An attorney for a man serving 130 years in prison for killing two teen girls in Indiana said police were so determined to find him guilty they used confessions gathered while he suffered from psychosis and withheld from trial a witness sketch that looked nothing like him, reported The Associated Press.
Jurors convicted
Richard Allen of murder in 2024 in the deaths of Abigail Williams, 13, and
Liberty German, 14, known as Abby and Libby. The case in the tiny town of
Delphi went unsolved for more than five years before Allen was arrested,
becoming a magnet for true-crime enthusiasts.
After Allen told investigators he had been on the
trail near where the girls died, authorities found any way they could to
convict him and make sure no evidence surfaced that any other man was on that
walkway, attorney Mark Leeman told a three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of
Appeals on Monday.
“We live in a world where one or two things happen
here,” Leeman said. “A pharmacy tech with no criminal history goes out for a
walk to watch a stock ticker and look at fish and decides to gruesomely murder
two girls. Or, we live in a world where the police through confirmation bias
failed to find the right guy.”
Judges have plenty of questions about the trial’s
fairness
The three judges handling the appeal questioned why
the trial judge didn’t allow the defense to call an expert to testify that it
looked like the girls were killed by unknown participants in a pagan ritual.
They also asked why a police sketch of someone seen near the trail was omitted
from trial, noting that the sketch looked nothing like Allen.
The panel also questioned why a defense expert wasn’t
allowed to question whether marks on an unfired bullet can be traced to a
specific gun, as prosecutors had asserted. And given that videos of Allen’s odd
behavior in prison were shown to jurors, the appeals judges wanted to know why
the trial judge did not allow the audio to be played as well, audio in which
Allen claimed to be a king and that he had started World War III.
But the judges also asked the state several times if
the decisions were harmless and whether the jury would have convicted Allen
anyway even if the trial decisions being weighed had gone his way.
Indiana Deputy Attorney General Ellen Meilaender said
Allen provided the strongest evidence himself when he told police before he was
arrested that he was on the trail, but said he didn’t see the girls.
“Allen denied seeing Abby and Libby there, even though the timeline evidence indisputably shows he must have done so, which was consciousness of guilt,” Meilaender said.
The judges will rule at a later date.
Crime scene had plenty of strange evidence
The girls’ bodies were found down a steep hill from an
abandoned railroad trestle on a hiking trail just outside of Delphi on Feb. 13,
2017. The eighth graders were dropped off and never made it to their pickup
point.
The teens’ throats were cut, and a few branches were
scattered over their bodies. One was found nude while the other was wearing the
first victim’s clothes. There was no evidence they had been sexually assaulted.
One of the girls took a brief video
of a suspicious man nearby saying, “Down the hill.”
Prosecutors said Allen was armed with a gun and forced
the girls off the hiking trail. They said he confessed to planning to rape them
before a passing van made him change his mind and kill them. An expert
testified an unspent bullet found between the teens’ bodies “had
been cycled through” Allen’s handgun.
Defense lawyers at his trial said no witness
explicitly identified Allen as the man seen near the trail the afternoon the
girls went missing. They also said no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence
linked Allen to the murder scene. They wanted to call an expert to dispute that
guns can mark bullets in unique ways, but weren’t allowed.
Allen’s lawyers say isolation led to mental breakdown
and false confessions
Allen was held in solitary confinement while awaiting
trial. He denied killing the girls for months, but his attorneys said mental
stress from isolation led to a steep psychological decline. Eventually, his
mental state became so bad he convinced himself he killed the girls and
confessed several times, his lawyers said.
Prosecutors said the statements coincided with Allen
seeing evidence in the case including the conditions of the teens’ bodies.
Expert testimony of possible pagan ritual also
excluded
Allen’s trial attorneys wanted to put an expert
witness on the stand to testify the killings appeared to be a ritual sacrifice
by people who worshipped Odin, the king of the gods in Norse mythology.
The expert was expected to say the positioning of the
bodies, the branches on the remains, the outdoor location of the crime and
knife wounds to the victims all were indications of pagan rituals.
Prosecutors said the expert had limited examples and
that defense lawyers shouldn’t be able to present just any theory without
evidence to back it up. They said it would have turned the trial into a
sideshow.
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