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

Journalist Lowenstein (founder, New Orleans Journalism Project), whose own father was murdered when the author was a child, originally intended this unique book that looks at false confessions to be about the death penalty from the viewpoint of all involved on both sides. The case he chose was the murder of a four-year-old girl who went missing one summer afternoon in 1988 from her own neighborhood in Philadelphia. Later that same day, her dead body was recovered nearby. The police investigated, yet it was years later, in 1992, that a suspect named Walter Ogrod was arrested and put on trial. What follows is a quagmire of a drawn-out case that ends up before a jury not once but twice, after an initial mistrial. Ogrod, the suspect, ultimately gets convicted and is still in jail, but the writer makes the argument that this is a case of a false confession and poor police work.