DELPHI, Ind. (AP) — A man charged with killing two teenage girls in a small Indiana community forced them off a hiking trail before cutting their throats, a prosecutor said Friday, telling jurors that the evidence includes images and audio recorded on a victim's phone.
"The last thing the girls saw was Richard Allen's face," Carroll County prosecutor Nicholas McLeland said.
And they heard his "chilling words: 'Girls, down the hill,' " McLeland said. "Out of fear the girls complied."
Richard Allen, 52, who lived in Delphi, population 3,000, is charged with two counts of murder as well as two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping.
The pharmacy technician was arrested in 2022, five years after the deaths of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German, a case that had vexed local police and inspired much speculation by true-crime enthusiasts. The outsized media attention in the small community where the trial is being heard prompted a specially appointed judge to pick jurors in Fort Wayne, nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) away.
They'll be sequestered for what could be a monthlong trial, banned from watching the news and allowed only limited use of their phones to call relatives while monitored by bailiffs.
In his opening statement, McLeland described the crime scene: a rugged, wooded area near the Monon High Bridge Trail, just outside the town of Delphi in Carroll County.
He said an unused bullet discovered at the scene came from a gun that belonged to Allen, and that his grainy image and voice were captured by Libby on her phone. One video showed a man walking behind her on the abandoned railroad bridge.
He also told jurors they would hear incriminating statements Allen made to correctional officers, inmates, law enforcement, even his wife.
"They had details that only the killer would know," the prosecutor said. "Richard Allen is the man on the bridge."
Allen shook his head at times while McLeland spoke, and his wife, seated in the gallery, did the same when the prosecutor said her husband had confessed to her.
During his turn, defense attorney Andrew Baldwin told the jury there's plenty of reasonable doubt.
He said Allen's statements were made under the stress of being in a tiny cell while under constant watch following his arrest. Baldwin noted that Allen mentioned shooting the girls in the back, though that wasn't how they died.
And he said police had believed that one person could not have committed the homicides.
"Richard Allen is innocent," Baldwin told the jury. "He is truly innocent."
The teens were found dead on Feb. 14, 2017. They went missing a day earlier while hiking the trail. Within days, police released files found on Libby's cellphone. Investigators also released one sketch of a suspect in July 2017 and another in April 2019, along with the bridge video.
After more years passed without a suspect identified, investigators said they went back and reviewed prior tips.
Investigators found that Allen had been interviewed in 2017. He told an officer he had been walking on the trail the day Abby and Libby went missing and had seen three "females" at a bridge called the Freedom Bridge but did not speak to them, according to an affidavit.
At earlier hearings, Allen's attorneys had sought to argue that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a pagan Norse religion and white nationalist group known as the Odinists.
News media are barred by Judge Fran Gull from reporting directly from the courtroom with electronic devices. The judge also set strict rules for photo or video coverage outside the courthouse. Police confiscated cameras from several journalists outside the building on Friday morning before court proceedings began, including 2 cameras from a photographer with The Associated Press.
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