The man suspected of killing two teenagers who were on a hike in Delphi, Indiana, allegedly confessed to the 2017 crime in a prison phone call to his wife, prosecutors have revealed in newly unsealed court documents.
Richard M. Allen allegedly spoke to his wife on April 3 from the Westville Correctional Center and admitted multiple times to killing 13-year-old Abigail «Abby» Williams and 14-year-old Liberty «Libby» German, according to the documents.
The girl’s bodies were discovered in a wooded area near the Delphi Historic Trail a day after they went missing on February 13, 2017. Their deaths were ruled homicides and their injuries were caused by a sharp object, according to one of the unsealed documents. .
Allen was arrested last year and charged with two counts of murder. He is being held at the facility until his trial.
Hundreds of pages of documents in the case were made public on Wednesday. Judge Frances C. Gull wrote in her order that her decision was based on the attorney agreeing with the Court «that transparency best serves the public interest.»
Some documents, including the original unredacted probable cause affidavit, will remain sealed because it lists the names of the minor witnesses, Gull said.
In one of the documents, prosecutors said investigators had Allen’s phone call transcribed to his wife, and the transcript confirms that Richard M. Allen admits to committing the murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German.
“He admits several times within the phone call that he committed the crimes of which he is accused. His wife, Kathy Allen, abruptly ends the phone call,” the document states.
In a separate document, Allen’s attorneys argue that at the time the call was made, he «appeared to be suffering from various psychotic symptoms that attorney would describe as schizophrenic and delusional.» They also said that Allen appeared to have memory loss and «a general inability to communicate rationally with the attorney and family members.»
The lawyers point out that this behavior was very different from what they were used to from Allen.
Allen’s attorneys, the prosecutor, and the families of Abby and Libby cannot comment publicly on the case.
The girls were walking about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis when they went missing on February 13, 2017. They had been left on an abandoned railroad bridge to walk and hang out. the police said earlier.
Their bodies were found the next day in a wooded area near the Delphi Historic Trail, half a mile upriver from the bridge.
After their deaths, police released grainy photos of a man believed to be Allen walking on an old railway bridge that Abby and Libby had visited, along with audio of the man ordering them to «get down the hill» taken from a video Libby filmed with his cell phone.
The phone was found under Libby’s body, according to a probable cause affidavit unsealed Wednesday. In the video, one of the girls said that the man had a gun.
Authorities initially interviewed Allen in 2017 after learning he had been on the road. He was not interviewed again until October 2022 when a search warrant at his home found that an unexpended round located near the girls’ bodies was used in a firearm belonging to him.
Allen will remain incarcerated until his trial in January 2024.