Jurors end Saturday with no verdict in Delphi murders trial
Jurors up to more than 14 hours over three days of deliberations. Back Monday, as they consider whether Richard Allen is guilty in the 2017 murders of Delphi teens Abby Williams and Libby German
Jurors will be back Monday in Carroll Circuit Court, after ending a third day of deliberations Saturday without a verdict in the case of Richard Allen, a 52-year-old former pharmacy tech accused of the 2017 murders of Delphi eighth-graders Abby Williams and Libby German.
The sequestered jury deliberated more than five hours Saturday, before leaving the Carroll County Courthouse around 2:45 p.m. Deliberations started for the 12 jurors and three alternates Thursday afternoon and continued Friday. Since Thursday, the jury has been deliberating for 14 1/2 hours.
Saturday marked Day 20 since opening arguments.
The jury is scheduled to take a day off Sunday and then resume at 9 a.m. Monday. Judge Fran Gull set a schedule for the sequestered jury — selected in mid-October from a pool in Allen County — to deliberate from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. each day until jurors reach a verdict in the high-profile case.
The initial schedule for the trial ran through Nov. 15.
Here’s a look, again, at where things left off Thursday, after Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland and Allen’s attorney Brad Rozzi presented their closing arguments after 18 days of testimony that started Oct. 18.
Published Thursday, Nov. 7
DELPHI MURDERS TRIAL: JURORS BEGIN DELIBERATIONS
Jurors started deliberating the fate of Richard Allen at 1:25 p.m., after prosecutors and the defense offered final arguments about whether he killed Delphi eighth-graders Abby Williams and Libby German in the woods near the Monon High Bridge on Feb. 13, 2017.
Allen, 52, a former pharmacy technician at the CVS store in Delphi, could face up to 65 years in prison for each of the four murder charges filed against him in October 2022.
Testimony in the trial started Oct. 18 in Carroll Circuit Court, with the prosecution wrapping up its case a week ago, on Oct. 31. The defense called witnesses for all or parts of five days, before resting at the start of the day Wednesday. That followed three days of jury selection and pretrial hearings in Allen County, starting Oct. 14.
These are accounts from media pool reports inside Carroll Circuit Court Thursday morning:
THE PROSECUTION’S TURN: During initial closing arguments of just under an hour – with a rebuttal coming after the defense team’s turn – Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland walked jurors through what he called “a day this community will never forget.”
McLeland’s prosecution over the first two weeks of testimony was essentially a chronological account, starting with Abby Williams and Libby German waking up from a sleepover and pestering Libby’s family members to go to the Monon High Bridge Trail during day off from school Feb. 13, 2017. After getting a ride from Kelsi German Siebert, Libby’s sister, to a trailhead off County Road 300 North around 1:48 p.m., the girls didn’t return to meet a ride home they’d arranged with Derrick German, Libby’s dad, around 3 p.m.
That turned into a search by family members, then by local first responders and friends, into early the next morning, before being called off at 2 a.m. Feb. 14.
“No one was looking for two dead bodies,” McLeland told the jury Thursday. “They were looking for two girls.”
They were found by Delphi residents who had volunteered to scour the Monon High Bridge Trail, Deer Creek and the woods nearby. The girls were found just north of Deer Creek and east of the Monon High Bridge after a search party spotted some of their clothes tangled in tree roots at the creek.
“This type of thing doesn’t happen in this small community,” McLeland told jurors.
McLeland showed jurors pictures of the crime scene, describing carnage where Abby and Libby were found dead from deep slash wounds on their necks – Libby wearing no clothes, Abby wearing several items from Libby.
McLeland replayed video Libby German shot at 2:13 p.m. Feb. 13, showing a man – identified throughout as “Bridge Guy” – walking behind Abby as she crossed the abandoned Monon High Bridge, telling the girls, “Guys … down the hill.” McLeland called that the moment the girls were kidnapped.
“Something in Liberty told her to record this,” McLeland told jurors. He said it showed fear in their voices and fear in Abby’s face.
McLeland recounted testimony from witnesses who were on and near the trail that day who described seeing a man they testified matched the photo of the Bridge Guy. He also told about how Libby’s iPhone 6S, found at the crime scene under Abby’s body, stopped tracking movement at 2:32 p.m. Feb. 13.
“If we can determine who Bridge Guy is, we know who killed Abby and Libby,” McLeland told jurors.
McLeland ran through how a tip in a 2017 file, rediscovered in 2022 by a volunteer cataloguing pieces of the investigation, resurfaced a meeting between Richard Allen and investigators in the days after the murders. Allen put himself on the trail between 1:30 and 3 p.m. Feb. 13, 2017.
Investigators testified that follow-up showed a car resembling Allen’s 2016 Ford Focus SE driving on County Road 300 West, near a trailhead, that day. In an October 2022 interview with investigators – one the defense entered into evidence and played for the jury two weeks ago – Allen turned incredulous when he realized he was a potential subject and not just someone offering help to detectives.
McLeland told jurors that a search of Allen’s home found a heavy jacket – “Surprise, surprise, same as Bridge Guy,” he said – the same brand and caliber bullet as an unspent Winchester .40-caliber Smith and Wesson cartridge found next to the girls’ bodies and a Sig Sauer P226 handgun that a state police forensic firearms examiner testified had tool markings that matched the gun.
