An Indiana man has been found guilty of killing two teenage girls near a hiking trail in Delphi back in 2017 in a case that gained national attention.
Richard Allen, 50, was found guilty Monday on two counts of murder and two counts of felony murder in the killing of 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German, CNN reported. The jury spent 19 hours deliberating across three days before coming to the decision.
“Regardless of what the verdict is, people aren’t going to be happy,” said Special Judge Frances Gull before reading the verdict, WTHR reported.
Allen faces up to 130 years in prison for the murders and remained emotionless while the verdict was read before being comforted by his attorneys. A gag order was placed on the case, so attorneys cannot speak about it until after Allen’s sentencing on December 20. Allen’s attorney did not respond to a Daily Wire inquiry about his likely appeal.
Libby’s grandmother, Becky Patty, cried and hugged family members as she left the courthouse. Outside, people reportedly cheered the verdict while others showed support for Allen, who many believe did not receive a fair trial and may be innocent.
Allen’s wife, Kathy, told WTHR that the legal case “isn’t over at all.”
Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland, in his opening and closing statements, alleged that Allen is the man seen in a video taken by Libby telling the girls to go “down the hill.”
The video was recorded as the girls crossed the Monon High Bridge. Their bodies were found nearby the day after they went missing.
“I believe the evidence is firmly convincing that Richard Allen is ‘Bridge Guy,’ and he killed Abby and Libby,” McLeland told jurors, WTHR reported.
The prosecution also pointed to confessions Allen made while in jail, though his defense attorneys have long claimed those confessions can’t be trusted because of Allen’s failing mental health.
Defense attorney Brad Rozzi used his closing statements to point out the issues with the prosecution’s case, including the lack of DNA or weapons evidence tying Allen to the crime, as well as a timeline he says doesn’t line up.
“The defense trusts what you’ve heard over the past several weeks is more important than what you’re hearing today,” Rozzi said.
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Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin previously argued that the state’s investigation was botched and that cell phone evidence shows Allen couldn’t have been the one to kill the girls. Baldwin said the prosecution claimed the girls were killed by 4 p.m. on February 13, 2017, and their bodies were not moved prior to their discovery the next day. Allen, who admitted to being on the trail the day the girls were killed, left the area by 2:15 p.m., according to his legal team, citing phone records.
The prosecution also claimed an unspent bullet found at the crime scene came from Allen’s gun, but the round is commonly used by law enforcement, and no officer’s gun was tested in connection to the case. The idea that a mass-produced bullet cycled through a mass-produced gun could create a unique marking is also suspect, according to Stephen Gutowski, a certified firearms instructor and reporter who founded The Reload.
“The forensic techniques used by crime labs to match specific guns to specific bullets have come under heavy scrutiny in recent years,” Gutowski told The Daily Wire in 2022. “So, I think it’s important to examine claims like this with a healthy dose of skepticism. The idea you could match a mark on the rim of a casing to a specific gun’s extractor seems dubious to me.”
The case was also plagued by drama behind closed doors, with accusations of impropriety flying from both sides, as well as at and from the judge.
