EP305: The Girl in the Television Box

In the summer of 1988, Philadelphia was shaken by the murder of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn, a little girl whose disappearance would become one of the city's most haunting mysteries. For years, detectives searched for the person responsible, following leads through the streets of Kensington and questioning countless people who might have known something about what happened that July afternoon. Nearly six years later, their investigation led them to Walter Ogrod, a quiet Philadelphia man whose name would become permanently intertwined with Barbara's death. What followed was a case filled with disturbing evidence, a controversial confession, competing versions of what happened, and a courtroom battle that would stretch across decades. At its center was a question that seemed, at first, to have a simple answer—but would prove anything but simple: What really happened to Barbara Jean Horn?SOURCES: 1) Supreme Court of PA decisions2) U.S. Supreme Court decisions3) Commonwealth of PA District Attorney's Office Documents4) NBC10 Philadelphia, "Who Killed Barbara Jean?"5) Philadelphia Inquirer Articles6) "The Trials of Walter Ogrod" by Thomas Lowenstein