Dateline NBC - The Investigation

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Lester Holt reports on how the investigation into the murder of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn revealed decades of misconduct across Philadelphia’s criminal justice system.

Did red flags ever pop up that maybe there was some evidence that was being hidden? Well, certainly. Certainly. You smelled a rat? Yes. Secrets. Lies. Corruption. The biggest part of this problem is the abuse of power. They've destroyed lives. It shocks the conscience. Tonight, inside the scandal that shook the city of Philadelphia.

A stunning pattern of misconduct exposed in a 30-year-old case. Little girl's body was found in this TV box. Killer is still at large tonight. This is a little girl taken off her neighborhood block. The haunting mystery of Barbara Jean Horn. There is no justice. We need to find out who did this. Did you feel like you were lifting the lid

on something much bigger? Yeah, it was even worse than I thought it was, what they were hiding and what they knew. The Investigation Welcome to Dateline, everyone. I'm Lester Holt. Murder was just the beginning. Tonight, an investigation into a cold case and the troubling secrets it revealed. Injustices deep inside Philadelphia's justice system. When Sharon Fahey was 21 years old, she lived in Northeast Philadelphia and worked at a department store. But her greatest dream was to have a daughter. I only had a girl's name picked out. That's all I ever wanted was children Shortly before Sharon gave birth John Fahey entered her life

And he became Barbara Jean Horn's stepfather Did you consider her your daughter? Well, yes She was my daughter And I raised her as my own The sweetest little girl that ever walked the face of the earth She was, she was. She was a sweetheart. He was happy to be her stepfather. He would take care of her. In fact, John was the

one who mostly stayed home with Barbara Jean while Sharon worked. July 12, 1988 was one of those days. I know this isn't easy, but can you tell me how that day began? What was typical in your life then? I got up in the morning, got ready for work, kissed Barbara Jean goodbye. Sharon was at work. I was, you know, up with Barbara Jean in the morning. Fed her a breakfast. We played around in the house a little bit. John says he relives the details of that summer day in a never-ending loop. Even now.

I was in the house cleaning the refrigerator, and, you know, Barbara Jean had come in. I hadn't asked if she could help. And I said, no, it's okay, sweetie. You know, you can go outside and just go outside and play. And, you know, she hadn't come in for a little while, so I went out to check on her. And I saw her toys on the sidewalk. I went, something's wrong.

John says he thought Barbara Jean had simply wandered off. He called for her. No answer. He began knocking on neighbors' doors. No one knew where the little girl was. I called Sharon. I said, you need to come home. I can't find Barbara Jane. At what point did you call police? I didn't call the police. I thought 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 Fahys. They said that they found Barbara Jean and that she was dead. And then he accused me of murdering her. Just like that accused you? Just like that. It was horrible. But not a surprise.

He'd been home alone with Barbara Jean all morning and hadn't called 911 to report her missing. While police accused John, they did not arrest him and continued to investigate. They quickly found five eyewitnesses who'd seen a man lugging the cardboard box. He walked across St. Vincent Street, set the box down as if to catch his breath because it seemed like it was heavy. A sketch of the suspect was made. A white male, 5'6 to 5'8, 160 to 180 pounds, about 30 years old.

This is a composite sketch of the guy that's wanted for yesterday's murder, the little boy. The neighborhood has been saturated with police all day and all night, passing out the composite drawing of the suspect. Dozens of detectives search for leads as Barbara Jean's murder gripped the city for days, then weeks. It even got national attention when Unsolved Mysteries featured the case. Tonight, the Philadelphia Police Department needs your help in solving the brutal murder of a four-year-old girl. Hundreds of tips poured in. They got so many calls about one guy,

they followed him for six months. When journalist Tom Lowenstein began investigating Barbara Jean's murder, he had no idea he would still be at it 20 years later. There was another suspect who had been accused of a murder of another little girl about a mile away. They showed his picture to one of the eyewitnesses. One of the eyewitnesses picked him out. But there wasn't enough evidence to make any arrests, and the case went cold. Was it frustration for you and Sharon that all this time had gone by and they still couldn't find the perpetrator? Yes. We were calling all the time. Four years later, Detective Marty Devlin and his partner took over the case.

Devlin, who was known as Detective Perfect for his uncanny ability to crack the toughest cases, quickly arrived at an old suspicion, this time about both parents. They said that I knew that John did it and that I was protecting him. And I said, I know he didn't do it. I would have already murdered him if I thought he did. I said, you guys are no closer to solving that. You were angry. I was pissed. I was pissed.

