Delphi murder trial: Family friend who found Abby, Libby tells about that day
In second day of testimony in Richard Allen’s trial, witness chokes up, telling the court he couldn’t look at the scene as he waited for police to arrive: ‘I stood there facing away from them'
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DELPHI MURDER TRIAL: FAMILY FRIEND WHO FOUND ABBY, LIBBY TELLS ABOUT THAT DAY
How one search party’s discovery of a tie-dyed shirt tangled in tree roots along Deer Creek led to a family friend’s discovery of the bodies of Abby Williams and Libby German, ending a frantic, two-day search for the Delphi eighth-graders on Feb. 14, 2017, filled the second day of testimony Saturday in the murder trial of Richard Allen.
Testimony during a morning-only session in Carroll Circuit Court picked up where family members of Abby and Libby left of on the first day of the trial, telling about how search parties – both formal and informal – scrambled to find the girls when they didn’t show up to meet their ride from an afternoon on Delphi’s Monon High Bridge Trail.
“At first, I thought they were mannequins,” Pat Brown, a lifelong Delphi resident and friends with Libby’s family, said while detailing how he discovered the girls only after getting about five feet away in the woods near the trail.
“I said, ‘We found them,’” Brown testified, choking up and telling the court he couldn’t look at the scene as he waited for police to arrive. “I stood there facing away from them.”
In opening arguments Friday, Prosecutor Nick McLeland said testimony would show that Allen, 52, was the infamous Bridge Guy, a grainy video clip captured on Libby German’s phone of a man walking across the abandoned Monon High Bridge. McLeland said the state would show that Allen followed the girls across the train trestle, 63 feet above Deer Creek and the surrounding woods, the afternoon of Feb. 13, 2017. McLeland told jurors – pulled this week from Allen County 92 miles away due to the high publicity surrounding the case – that Allen used a gun to force Abby and Libby down the hill at the southeastern end of the bridge before cutting their necks, leaving the scene and hiding in plain sight, working at the CVS pharmacy in Delphi, for the next 5½ years until his arrest in October 2022.
Defense contended in opening arguments that the prosecution’s case was built to quickly fall apart. Andrew Baldwin, one of three attorneys on the defense team, dismissed dozens of alleged confessions investigators say Allen made were the product of solitary conditions in a maximum security unit at Westville Correctional Facility that wrecked his mental state as he awaited trial. Baldwin told jurors that evidence about cellphone data, flaws in matching a bullet found near the girls to a gun owned by Allen and holes in the timeline presented by the state will prove Allen didn’t kill the girls.
For more, here’s coverage from Friday, the first day of testimony.
Here are some highlights from Saturday morning’s testimony during the state’s case, all revolving around the search for the girls.
FORMER DELPHI POLICE CHIEF ON A ‘ROUTINE DAY THAT DAY:’ Steve Mullin, now an investigator for the Carroll County prosecutor’s office, was Delphi police chief in February 2017. He testified Saturday that he’d gone home around 5 or 5:30 p.m. after his shift.
“Simply, it was a routine day that day,” Mullin said.
He said it was long after, though, he heard police radio traffic about two missing girls. He said he also started getting texts from community members. He said he called the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office dispatch to check in on what was happening.
Libby German’s grandma, sister and father testified about dropping the girls off at the Mears entrance to the Monon High Bridge Trail, just off County Road 300 North. A Snapchat photo posted by Libby showed their path across the Monon High Bridge. Derrick German told about going to look for Abby and Libby when they didn’t return to the Mears entrance when he told them to meet for a ride home. After the family searched, the called police for help shortly after 5 p.m.
Mullin said he went to the sheriff’s dispatch center to provide assistance “any way I could” to find the girls. He reached out to Delphi Community Middle School to get names of friends and acquaintances who might have known where they’d gone that Monday, a day off from school. He said he didn’t go to the Monon High Bridge Trail, instead working from dispatch to help coordinate things until the initial search was called off just before 2 a.m. Feb. 14.
“I didn’t suspect anything nefarious,” Mullin testified. “I still believed, given time, they would return home. I couldn’t imagine anyone had done any harm to them.”
The next morning, volunteers were gathering at the fire station to help with the search in daylight. Mullin said he supplied maps and teamed people up in two and threes, gave them his cellphone number and sent them out.
About the maps – McLeland commented that he had to catch himself and remember that the jury wasn’t from Carroll County and likely wouldn’t know the sites and landmarks familiar to lifelong Delphi residents. He spent time Saturday having Mullin mark spots along the trail, from the Freedom Bridge over the Hoosier Heartland Highway to the Monon High Bridge, as well as spots witnesses referenced along County Road 300 North.
Mullin also narrated a low-flying drone tour of the Monon High Bridge trail, taken by Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Department on Feb. 13, 2024 – a time meant to give a sense of the landscape on that day. The difference, he said, would be the more recent improvements on the trail and on the decking and rails that make a new overlook at the Monon High Bridge. Most of that project was done in 2022 and dedicated in September 2023.
Mullin said the search teams covered the woods and fields near the trail, focusing downstream on Deer Creek – which flows east to west – in case the girls had fallen off the bridge and into the water.
