Indiana Court Hears Richard Allen’s Appeal of Delphi Murders Conviction in Deaths of Abigail Williams and Liberty German

DELPHI, Ind. — A man sentenced to 130 years for the murders of two Indiana teenagers is asking an appeals court to vacate his convictions. Richard Allen’s attorneys argue that he confessed during a severe psychological crisis and that he was wrongly prevented from presenting evidence suggesting the girls were killed by unidentified people as part of a pagan ritual.

A jury convicted Allen in 2024 in the deaths of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, who were known as Abby and Libby. The killings in the small town of Delphi remained unsolved for more than five years before Allen’s arrest, drawing intense attention from true-crime followers.

The Indiana Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear an hour of arguments in Allen’s case on Monday.

Prosecutors maintain that several of Allen’s incriminating statements came before he displayed signs of mental illness and continued after his condition improved. They also argue that, even without the confessions, the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to support the guilty verdicts.

The state said Allen acknowledged being on the trail near the spot where one of the girls recorded a brief video of a suspicious man saying, “Down the hill.” Prosecutors argued that allowing a defense expert to testify about a possible pagan ritual would have transformed the proceedings into a sideshow.

Investigators found the girls’ bodies down a steep slope from an abandoned railroad trestle along a hiking trail outside Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017. The eighth graders had been dropped off in the area but never reached the place where they were supposed to be picked up.

Both teenagers had suffered fatal cuts to their throats, and several branches lay across their bodies. One girl was nude, while the other was dressed in the first victim’s clothing. Authorities found no evidence of sexual assault.

Prosecutors said Allen used a gun to force the girls away from the trail. They said he initially confessed to intending to rape them, but changed his plan after a passing van appeared and then killed them. An expert also testified that an unspent bullet recovered between the bodies had been “cycled through” Allen’s handgun.

At trial, defense attorneys emphasized that no witness directly identified Allen as the man seen near the trail that afternoon. They also said investigators found no fingerprint, DNA or other forensic evidence connecting him to the crime scene.

Allen spent his time awaiting trial in solitary confinement. He denied involvement for months, but his lawyers said the prolonged isolation caused a dramatic decline in his mental health. They argued that Allen eventually became so psychologically impaired that he convinced himself he had committed the killings and confessed repeatedly.

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“Allen lost forty pounds, was unable to care for himself, was tased, his face was black and blue and at times bleeding, and he was poisoned by fecal matter and toilet water,” attorneys Stacy Uliana and Mark Leeman wrote in their brief.

Prosecutors countered that Allen’s statements began as he reviewed evidence in the case, including details about the girls’ bodies.

“The discovery materials forced Allen to face the horrifying evidence of what he did … images and events he had been able to ignore and repress over the five years in which his guilt had gone undiscovered,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita wrote in a brief filed by his office.

Allen’s trial lawyers sought to call an expert who would testify that the killings resembled a ritual sacrifice carried out by people who worshipped Odin, the king of the gods in Norse mythology.

The proposed testimony was expected to link the bodies’ positioning, the branches placed on them, the outdoor setting and the knife wounds to alleged pagan rituals.

Prosecutors argued that the expert had only a limited number of examples and that defense lawyers should not be permitted to present a theory unsupported by adequate evidence.

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