Delphi murder trial, Day 4: Witnesses say they saw ‘Bridge Guy,’ but descriptions vary
Day 4 in the trial of Richard Allen, accused in the 2017 murders of teens Abby Williams and Libby German, follow tracks of hikers who saw a suspect, video from Libby’s phone and more from crime scene
Support for this edition comes from the Purdue Presidential Lecture Series, presenting Sully Sullenberger — Purdue alum, hero and pilot — who landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River, saving all aboard. Purdue University invites you to hear his inspiring story live at the upcoming Presidential Lecture Series event Nov. 4 at 4 p.m. in Elliott Hall of Music. This event is free and open to the public. Reserve your seat today: www.purdue.edu/president/lecture-series/a-conversation-with-sully-sullenberger.
Sponsorship help for this edition also comes from Purdue Musical Organizations. The 91st Annual Purdue Christmas Show is the must-see event of the year! Gather your family and friends, and create lasting memories as you sing along to your favorite songs and marvel at the extraordinary Purdue student talent on display. Get tickets here.
DELPHI MURDER TRIAL, DAY 4: WITNESSES SAY THEY SAW ‘BRIDGE GUY,’ BUT DESCRIPTIONS VARY
Three people who were on the Monon High Bridge Trail the same afternoon Delphi eighth-graders Abby Williams and Libby German went missing testified Tuesday that they saw a man investigators called “Bridge Guy,” as captured in a grainy image on Libby’s cellphone.
But defense attorneys for Richard Allen, the 52-year-old former clerk at the CVS in Delphi charged in the murders of the girls in February 2017, spent the afternoon poking holes in the witnesses’ testimony, using their initial descriptions of a man seen following Abby and Libby on the Monon High Bridge.
In police interviews after the murders, Allen’s attorneys reminded them, they described the man they saw on the trail and bridge that day as youthful, tall and muscular. Allen stands about 5-foot-4, has a slight build and would have been in his mid-40s in 2017.
Day 4 of testimony in the Delphi murders trial – scheduled through Nov. 15 in Carroll Circuit Court – featured investigators who inventoried the crime scene, the efforts to pull data from Libby German’s phone and a new look at the video clip that showed the suspect on the bridge – in what an investigator said was the last thing on Libby’s camera roll.
Here were some of the takeaways from Day 4.
WITNESSESES ON THE TRAIL … AND MAYBE AN OPENING TO REINTRODUCE THE ‘BRIDGE GUY’ SKETCHES: Railly Voorheis and Breann Wilber, sophomores at Delphi Community High School in 2017, testified that they’d gone for hike on the Monon High Bridge Trail on Feb. 13 to take pictures of the bridge, Deer Creek and of themselves enjoying a Monday off from school. Voorheis had a Nikon 250mm – “It’s a real camera,” she said – and the group they were with, including Voorheis’ two sisters, had cell phones to post to social media.
Testifying separately, Voorheis and Wilber said saw a man walking on the Monon High Bridge Trail who seemed dressed the wrong way for a day that was in the upper-40s. While they were in light jackets, Voorheis said the man walked by in a hood and a hat, in layers including a heavy coat, a running-style mask pulled up over his nose – “overdressed for the weather, I thought.” They said he wasn’t the friendliest.
“I remember I waved to him,” Voorheis said. “He kind of glared at me a little bit. He didn’t seem to be the happiest person.”
“It gave me bad vibes,” Wilber testified.
At 12:43 p.m. and 1:26 p.m., Wilber posted photos to her Snapchat story from the walk. She testified that Libby German sent a Snapchat message, asking if she was still near the Monon High Bridge. Wilber said she replied that they’d just left and were heading home.
Later, after the murders, they gave statements to investigators, along with descriptions of the man they saw that afternoon. Both testified that when they saw the video image of the Bridge Guy a week after the murders – when it was released to the public – they recognized him as the man they’d seen.
Court documents say police found that Allen owned clothing consistent with what was being worn by a man Libby German videotaped coming across the Monon High Bridge – an image used by police to spread the word about the case.
Allen’s attorneys asked them whether their idea of what the man looked like had changed over time. Defense Attorney Andrew Baldwin asked Wilber about her initial take that she would have stood only as tall as the man’s upper arm.
