The case of two teenage girls killed in Indiana in 2017 has reached the halfway point as prosecution continues

DELPHI, Ind. — The trial of a man accused of killing two teenage girls in a small Indiana community has passed the midway point after more than two weeks of testimony about the 2017 killings.

Prosecutors rested their case against Richard Allen on Thursday after jurors heard recorded phone calls in which he told his wife that he killed 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German.

Allen’s trial began Oct. 18 at the Carroll County Courthouse in the girls’ hometown of Delphi. Jury members have been given detention orders since the beginning of the trial, which is scheduled to last until November 15.

The defense began calling its first witnesses on Thursday. A psychologist with the Indiana Department of Corrections told jurors Friday that Allen was severely mentally ill when he began confessing to the murders while being held at Westville Correctional Facility.

Allen, 52, faces up to 130 years in prison if convicted of two counts of murder. two additional counts Committing murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping.

Here are some highlights of the hearing so far:

Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland opened the trial He told jurors they would see and hear evidence, including incriminating statements made by Allen, that would convince them that he forced the girls, armed with a gun, off the hiking trail into a secluded area and slit their throats.

McLeland said that the person seen in the cellphone video recorded in German on the day the girls disappeared was Allen, and that the unspent bullet found among their bodies came from Allen’s gun.

Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin told jurors that Allen was innocent. Baldwin said the jury would hear witness testimony and forensic evidence that would raise “reasonable doubt” that Allen was not the killer and that the state’s timeline did not match the evidence in the case.

Baldwin said someone else may have kidnapped the teens and taken them to where they were found dead early the next day.

During the first week of the trial, jurors were shown photographs of the area where the teenagers’ bodies were found in the woods outside the hiking trail. The girls, known as Abby and Libby, had crossed an abandoned railroad bridge called the Monon High Bridge during their walk.

Some jurors and others in the courtroom either gasped or turned away when shown the gruesome images of their bloodied bodies, and the girls’ mothers wept.

Jurors also watched cellphone video that German recorded just before the teens disappeared, in which a man in a blue jacket and jeans follows Williams across the Monon High Bridge.

In an enhanced version of the video shown to jurors, one of the girls says: “There’s no road so we have to get down here.” Just before the video ended, prosecutors said the man seen in the video said to the teenagers: “ down hill.”

Investigators said in a statement released nearly a month later: Allen’s arrest in October 2022 He said he became a suspect after going back and examining “previous leads” and learning that he had been interviewed by a police officer in 2017.

Testimony at the hearing revealed more details about how they targeted the former pharmacy worker.

A retired state government employee who volunteered to help police with the investigation in March 2017 told jurors he found paperwork that caught his attention in September 2022.

Kathy Shank testified that two days after German and Williams’ bodies were found, a man contacted authorities and found a “lead sheet” saying he had been on trail the afternoon the girls disappeared. Shank said his name was incorrectly listed as Richard Allen Whiteman and marked “cleared.”

She determined that the man’s name was actually Richard Allen and remembered that a young girl was on the trail at the same place and time and saw a man.

“I thought there might be a correlation,” Shank said in his statement, adding that he reported his finding to officers.

The girls’ bodies were found the day after they went missing on February 14, 2017.

Allen contacted authorities two days later and told them he was on the hiking trail on the afternoon of Feb. 13, around the time the girls went missing, according to testimony.

Indiana Department of Natural Resources captain Dan Dulin told the court that he spoke with Allen and recalled that Allen was on the hiking trail between 1 and 3:30 p.m. and saw three girls.

After Shank brought Allen to the attention of investigators, they interviewed him in October 2022. Allen told investigators that he arrived at the trail around noon and left at 2:30 p.m. (not 3:30 p.m.) at the latest, as he told Dulin in 2017.

Steve Mullin, who was Delphi’s police chief when the girls were killed and later became an investigator with the district attorney’s office, said Allen told him and another officer that he was wearing a blue or black Carhartt jacket, jeans and a beanie the day of the incident. young people disappeared.

Mullin said he asked Allen if German was the similarly dressed person seen in the cellphone video.

“His response was that if the photo was taken with the girls’ camera, there was no way it could have been him,” Mullin testified.

Prosecutors also showed jurors videotaped interviews with Allen before his arrest, in which Allen repeatedly admitted his innocence.

On Thursday, the jury heard several recorded phone calls in which Allen spoke to his wife from prison, telling her he killed German and Williams. In one of the interviews he said: “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.

The jury had previously heard testimony from the former warden of Westville Prison, where Allen was previously held; He said Allen claimed to have killed the girls with a box cutter that he then threw away.

Allen’s prison psychologist during his time in Westville, Dr. Monica Wala testified that Allen began confessing to killing the girls during sessions with her in early 2023. In some of his confessions, he said, he gave details of the crime, including saying he slit the girls’ throats and placed tree branches over their bodies.

A report written by Wala and presented as an exhibit to the jury states that Allen also said he planned to rape the teens but did not do so after seeing a van driving around nearby.

A state trooper testified Thursday that Allen’s words corroborated the testimony of a man whose driveway passed under the Monon High Bridge and who said he was driving home in his minivan at the time.

Allen’s attorneys said their client made the incriminating statements while under duress and mental stress from being locked up, monitored 24 hours a day and taunted by people incarcerated with him.

During cross-examination, Wala acknowledged that he followed Allen’s case with interest in his personal time, even while treating him, and was a fan of the true crime genre.

Court documents released weeks after Allen’s arrest show the tests An unspent bullet was found among the girls’ bodies A gun in Allen’s possession was “turned over.”

Indiana State Police firearms expert Melissa Oberg told the jury her analysis tied the bullet to Allen’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol.

During cross-examination, Allen’s attorney attempted to cast doubt on the accuracy of the firearms tests. Oberg said he was not aware of any mistake of identity in his more than 17 years of analyzing firearms.