Delphi murders: Richard Allen seeks new trial, cites coerced confession

A man convicted of killing two teenage girls in Delphi, Indiana, is asking the state's Court of Appeals to throw out his convictions, arguing that his confession came during a psychological crisis and that he was wrongly prevented from presenting an alternative theory at trial.

Richard Allen, who is serving 130 years in prison, was found guilty by a jury in 2024 in the deaths of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, known as Abby and Libby. The case remained unsolved for more than five years after the girls disappeared, drawing intense attention from true-crime followers before Allen's arrest. His appeal is scheduled for an hour of arguments on Monday.

Prosecutors maintain that some of Allen's incriminating statements were made before he showed signs of mental illness and that others continued after his condition improved. They argue that even setting the confessions aside, jurors had sufficient evidence to convict him.

According to the prosecution, Allen admitted to being on the trail near where the girls were killed at the time one of them recorded a brief video of a suspicious man nearby saying, "Down the hill." Prosecutors said Allen used a gun to force the girls off the hiking trail and confessed to planning to rape them before a passing van prompted him to change his mind and kill them. An expert testified that an unspent bullet found between the bodies had been cycled through Allen's handgun.

The girls' bodies were discovered on Feb. 13, 2017, down a steep hill from an abandoned railroad trestle on a hiking trail outside Delphi. The eighth graders had been dropped off and never reached their pickup point. Their throats were cut, and a few branches were scattered over the remains. One girl was found nude, while the other was wearing the first victim's clothes. There was no evidence of sexual assault.

Defense lawyers at trial argued that no witness explicitly identified Allen as the man seen near the trail that afternoon, and that no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence tied him to the scene.

Allen was held in solitary confinement while awaiting trial. He denied killing the girls for months, but his attorneys said the mental stress of isolation led to a severe psychological decline, eventually convincing him that he had committed the killings and prompting several confessions. In their brief, attorneys Stacy Uliana and Mark Leeman wrote that Allen lost forty pounds, was unable to care for himself, was tased, and suffered injuries including a black-and-blue and at times bleeding face, as well as exposure to fecal matter and toilet water.

Prosecutors countered that the statements coincided with Allen reviewing evidence in the case, including the condition of the teens' bodies. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita wrote in his office's brief that the discovery materials forced Allen to confront the horrifying evidence of what he did — images and events he had been able to ignore and repress during the five years his guilt went undiscovered.

Allen's trial attorneys had sought to call an expert witness to testify that the killings appeared to be a ritual sacrifice by worshippers of Odin, the king of the gods in Norse mythology. The expert was expected to cite the positioning of the bodies, the branches on the remains, the outdoor location and knife wounds as indications of pagan rituals. Prosecutors argued the expert had limited examples and that the defense should not be allowed to present a theory without supporting evidence, saying it would have turned the trial into a sideshow.

Allen's attorneys are also expected to raise inconsistencies in how witnesses described the suspicious man near the trail, pointing to a sketch of a potential suspect that did not resemble Allen. They further question why a defense expert was not allowed to examine whether marks on an unfired bullet can be traced to a specific gun.