Images of the horrific injuries suffered by Liberty German and Abigail Williams were shown in court during the Delphi murder trial on Wednesday.
As the high-profile trial of Richard Allen for the murders of the teenage friends entered its fifth day, jurors were visibly shocked when forensic pathologist Dr. Roland Kohr gave evidence about the autopsies he had performed on both girls and testified that both had bled to death.
It is the first time details about the girls’ injuries and cause of death have been made public.
Images of the gaping wounds on both girls’ necks were shown on a large screen placed directly in front of the jurors. A man put his hands to his head, took a deep breath, and turned red. Behind him, a woman covered her mouth with her hand.
Libby, 14, and Abby, 13, were murdered outside their hometown of Delphi, Indiana, in February 2017.
The abandoned Monon High Bridge outside Delphi, Indiana, where Abby and Libby were murdered
In the images, both girls are seen lying face up on the morgue table, with their neck wounds wide open. They were both 5 feet 4 inches tall, Abby weighed 95 pounds and Libby weighed 200 pounds.
James Luttrull Jr told the court there would be no footage of the girls’ internal examination and that a female voice could be heard saying “Oh, thank God” from where Allen’s wife, Kathy, was sitting with her followers.
Abby suffered only one cut, about 2 to 2 inches long and less than an inch deep. It ran from right to left and was deep enough to partially sever his jugular vein, meaning his death would not have been quick. The doctor estimated that it would have taken the 13-year-old boy five to ten minutes to bleed out.
He told the court she would have “felt pain”, before going into “fight or flight mode” and panicking.
He said: “Your heart rate and blood pressure would increase and your breathing would become faster.”
The bleeding, he said, would be “passive” since no arteries were injured. He said: “It’s going to be some time before I lose enough blood… (for) shock to set in.” From there, he said silently in the courtroom, organs would begin to fail and unconsciousness would be lost. “She didn’t die immediately,” he said.
Libby’s injuries were more serious and also made for distressing viewing. At first glance it appeared that the 14-year-old girl had three deep cuts on her throat on the left, center and right.
In fact, Kohr testified, he had suffered four or five deep cuts, as at least one of the wounds showed evidence of overlapping cuts.
The cuts partially severed Libby’s left carotid artery and completely severed both her right carotid artery and jugular vein. She would have bled more quickly than her friend, but her death was not instantaneous either since, the pathologist testified, the swelling in her brain was evidence of a longer death.
Allen, 52, has been charged with two counts in relation to each girl; murder and felony murder which means murder in the act of committing another crime, in this case kidnapping.
He has pleaded not guilty to all four charges and faces a maximum sentence of 130 years in prison if convicted.
In the images, both girls are seen lying face up on the morgue table, with their neck wounds wide open. They were both 5 feet 4 inches tall, with Abby weighing 95 pounds and Libby 200 pounds.
Neither of them, the court heard, showed physical signs of sexual trauma (although it was noted that this did not mean sexual activity had not occurred) nor did they display defensive wounds. But Libby’s hands were covered in blood, suggesting, the doctor said, that she may have been desperately trying to stop the bleeding in her neck.
Witness Sarah Carbaugh told the court she had seen a “bloody and muddy” man fitting Bridge Guy’s description walking away from the Monon High Bridge trail around 4 p.m. on the day the girls disappeared.
The trail in Delphi, Indiana, where 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German were murdered.
A faint red line along Abby’s chin and below her mouth suggested, he said, that duct tape or some type of material restraint had been placed over that part of her face at the time of her death.
When asked if the girls’ livor mortis status (the discoloration of the skin that occurs when blood settles postmortem) was consistent with them having died 40 to 41 hours before the autopsy, Kohr responded, “Yes.” “. But during questioning he admitted that establishing the time of death was challenging and speculative at best.
Jurors had earlier heard from a final witness, Sarah Carbaugh, who told the court she had seen a “bloody and muddy” man fitting Bridge Guy’s description walking away from the Monon High Bridge trail around 4 a.m. pm the day the girls disappeared.
She said she looked at him as he drove in the opposite direction, but he didn’t make eye contact with her.
When questioned about the consistency of his recollection (transcripts of his three law enforcement interviews show he did not mention “blood” until a 2019 interview), Carbaugh insisted that he had always mentioned both mud and blood.
She argued that he may have murmured during his first interview and pointed to the fact that he missed more than an hour of video from his second interview.
Richard Allen denies murdering Liberty and Abby, who were killed while walking in their hometown of Delphi, Indiana.
The prosecutor struggled to get witnesses to positively identify Allen as the suspected man on the road.
In an increasingly angry exchange with defense attorney Andrew Baldwin, Carbaugh snapped: “I saw Bridge Man walking down the road. He was covered in mud and blood and that’s it.
Digital Forensic Examiner First Lt. Christopher Cecil took the stand to tell the jury what information could be obtained from Libby’s cell phone that was recovered under Abby’s body at the scene.
She told the court that after she took the Bridge Guy video at 2.13pm, there was a failed attempt to open the phone using biometric data (a fingerprint) at 2.14pm.
At 2:18 p.m., information retrieved from Apple’s Health app showed that the phone had stopped moving, but started moving again at 2:25 p.m. It then stopped moving for the last time at 2:32 p.m.
During that time, it covered 50.64 meters and had an elevation change, which could have been either up or down, for a total of two stories or 20 feet.
More than two hours after the phone’s last known movement, a frantic message arrived from Libby’s grandmother, Becky Patty, saying, “You have to call me right now!!!”
Richard Allen is thin, gaunt, with close-cropped hair and barely five feet tall, but witness Breann Wilber described ‘Bridge Guy’ as tall and muscular.
There was no activity of any kind from that time until 4:33 a.m. the next morning, when 15 messages and numerous FaceTime and iMessage call attempts filled the cell phone.
The prosecution could not explain this twelve-hour “blackout”, but Cecil said that the phone had not been turned off during that time.
But while the State had no explanation, the defense sent it. Their theory is that Libby and Abby were transported in a vehicle, out of range of the nearest cell tower and only returned there in the early morning hours to be murdered and dumped, at which point the cell phone reconnected. to the network. .
Cecil admitted that he didn’t know if the Health app would record movement if the phone was in a car.
On November 8, 2022, following his arrest, a total of 23 electronic devices, including mobile phones, were collected from Allen and all were the subject of investigation by Cecil.
During cross-examination by Jennifer Auger, Cecil admitted that they had found nothing on any of the devices that connected Allen to the girls or their murder.
But under the direction of prosecutor Nick McLeland it emerged that the phone Allen used in 2017 at the time of the murders was not found in his home and has never been analyzed.