The wife of convicted Delphi murderer Richard Allen gave a chilling response after an Indiana jury unanimously found her guilty of the brutal murders of 14-year-old Liberty German and 13-year-old Abigail Williams.
Allen, 52, who was arrested in connection with the 2017 murders in October 2022, remained impassive as the verdict was handed down Monday afternoon, after spending the past two years in solitary confinement at the Correctional Facility. Westville in Indiana and the Cass County Jail.
The verdict marks the culmination of a high-profile three-week trial and a community’s seven-year wait for justice.
Allen now faces a maximum sentence of 130 more years behind bars on charges of two counts of murder and two counts of felony murder, which is a murder committed in the context of another crime, in this case kidnapping.
But his wife, Kathy Allen, he told WTHR “This is not over at all,” as he left the courtroom.
Kathy Allen, the wife of convicted Delphi murderer Richard Allen, argued that “this is not over at all” as she left the courtroom.
Allen was convicted of killing his best friends Libby, 14, and Abby, 13, after they went on a hike outside their hometown of Delphi, Indiana, in February 2017.
Prosecutors had argued that Allen killed Libby and Abby after they went on a hike in their hometown of Delphi on February 13, 2017, which Nick McLeland described as “a day this community will never forget.”
‘Abigail Williams and Liberty German went for a walk on the trails and never came back. The day they were both murdered by Richard Allen,” he said during his closing arguments Thursday.
McLeland went on to say that authorities and locals who joined the first frantic search for the girls did not assume they would stumble upon a gruesome crime scene.
“They weren’t looking for two bodies, they were looking for two girls,” he said. “No one thought anything bad had happened to Abby and Libby.” That doesn’t happen around here.
At the beginning of the trial he had argued that the case centered on the so-called Bridge Guy, and said in his closing arguments that Allen had repeatedly condemned himself through his own words by placing himself on the bridge at the time of Bridge Guy’s death. the girls. kidnappings and through his multiple confessions in prison.
It was Allen who went on the trail between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m., Allen who told investigators he had gone out to the Monon High Bridge, Allen who described the suit he was wearing, and Allen who made a series of prison confessions that included details that only the killer could have known.
Allen now faces a maximum sentence of 130 more years behind bars on charges of two counts of murder and two counts of felony murder.
McLeland also showed the jury a video that Libby recorded at 2:13 p.m. that day, which he said showed “the moment the girls were kidnapped.”
Shaky footage showed Abby crossing the bridge as the shrouded figure of a man walked purposefully behind her.
“Guys, down the hill,” echoed in the silent room along with a surprised squeak from one of the girls and the horrified words, “That’s a gun.”
McLeland described the feeling of this scene to the jury: ‘You can hear the fear in his voice. You can see the fear on Abby’s face.
He reminded jurors that eyewitnesses insisted the person they saw that day was Bridge Guy. He reminded them of digital evidence obtained from Libby’s phone which he said showed she stopped moving at 2.32pm and never moved again.
McLeland recalled volunteer Kathy Shank’s chance discovery of the lead sheet in 2022, something that had not been followed up at the time, recording a man who reported being on the trails between 1:30 and 3: 30 p.m.
He told them that investigators knew that “all indications pointed to that man being Bridge Guy,” and that that man was Allen.
In fact, when agents searched his home on Oct. 26, 2022, McLeland said they found “a Bridge Guy starter kit”: a Carhartt jacket, a Sig Sauer P226, and an unspent Smith and Weston .40-caliber cartridge stored in a hope box at Allen’s. bedroom.
They also confiscated numerous electronic devices, but the only one missing was the phone Allen used in 2017 at the time of the murders, a device he had never allowed authorities to inspect.
Prosecutors had said the case revolves around the so-called Bridge Guy, who was seen walking behind the girls before they disappeared.
The prosecutor went on to tell the jury that Allen was “familiar with the area.” He had frequently visited the Monon High Bridge alone and with his family.
‘Do you see how the pieces are starting to fit together?’ he urged.
McLeland reminded them that the state presented evidence that the cartridge found between the girls’ bodies had “passed through Richard Allen’s gun.”
“That could have put an end to the case,” he said. “But then he starts confessing.”
He had made multiple confessions both in phone calls to his mother, Janice, and his wife, Kathy, and in person to the prison officers charged with monitoring him on suicide watch, to his prison therapist, Dr. Monica Wala, and to his prison psychiatrist. , Dr. John. Martin.
McLeland played one of Allen’s April 3 calls to his wife in which he said, “I just wanted to apologize.” I did it. You know I did. I killed Abby and Libby.
The call was, McLeland said, “unprovoked, unpressured” and “made of his own free will.”
Later that month, Allen confessed on April 26 that he had stolen a box cutter that he used to kill the girls and then threw it in the trash at the CVS where he worked.
He made his most detailed confession yet to Dr. Wala when he told her that he had tried to rape the girls but had seen a van, got scared and killed them.
Quoting Allen’s own words, the prosecutor said: “He continued to live his life after time had passed because he had not been caught.”
Prosecutors also said he had confessed to the murders while in solitary confinement.
Taking jurors back to February 13, 2017, McLeland said, “That day started like any other day.” The day Bridge Guy stole Liberty and Abigail’s youth and life. The state has shown them that Richard Allen is Bridge Guy.
‘For five years he has lived among us. He didn’t realize he left a cartridge from his gun and also left Liberty’s cell phone.
But Bradley Rozzi, who delivered the defense’s impassioned closing statements, argued that the state had proven nothing.
He described his timeline as “broken,” his ballistic evidence as “flawed” and the confessions as “false” and “cherry-picked” to present only a fraction of a much more complicated and troubling truth.
The only thing that “tells the truth,” he insisted, was something the state had not told the jury at all: raw data obtained from Libby’s cell phone showing that at 5:45 p.m. on February 13, 2017, someone He had connected headphones to the phone and, at 10:32 p.m., someone had removed them.
The state attempted to rule this out as a technical issue caused by dirt or water damage.
Rozzi also reminded jurors that there was no DNA evidence, no traces, no clothing, no data or digital communications connecting Allen to the crime scene or to any of the girls.
‘The magic bullet is nothing more than a tragic bullet. It’s the catalyst that put Rick in that prison,” the defense attorney said of the Westville Correctional Center in Westville, about 76 miles from Delphi.
Allen’s defense said the conditions in which he was held caused an already “fragile egg” to become mentally ill, to the point of developing major depressive disorder with psychosis.
The defense had claimed that the conditions in which Allen was held caused an already “fragile egg” to become seriously ill and develop major depressive disorder with psychosis.
The confessions were nothing more than the product of his psychotic mind and should be discarded completely and given no weight, they insisted.
The conditions in which he was held amounted to torture. An image of a medieval rack appeared on the big screen behind Rozzi, followed by an image of a wing screw, which the lawyer said were “medieval devices for interrogating people.”
“As a society, we have evolved… toward a more subtle form called solitary confinement,” he said. ‘Whether intentional, reckless or negligent, someone should have spoken up. Where was the moral compass? You are the moral compass.’
To drive home his point, Rozzi showed photographs of Allen at the open court, taken from a jailhouse video that, until this point, has been hidden from public view and only seen by the jury.
In one photo, he lies naked, curled up in a fetal position on the floor. In one he is naked against a wall, and in another, he is wearing a suicide robe with a white hood over his head.
“That’s the power of your state,” he said, pointing to the screen behind him. An image of a python crushing its prey followed. ‘Now is the time to step forward and recognize that this is not how we operate.
‘Issuing a guilty verdict would be endorsing this process and that should not be done. We ask that you release Richard Allen.