You would think that after four years, there was some kind of progress, and there didn't 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 Ogrot, what were you thinking? Who the hell's Walter Ogrot, what were you thinking? Who the hell's Walter Ogrot? Coming up... Are you in it? An 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? The search for an answer would uncover some long buried secrets. The biggest part of this problem is not just innocent mistakes. The biggest part of this problem is the abuse of power. To think that somebody would just purposely kill your child don't make sense. You know, it just don't make sense. When detectives Marty Devlin and his partner

took over the Barbara Jean Horn case in 1992, they decided to go back to square one. They felt that Barbara Jean must have been killed on the block, very near to where she lived. And they decided to re-canvass it. None of the neighbors had any new information, but the detectives learned that the man who lived across the street had moved across town the year after the crime.

His name was Walter Ogrod, a single 27-year-old Philadelphia native who worked as an overnight bakery truck driver. They called him up and they asked him to come in as a witness. They said, we're just talking to people in the neighborhood. And he said, all right, and he went in. And told him he was going to go see the Philadelphia police about, you know, the neighborhood. And he said, all right. And he went in and told me he's going to go see the Philadelphia police about, you know, the murder. Ograd's friend, Steve Mulvey, vividly remembers speaking with him that day. I said, you shouldn't go down there without a lawyer. I expressed that numerous times, maybe three or four times. Ograd said he had nothing to hide and drove himself to police headquarters.

He told the detectives 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 asked these people to move into his house to help pay the rent. And the Greens had two children, one of whom, Charlie Bird, was Barbara Jean's best friend. O'Grodd told Detective Devlin the same thing he told an officer hours after the murder. Barbara Jean had come to his front door looking for Charlie Bird a few hours before she went missing. It was a detail that Devlin didn't believe was a coincidence.

He accused O'Grodd of lying. It was a detail that Devlin didn't believe was a coincidence. He accused O'Grodd of lying. That's when Devlin said O'Grodd began to sob, and a confession came pouring out. Walter's confession was that the little girl showed up at his house in the afternoon looking for her friend. He grabbed her, took her in the basement. According to the confession transcribed by Detective Devlin, O'Grodd lured Barbara Jean into his basement to play doctor. And when the little girl screamed, he hit her over the head with a weight machine pull-down bar. Then he found a box outside and disposed of her body. About six hours after the interrogation began,

O'Grodd signed each sheet of a 16-page statement. And he was arrested for first-degree murder and sexual assault. The news came on, and they were saying that they had solved Barbara Jean Horne's murder. I was like, oh, wow, they finally caught the guy. Heidi Gould has known O'Grodd since they were teenagers. Next thing I know, they're flashing a picture of Walt on the screen. Are you innocent? And Walt's in handcuffs.

Did you want to confess? Walt's just not a violent person. He's like a gentle giant. He would never hurt anyone. But to John and Sharon Fahey, Ograd 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. Ograd had no criminal record. No physical evidence linked him to the crime. He didn't resemble the sketch. He wasn't identified by a single eyewitness.

And he'd immediately recanted his confession. Still, in 1993, Ograd stood trial for murder. Prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. He let that poor little baby just lie there and die and then put her out in the trash. If that's not intent to kill, maybe I haven't seen it yet. The prosecution's case rested entirely on the confession. Ograd took the stand in his own defense. He testified the detectives had wrung a false confession out of him. He makes the case that that confession was forced out of him, that he was coerced.

Yes. How did 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. And now the story of Walter Ograd. 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 Fahey would be the one led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. Coming up. One juror stood up and said, I don't know how I feel about this.

A crazy confrontation in that courtroom. There is no justice in murder. You're never going to find justice. Ever. When Dateline continues. I just wanted him to be locked away forever. Sharon and John Fahey had prayed that the jury would find Walter Ograd guilty, even though they knew nothing could bring back their little girl. There is no justice in a murder.

There is no justice. You're never going to find justice, ever. Walter Ograd's life doesn't equal Barbara Jean's life. But no one was prepared for what happened after the jury announced it reached a verdict. Journalist Tom Lowenstein wasn't in the courtroom, but says the transcript reads like a Hollywood drama. The jury came in and they sat down. The question still remains, what was the verdict? The jury had voted unanimously and signed the verdict form, not guilty. Walter Ograd was moments away from going home. And the foreman

stood up and said, you know, yes, we've reached a verdict and literally opened his mouth to start reading it when one juror stood a jaw-dropping announcement. He changed his mind. The judge immediately declared a mistrial. John Fahey launched himself out of his seat, over the barrier, got his hands very nearly around Walter's throat. John was never charged, and Ograd was immediately sent back to jail to await another trial. The story, once again, was the buzz of Philadelphia.

