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    Richard Allen’s Delphi Murder Trial Live: Emotional Day 2 Testimony

    Mars Posted on

    The former Delphi police chief and two other men who were part of search teams in the hours after the disappearance of Abigail “Abby” Williams and Liberty “Libby” German testified Saturday during the second day of the murder trial of Richard Allen.

    Allen is accused of murdering the teens, who were reported missing on Feb. 13, 2017, and found dead the next day. In 2022, authorities arrested Allen, of Delphi, who faces two counts of murder and two counts of murder in the kidnapping of the girls.

    Jurors were back in the Carroll County courtroom Saturday to hear testimony from the man who was Delphi police chief when the girls were killed and two men who played key roles in searching for the girls the next day – including one who found their bodies in the woods.

    Reporters from the Indianapolis Star and Lafayette Journal & Courier will cover the case as it moves through the court system.

    Former Delphi Police Chief Steve Mullin, a longtime Delphi resident who was named chief in 2014, worked his regular shift and returned home on the day of February 13, 2017. It was a “routine day” which ended around 5:30 p.m. said.

    “When I got home,” Mullin testified Saturday in a packed courtroom, “I started hearing radio reports about two missing girls.”

    The girls had been dropped off on the Monon High Bridge trails earlier in the day and could not be found after 2 p.m. Soon, search efforts were underway, led by Carroll County Sheriff Tobe Leazenby. The first search ended just before 2 a.m. Feb. 14, Mullin said.

    “We had no idea anything bad had happened to the girls,” Mullin said of how the first day of searching ended. “At that time, I still believed that in time they would return home. I just couldn’t imagine that anyone would harm them.”

    First day of the Delphi murder trial: Relatives remember teens as lawyers offer dueling tales

    The search resumed after 7 a.m. the next day, with searchers looking primarily around the Monon High Bridge and further downstream on Deer Creek, which flows east-west south of Delphi.

    That morning, Mullin gave his phone number and instructions to searchers at a downtown Delphi fire station. Among the searchers was another Delphi resident, Patrick Brown, who had stopped work on Feb. 14 to help search for the girls.

    Brown said during Saturday’s third and final testimony that he was a longtime friend of Libby’s grandfather, Mike Patty, and that he learned the two girls were missing through a Facebook post made by Mike’s wife the night before.

    After an unsuccessful search that night near Morning Heights Cemetery, Brown returned to that location on February 14.

    Among those searching alongside Brown was Jake Johns.

    “My wife had come home and told me they were missing,” Johns said of the girls. The next day, his boss at Pearson’s, a propane delivery company in Delphi, asked him if he and a co-worker would be willing to help him with the research. “We said ‘absolutely,’” Johns recalls.

    Johns said he had never heard of the Monon High Bridge. He and his co-worker parked at Riley Park, just south of downtown, around 8:30 a.m. Saturday and walked upstream, east, along the south bank of Deer Creek. It took them nearly four hours to reach the upper deck, he said.

    After passing the bridge, Johns saw a flash of yellow, pink and blue on the otherwise barren February landscape. Libby’s tie-dye shirt was snagged on branches in the water near the creek’s north bank, Johns testified. The cemetery was further north, on a hill beyond the creek.

    Looking toward the Monon High Bridge, “you could see where the rocks and the dirt had been disturbed, absolutely,” Johns said. He also noted shoe prints that his colleague saw during the search. Prosecutors say Allen accompanied the two girls from the old wooden bridge, which they had crossed on Feb. 13 while taking Snapchat photos, to the creek bank while holding a gun.

    Shortly afterward, Johns said, he heard Brown’s voice from across Deer Creek. Brown was yelling “we just found the bodies,” Johns recalled.

    “At first I thought they were mannequins,” Brown said of his discovery of the two girls’ bodies.

    Brown, a soft-spoken older man, choked up and his voice began to shake. After asking for a minute to compose himself in court, he recalls, “I turned around and yelled that we found them.”

    Prosecutors say both girls had their throats slit. Libby’s body was found naked and covered in blood, prosecutors said, while Abby was wearing some of Libby’s clothes.

    Brown stood there, facing the girls’ bodies, never coming within five feet of them, he said. He called Mullin, the police chief, and told him what he had seen. The officers quickly parked at the cemetery and began walking through the woods toward the bodies.

    As Brown recounted his encounter with their bodies, Becky Patty, Libby’s grandmother, leaned forward in her chair in the courtroom. Libby’s older sister, Kelsi Siebert, sat to her grandmother’s left and bit her lower lip.

    Mullin, the former police chief, said he went to a business north of the Monon High Bridge trails called Hoosier Harvestore after the girls disappeared to view security footage of the road leading south, County Road 300 North. In the probable cause affidavit for Allen’s 2022 arrest, prosecutors repeatedly mention the Hoosier Harvestore video.

    The trial resumes in Delphi on Monday morning.

    Here are a few moments from Friday, the first day of the trial.

    People were lining up to enter the courtroom for the trial of Richard Allen. Not everyone got in.

    The line of people outside the Carroll County Courthouse in the early hours of Friday morning camped there for hours hoping to get a seat for Friday’s opening statements. More than half of the people in line did not get in. Even those who arrived at 2:30 a.m. did not get a seat in the 72-seat courtroom.

    Cameras confiscated outside Delphi courthouse

    Reporters’ cameras outside the courthouse were confiscated shortly after jurors arrived Friday morning, including those of Gannett photographer Alex Martin. He said he put his camera on his hip and put the second camera on the ground when he saw jurors arriving at the courthouse to comply with court rules.

    Jury won’t see suspicious Delphi sketches

    Attorneys for Richard Allen have filed a motion arguing that sketches released following the 2017 murders of teenagers Liberty German and Abigail Williams should be shown to jurors. The judge ruled Friday that the sketches would not be admissible, according to Fox59.

    ▶ State v. Richard Allen: Reports say Delphi judge rules suspect sketches won’t be allowed in court

    Hair evidence not linked to Richard Allen, defense says

    During his opening statement Friday, defense attorney Andrew Baldwin said the hair found in Abby Williams’ hand had a root and could be tested. Tests showed it belonged to a woman – not Abby or Libby, but probably a relative of Libby’s. Baldwin said there should be more testing to find out who the hair belonged to.

    Opening statements in the murder case against Richard Allen

    During opening statements, Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland alleged that Allen followed Libby and Abby to the famous Monon High Bridge. He outlined the prosecution’s timeline, saying Allen used a gun to control the girls and describing how that related to the crime scene.

    ▶ Updates from Friday October 18: Delphi declares Richard Allen trial open

    Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin portrayed Allen as an innocent man trapped in an investigation that he said “was bungled from the start.” He challenged the state’s timeline, saying Abby’s phone was connected to a cell tower after Allen left the trail on Feb. 13, 2017.

    “After 4 p.m. (on February 13), human hands handled this phone,” Baldwin said. “Richard Allen was at home and never came back.”

    Family members of Libby German and Abby Williams testify

    Becky Patty, Libby’s grandmother; Derrick German, Libby’s father; and Anna Williams, Abby’s mother, all took the stand Friday, giving emotional testimony. They described the last times they spoke with the girls and the frantic search after realizing they were missing.

    Mars
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