Jurors in Delphi, Indiana, have heard key testimony about when and where the bodies of Liberty German and Abigail Williams were found by the man who discovered them.
Local man, Patrick ‘Pat’ Brown, found the girls’ bodies around midday on Tuesday 14 February 2017, having joined community search efforts earlier that day.
Taking the stand on Saturday morning, he struggled to maintain his composure as he told the court: ‘I looked and at first I thought they were mannequins. Then I said, “We have found them. Please call the police.”
Details of the timing and location of Brown’s grim discovery are central to both sides’ case, and Richard Allen’s innocence or guilt could depend on which version jurors believe.
Allen has been accused of murdering Libby and Abby, whose bodies were found near Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi.
Libby, 14, and Abby, 13, went missing on the afternoon of Monday, February 13, 2017, but their bodies were not found until the next day.
Local man, Patrick ‘Pat’ Brown, found the bodies of Liberty German and Abigail Williams around midday on Tuesday 14 February 2017, having joined community search efforts earlier that day.
Richard Allen (pictured) has been charged with murdering Libby and Abby, whose bodies were found near Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi.
In his opening defense statement, Allen’s lead attorney, Andrew Baldwin, insisted that this is because the girls were not immediately killed at the scene, but were instead kidnapped and held elsewhere and then returned to the area. forest the next day, where they were brutally murdered.
It’s a timeline that, if believed, would throw prosecutors off their game, as it covers a period during which Allen’s movements are accounted for.
Today, prosecutor Nick McLeland moved to close the door on Baldwin’s claims and rejected the defense’s suggestion that the area where the girls were found had already been thoroughly searched the day before.
In fact, the jury heard, initial search efforts focused on an area downstream of the Monon High Bridge that Libby and Abby were walking on.
Carroll County Investigator Steve Mullin, who was police chief in Delphi at the time of the murders, explained that authorities were working under the assumption that the teens had been in an accident and may have fallen off the bridge. in which case they would have been murdered. downstream washing.
He said: ‘At that time, I still believed they would return home. I just couldn’t imagine that anyone had hurt them.
Brown struggled to maintain his composure as he told the court: ‘I looked and at first I thought they were mannequins. Then I said, “We have found them. Please call the police.” The girls were found near the bridge (pictured).
In fact, the court was told, it was the discovery of Libby’s clothing, stuck in roots in Deer Creek upstream of the bridge on Tuesday morning, that led to a closer search of the heavily wooded area in the that were found and that, the prosecution stated, had not been searched on foot or in daylight on Monday.
McLeland told jurors in his opening address earlier this week: “The last face the girls saw before their throats were cut was that of Richard Allen.”
His words came as a chilling conclusion to his brief opening remarks about a case he summarized as “about Bridge Guy, a bullet, and the brutal murder of two girls.”
As the jury listened attentively, he painted the scene of a bucolic and innocent day enjoyed by two girls who were more sisters than friends.
It was, he said, unseasonably warm, “a beautiful summer day in the middle of winter,” when they decided to walk along a path they had walked many times before, along abandoned railroad tracks, toward the High Monon Bridge. of Delphi.
“It’s scary and completely dangerous,” McLeland said of the bridge, and once it’s crossed, he noted, “there’s no escape.”
It was as they crossed that bridge that Libby looked at her 13-year-old friend Abby and saw that they were being followed. He pulled out his phone and took the now infamous video of ‘Bridge Guy’, before the two were threatened with a gun and ordered to ‘go down the hill’.
Prosecutor Nick McLeland told jurors in his opening statement earlier this week: “The last face the girls saw before their throats were cut was that of Richard Allen.”
McLeland’s words came as a chilling conclusion to his brief opening remarks about a case he summarized as “about Bridge Guy, a bullet, and the brutal murder of two little girls.”
McLeland described the horror of the scene encountered by searchers who discovered the girls the next day. They both had their throats slit several times, Libby was naked and covered in blood. Abby was partially dressed in her own and her friend’s clothes, while the rest of the girls’ clothes were found in the creek.
Convincing the jury that Allen is guilty of the crimes and that only he knows what happened in the hours between the girls’ disappearance and this terrible reality will be the state’s job over the next five weeks.
The prosecution will depend on the presence of a bullet at the scene and the alleged bullet that ‘passed through’ Allen’s gun, as well as his own statements about having been on trial that day and numerous confessions in jail.
