CHICAGO (CBS) – After more than three days of deliberations, the jury reached a verdict Monday in the double murder case against Richard Allen, accused of killing two teenage girls who disappeared while hiking in Delphi, Indiana, in 2017.
The case went to the jury on Thursday afternoon and deliberations continued on Friday, Saturday and Monday, following closing arguments by the weeks-long trial.
It was not immediately clear how soon the verdict would be announced in court at the Carroll County Courthouse.
Allen had pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of felony murder in the deaths of 14-year-old Liberty “Libby” German and 14-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams.
Prosecutors told jurors that Allen was the man seen in a grainy cellphone video recorded by one of the girls as they crossed an abandoned railroad bridge moments before disappearing on February 13, 2017. It was also noted that Allen repeatedly confessed to the murders . person, by telephone and in writing. In one of the recordings, Allen could be heard telling his wife, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”
Allen’s defense questioned the confessions, with witnesses including a psychologist saying Allen was delirious and psychotic after months in solitary confinement. The defense further argued that there was no physical evidence linking Allen to the murders, stating that no witness explicitly identified Allen as the man seen on the walkway or bridge the afternoon the girls went missing.
Allen continued to live in Delphi while working at a local pharmacy five years after the teens were killed.
Delphi Murders: Timeline of Events
Abigail, 13, and Liberty, 14, better known as Abby and Libby, were close friends who were dropped off by a family member at a walking trail on the Monon High Bridge in Delphi on February 13, 2017. When they didn’t meet Libby’s partner father later in the day they were reported missing. Prosecutors said they were found dead about a mile from where they were last seen with cuts to their throats.
The police have been searching for a suspect and investigating for years thousands of leadsand releasing multiple composite sketches of the suspect based on eyewitness accounts.
Audio evidence Libby’s cell phone revealed that an unknown man had told the girls to go “down the hill.” Libby too recorded a short video of a man police believed was the killer. Although police released the photo and audio just days after the murders, the case stalled for more than five years until Allen was arrested in 2022.
Allen stayed in the small town of Delphi and worked at a local CVS pharmacy until a clerk involved in the investigation noticed in September 2022 that he had placed himself at the scene of the murders. Just days after the bodies were discovered, Allen told police he had been on that trail around the time the girls were allegedly killed. He told them he had been walking in the area and saw three “females” near a bridge, but had not spoken to them.
On October 13, 2022, Allen was interviewed again after police searched former suspects. Allen was arrested after police matched an unused cartridge found among the girls’ bodies to a gun recovered from his home during a police investigation.
Allen was arrested on October 26, 2022 and charged with two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping five days later. Prosecutors later amended the indictment to include two additional murder charges. Allen has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Over the course of the trial, which began Oct. 18, the prosecution highlighted Allen’s dozens of confessions while in prison: He confessed to the crime more than 60 times, prosecutors say, including to his wife, his mother, the psychologist who treated him, the director and other prison staff and prisoners. They played audio recordings of some confessions to the jury. The defense doubted the confessions, saying they were made involuntarily and that he was suffering from mental illness at the time.
Monica Wala, the former chief psychologist at the Westville Correctional Facility where Allen was housed, testified that he initially told her he was innocent but began confessing to the crimes in April 2023, around the time he was placed back on suicide watch.
According to WTHR, Wala testified that Allen told her, “I killed Abby and Libby. I’m sorry,” and that he originally planned to sexually assault the victims, but ran away when he saw a van nearby and that he cut off the car. girls’ throats and covered their bodies with sticks, she testified.
Allen’s lawyers previously suggested it was about the girls killed as part of a pagan ritual sacrifice and accused police of ignoring evidence from the crime scene. In March 2017, an FBI agent alleged in a search warrant request that the girls’ bodies had been “moved and staged” at the crime scene. According to the judge’s ruling, that theory was not heard by the jury.
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