Indiana man to receive sentence after being convicted of killing two teenage girls in 2017

DELPHI, Indiana. An Indiana man convicted of killing two teenage girls who disappeared during a winter hike in 2017 will face up to 130 years in prison on Friday in a case that has long cast a shadow over the teens’ hometown of Delphi.

After a week-long trial, on November 11, Richard Allen was found guilty of the murders of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German. A jury found him guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping. .

Allen faces 45 to 130 years in prison for the murders of the Delphi teenagers, known as Abby and Libby. He will be convicted of two of the four murders.

Allen, 52, also lived in Delphi. When he was arrested in October 2022, more than five years after the February 2017 murders, he was working as a pharmacy technician at a pharmacy just a few blocks from the county courthouse where he later stood trial.

Allen’s trial came after repeated delays, leaked evidence, the recall of his public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.

The case, which included tantalizing evidence, has long attracted enormous attention from true crime enthusiasts.

Allen will be sentenced Friday by the special judge who oversaw the case, Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gall. Relatives of Herman and Williams may appear in court during the hearing, which Gall has scheduled for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Allen’s attorneys said in a sentencing memorandum that even in the “unlikely scenario” that Gull sentences their client to 45 years on each of the two counts of murder and orders those sentences to run concurrently, the minimum possible 45-year term for their client with good credit on the time will be “33.75 real years of imprisonment.”

“Richard Allen is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. Even on the best day of sentencing, Richard will be 85 years old after his release,” they wrote.

Gall and the jurors came from northeast Indiana’s Allen County. The seven women and five men on the jury were sequestered during the trial, which began Oct. 18 in Delphi, the girls’ hometown of about 3,000 people, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis.

On February 13, 2017, a relative dropped off the teenagers on a hiking trail near Delphi. The eighth-graders failed to arrive at their agreed-upon drop-off location and were reported missing that evening. The next day, their bodies were found with their throats slit in the woods near an abandoned railroad trestle they had crossed.

In his closing arguments, Carroll County District Attorney Nicholas McClelland told jurors that Allen, armed with a handgun, forced the youths off a footpath and planned to rape them before the van forced him to change his plans and he slit their throats. McClelland said the unexpended bullet found between the teenagers’ bodies “went right through” Allen’s Sig Sauer .40-caliber handgun.

An Indiana State Police firearms expert told jurors that her analysis tied the round to Allen’s gun.

McLeland said Allen was the man seen following the teenagers across the Monon High Bridge in the grainy cellphone video Herman recorded. And he said it was Allen’s voice that could be heard on the video telling the teenagers, “Down the hill!” after they crossed the bridge.

“Richard Allen is Bridge Guy,” McLelland told the jury. “He kidnapped them and then killed them.”

McClelland also noted that Allen had repeatedly confessed to the murders — in person, over the phone and in writing. In one of the tapes he played for the jury, Allen could be heard telling his wife, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”

Allen’s defense argued that his confessions were unreliable because he was facing a serious mental health crisis, under the pressure and stress of being locked up in solitary confinement, under 24-hour surveillance and abuse from people who were along with him. A psychiatrist called by the defense testified that months in solitary confinement can cause delusions and psychosis.

Attorney Bradley Rozzi said in his closing argument that Allen is innocent. He said no witnesses identified Allen as the man seen on the footpath or bridge the day the girls disappeared. He also said no fingerprints, DNA or forensic evidence linked Allen to the scene of the murder.

“He had every chance to run, but he didn’t because he didn’t,” Rozzi told the jury.

During the trial, Allen’s lawyers tried to argue that the girls were killed during a ritual sacrifice by members of a white nationalist group known as Odinists, who practice a pagan Scandinavian religion. The judge, however, ruled against it, saying the defense had “failed to provide admissible evidence” of such a connection.

Gall’s lengthy restraining order in the case is expected to be lifted after Allen’s sentencing, Indiana State Police spokesman Capt. Ron Galaviz said Wednesday. Law enforcement agencies, the prosecutor’s office and relatives of the teenagers plan to speak at a press conference shortly after the hearings on Friday.