DELPHI, Ind. — For a year and nine months, accused Delphi double killer Richard Allen has languished inside two state prisons, locked in solitary confinement, officials said, for his own safety, while awaiting trial for the killings of Abby Williams and Libby German near the Monon High Bridge in Carroll County in 2017.
At the end of three days of marathon pretrial hearings in a Delphi courtroom, Judge Fran Gull ruled affirmatively on the first motion to be heard this week. Allen’s defense team asked that he be moved from the custody of the Indiana Department of Correction back to the responsibility of Carroll County Sheriff Tony Liggett.
Liggett led the five-and-a-half year investigation to put the suspected killer behind bars; Allen’s attorneys wanted him housed closer to home in anticipation of his trial this fall. Gull ultimately approved the transfer.
Safekeeping order at center of hearings
Earlier this week Allen’s attorneys argued that their client’s “safekeeping” 200 miles away at the IDOC’s Wabash Valley Correctional Facility south of Terre Haute was hardship as his team tried to build his defense and a possible violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights.
On the witness stand Tuesday, when asked about remanding Allen back to his custody, Sheriff Liggett said, “I don’t care where he’s at. He can’t be with mine,” citing the potential danger the accused killer would experience from other inmates in the tiny Carroll County Jail.
This week, during his hearings, Allen has been housed at and transported from the Cass County Jail in Logansport, hometown of his lead defense attorney Bradley Rozzi.
The court learned the Cass County Jail would be able to accommodate Allen for the rest of his pretrial incarceration.
It was Allen’s pretrial detention that was subject of intense testimony during hearings in Carroll Circuit Court this week.
While an Indiana State Police investigator said he listened to more than 60 phone calls of Allen confessing to his alleged role in the killings of the two girls Feb. 13, 2017, outside of Delphi, an IDOC contracted psychologist testified that the accused man was suffering from a mental illness breakdown at the time of those confessions in the spring of last year due to his incarceration conditions.
Defense touts Odinism theory
The attorneys spent two days presenting evidence to Judge Gull in an attempt to allow them to tell jurors about a potential third-party defense that would pin the murders on a group of men who practice Odinism, a pagan Nordic religion, in Carroll County.
One of those men is the father of Abby’s older boyfriend at the time of her death.
The man’s ex-wife testified that the father told her Abby was targeted by the group because one of her relatives was suspected of dating a person of color.
Dr. Dawn Perlmutter, a recognized subject matter expert in the field of ritualistic crime investigations, testified that some offshoots of Odinism are racist in nature and engage in “magical thinking” contrary to typical linear western thought, that imbues objects like sticks and locations such as wooded areas and bodies of water with supernatural powers to control human life events.
A noted author who literally wrote the book on ritualistic crime, Perlmutter said, “This crime scene is a textbook for ritualistic murder.”
She was followed to the witness stand by two retired police officers who were part of the task force assembled by Indiana State Police to investigate the Delphi killings and who testified that they were convinced a group of Vinlanders, practitioners of Odinism, from Delphi and Rushville, carried out the killings as part of a ceremony.
The prosecution countered with its own evidence that there was no evidence linking the group to the murders and that runes and blood markings on trees were simply evidence of the struggle during the killings or an attempt by the murderer to cover his tracks.
The defense team is seeking Judge Gull’s approval to bring the Odinism theory before jurors in an attempt to sow the seeds of reasonable doubt once the trial begins.
New details about murders
Without spelling out exactly what Allen may have said in his purported confessions, Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland asked Perlmutter what her response would be if she learned that the defendant “said that the intent was a sexual assault,” and “said that the branches were there to cover the girls’ bodies,” not an example of symbolic runes as the defense argues.
As a blood spatter expert revealed details of the crime scene and the conditions of the girls’ bodies upon discovery the day after they disappeared, some persons in the courtroom, including the victims’ families, choked back tears.
Details included cutting wounds on the throats of the victims and Abby’s body found wearing Libby’s clothes.
One retired detective grew emotional on the stand as he viewed a photograph of the crime scene and said, “There’s sticks on Abby,” and, “It sucks.”
A state police detective confirmed an unspent .40 caliber handgun round was found on the ground beneath the bodies of one of the victims.
Prosecutors are expected to present expert testimony linking that round to a gun discovered in Allen’s house.
While investigators believe Abby and Libby were abducted at 2:14 p.m. on that Monday and dead within 18 minutes, the defense claims Libby’s cell phone was quiet for more than 12 hours before suddenly turning on again and receiving text messages at 4:30 the next morning, some seven hours before the bodies were discovered in a wooded area along Deer Creek.
The defense has sought to pin the blame for the killings on the father of Abby’s boyfriend, arguing the man claimed he was working out at a fitness center in Logansport at 2 a.m., twelve hours after the girls vanished, but was in reality attending to the moving of the bodies in Carroll County.
While the defense and the prosecutor trotted out bits and pieces of evidence that expected to be raised at trial in October, Judge Gull took several motions under advisement.
