AP – A former drugstore worker in the small Indiana community of Delphi was found guilty of murder on Monday in the killings of two teenage girls who vanished during an afternoon hike.
Jurors convicted Richard Allen of two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the 2017 killings of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14.
Allen wasn’t arrested for five more years, while the case drew outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts. His trial followed repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of Allen’s public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court.
Reporters inside the courtroom said Allen, 52, showed no reaction as the verdict was delivered, but he looked back at his family at one point. Allen is scheduled to be sentenced on December 20.
He could face up to 130 years in prison. Outside the courthouse, people on the sidewalk began to cheer as word of the verdict spread. Indiana State Police spokesman Captain Ron Galaviz told The Associated Press that the judge’s gag order remains in place and he believes it will until Allen is sentenced. Allen’s lawyers left the courthouse without making statements.
A special judge oversaw the case – Superior Court Judge Fran Gull who along with the jurors, came from northeastern Indiana’s Allen County.
The seven women and five men were sequestered throughout the trial, which began on October 18 in the Carroll County seat 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 had repeatedly confessed to the killings – in person, on the phone and in writing. In one of the recordings he replayed for the jury, Allen could be heard telling his wife, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”
McLeland also said Allen is the man seen following the teens in a grainy cell phone video recorded by one of the girls as they crossed an abandoned railroad trestle called the Monon High Bridge.
