An Indiana man is convicted of murdering two teenage girls in 2017

DELPHI, India – A former drugstore worker in the small Indiana community of Delphi was convicted Monday of murdering two teenage girls who disappeared during an afternoon hike.

Jurors convicted Richard Allen of two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder for committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the 2017 killings of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14.

Allen was not arrested for another five years while the case attracted widespread attention from true crime enthusiasts. His trial was followed by repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of Allen's public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.

Reporters in the courtroom said Allen, 52, showed no reaction to the verdict, but at one point he looked back at his family. Allen is scheduled to be sentenced on December 20th. He faces up to 130 years in prison.

Outside the courthouse, people on the sidewalk began cheering as news of the verdict spread.

Indiana State Police spokesman Capt. Ron Galaviz told The Associated Press that the judge's silence order remains in effect and he believes it will remain that way until Allen is convicted. Allen's lawyers left the courthouse Monday without making a statement.

A special judge oversaw the case – Supreme Court Justice Fran Gull, who along with the juror hailed from Allen County in northeast Indiana. The seven women and five men were sequestered throughout the trial, which began Oct. 18 in the Carroll County capital of Delphi, the girls' hometown of about 3,000 residents in northwest Indiana, where Allen also lived and worked.

Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland noted in his closing argument that Allen repeatedly confessed to the murders – in person, on the phone and in writing. In one of the recordings he played for the jury, Allen was heard telling his wife: “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”

McLeland also said Allen was the man who followed the teens in a grainy cellphone video taken by one of the girls as they crossed an abandoned railroad trestle called the Monon High Bridge.

“Richard Allen is a bridge guy,” McLeland told the jury. “He kidnapped her and later murdered her.”

McLeland said it was Allen's voice that was heard on the video telling the teens, “Down the hill,” after they crossed the bridge on Feb. 13, 2017. Their bodies were found the next day with their throats slit in a nearby forest area.

An investigator testified that Allen told him and another officer that on the day of the teen's disappearance he was wearing a blue or black Carhartt jacket, jeans and a hat – clothing similar to what the man recorded on the bridge was wearing wore.

McLeland said a fresh bullet found between the teens' bodies “passed through Allen's .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol.” An Indiana State Police firearms expert told the jury that her analysis linked the cartridge to Allen's handgun.

But a firearms expert called by the defense questioned the analysis, and attorney Bradley Rozzi dismissed it as a “silver bullet” and said investigators compared the unspent cartridge to a cartridge fired from Allen's gun.

Allen was arrested in October 2022. He became a suspect after a retired state government employee who had volunteered to help police in the case found documents in September 2022 showing that Allen had died two days after the bodies were found girl had contacted the authorities. Those documents showed that Allen told an officer that he had been on the trail the afternoon the girls went missing, according to a witness statement.

Allen's defense argued that his confessions were unreliable because he was in a serious mental crisis while under the pressure and stress of being locked in isolation, watched 24 hours a day and ridiculed by people who were incarcerated with him become. A psychiatrist called by the defense testified that months in solitary confinement could send a person into delirium and psychosis.

But Dr. Monica Wala, Allen's psychologist at Westville Correctional Facility, said Allen revealed details of the crime in some confessions, including saying he slit the girls' throats and placed tree branches over their bodies. She wrote in a report that Allen told her he had abandoned his plans to rape the teens when a van drove by nearby. A man whose driveway runs under the Monon High Bridge said he was driving home from work in his van at the time.

McLeland concluded by telling the jury that this van was a detail “only the murderer would know.”

Under cross-examination, Wala admitted that she had followed Allen's case with interest in her free time, including while she was treating him, and that she was a fan of the true crime genre.

Rozzi said in his closing argument that Allen was innocent. He said no witness specifically identified Allen as the man seen on the trail or bridge the afternoon the girls went missing. And he said no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence linked Allen to the crime scene.

“He had every chance to run, but he didn't because he didn't,” Rozzi told jurors.

Allen's lawyers had argued before trial that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a white nationalist group known as the Odinists, who belong to a pagan Nordic religion. However, the judge ruled against it, saying the defense had “presented no evidence”. “Admissible evidence” of such a connection.