Thank you, Brian, for the tip on the Portage Co. newspapers being available via Newspapers.com. I have a Newspapers.com subscription and did do a Search there, only finding the 26 Apr 1860 The Motor (Appleton, Wis.) newspaper account. I'll check Newspapers.com again.

John Ogden's father, Abram H. Ogden, who was living in/at Madison, Dane Co. at the time, was a local court magistrate (among other things) and one of his brothers, Caleb Smith Ogden, Waupaca Co., was an attorney by that time. I suspect the two of them had something to do with raising the legal issues of the actual accused arsonist, Sidney Wright, vanishing and not being legally charged or found guilty of the alleged arson, thereby securing the pardon and release of John Ogden from prison.

I was concerned that John Ogden had similar traits of his youngest brother, Jesse L. Ogden, who apparently was an accused mule thief in 1860 in what was then Kansas Territory near Denver (present-day Colorado.) According to the newspaper report I found on him and 2 buddies stealing mules (I guess that is a step below horse thieving), he was never caught and never officially charged with mule theft, however. Jesse apparently went on to a life of crime, though, moving on to California. From a California newspaper notice, he had a perjury conviction against him there, was sentenced to 3 years in prison for it, and was eventually pardoned about Oct 1866, because of good behavior while imprisoned. According to California newspaper accounts, in 1867 he headed up "The Ogden Highway Gang", a bunch of ne'er do wells and thieves who apparently preyed upon miners of Mexican and Chinese ancestry. (Apparently, law enforcement authorities in the area didn't do much if transgressions were done against Mexicans and Chinese . . . sigh.) I found a newspaper account of one of his gang members shooting him to death 24 Apr 1867 near Coulterville, Mariposa County, California.

From what more I could find on John Ogden (b. 1824, New York) he went on to live a normal life, settling in Colorado for a while. From census records, it looks like he and his wife Melissa/Malissa moved to Arkansas for a while, when they were in their 70s, to live with and care for an orphaned niece of Mellissa's.