How might a white van hold the key to the innocence or guilt of the Delphi murder suspect?

In one of many confessions delphi murders The alleged suspect, Richard Allen from prison, claimed a white van scared him, causing him to abandon his rape plan. two young girls on the hiking trail Small indiana go into town and kill them quickly instead.

But now its reliability Allen’s confessions He was questioned once again after a witness testified about a detail Only the murderer can know this.

Brad Weber, a key witness in the case, claims he was driving his white van home from work on February 13, 2017. Killed were 13-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams and 14-year-old Liberty “Libby” German. At about 2:30 p.m. on that fateful day, he drove past Deer Creek, where the girls’ bodies were found a day later.

Based on signals from Libby’s phone, the timeline appears to match the case put forward by the prosecution, which alleges the killer took the girls down the hill at 2:31 p.m. The last ping of the phone was at 2:32pm

Allen, 52, is on trial for the murders of Abby and Libby, whose bodies were found on Feb. 13, 2017, a day after they disappeared while walking on a trail at the Monon High Bridge near Delphi. Allen was arrested five years later in October 2022.

Weber was called to the stand by the defense this week as attorney Andrew Baldwin sought to discredit his testimony by pointing out that he gave conflicting statements to investigators about the timeline in the days following the murders.

Weber acknowledged that he told two different stories in two separate interviews in February 2017. He said in an interview that he was driving his white minivan home from work on Feb. 13, 2017, the day of the murders. In the other interview, he said that he left work and went to maintain some ATM machines.

This difference is important because if Weber had not gone home from work, the state’s timeline for Allen seeing the van just before the murders did not match what the jury was told. Fox 59 reported.

And it further raises questions about the reliability of Allen’s prison confessions, which his lawyers say were made in the throes of a mental health crisis brought on by months of solitary confinement.

Last week, the court heard from psychologist Dr. He listened as Monica Wala told jurors how Allen confessed in detail to the crimes while he was in Westville Correctional Facility.

She claimed Allen told her his intention was to rape the girls, but that a white van “scared” him. He then forced them into the forest and slit the girls’ throats before covering them with sticks; It was a detail that matched the crime scene.

He said he told Wala that Allen, who said he followed the girls on the bridge, had “fumbled with his gun,” which may have led to the bullet being found at the scene.

Weber, the owner of the white minibus, also took to the podium after Wala. He also owns property near the Monon High Bridge trails, which was searched in the first hours after the girls’ disappearance.

During cross-examination, Baldwin pressed Weber about the timeline, claiming that he had gone to drop off a trailer and not go directly to the house, according to one of the earlier interviews. Weber repeatedly denied this in a heated debate.

When called back by the defense, Weber told the court that he got angry on the stand last week because he thought the defense was trying to tell him what he did after leaving work on the day of the murders.

Baldwin also confronted an inconsistent statement Weber made to police on Feb. 19, 2017, in which Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Adam Pohl wrote that Weber may have gone to service ATMs that day.

Weber told the court he didn’t remember saying this and claimed he went straight home after work that day and took a nap.

He said he was unaware of the missing girls until police officers came to his home that afternoon, woke him up and asked if he had seen the girls on the footpaths or near the bridge that day. He said he didn’t see them and then gave officers permission to search the area.

When former Delphi police Chief Steve Mullin took the stand Monday, the defense questioned him about whether Allen was told about the white van before his confession.

According to Fox 59, Baldwin told Fox 59 that Allen brought this important detail to Dr. Thomas, who obsessively followed the Delphi case, reading articles about it online, listening to podcasts, and even traveling to the Monon High Bridge. He argued that he might have learned from Wala. he reportedly shared it with Allen during their sessions.

“Don’t you know what Dr. Wala told Richard Allen about the van?” Baldwin replied “no” to Mullin.

But Mullin added that Allen’s admission that he was “scared of a van” was the first time the prosecution had heard of the van.

According to Fox 59, many details of Allen’s confession match the crime scene, but it is unclear whether Allen knew these details because he received discovery documents from his lawyers around the time he made these confessions.

Allen’s long-awaited trial comes seven years after the girls’ murders and two years after his arrest.

Prosecutors say Allen is the man known as the “Bridge Man” seen in footage recorded on Libby’s cell phone. A grainy image of the man was one of the few pieces made public as police searched for a suspect after the murders. The case became a favorite of the true crime community, and it took years for Allen to be arrested.

A jury of five men and seven women will decide Allen’s fate. They have been detained since the start of testimony last month. The trial is expected to last another two weeks.