Delphi trial, Day 12: The state rests
The prosecution’s case against Richard Allen ends with his own words, with calls from a prison cell telling family he killed Abby Williams and Libby German. Plus, a Day 12 wrap.
The prosecution rested Thursday afternoon after 12 days of testimony in the Delphi murders trial, closing its case with a series of prison phone calls Richard Allen made over eight months, telling family members that he was sorry but he needed them to know he’d killed Delphi eighth-graders Abby Williams and Libby German in February 2017.
In the courtroom Thursday, Kathy Allen wept in the gallery and Richard Allen rubbed his eyes as prosecutors played phone calls placed from Westville Correctional Facility after the 52-year-old former CVS clerk’s arrest and murder charges in 2022.
Across eight recordings of phone calls – dialed from “Ricky” and roughly less than five minutes – Allen tried to convince his family that he killed the girls, as they push back with worries about his medication dosages and what his time in a state prison was messing with him. His wife, Kathy, and mother, Janis, repeatedly tell Allen that he’s not thinking straight and that he needs to quit calling them to talk that way.
The collection came from more the 700 calls and other messages Allen made that were constantly monitored by Brian Harshman, a master trooper with the Indiana State Police and the designated “phone guy” on the Delphi case.
The collection also came amid three consecutive days of testimony about some of the more than 60 confessions investigators say Allen made to his family and to prison officials and guards.
Among them, this call to Kathy Allen on April 3, 2023:
Richard Allen: I just want to apologize to you. I did it. No, I did it.
Kathy Allen: No, you didn’t.
Richard Allen: I killed Abby and Libby.
Kathy Allen: No, you didn’t, dear.
Richard Allen: Yes, I did.
Kathy Allen: You’re not feeling well. They messed up your meds or something.
Richard Allen: I think I did.
Kathy Allen: They are screwing with you there. I’m going to get to the bottom of it. … There’s something wrong. … But you didn’t do it. You said you didn’t do it.
Richard Allen: Maybe I did.
And this call to Kathy Allen on May 10, 2023:
Richard Allen: I need to tell you something. I need you to know I did this.
Kathy Allen: What? No. No, you didn’t. There’s no way. Dear, there’s no way.
Richard Allen: I hope you still love me.
Kathy Allen: I do. … You’re not well. … You don’t need to say something you didn’t do.
Richard Allen: I’m just trying to be at peace with things.
From May 17, 2023, in a call to his mother, Janis Allen:
Richard Allen: Did Kathy tell you that I did it?
Janis Allen: We’re not going to discuss this, OK? … Just saying it doesn’t mean you did it.
Richard Allen: Well, it does when I did.
From June 5, 2023, in a call to Kathy Allen:
Richard Allen: I feel like I lost my mind and gone to hell.
Kathy Allen: We’re all living it right now.
Richard Allen: You know I done it, right?
Kathy Allen: I don’t want to tale about that, OK?
From June 11, 2023, in a call to Kathy Allen:
Richard Allen: I did it. (Long pause.) Are you still on there?
Kathy Allen: Yes, dear. But you didn’t do it.
Richard Allen: Why do you say that?
Kathy Allen: Why do you say that? …
Richard Allen: I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel I lost my mind.
Kathy Allen: Honey, you can’t call me and talk like this.
Richard Allen: I’m scared, baby.
Kathy Allen: I can’t talk to you right now. …
Richard Allen: I’m probably going to have to kill myself now. … I guess I’m just going to have to stop calling. I’m sorry.
Kathy Allen: You can’t call me if you’re going to talk like that.
Brad Rozzi, one of Allen’s attorneys, unsuccessfully attempted to force the prosecution to play other phone calls made on the same days, when he said Allen professed his innocence to family members and told them that he was not sure how long he would stay lucid, that he believed he was being mentally tortured and that he was losing his mind. Without that context, Rozzi argued, the jury wouldn’t get the full story.
“It’s like there’s one long conversation over the course of five hours,” Rozzi said. “It’s one of those situations where we either play them all, or we play none.”
Gull said she agreed with the prosecutor that the calls were complete in that they weren’t cut from their original length. She said it was up to the defense whether they wanted to introduce those phone calls as they presented their case.
Harshman characterized Allen’s voice as “calm, subdued, solemn” in the phone calls.