What happens if you go to trial and he's acquitted? I guess we'll get there when we get there. We'll see what happens. I don't think he'll be acquitted. It took three years. In 1996, Ogrod stood trial for a second time. The first trial ended in a hung jury. This time, a different prosecutor named Judy Rubino was in charge.

And two weeks before trial, she dropped a bombshell. Here comes Judy Rubino to say that, oh, Walter is confessed in jail. There's another confession. A jailhouse snitch had come forward to say Ograd had admitted again that he killed Barbara Jean. But the story the snitch told went even further about why Ograd committed the crime. The story was that Walter Ograd had fallen in love with Barbara Jean's mother, Sharon, who lived across the street. So Walter decided that if he murdered Barbara Jean, the police would blame John Fahey. And when John Fahey was taken away, Sharon would be so upset and distraught, she would come to Walter. Then that would be it. They would fall in love.

Prosecutor Rubino argued that this delusional fantasy was the true motive. Details Rubino said that Ograd didn't originally share with detectives. He was not telling the police the entire truth. He was trying to make it as good for himself as he could. And when he was in the prison, he wasn't doing that. And he was sort of bragging. Ograd's lawyer said both confessions, which didn't match each other, were suspicious. I think it's frightening when you have two opposing contradictory versions,

especially from a jailhouse snitch who just coincidentally happened to come out of nowhere. Walter's lawyer's theory was that since the two stories at the two trials are so diametrically opposed, that's reasonable doubt. But it didn't work. This jury found Ograd guilty and sentenced him to death. It took eight years and two juries to convict 31-year-old Walter Ograd of murder. If one jury's stupid, doesn't mean that the next one has to be. He's an animal. He's got no remorse for what he's done at all. I'm just glad that he'll be in jail and he won't get out to hurt another child. At last, the Fahys had the verdict they'd hoped for.

He's held responsible. All that mattered was that he'd never get the opportunity to do it again. I wanted him dead. I did. But Tom Lowenstein was about to embark on his own investigation into Barbara Jean Horn's murder, and he would soon be faced with a difficult question. What would Sharon and John think if it turned out neither jury had heard the real story? Coming up, that prison snitch who helped secure the verdict. Someone was about to snitch on him. I was like, all right, well, he lied about Walter Ograd.

And she said, yeah, I know he did because I helped him do it. Walter Ograd had been on death row for five years when he heard from another inmate that journalist Tom Lowenstein was writing a book about the death penalty. So Ograd sent Tom a letter imploring him to investigate his case. At first, Tom had no interest in helping the convicted murderer of a four-year-old. I was just like, I can't do this. The idea that me being in touch with someone who did that might offer them any kind of hope or happiness in their life was repulsive. Follow that rule, you're very likely to... But it wasn't in Tom's DNA to turn away. Tom's father, Allard Lowenstein, was a United States congressman

and a leader in the fight for civil rights. We showed in 1968 not that we couldn't change America through elections, but that we could change America through elections. He was a tireless campaigner all through Tom's childhood. But on March 14, 1980, his campaigns came to an abrupt end. Former Congressman Allard Lowenstein was shot five times and critically wounded today. Allard Lowenstein was assassinated by a deranged former student.

I was 10 years old when my father was murdered. How did your father's death affect you as you grew up and 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 and wanted to do the same. He became a writer, focusing on the justice system. So when that letter from Walter Ograd showed up, Tom began to learn everything he could about the case. He had signed every page of a 16-page confession,

and you think, oh, wow, geez, that's damning. And then you read that the first jury voted to acquit him. Tom spoke with about a dozen people who knew Ograd before he was arrested. None believed he'd committed the crime. There's no evidence connecting him to it. Many, like Heidi Gould, told Tom if anyone could be easily manipulated into confessing, it was her friend, Walter.

You could tell that he was a little bit different, like socially awkward. Tom decided he'd heard enough doubt that he needed to meet O'Grodd himself. What were your initial impressions of him? It was a tiny bit like talking to Rain Man. You know, he couldn't express feelings to me, but he knew all the facts. And I thought he's like the Asperger's kids that my friend works with. For Tom, meeting Ogron in person changed everything. Because the man sitting across from him seemed incapable of conveying the words and emotions that Detective Devlin claimed he did in the confession.