Mullin testified that he, Indiana State Police Sgt. Kim Riley and the department’s chaplain met with Abby and Libby’s families around 2 p.m. Feb. 14 and told them that two bodies had been found and that investigators were working to make identifications.
Mullin said that later a neighbor mentioned that the Hoosier Harvestore on County Road 300 North, just west of the Mears entrance, had security cameras pointing in two directions to the road. He said he reviewed that footage and took pictures on the cellphone of cars that had gone by in the daylight. He testified that he wasn’t able to see vehicles that had gone by in the dark.
THE DISCOVERY OF A TIE-DYED SHIRT IN DEER CREEK: Jake Johns, a Delphi resident, said he knew about the search started Feb. 13 from his wife, Jennifer, who worked with Becky Patty, Libby German’s grandma. Johns testified that when he clocked in the next morning, his boss at Pearson’s of Delphi, a propane delivery company, asked if he wanted to use his shift to help search.
“We said, ‘Sure,’” Johns said.
Johns said he teamed up with coworker Shane Haygood. Instead of going to the fire department’s staging area in town – “We figured they didn’t need more commotion,” he said – Johns testified that they drove to Riley Park, which is just on Deer Creek three blocks from the Carroll County Courthouse.
Johns said they walked one side of the creek, spread out about 10 feet apart, for nearly four hours, making it past the Monon High Bridge. He said they’d kept an eye out for a tie-dyed shirt, which his wife had told him had been part of Becky Patty’s description of the girls’ clothing.
Johns testified that they spotted what looked like a tie-dyed shirt in the roots of a tree sticking into Deer Creek, near the High Bridge. He said the water was too deep about halfway across the creek to get to the other side with the muck boots he had on. But they found a firefighter stationed up a hill on County Road 625 West, on the south side of Deer Creek, where they were. Johns testified that the firefighter tried to call someone to report it but couldn’t get through. Johns said the firefighter got to the end of the Monon High Bridge and crossed to the other side to check out the find.
Johns said the firefighter found a tie-dyed shirt and “some black Nike shoes.” (No evidence or testimony Saturday specifically identified who the shirt or shoes belonged to.)
Johns said that Haygood had the number for Pat Brown, who had been searching on the other side of the creek, near the trail. Johns said Haygood told Brown to walk toward where they were, because they’d spotted the shirt.
Johns testified that Haygood was on the phone with Brown when Brown came across the girls’ bodies.
Jennifer Auger, one of Allen’s attorneys, asked Johns to tell about “a slide” they saw that day on the hill near the bridge. Johns said they’d seen where rocks and dirt had been disturbed.
FINDING THE GIRLS’ BODIES: Pat Brown, a lifelong Delphi resident, got home from his job in the maintenance department at the Tate & Lyle plant in Lafayette the afternoon of Feb. 13, 2017. He stopped at an auto parts store to get an oil filter after his 7 a.m.-3 p.m. shift, changed the oil in an SUV and drove that vehicle to Monticello with his wife to sell it. After firing up the grill for dinner, his wife told him about a post Becky Patty had on Facebook about Libby and Abby missing and not answering calls or texts.
Brown said he called Mike Patty, Libby’s grandpa and a friend he’d gone to school with, to ask what he could do. He said it was already dark when he reached Mike Patty.
Brown testified that he went to the cemetery along County Road 300 North to look around, called neighbor Tom Mears to see if he could help and stopped at Ron Logan’s house nearby along 300 North to see if he’d seen the girls.
Back at the cemetery, Brown said he worked his way down a ravine toward the High Bridge. He testified that he spoke to other people searching before heading to the Mears entrance to the trailhead, seeing flashlights scattered around, working the area. When he got home later that night, he decided to drive back to town to get a can of Skoal smokeless tobacco. On the way home, he drove country roads he knew north of the Monon High Bridge Trail, to see if the girls maybe were walking home or walking to town.
“I was just trying to see,” Brown said.
On Feb. 14, Brown testified that he called off work, drove to town and rejoined the search. He and Tom Mears searched several spots, including a cave they knew about, only to find that it had collapsed long ago.
That afternoon, while near the cemetery, Brown testified that Shane Haygood called him and told him about the clothing find. He’d run into Melissa Marchand, a relative of Libby’s, who’d joined him as he started making his way toward where Haygood was.
“That’s when we came across the girls,” Brown testified.
As Marchand ran back toward the trailhead, Brown called Mullin. Other search parties started coming from other directions but didn’t get closer, as he turned away from the scene and waited for police.
A juror asked a question, read by Judge Fran Gull, about how long it took for police to get there.
“Seems like it takes forever in a situation like that,” Brown said. He said it was about five minutes, though.
He said police took his statement and then asked him and others around the area to go back the way they came, as they took over the crime scene.
WHAT’S NEXT: The trial resumes at 9 a.m. Monday in Carroll Circuit Court.
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Without reading, I've deleted every other "Based in Lafayette" article that mentioned this case. Now I feel like a weirdo at a train wreck, reading every word.