THE VOICE OF BRIDGE GUY: Later on the stand, Harshman testified that the description of the murders offered to his prison psychologist in May 2023 offered a bit of information he said that only someone involved in the crime would know.
Dr. Monica Wala, who treated Allen when he was being held in Westville Correctional Facility testified Wednesday that Allen then laid a version for her of what happened Feb. 13, 2017: He’d gone to his mom’s house near Peru that morning but decided not to stay for lunch. He bought a six-pack of beer on the way home and drank three. He bundled up and went to the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi. He saw Abby and Libby and followed them to the Monon High Bridge. He said he did something with his gun that made an unspent cartridge come out, later found by police at the crime scene. Wala said he told her he intended to rape the girls. But he saw a van nearby, which scared him and stopped that plan, forcing him to cross Deer Creek. He cut Abby and Libby’s necks and made sure they were dead, in essence to save himself. He covered the girls’ bodies with some sticks. And he left, avoiding the Monon High Bridge Trail so he wouldn’t be seen, and went on living his life.
Brad Weber, a Delphi resident who lives just southeast of the south end of the Monon High Bridge, testified Wednesday that he owned a 2000 Ford Econovan that he drove to and from his shift at the Subaru of Indiana Automotive plant in Lafayette. Weber testified that he got off his shift at 2:02 p.m. Feb. 13, 2017, and drove home. He said it took 20 to 25 minutes to get home. Harshman estimated that would have Weber coming up County Road 625 West and onto his private drive between 2:27 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.
Libby German shot a final video – the one capturing the image and voice of a suspect known as Bridge Guy – at the southwest end of the Monon High Bridge at 2:13 p.m. Feb. 13, 2017.
Prosecutor Nick McLeland played a version of the video that had enhanced audio that smoothed and brought forward the voice of a man who told the girls, “Guys … down the hill.”
McLeland asked Harshman, given the time he’d spent listening to more than 700 phone calls Allen placed from a state prison or county jail cell, whether he recognized the voice in the enhanced Bridge Guy video.
Harshman said he was convinced it was “the voice of Richard Allen.”
Rozzi objected, questioning whether Harshman had training in voice patterns, but was overruled by the judge.
On Wednesday, Allen’s attorneys had already challenged Weber, asking him where he was the week before and whether he came straight home that day from the Subaru plant in Lafayette. Andrew Baldwin, one of the defense attorneys, had asked Weber whether he’d told police in 2017 that he’d made stops to service his ATM machines that day. Weber said on the stand that wasn’t true. Baldwin put a subpoena in Weber’s hand while he was on the stand to testify later.
Rozzi asked Harshman whether his timeline, featuring Allen getting spooked by a van, would fall apart if it’s shown that Weber didn’t come straight home from work, even if it just meant stopping for gas or lingering in the parking lot to talk to a coworker.
“If Brad Weber is not a credible human being,” Rozzi asked, “would that change your conclusion?
Harshman said: “No.”
VIDEO FROM CASS COUNTY JAIL BLOCKED: During his testimony Thursday, Harshman was asked by the state about Allen’s conduct since he was moved to the Cass County Jail in August, after spending the rest of his from the Department of Corrections, where he’d been held in state prisons under a safekeeping order since his October 2022 arrest. Harshman testified that Allen exhibited confrontational behavior at the jail in Logansport, kicking at doors, screaming at staff and having to be restrained. But when the prosecution attempted to introduce a half-hour of video evidence of that, the defense objected. With the jury still on a lunch break, Judge Fran Gull agreed to look at the footage in her chambers. Gull returned siding with the defense and denying the video footage as evidence.
THE DEFENSE OPENS: The first witness for the defense was Cheyenne Mill, who testified she and a friend, Shelby Duncan, hiked the Monon High Bridge Trial on Feb. 13, 2017. Mill said that she and Duncan had done a lap at France Park near Logansport before deciding to hike in Delphi next that day.
Mill said they arrived at “2:50-ish,” parked at the Mears entrance to the trails, off County Road 300 North, and were walking toward the Monon High Bridge when she fielded a call from her boyfriend at 3:12 p.m.
Earlier testimony put Abby and Libby at the Mears entrance when they were dropped off around 1:30 p.m. that day. Libby later posted a photo of Abby on the Monon High Bridge at 2:07 p.m.
