An Indiana man was found guilty on Monday of killing two girls on a wooded trail in 2017 in a case that garnered national attention, spawned podcasts and riveted true-crime fans drawn to the case’s twists and turns.
The bodies of the girls, Liberty German, 14, and her friend Abigail Williams, 13, were found a day after they went missing during a hike in Delphi, Ind., a city about 80 miles northwest of Indianapolis, on Feb. 13, 2017.
Five years later, the man, Richard Allen, 52, of Delphi, was arrested and charged.
Jurors found Mr. Allen guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping, according to The Associated Press. The jury began deliberations on Thursday.
Mr. Allen is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 20 and could face up to 130 years in prison.
During the trial, prosecutors told the jury that Mr. Allen planned to rape the girls.
Prosecutors also said Mr. Allen had admitted to killing the girls, including in one statement where he said he killed the girls with a box cutter.
But Mr. Allen’s lawyers cast doubt on these admissions in part by arguing that Mr. Allen suffered mentally while being held in solitary confinement, The A.P. said.
Bradley Rozzi, one of Mr. Allen’s lawyers, said that no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence linked Mr. Allen to the murder scene.
Mr. Rozzi also cast doubt on a bullet that was linked to Mr. Allen. Mr. Rozzi did not respond to a request seeking comment.
According to court records and prosecutors, on Feb. 13 at 1:49 p.m., the girls were dropped off at an entrance of a hiking trail near Monon High Bridge in Delphi on the last day of their four-day winter break from middle school.
During their hike, video captured on one of their phones showed them being followed by a man in a dark jacket and jeans.
One of the girls mentioned a “gun” and a man’s voice was heard ordering them to go “down the hill,” according to an affidavit filed by a detective with the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office.
An unspent round from a .40-caliber gun was found near the girls’ bodies, the affidavit said.
During their investigation, detectives interviewed multiple other hikers and witnesses who described seeing a man whose clothes and stature matched the man seen in the victims’ video, the affidavit said.
One person described him as “kind of creepy,” the document said. And another witness said the man’s clothes appeared to be bloody and covered in mud.
Investigators even interviewed Mr. Allen in 2017. At the time, Mr. Allen admitted to being on the trail during the same time frame as the girls and said he saw three young women but did not remember what they looked like, according to the affidavit.
Five years later, on Oct. 13, 2022, Mr. Allen was interviewed again and his home was searched. Investigators found a gun at Mr. Allen’s home that they determined to have at one point held the unspent round that was found near the victims’ bodies, the affidavit said.
When asked, Mr. Allen said he did not know why the bullet was found at the scene and denied being involved in the deaths of the two girls.
The so-called Delphi Murders have become the subject of public scrutiny as true crime fans analyzed the cellphone video and weighed in on the evidence against Mr. Allen.
Hidden True Crime, a YouTube channel with over 200,000 subscribers, reviewed a day of the trial during a livestream that had nearly 90,000 viewers.
“It’s just this small town in the middle of nowhere,” the trailer of “Down The Hill: The Delphi Murders,” a podcast covering the case, said over an ominous soundtrack.
Members of the public appeared outside the Carroll County Courthouse, as jurors deliberated inside. Some held signs with the victims’ names and phrases such as “never forgotten,” while others proclaimed Mr. Allen’s innocence.
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