Indiana State Police (ISP) records about Jeffrey Wogenstahl’s case were made available to him only weeks before his evidentiary hearing last year: it took a court order for them to be produced. As with records from other agencies involved in Jeff’s case, coercion was needed for Jeff to gain access to what should rightfully have been available to him 32 years ago.*

ISP records show that witness Kathy Roth told police she was “unable to observe” the face of a man she saw at the crime scene on the night of Amber’s disappearance. If Jeff’s defense had known this, they would have highlighted the impossibility that this witness could have reliably identified the man she saw from a police line-up.

Another witness, Brian Noel, told ISP initially that the man he saw at the side of the road near where the body was found had a “scraggly beard”; yet this description later evolved into a “beard + mustache (not a full beard)”, then, at trial, into facial hair that he first described as “three or four days’ growth” and later as “like two or three days’ growth”. Again, if Jeff’s defense had known about the earlier descriptions, they could have pointed out that, according to a State witness, Jeff was clean-shaven on the night in question.

ISP records also include impeaching information about the car seen near the murder scene: the descriptions given by witnesses to the police do not match Jeff’s car.

The Indiana records even contain further information about Eric Horn: “Eric looks into the bedroom, but does not check each child individually, and closes the door.”  Yet at the trial Eric said that he saw two of the children, but “Amber wasn’t there”. Clearly this huge discrepancy could have been highlighted by the defense if the records had been made available to them.

The ISP documents add to the shamefully long list of records from other agencies that were suppressed by the State, thus contributing to the overwhelming unfairness of Jeff’s trial. Judge Christian Jenkins is soon to decide whether to grant Jeff a new trial. Now is surely the time to end this appalling injustice.

*State of Ohio, Plaintiff, v. Jeffrey A.Wogenstahl, Defendant. B926287. Post Hearing Brief. In the Court of Common Pleas Hamilton County, Ohio. January 3, 2025. Pp.30-31 (Pp. 34-35 of pdf) and pp. 11-13 (Pp. 15-17 of pdf)