Dive deep into true crime cases and follow the latest headlines with HuffPost’s Suspicious Circumstances newsletter. Sign up here .
Five years after the horrific killing of two girls in Delphi, Indiana, authorities said they solved the mystery that had been the subject of wild speculation by true crime followers.
Yet the arrest of Richard Allen in the killings only marked the beginning of a series of chaotic developments — including a defense theory about a pagan cult, a man’s suicide and arguments about whether Allen was of sound mind when he allegedly confessed 61 times — that many feel have subsumed the victims and what happened to them. On Oct. 14, the highly anticipated trial begins, and prosecutors, who have been largely silent on even basic facts of the case, will finally outline the evidence against the 52-year-old.
Will it lead to justice for 14-year-old Liberty “Libby” German and 13-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams? True crime fans will be watching, but only the jury will decide.
The case, which came to be known as the Delphi murders, fascinated the true crime community from the start.
On the afternoon of Feb. 13, 2017, shortly before the girls disappeared, Libby shared an eerie photo on Snapchat of Abby standing on an abandoned railroad bridge and another of the bridge itself. Their bodies were found the next day, about half a mile away downhill from the bridge in a wooded area.
On Feb. 15, the police released two grainy images of a man walking on that bridge, asking the public for help identifying him .
It was years before the public learned that the girls had filmed their alleged killer.
Investigators shared audio and then, in 2019, snippets of the video from which the images were screenshotted and identified the man as a suspect in the girl’s abduction and killing. He was later dubbed “Bridge Guy” by true crime enthusiasts who analyzed the footage, offering vastly different theories about what he was wearing, his height, his gait and his voice.
“Guys, down the hill,” the man said to the girls in the video retrieved from Libby’s cellphone. One of the girls could be heard in the video saying “gun” as he approached. The police said the video ended as they started going down the hill.
Despite the video that seemed to capture the killer, the case went cold. The girls’ families regularly spoke to local media and packed sessions at the yearly true crime convention CrimeCon in the hopes that someone would come forward with information to help identify the killer. Then, on Oct. 28, 2022, authorities said they would give an “update” on the case, prompting a frenzy in the true crime community, with people on Reddit and other social media platforms spending an agonizing weekend waiting for the news conference.
On Oct. 31, 2022, authorities announced Allen’s arrest and said he had been charged with murder and kidnapping in connection to the girls’ killings.
Their announcement that they’d arrested a “local guy” was staggering: For more than five years, and in spite of international scrutiny, the suspect was allegedly hiding in plain sight. Allen not only lived in Delphi, a small town of about 3,000 residents, but he also worked as a pharmacy technician at the local CVS drugstore. He and his wife lived in an unassuming house with a tidy front lawn on a quiet residential street.
The break in the case came when investigators unearthed (the circumstances remain unclear) a record of a 2017 police interview with Allen. The officer who met with him reported that Allen admitted being on the trail during the time period the girls disappeared, wearing clothes consistent with those worn by the man in Libby’s video. According to an arrest warrant unsealed by a judge in December 2022 , other people on the trail said they encountered a man in similar clothing, and another witness said she saw a “muddy and bloody man” at 4 p.m. walking away from the area where the girls’ bodies were later found and toward the area where Allen had allegedly said he parked his car.
Although the girls had been killed with a “sharp object,” specified as a knife in a court filing released last year, police said an unspent bullet was found near German’s body — and claimed that it had been cycled through a Sig Sauer handgun they found when they searched Allen’s home.
Apart from those details, little has been officially released on the circumstances of the girls’ killings; even the autopsy report has been withheld. That changes when the trial begins next week. Why and how do authorities suspect Allen killed the girls? Was it an opportunistic or carefully orchestrated crime? Were the girls specifically targeted? Were they sexually assaulted? Do prosecutors still believe, as Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland said in 2022 when arguing for court documents about the investigation to remain sealed, that there is “ good reason to believe Allen is not the only one involved ”?
From left: Abby Williams, 13, and Libby German, 14, were found dead near an abandoned railroad bridge where they were last seen apparently hiking in 2017.
While prosecutors have said little, Allen’s defense attorneys outlined their theory about the crime in an explosive 136-page memo to the court in September 2023. The court filing contained previously undisclosed, graphic details about the crime scene, which the defense attorneys claimed was staged by “Odinists,” or pagan cult members, who kidnapped the girls, killed them in a “ritualistic sacrifice” and painted a tree with one victim’s blood.
The jaw-dropping filing resulted in intense media coverage — which prosecutors argued was intentional — and fueled speculation that Allen was the victim of an Odinist conspiracy.
