INDIANAPOLIS — A man accused of killing two teenage girls in Indiana during a winter hike in 2017 will stand trial in a case that has long haunted their hometown of Delphi and sparked endless online speculation.

Richard Allen, 52, is charged with two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in connection with the killings of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14 years. If convicted, he faces up to 130 years in prison. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

Jury selection begins Monday in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Once the 12 members and four alternates are selected, they will be taken to Delphi, a town of about 3,000 located about 100 kilometers northwest of Indianapolis, where they will be sequestered for the duration of the trial, monitored by bailiffs. and they are prohibited from using cell phones or watching television news.

If jury selection is completed Wednesday, jury instructions and opening statements could take place Friday morning. The trial is expected to last a month.

Allen, a pharmacy technician who had lived and worked in Delphi, was arrested in October 2022, nearly six years after the murders of the girls known as Abby and Libby.

A parent had dropped the eighth-graders off at a hiking trail just outside Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017, but they did not show up at the arranged pick-up location later that day. They were reported missing that evening and their bodies were found the next day in a rugged, wooded area near the trail.

Days later, police released files found on Libby’s cellphone — two grainy photos and an audio recording of a man saying “down the hill” — that they said depicted the killer.

But no arrests followed.

In July 2017, investigators released a sketch of the suspect, and then another in April 2019. They also released a brief video showing the suspect walking on an abandoned railroad bridge called the Monon High Bridge.

After years of failing to find a suspect, investigators said they went back and reviewed “previous tips.”

Allen was interviewed in 2017. He told the officer he was walking on the trail the day the girls disappeared and saw three “females” on another bridge – the Freedom Bridge – but didn’t tell them. didn’t speak. He said he didn’t notice anyone else because he was distracted by a ticker on his phone, according to an arrest affidavit.

Police questioned Allen again on October 13, 2022, when he reiterated that he saw three “young girls” during his walk in 2017. Investigators then searched Allen’s home and seized a caliber pistol .40. Tests determined that an unspent bullet found between the teen’s bodies “passed through” Allen’s gun.

According to the affidavit, Allen said he had never been to the location where the bullet was found, did not know the owner of the property and “had no explanation as to why which a bullet pierced by his firearm would be found at this location. »

The case experienced repeated delays after evidence leaked, Allen’s public defenders withdrew and was later reinstated by the Indiana Supreme Court. The Delphi murders remain the subject of widespread speculation and theories among true crime enthusiasts.

Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gull, who is overseeing the case, issued a hush order at the request of prosecutors in December 2022, two months after Allen’s arrest, barring attorneys, for law enforcement officials, court personnel, the coroner and the girls’ relatives to enter. commenting on the case, including on social networks.

Gull banned cameras from the courtroom during Allen’s trial, and reporters are prohibited from taking electronic devices inside the courthouse.

In August of this year, she ruled that prosecutors could introduce evidence of dozens of incriminating statements Allen allegedly made in conversations with correctional officers, inmates, law enforcement and relatives. That evidence includes a recording of a phone call between Allen and his wife in which, prosecutors say, he confessed to the murders.

The judge’s decision was “a real blow to the defense,” said Hal Johnston, an assistant professor of criminal law at Indiana University who is not involved in the case.

“The incriminating statements are going to be extremely compelling because that’s what the jury wants to hear,” Johnston said. “In addition to physical evidence, they want to hear that the man said he was the one who did it.”

Allen’s lawyers had hoped to present evidence that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a pagan Norse religion and a white nationalist group known as the Odinists, but Gull failed. is ruled against this, asserting that the defense “failed to produce admissible evidence” of this type. a connection.

She also blocked Allen’s lawyers from arguing that the killings could have been committed by others, including the late owner of the property where the teens’ bodies were found.

Prosecutors have not revealed how Abby and Libby were killed. But a court filing by Allen’s lawyers in support of their theory of Odinism states that their throats had been slit.

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