A murder trial begins in a small Indiana town in the killings of two teenage girls

DELPHI, Ind. (AP) — A murder trial in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls was beginning Friday in the small Indiana town where the teens and the man charged with killing them all lived.

Richard Allen, 52, is accused of killing 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German. Their deaths had gone unsolved for more than five years when Allen, then a pharmacy worker, was arrested in the case that has drawn outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts.

Allen had been there all along in Delphi, living and working in the community of about 3,000 people in northwest Indiana. He faces two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping. If convicted, Allen could face up to 130 years in prison.

Nearly two years after his October 2022 arrest, opening statements are scheduled to begin before a special judge in the Carroll County Courthouse, just blocks from the pharmacy where Allen had worked. A panel of jurors has been brought in from nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) away. They’ll be sequestered throughout what’s expected to be a monthlong trial, banned from watching the news and allowed limited use of their cellphones to call relatives while monitored by bailiffs.

The judge also barred reporting from the courtroom while trial is in session.

Prosecutors said during this week’s jury selection in Fort Wayne that they plan to call about 50 witnesses. Allen’s defense attorneys expect to call about 120 people. The 12 jurors and four alternates will receive preliminary instructions Friday morning before hearing opening statements.

The case has seen repeated delays, some surrounding a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of Allen’s public defenders and their later reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court. It’s also the subject of a gag order.

The teens, known as Abby and Libby, were found dead on Feb. 14, 2017, in a rugged, wooded area about a quarter-mile from the Monon High Bridge Trail. The girls went missing the day before while hiking that trail just outside their hometown. Within days, police released files found on Libby’s cellphone that they believed captured the killer’s image and voice — two grainy photos and audio of a man saying “down the hill.”

Investigators also released one sketch of a suspect in July 2017 and another in April 2019. And they released a brief video showing a suspect walking on an abandoned railroad bridge, known as the Monon High Bridge. After more years passed without a suspect identified, investigators said they went back and reviewed “prior tips.”

Investigators found that Allen had been interviewed in 2017. He told an officer he had been walking on the trail the day Abby and Libby went missing and had seen three “females” at a bridge called the Freedom Bridge but did not speak to them, according to an affidavit.

Allen told the officer that as he walked from that bridge to the Monon High Bridge he did not see anyone but was distracted, “watching a stock ticker on his phone as he walked.”

Police interviewed Allen again on Oct. 13, 2022, when he said he had seen three “juvenile girls” during his walk in 2017. Investigators searched Allen’s home and seized a .40-caliber pistol. Prosecutors said testing determined that an unspent bullet found between Abby and Libby’s bodies “had been cycled through” Allen’s gun.

According to the affidavit, Allen said he’d never been to the scene and “had no explanation as to why a round cycled through his firearm would be at that location.”

Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gull, now overseeing the Carroll County trial, has ruled that prosecutors can present evidence of dozens of incriminating statements they say Allen made during conversations with correctional officers, inmates, law enforcement and relatives. That evidence includes a recording of a telephone call between Allen and his wife in which, prosecutors say, he confesses to the killings.

Allen’s defense attorneys have sought to argue that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a pagan Norse religion and white nationalist group known as the Odinists.

Prosecutors have not disclosed how the teens were killed. But a court filing by Allen’s attorneys in support of their ritual sacrifice theory states their throats had been cut.