7 years after Delphi double murder, jury starts deliberating

By Zoe Sottile and Jean Casarez, CNN

(CNN) — A jury began deliberations Thursday in the trial of Richard Allen, who is accused of killing two teenage girls and leaving their bodies near a hiking path in Delphi, Indiana, in 2017. Allen is facing two murder and two felony murder charges and has pleaded not guilty.

Allen County Superior Court Judge Frances Gull gave the jury their final instructions Thursday morning ahead of closing arguments, urging them to “consider the facts,” in the deaths of Liberty “Libby” German, 14, and Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13, according to CNN affiliate WTHR.

Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland delivered closing arguments, walking the jury through the evidence and testimony presented during the trial, WTHR reported.

McLeland showed jurors graphic photos of the girls’ dead bodies, a video of the suspect taken from Libby’s smartphone that he said captured the final moments of the girls’ lives, and a recording of Allen purportedly confessing to his wife during a phone call.

Attorney Brad Rozzi delivered closing arguments for the defense and said a broken timeline, false confessions and a lack of DNA or weapons evidence should lead to acquittal.

“The defense trusts what you’ve heard over the past several weeks is more important than what you’re hearing today,” Rozzi told the jury Thursday.

The defense has argued there is no physical evidence tying Allen to the murders and said his “confessions” were “involuntary” and stemmed from being in solitary confinement for months, CNN previously reported.

Allen was arrested on October 26, 2022, and charged with two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit a kidnapping on October 31, 2022. Prosecutors later amended the charges to include two additional counts of murder.

Last month, sixteen Allen County residents were selected to serve on the jury. Twelve (eight women and four men) began the trial as jurors with four (two men and two women) serving as alternates, per WTHR.

The highly publicized Delphi murders case goes back to February 13, 2017, when “Abby” and “Libby” went for a hike on the Monon High Bridge in Delphi, Indiana. The two girls were reported missing after they failed to meet Libby’s father that afternoon. The next day, their bodies were found, both dead from cuts to the throat, partially covered by sticks.

The case attracted 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 circulated the photo and audio just days after the killings and identified the “Bridge Guy” as their prime suspect, the case ran cold for more than five years until Allen was arrested in 2022.

Allen had seemingly evaded police notice, staying in the small town of Delphi and working at a local CVS pharmacy, until a clerk digitizing tips related to the investigation in September 2022 noticed 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 frame the girls were thought to have been killed.

Carroll County Sheriff Tony Liggett said despite the tip, Allen “got lost in the cracks,” according to CNN affiliate WLFI. Around a month after the tip was rediscovered, Allen was arrested after police matched an unspent cartridge found between the girls’ bodies to a pistol recovered from his home during a police search.

Over the course of the trial, the prosecution highlighted Allen’s dozens of confessions while incarcerated: He confessed to the crime more than 60 times, prosecutors say, including to his wife, his mother, the psychologist who treated him, the warden and other prison employees and inmates. They played audio recordings of some of the confessions for the jury.

Monica Wala, the former lead psychologist at Westville Correctional Facility where Allen was housed, testified he initially told her he was innocent, but began confessing to the crimes in April 2023, around the time he was placed back on suicide watch.

Wala testified that Allen had told her, “I killed Abby and Libby. I’m sorry,” according to CNN affiliate WTHR. He said he originally planned to sexually assault the victims but ran away when he saw a van nearby, and that he had cut the girls’ throats and covered their bodies with sticks, she testified.

Despite Allen’s confessions, there is very little physical evidence tying him to the case: A DNA expert testifying for the state found none of Allen’s DNA at the crime scene, and none of Libby or Abby’s DNA was found on items recovered from his home.

The prosecution has also tried to match Allen with the video and audio recording of the “Bridge Guy” captured on Libby’s cellphone. Indiana State Police Master Trooper Brian Harshman, who said he listened to more than 700 of Allen’s prison phone calls, testified for the prosecution that in his opinion, “the voice of the ‘Bridge Guy’ is the voice of Richard Allen,’” according to CNN affiliate WRTV.

Additionally, prosecutors drew attention to the .40-caliber unspent round found by the girls’ bodies, which a prosecution expert testified matched Allen’s pistol. The defense tried to cast doubt on the bullet evidence, questioning why more images were not taken of the cartridge and suggesting the bullet could have come from a law enforcement officer’s weapon, according to CNN affiliate WRTV.

The defense has sought to paint a portrait of Allen as a mentally ill man whose fragile mental state was exacerbated by months spent in solitary confinement – including during the time period when he confessed to the crimes. He was twice put on suicide watch while in prison, exhibited bizarre behavior such as eating his own feces and banging his head, and was at one time diagnosed with “a brief psychotic disorder,” according to testimony from Wala, the psychologist who treated Allen.

Testifying for the defense, Deanna Dwenger, a clinical psychologist who worked for the Indiana Department of Corrections Behavioral Health, testified Allen was diagnosed with a serious mental illness in April 2023 and that a team of mental health professionals concluded he had a “grave disability,” according to CNN affiliate WRTV.

The defense originally hoped to introduce the so-called “Odinism” defense: a theory that followers of Odinism, a Norse pagan religion recently adopted by White supremacists, committed the killings. But Judge Gull repeatedly rejected motions to introduce this theory.

CNN’s Melissa Gray contributed to this report.

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