Delphi murders: Man found guilty of murdering two girls in 2017

DELPHI, Ind. (AP) — A former drugstore worker in the small Indiana town of Delphi was found guilty of murder Monday 2017 murders of two teenage girls who disappeared during an afternoon hike.

The jury convicted Richard Allen of two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder for committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the killings of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German.

Reporters in the courtroom said Allen, 52, showed no reaction to the verdict, but instead looked back at his family. Allen is scheduled to be sentenced on December 20th. He faces up to 130 years in prison.

The twelve jurors and their alternates were sequestered throughout the trial, which began on October 18th in the girls’ hometown of Delphi, a small town in northwest Indiana where Allen also lived and worked.

The seven women and five men began deliberations on Thursday Afternoon after hearing closing arguments in the week-long murder trial.

A special judge supervised the case. Superior Court Judge Fran Gull and the jury came from Allen County in northeast Indiana.

Reports that the jury had reached a verdict spread, drawing a crowd to the courthouse. Minutes later, a handful of people streamed outside and people on the sidewalk began cheering.

The case has attracted a lot of attention from true crime lovers due to repeated delays, leakage of evidence, etc Withdrawal of Allen’s public defenders and theirs Reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court. It was that too Subject to a silence order.

Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors in his closing argument that Allen was the man who followed the teens in a grainy cellphone video recorded by one of the girls, known as Abby and Libby, as they left one Railroad trestle called Monon High Bridge.

“Richard Allen is a bridge guy,” McLeland told the jury. “He kidnapped her and later murdered her.”

McLeland also said that it was Allen’s voice that was captured on German’s cellphone video, in which he told the teens, ” Down the hill “ after crossing the bridge on February 13, 2017, shortly before their disappearance. Their bodies were found the next day, with their throats slit, in a wooded area about a quarter mile (less than half a kilometer) from that bridge.

An investigator testified during the trial that Allen told him and another officer that on the day the teen disappeared he was wearing a blue or black Carhartt jacket, jeans and a hat – clothing that resembled the person seen in German’s cell phone video could be seen.

In his closing, McLeland summarized the evidence that an unspent bullet was found between the teenagers’ bodies “was driven through” Allen’s Sig Sauer .40 caliber handgun. An Indiana State Police firearms expert told the jury that her analysis linked the cartridge to Allen’s handgun.

But a firearms expert called by the defense questioned the state police’s analysis of the bullets, and attorney Bradley Rozzi dismissed them as a “silver bullet” in his closing argument, saying investigators compared the unspent cartridge to a cartridge fired from Allen’s gun.

Allen was arrested in October 2022. He became a suspect after a retired state government employee who had volunteered to help police with the investigation found documents in September 2022 showing that Allen had died two days after the bodies of German and Williams were found had contacted the authorities. Those documents showed that Allen told an officer that he had been on the trail the afternoon the girls went missing, according to a witness statement.

McLeland concluded by noting that Allen had repeatedly confessed to the murders – in person, on the telephone and in writing. In one of the recordings he played for the jury, Allen was heard telling his wife: “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”

Allen’s defense argued that Allen’s confessions were unreliable because he was in a serious mental health crisis while under the pressure and stress of being held in isolation, watched 24 hours a day and taunted by those imprisoned with him. The defense called witnesses, including a psychiatrist who testified that months in solitary confinement could cause a person to become insane and psychotic.

Prosecutors said Allen’s incriminating statements contained information that only the killer could have known. McLeland pointed to notes from Allen’s psychologist at Westville Correctional Facility that Allen had told her during one of their sessions that he had planned to rape the teens but did not do so after he saw a van driving nearby.

A state trooper testified that Allen’s van remark corroborated the statement of a man whose driveway runs under the Monon High Bridge who said he was driving home from work in his van at the time.

McLeland concluded by telling the jury that this van was a detail “only the murderer would know.”

Allen’s prison psychologist, Dr. Monica Wala, testified that in early 2023, during his sessions with her, he began confessing to killing the girls. She said he gave details of the crime in several confessions, telling her, among other things, that he slit the girls’ throats and placed tree branches over their bodies.

Under cross-examination, Wala admitted that she had followed Allen’s case with interest in her free time, including while she was treating him, and that she was a fan of the true crime genre.

Rozzi said in his closing argument that Allen was innocent. He said no witness specifically identified Allen as the man seen on the trail or bridge the afternoon the girls went missing. And he said no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence linked Allen to the crime scene.

And more than five years after the teens’ murders, Allen was still living in Delphi while working at a local pharmacy.

“He had every chance to run, but he didn’t because he didn’t,” Rozzi told jurors.