Delphi, Indiana — A former pharmacy employee in the small town of Delphi, Indiana, was found guilty of murdering two teenage girls who disappeared while hiking Monday afternoon.
Jurors found Richard Allen guilty of two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the 2017 killings of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14.
Allen was not arrested for five years, and the case attracted tremendous attention from true crime enthusiasts. His trial followed repeated delays, leaked evidence, the withdrawal of Allen’s public defender and reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.
Reporters inside the court reported that Allen (52) showed no reaction when the verdict was handed down, but at some point turned to look at his family. Allen is scheduled to be sentenced on December 20. He could face up to 130 years in prison.
As news of the verdict spread outside the courthouse, people on the sidewalk began to cheer.
Indiana State Police spokesman Capt. Ron Galaviz told The Associated Press that the judge’s gag order remains in place and that he believes it will remain so until Allen is sentenced. Allen’s lawyers left court Monday without making any statements.
A special judge oversaw the case. With the jurors is Superior Court Judge Fran Gull from Allen County in northeastern Indiana. The seven women and five men were quarantined throughout the trial, which began Oct. 18 in the Carroll County seat of Delphi. Delphi is home to about 3,000 girls from northwest Indiana, where Allen also lived and worked.
Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland pointed out in closing arguments that Allen repeatedly confessed to the murders in person, by phone and in writing. In one of the recordings he played for the judges, Allen tells his wife, “I did it. “I killed Abby and Libby.”
McLeland also said Allen was the man seen following the teens in grainy cellphone video recorded by one of the girls as they crossed an abandoned railroad trestle called the Monon High Bridge.
“Richard Allen is a bridge guy,” McLeland told the jury. “He kidnapped them and later murdered them.”
McLeland said Allen’s voice can be heard on video saying “down the hill” after the teens crossed the bridge on Feb. 13, 2017. Their bodies were found the next day in a nearby forest with their throats cut. area.
One investigator testified that Allen told him and another officer that he was wearing a blue or black Carhartt jacket, jeans and a beanie on the day the teens disappeared. This was similar clothing to the one worn by the man recorded at the bridge.
McLeland said unspent bullets found among the teens’ bodies were “circulated” through Allen’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol. An Indiana State Police firearms expert told jurors that her analysis linked Allen’s handgun.
But a firearms expert called by the defense questioned the analysis, and attorney Bradley Lodge said investigators compared the unspent bullets with those fired from Allen’s gun “apples to oranges,” calling it a “magic bullet.” I dismissed it.
Allen was arrested in October 2022. He became a suspect after a retired state employee who volunteered to assist police in the case discovered documents in September 2022 showing Allen had contacted authorities two days after the girls’ bodies were discovered. According to testimony, the documents showed Allen told officers he had been on a hiking trail the afternoon the girls went missing.
Allen’s lawyers argued that his confession was unreliable because he was facing a serious mental health crisis under the pressure and stress of being held in isolation, monitored 24 hours a day and ridiculed by his fellow inmates. A psychiatrist called by the defense testified that months of solitary confinement could cause delirium and psychosis.
But Allen’s psychologist at Westville Correctional Facility, Dr. Monica Walla, said Allen shared details about the crimes, including in some confessions where he said he decapitated the girls and placed tree branches on their bodies. She said in the report that Allen abandoned his plan to rape the teens as a van passed nearby. A man driving down the driveway under the Monon High Bridge said he was driving home from work in his van at the time.
McLeland told jurors in his sentencing that the van was a detail “only the killer would know.”
On cross-examination, Wala admitted that he followed Allen’s case with interest during his personal time, even while treating him, and that he was a fan of the true crime genre.
Rozzi said in closing arguments that Allen was innocent. He said no witnesses explicitly identified Allen as the man seen on the hiking trail or bridge the afternoon the girls went missing. And he said there were no fingerprints, DNA or forensic evidence linking Allen to the murder scene.
“He didn’t run because he had every opportunity to run and he didn’t,” Rozzi told jurors.
Allen’s lawyers tried to argue before trial that the girls were ritually murdered by members of a white nationalist group known as the Odinists, who follow a Norse pagan religion, but the judge said the defense “failed to demonstrate evidence.” ruled against it. Admissible evidence of such connection”.
