Delphi, Indiana
AP
—

An Indiana man convicted of the 2017 murders of two teenage girls who disappeared during a winter hike faces up to 130 years in prison Friday when convicted in the case that has long cast a shadow on the teenagers’ small hometown of Delphi, Indiana.

After a week-long trial, Richard Allen was convicted on November 11th of the murders of Abigail Williams (13) and Liberty German (14). A jury found him guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of murder in the commission or attempt of kidnapping.

All face between 45 and 130 years in prison for the murders of the Delphi teenagers, known as Abby and Libby. He is convicted of two of the four murder counts.

Allen, 52, also lived in Delphi. When he was arrested in October 2022, more than five years after the February 2017 murders, he was employed as a pharmacy technician at a pharmacy just blocks from the county courthouse where he later stood trial.

Allen’s trial took place after repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of his public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.

The case, which contained tantalizing evidence, has long attracted great attention from true crime fans.

Allen will be sentenced Friday by the special judge who oversaw the case, Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gull. Relatives of German and Williams may speak in court during the hearing, which Gull has scheduled for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m

Allen’s attorneys said in a sentencing memorandum that even in the “unlikely event” that Gull sentences her client to 45 years in prison on each of two counts of murder and orders those sentences to be served concurrently, the possible minimum sentence is 45 years Good time credit would apply to her client “amounts to 33.75 actual years in prison.”

“Richard Allen will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. Even on his best day at sentencing, Richard will be 85 years old when he is released,” they wrote.

Gull and the jury came from Allen County in northeast Indiana. The jury’s seven women and five men were sequestered throughout the trial, which began Oct. 18 in Delphi, the girls’ hometown of about 3,000 people, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis, in Carroll County.

A relative dropped the teens off at a hiking trail just outside Delphi on February 13, 2017. The eighth graders did not arrive at the agreed pickup location and were reported missing that evening. Their bodies were found the next day, their throats slit, in a wooded area near an abandoned railroad trestle they had crossed.

In his closing argument, Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors that Allen, armed with a gun, forced the teens off the trail and planned to rape them before a passing van caused him to change his plans and he cut their throats. McLeland said a fresh bullet found between the teens’ bodies “passed through Allen’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol.”

An Indiana State Police firearms expert told the jury that her analysis linked the cartridge to Allen’s handgun.

McLeland said Allen was the man seen following the teens across the Monon High Bridge in a grainy cellphone video taken by German. And he said it was Allen’s voice that was heard in that video as he told the teens, “Down the hill,” after they crossed the bridge.

“Richard Allen is a bridge guy,” McLeland told the jury. “He kidnapped her and later murdered her.”

McLeland also noted that Allen had repeatedly confessed to the murders – in person, on the phone and in writing. In one of the recordings he played for the jury, Allen was heard telling his wife: “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”

Allen’s defense argued that his confessions were unreliable because he was in a serious mental health crisis while under the pressure and stress of being held in isolation, watched 24 hours a day and taunted by those imprisoned with him. A psychiatrist called by the defense testified that months in solitary confinement could send a person into delirium and psychosis.

Defense attorney Bradley Rozzi said in his closing argument that Allen was innocent. He said no witness specifically identified Allen as the man seen on the trail or bridge the afternoon the girls went missing. He also said no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence linked Allen to the crime scene.

“He had every chance to run, but he didn’t because he didn’t,” Rozzi told the jury.

Allen’s lawyers had argued during the trial that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a white nationalist group called the Odinists, who belonged to a pagan Nordic religion. However, the judge rejected this on the grounds that the defense had presented “no admissible evidence” of such a connection.

Gull’s longstanding gag order in the case is expected to be lifted following Allen’s conviction, Indiana State Police spokesman Capt. Ron Galaviz said Wednesday. Law enforcement, prosecutors and relatives of the teens plan to speak at a news conference shortly after the hearing ends Friday.