that did not match either the eye­wit­ness accounts of the man car­ry­ing the box or Ogrod’s alleged state­ment — the motive for the killing, the dis­ap­pear­ing exten­sion cord, the attempt­ed rape, the route Ogrod took with the body.

On March 20, a detec­tive inter­viewed Wolchansky about Ogrod. He denied that any­one had helped him or advised him to write the let­ters, and Hall came up only in pass­ing. The inter­view last­ed 25 min­utes.

Two days lat­er, Wolchansky signed a Frumer-nego­ti­at­ed plea agree­ment on his three open cas­es. He’d been fac­ing up to 30 years in jail and fines of up to $75,000. He got 11 to 23 months for each count, to run con­cur­rent­ly.

For his parole vio­la­tion, Wolchansky received what Hall called the ​“min­i­mum pos­si­ble sen­tence,” obtained for him when some of the detec­tives who had worked the Ogrod case showed up to tes­ti­fy for Wolchansky at his sen­tenc­ing hear­ing.

But, Hall wrote, ​“I did­n’t just give” the Ogrod case to Wolchansky, ​“I used it first.“

Hall was fac­ing a 25- to 50-year manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence for charges relat­ed to a high-speed car chase and assault­ing an offi­cer. He got 9 to 18 months after a hear­ing in which sev­er­al detec­tives who’d worked with him on the Horn case and oth­er cas­es showed up to tes­ti­fy for him. As Hall put it, ​“Everyone made out.“

Frumer, who rep­re­sent­ed both Hall and Wolchansky, acknowl­edges that both men ben­e­fit­ed from the infor­ma­tion they gave in the Ogrod case, but he referred all oth­er ques­tions about the case to the District Attorney’s Office.

Hall also worked with Wolchansky on snitch­ing out anoth­er inmate, David Dickson, who’d been accused of the 1984 mur­der of Drexel University stu­dent Deborah Wilson. Wolchansky tes­ti­fied against Dickson in 1995 but, accord­ing to Hall, ​“screwed it up.” The case end­ed in a mis­tri­al.

​“When I learned [Wolchansky] blew the case with Dickson,” Hall wrote, ​“I wrote a let­ter to [the pros­e­cu­tor] and they picked me up the day after they received it. They inter­viewed me and used me at tri­al. The result was a con­vic­tion.“

Dickson was sen­tenced to life in prison.

​“Wolchansky nev­er talked to Dickson,” Ogrod insists. ​“Neither did Hall.“

Dickson, too, says that he nev­er spoke to Hall or Wolchansky.

Even before the sec­ond Ogrod tri­al got under way, Hall plunged him­self into anoth­er high-pro­file case. In November 1995, a young woman named Kimberly Ernest, out for her ear­ly morn­ing jog, was killed in Center City. Shortly after her slay­ing, Hall con­tact­ed police with infor­ma­tion that his own step­son, Herbert Haak, who had been brought to the same jail as Hall, had admit­ted that he and a friend had killed Ernest.

But Hall had a long-stand­ing grudge against Haak, who Hall felt had stolen from him and betrayed him over the years.

​“I had extreme­ly strong moti­va­tions to cause [Haak] injury,” Hall wrote lat­er. ​“It isn’t in my nature to kill. … But I was not adverse to let­ting the state do it.“

However, in his eager­ness to use the Ernest case for revenge against his step­son, Hall slipped. He even­tu­al­ly admit­ted to a homi­cide detec­tive that he lied and fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence against Haak — a neck­lace inscribed ​“to Kim” that he planned to plant in Haak’s cell — because he knew the pros­e­cu­tion’s case was weak.

The pros­e­cu­tor for both the Ernest mur­der tri­al and the sec­ond Ogrod tri­al was Judy Rubino, one of the city’s best and tough­est assis­tant DAs who, at the time of the Ogrod and Haak cas­es, was in the midst of a 33-year career dur­ing which she sent more than 20 peo­ple to death row. Rubino knew that Hall had con­tact­ed the author­i­ties with a sto­ry about Ogrod, but she says she thought Hall had too much bag­gage to use him in the Ogrod case.

