Indiana man sentenced to the maximum of 130 years in prison for 2017
killings of 2 teenage girls
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 [December 21, 2024]
By RICK CALLAHAN
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.
After the hearing concluded, one of Allen’s defense attorneys, Jennifer
Auger, told reporters they plan to appeal and seek a new trial.
“Thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims. What they went
through was unimaginable,” Auger said. She added that the defense plans
to give a more detailed statement later, “but today is not the day for
that.”
The Associated Press left messages for Allen's attorneys Friday seeking
additional comment on his sentence and their plans for an appeal.
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.
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Spectators line up to enter the Carroll County Courthouse for the
sentencing of Richard Allen, convicted in the 2017 killings of two
teenage girls , in Delphi, Ind., Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP
Photo/Michael Conroy)
“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.
German’s grandfather, Mike Patty, thanked the jury, investigators,
prosecutors and Gull as a photo of German and Williams, grinning in
winter garb, was projected onto a screen behind him during the news
conference.
“Justice has been served for the girls,” 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.
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.
Defense attorney Bradley Rozzi said in his closing trial arguments
that no witness explicitly identified Allen as the man seen on the
hiking trail or the bridge the afternoon the girls went missing. He
also said no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence links Allen to
the murder scene.
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