Man Sentenced For Brutal Murders Of 2 Girls In Delphi, Indiana

An Indiana man was sentenced Friday to 130 years in prison for the brutal stabbing deaths of two girls in the small town of Delphi.

After the case had languished for years with no publicly named suspect, Richard Allen, 52, was convicted last month of kidnapping and killing 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German on Feb. 13, 2017.

Allen received the maximum sentence of 65 years in prison for each murder, to be served consecutively.

The girls were last seen on a popular hiking trail, and following a frantic overnight search, their bodies were discovered the next day beside a creek about half a mile from an abandoned railroad bridge.

The 60-foot-tall Monon High Bridge, once a popular backdrop for celebratory photo shoots — including weddings, local news station WRTV noted in 2017 — became an infamous landmark following the killings: Not long before they disappeared, Libby posted an eerie photo on Snapshot of Abby walking on the railroad trestles — and appeared to capture the killer approaching the girls in a blurry video later recovered from her phone.

The man, dressed in jeans and a blue coat, was nicknamed “Bridge Guy” by true crime sleuths obsessed with the case after the state police circulated snippets of the video in which he apparently directs the girls to go “down the hill.” A detective testified that he could hear one of the girls say that the man had a gun, WTHR reported.

But despite hundreds of tips, the man in the video was never identified. It wasn’t until September 2022 that a volunteer clerk uncovered a mislabeled record of a police interview with Allen, who lived in Delphi with his wife and had worked for years at the local CVS, placing himself on the trail at the time the girls disappeared, IndyStar reported. Authorities arrested Allen that October, after linking a gun Allen owned to an unspent bullet found between the girls’ bodies. During a search of the Allens’ house, they also found clothing similar to what the man on the bridge had been wearing, prosecutors said.

Allen, who pleaded not guilty, confessed to killing the girls more than 60 times while he was being held in prison before the trial, prosecutors said. But his defense attorneys argued he was innocent, discounting the confessions as brought on by his poor mental health under the conditions of incarceration. Allen’s attorneys had earlier claimed that the girls had been killed in a “ritualistic sacrifice.” The judge barred Allen’s attorneys from presenting that third-party theory during the trial, however.

Allen’s attorneys said in a court filing this week that he will appeal the verdict.

Several family members gave emotional victim impact statements in court on Friday before the judge delivered the verdict.

Libby’s mother, Carrie Timmons, said her family had endured “absolute hell” since the murders, leaving her with “a literal hole in my soul,” according to WTHR.

Abby’s grandfather, Eric Erskin, said, “The loss of losing Abby is like losing a limb that never grows back.”

Libby’s grandmother Becky Patty had been the first to testify at the trial, praising Libby’s adventurous spirit, intelligence and interest in true crime.

“She was logical. She loved crime shows. She said, ‘I’m going to help you solve crimes.’ She wanted to make a difference,” Patty said.

At a news conference following the verdict Friday, prosecutor Nick McLeland said that the girls themselves provided “arguably the biggest piece of evidence” in the case: the video that Libby recorded on her phone.

Abby hid the phone from their killer, McLeland said, so that investigators could find it.

“Without the efforts from those two little girls, we wouldn’t be here today,” McLeland said.