DELPHI, Ind. — A jury within the small Indiana city of Delphi convicted a person of homicide on Monday within the 2017 killings of two teenage ladies who vanished throughout a day hike.
Deliberations stretched right into a fourth day earlier than jurors discovered Richard Allen responsible within the killings of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German. The previous drugstore employee was convicted of two counts of homicide and two extra counts of homicide whereas committing or making an attempt to commit kidnapping. Allen, 52, might now withstand 130 years in jail.
The 12 jurors together with alternates had been sequestered all through the trial, which started Oct. 18 within the ladies’ hometown of Delphi, a small northwest Indiana metropolis the place Allen additionally lived and labored as a pharmacy technician.
The seven ladies and 5 males started deliberations Thursday afternoon after listening to closing arguments within the weekslong homicide trial.
A particular choose oversaw the case. Superior Court docket Decide Fran Gull, together with the jurors, got here from northeastern Indiana’s Allen County.
The case has drawn outsized consideration from true-crime fans, with repeated delays, a leak of proof, the withdrawal of Allen’s public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court docket. It has additionally been the topic of a gag order.
Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland advised jurors in his closing arguments that Allen is the person seen following the kids in a grainy cellphone video recorded by one of many ladies, often known as Abby and Libby, as they crossed an deserted railroad trestle known as the Monon Excessive Bridge.
“Richard Allen is Bridge Man,” McLeland advised jurors. “He kidnapped them and later murdered them.”
McLeland additionally stated it was Allen’s voice that was captured on German’s cellphone video telling the kids, “ Down the hill ″ after that they had crossed the bridge simply earlier than vanishing on Feb. 13, 2017. Their our bodies had been discovered the subsequent day, their throats minimize, in a wooded space a couple of quarter-mile (lower than half a kilometer) from that bridge.
An investigator testified throughout trial that Allen advised him and one other officer that on the day the kids vanished he was sporting a blue or black Carhartt jacket, denims and a beanie — clothes that’s much like the particular person seen in German’s cellphone video.
McLeland recapped proof in his closing that an unspent bullet discovered between the kids’ our bodies “had been cycled by means of” Allen’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun. An Indiana State Police firearms knowledgeable advised the jury her evaluation tied the spherical to Allen’s handgun.
However a firearms knowledgeable known as by the protection questioned the state police bullet evaluation, and lawyer Bradley Rozzi dismissed it in his closing arguments as a “magic bullet,” saying investigators had made an “apples to oranges” comparability of the unspent spherical to 1 fired from Allen’s gun.
Allen was arrested in October 2022. He grew to become a suspect after a retired state authorities employee who had volunteered to assist police with the investigation discovered paperwork in September 2022 displaying that Allen had contacted authorities two days after German and Williams’ our bodies had been discovered. That paperwork indicated that Allen had advised an officer he had been on the mountain climbing path the afternoon the women went lacking, in accordance with testimony.
McLeland famous in his closing that Allen had repeatedly confessed to the killings — in particular person, on the cellphone and in writing. In one of many recordings he replayed for the jury, Allen could possibly be heard telling his spouse, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”
Allen’s protection argued that Allen’s confessions are unreliable as a result of he was dealing with a extreme psychological well being disaster whereas beneath the strain and stress of being locked up in isolation, watched 24 hours a day and taunted by folks incarcerated with him. The protection known as witnesses, together with a psychiatrist who testified that months in solitary confinement might trigger an individual to turn out to be delirious and psychotic.
Prosecutors stated Allen’s incriminating statements contained info solely the killer might have identified. McLeland pointed to notes written by Allen’s psychologist on the Westville Correctional Facility that Allen advised her throughout one in every of their periods that he had deliberate to rape the kids however didn’t accomplish that after he noticed a van touring close by.
A state trooper testified that Allen’s van comment corroborated an announcement by a person whose driveway passes beneath the Monon Excessive Bridge and who stated he was driving house from work in his van round that point.
That van, McLeland advised jurors in his closing, was a element “solely the killer would know.”
Allen’s jail psychologist, Dr. Monica Wala, testified that he started confessing to killing the women in early 2023 throughout his periods together with her. She stated he supplied particulars of the crime in a number of the confessions, together with telling her he slashed the women’ throats and put tree branches over their our bodies.
Throughout cross-examination, Wala acknowledged that she had adopted Allen’s case with curiosity throughout her private time even whereas she was treating him and that she was a fan of the true-crime style.
Rozzi stated in his closing arguments that Allen is harmless. He stated no witness explicitly recognized Allen as the person seen on the mountain climbing path or the bridge the afternoon the women went lacking. And he stated no fingerprint, DNA or forensic proof hyperlinks Allen to the homicide scene.
And for greater than 5 years after the kids had been killed, Allen nonetheless lived in Delphi whereas working at an area pharmacy.
“He had each probability to run, however he didn’t as a result of he didn’t do it,” Rozzi advised the jurors.
Initially Revealed:
