Delphi murder trial Day 5: Autopsy photos, another ‘Bridge Guy’ witness
Forensic pathologist rethinks style of weapon used to kill Abby, Libby. Resident tells about seeing ‘Bridge Guy,’ gets into it with defense over details. New info from Libby’s phone. Return of Odin?
The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy for Delphi eighth-graders Abby Williams and Libby German the day after they were found dead in the woods near the Monon High Bridge Trail in February 2017 backtracked on the stand Wednesday, testifying that he’s rethought whether marks on one of the cut wounds was made by a serrated blade, as he initially thought.
The revelation – one that had Richard Allen’s defense team reeling, a bit – came during the morning session of Day 5 of the trial for the 52-year-old Delphi man accused in the murders of the two teens.
Here were some of the highlights about the trial, played out in and outside the courtroom:
PHOTOS AND RESULTS FROM THE AUTOPSY: As Dr. Roland Kohr, a former Vigo County coroner who led the autopsies on Feb. 15, 2017, detailed graphic photos of the fatal wounds on the girls’ necks on large-screen TV set up in Carroll Circuit Court, he pointed to a series of patterned markings left in one of Libby’s wounds.
Kohr said that the more he looked at it, as the trial against 52-year-old Delphi man Richard Allen approach, the less he was convinced a weapon with a serrated edge was used, “but something related to the blade or handle.” Kohr said it wasn’t a classic serrated, but serrated-like. Kohr said his evolving thoughts were inspired in his own garage workshop, saying one candidate might be a box cutter designed with parallel lines to make a gripping surface for the thumb.
That was a surprise to Allen’s defense team. During opening arguments last week, Andrew Baldwin had told jurors that the killer used two blades in the murder – one serrated, the other not – while the state would contend Allen used a box cutter.
Brad Rozzi, another of Allen’s attorneys, asked Kohr whether he had given a deposition to the defense team in February 2024 agreeing with an initial report about wounds coming from serrated and non-serrated blades. Kohr said he had. Rozzi asked him whether he planned to update his report.
“Do you think it would have been good to contact the defense … that you were going to come in here and change your mind?” Rozzi asked.
During his testimony, Kohr said Abby’s carotid arteries were partially cut on the left side of her neck. He said she died of that single wound.
Kohr testified that Libby’s jugular veins were completely cut. Cuts also sliced carotid arteries on her left side. Kohr showed that Libby had three gaping wounds. But he said she might have been cut four five times, as if the killer made second passes on two of the three spots on her neck.
While pictures of the wounds were show on a large screen TV in the courtroom, families wiped eyes and sat stoically. A few jurors looked flushed and had to look down occasionally. Allen sat at the defense table looking at the pictures along with everyone else.
Kohr said he didn’t determine a time of death, other than between the time the girls were dropped off at a trailhead the afternoon of Feb. 13, 2017, and when they were found the following afternoon, east of the Monon High Bridge Trail.
Kohr said given the wounds, the girls would have died in five to 10 minutes after being cut.
Kohr said that from the autopsies, he wasn’t able to tell from the wounds whether the killer was left handed or right handed.
Kohr testified that rape kits were administered for Abby and Libby. Those did not show signs of sexual assault. Kohr also said he did not see signs of trauma that would have come from sexual assault.
Kohr testified there were no signs of defensive wounds.
Kohr also testified that Abby had a faint line on her face, under her nose, as if it had been covered by a cloth or by tape – though he said there was not residue from adhesive that would be present with tape.
James Luttrell, part of the prosecution team, asked Kohr that, given his examination of the wounds, what was the minimum number of blades possible in the murders.
“The minimum number is one,” Kohr said.
ANOTHER WITNESS TO THE ‘BRIDGE GUY’ TESTIFIES: Sarah Carbaugh, a lifelong Delphi resident, testified Wednesday that she’d driven on County Road 300 North, past the Mears entrance to the Monon High Bridge Trail, several times on Feb. 13, 2017. She said she walked her dogs on the trail almost daily but liked to go when the small parking lot at the trailhead was empty.
Carbaugh said it was full that afternoon, including a group of people gathered who “looked stressed out.”
(On Tuesday, Steve Mullin, former Delphi police chief, testified that security cameras at the nearby Hoosier Harvestore showed Carbaugh’s car driving east on County Road 300 North at 3:56 p.m. Feb. 13, 2017.)
Carbaugh testified Wednesday that as she continued on, she saw a man walking west on County Road 300 North. She testified that he had his hands in his pockets, looking down and shoulders hunched. She said he was wearing layers of clothes on an unseasonably warm day that didn’t seem to require them. His posture, she said, curled into itself. Carbaugh testified that the man was covered in mud and blood – as if he’d just fallen down a cliff along the trails.
“I looked at him,” Carbaugh said, “but he didn’t make eye contact with me.”
Carbaugh said she later saw images of a potential suspect, captured in video on Libby German’s phone, and recognized him as the man she’d seen on Feb. 13, 2017. She said it took her three weeks to report what she saw because she was anxious about it. She eventually met several times with investigators in 2017 and in the years that followed to tell about what she saw.
(It didn’t come up Wednesday, but during a pretrial hearing last week in Allen County, her name came up in connection with witness statements the helped with police composite sketches used to drum up tips during the investigation.)
Baldwin, Allen’s attorney, challenged her certainty about her description of what she saw on Feb. 13, 2017.
Baldwin pointed to transcripts of her initial interviews with police, she mentioned “mud” 11 and 13 times and “blood” no times. Carbaugh said she believed she might have mumbled the word “blood” the first time. The second one, she said, about an hour of her interview is missing. (Missing or erased investigation interviews have been a bone of contention for Allen’s team through pretrial hearings and motions.)
“We have to take your word for that?” Baldwin asked.
“That video is missing, and that’s not on me,” she said of her June 2017 interview with police. “I understand you’re doing your job. You’re doing a good job … My description is always going to be the same. It’s mud and blood.”
Baldwin noted that a later interview had Carbaugh mentioning “blood” but no longer talking about “mud.” He also pressed her on other bits of descriptions she gave about the man she said she saw.
At one point, as Baldwin drilled deeper into differences in her descriptions, Carbaugh asked him: “Are we doing this, again?”
Baldwin paused and lowered his glasses: “Yes. We are.”
He said she’d initial described the man wearing a tan coat, when the Bridge Guy was in a dark blue coat. He said transcripts show that Carbaugh told police the man had “effeminate eyes.”
“Are you romanticizing this?” Carbaugh said. “I can’t tell you how many freckles he had or if he had effeminate eyes or any of that.”
Carbaugh was the fourth witness over two days called to testify about seeing a man they say matched the image of the Bridge Guy. Each time, Allen’s defense team tried to poke holes in descriptions of a muscular, tall, youthful man. Allen, who would have been in his mid-40s in 2017, stands 5-foot-4 with a slight build.
THE LATEST EXTRACTION FROM LIBBY’S PHONE: Details from another analysis of Libby German’s cellphone, found Feb. 14, 2017, under the body of Abby Williams, came in the afternoon via testimony from ISP 1st Sgt. Chris Cecil.
This account is from notes from media pool reports:
The iPhone 6S had been examined several times since 2017, each time with progressively more advanced software. Cecil testified that the phone’s last logged movement was at 2:32:39 on Feb. 13. His report included a timeline of the phone’s actions leading up to that:
1:41:44 p.m. - A picture was posted to Snapchat
1:43:59 p.m. - Another picture was posted to Snapchat
2:05:10 p.m. - Another picture was posted to Snapchat of the Monon High Bridge
2:07:20 p.m. - Last time the phone was unlocked
2:13:51 p.m. - Video lasting 43 seconds recorded shows Abby walking across the Monon High Bridge with someone behind her
2:14:41 p.m. - Someone tries to unlock the phone
2:32:39 p.m. - Last movement of phone
4:06 p.m.: Gets SMS message from Becky Patty, who is Libby's grandmother, saying, "You need to call me now!!!"
10:32:06 p.m. - Last signal from phone
Cecil testified the phone records had a gap until 4:33 a.m. Feb. 14, which it received 15 to 20 message all at once. Why was that?
“Based on information I have, I don’t know,” Cecil testified.
He said the phone had no activity after 4:34 a.m. Feb. 14.
DEFENSE ASKS AGAIN TO PRESENT THIRD-PARTY, ODIN THEORY: Defense attorneys are taking another run at introducing evidence about a third-party theory that Abby and Libby were victims of a ritual killing done by people practicing Odinism/old Norse paganism. In a motion filed Wednesday, they argued the testimony from Brian Olehy, a crime scene investigator with Indiana State Police, discussed how Abby and Libby’s bodies had been covered with sticks. Olehy testified this week that he understood the sticks were meant to conceal the bodies in the woods. The defense team argued in a 2023 court filing and again in a pretrial hearing Aug. 1 that the sticks were arranged on the girls in ways that resembled runes, symbols of old Norse paganism.