“That’s what I guessed at,” Wilber said.
Attorney Jennifer Auger asked Voorheis about telling police that the man was in his early-20s or 30s, had a bigger build, dirty blond hair, brown eyes, a wrinkly kind of face and dressed in all black. Auger asked if maybe Voorheis had been influenced by what she saw in the video image.
“I do think my memory has been impacted by the image,” Voorheis testified.
A third witness, Betsy Blair told the court that she walked a loop that takes in the High Bridge Trail and a connected NICHES Land Trust property two or three times a week. That day she saw two girls, who she later recognized from news reports as Abby and Libby. She also saw a man standing on a platform jutting out from the Monon High Bridge, about 50 feet from where she made her turn to head back toward the Freedom Bridge at the other end of the trail.
“He just looked like he was expecting somebody or something,” Blair testified. “I just felt like he wasn’t looking for me.”
Blair said the Bridge Guy picture fit the man she saw that day.
Baldwin pressed in on her description, too, noting that she’d told investigators that he was more boyish looking and average height. And Baldwin asked if the man had brown, poofy hair, as she’d initially said.
“That’s the description I gave to the person making the sketch,” Blair said.
That moment lighted up the defense table.
Last week, Judge Fran Gull sided with the prosecution that the defense should be barred from presenting a pair of composite sketches – ones shared publicly in 2017 and 2019 to drum up tips about potential suspects – because they weren’t used to identify Allen and might mislead jurors. The defense team had argued before the trial started that the reason the prosecution wanted the sketches barred was because they didn’t look like Allen.
At the close of the session Tuesday, Baldwin suggested that the testimony had “opened the door to the sketches.”
“We need to talk,” Baldwin said.
AN INVENTORY OF THE CRIME SCENE: Tuesday morning, Brian Olehy, who was an Indiana State Police crime scene investigator, picked up testimony started Monday about what was found at the crime scene – what investigators called “ground zero” – and in nearby Deer Creek on Feb. 14, 2017, the day their bodies were found.
Olehy said that among the items found at the creek were: A white and black Nike show, size 10; a pair Hollister blue jeans; a tie dye shirt; a gray sweatshirt; underwear; a black and purple sock; a pink sock; a green headscarf; and a black spaghetti strap shirt.
He spent time testifying about how the items were collected, bagged and labeled before being taken from the scene – much of it going to ISP’s Putnamville post to be properly dried. The jury was given the opportunity to pass three items in their sealed bags to see.
As for the crime scene, in wooded area near Monon High Bridge Trail, Olehy described 24 items collected where girls were found dead. Among them: Converse shoes, one on Abby, one nearby; a .40 caliber Smith and Wesson bullet; various swabs taken of the girls; stranded material’ found on the girls’ fingers; a black and white Nike found under Abby; swabs of blood from ground and trees and a cell phone.
Even more was collected during an autopsy in Terre Haute on Feb. 15, 2017, Olehy said. That included a Delphi swimming sweatshirt with “German” on the back, two bras, pink sleeveless shirt and jeans, all being worn by Abby. Olehy testified the clothing was still damp with moisture he said was both from blood and the creek, even a day after the girls were found.
Olehy testified that during an autopsy of the girls at Terre Haute, each had a rape kit done. Results weren’t disclosed in Tuesday’s testimony.
Brad Rozzi, another of Allen’s attorneys, asked Olehy whether any of the swabs he collected came back with DNA tied to Richard Allen.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Olehy said.
Rozzi also pressed Olehy about whether he wished investigators had done more to check on blood patterns on trees and the ground or to document and photograph the discovery of the bullet between the girls’ bodies. Olehy testified several times that he stood by the investigation.
Rozzi was knocked back as he tried to identify the unspent .40 caliber round as the “magic bullet.” That’s how the defense team had referred to it after 2022 charges that tied Allen to the crime leaned heavily on marks on the bullet that prosecutors say match a Sig Sauer handgun found at Allen’s home in October 2022.
The prosecutor objected to the use of “magic bullet.” The judge agreed: “Your characterization is improper.”