Prosecutors argued in August that Allen’s defense team should not be allowed to present their theory before jurors.
“The defense has only offered up speculation supported by conjecture and buttressed by ‘what-ifs,’” McLeland wrote, and lacked evidence to demonstrate a “direct material connection between the third party and the crime.”
The judge last month sided with the prosecution, barring the defense team from presenting the Odinism theory in the trial.
Anyone else who might share information about the case has been barred from speaking publicly under a strict gag order that’s been in place since December 2022. Notably, it has silenced the girls’ families, who, before Allen’s arrest, had been vocal about their desire for justice.
Almost daily since Libby was killed, her grandmother and guardian, Becky Patty, posted “Today is the day” on social media — an affirmation of sorts that the killer would be apprehended. It became a rallying cry for the family and their supporters.
“When I’m feeling frustrated, when I feel like no answers are coming and I’m feeling dejected, I say that,” Libby’s older sister Kelsi German told WTHR on the fifth anniversary of the killing. “I say, ‘Today is the day. It’s coming and it’ll get here. We’re going to have answers’ and just reaffirm myself and say, ‘It’s hard, it’s frustrating, it’s been five years, but we’re going to have answers eventually. It’s coming.’”
Mike and Becky Patty, grandparents of Libby German, speak with the media following a news conference in Delphi, Indiana, Monday, Oct. 31, 2022, where the arrest of Richard Allen, 50, was announced for the murders of two teenage girls killed during a 2017 hiking trip in northern Indiana. Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13, were killed in February 2017.
A misguided search for answers, however, threw the case into an uproar, with far-reaching repercussions, including a man’s suicide.
Grisly photos of the crime scene and other documents were leaked from the office of Allen’s defense attorney Andrew Baldwin by a former associate — without, Baldwin said, his permission or knowledge. Another man who received the materials and shared them with at least two other people died by suicide after an investigation was launched into the leak, podcasters Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee told HuffPost . The co-hosts of “The Murder Sheet” contacted authorities after they received the leaked material, which the judge addressed in a hearing last October.
In one of the only instances Judge Frances Gull allowed cameras to roll in her courtroom, she announced that Allen’s attorneys had withdrawn from the case .
(Mitchell Thomas Westerman, the man who allegedly used his cellphone to take pictures of the crime scene photos while visiting Baldwin’s office, was later criminally charged in connection to the leak.)
According to transcripts of a private meeting between the judge and Allen’s attorneys, they said they felt “ ambushed ” when the judge, who called their actions “grossly negligent,” told them she would remove them from the case if they did not announce they would withdraw. They were then reinstated in January by the Indiana Supreme Court in response to Allen’s request that he keep his original lawyers.
Libby German uploaded two photos to Snapchat prior to her and Abby Williams' disappearance: One of Abby standing on an abandoned railroad bridge (right) and another of the bridge itself (left).
Though the defense was successful in their bid to remain on the case, they faced a perhaps crushing blow when the judge ruled in August that Allen’s alleged confessions could be heard by the jury.
His defense attorneys argued that the recorded confessions — allegedly to Allen’s family members, fellow inmates, correctional officers and a psychologist — were coerced and unreliable due to his precarious mental state after being incarcerated in a maximum security prison among people who had already been convicted of crimes.
Allen lost considerable weight early in his incarceration, and his physical and mental health deteriorated , his attorneys said, in a 2023 request that he be returned to a jail closer to Delphi.
But Gull said that Allen’s attorneys had failed to show that his allegedly incriminating statements were a result of “coercive interrogation” or the conditions of his pre-trial detention, noting that he was transferred to the prison to protect him.
In August, he was transferred to a county jail in advance of his trial.
Jury selection begins on Oct. 14 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and is expected to last three days. After a jury is selected, they will be sequestered and moved 95 miles away to Delphi. The judge said in a court filing that she expects the proceedings, which will be held in the Carroll County courthouse, to last about a month. If Allen is convicted, his sentence could range from 90 to 130 years in prison, the Indy Star reported .
The trial will not be livestreamed; Gull has banned photography and video cameras from the courtroom, along with audio recording and other electronic devices. For better or worse, the strict limitations mean that a case that has already been shrouded in secrecy will continue to be inaccessible to the public.
It’s a decision that “The Murder Sheet” podcast co-host Cain understands but said she disagrees with.
“I do wish it was being broadcast because I feel it’s engendered such enormous public interest,” Cain told HuffPost. “I think that part of the reason that conspiracy theories form is when things are perceived to be in darkness, and sunlight is the cure.”
Local News
