Judge rejects request to dismiss charges in Delphi murder case
Ruling against Richard Allen follows three days of hearings in Delphi, with two pivotal issues still in play. Plus, Purdue students continue to have free rides off campus in revised deal with CityBus
A judge on Friday ruled against an attempt by Richard Allen to dismiss charges, saying the defense team didn’t make an adequate case that lost or damaged evidence might have pinned the 2017 murders of Delphi eighth-graders on a Logansport man who police had cleared early in the investigation.
Judge Fran Gull also rejected a motion to sanction the prosecutor and compel him to provide the overwhelming amount of evidence in the case in a way Allen’s attorneys deemed more orderly and better labeled.
The pair of orders issued Friday stemmed from arguments made July 30, the first of three consecutive, marathon days of pretrial hearings in Carroll Circuit Court in Delphi.
Gull, a special judge assigned to the high-profile case from Allen County, already ruled on one other matter from that day, removing a safekeeping order that had kept Allen in a solitary cell in Indiana Department of Corrections facilities instead of in a county jail for all but the first days after his October 2022 arrest in the case. He was put back into custody of the Carroll County sheriff.
In the motion to dismiss, Allen’s defense team – who have spent more than a year building a case around the possibility that other suspects were connected to a pagan Norse ritualistic sacrifice killing of the girls – argued that interview tapes lost, phone records not collected, sketches that turned up on Facebook that resembled the crime scene and investigators’ reluctance to follow up on leads too quickly cleared a Logansport man who was an early suspect in the crimes. (That man’s name and others accused in the third-party defense aren’t being named here, because they have not been arrested, charged or testified in connection with the murders.)
Attorney Andrew Baldwin told Gull during the July 30 hearing that the situation made “a tall task” to get Allen a fair trial, when it starts in mid-October.
Prosecutors and one of the lead Indiana State Police investigators on the case after the Feb. 13, 2017, murders pushed back on the defense team’s arguments. They testified that the Logansport man at the center of the defense team’s contention had an alibi that they say cleared him from being at the Monon High Bridge Trail when the girls were killed between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. that day. Lt. Jerry Holeman, a detective with the Indiana State Police, said on the stand that he was convinced Allen was the man captured on Libby German’s cellphone coming across the Monon High Bridge and heard telling the girls, “Guys … down the hill.”
Baldwin and attorney Brad Rozzi have pointed toward a defense aimed at suspected Odinists, including the one from Logansport whose son knew the girls and posted several things on Facebook that teased unpublished details and “Easter egg” drawings and comments about Norse runes and how the girls’ bodies were found and other things ultimately discovered at the scene.
On Friday, Gull ruled that Rozzi and Baldwin’s arguments weren’t enough.
“No evidence has been presented to the court that the state destroyed exculpatory evidence nor that the state acted in bad faith,” Gull wrote. “The defense argues that this alleged exculpatory evidence all relates to one person. … However, no evidence has been presented to support this argument, nor has any evidence been presented to negate the evidence offered by the state which cleared (the Logansport man) of involvement in these crimes.”
Still pending are motions heard July 31 and Aug. 1, each of which are pivotal in the case against Allen, a 51-year-old former CVS clerk from Delphi.
In one, his attorneys have asked to toss what investigators contend were more than 60 confessions. They’ve argued that conditions imposed by forcing Allen into a maximum security, “prison inside a prison” setting at Westville Correctional Facility to await trial broke him physically and mentally, making the confessions suspect.
The other one deals with whether Prosecutor Nick McLeland can block the use of some words and names, including Odinism, cult or ritualistic killing and names of people central to a third-party theories Rozzi and Baldwin have been building to raise doubts about whether Allen killed Abby and Libby.
For more on arguments from that week in court and more about the case and charges against Allen, check this coverage:
PURDUE TELLS STUDENTS OFF-CAMPUS RIDES WILL BE FREE AFTER REFRESHED NEGOTIATIONS WITH CITYBUS
Purdue students will continue to get free, off-campus rides on CityBus routes, after all.
On Friday, days after it was reported that CityBus hadn’t accepted terms voted on Aug. 2 by Purdue’s trustees, Purdue announced it would cover the full cost of $99 semester bus passes for the 2024-25 academic year.
Previously, Purdue officials had said the university would subsidize $74 of those passes, leaving students, staff and faculty to pay $25 a semester for unlimited off-campus rides on CityBus.
“Purdue has signed a contract to pay a transportation vendor, CityBus, so that your on-campus bus routes will remain free,” the offices of the provost and Administrative Operations wrote in a letter sent to students Friday morning.
The letter to students said details about the $99 reimbursements from university would come later but that students would need to get semester passes from CityBus to access off-campus routes. Campus loop routes, also run by CityBus for the past 20 years, would remain free for those with passes obtained through their Purdue IDs.
“Data will be gathered on ridership through this year as Purdue works toward a better long-term solution and future vendor contracts for transportation for on- and off-campus students,” the letter said.
Purdue officials did not respond to further questions about how the deal came about and what alternative transportation solutions might be in the works beyond this year.