​“He had been using drugs,” Rubino said in a recent inter­view. ​“He was involved in too much — pho­ny [pre­scrip­tions] and, I mean, he just had too many cred­i­bil­i­ty prob­lems to suit me.“

She did­n’t want to use Hall in the Ernest tri­al either, but ​“prob­a­bly would have” until she looked into things a lit­tle fur­ther. That is, until she found out about the neck­lace.

For his part, Hall wrote that he thought Rubino did­n’t know he was lying about the Ernest case until she found out about the neck­lace; he also wrote that he thought Frumer knew the truth all along. In February1997, Hall invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and declined to tes­ti­fy at the Ernest tri­al. Haak and his co-defen­dant were acquit­ted of the mur­der on March 14, 1997. The case remains unsolved.

Hall told an inves­ti­ga­tor work­ing for Ogrod’s defense lawyer in August 1996 that he was not going to tes­ti­fy at the sec­ond Ogrod tri­al because Rubino want­ed him to tes­ti­fy in the Ernest case.

For the Ogrod retri­al, Rubino said that Wolchansky was in a total­ly dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion from Hall. She met with Wolchansky twice, includ­ing once with him and his daugh­ter. He reit­er­at­ed that his desire to tes­ti­fy against Ogrod sprang from his feel­ings for his daugh­ter, and Rubino appar­ent­ly believed him, but a more real­is­tic look at his motives comes in a let­ter he wrote to Hall in August 1996:

​“I will not do any­thing for the Ogrod tri­al unless I am free first,” he wrote. ​“And then I will only think about doing it, since I don’t enjoy the pub­lic­i­ty.“

Rubino says she believes Ogrod’s state­ment to the detec­tives did­n’t con­tain any­thing that he had­n’t said and that he’d been over­med­icat­ed at his first tri­al, mak­ing him seem like an idiot who was inca­pable of such a flu­ent state­ment. She called the prison psy­chi­atric ward and asked them to check his med­ica­tion lev­el. (His med­ica­tions were reduced.) She also says she thought that Ogrod had spo­ken to Wolchansky and Hall at the same time, and that there were good rea­sons for the dis­crep­an­cies between their sto­ry and Ogrod’s state­ment. Maybe Ogrod, in an attempt to gain some kind of lenien­cy, had­n’t told the entire truth in 1992, or had tried to make him­self look good when he was brag­ging to Hall and Wolchansky in jail, or maybe Wolchansky had­n’t remem­bered every detail pre­cise­ly.

​“If I don’t believe a wit­ness,” Rubino said recent­ly, ​“I’m not going to put them on the stand. … I think that prob­a­bly [Ogrod’s] state­ment was more accu­rate, but the sub­stance [of Wolchansky’s let­ter] was, you know, that [Ogrod] had done it.“

She says she thought the peo­ple who’d seen the man car­ry­ing the TV box prob­a­bly had­n’t been pay­ing atten­tion to some guy putting out his trash and there­fore weren’t reli­able. (She was not aware that the wit­ness who saw the man car­ry­ing the box for the longest time, David Schectman, had known Ogrod by sight, if not by name.)

She also says she did­n’t think the argu­ment about whether a sperm head had been found in Horn’s sali­va was impor­tant since the med­ical exam­in­er did­n’t find one. In any event, it real­ly did­n’t mean any­thing if one sperm head from the box did­n’t match Ogrod’s DNA. She insists that, as far as she knows, Wolchansky got ​“noth­ing” for his tes­ti­mo­ny in the Ogrod case, and that any deal he got on his open cas­es was just part of ​“what­ev­er arrange­ment there was on that case itself.“

During the tri­al, Rubino wove unsub­stan­ti­at­ed details tak­en from the Greens (the fam­i­ly that had been liv­ing in Ogrod’s house) and from the Hall/​Wolchansky sto­ry — that Ogrod had been inap­pro­pri­ate with the Green’s chil­dren, that Charles ​“Sarge” Green had beat­en Ogrod up in November 1988 because he knew Ogrod killed Horn, that Ogrod’s own moth­er had been con­vinced he’d killed the lit­tle girl — togeth­er with Ogrod’s state­ment to cre­ate a por­trait of a guilty man.