Mill said they walked the length of the abandoned rail bridge, stopped long enough to go to the bathroom on the far end, and walked back to one of the bridge platforms. She said they saw an “overweight” man on the trail who didn’t acknowledge them and two friends who they didn’t realize would be there that day. Social media posts and camera timestamps had them on the bridge until 3:55 p.m.
As they left, Mill said, they saw another man and woman parked at the Mears entrance who were acting frantic.
Mill testified that while they were on the bridge, they didn’t hear or see anything unusual.
She testified that she reported that they’d been on the bridge and trail a day after the girls were found. She said police got back to them two weeks later. Mill testified that she wrote to police several years later that she was still available if they needed her for information, but that she’d deleted her social media presence after “vigilantes trying to solve it from their couch” discovered her pictures from the bridge and harassed and doxxed her.
GOOGLE SEARCH HISTORY TIED TO ALLEN’S EMAIL ACCOUNT ADMITTED: Gull allowed a list of Google searches from Allen’s email account, after Dec. 16, 2022, search warrant from Indiana State Police. Allen’s defense team had objected, questioning whether prosecutors could show that Allen was the only one with access to the account. The list, turned over by Google on Feb. 1, 2023, included searches ranging from May 2020 to the days before his arrest in October 2022. Among them:
Man held hostage by teen.
Movie about a man being held against his will.
65+ best kidnapping and hostage movies ever made.
Story about rebuilding Monon High Bridge.
Shooting ranges near me.
Should I die now?
What’s the most horrifying thing I can watch?
What’s the more insidious thing I can watch?
Various searches for “Delphi”
Various Delphi murder updates.
Delphi murders: $1.2M to restore jail.
THE RETURN OF THE ODIN THEORY?: At the end of Thursday’s session, after the jury had been escorted out for the evening, defense attorney Andrew Baldwin asked Gull if she had a timeline for a ruling on two motions filed since testimony started Oct. 18 about 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.
“We’re having a hard time charting our course,” Baldwin said.
In motions filed Oct. 23 and Oct. 30, Allen’s attorney argued that testimony in the past two weeks opened the door to evidence that sticks were arranged on the girls in ways that resembled runes, symbols of old Norse paganism and that connections on social media and interviews with investigators link a group of men to the crime. They first laid out that theory in 2023 in an effort to toss an October 2022 search warrant of Allen’s house ahead of his arrest.
After a hearing in August, 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.”
The new motions argue that Allen has a Sixth Amendment right to offer the jury his alternative theory about who killed Abby and Libby.
On Thursday, Gull said she was waiting to see whether the state planned to answer the motions in writing. Prosecutor Nick McLeland said in court that he didn’t and that he expected the two sides to make arguments in open court. Gull said she was in the midst of reading the motions.
SOMETHING ABOUT OCT. 31: Halloween has been big on notable events in the Delphi murder case.
In 2022, the Carroll County prosecutor announced murder charges against Richard Allen, more than 5½ years after Abby and Libby were murdered
(Photo: Frank Oliver for Based in Lafayette) .
In 2023, Gull said during a hearing in Carroll Circuit Court that she “cannot … will not” allow attorneys Brad Rozzi and Andrew Baldwin back on the case after two week earlier they’d faced a series of accusations in the judge’s chambers to show the team’s “gross negligence” in how they’d managed the case. The Oct. 31, 2023, pretrial hearing featured appearances by Rozzi and Baldwin, as well as another set of public defenders assigned to the case, all staking claim to space at the defense table. Rozzi and Baldwin were reinstated after arguments before the Indiana Supreme Court months later.
In 2024, the state rested its case and the defense called its first witnesses in the trial of Richard Allen.
MORE COVERAGE:
Day 11: ‘I killed Abby and Libby:’ Reports of confessions kept rolling, these from prison psychologist
Day 10: Interrogation denials and confessions in a state prison
Day 9: DNA doesn’t come back to Richard Allen, state witness says
Day 7: How investigation tied a bullet found at scene to Richard Allen’s gun
Day 6: How attention turned to a tip Richard Allen gave in the days after the murders
Day 5: Autopsy photos, another ‘Bridge Guy’ witness and new info from Libby’s phone
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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I was a juror on a murder trial that lasted from opening to verdict one month. This one feels on that pace.