Jury begins deliberating in murder trail for killings of two teenage girls in Delphi, Indiana
CHICAGO (CBS/AP) -- Following weeks of testimony, the trial of a man accused of killing two teenage girls while they were out for a hike in 2017 in a small town in Indiana is now in the hands of a jury.
The case against 52-year-old Richard Allen went to the jury Thursday afternoon, after prosecutors and defense attorneys presented closing arguments. Jurors spent about 2 hours deliberating before wrapping up for the day, and will resume deliberations on Friday.
Allen faces two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the killings of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14. He could be sentenced to up to 130 years in prison if convicted of all the charges in the killings of the girls, known as Abby and Libby.
In closing arguments Thursday following the weekslong trial, Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors that Allen was the "Bridge Guy" seen in a video German recorded on her cellphone just before they vanished. He also recapped prosecution evidence that an unspent bullet found between the teens' bodies came from Allen's Sig Sauer, a .40-caliber handgun.
Prosecutors have said the bullet "had been cycled through" Allen's gun, while a firearms expert called by the defense during the trial questioned the state police analysis of that unspent round.
McLeland said Allen had confessed repeatedly to the killings — in person, on the phone and in writing. He replayed for the jury recordings of phone calls, including one in which Allen could be heard telling his wife, "I did it. I killed Abby and Libby."
Defense witnesses testified that Allen was delirious and psychotic while behind bars and made the confessions while under mental stress.
The prosecutor also said a state trooper who had listened to more than 700 phone calls placed by Allen had identified Allen's voice on German's cellphone video telling the teens, " Down the hill " after they crossed an abandoned railroad trestle called the Monon High Bridge.
"I am going to ask you to look at all the evidence and issue a guilty verdict on all four counts," McLeland told the jury.
McLeland had opened the trial by saying it was Allen, armed with a gun, who forced the youths off the Monon High Bridge and into a secluded area. He said Allen had planned to rape them before he cut their throats on Feb. 13, 2017. The teens were found dead the next day, about a quarter-mile (less than half a kilometer) from the bridge.
Prosecutors also showed jurors gruesome crime scene photos showing the girls with their throats cut, and the grainy cellphone video, which they said shows Allen walking behind Williams as they crossed the Monon High Bridge.
Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin told jurors that Allen was not the killer. He said the state's timeline does not match the evidence, arguing that one or more other people must have kidnapped the teens and returned them early the next day to the spot where they were found.
Defense witnesses included a digital forensics expert who said headphones or an auxiliary cable were plugged into Libby's cellphone for nearly five hours after she and Abby disappeared. Her testimony called into question the investigators' belief that the girls were killed and left in the woods around 2:32 p.m. on Feb. 13, 2017.
The 12 jurors along with alternates were sequestered throughout the trial, which began Oct. 18 in the girls' hometown of Delphi, where Allen also lived and worked as a pharmacy technician. A special judge oversaw the case. Superior Court Judge Fran Gull, along with the jurors, came from northeastern Indiana's Allen County.
The case has drawn outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts, with repeated delays, some surrounding a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of Allen's public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court. It has also been the subject of a gag order.
The jury also heard testimony about Allen's confessions — made to his mother and wife and also to a prison psychologist, correctional officers and the former warden of the Westville Correctional Facility, who said Allen wrote him claiming to have killed the girls with a box cutter that he later discarded.
Prosecutors argued that some of Allen's incriminating statements contained information that only the killer could have known.
Defense attorneys argued that Allen's confessions are unreliable because he was facing a severe mental health crisis while under the pressure and stress of being locked up in isolation, watched 24 hours a day and taunted by people incarcerated with him. A psychiatrist supported the argument, testifying that months in solitary confinement could cause a person to become delirious and psychotic.
The defense rested its case on Wednesday after presenting less than a week of testimony and evidence.
Allen's lawyers had sought to argue that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a white nationalist group known as the Odinists who follow a pagan Norse religion, but the judge ruled against that, saying the defense "failed to produce admissible evidence" of such a connection.