McLeland called it a “Bridge Guy starter kit.”
“See how the pieces are starting to fall into place?” McLeland asked jurors.
McLeland played phone calls Allen made to his family in April 2023 from a prison cell at Westville Correctional Facility, telling them that he killed Abby and Libby. McLeland said the calls were “unprovoked, unpressured, of his own free will.”
He also referenced confessions that Dr. Monica Wala, a psychologist at Westville; the prison warden and other prison guards testified Allen made, telling about how he’d laid in wait and killed the girls with a box cutter he stole and threw away at CVS. McLeland told about how Wala had testified that Allen described details about forcing the girls off the Monon High Bridge with the intent of raping them, only to get scared when he spotted a passing van. And he told about how Wala’s testimony had Allen telling that he killed the girls, making sure they were dead and then walking away to live his life because he’d never been caught.
The van was a piece McLeland told jurors that only the killer would know about the highly publicized case, tying to a Ford Econovan owned by neighbor Brad Weber. Weber testified that he drove home to his house near the Monon High Bridge’s southern end after getting off work at the Lafayette Subaru plant at 2:02 p.m. Feb. 13, 2017.
McLeland told jurors that Allen left behind his bullet and Libby’s cellphone, leading investigators to him 5½ years after the murders. If that wasn’t enough, McLeland told jurors, Allen offered confessions. McLeland told jurors that all the pieces fit together and that Allen was Bridge Guy.
“I’m going to ask you to look at all the evidence and issue a guilty verdict on all four counts,” McLeland said.
THE DEFENSE, CLOSING ARGUMENTS: Defense attorney Brad Rozzi, ending at 1 hour and 17 minute closing argument, told jurors Allen should be set free, that no DNA, no fingerprints, no physical or digital evidence presented by prosecutors ties him to the girls or to the crime scene.
Rozzi questioned state police tests on the unspent round found at the scene, saying it wasn’t convincing. He continued to call it the prosecution’s “magic bullet” in the case against Richard Allen.
He told jurors that the investigation was full of holes and lost interviews and evidence, followed by questionable and changing conclusions by the prosecution. That included, he said, testimony that the FBI left the case before Allen’s arrest.
“You should question the credibility of this case,” Rozzi told jurors.
He said it was fair to question the state’s suggested timeline of the crime and whether the girls’ bodies were at the crime scene where they were found on the afternoon of Feb. 14, 2017, during the evening of Feb. 13, when search parties were combing the woods deep into that night.
Rozzi pointed out that Brad Weber, whose drive goes under the Monon High Bridge near where the girls were taken, owns a Sig Sauer handgun – the brand Allen owns that prosecutors tied to the unspent round found next to Abby and Libby.
He cast doubt on self-incriminating statement Allen said gave while in solitary confinement in Westville Correctional Facility. He asked how Allen, diagnosed for months in psychotic state and showing signs of fragmented thought, could give a clear narrative of what he said he did on Feb. 13, 2017, to Dr. Monica Wala, a prison psychologist treating him. Rozzi told jurors that it was fair to question the accuracy and authenticity of what Wala recorded about the confession, given that she’d admitted being a true crime fan who closely followed podcasts and social media about the Delphi murders case and Allen’s involvement in it.
He played back portions of Allen’s conditions in segregation unit at Westville Correctional Facility, where he’d been sent as part of a safekeeping order signed by a Carroll County judge days after his arrest.
“Who could possibly watch that video and for one second believe that man was oriented to time and place?” Rozzi asked.
Rozzi looked cast doubt on phone call confessions to his family, all couched with phrases like “I don’t know” and “I think” and fears that he’s losing his mind.
Rozzi recalled testimony from a former FBI digital forensic analyst who told the court this week that Libby German’s phone logged someone plugging in a headphone jack at 5:45 p.m. and unplugging it at 10:32 p.m. on Feb. 13, 2017. That was hours after a state analysis showed the phone registered it last movement at 2:32 p.m. Feb. 13, 2017. The defense expert had testified that she knew only that the move would take human interaction. (An Indiana State Police analyst later testified, based on a Google search of Apple troubleshooting sites, that the phone log could have been due to moisture or dirt in the auxiliary port.)
“Someone was using that phone,” Rozzi told jurors.
Rozzi dismissed the fact that investigators found a common blue Carhartt jacket in Allen’s home as proof that he was Bridge Guy. And he questioned witnesses who said they saw the man in Libby’s video but all described him in different ways, including taller, muscular and younger than the 5-foot-4 Allen.
Rozzi compared Allen’s treatment in a solitary prison cell for months to times of medieval torture, showing the jury an image of a python suffocating its prey – comparing it to how the state handled Allen to get him to admit a crime he didn’t do. “You’re the moral compass,” Rozzi told jurors.
“For five years, he worked at CVS,” Rozzi said. “He had every chance to run, but he didn’t, because he didn’t do it.”
According to media pool reports, Judge Fran Gull told jurors they could deliberate until 4 p.m. each day before calling it a day.
MORE COVERAGE
Day 16: Digital analyst says someone put headphones into Libby’s phone
Day 14: Jurors see conditions defense says played a role in Allen’s confessions
Day 13: First full day for the defense
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
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.
Headline should be without a verdict, quick read/misread thought it was not guilty ><