Disturbing new details have come to light in the unsolved 2017 killings of two teenage girls found slain along a well-known Indiana hiking trail.
The case of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German has baffled investigators and horrified the public ever since their bodies were discovered in Delphi, Indiana, on Feb. 14, 2017, a day after family members sounded the alarm that they’d vanished during a walk.
In one of the most bizarre twists in the case, the girls are thought to have recorded footage of their would-be killer ahead of their fatal encounter. A video found on German’s phone showed an unidentified man—who was subsequently named as a suspect—walking on the Monon High Bridge a few feet away from the girls. Police later released audio of the man telling the two girls, “Guys… down the hill.” Although images of the man have been widely shared in the media, he has never been identified.
According to court documents obtained this week by The Murder Sheet podcast—and later shared with The Daily Beast—an FBI agent involved in the investigation confirmed the two girls were followed by the suspect on the bridge.
“It sounds as though he is directing the victims to leave the trail they were on and enter the wooded area below,” the agent notes in a search warrant filed a few weeks after the murders.
The document notes that the girls would have likely come in contact with the killer at about 2:13 p.m. that day, around the same time the video was filmed.
The agent also revealed the murderer would have had blood on his clothing, as “a large amount of blood was lost by the victims at the crime scene.”
“Because of the nature of the victim’s wounds, it is nearly certain the perpetrator of the crime would have gotten blood on his person/clothing,” the agent wrote.
Authorities have never revealed how the two teenagers died. But the search warrant notes that they suffered wounds caused by an unspecified weapon. The one word that would reveal exactly what kind of weapon is redacted.
“It also appeared the girls’ bodies were moved and staged,” the FBI agent noted, adding that some unspecified part of one of the girls’ clothing was also missing from the scene.
“Based upon my training and experience it is common for perpetrators of this type of crime to take a ‘souvenir’ or, in some fashion, memorialize the crime scene,” the search warrant reads, noting that “unknown fibers and unidentified hairs” had been found at the crime scene.
The girls are said to have been found “with no visible signs of a struggle or fight.”
The search warrant was filed as part of efforts by investigators to examine the property of a man identified as Ronald Logan, whose home is said to have been located just 1,400 feet from where the bodies of German and Williams were found.
Logan was never formally named a suspect or charged in the case, and he passed away in 2020. But the search warrant makes clear that investigators had their suspicions of his involvement. The documents note that his voice “was not inconsistent with that of the person in the video.”
It also alleges that he created a “factually false” alibi to explain where he was at the time the girls went missing, and that at least 15 tips from members of the public implicated Logan in the killings. Cellphone data is also said to put him near the scene of the crime around the time the girls went missing.
The court documents show that the search-warrant request was granted, but there were no further details available on what, if anything, investigators recovered from Logan’s home.
— Justin Rohrlich contributed reporting
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