Video and unused bullet prove man’s guilt in Indiana girls’ murders, prosecutor says

DELPHI, Ind. — A man accused of killing two teenage girls in a small Indiana community forced them off a hiking trail before slitting their throats, a prosecutor said Friday, telling jurors the evidence included images and audio recordings recorded on a victim’s phone.

“The last thing the girls saw was Richard Allen’s face,” said Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland.

And they heard his “scary words: ‘Girls, down the hill,'” McLeland said. “Out of fear, the girls obeyed. »

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 this town of 3,000, where people line up in the cool of the morning to get a place in the courtroom.

Allen, a local pharmacy technician, was arrested in 2022, five years after the deaths of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German, a case that irked police and inspired much speculation from fans of true crime. The inordinate media attention given to the small community prompted a specially appointed judge to choose jurors in Fort Wayne, nearly 100 miles away.

They will be sequestered for what could be a month-long trial, banned from watching the news and allowed limited use of their phones to call loved ones, under the supervision of bailiffs.

In his opening statement, McLeland described the crime scene: a rugged, wooded area near the Monon High Bridge Trail, just outside the town of Delphi in Carroll County.

He said an unused bullet discovered at the scene came from a gun belonging to Allen, and that its grainy image and voice were captured by Libby on her phone. A video showed a man walking behind her on the abandoned railway bridge.

He also told jurors they would hear incriminating statements Allen allegedly made to correctional officers, inmates, law enforcement and even his wife.

“They had details that only the killer could know,” the prosecutor said. “Richard Allen is the man on deck.”

Allen sometimes shook his head as McLeland spoke, and his wife, sitting in the gallery, did the same when the prosecutor said her husband had confessed to him.

In turn, defense attorney Andrew Baldwin told the jury there were many reasonable doubts.

He said Allen’s statements were made under the stress of being in a small cell under constant surveillance after his arrest. Baldwin noted that Allen mentioned shooting the girls in the back, even though that was not how they died.

And he said police believe a single person could not have committed the homicides.

“Richard Allen is innocent,” Baldwin told the jury. “He is really innocent.”

The teens were found dead on Feb. 14, 2017. They had gone missing a day earlier while hiking the trail. Within days, police released the files found on Libby’s cell phone. Investigators also released a sketch of a suspect in July 2017 and another in April 2019, as well as video from the bridge.

After several years went by without a suspect identified, investigators said they went back and reviewed previous information.

Investigators found that Allen was interviewed in 2017. He told an officer that he was walking on the trail the day Abby and Libby disappeared and saw three “women” on a bridge called Freedom Bridge , but did not speak to them, according to an affidavit.

In previous hearings, Allen’s lawyers had sought to argue that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a Norse pagan religion and a white nationalist group known as Odinists.

Judge Fran Gull bans news media 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 the cameras of several journalists outside the building Friday morning before the court proceedings began, including two cameras from an Associated Press photographer.