Indiana man to learn his sentence following conviction in 2017 killings of 2 teenage girls

[December 20, 2024]  DELPHI, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana man convicted in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls who vanished during a winter hike will face up to 130 years in prison when he's sentenced Friday in the case that's long cast a shadow over the teens' small hometown of Delphi.

After a weekslong trial, Richard Allen was convicted on Nov. 11 in the killings of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14. A jury found him guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping.

Allen faces between 45 years and 130 years in prison for the killings of the Delphi teens, known as Abby and Libby. He will be sentenced on two of the four murder counts.

Allen, 52, also lived in Delphi. When he was arrested in October 2022, more than five years after the February 2017 killings, he was employed as a pharmacy technician at a pharmacy only blocks from the county courthouse where he later stood trial.

Allen's trial came after repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of his public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.

The case, which included tantalizing evidence, has long drawn outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts.

Allen will be sentenced Friday by the special judge who oversaw the case, Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gull. Relatives of German and Williams may address the court during the hearing, which Gull has scheduled to run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Allen's attorneys said in a sentencing memorandum that even in “the unlikely scenario” that Gull sentences their client to 45 years on each of two murder counts, and orders those sentences served concurrently, their client's minimum possible 45-year sentence with good time credit would “amount to 33.75 actual years in prison.”

“Richard Allen is likely facing the rest of his life in prison. Even on his best day at sentencing Richard will be 85 years old upon his release,” they wrote.

Gull and the jurors came from northeastern Indiana’s Allen County. The jury's seven women and five men were sequestered throughout the trial, which began Oct. 18 in the Carroll County seat of Delphi, the girls’ hometown of about 3,000 residents some 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis.

A relative dropped the teens off at a hiking trail just outside Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017. The eighth graders didn't arrive at the agreed pickup location and were reported missing that evening. Their bodies were found the next day with their throats cut in a wooded area near an abandoned railroad trestle they had crossed.

Officers escort Richard Allen out of the Carroll County Courthouse following a hearing, Nov. 22, 2022, in Delphi, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)

In his closing arguments, Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors that Allen, armed with a gun, forced the youths off the hiking trail and had planned to rape them before a passing van made him change his plans and he cut their throats. McLeland said an unspent bullet found between the teens’ bodies “had been cycled through” Allen’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun.

An Indiana State Police firearms expert told the jury her analysis tied the round to Allen’s handgun.

McLeland said Allen was the man seen following the teens across the Monon High Bridge in a grainy cellphone video German had recorded. And he said it was Allen’s voice that could be heard on that video telling the teens, “ Down the hill ″ after they crossed the bridge.

“Richard Allen is Bridge Guy,” McLeland told jurors. “He kidnapped them and later murdered them.”

McLeland also noted that Allen had repeatedly confessed to the killings — in person, on the phone and in writing. In one of the recordings he replayed for the jury, Allen could be heard telling his wife, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”

Allen’s defense argued that his confessions were unreliable because he was facing a severe mental health crisis while under the pressure and stress of being locked up in isolation, watched 24 hours a day and taunted by people incarcerated with him. A psychiatrist called by the defense testified that months in solitary confinement could make a person delirious and psychotic.

Defense attorney Bradley Rozzi said in his closing arguments that Allen was innocent. He said no witness explicitly identified Allen as the man seen on the hiking trail or the bridge the afternoon the girls went missing. He also said no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence links Allen to the murder scene.

“He had every chance to run, but he did not because he didn’t do it,” Rozzi told the jury.

Allen’s lawyers had sought to argue during the trial that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a white nationalist group known as the Odinists who follow a pagan Norse religion. The judge, however, ruled against that, saying the defense “failed to produce admissible evidence” of such a connection.

Gull's long-running gag order in the case is expected to be lifted after Allen is sentenced, Indiana State Police spokesperson Capt. Ron Galaviz said Wednesday. Law enforcement, prosecutors and relatives of the teens plan to speak at a news conference shortly after Friday’s hearing ends.

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