Video and an unused bullet prove man's guilt in Indiana girls' killings,
prosecutor says
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[October 19, 2024]
By RICK CALLAHAN
DELPHI, Ind. (AP) — A man charged with killing two teenage girls in a
small Indiana community forced them off a hiking trail before cutting
their throats, a prosecutor said Friday, telling jurors that the
evidence includes an unused bullet and video recorded on the eldest
girl’s phone.
“The last thing the girls saw was Richard Allen's face,” Carroll County
prosecutor Nicholas McLeland said.
And they heard his “chilling words: ‘Girls, down the hill,’" while Allen
was wielding a gun, McLeland said. “Out of fear the girls complied.”
Richard Allen, 52, is charged with two counts of murder as well as two
additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit
kidnapping. The trial is a spectacle in Delphi, a town of 3,000, with
people lining up in the morning chill to secure a seat in the courtroom.
Allen, a pharmacy technician, was arrested in October 2022, more than
five years after the deaths of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and
14-year-old Liberty German, a case that had vexed police and inspired
much speculation by true-crime enthusiasts. The outsized media attention
in the small community prompted a specially appointed judge to pick
jurors in Fort Wayne, nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) away.
They’ll be sequestered for what could be a monthlong trial, banned from
watching the news and allowed only limited use of their phones to call
relatives while monitored.
In his opening statement, McLeland described the crime scene: a rugged,
wooded area near the Monon High Bridge Trail, just outside Delphi, the
Carroll County seat.
He said an unused bullet discovered at the “gruesome” scene between the
girls' bodies came from a gun that belonged to Allen, and that his
grainy image and voice were captured by German on her phone.
A short video released in 2019 that also came from German's phone showed
a suspect walking on Monon High Bridge. McLeland said that man was
Allen.
Investigators searched Allen’s home in 2022 and seized a .40-caliber
pistol. Prosecutors disclosed in court documents released several weeks
after his arrest that testing determined that an unspent bullet found
between Williams and German “had been cycled through” Allen’s pistol.
McLeland told jurors that in addition to the bullet evidence, they would
also hear incriminating statements Allen made to correctional officers,
inmates, law enforcement, and even his wife.
“They had details that only the killer would know," the prosecutor said.
“Richard Allen is the man on the bridge.”
Allen shook his head at times while McLeland spoke, and his wife, seated
in the gallery, did the same when the prosecutor said her husband had
confessed to her.
Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin told the jury there’s plenty of
reasonable doubt.
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Spectators line up to enter the Carroll County Courthouse for the
trail of Richard Allen, accused of the slayings of two teenage girls
in 2017, is set to begin in Delphi, Ind., Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (AP
Photo/Michael Conroy)
He said Allen's statements were made under the stress of being in a
tiny cell while under constant watch following his arrest. Baldwin
noted that Allen mentioned shooting the girls in the back, though
that wasn't how they died.
He said some police officers had believed that one person could not
have committed the homicides alone.
“Richard Allen is innocent," Baldwin told the jury. "He is truly
innocent.”
The teens, known as Abby and Libby, were found dead Feb. 14, 2017.
They went missing a day earlier while hiking the trail on a mild
winter's day off school. Within days, police released files found on
German's cellphone. Investigators also released one sketch of a
suspect in July 2017 and another in April 2019, along with the
bridge video.
After more years passed without a suspect identified, investigators
said they went back and reviewed prior tips.
Investigators found that Allen had been interviewed in 2017. He told
an officer he had been walking on the trail the day Williams and
German went missing and had seen three “females” at a bridge called
the Freedom Bridge but did not speak to them, according to an
affidavit.
Allen also told the officer that as he walked from that bridge to
the Monon High Bridge he did not see anyone but was distracted,
“watching a stock ticker on his phone as he walked.”
Police interviewed Allen again Oct. 13, 2022, when he said he had
seen three “juvenile girls” during his walk in 2017. Investigators
searched his home within days, a search the led to the discovery of
the .40-caliber pistol.
At earlier hearings, Allen’s attorneys had sought to argue that the
girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a pagan Norse
religion and white nationalist group known as the Odinists.
Several relatives of the girls testified Friday afternoon, including
German's grandmother, Becky Patty, who told jurors the two friends
were so close that Williams once joined their family on a trip to
Florida. She choked up as she recalled her last conversation with
her granddaughter on the morning the girls left for their hiking
trip to the Monon High Bridge, dropped off there by German's older
sister, Kelsi.
Patty said she told her granddaughter to dress warmly for their
excursion despite the mild weather.
“The last thing she said to me was, 'Grandma, we'll be OK,'” Patty
said.
News media are barred by Judge Fran Gull from reporting directly
from the courtroom with electronic devices. The judge also set
strict rules for photo or video coverage outside the courthouse.
Police confiscated cameras from several journalists outside the
building on Friday morning before court proceedings began, including
2 cameras from a photographer with The Associated Press.
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