A 52-year-old man who prosecutors said was “hiding in plain sight” was found guilty on Monday of the brutal murders of two girls in the small town of Delphi, Indiana, more than seven years ago.
The 2022 arrest of Richard Allen, 52, a married Delphi resident who worked at a local CVS, had been a surprising development in what for years had been an unsolved case. Libby German, 14, and her best friend, Abby Williams, 13, disappeared from a hiking trail on Feb. 13, 2017, and their bodies were found the next day beside a creek about half a mile away. Allen confessed to the killings more than 60 times while he was being held in prison before the trial, prosecutors said. But his defense attorneys argued he was innocent, discounting the confessions as brought on by his poor mental health under the conditions of incarceration.
The case had drawn the attention of true crime fans and online sleuths for the many questions that surrounded what happened to the girls, even as a video from Libby’s phone seemed to capture the moment their killer approached them on an abandoned railroad bridge. Prosecutors said Allen was the man — dubbed by online sleuths as “Bridge Guy” — glimpsed and heard in the chaotic video filmed at about 2:13 p.m. on the day the girls were allegedly abducted.
Authorities had publicly released snippets of the video in hopes that someone could identify the man, but for more than five years, they had no credible leads.
Allen was identified as a suspect only after a volunteer file clerk in the county prosecutor’s office testified that on Sept. 21, 2022, she discovered a mislabeled record of Allen telling investigators he was on the hiking trail at the time of the girls’ disappearance, IndyStar reported.
Li Buszka, Pool photo via Associated Press
The video that had become an obsession in the true crime community and stymied investigators was played publicly in its entirety for the first time in court in its original and forensically enhanced forms. In the 43-second video, authorities said a man can be seen approaching the girls across the railroad trestles and later ordering them to go “down the hill,” the Journal & Courier in Lafayette, Indiana, reported.
Reporters in the courtroom said they could hear a girl’s voice saying that they’d reached the end of the trail and had to “go down.”
A detective said he could hear one of the girls say that the man had a gun, WTHR-TV in Indianapolis reported.
Investigators found an unspent bullet cartridge between the girls’ bodies that they said also tied Allen to the crime. A firearms expert for the prosecution testified that it had been cycled through one of Allen’s guns, while his defense attorneys questioned the reliability of the testing, WXIN-TV in Indianapolis reported.
We Need Your Support
Support HuffPost
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
Though the trial revealed disturbing details about the girls’ deaths that had long been withheld from the public, Allen’s defense attorneys argued that prosecutors had failed to prove that he was guilty. Among a variety of issues the defense raised, no evidence linked Allen’s DNA to the bloody crime scene, the IndyStar and other news outlets reported.
The trial also included emotional testimony from the girls’ family members, who have worked for years to keep the girls’ memory alive and seek justice.
“Maybe when this is over ― we will learn to move forward ― maybe not,” Libby’s grandmother Becky Patty wrote in a poignant Facebook post on the first day of the trial. “One thing is for certain though ― we will live our lives loving and honoring you. Love you and miss you so much Libby.”
Michael Conroy/Associated Press
