ISP detective: Allen confessed ’60-plus’ times to Delphi murders. Defense looks to toss it all

An effort to suppress those confessions was key Wednesday, the second of three days devoted to pretrial questions in the murders of Abby Williams and Libby German

In a roughly two-month stretch in 2023, six months after his arrest, Richard Allen found Jesus and tried to make things right with God by confessing more than 60 times to his wife, his mother, to prison guards and inmates that he killed Delphi eighth-graders Abby Williams and Libby German in 2017 near the Monon High Bridge Trail, an Indiana State Police detective testified Wednesday.

“That’s a conservative number, without a doubt,” Detective Brian Harshman said on the stand in Carroll Circuit Court Wednesday afternoon.

During a hearing on a defense motion to suppress statements police and prison officials say Allen made since he was charged in November 2022 with the girls’ murders, Harshman said that monitored phone calls in March 2023 revealed Allen talking about religious conversion. Harshman testified that Allen told family members that he wasn’t sure he’d be with them again on Earth but that he was doing what he could to make it so when they went to heaven he’d have a chance to go, too.

“Several days later,” Harshman said, “the confessions started.”

The defense team for Allen, facing damning evidence if allowed in the trial, on Wednesday pressed back with questions about how statements from the 51-year-old former Delphi CVS clerk were inconsistent – Harshman testified that Allen professed his innocence at times, too – and came amid harsh conditions in Westville Correctional Facility unit where Allen was held in what amounted to solitary confinement in “a prison inside a prison” where some of the facility’s disciplinary cases wind up.

Carroll County Courthouse (Photo: Dave Bangert)