The university also hadn’t responded earlier this week when Based in Lafayette obtained internal memos that indicated that CityBus had rejected the plan and contract presented as a done deal to Purdue’s trustees. In that memo, CityBus CEO Bryan Smith told his board that Purdue officials had “misrepresented” negotiations during the Aug. 2 trustees meeting and in press releases that followed.
Final contract terms weren’t announced by CityBus on Friday, either. Though, Bryan Walck, CityBus manager of customer experience, said the deal was similar to one CityBus and Purdue had hammered out on July 12 – one that had Purdue and CityBus working out free rides for the coming academic year.
CityBus announced in April that it would start selling $99 semester passes for Purdue students and staff for the 2024-25 school year, saying that it had been eating the cost of off-campus rides in recent annual contracts with Purdue and was facing a “financial cliff” in a matter of two years. (For more background on CityBus’ rationale, see this from April 30: “CityBus ending free off-campus rides for Purdue students, staff. Purdue stunned, but CityBus CEO says subsidizing off-campus rides is putting company in a hole.”)
The two sides continued negotiations over the summer. On Aug. 2, Purdue’s auxiliary services presented trustees with a $2.39 million package, which included about $725,000 to cover university-subsidized semester passes for off-campus CityBus rides. According to the university’s arrangement laid out that day, Purdue would pay CityBus $99 per off-campus semester pass purchased up to 7% of the enrollment for fall 2024 and spring 2025 semesters.
Earlier in July, according to Smith, CityBus had agreed to a proposed deal that would provide semester passes to those with purdue.edu email addresses at no charge. He said Purdue had agreed to pay for up to 7% of the enrollment for each bus pass, capping the university’s expense at $700,000. Smith said CityBus’ starting point had been $1.6 million for the off-campus rides – or roughly $1 per off-campus ride used by someone with a Purdue ID in the past year.
Smith said CityBus agreed to the cap, even though it was less than projected from pass sales, because it would lead to wider adoption of the semester pass in the coming year. He said the goal was to get better data on Purdue riders who downloaded passes for negotiations the next year.
According to a timeline in CityBus’ memo, Purdue officials came back later and said they wanted students and staff to pay a portion of the off-campus rides. They presented a plan to have students and staff pay $25 of the $99 cost for a semester pass, with the university picking up $74 of that.
CityBus officials rejected that idea and held firm on the July 12 agreement. Smith told the CityBus board that the tax-supported transportation corporation had been surprised when that deal wound up before Purdue trustees and announced on campus Aug. 2.
Purdue, as of Friday, had not commented on whether the university agrees with CityBus’ version of the negotiations, as reported earlier in the week in Based in Lafayette.
“It's exciting to be able to make sure that we can provide the service to community and that we can continue to partner with the university,” Walck said. “It's a very valuable service to the community, and I think that you'd be hard pressed to find someone who would disagree that if we didn't have buses on campus, that campus would be gridlock and nobody would get anywhere.”
Brantly McCord, a doctoral student at Purdue, called Friday’s announcement a win that “belongs to the community” and that “was the best possible outcome for all parties.” McCord was part of push to maintain free off-campus transportation through the Graduate Rights and Our Wellbeing group based at Purdue.
“Purdue riders — students, staff, and faculty — as well as CityBus staff and local press shared a common objective: make the transit negotiations transparent so that the public can participate,” McCord said. “Purdue University exposed itself as the odd one out, attempting to cut and run with a deal that would have left its students and its own workers hurting.”
McCord said the GROW group’s concern is about how long that arrangement will last.
“Purdue announcing that it will pursue 'a better long-term solution and future vendor contracts for transportation' is worrisome,” McCord said. “We speculate that Purdue would rather not spend this moderate amount of money on a public service, despite its essential nature, and will attempt to slash service with CityBus for profit-seeking alternatives at its next opportunity. If our speculation is incorrect, then we graciously look forward to Purdue joining us at the community table next time to guarantee it.”
For details about semester passes through CityBus, here’s a link with an explainer.
THIS AND THAT/OTHER READS …
Indianapolis Business Journal reporters Cate Charron and Mickey Shuey reported on initial steps by the Indiana Finance Authority on a plan that would channel up to 25 million gallons of water to serve the needs of developments at the 10,000-acre LEAP district in Boone County for the next 15 to 20 years. The news of immediate local interest is that the water being contemplated was not coming from western Tippecanoe County, as initially contemplated by the Indiana Economic Development Corp. in its controversial studies for a pipeline that could carry up to 100 million gallons a day. Still, the IBJ report included this line: “Lebanon Mayor Matt Gentry said he doesn’t expect the effort to fully remove the possibility of the need for an additional water source, such as a pipeline from the Wabash River, somewhere down the road.” Check the IBJ’s full report here: “Potential water project poised to deliver 25M gallons a day to LEAP District, Lebanon.”
With that in mind, ICYMI: Tippecanoe County commissioners on Monday will consider a one-year extension for a local moratorium on large-scale water transfers outside the county and on high-volume wells – a move aimed at curbing the LEAP pipeline concept. Here’s more from a Friday edition of Based in Lafayette:
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
I couldn't understand why the judge was excluding the Odinist theory from the upcoming Richard Allen trial. Your quotes from her reasoning were very helpful.