A man accused of killing two teenage girls near an Indiana hiking trail cut their throats, prosecutors told a jury Friday.
Richard Allen, 52, is charged with two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the February 2017 deaths of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, in the small town of Delphi.
“The last thing the girls saw was Richard Allen’s face,” Carroll County prosecutor Nicholas McLeland said in his opening statement.
DELPHI MURDERS: MAN CHARGED WITH KILLING 2 GIRLS IS ‘HIS OWN WORST ENEMY,’ EXPERT SAYS
Officers escort Richard Allen from the Carroll County Courthouse after a hearing, Nov. 22, 2022, in Delphi, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
An unused bullet discovered at the murder scene between the girls’ bodies came from a gun that belonged to Allen, and a grainy image of a man and his voice were captured by German on her phone. A short video released in 2019 that also came from German’s phone showed a suspect walking on Monon High Bridge.
McLeland said that man was Allen. The girls vanished while walking along the Monon High Bridge Trail Feb. 13, 2017. They were found dead the next morning.
Allen, a pharmacy technician, was questioned months after authorities recovered the girls’ bodies, but he was not arrested at the time. He was arrested on suspicion of the slayings five years later.
DELPHI MURDERS: KNIFE LIKELY USED IN KILLING OF 2 GIRLS ON HIKING TRAIL, DOCS REVEAL
Richard Allen’s defense attorneys, Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rozzi, alleged in September that the Feb. 14, 2017, killings of 14-year-old Liberty “Libby” German and 13-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams were carried out by members of a pagan cult dedicated to Odin, a war god in Norse mythology. They contend Allen was framed by law enforcement as the main suspect in the girls’ murders. (Indiana State Police/AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)
In court documents, prosecutors said that testing revealed the unspent bullet found between Williams and German “had been cycled through” Allen’s pistol, which was found during a search of his home.
“They had details that only the killer would know,” McLeland said, noting that Allen made incriminating statements to law enforcement. “Richard Allen is the man on the bridge.”
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Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin argued to jurors that there was plenty of reasonable doubt about the murder. He argued that his client’s statements were made under duress.
“Richard Allen is innocent,” Baldwin told the jury. “He is truly innocent.”
On Feb. 14, 2017, Libby German, 14, and Abby Williams, 13, were killed while biking on trails near Delphi, about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis. (Indiana State Police)
Prosecutors have alleged in previous court filings that Allen “admitted that he committed the offenses that he is charged with no less than five times while talking to his wife and his mother on the public jail phones available at the Indiana Department of Corrections.”
Allen allegedly told authorities he had been walking on the trail the day Williams and German went missing and had seen three “females” at the Freedom Bridge but didn’t speak to them.
Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter announced at a press conference that police had arrested Richard Allen for the murders of eighth graders Abby Williams, 13, and Libby German, 14, in 2017. (Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket)
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At earlier hearings, defense attorneys alleged there was “overwhelming evidence” to support the narrative that “[m]embers of a pagan Norse religion, called Odinism, hijacked by white nationalists, ritualistically sacrificed Abigail Williams and Liberty German.”
Fox News Digital’s Audrey Conklin as well as The Associated Press contributed to this report.
