An Indiana jury on Monday afternoon reached a verdict for double murder suspect Richard Allen for the February 2017 killings of two girls who had been walking on a hiking trial in Delphi, known as the Delphi murders.
The verdict will be announced in a Carroll County courtroom.
The case had been more than seven years in the making since Abigail (Abby) Williams, 13, and Liberty “Libby” German, 14, disappeared during their walk on Feb. 13, 2017, and investigators found them both brutally murdered the next day, with sticks covering their bodies in a wooded area near the High Monon Trail.
Prosecutors pointed to various evidence that placed Allen at the scene at the time of the crime, including an unspent bullet at the crime scene matching a firearm recovered from Allen’s home in 2022, as well as the dozens of confessions he made in prison, according to FOX 59 Indianapolis.
Allen’s defense leaned largely on expert analysis showing Allen’s unhealthy mental state after his 2022 arrest, which took the Delphi community as a surprise at the time. Allen had been a longtime CVS employee in the small Indiana town when police took him into custody five years after the murders.
Officers escort Richard Allen out of the Carroll County courthouse following a hearing, Nov. 22, 2022, in Delphi, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
Near the conclusion of Allen’s trial, the defense also presented testimony from a former FBI forensic expert who said it appeared as though someone plugged headphones into Libby’s phone — which was discovered near the girls’ bodies on Feb. 14 — at 5:45 p.m on Feb. 13., hours after they were last seen.
The headphones were then removed from the phone at 10:32, Stacey Eldridge testified, presenting a possible challenge to the prosecution’s timeline that they were killed around 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 13, according to FOX 59.
DELPHI MURDERS SUSPECT CONFESSED TO KILLING 2 GIRLS ON HIKING TRAIL IN SMALL TOWN, PRISON DOC SAYS
Supt. Doug Carter of the Indiana State Police, right, speaks during a press conference on an update on the Delphi murders investigation, Monday, April 22, 2019 at the Canal Center in Delphi. (Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier / USA TODAY NETWORK)
Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland told jurors in his opening statements that when searchers found the two girls deceased in a wooded area near the Monon High Bridge, Libby was naked and covered in blood. Both girls’ throats had been cut several times, FOX 59 reported.
Other articles of clothing were mismatched or thrown into the nearby Deer Creek, McLeland said. Abby was wearing her own undershirt but Libby’s sweatshirt. She was also wearing jeans and shoes, but her socks were missing. One of Libby’s shoes and Libby’s cellphone were located beneath Abby’s body.
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Snow covers the water of Deer creek as the Monon High Bridge towers above, Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022 in Delphi. Abby Williams and Libby German, both Delphi eighth-graders, were murdered while hiking a popular community trail near Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017. (Nikos Frazier / Journal & Courier / USA TODAY NETWORK)
One key piece of evidence presented during the trial was a video Libby happened to snap on her phone at some point before she and Abby were killed.
DELPHI MURDERS TRIAL: ‘BRIDGE GUY’ EMERGES AS NEW CRIME SCENE EVIDENCE PRESENTED
For the first time since the girls were reported missing, jurors got to watch 43 seconds of the crucial video in court on Oct. 22. The video shows Libby and Abby walking with an unknown man wearing a hat and blue utility jacket who has become known over the last five years as “Bridge Guy.” Libby captured the video at 2:13 p.m., less than 25 minutes after she and Abigail’s family members dropped them off at the trail.
“Guys, down the hill,” the man can be heard saying to the girls in the video.
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In this courtroom sketch, Richard Allen, left, is seated next to one of his defense attorneys, Andrew Baldwin, inside a courtroom at the Carroll County Courthouse in Delphi, Ind. on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024. (Li Buszka via AP, Pool)
Allen admitted in one jailhouse confession that he did, in fact, order the girls “down the hill.” He also repeatedly confessed to killing the girls, apparently saying he wanted to rape the girls but was spooked by a van driving nearby, at which point he decided to kill them.
His attorneys said his declining mental stability led him to make false statements behind bars.
Delphi police recovered Libby’s cellphone beneath her body Feb. 14, 2017. The phone had a 43-second video showing Abigail walking on the Monon High Bridge in Delphi toward Libby while a man wearing a dark jacket and jeans walks behind her. (FOX Nation)
Additionally, witnesses who testified during Allen’s trial said they saw Allen on or around the High Monon Trail on Feb. 13, around the time the girls disappeared.
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More than five years after their deaths, investigators executed a search warrant at Allen’s home in Delphi on Oct. 13, 2022, and they recovered a blue Carhartt jacket, a SIG Sauer P226 .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun and a .40-caliber S&W cartridge in a “wooden keepsake box” from a dresser between two closets in Allen’s bedroom, according to authorities.
The handgun recovered at Allen’s home was consistent with a .40-caliber unspent bullet police located at the site of the murders in 2017, police said.
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The defense previously argued in court documents that members of an Odinist cult had killed the girls in a ritualistic sacrifice, but a judge ultimately decided not to allow evidence pertaining to that theory in court during the trial. It is possible that they may get to argue the Odinist theory on appeal, according to attorneys who spoke to Fox News Digital.
Audrey Conklin is a digital reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business. Email tips to audrey.conklin@fox.com or on Twitter at @audpants.
