Trial in 2017 killings of 2 teenage girls in Indiana reaches midway point as prosecution rests
DELPHI, Ind. — The trial of a man accused of killing two teenage girls in a small Indiana community is halfway through after more than two weeks of testimony about the 2017 killings.
Prosecutors rested their case against Richard Allen on Thursday after jurors heard recorded phone calls in which he told his wife that he had killed Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14.
Allen’s trial began Oct. 18 at the Carroll County Courthouse in Delphi, the girls’ hometown. Jurors have been sequestered since the start of the trial, which is expected to last through Nov. 15.
The defense started calling the first witnesses on Thursday. An Indiana Department of Correction psychologist told jurors Friday that Allen was seriously mentally ill when he began confessing to the murders while housed at the Westville Correctional Facility.
Allen, 52, faces up to 130 years in prison if convicted of two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping.
Here are some key moments in the trial so far:
Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland opened the lawsuit by telling jurors they would see and hear evidence, including incriminating statements Allen made, that will convince them he forced the girls, armed with a gun, off a hiking trail into a secluded area and slit their throats.
Allen was the person seen in a German cellphone video recorded the day the girls disappeared and an unspent bullet found between their bodies came from Allen’s gun, McLeland said.
Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin told jurors that Allen is innocent. Baldwin said the jury would hear testimony and forensic evidence that would raise “reasonable doubt” that Allen is not the killer, and said the state’s timeline does not match the evidence in the case.
Someone else may have kidnapped the teens and returned them early the next day to where they were found dead, Baldwin said.
In the first full week of the trial, jurors were shown photos of the area where the teens’ bodies were found in a wooded area off the hiking trail. The girls, known as Abby and Libby, had crossed an abandoned railroad trestle called the Monon High Bridge during their walk.
Some jurors and others in the courtroom gasped or turned away as gruesome images of their bloodied bodies were shown, and the girls’ mothers cried.
Jurors also viewed cellphone video German recorded just before the youths disappeared, showing a man wearing a blue jacket and jeans following Williams as she crossed the Monon High Bridge.
In an enhanced version of the video shown to the judges, one of the girls says: “There’s no path, so we have to go here.” Just before the video ends, prosecutors say, the man seen in the video tells the teens: Down the hill.”
Researchers said this in a statement released about a month later Allen’s arrest in October 2022 that he became a suspect after they went back and reviewed “previous tips” and discovered he had been interviewed by an officer in 2017.
Trial testimony has revealed more details about how they targeted the former pharmacy worker.
A retired government employee who volunteered to help police with the investigation in March 2017 told jurors she found paperwork in September 2022 that caught her attention.
Kathy Shank testified that she found a “lead sheet” stating that two days after German and Williams’ bodies were found, a man had contacted authorities and said he had been searching the afternoon the girls went missing . His name was incorrectly listed as Richard Allen Whiteman and marked as “cleared,” Shank said.
She determined that the man’s name was actually Richard Allen and recalled that a young girl had been out at the same location and time and had seen a man.
“I thought there might be a connection,” Shank testified, adding that she informed officers of her find.
The girls’ bodies were found on February 14, 2017, the day after they went missing.
Two days later, Allen contacted authorities and told them he was on the trail on the afternoon of Feb. 13, around the time the girls disappeared, according to testimony.
Indiana Department of Natural Resources captain Dan Dulin told the court he spoke with Allen, who said he was on the trail between 1 and 3:30 p.m. and remembered seeing three girls.
After Shank brought Allen to the attention of investigators, they interviewed him in October 2022. Allen told investigators that he arrived at the trail around noon and left no later than 2 p.m., not 3:30 p.m., as he told Dulin in 2017 told.
Steve Mullin, who was Delphi’s police chief when the girls were killed and later became an investigator with the county prosecutor’s office, said Allen told him and another officer that on the day he was wearing a blue or black Carhartt jacket, jeans and wore a cap, wore a cap. teenagers disappeared.
Mullin said he asked Allen if he was the person dressed similarly seen in the German cellphone video.
“His response was that if the photo was taken on the girls’ camera, then it absolutely couldn’t have been him,” Mullin testified.
Prosecutors also showed juror police interviews with Allen that were videotaped before his arrest, in which he repeatedly professed his innocence.
On Thursday, the jury heard several recorded phone calls in which Allen spoke to his wife from jail, telling her he had killed German and Williams. In one of the calls he said: ‘I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”
The jury previously heard testimony from the former warden of the Westville Correctional Facility, where Allen was previously held, who said Allen claimed to have killed the girls with a box cutter that he later threw away.
Dr. Monica Wala, Allen’s prison psychologist during his time in Westville, testified that Allen began confessing in early 2023 to killing the girls during his sessions with her. She said he provided details of the crime in some confessions, including that he had slit her throat and placed tree branches over their bodies.
A report written by Wala and presented as evidence to the jury states that Allen also told her he intended to rape the teens, but decided not to do so after seeing a van driving nearby.
A state trooper testified Thursday that Allen’s comment corroborated a statement from a man whose driveway passes under the Monon High Bridge and who said he was driving home in his van around that time.
Allen’s lawyers have said their client made the incriminating statements while under the pressure and mental stress of being locked up and watched 24 hours a day and being taunted by people incarcerated with him.
During cross-examination, Wala acknowledged that she followed Allen’s case with interest during her personal time, even while treating him, and that she was a fan of the true crime genre.
Court documents released weeks after Allen’s arrest say testing proved conclusive an unspent bullet found among the girls’ bodies “It was cycled through” a gun that Allen owned.
Melissa Oberg, an Indiana State Police firearms expert, told the jury her analysis was tied to Allen’s Sig Sauer, a .40-caliber handgun.
Allen’s attorney tried to cast doubt on the accuracy of firearms testing during cross-examination. Oberg said she is not aware of any identification errors she has made in the more than 17 years she has been analyzing firearms.