Allen Found Guilty in Delphi Murders

A jury in the small Indiana town of Delphi convicted a man of murder on Monday in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls who vanished during an afternoon hike. Deliberations stretched into a fourth day before jurors found Richard Allen guilty in the killings of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German. The former drugstore worker was convicted of two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping, the AP reports. Allen, 52, could now face up to 130 years in prison.

• The 12 jurors along with alternates were sequestered throughout the trial, which began Oct. 18 in the girls' hometown of Delphi, a small northwest Indiana city where Allen also lived and worked as a pharmacy technician.

• The seven women and five men began deliberations Thursday afternoon after hearing closing arguments in the weekslong murder trial. A special judge oversaw the case. Superior Court Judge Fran Gull, along with the jurors, came from northeastern Indiana's Allen County.
• Reports that the jury had reached a verdict began to spread and drew a crowd outside the courthouse. Minutes later, a handful of people spilled outside and people on the sidewalk began to cheer.
• The case has drawn outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts, with repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of Allen's public defenders, and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court. It has also been the subject of a gag order.
• Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors in his closing arguments that Allen is the man seen following the teens in a grainy cellphone video recorded by one of the girls as they crossed an abandoned railroad trestle called the Monon High Bridge. "Richard Allen is Bridge Guy," McLeland told jurors. "He kidnapped them and later murdered them."

• McLeland also said it was Allen's voice that was captured on German's cellphone video telling the teens, "Down the hill" after they had crossed the bridge just before vanishing on Feb. 13, 2017. Their bodies were found the next day, their throats cut, in a wooded area about a quarter-mile from that bridge.
• McLeland noted in his closing that Allen had repeatedly confessed to the killings—in person, on the phone, and in writing. In one of the recordings he replayed for the jury, Allen could be heard telling his wife, "I did it. I killed Abby and Libby." Allen's defense argued that Allen's confessions are unreliable because he was facing a severe mental health crisis while under the pressure and stress of being locked up in isolation. Prosecutors said Allen's incriminating statements contained information only the killer could have known.
• Allen "will most certainly appeal," the Indianapolis Star reports.

(More Delphi stories.)