photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Carrody Buchhorn, right, appears with her attorneys, Bill Skepnek, left, and Quentin Templeton, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

What happened to Oliver Ortiz’s heart after he died at a Eudora day care nearly a decade ago?

The answer to that question — especially as informed by a document that recently came to light — could play a significant role in the pending wrongful conviction action brought by the woman who was accused of killing him.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Kaylen Ortiz, on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025, describes her son Oliver “Ollie” Ortiz as he appeared in a photo taken the night before he died at a Eudora day care.

Oliver’s mother, Kaylen Ortiz, testified last fall that her 9-month-old son’s heart valves were donated for transplantation. She believes that Oliver died of abuse at the hands of day care worker Carrody Buchhorn and rejects the finding by forensic pathologist Jane Turner that a congenital heart defect — not violence — ultimately killed her baby.

If his heart had been defective, if he had infection or sepsis as Turner had suggested, his valves would not have been accepted for donation by the Midwest Transplant Network, Ortiz testified at the wrongful conviction trial.

The valves would have been rejected, the state reiterated to the court in a recent filing.

In fact, though, the valves were rejected, according to Buchhorn’s attorneys, Bill Skepnek and Quentin Templeton.

“Ms. Buchhorn has come into possession of a document evidencing that this statement [that the valves were accepted] is false,” they wrote in a new motion. They don’t specify what the document is, noting that it is subject to a protective order in federal court, where, in a separate case, Buchhorn is suing Douglas County for violating her civil rights.

However, in their motion opposing the protective order in the federal case, Buchhorn’s attorneys refer to multiple email chains between Midwest Transplant Network and LifeNet Health, which presumably indicate that the valves were rejected for donation. The attorneys argue that the document in question shouldn’t be sealed because it does not contain confidential medical information but rather discusses widely publicized subject matter — the repeated claims that Oliver’s heart valves were accepted for donation and transplanted.

Ortiz, who was employed as a licensed practical nurse at LMH health when Oliver died on Sept. 29, 2016, later became the donation services coordinator for the Midwest Transplant Network.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Chief Judge James McCabria presides over Carrody Buchhorn’s wrongful conviction trial Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

Douglas County District Judge James McCabria heard several days of evidence last fall during a trial in which Buchhorn attempted to prove her innocence. He has yet to render a verdict in the civil matter. On Monday he held a status conference with the parties in which they seemed to be referring to the recent document but did not openly discuss its contents.

Templeton also renewed a push for the court to disregard the testimony of pediatrician Terra Frazier, who testified last fall that she believed abuse had led to Oliver’s death. Buchhorn’s attorneys have argued that Frazier, unlike Turner the forensic pathologist, is not qualified to testify about a cause of death. Templeton on Monday told McCabria, who had allowed Frazier to testify as an expert, that another Kansas judge, Ben Sexton, hearing a similar case, said Frazier was “unimpressive,” had “grossly mischaracterized” evidence and had “rushed to judgment.”

McCabria set another status conference for the matter on April 7.

As the Journal-World has reported, a jury convicted Buchhorn of murdering Oliver, but her conviction was overturned based on ineffective assistance of counsel. The appellate court said that Buchhorn’s original trial attorneys hadn’t done enough to counter Coroner Erik Mitchell’s controversial explanation of the cause of death as “depolarization.” The Kansas Supreme Court, via a 3-3 tie, affirmed the reversal.

Former Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez vowed to retry Buchhorn but dropped the prosecution after Turner’s report came out saying that Oliver had died of natural causes. Valdez testified at Buchhorn’s wrongful conviction trial that she nevertheless strongly believed in Buchhorn’s guilt.

Turner, who did not examine Oliver’s body but reviewed materials supplied to her by the DA’s Office, testified that she found clear evidence that Oliver had suffered from patent foramen ovale (PFO), which is a hole in the wall between the two upper chambers of the heart, which normally closes after birth. The PFO combined with infections, she said, resulted in blood clots forming and traveling from the right side of his heart to the left side and blocking blood flow from the coronary artery, likely causing a heart attack and possibly a stroke.

Mitchell, the coroner, had testified at Buchhorn’s criminal trial years ago that traumatic abuse had caused “depolarization” of neurons in Oliver’s brain — a way of explaining a death when there’s no external evidence of head trauma. First responders had said they found no injuries on Oliver’s head.

Buchhorn’s attorneys have claimed that although Frazier didn’t use the word “depolarization,” her findings are no different from those of Mitchell, who they noted had a documented history of unethical conduct in New York before moving to Kansas.

Turner testified last fall that Mitchell could not truthfully describe Oliver’s heart, as he purported to do in the autopsy report, because he had removed it and sent it to a cardiac pathologist before he performed the autopsy. Mitchell’s report described the foramen ovale in Oliver’s heart as closed, which Turner said could not be reconciled with the finding of the heart expert, who found otherwise.

Turner also said that microbiology lab reports indicated that Oliver had suffered from an infection and that the lab had alerted Mitchell to the fact because such a finding is considered a “critical result” requiring notification. Mitchell, however, did not include the infection evidence in his autopsy report. Nor did he include the evidence the cardiac pathologist found regarding the PFO and ischemic damage to the heart, which results from lack of blood flow.

If Buchhorn wins her lawsuit, she will be entitled to around $400,000, or $65,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment. Her petition states that she was on house arrest or in the Douglas County Jail or the Topeka Correctional Facility for a total of 2,072 days, or more than 5.5 years. She has said her main goal with the lawsuit, though, is to acquire a certificate of innocence.

“It’s been 9 years,” she said at the beginning of her wrongful conviction trial. “I did not do anything to Ollie.”

In the federal lawsuit, Buchhorn is seeking compensatory as well as punitive damages for the “devastating injuries” suffered by her and her family, though no amount is mentioned. The suit says that Buchhorn suffered physical pain and anguish, humiliation, the loss of family contact, severe psychological damage, financial loss, other harms and, most importantly, the loss of her freedom.

Previous reporting:

Woman accused in 2016 day care death aims to prove her innocence as wrongful conviction trial gets underway.

Pathologist whose report led to Valdez dropping murder case testifies that baby died of natural causes, not abuse

‘I am innocent,’ woman accused of killing baby 9 years ago declares to packed courtroom

Mother of baby who died at day care does not believe woman accused of murder was wrongfully convicted

Child abuse pediatrician says baby died from injuries, not natural causes; detective grilled over investigation

Doctor claiming baby died from abuse spends 6 hours defending her findings and expertise on cross-examination

Former DA says she always believed day care worker murdered baby; ‘natural causes’ report didn’t change her mind