Prosecutors focus on Delphi murder suspect’s ‘I did it’ confession as they make final arguments to jury

Jurors heard confessions from the Delphi murder suspect because the prosecutor made one last attempt during closing arguments Thursday to convince the panel that Richard Allen is a “Bridge man” who allegedly murdered two teenage girls in 2017.

After three weeks of testimony in the highly anticipated double murder trial, Allen’s fate is now in the hands of the jury. He faces up to 130 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

Allen, 52, faces two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the killings of Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13, and Liberty “Libby” German, 14, who disappeared on Feb. 13, 2017. , after hiking the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi, Indiana.

Their bodies were discovered the next day with their throats slit near the trail. It would be five years before Allen was arrested in October 2022. A grainy image of “bridgeman” was one of a few pieces released by investigators looking for the suspect.

During closing arguments on Thursday, Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland maintained that Allen was the “Bridge Guy” seen in a Snapchat video Libby recorded on her cell phone moments before they were killed.

McLeland said Allen repeatedly confessed to the murders in recorded phone conversations, which were played for the jury, including one in which Allen told his wife, “I did it.” I killed Abby and Libby.”

He also argued that some of Allen’s incriminating statements contained information that only the killer could have known.

“Now all the pieces are clear,” McLeland said. “All the pieces have been put together.”

But defense attorney Bradley Rozzi argued that Allen’s confessions are unreliable because he suffered a serious mental health crisis while under the stress of isolation.

A psychiatrist who testified at the trial supported this argument, testifying that months in solitary confinement can cause a person to become delirious and psychotic.

Rozzi also blasted the prosecution’s timeline, telling jurors that Allen was not the killer while highlighting four points, including the state’s “broken” murder timeline, “bungled” ballistics, “false” confessions and digital forensics.

“Time and time again we had to do their job,” Rozzi said of the investigators in the case.

He said the state’s timeline does not match the evidence, arguing that one or more people must have kidnapped the teens and returned them to where they were found early the next day. Fox 59 reported this.

Rozzi also targeted witness Brad Weber, who gave conflicting statements in previous police interviews about whether he went straight home after work on the day of the murders. He claimed that on February 13, 2017, at 2:30 p.m., he drove his white van along the stretch of Deer Creek where the girls’ bodies were discovered.

The timeline appears to line up with the case laid out by the prosecution, which claims the killer led the girls down the hill at 2:31 p.m., according to pings from Libby’s phone. The last ping from the phone was at 2:32 PM

Last week the court heard from psychologist Dr. Monica Wala, who told jurors how Allen confessed the crimes to her in detail while he was at the Westville Correctional Facility.

She claimed Allen told her his intention was to rape the girls, but said he was “shocked” by a white van. He then forced them into the woods and slit their throats before covering the girls with sticks, a detail that matched the crime scene.

Perhaps the defense’s biggest revelation in court was a digital forensics expert saying that headphones or an auxiliary cable were left plugged into Libby’s cell phone for nearly five hours after she and Abby disappeared. Her testimony called into question investigators’ belief that the girls had been killed and left in the woods around 2:32 p.m.

During the trial, prosecutors showed the court a grainy cellphone video, which they say shows Allen walking behind Abby as they cross the Monon High Bridge.

McLeland said a state trooper who listened to more than 700 of Allen’s phone calls identified Allen’s voice on the video telling the teens to “get down the hill.”

An “unspent bullet” found among the girls’ bodies at the crime scene came from Allen’s Sig Sauer, a .40-caliber handgun, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors have said the bullet “cycled through Allen’s gun,” while a firearms expert called by the defense during the trial questioned the state police’s analysis of that unspent round.

The defense concluded its closing by calling the “magic bullet” the “tragic bullet” and said the totality of the evidence “makes it impossible that Richard Allen is the killer,” Fox 59 reported.

No one identified Allen as “Bridge Guy,” Rozzi told the jury, adding that there is no DNA or digital evidence linking him to the crime scene and there is no connection between Allen and the girls.

He ended his closing with a photo of a medieval torture device and showed photos of Allen’s prison cell, some of him lying naked in a hood.

Allen was held in “conditions that no man or woman should have to endure,” Rozzi said.

“We asked you to release Richard Allen and find him not guilty,” he added.

Before the trial began, Allen’s lawyers had tried to argue that the girls had been killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a white nationalist group known as the Odinists, who practiced a pagan Norse religion, but the judge ruled against that and said the defense “failed.” to provide admissible evidence” of such a connection.

The bizarre case that has captured the attention of true crime enthusiasts and is also shrouded in mystery and plagued by delays, shifting narratives, controversies, chaotic developments and evidence leaks is now in the hands of the jury.