That supposedly verbatim admission just didn't match up with the guy you had been face-to-face with. Yeah. The story that the detectives tell about Walt's confession is that they never interrupted him. You know, he just poured out his heart to them and started crying and said to them, Officers, give me a moment. You don't know how hard this is for me. I never meant to kill that little girl. For me, that was the moment it clicked that not only had they dictated a story to Walter, they had dictated a frame of mind that he's not capable of. But remember, prosecutors alleged Ograd hadn't confessed only to detectives, but also to a prison

snitch. Tom learned the snitch was so prolific, he had a nickname. The snitch was a guy named John Hall who was known as the Monsignor because he'd heard more confessions than a priest. John Hall was a career criminal who had been used as a witness by prosecutors in the Philadelphia area in at least a dozen murder trials, often receiving leniency in exchange for his testimony. He just had this knack for getting put next to defendants in old homicide cases where the DA didn't have enough evidence. And somehow, miraculously, every time that happened, John would produce a confession from that person

and he would give them convictions. Tom called Hall's house and his wife answered. And I thought, she's 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. And I was like, all right, well, do you think he lied about Walter Ograd? And she said, yeah, I know he did. And I said, how do you know he did? And she said, because I helped him do it. This is Phyllis Hall. She says her husband, who has since passed away,

had his snitching schemes down to a science. Didn't bother John at all putting someone on death row because of what he got out of it. Shortly before Ograd's second trial, Hall was moved to the same cell block. At the time, he was facing a 50-year sentence for assaulting a police officer. Days after meeting Ograd, Hall asked his wife to find information about Barbara Jean Horn's murder. I went to the library in Philadelphia, and they have all the newspapers, so I would get him copies.

Hall then used those articles to learn about the case so he could create a confession that sounded plausible. I had the notes that he made of the Ograd case. I had it all right in front of me. How he made it up, I found a library printout of a newspaper article about the Barbara Jean Horn case. Hall also shared the fabricated story with another snitch. He gave the story to another inmate, Jay Wolchansky.

Like, he got the story from Walter, but Walter and Jay never communicated together. Both snitches went to prosecutors claiming they each heard the same story from Ograd. But only Wolchansky testified. Hall wrote to his wife that prosecutors told him they'd been using him too much. Now, all these years later, Tom was convinced 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's family. Yeah. From the beginning, that was always looming for me. If I had shown up at my door asking about my dad, I would have slammed the door and told me to get lost. I wouldn't have talked to someone

about the guy who killed my dad. But Sharon and John agreed to hear him out. John and I met with him, and he told us a lot of the different things that were not right, he felt. He claims that Walter's innocent and he got a bad deal. You know, the police did it on purpose. It was accidental that they coerced him. Whatever. I've never wavered on Walter's guilt. Never.

Tom hadn't convinced the Fahys, but his next stop would be an even tougher audience. The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. Coming up. Frankly, it shocked me as to some of the evidence that was in that file. A new legal battle begins. Walter Ogrod is about to fight for justice. Did you kill Barbara Jean Horner? When Dateline continues. After meeting Walter Ogrod,

Tom Lowenstein was convinced that he was an innocent man. So Lowenstein contacted the Philadelphia DA's office and told them what he'd found. He says they didn't seem interested. I had hard evidence, and it just got no substantive response at all. Ograd was arrested in 1992 when he was 27 years old. When he sat down with me in 2020, he was 55. Did you kill Barbara Jean Horne? No, I did not.

I did not do anything to that child at all. Did it shake you up a little bit that a child had been killed in your neighborhood? It shook everyone up. Because you could just basically still have your doors open and all. A long time went by, and then 1992, they wanted to talk to you. Yes. They stopped by my home, my apartment. I wasn't there, so they gave a card to my landlord. When Elgrod came home from working an overnight shift,

he'd been awake 30 hours, but still agreed to come to the precinct for an interview. And they says, we believe that you killed her, you're blocking your mind, we're going to help you get it out, you know, your memories, and we don't care if it takes all night or the next day. What was your reaction? Yeah, I tried to get out many times, I locked the door, sometimes they will handcuff me to the chair. Did you ask for a lawyer at some point?

