Ritualistic killing theory tossed in Delphi murder case
Judge rules Richard Allen’s attorneys have provided speculation but not admissible evidence of an Odinist, cult killing in the 2017 murders of Abby Williams and Libby German
Attorneys for Richard Allen will not be allowed to go to trial presenting the possibility that a group of men performing old Norse rituals were responsible for the 2017 murders of Delphi eighth-graders Abby Williams and Libby German, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Judge Fran Gull ruled that the defense team for Allen – a 51-year-old former CVS clerk charged nearly two years ago with the murders near the Monon High Bridge Trail – hadn’t provided adequate admissible evidence to tie others to the crime, despite building a third-party defense around the Odinist ritualistic killing angle for more than a year.
In her order, 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.
“The case law is quite clear that the nexus must not be based on speculation, conjecture, rumors or hearsay, but rather on admissible evidence,” Gull wrote, ruling in favor of Prosecutor Nick McLeland’s motion to block certain words from a trial scheduled to start Oct. 14.
“The Court will not permit the evidence submitted by the defense in support of their arguments regarding third-party perpetrators in the trial of this cause, as the probative value of such evidence is greatly outweighed by confusion of the issues and its potential to mislead the jury,” Gull wrote.
Gull did leave room for Brad Rozzi and Andrew Baldwin, Allen’s attorneys, to bring in “evidence to support an offer of proof at the trial if one is made by counsel.”
The ruling was a second setback for Allen’s defense in as many weeks, coming in the wake of three days of pivotal pretrial hearings July 30-Aug. 1 in Carroll Circuit Court.
Last week, Gull ruled that jurors will be allowed to hear evidence that Allen allegedly confessed more than 60 times to his family, as well as to the warden, a psychologist and inmates assigned to watch him at Westville Correctional Facility while he was being held there. In court documents and during a full day of testimony on July 31, Allen’s attorneys argued that any self-incriminating statements came from an accused man whose physical and mental state had been broken by his pre-trial conditions in what amounted to solitary confinement in one of the worst units in the Westville Correctional Facility, a state prison. Gull disagreed, saying that a safekeeping order that had Allen waiting trial in a prison instead of a county jail did not cause Allen to initiate calls to his family to talk about the murders or offer confessions to the prison psychologist.
For more on that ruling:
The question about the third-party defense references was the final ruling expected from the three days of hearing a month ago.
In 11½ hours of testimony Aug. 1, Baldwin and Rozzi made a case that it would have been impossible for Allen to work alone to abduct Abby and Libby from the Monon High Bridge Trail, get them to go into the woods along Deer Creek and kill them in the timeframe investigators have laid out.
Instead, the defense team argued that Abby and Libby could have been victims of Odinists, headed by a Logansport man whose son knew the girls. They argued several ways that the Logansport man – one prosecutors contend had an alibi that allowed investigators to clear him – had posted drawings and pictures on Facebook that were eerily similar to the crime scene. (The man’s name and others accused in the third-party defense aren’t being named here, because they have not been arrested, charged or testified in connection with the murders.)
Allen’s attorneys presented a ritualistic crimes expert who called the crime scene a “textbook” case, with the girls left in seemingly significant poses and sticks resembling Norse runes arranged on their bodies. They also brought in a former Indiana State Police detective and a Rushville police officer who had pursue what they concluded as “an undeniable connection” between the Logansport man, another from the Delphi area and three men from Rushville who were wrapped up in a Norse pagan religion. One of those men, the former ISP detective testified, asked him after an interview in early 2018 whether, if traces of his spit were found on one of the girls but he could explain why, would he still be in trouble. They also testified that social media accounts showed that the men they were monitoring “seemed to know things that no one else would know unless they were involved or were there.”
When pressed by McLeland on Aug. 1 whether “your belief is just a theory,” they agreed that they’d uncovered no direct evidence.
McLeland also presented a LaPorte County blood pattern expert whose analysis of the crime scene countered theories about markings found on a tree at the scene. Allen’s attorneys argued that the stains were an Odinist symbol; the crime scene expert said the markings were from one of the girls’ hands after she was cut and before she died.
For more on that day in court:
From those three days of pretrial hearings, Gull already had ruled against an attempt to dismiss charges, saying the defense team didn’t make an adequate case that lost or damaged evidence might have pinned the murders on a Logansport man who police had cleared early in the investigation. Gull ruled in Allen’s favor on another motion to remove a safekeeping order that had kept him in a solitary cell in Indiana Department of Corrections facilities instead of in a county jail for all but the first days after his October 2022 arrest in the case. On Aug. 1, Allen was put back into custody of the Carroll County sheriff.
The trial is scheduled to start Oct. 14, with jury selection happening in Allen County, nearly 100 miles from Delphi. Jurors will be brought to Carroll County for the rest of the trial, scheduled to run into mid-November.
About the case and the arrest: Abby Williams and Libby German, eighth-graders at Delphi Community Middle School, were killed Feb. 13, 2017, while on the town’s Monon High Bridge Trail. That day, Libby and Abby had taken advantage of a day off school and an unseasonably warm, winter afternoon to hike Delphi’s trails, taking off near the Freedom Bridge over Indiana 25/Hoosier Heartland Highway. When the girls didn’t show up that evening to meet their ride home, family and friends combed Delphi’s popular trail system, crossed an abandoned rail trestle called Monon High Bridge and brought in people to walk the woods that lined Deer Creek. The next morning, Feb. 14, 2017, a group of volunteers in a search party found the girls’ bodies, about a half-mile upstream from the Monon High Bridge.
Allen was charged in late October 2022, a big turn in a case that had gone unsolved for 5½ years and that hadn’t seen an arrest in that time. Investigators tied Allen to the scene after revisiting an interview with him in the days after the murders, when he told police he’d been on the trail that day, going to look at fish from the bridge, but had not seen the girls. Investigators say witness descriptions put Allen there. They also pointed to the discovery of an unspent bullet that they say they found near the girls’ bodies in February 2017 and that matched a handgun Allen owned, according to a probable cause affidavit made public months ago.
Court documents laid out that investigators believed Allen was the man shown in Libby German’s cellphone footage walking across the Monon High Bridge and kidnapping the girls, telling them, “Guys … down the hill,” and leading them to where their murders occurred near Deer Creek. Court documents indicate that investigators “believe they hear the sound of a gun being cycled and one of the victims mentioning ‘gun.’”
Allen’s attorneys have argued in court and in court documents that investigators ignored the possibility that a group of others, involved in a Norse religion ritualistic sacrifice, were involved in the girls’ murders.
Allen has been held without bond since his arrest in October 2022.
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
Skinheads and neo-Nazis sometimes use "Odinism" to soften their image, which is the only way I've heard it used in Indiana, as a euphemism for organized racism (Volkish, neo-Volkish, all white nationalism tied up in Viking aesthetics). I'm wondering whether this has been discussed around this case. Dave, any thoughts on the references to "Odinism" that you can share?
Everything happening with this case seems to be setting up a mistrial or the most obvious appeal in judicial history.