By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-11-02 04:26:29 | Updated at 2024-11-02 06:19:57
2 hours ago
Richard Allen was 'seriously mentally ill' when he made a string of prison confessions in which he admitted to killing Delphi teenagers Liberty German and Abigail Williams.
Jurors at Carroll County Court in the small Indiana town heard expert testimony on Friday from Dr Deanna Dweinger, who oversees mental health services in the state's Department of Corrections.
Under questioning from Bradley Rozzi, Dweinger told the court that Allen's 13 months in solitary confinement in the most secure unit in Westville Correctional Facility, Westville some 76 miles from Delphi, would have been 'toxic' for a man who was already suffering from depression and anxiety.
Allen, 52, has been charged on four counts relating to the February 13, 2017, murders – two of murder and two of felony murder, which means murder committed during the act of another crime, in this case kidnap.
If convicted he faces a maximum sentence of 130 years in prison.
Richard Allen was 'seriously mentally ill' when he made a string of prison confessions in which he admitted to killing Delphi teenagers Liberty German and Abigail Williams.
Libby, 14, and Abby, 13, were killed outside their hometown of Delphi, Indiana, in February 2017
In his opening statements at the start of the highly anticipated trial lead attorney Andrew Baldwin promised the jury, 'You will watch the state's case fall apart before your eyes.'
But he got off to a faltering start with the first full day of defense evidence as he, Rozzi and Jennifer Auger got through ten witnesses and barely landed a punch.
In fact at least two of their witnesses actually shored up key aspects of the state's case.
Responding to questions from the jury – in Indiana jurors can pose questions after direct and cross examination - Dr Dweinger was forced to concede that even a person in the midst of a psychotic break could 'slip truths' into confessions.
She also revealed that she and her colleagues had lengthy discussions regarding the veracity of Allen's apparent breakdown which reached its peak between April and July 2023 and questioned if he was feigning it for attention or for other goals such as a prison transfer or visits from his wife.
Hammond Police Department Trooper Christopher Goote testified ahead of Dweinger.
The two best friends were last seen alive going on their fateful hike to Monon High Bridge in February 2017
The prosecution believes Allen's deteriorating mental state in prison was a ploy while his defense argued that it was because of his extensive time in solitary confinement
The suspect, who became known as 'Bridge Guy', was first spotted in footage captured on one of the girls' cellphones before they were killed
He was one of the officers to take local man Brad Weber's original statement regarding when he returned home from work on the day the girls went missing.
Weber's account is key because he lives at the end of a private driveway which runs beneath the side of the bridge from which the girls were abducted.
If he went straight home as he has claimed it seems to verify a detail contained in one of Allen's prison confessions that, the prosecution are confident, 'only the killer would have known.'
Allen told prison psychologist Monica Wala that he had intended to rape Libby, 14, and Abby, 13, but 'saw a van' and 'got scared' and so ordered the girls across the creek and killed them instead.
Weber drives a Ford Econoline van. He testified yesterday that he clocked into work at 5.14am and clocked out at 2.02pm and that it took him roughly 20 to 25 minutes to get home placing him near the scene at the time when the girls were taken.
Libby's video of Bridge Guy was recorded at 2.13pm and the last recorded movement on her iphone health app was at 2.32pm.
The defense had believed that Goote would offer up a different narrative as Weber has, they assert, given inconsistent accounts of his movements that day and originally told officers he went to check on the ATM machines he owns before going home.
But defense attorney Auger was left blindsided and stumped when Goote took the stand and testified Weber told him he simply, 'went home' – a claim that matches the state's timeline.
Later former Fire Chief Darrell Sterrett told the court about the searches that had been carried out around Delphi and near the trail on the afternoon and night of February 13, 2017.
The defense's theory is that the girls were not found until the following day because they were not there but were taken somewhere else then returned to be killed.
They assert that the area in which the bodies were ultimately found - upstream of the bridge and in heavy woodland – had been thoroughly searched the night before.
But Chief Sterrett took the stand to tell the court that the 'hasty' search party consisted of widely separated searchers, working in thick brush and darkness and not in a grid formation.
The abandoned Monon High Bridge outside Delphi, Indiana, where Abby and Libby were murdered
The trail in Delphi, Indiana, where Abby Williams, 13, and Libby German, 14, were killed on Feb. 13, 2017
He stated that their efforts had primarily been focused on the southwest of the bridge – the opposite direction from where the bodies were ultimately found, again a statement which shored up the state's position.
At the time, he told the court, 'I believed they were hunkered down somewhere cold and afraid and just waiting for us to find them.'
After a day in which the defense struggled to make the impact they sought, they faced three disappointments.
Judge Frances Gull denied a request to have an FBI agent who interviewed Weber in February 2017 testify remotely via Zoom and she denied two motions in which they tried, yet again, to introduce evidence that the girls were the victims of multiple assailants participating in an Odinist ritual.
Addressing the attorneys after letting the jury go for the day Gull stated, 'The case law on third party suspects is clear. There has to be a nexus [to the defendant]. There is no nexus.'
The trial continues.
