Delphi murders suspect Richard Allen forced teens off trail before killing them and theres video evidence, prosecutors say

A man charged with killing two teenage girls in a small Indiana community forced them off a hiking trail before cutting their throats, a prosecutor said Friday, telling jurors that the evidence includes an unused bullet and video recorded on the eldest girl’s phone.“The last thing the girls saw was Richard Allen’s face,” Carroll County prosecutor Nicholas McLeland said.And they heard his “chilling words: ‘Girls, down the hill,’” while Allen was wielding a gun, McLeland said.“Out of fear the girls complied.”Richard Allen, 52, is charged with two counts of murder as well as two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping.The trial is a spectacle in Delphi, a town of 3,000, with people lining up in the morning chill to secure a seat in the courtroom.Allen, a pharmacy technician, was arrested in October 2022, more than five years after the deaths of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German, a case that had vexed police and inspired much speculation by true-crime enthusiasts.

The outsized media attention in the small community prompted a specially appointed judge to pick jurors in Fort Wayne, nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) away.They’ll be sequestered for what could be a monthlong trial, banned from watching the news and allowed only limited use of their phones to call relatives while monitored.In his opening statement, McLeland described the crime scene: a rugged, wooded area near the Monon High Bridge Trail, just outside Delphi, the Carroll County seat.He said an unused bullet discovered at the “gruesome” scene between the girls’ bodies came from a gun that belonged to Allen, and that his grainy image and voice were captured by German on her phone.A short video released in 2019 that also came from German’s phone showed a suspect walking on Monon High Bridge.McLeland said that man was Allen.Investigators searched Allen’s home in 2022 and seized a .40-caliber pistol.

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