Yes. And they said, we'll get one when we're done. Ograd says Detective Devlin took the lead and fed him details of the crime. They just kept on taking pictures of Barbara Jean's body and putting it right in my face like so. And they said, remember, this is what you did. This is what you did. You killed a child. We're going to do everything we can to help you remember it. like so and say remember this is what you did this is what you did you killed a child we're

going to do everything you can to help you remember it and he said this is what you went this way and you want to hear now i need you to do exactly what i just showed you so i could say you did it and devlin was the one creating everything and you're going along with this i'm like out of it i'm like what's going on around here he says he repeated what devlin wanted him to say and then signed the confession because he was exhausted and afraid. By the time he was put in a holding cell, he'd already recanted.

But it was too late. Did you realize what had just happened? When I started getting, like, a little more conscious and all, I mean, yeah, I started like, what the hell did I just do? But remember, years later, prosecutors claimed Ograd had confessed again to that jailhouse snitch. What was it like to hear in court this story that you had somehow killed Barbara Jean to get close to her mom? I'm like, where the hell did I come up with this crap? But it was enough to convince the jury

that Ograd was guilty and deserved to die. Did you look at the jury? Yeah, and they're like, they're stone-faced. They're like, yeah, we want to just get rid of you. Ograd was shipped off to death row. 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 Philadelphia's City Paper that included

everything he'd learned about O'Grodd's case. A few months later, a team of attorneys led by Jim Rawlins took on that case pro bono. We had the benefit of a good bit of journalistic work that had been done by Tom Lowenstein. But to build a strong argument for an appeal, Rawlins and his team would need to do their own investigation. There was no physical evidence tying Mr. Ograd to this crime. And 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'd amassed thousands of pages undermining the prosecutor's case, including affidavits from snitch John Hall and his wife Phyllis laying out the scheme against Ograd. How hopeful were you at that moment?

We were hopeful because we believed there were more than sufficient grounds in that petition for some court to grant relief. But prosecutors vigorously defended their conviction. Years passed while Ograd remained on death row. As the convicted killer of a four-year-old girl, he says he was often beaten by both inmates and officers. By now, Tom had been hard at work on a book about Ograd's case, and it was published in 2017,

the same year that the city elected a new district attorney, Larry Krasner, a firebrand former civil rights lawyer. The office of the district attorney of the city elected a new district attorney, Larry Krasner, a firebrand former civil rights lawyer. Larry Krasner, Former Civil Rights Lawyer, District Attorney, Philadelphia Krasner immediately poured resources into a conviction integrity unit to investigate claims of innocence and hired Patricia Cummings to run it. Ograd's case was among the first her team reviewed. We started that endeavor by hiring experts that had no affiliation with the case. We just said, here, take a look at what

we've got. Tell us what Barbara Jean can tell us about how she died. According to the confession, Ograd hit the little girl over the head with a weight bar. At trial, prosecutors argued those blows were the cause of Barbara Jean's death. Did the science support that? The science did not support it. And she says the original prosecutors should have known it. We learned that the prosecution actually had evidence from an expert back at the time of trial that suggested that Barbara Jean did not die of the injuries to her head, which is what the jury heard. Instead, one of the experts said that the likely cause of death was asphyxia.

That was just the beginning. Her team determined the jury was given false, unreliable, and incomplete evidence. And even worse, prosecutors failed to disclose evidence favorable to Ograd, including a personality profile from their own experts, concluding Ograd is a person who is easily manipulated. Frankly, it shocked me and I think it shocked some other people as to some of the evidence that was in that file that was not turned over. When I spoke with Cummings in the spring of 2020, she told me it was time to act. So what are you asking the court to do? We are asking the court to vacate the conviction because we believe that the conviction as it stands is a gross miscarriage of

justice. It's an extraordinary admission rarely heard from a prosecutor. In a case where you say we got it wrong and not only did we get it wrong we think this person is innocent that ought to concern scare anybody. But would it be enough to free Walter Ograd? Coming up... I've found another case where another man is claiming that he is innocent. A detective under fire

and behind bars, Walter Ograd's life is in danger. I said, you're going to kill him before he gets out. You're visibly angry now. I was visibly angry then, and I'm still angry now.

Walter O'Grodd's road to death row began in an interrogation room with Detective Marty Devlin. Detective Marty Devlin was known in the department as the Golden Marty and Detective Perfect. But O'Grodd is far from the only one to allege that Detective Perfect didn't always play by the book. The first time I heard about Walter O'Grodd's case was when I was working on another wrongful conviction case involving the Philadelphia Police Department from the exact same time period. Amelia Green is a civil rights attorney. I thought, what Mr. O'Grodd's saying happened to him

is exactly what happened to my client. The year before O'Grodd's arrest, Green's client, Tony Wright, also signed a confession to murder and also insisted it was coerced. And just like Ograd, the person who transcribed that confession was Detective Marty Devlin.

