Family friend recalls horrific discovery at Delphi double murder trial: ‘Thought they were mannequins’

Jurors in Delphi, Indiana, have heard key testimony about when and where the bodies of Liberty German and Abigail Williams were found by the man who discovered them.

Local man Patrick ‘Pat’ Brown found the girls’ bodies around noon on Tuesday, February 14, 2017, after joining the community’s search efforts earlier that day.

On Saturday morning he struggled to keep his composure as he told the court: ‘I looked and at first I thought they were mannequins. Then I said, ‘We found them. Please call the police.”

The details of the timing and location of Brown’s grim discovery are crucial to both sides’ cases, and Richard Allen’s innocence or guilt could depend on which version the jurors believe.

Allen has been charged with the murders of Libby and Abby, whose bodies were found near the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi.

Libby, 14, and Abby, 13, went missing on Monday afternoon, February 13, 2017, but their bodies were not found until the next day.

Richard Allen (pictured) has been charged with the murders of Libby and Abby, whose bodies were found near the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi

In his opening statement for the defense, Allen’s lead attorney Andrew Baldwin emphasized that this is because the girls were not immediately killed on the spot, but were abducted and held elsewhere and returned to the forest area the next day, where they were brutally murdered.

It’s a timeline that, if believed, would blow the prosecution out of the water, as it covers a period of time in which Allen’s movements are accounted for.

Today, prosecutor Nick McLeland moved to close the door on Baldwin’s claims and pushed back on the defense’s suggestion that the area where the girls were found had already been thoroughly searched the day before.

The jury heard that initial search efforts were in fact focused on an area downstream of the Monon High Bridge, where Libby and Abby were walking.

Carroll County Investigator Steve Mullin, who was Delphi police chief at the time of the murders, explained that police believed the teens had been in an accident and may have fallen off the bridge, in which case they would have fallen . washed downstream.

He said: ‘At that point I still believed they would return home. I just couldn’t imagine anyone doing any harm to them.”

Brown struggled to keep his composure as he told the court: “I looked and at first I thought they were mannequins. Then I said, ‘We found them. Please call the police.’” The girls were found near the bridge (photo)

In fact, the court was told, it was the discovery of items belonging to Libby, caught by the roots in Deer Creek upstream of the bridge on Tuesday morning, that led to a further search of the densely wooded area in which they were found and which, according to the complainant was not searched on Monday either on foot or in daylight.

McLeland told the jury in his opening statement earlier this week: “The last face the girls saw before their throats were slit was that of Richard Allen.”

His words were a chilling conclusion to his brief opening remarks on a case he summarized as “involving Bridge Guy, a bullet and the brutal murder of two young girls.”

As the jury listened intently, he painted the scene of a rural, innocent day enjoyed by two girls who were more sisters than friends.

It was, he said, unseasonably warm, “a beautiful summer day in the middle of winter,” when they decided to walk a path they had walked many times before, along abandoned railway lines, towards Delphi’s High Monon Bridge.

“It’s scary and downright dangerous,” McLeland said of the bridge, and once crossed, he noted, “there’s no escape.”

As they crossed that bridge, Libby looked back at her friend Abby, 13, and saw that they were being followed. She took out her phone and shot the now infamous ‘Bridge Guy’ video, before the two were threatened at gunpoint and ordered to ‘get down the hill’.

Prosecutor Nick McLeland told the jury in his opening statement earlier this week: “The last face the girls saw before their throats were slit was that of Richard Allen.”

McLeland’s words provided a chilling conclusion to his brief opening remarks on a case he summarized as “involving Bridge Guy, a bullet and the brutal murder of two young girls.”

Now that cellphone footage captures “Bridge Guy,” the man prosecutors claim is Allen, filmed in the final moments of Libby’s life, she may yet realize that ambition.

McLeland described the horror of the scene involving searches that the girls discovered the next day. Both had their throats slit several times. Libby was naked and covered in blood. Abby was partially dressed in both her own and her friend’s clothes, while the rest of the girls’ clothes were found in the creek.

Convincing the jury that Allen is guilty of the crimes and that only he knows what happened in the hours between the girls’ disappearance and this terrible reality will be the job of the state over the next five weeks.

The prosecution will hinge on the presence of a bullet at the scene that allegedly “cycled” through Allen’s gun, as well as his own statements about being on trial that day and numerous confessions in prison.