A volunteer assisting police helped identify man accused of killing 2 teenagers

five years ago accused of killing two middle school students Richard Allen reached out to authorities about a double murder near a trail in Indiana: He told an investigator at the time that he had been in the area the day the girls were killed.

This information, contained in a “coverage sheet” kept by law enforcement, was mistakenly flagged open, and it wasn’t until 2022 that a volunteer officer tasked with helping sort through thousands of leads in the investigation discovered it and set events in motion. It led to Allen’s arrest.

This revelation emerged in a Carroll County courtroom this week; Law enforcement, witnesses and others detailed their involvement in the case during the first week of depositions in the Feb. 13, 2017, killings of 14-year-old Liberty German and Abigail Williams. , 13.

Lawyers for Allen, a 52-year-old former CVS employee, said he is “truly innocent.”

In court filings, Allen’s legal team said the killings may have been part of a sacrificial ritual, and at the hearing they disputed the prosecution’s timeline and testimony from witnesses who once located “a man covered in mud.” and there was blood near the area where the teenagers’ bodies were found.

During Thursday’s hearing, defense attorney Andrew Baldwin asked clerk Kathy Shank if his client was trying to “help” the investigation.

The prosecution objected to the question, calling it “speculation”, and the judge replied: WTHR, Indianapolis’ NBC affiliate, reported.

The researcher who spoke to Allen in 2017 was Dan Dulin, then a conservation officer with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. He testified Thursday that he helped local authorities follow up on leads about the killings.

On Feb. 16, 2017, three days after the murders, Dulin said he received a piece of paper with Allen’s name and phone number on it. The officer asked to meet Allen at his home, but he refused and instead asked them to meet in a grocery store parking lot, Dulin said.

During the unrecorded conversation that followed, Dulin said Allen told him he parked in the Farm Bureau parking lot and walked toward an abandoned railroad bridge (which is now part of the Delphi Historic Trails network) where the teenagers planned to spend a day off from school. .

Dulin said Allen was there between 13.30 and 15.30 in the afternoon and said he passed three girls along the way.

After about 10 minutes, Dulin said the conversation was over. He stated that Dulin wrote down his notes and handed the file over to the investigators.

Five years later, while sifting through thousands of clues, Shank, a retired Department of Children’s Services receptionist who volunteered to investigate, came across a file box containing a clue named “Richard Allen Whiteman.”

Shank testified that the tip incorrectly identified Allen’s last name and was marked as “cleared.” But in September 2022, Shank reported the situation to a detective, who testified that investigators were trying to locate a man that witnesses reported seeing on the trail that day.

Detective Tony Liggett, now Carroll County Sheriff, said he believes the man was someone known to investigators as the “bridge man.” Expression talked about a mysterious Snapchat video A photo was found on Abigail’s phone showing a white man wearing jeans and a dark jacket walking on the bridge.

In the statement released after the murder, which included a short clip of the videoAuthorities identified the unidentified man as a suspect in the teenagers’ murder.

Railly Voorhies, one of the witnesses, testified Tuesday that he said hello to a man who was overdressed for the weather, wearing a hat, mask and dark clothing. Voorhes, then a 16-year-old high school student who was friends with the victims, said he didn’t respond when she waved and “didn’t seem like a happy person.”

Voorhies testified that when she saw the Snapchat image, she realized it was the same man she renounced.

Allen’s defense attorney, Jennifer Auger, noted that Voorhies’ initial description to police differed from the one he gave in court, of a man in his 20s or 30s with curly hair and a square jaw who was pursuing him.

When asked if his “bridge man” image affected his memory, Voorhies said, “Probably.”

Liggett testified that he believed the witnesses who described seeing Allen on Feb. 13 were credible. And he said information Allen provided to authorities days later was marked as scrubbed when it shouldn’t have been.

“It got lost in the cracks,” Allen said.

After Shanks gave Liggett the preliminary document, investigators returned to Allen and interviewed him again. According to former Delphi Police Chief Steve Mullin, who conducted the interview, Allen made a similar statement, but Allen said he arrived at the trailhead around noon and left at 1:30 p.m.

When Mullin showed Allen the photo of the “bridge man,” the former chief testified, Allen responded: “If the photo was taken with the girl’s camera, there was no way it was him,” Mullin testified.

Authorities later executed a search warrant at Allen’s home and found a .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun that prosecutors said matched a bullet found near the girls’ bodies. In his statement, Liggett said that it was the discovery of that bullet and the witness statements that led to Allen’s arrest.

ballistics experts testified on Friday I explained how they matched the bullet to Allen’s gun.