People in the packed courtroom reportedly gasped aloud when a close-up photograph of the young victim’s bloody face was displayed on a large monitor for the jury. This week, prosecutors in the double murder trial of Indiana man Richard Allen, 52, publicly shared for the first time how Libby German, 14, and her best friend, Abby Williams, 13, were killed — and the chilling scene that awaited searchers who found their bodies a day after they disappeared from a hiking trail in the small town of Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017.
For years, the public had almost no information on the circumstances of the killings, even as true crime obsessives shared theories online and the girls’ families spoke out regularly for anyone with information to come forward. Ultimately, it was those details of the crime — which only the girls’ killer could know — that prosecutors said Allen himself revealed when he confessed to the killings in recorded calls he made from prison to his wife and mother . Allen, a Delphi resident who was arrested years after the killings in October 2022, pleaded not guilty to murder and kidnapping charges.
His defense attorneys have argued that his more than 60 alleged confessions were coerced and unreliable because his mental health had deteriorated while incarcerated. As the long-awaited trial got underway, the judge warned jurors that the crime scene photos they would see would be harrowing and, according to reporters in the courtroom, they were visibly distressed w.
