Opening statements and first witness evidence were given in Indiana’s double murder trial on Friday. The trial is related to the brutal killings of two teenage girls seven years ago.
Abigail “Abby” Williams and Liberty “Libby” German were killed in Delphi, Indiana, a small farming town. Richard Allen is charged with their deaths.
They were last seen on February 13, 2017, and their bodies were found the next day near the Monon High Bridge in Carroll County, which is about 19 miles west of West Lafayette, Indiana.
The police didn’t find a suspect in the killings until they caught Allen in 2022. He was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of kidnapping.
First arguments were heard by a 12-person jury and four alternates from Allen County in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
They were in front of Special Judge Frances Gull, who had already said that cameras would not be allowed in the courtroom.
The opening statements came from Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland and defense lawyer Andrew Baldwin. Several of the girls’ families then gave sometimes dramatic testimony.
McLeland said Allen used a gun to make the girls go down a hill from the hike trail. The next day, their throats were cut and they were found dead. He choked up and said that Libby was found naked and covered in blood.
He told WMAQ-TV, “The last face the girls saw before their throats were slit was Richard Allen’s face.” Allen later admitted being at the scene of the crime. It was proven that a round that wasn’t used was used in a gun that was found at his home.
Baldwin, on the other hand, said that Allen was “an innocent man” and that he was the target of a police investigation that was fatally flawed because important pieces of evidence were lost.
Allen did say that he was on the climbing trail that day, but he left before the girls were killed, he said.
“Richard Allen was never on the trail with those girls,” Baldwin told the Indianapolis Star.
After the opening comments, Becky Patty, Liberty German’s grandmother, gave a very emotional testimony about the last day her granddaughter lived.
Per the Star, Patty said, “The last thing she said to me was, ‘Grandma, it will be OK.’”
Before the first statements, McLeland asked that composite sketches that were used to look for a suspect not be used in the trial because they would make things more difficult for the judges. He said the sketches didn’t help figure out who Allen was in the case.
Jennifer Auger, the defense lawyer, said that the sketches don’t show her client and are “highly relevant” to her case. McLeland replied that the pictures were only used to help identify the suspect and not to actually name him or her.
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