Ogrod’s attor­ney Mark Greenberg says he thought the pros­e­cu­tion’s case at the sec­ond tri­al amount­ed to a re-hash of the first tri­al, the only new infor­ma­tion being Wolchansky’s tes­ti­mo­ny. The prob­lems with the alleged con­fes­sion, the dis­crep­an­cies between it and the Hall/​Wolchansky state­ment, and the unde­ni­able dif­fer­ences between the wit­ness­es’ descrip­tions of the man car­ry­ing the box and Ogrod — any one of these, Greenberg said, might amount to rea­son­able doubt. Taken togeth­er, all three had to cause doubt.

Ogrod did­n’t tes­ti­fy at the sec­ond tri­al.

Wolchansky claimed he was in dan­ger of being beat­en up in jail (a claim that Hall, who was with Wolchansky in the Bucks County prison at the time of Wolchansky’s tes­ti­mo­ny in the Dickson case, laughed off as ​“bull­shit” because ​“no one beat him up there” ). On the stand, Wolchansky, allowed to tes­ti­fy under the alias Jason Banachowski, denied get­ting any deal for his tes­ti­mo­ny against Ogrod and told the sto­ry Hall had giv­en him. Hall’s name came up twice, in pass­ing; Greenberg was able to estab­lish only that Hall and Wolchansky had the same lawyer.

Ogrod says he remem­bers vivid­ly the moment Wolchansky took the stand.

​“He was lying his ass off,” Ogrod says. ​“His daugh­ter was there, wav­ing to her dad­dy so he’d look good to the jury. How would you feel?“

On Oct. 8, 1996, after 90 min­utes of delib­er­a­tions, the jury came in with their ver­dict.

​“When they walked in, I kin­da knew,” John Fahy, Horn’s step­fa­ther, said in an inter­view. ​“I knew they found him guilty. They walked in, it was just, the way they the way they came in, they looked right at us.“

John Fahy isn’t sure, but he says he thinks one of the jurors even nod­ded at him slight­ly. He recalls squeez­ing Sharon’s hand.

​“They got him,” he whis­pered. ​“I know they got him.“

Ogrod was con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der and attempt­ed invol­un­tary devi­ate sex­u­al inter­course. He was acquit­ted of rape.

​“It’s over,” John remem­bers think­ing. ​“It’s final­ly over. They final­ly got him.” Sharon says that it was ​“like some­body took bricks right off your back.“

The next day, after a mit­i­ga­tion hear­ing and anoth­er 90 min­utes of delib­er­a­tions, the jury sen­tenced Ogrod to death.

In March 1996, four detec­tives, who’d worked with Hall on one or more of the Ogrod, Dickson and Ernest cas­es, showed up at a sen­tenc­ing hear­ing for Hall before Judge Kenneth Biehn in Bucks County. At one point in the hear­ing, Frumer, the attor­ney, point­ed out how often Hall, even under intense cross-exam­i­na­tion, had been able to get con­vic­tions for pros­e­cu­tors in dif­fi­cult retri­als.

Biehn respond­ed that that was because ​“peo­ple believe him.” The judge con­tin­ued: ​“He makes peo­ple believe him the first, sec­ond, third, fourth time, that’s his bless­ing; that’s his curse, because he knows he can get away with a lot of stuff. It seems to me that per­haps the best thing I could do would be to put him in jail for the rest of his life so he would­n’t com­mit crimes against oth­ers and he would be able to fer­ret out crime with­in the State Correctional facil­i­ty. I mean, this is a joke, is what this has become.“

In the fall of 2003, in jail again on a vari­ety of charges includ­ing car theft, forg­ing pre­scrip­tions and parole vio­la­tions, Hall main­tained in let­ters that he faces ​“no lia­bil­i­ty” even if the truth about his fab­ri­ca­tions in the Ogrod case come out because the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on the only crime he could be charged with — unsworn fal­si­fi­ca­tions to law enforce­ment author­i­ties — ran out in 1997.

