DELPHI, Ind. — An indiana man convicted in the Murder of two teenage girls in 2017 who disappeared during a winter walk could face up to 130 years in prison when he is sentenced Friday in the case that has long cast a shadow over the teenagers’ small hometown of Delphi.
After a week-long trial, Richard Allen was convicted on November 11 in the murders 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 and 130 years in prison for the murders of the Delphi teenagers known as Abby and Libby. He will be convicted of two of the four murder counts.
Allen, 52, also lived in Delphi. When he was arrested in October 2022More than five years after the February 2017 killings, he worked as a pharmacy technician at a pharmacy just 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 them recovery by the Indiana Supreme Court.
The case, which included tantalizing evidence, has long attracted excessive 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. Family members of German and Williams may address the court during the hearing, which will last 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 the two murder charges, and orders those sentences to be served concurrently, the minimum possible sentence of 45 years with good time credit for their client. “amounts to 33.75 actual years of imprisonment.”
“Richard Allen will probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Even on his best day at sentencing, Richard will be 85 years old when released,” they wrote.
Gull and the jurors came from Allen County in northeastern Indiana. The seven women and five men of the jury were locked up the entire time the trial, which began on October 18 in the Carroll County seat of Delphi, the girls’ hometown of about 3,000 residents about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis.
A family member dropped the teens off at a hiking trail just outside Delphi on February 13, 2017. The group eight students did not arrive at the agreed pick-up location and were reported missing that evening. Their bodies were found the next day with their throats slit in a wooded area near an abandoned railroad trestle they had crossed.
In his closing argument, Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors that Allen, armed with a gun, forced the youths off the hiking trail and planned to rape them before a passing van forced him to change his plans and he cut the throat. McLeland said an unspent bullet was found among the teens’ bodies “had cycled through” Allen’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol.
An Indiana State Police firearms expert told the jury that her analysis linked the round to Allen’s gun.
McLeland said Allen was the man who followed the teens across the Monon High Bridge in a grainy cellphone video German recorded. And he said it was Allen’s voice that was heard on the video telling the teens, ” Down the hill ″after they crossed the bridge.
“Richard Allen is Bridge Guy,” McLeland told the judges. “He kidnapped them and later killed them.”
McLeland also noted that Allen had repeatedly confessed to the murders – in person, on the phone and in writing. In one of the recordings he played for the jury, Allen was heard telling his wife, “I did it.” I killed Abby and Libby.”
Allen’s defense argued that his confessions were unreliable because he was dealing with a serious mental health crisis while under the pressure and stress of being kept in isolation, under 24-hour surveillance and taunted by people who were locked up with him. A psychiatrist called by the defense testified that months in solitary confinement can make a person delirious and psychotic.
Defense attorney Bradley Rozzi said in his closing arguments that Allen was innocent. He said no witnesses explicitly identified Allen as the man seen on the trail or 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 opportunity to run, but he didn’t because he didn’t do it,” Rozzi told the jury.
Allen’s attorneys had tried to argue at trial that the girls had been murdered in a ritual sacrifice by members of a white nationalist group known as the Odinists, who follow a pagan Norse religion. However, the judge ruled against this, saying the defense “failed to provide admissible evidence” of such a link.
Gull’s long-standing silence order The case is expected to be dropped after Allen is convicted, Capt. Ron Galaviz, spokesman for the Indiana State Police, said Wednesday. Law enforcement officials, prosecutors and relatives of the teens plan to speak at a news conference shortly after Friday’s hearing ends.