Indiana man sentenced to the maximum of 130 years in prison for 2017 killings of 2 teenage girls
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indiana man convicted in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls who vanished during a winter hike was sentenced to a maximum of 130 years in prison Friday in the case that’s long cast a shadow over the teens’ small hometown of Delphi.
Allen, 52, was convicted on Nov. 11 in the killings of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, known as Abby and Libby. A jury found him guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping.
The special judge in the case, Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gull sentenced Allen on two of the four murder counts and imposed the maximum of 65 years for each count, to be served consecutively. The sentencing hearing, which included victim impact statements from six relatives of the teens, lasted less than two hours and after it concluded one of Allen’s defense attorneys said they plan to appeal and seek a new trial.
“Thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims. What they went through was unimaginable,” defense attorney Jennifer Auger said. She added that the defense plans to give a more detailed statement later, “but today is not the day for that.”
Allen, who has maintained his innocence, had faced between 45 years and 130 years in prison in the killings of the Delphi teens, who were found dead in February 2017, their throats cut, one day after they vanished while hiking during a day off from school.
Allen also lived in Delphi and when he was arrested in October 2022, more than five years after the killings, he was employed as a pharmacy technician at a pharmacy only blocks from the county courthouse where he later stood trial. His weekslong trial came after repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of his public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.
The case, which included tantalizing evidence, has long drawn outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts.
With Gull’s long-running gag order in the case lifted at the end of Friday’s sentencing, police and prosecutors held a news conference where they thanked investigators for their work that helped with Allen’s arrest and prosecution.
“There is zero doubt that justice has been served and today is the day,” said Carroll County Sheriff Tony Liggett.
He and others singled out the work of a retired state government worker who volunteered in March 2017 to help police organize tips received as part of the investigation — and who discovered a key piece of information that led investigators to Allen.
Kathy Shank testified at trial that in September 2022 she found a misplaced “lead sheet” which stated that two days after German’s and Williams’ bodies were found, a man contacted authorities and said he had been on the trail the afternoon the girls went missing. His name was listed incorrectly as Richard Allen Whiteman and marked “cleared,” Shank said.
She determined the man’s name was actually Richard Allen and recalled that a young girl had been on the trail at the same location and time and had seen a man.
“I thought there could be a correlation,” Shank told the court, adding that she notified officers of her find.
Liggett thanked Shank at Friday’s news conference for her crucial discovery and for bringing it to investigators’ attention.
“When she would come across something she didn’t know she would always bring that to an investigator and every time she brought us something and said, `Did you know this?’ we knew it — except for the tip that she brought us that got us here today,” he said.
Gull, the special judge who oversaw Allen’s trial, came from northeastern Indiana’s Allen County, as did the jury.
The seven women and five men were sequestered throughout the trial, which began Oct. 18 in the Carroll County seat of Delphi, the girls’ hometown of about 3,000 residents some 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis.
Allen’s trial came after repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of his public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.
The case, which included tantalizing evidence, has long drawn outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts.
A relative dropped the teens off at a hiking trail just outside Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017. The eighth graders didn’t arrive at the agreed pickup location and were reported missing that evening. Their bodies were found the next day in a wooded area near an abandoned railroad trestle they had crossed.
In his closing arguments at Allen’s trial, Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors that Allen, armed with a gun, forced the youths off the hiking trail and had planned to rape them before a passing van made him change his plans and he cut their throats. McLeland said an unspent bullet found between the teens’ bodies “had been cycled through” Allen’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun.
An Indiana State Police firearms expert told the jury her analysis tied the round to Allen’s handgun.
McLeland said Allen was the man seen following the teens across the Monon High Bridge in a grainy cellphone video German had recorded. And he said Allen’s voice could be heard on that video telling the teens, “ Down the hill ″ after they crossed the bridge.
“Richard Allen is Bridge Guy,” McLeland told jurors. “He kidnapped them and later murdered them.”
McLeland also noted 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 his confessions were unreliable because he was facing a severe mental health crisis while under the pressure and stress of being locked up in isolation, watched 24 hours a day and taunted by people incarcerated with him. A psychiatrist called by the defense testified that months in solitary confinement could make a person delirious and psychotic.