This summer, Judge Fran Gull agreed with prosecutors who’d asked to block the theory from the trial. Gull wrote that the burden was on Allen’s attorneys “to show a nexus between Odinism, cult or ritualistic killing” or any of the names of the men attached to the third-party theory. In that ruling, Gull had left the door open for Allen’s attorneys to bring in “evidence to support an offer of proof at the trial if one is made by counsel.”
“Richard Allen has a Sixth Amendment right to offer the jury his alternative theory as to the reasons the sticks are aligned and arranged in the manner in which they are arranged,” Allen’s attorneys wrote in Wednesday’s motion. The referenced evidence offered by Dawn Perlmutter, director of the Symbol Intelligence Group and a subject matter expert in ritualistic crimes, during the August pretrial hearing.
“Additionally, the sticks on the girls appear to be arranged in a pattern/arrangement or (at a minimum) using a person’s own eyeballs, common sense, logic and reason could cause a reasonable person to believe that the sticks were formed into some pattern/arrangement and weren’t being used to conceal the bodies,” they wrote.
As of Wednesday afternoon, according to online court records, the prosecutor had not filed a response and Gull had not ruled.
DEFENSE WITNESS BLOCKED ON BULLET EXAMINATION: Allen’s defense team will not be allowed to call William Tobin, a forensic metallurgist lined up with testify about the accuracy and reliability of the state’s examination of a bullet found near the girls’ bodies. In a Wednesday ruling, Judge Fran Gull agreed with the prosecutor, who argued that Tobin isn’t qualified as an expert in the field of firearms examination. “He’d be opining,” James Luttrell, part of the prosecutor’s team, said during pretrial arguments on the motion last week in Allen County. In the court documents, investigators pointed to an unspent, .40-caliber bullet they say that ballistic testing shows traces back to a Sig Sauer pistol police found at Allen’s Delphi home in October 2022, after officers circled back to talk with Allen more than five years after the crime. Brad Rozzi, one of Allen’s attorneys, had argued that Tobin was well qualified and was included to challenge what he called junk science that saw tool markings on an unspent bullet and leaped to tying Allen to the murders. In her ruling, Gull wrote that Tobin “is not a firearms expert, has not training in firearms identification and has never conducted a firearms examination.” She also wrote that Tobin had not examined the evidence introduced in the trial this week.
EXHIBITS FROM JULY/AUGUST PRETRIAL HEARINGS, INCLUDING CONFESSION NOTE, SHOWN IN ALLEN COUNTY: While the trial continued Tuesday in Delphi, a redacted set of exhibits and documents presented three days of pretrial hearings July 30-Aug. 1 were opened for a short period of public viewing in Judge Fran Gull’s home court in Allen County, 92 miles away. As reported by Matt Christy of Fox59, among the documents was a confession letter received from Allen on March 5, 2023. According to the report, Allen sent a request for an interview to the Indiana Department of Corrections while he was held in Westville Correctional Facility, saying he was “ready to officials confess” to killing the girls. He also wrote that he hoped to be able to tell Abby and Libby’s families he was sorry.
Gull wrote in an order earlier this month that a request for documents this summer was “unreasonable” given the load of photos, documents and more presented during three days of hearings, including one about Allen’s defense team’s efforts to block what prosecutors say are more than 60 confessions months after he was charged. Gull eventually ruled that the confessions were fair game, despite defense arguments that Allen’s solitary conditions in a state prison imposed by a safekeeping order had broken him mentally and physically and amounted to coercion.
But Gull wrote that the court had brought in a senior judge “to supervise the review of those exhibits which are accessible to the media” from the July and August hearings. That included looking at documents with employment personnel records, health records, mental health record, autopsy results, financial bank records and other information deemed confidential by the court. Addressing that “the media is demanding access to the exhibits which will be introduced at the trial,” she allowed media access for 15 minutes at the end of each trial day.
For more on what was open for inspection Tuesday in Fort Wayne, this is from Fox59: “Richard Allen confession letter provides no insights into knowledge ‘only a killer would know.’” WTHR’s Emily Longnecker also had this account about what was among the hundreds of documents and what wasn’t: “'I am ready to officially confess.’ Letter allegedly signed by Richard Allen is one of the exhibits in Delphi murders trial.”
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
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
It really seems like Gull is opening up the defense to to all kinds of appeals if he is convicted.