(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Day one of the trial of Richard Allen, the man accused of murdering Abby Williams and Libby German in 2017 in Delphi, Indiana, included opening statements and testimony from family members of the two girls.
During opening statements, prosecutor Nick McLeland maintained that Richard Allen is the “Bridge Guy” seen in a grainy video found on Libby German’s phone and described by witnesses.
McLeland said Allen stalked the girls and slashed their throats, killing them.
“The last thing the girls saw was Richard Allen's face,” Carroll County prosecutor Nicholas McLeland said.
And they heard his “chilling words: ‘Girls, down the hill,’" while Allen was wielding a gun, McLeland said. “Out of fear the girls complied.”
Allen, 52, is charged with two counts of murder as well as two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping. The trial is a spectacle in Delphi, a town of 3,000, with people lining up in the morning chill to secure a seat in the courtroom.
The prosecutor also said Allen’s many confessions included details only the killer could know.
Allen shook his head at times while McLeland spoke, and his wife, seated in the gallery, did the same when the prosecutor said her husband had confessed to her.
Evidence presented included an unspent bullet found at the scene that matches a gun seized from Allen’s home.
After the murders, Allen told police he saw the girls on a hiking trail near where their bodies were later found but didn’t talk to them.
He was charged after being reinterviewed in 2022.
Allen’s defense attorney, Andrew Baldwin, argued that witness descriptions were inconsistent and said Allen suffered a “mental health crisis” that led him to confess. Baldwin noted that Allen mentioned shooting the girls in the back, though that wasn't how they died.
Baldwin called the bullet evidence inconclusive.
Additionally, the defense said a hair found in Abby Williams’ hand was not Allen’s.
Libby German’s Grandmother, Becky Patty, was among family members to testify. She said the girls had had a sleepover the night before they were killed and asked if they could go to the hiking trail.
The last thing Libby said was “Grandma, I’ll be OK.”
The teens, known as Abby and Libby, were found dead Feb. 14, 2017. They went missing a day earlier while hiking the trail on a mild winter's day off school. Within days, police released files found on German's cellphone. Investigators also released one sketch of a suspect in July 2017 and another in April 2019, along with the bridge video.
After more years passed without a suspect identified, investigators said they went back and reviewed prior tips.
Investigators found that Allen had been interviewed in 2017. He told an officer he had been walking on the trail the day Williams and German went missing and had seen three “females” at a bridge called the Freedom Bridge but did not speak to them, according to an affidavit.
Allen also told the officer that as he walked from that bridge to the Monon High Bridge he did not see anyone but was distracted, “watching a stock ticker on his phone as he walked.”
Police interviewed Allen again Oct. 13, 2022, when he said he had seen three “juvenile girls” during his walk in 2017. Investigators searched his home within days, a search that led to the discovery of the .40-caliber pistol.
At earlier hearings, Allen’s attorneys had sought to argue that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a pagan Norse religion and white nationalist group known as the Odinists.
News media are barred by Judge Fran Gull from reporting directly from the courtroom with electronic devices. The judge also set strict rules for photo or video coverage outside the courthouse. Police confiscated cameras from several journalists outside the building on Friday morning before court proceedings began, including 2 cameras from a photographer with The Associated Press.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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