Delphi murders - AP 1

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- More questions about lost evidence and errors by police came out of the Delphi murder trial on Wednesday.

Richard Allen, 52, is charged with two counts of murder as well as two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping. The trial is a spectacle in Delphi, a town of 3,000, with people lining up in the morning chill to secure a seat in the courtroom.

Allen, a pharmacy technician, was arrested in October 2022, more than five years after the deaths of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German, a case that had vexed police and inspired much speculation by true-crime enthusiasts. 

The teens, known as Abby and Libby, were found dead Feb. 14, 2017. They went missing a day earlier while hiking the trail on a mild winter's day off school. Within days, police released files found on German'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 Williams and German went missing and had seen three “females” at a bridge called the Freedom Bridge but did not speak to them, according to an affidavit.

DELPHI MURDERS UPDATE

Photo of suspect.

Allen also told the officer that as he walked from that bridge to the Monon High Bridge he did not see anyone but was distracted, “watching a stock ticker on his phone as he walked.”

Police interviewed Allen again Oct. 13, 2022, when he said he had seen three “juvenile girls” during his walk in 2017. Investigators searched his home within days, a search the led to the discovery of the .40-caliber pistol.

Carroll County prosecutor Nicholas McLeland said in his opening statement last week that an unused bullet discovered at the “gruesome” scene between the girls' bodies came from a gun that belonged to Allen, and that his grainy image and voice were captured by German on her phone.

A short video released in 2019 that also came from German's phone showed a suspect walking on Monon High Bridge. McLeland said that man was Allen.

Investigators searched Allen’s home in 2022 and seized a .40-caliber pistol. Prosecutors disclosed in court documents released several weeks after his arrest that testing determined that an unspent bullet found between Williams and German “had been cycled through” Allen’s pistol.

McLeland told jurors that in addition to the bullet evidence, they would also hear incriminating statements Allen made to correctional officers, inmates, law enforcement, and even his wife.

So far, the state has presented several key pieces of evidence from the crime scene.

Monday, the jury was shown crime scene photos of the gruesome scene. The state entered more than 40 crime scene photos in to evidence, including shots of the general area, close-up photos of Williams and German, whose throats had been slashed.

The images showed that when the girls were found, Williams was dressed, but German was not. Blood stains were visible on both girls, on the ground and on nearby trees. The images also showed tree branches on top of the girls in a "V" or cross-shaped pattern. 

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. But that argument was blocked by the judge.

Allen shook his head at times while McLeland spoke during opening statements, and his wife, seated in the gallery, did the same when the prosecutor said her husband had confessed to her.

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.

He said some police officers had believed that one person could not have committed the homicides alone.

On Tuesday, more key pieces of evidence were brought into court when the lead crime scene investigator took the stand to finish his testimony. He was asked about the evidence collected from the girls' autopsies. That includes swabs collected from the girls' bodies and clothes, and rape kits done on both of them.

The investigator testified that there was no DNA connecting Allen to the crime scene in the swabbed evidence. 

Witnesses have also testified about seeing a man near the bridge around the time of the murders.

Video from German's cell phone captured images and audio of that man, known as the "Bridge guy." 

In court on Wednesday, a woman testified she saw him walking and said his clothes were bloody and muddy. She also testified that 90 minutes of footage from one of her police interviews was lost, due to problems with the recording system police used.

The outsized media attention in the small community prompted a specially appointed judge to pick jurors in Fort Wayne, nearly 100 miles away.

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