​“If you are going to become involved in this sort of thing,” he wrote, ​“you can’t be trou­bled about it long after you get the desired result. They’ll cru­ci­fy you if you start to recant tes­ti­mo­ny in cas­es of that mag­ni­tude.“

Writing a few months lat­er about his involve­ment in the high-pro­file homi­cide cas­es includ­ing Ogrod’s, he added: ​“All these cas­es are crap. They are all based on hearsay with no phys­i­cal evi­dence of any­thing in any of the cas­es. Just words.“

To Hall, the ​“bot­tom line” was that Ogrod was con­vict­ed. ​“Nothing else mat­ters, espe­cial­ly how the con­vic­tions were obtained,” he wrote. ​“The point is they were obtained and will be sus­tained.“

Given the ques­tions sur­round­ing Ogrod’s con­vic­tion and the dis­turb­ing rev­e­la­tions about how Hall and Wolchansky helped send him to death row, might DNA test­ing offer any answers in this case? The one dis­put­ed sperm cell was sent to Cellmark Labs in Maryland for test­ing after the first tri­al. When Cellmark got the sam­ple, the slide that held what might have been a sperm had been bro­ken and taped back togeth­er. Cellmark was unable to find enough genet­ic mate­r­i­al to per­form a DNA test. It is unlike­ly but pos­si­ble that new tech­nol­o­gy exists that could test a sin­gle cell, if the sin­gle cell exists.

After Raymond Sheehan — who had been iden­ti­fied by at least one wit­ness as the man car­ry­ing the TV box con­tain­ing Horn — was arrest­ed for the 1987 mur­der of 10-year-old Heather Coffin, Greenberg urged in a 2003 let­ter to the District Attorney’s Office final test­ing of the dis­put­ed DNA from the Horn case.

Ogrod is now push­ing for the test to be done.

Judy Rubino, before retir­ing from the DA’s Office this spring, said, ​“Well, I mean, what­ev­er the defense wants to do. But we won’t do it.“

The Fahys say they remain absolute­ly con­vinced of Ogrod’s guilt, but would sup­port a new round of DNA test­ing if it’s pos­si­ble. ​“I mean,” Sharon says, ​“I don’t want it to be that, just to make us feel bet­ter, that some­body gets killed for this and it not be the per­son who mur­dered her.“

Her hus­band John says they want the right guy, ​“and I believe that Walter is the right guy.” The Fahys still live in Philadelphia.

DA spokes­woman Cathie Abookire agreed with John Fahy’s stance in a state­ment issued on Monday.

​“We believe the evi­dence proved that the defen­dant is guilty. A jury believed that too, after see­ing the wit­ness­es and hear­ing the defense argu­ments, and con­vict­ed him in the sex­u­al assault and bru­tal mur­der of 4‑year-old Barbara Jean Horn. On appeal the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reject­ed his claims and upheld his con­vic­tion [last December]. If there are fur­ther claims, we will respond to them, and they will be resolved in a court of law. The tragedy here is that 16 years after the hor­ren­dous mur­der of 4‑year-old Barbara Jean Horn, her fam­i­ly is still sub­ject­ed to the pain of reliv­ing this night­mare, rather than allow­ing the legal process to take its course.“

Joseph Casey left the DA’s office in fall 2003. Through a spokesper­son, he declined to be inter­viewed for this arti­cle. Jay Wolchansky’s where­abouts are unknown.

Hall remains in jail, pend­ing the dis­po­si­tion of his cur­rent charges.

As Ogrod’s first round of appeals were reject­ed, he’s left to won­der whether he’ll ulti­mate­ly be exe­cut­ed for the Horn mur­der. Ogrod remains on death row at the State Correctional Institution in Greene County in Waynesburg, where he main­tains his inno­cence.

​“I’m hop­ing. I’m doing what­ev­er I can,” he said in a recent tele­phone inter­view. ​“Yeah, I feel a lit­tle scared. [Execution is] some­thing you got to real­ize and all, but you try not to think about it or you’ll go crazy.”