A volunteer helping police has helped identify a man accused of murdering two teenagers

Five years ago he was accused of murdering two high school students near the highway in Indiana, Richard Allen contacted authorities about the double murder: He was in the area the day the girls were killed, he told an investigator at the time.

This information, contained in a “lead sheet” kept by law enforcement, was inadvertently marked as clear, and it wasn’t until 2022 that a volunteer clerk tasked with helping organize the thousands of tips in the investigation discovered it, setting in motion the events that led to Allen’s arrest.

The discovery came in a Carroll County courtroom this week, where law enforcement officers, witnesses and others detailed their involvement in the case during the first full week of testimony in the Feb. 13, 2017, murders of 14-year-old Liberty Herman and Abigail Williams. , 13.

Attorneys for Allen, a 52-year-old former CVS employee, said he is “truly innocent.”

In court documents, Allen’s legal team said the killings could have been part of a ritual sacrifice, and in court they challenged the prosecution’s timeline and witness testimony that in one case a person was “covered in dirt.” and blood” not far from the place where the bodies of the teenagers were found.

In court Thursday, defense attorney Andrew Baldwin asked clerk Kathy Shank if his client was trying to “help” the investigation.

The prosecution objected, calling the question “speculation”, and the judge supported: NBC affiliate WTHR from Indianapolis reports.

The investigator who spoke with Allen in 2017 was Dan Doolin, then with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. He testified Thursday that he was helping local authorities investigate suspicions related to the murders.

On Feb. 16, 2017 — three days after the murders — Doolin said he picked up a lead sheet with Allen’s name and phone number. The officer asked to meet Allen at his home, but he declined, Doolin said, and asked that they meet in a grocery store parking lot instead.

In an unrecorded conversation that followed, Doolin testified, Allen told him he parked in the Farm Bureau parking lot and walked to the abandoned railroad bridge — now part of the Delphi Historic Trails network — where the teenagers planned to spend their day off from school . .

Allen was there between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m., Doolin recalled, and passed the three girls on the way.

After about 10 minutes, Doolin said, the conversation ended. Dulin typed up his notes and turned the case over to investigators, and he testified.

Five years later, Schenck, a retired Department of Child Services employee who volunteered to help with the investigation, was sifting through thousands of leads when she came across a box of files that contained a clue to the name “Richard Allen Whiteman.”

The tip misstated Allen’s last name, Schenk testified, and was marked “redacted.” But in September 2022, Schenck reported it to a detective, who testified that investigators were trying to find the person witnesses reported seeing on the tracks that day.

Detective Tony Liggett, now the Carroll County sheriff, said he believed the man was the man known to investigators as “a typical bridge.” Phrase referred to a mysterious Snapchat video found on Abigail’s phone showing a white man in jeans and a dark jacket walking across a bridge.

In a statement released after the killing, which included a short clip of the videothe law enforcement officers named an unknown person as a suspect in the murder of teenagers.

One witness, Reilly Voorhees, testified Tuesday that she greeted the man, who was overdressed for the weather, wearing a hat, mask and dark clothing. He didn’t respond when she waved, said Voorhes, then a 16-year-old high school student who was friends with the victims, and he “didn’t look like a happy person.”

When she saw the Snapchat image, Voorhees testified, she said she realized it was the same man she had rejected.

Allen’s attorney, Jennifer Auger, said Voorhees’ initial description to police of the man on the trail — a man in his 20s or 30s with curly hair and a square jaw — differed from the one she gave in court.

When asked if the image of the “boy from the bridge” could have affected her memory, Voorhees replied: “Maybe.”

Liggett said he believed the witnesses who described seeing Allen on Feb. 13 to be credible. And he said the information Allen provided to authorities days later was marked as redacted when it shouldn’t have been.

According to him, Allen “got lost in the cracks.”

After Shanks provided Liggett with a master sheet, investigators returned to Allen and interviewed him again. Allen gave a similar story, according to former Delphi Police Chief Steve Mullin, who conducted the interview, although Allen said he arrived at the trail at noon and left at 1:30 p.m.

When Mullin showed Allen a picture of the “bridge guy,” the former chief testified, Allen replied, “If the picture was taken by the girl’s camera, there’s no way it could have been him,” Mullin testified.

Authorities then executed a search warrant at Allen’s home and found a Sig Sauer .40-caliber handgun that prosecutors say matched the bullet found near the girls’ bodies. In his testimony, Liggett said it was the discovery of that bullet and witness statements that led to Allen’s arrest.

Ballistics experts testified on Friday about how they matched the bullet to Allen’s gun.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com