When Rozzi asked Olehy about time of death. Olehy said he didn’t have that to offer, saying time of death was an imprecise science. Rozzi also asked whether there was anything odd about finding a round in a field or the woods in Indiana. Olehy said that was more likely with a shotgun cartridge used by hunters than a .40-caliber bullet.
ON LIBBY GERMAN’S CELL PHONE: Lt. Brian Bunner, part of the Indianapolis State Police digital forensics unit, testified about a series of data extractions from the cell phone found with the bodies. Bunner said that among the first data pulled from the phone was Libby’s camera roll, which included a video time-stamped at 2:13 p.m. Feb. 13, 2017.
The clip shown in court was less than a minute. In it, Abby Williams is negotiating the final few railroad ties on the abandoned bridge. In a fleeting glance in the background, is a man following the girls. Screenshots pulled from the video and given to jurors showed the man roughly 16 rail ties behind Abby at that moment.
The video then shows gravel, railroad ties and brush, as if Libby had the phone in her hand and continued to shoot without focusing on a subject. At one point, one of the girls talks about how “there’s no path there.”
Jeremey Chapman was a forensic audio-video technician for Indiana State Police in 2017. Chapman testified Tuesday about how he used software to find three frames from Libby’s video he called “decent candidates” for enhancing to get a better look at the man and his face.
To get the image of the Bridge Guy used in wanted posters since 2017, Chapman said he rotated, cropped, resized, adjusted levels and sharpened the image. On one, he also used optical deblurring techniques. (“It does the best it can,” Chapman said. “Once it’s blurry, it’s blurry.”)
Prosecutor Nick McLeland asked Chapman if he also used filters to enhance the audio.
“Yes,” Chapman said. “One portion where the male voice says, ‘Down the hill.’”
That got the attention of the defense table, too.
Late Sunday, Allen’s defense team filed a motion looking “to prohibit the state from eliciting testimony as to the words and sounds allegedly contained in the video recovered from Liberty German’s cell phone.” Besides the command of “Guys … down the hill,” in court documents tied to Allen’s murder charges in 2022, McLeland also wrote that one of the girls mentioned the word “gun” in the clip.
The motion filed this week asks the court not to allow the prosecutor to elicit testimony based on an enhanced version of the audio, which investigators played in a loop as they solicited tips in the case. The motion contends that “interpreting the words and sounds on the enhanced video requires a completely subjective analysis” and that “testimony identifying the words and sounds on the video is speculative.”
As of Tuesday evening, court records hadn’t shown that Gull had ruled on that motion.
IN LINE TO SIT THROUGH THE TRIAL: Getting into Carroll Circuit Court each day isn’t a sport for the weak. The courtroom in Delphi has 72 seats in the gallery. Take away the seats reserved for families, defense and prosecution, and 12 for credentialed media – divvied up lottery style among dozens of broadcast and print outlets covering the trial and qualify under state code as media – there 24 seats. Lines have started in the 8 p.m. range each night on the ramp at the entrance to get into the courthouse the next day. That’s included media that didn’t get one of the 12 credentials, podcasters and non-traditional content creators who have followed the Delphi case closely, and members of the public. That hasn’t let up, now four days into testimony. Here’s look at the line, via social media from Kyla Russell of WISH-TV in Indianapolis. Note the time stamp … and that she’d already been there for a few hours:
MORE COVERAGE
Day 2: Delphi murder trial: Family friend who found Abby, Libby tells about that day
Day 1: Families testify about Abby, Libby’s last day as Delphi murder trial opens
Final day, pretrial: Composite sketches, other unresolved issues before opening statements Friday
Thanks for support from Purdue Musical Organizations, presenting the 91st Annual Purdue Christmas Show, Dec. 7-8. Get tickets here.
And thanks to the Purdue Presidential Lecture Series, presenting Sully Sullenberger — Purdue alum, hero and pilot — at 4 p.m. Nov. 4 in Elliott Hall of Music. This event is free and open to the public. Reserve your seat today: www.purdue.edu/president/lecture-series/a-conversation-with-sully-sullenberger.
Thank you for supporting Based in Lafayette, an independent, local reporting project. Free and full-ride subscription options are ready for you here.
Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
Why do they not directly ask the witnesses whether the person seated in front of them is the person they saw on the trail?
If non-traditional media held itself to the same standards as traditional media, I might agree. But not all do.