He said that Mr. Wright's confession was a straight-up transcription of what Mr. Wright said, just as if it was being tape-recorded. DNA proved Wright was innocent, and in 2016, he was exonerated. He filed a civil lawsuit, which compelled Devlin to sit for a videotape deposition. And at that deposition, we put his story to the test. Are you ready, Mr. Devlin? Yes.

As another detective read Wright's confession, Devlin was asked to transcribe it, just like he said happened in the interrogation room. Went over to Miss Talley's house on 9th Street. Way too fast. Her front door. Way too fast. He could barely keep up.

He couldn't keep pace at all. And at a certain point, he just gave up. I like just barged into her house. It's way too fast. It's just way too fast. It just corroborates that the confession was completely fabricated. Devlin declined our request for an interview. In 2018, Tony Wright settled with the city, which admitted no wrongdoing for nearly $10 million. I kept looking into Devlin and I found another case from the exact same time period where another

man is claiming that he is innocent. In fact, Devlin worked several other cases along with other detectives and prosecutors where false statements sent innocent people to prison, convictions that have been overturned. And on August 13th, 2021, Marty Devlin and two other former homicide detectives were indicted by a Philadelphia grand jury accused of making their own false statements in the Tony Wright case. Martin Devlin is charged with two counts of perjury and two counts of false swearing for false testimony. In a statement, Devlin's attorney said he is innocent and that Devlin has spent 50 years fighting for justice for victims of crime. You're looking through a keyhole at a much bigger picture. This is a slice of a much bigger problem. District Attorney Larry Krasner says the Tony Wright case is hardly unique,

that a culture of corruption has existed for decades. In just three years, his conviction integrity unit has helped free 27 people, all victims of official misconduct. His office is investigating dozens of other cases. You're looking at the actions of the prosecutor or the police? Both. The biggest part of this problem is not just innocent mistakes. The biggest part of this problem is the abuse of power.

In February 2020, Krasner's office, together with defense attorneys, did something rarely seen. They filed a joint motion asking the court to vacate Ograd's conviction. It was unbelievable. They came up with 160 stipulations with the defense of things that had gone wrong. For nearly 30 years, Sharon Fahey hated Ograd. But after meeting with prosecutors from the Conviction Integrity Unit, she became furious with the people who put him away and heart sick for the man she now believes is innocent. This is a man you wanted to die. And now you're saying you want him free.

Yes. Once I had all the facts, I in my heart believe that he is the wrong man. And he did not do this. Sharon and John are now divorced, in large part because of the stress and sadness of Barbara Jean's murder. What do you make of the fact that the prosecutor, the defense, and Sharon all believe that Walter Ograd is innocent? Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't. I don't know. But Sharon took it upon herself to write a letter to the judge, asking for Ograd's release.

I didn't want him to die behind bars. But suddenly, that was a real possibility. COVID-19 was rapidly spreading inside the prison, and Ograd began showing symptoms. Jim Rollins filed an emergency motion demanding Ogrod be taken to an outside hospital. A judge granted it, but the prison defied the order. Rollins called the facility livid. I said, you've got to understand, this guy is getting out, and you're going to kill him before he gets out. Get him treated. You're visibly angry now.

I was visibly angry then and I'm still angry now. As the weeks passed, Ogron began to recover and called me from prison. On June 5th, 2020, after 28 years behind bars, Walter Ograd finally had his day in court. After an extraordinary effort by the DA's office, his legal team, and Tom Lowenstein, he heard the words he'd 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, picture me, because is this really happening? He's really getting out today. I think I'm like in a state of shock.

I'm so hyped up now. I mean, I can feel the pulse in my heart. Everything's racing right now. And it's been like that since I walked out. So it's going to take a while. What do you hope for him now? I just want him to be happy. Walter Ograd filed a civil suit against the city of Philadelphia

and several police officers, including Detective Devlin. In 2023, the party settled for a total of $9.1 million, though the city did not admit to any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, police have reopened the investigation into Barbara Jean's murder. Tom Lowenstein has investigated the little girl's case longer than anyone. It's a journey he's grateful he took. When Walt got out on June 5th, there is that sense of my dad saying, that notion of being useful and doing something useful in life. And I definitely, that day, felt useful.

That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.