INDIANAPOLIS — The first full day of jury deliberations ended Friday without a verdict in the trial of Richard Allen, charged with the 2017 murder of two teenage girls who disappeared while hiking in Delphi, Indiana, in 2017.
Jurors began their deliberations Thursday afternoon, spending two hours deliberating before wrapping up the day. They then spent seven hours Friday deliberating without reaching a verdict, and will return Saturday morning.
Allen had pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of murder in connection with the 2017 deaths of Liberty “Libby” German and Abigail “Abby” Williams, ages 14 and 13, respectively.
He could face up to 130 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
The seven women and five men continued their deliberations Friday after hearing closing arguments. in the weeks-long murder trial. Deliberations ended after about two hours and will resume Friday morning. They will deliberate from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday until they reach a verdict, CNN reports.
Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors that Allen is the man seen in a grainy cellphone video recorded by one of the girls, known as Abby and Libby, while they were crossing an abandoned railway bridge just before disappearing on February 13, 2017.
“Richard Allen is Bridge Guy,” McLeland told jurors. “He kidnapped them and then murdered them.”
He noted that Allen repeatedly confessed to the murders – in person, on the phone and in writing. In one of the recordings he played back for the jury, Allen could be heard telling his wife: “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”
Allen’s defense cast doubt on the confession, calling witnesses including a psychiatrist who said Allen was delusional and psychotic after months in solitary confinement. The defense further argued that there was no physical evidence linking Allen to the murders and said that confessions he made in the past were “involuntary” and the result of months in solitary confinement.
No witnesses explicitly identified Allen as the man seen on the hiking trail or bridge the afternoon the girls disappeared, he noted. No fingerprints, DNA or forensic evidence links Allen to the murder scene, Rozzi said.
And for more than five years after the teens’ murder, Allen still lived in Delphi while working at a local pharmacy.
“He had every chance to run, but he didn’t because he didn’t,” he told jurors.
Before the trial began, Allen’s lawyers had sought to argue that the girls had been killed. in a ritual sacrifice by members of a white nationalist group known as the Odinists who follow a pagan Norse religion, but the judge ruled against this, saying the defense “failed to produce admissible evidence” d ‘such a connection.
Timeline of events surrounding the Delphi murders
The Delphi murder case dates back to February 13, 2017, when “Abby” and “Libby” went for a hike on the Monon High Bridge in Delphi. Both girls were reported missing after failing to meet Libby’s father that afternoon. The next day their bodies were found, both dead from cuts to their throats, partially covered with sticks.
The case gained public attention in part because of a photo and audio recording of the suspect taken from Libby’s smartphone. The image shows a man walking on the bridge with his hands in his pockets, and the audio includes a man’s muffled voice saying, “Guys, down the hill.” Although police released the photo and audio just days after the murders and identified the “Bridge Guy” as their prime suspect, the case went unaddressed for more than five years until Allen was stopped in 2022.
Allen had apparently escaped police attention, remaining in the small town of Delphi and working at a local CVS pharmacy, until an employee scanning information related to the investigation in September 2022 noticed that he had placed himself at the scene of the crime. Just days after the bodies were discovered, Allen told police he had been on that trail during the time the girls were allegedly killed.
Carroll County Sheriff Tony Liggett said that despite the information, Allen “got lost in the cracks,” according to CNN affiliate WLFI. About a month after the tip was rediscovered, Allen was arrested after police compared an unused cartridge found between the girls’ bodies to a gun recovered from his home during a police search.
After Allen was arrested on October 26, 2022, he was charged with two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping five days later. Prosecutors later amended the charges to include two additional counts of murder.
During the trial, which began October 18, the prosecution highlighted dozens of confessions Allen made during his incarceration: he confessed to the crime more than 60 times, according to prosecutors, including to his wife, to his mother, to the psychologist who treated him, to the director and other prison employees and inmates. They played audio recordings of some confessions for the jury.
Monica Wala, the former lead psychologist at the Westville Correctional Center where Allen was housed, said he initially told her he was innocent, but began confessing to the crimes in April 2023, at around the time he was put back on suicide watch.
Wala testified that Allen told him, “I killed Abby and Libby.” I’m sorry,” according to WTHR. He said he initially planned to sexually assault the victims, but fled when he saw a van nearby, and slit the girls’ throats and covered their bodies with sticks, she testified.
contributed to this report.
