The murder of Abigail Williams and Liberty German

The break came from a piece of paper, not a laboratory. According to testimony reported by The Indiana Lawyer, a retired state worker volunteering as a file clerk found a misplaced lead sheet in September 2022. It described a man who had contacted authorities two days after the bodies were found, saying he had been on the trail the afternoon the girls disappeared. The name had been recorded as "Richard Allen Whiteman" and the sheet marked "cleared." The clerk worked out that the man was Richard Allen of Delphi. NBC News reported that Allen had not been a suspect until that discovery. Investigators searched his home on October 13, 2022, and, according to the probable cause affidavit reported by ABC7, found knives and guns including a Sig Sauer Model P226 .40-caliber pistol. The affidavit said Indiana State Police determined that an unspent .40-caliber round found within two feet of one victim, between the two bodies, had been cycled through that pistol. Allen told police he had owned the gun since 2001 and never let anyone borrow it, and had no explanation for the round. He said he had worn jeans and a blue or black Carhartt jacket on the trail that day, matching the man on Liberty's video, and that he had seen juvenile girls on the trails east of Freedom Bridge. Prosecutors also said a black 2016 Ford Focus seen on nearby security video was the only such car registered in Carroll County, and it was his. He was arrested on October 26, 2022. At trial in late 2024, a state firearms examiner testified that the markings on the cartridge tied it to Allen's gun; a defense examiner said the evidence was insufficient. A prison psychologist testified that Allen confessed to the killings often during his thirteen months at Westville Correctional Facility, and jurors heard a recorded call in which he told his wife, "I did it. I killed Abby and Libby." The defense argued that months of solitary confinement had put him in a mental health crisis and that no fingerprint, DNA or eyewitness identification linked him to the scene. The jury convicted him on all four counts after deliberating from a Thursday afternoon to the following Monday morning.