The wife of convicted Delphi killer Richard Allen had a chilling reaction after an Indiana jury unanimously found him guilty of the brutal murders of Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13.
Allen, 52, who was arrested in connection with the 2017 murders in October 2022, sat emotionless as the sentence was handed down Monday afternoon, having spent the past two years in solitary confinement at the Westville Correctional Facility and the Cass County Jail in Indiana.
The verdict marks the culmination of a high-profile three-week trial and one community’s seven-year wait for justice.
Allen now faces a maximum sentence of an additional 130 years behind bars on charges of two counts of murder and two counts of murder – murder committed in the course of another crime, in this case kidnapping.
But his wife, Kathy Allen, told WTR “This is not over at all” as she left the courtroom.
Kathy Allen, wife of convicted Delphi killer Richard Allen, argued ‘this isn’t over at all’ as she left the courtroom
Allen was convicted of killing best friends Libby, 14, and Abby, 13, after they took a walk outside their hometown of Delphi, Indiana, in February 2017.
Prosecutors had argued that Allen killed Libby and Abby after they took a walk in their hometown of Delphi on February 13, 2017, which Nick McLeland described as “a day this community will never forget.”
“Abigail Williams and Liberty German went for a walk and never came back. The day they were both murdered by Richard Allen,” he said during his closing arguments on Thursday.
McLeland went on to say that law enforcement officers and local residents who participated in the initial frantic search for the girls were not expecting to stumble upon a gruesome crime scene.
“They weren’t looking for two bodies, they were looking for two girls,” he said. “No one thought anything bad happened to Abby and Libby. That doesn’t happen here.’
He had argued at the start of the trial that the case centered around the so-called Bridge Guy, saying in his closing arguments that Allen had repeatedly damned himself through his own words by putting himself on the bridge at the time of the girls. kidnappings and through his multiple confessions in prison.
It was Allen who put himself on the trail between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m., Allen who told investigators he went to the Monon High Bridge, Allen who described the outfit he was wearing and Allen who made a series of prison confessions with details only the killer should have known.
Allen now faces a maximum sentence of an additional 130 years behind bars on charges of two murders and two murders
McLeland also showed jurors a video Libby recorded at 2:13 p.m. that day, which he said showed “the moment the girls were abducted.”
The shaky footage showed Abby walking across the bridge as the bundled figure of a man walked purposefully behind her.
“Guys, down the hill,” echoed through the silent room, along with a startled chirp from one of the girls and the shocked words, “That’s gotta be a gun.”
McLeland described the feeling of this scene to the jury: “You can hear the fear in their voice. You can see the fear on Abby’s face.”
He reminded the jurors of the eyewitnesses who were adamant that the person they saw that day was Bridge Guy. He reminded them of the digital evidence from Libby’s phone that showed it stopped moving at 2:32 p.m. and never moved again.
McLeland recalled volunteer Kathy Shank’s accidental discovery of the lead sheet in 2022 — something that was not followed up at the time — which included a man who he said was out and about between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.
He told them that investigators knew that “all indications pointed to that man being Bridge Guy,” and that that man was Allen.
When officers searched his home on October 26, 2022, McLeland said they found “a Bridge Guy starter kit”: a Carhartt jacket, a Sig Sauer P226 and an unused 40-caliber Smith and Weston cartridge, kept in a hope box in Allen’s house. bedroom.
They also seized numerous electronic devices, but all that was missing was the phone Allen was using at the time of the murders in 2017 — a device he never allowed police to inspect.
Prosecutors had said the case centers on the so-called Bridge Guy who chased the girls before they disappeared.
The prosecutor further told jurors that Allen was “familiar with the area.” He had visited the Monon High Bridge many times alone and with his family.
“See how the pieces are starting to fall into place?” he insisted.
McLeland reminded them that the state had presented evidence that the cartridge found between the girls’ bodies had “cycled through Richard Allen’s gun.”
“That could have ended the matter,” he claimed. “But then he starts confessing.”
He had made multiple confessions, both through phone calls to his mother, Janice, and wife Kathy, and in person to the correctional officers charged with watching over him on suicide watch, his prison therapist Dr. Monica Wala and his prison psychiatrist Dr. John. Martin.
McLeland played one of Allen’s April 3 calls to his wife, in which he said, “I just wanted to apologize.” I did it. You know I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”
The call was, McLeland said, “unprovoked, unpressured” and “made of my own volition.”
Later that month, Allen confessed on April 26 to stealing a box cutter he used to kill the girls and then throwing it in the trash at the CVS where he worked.
He made his most detailed confession yet to Dr Wala when he told her that he intended to rape the girls, but saw a van, got scared and killed them instead.
The prosecutor quoted Allen’s own words: “He continued to live his life after time expired because he wasn’t caught.”
Prosecutors also said he confessed to the murders while in solitary confinement
McLeland took jurors back to Feb. 13, 2017, saying, “That day started like any other day. The day Bridge Guy stole the youth and lives of Liberty and Abigail. The state has shown you that Richard Allen is Bridge Guy.
‘He lived among us for five years. He didn’t realize he left a shell from his gun, as well as Liberty’s cell phone.”
But Bradley Rozzi, who delivered the defense’s impassioned closing statements, argued the state had proven nothing.
He described their timeline as “broken,” their ballistics evidence as “botched,” and the confessions as “false” and “cherry-picked,” to present just a fraction of a much more complicated, disturbing truth.
The only thing that “speaks the truth,” he pointed out, was something the state hadn’t told jurors about at all — raw data taken from Libby’s cell phone that showed someone plugged headphones into the phone on Feb. 13, 2017, at 5:45 p.m. and By 10:32 p.m., someone had removed them.
The state tried to dismiss this as a technical problem caused by dirt or water damage.
Rozzi also reminded jurors that there was no DNA evidence, no trace evidence, no clothing and no digital data or communications linking Allen to the crime scene or any of the girls.
‘The magic bullet is nothing more than a tragic bullet. It’s the catalyst that put Rick in that prison,” said the attorney for the Westville Correctional Facility in Westville, about 75 miles outside Delphi.
Allen’s defense said the conditions in which he was held caused an already “fragile egg” to become mentally ill – to the point of developing a depressive disorder with psychosis.
The defense had argued that the conditions in which Allen was held caused an already “fragile egg” to become seriously mentally ill and develop a depressive disorder with psychosis.
The confessions were nothing more than the product of his psychotic mind and should be completely dismissed and given no weight, they insisted.
The conditions in which he was held amounted to torture. On the large screen behind Rozzi, a photo of a medieval rack appeared, followed by a photo of a thumbscrew, which the lawyer claimed were “medieval devices for interrogating people.”
“As a society, we have evolved … toward a subtler form called solitary confinement,” he said. “Whether it was intentional, reckless or negligent, someone should have spoken up. Where was the moral compass? You are the moral compass.’
To make his point, Rozzi showed photos of Allen in open court, taken from a prison video that had until now been hidden from the public and seen only by the jury.
In one photo he lies naked, curled up in a fetal position on the floor. In one he stands naked against a wall, and in the other he wears a suicide smock with a white spit hood over his head.
“That is the power of your state,” he said, pointing to the screen behind him. This was followed by a photo of a python crushing its prey. ‘Now is the time to take action and recognize that this is not the way we function.
‘By pronouncing a judgment of guilt you would be endorsing this process and you should not do that. We ask that you release Richard Allen.”