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An Indiana man has been sentenced to 130 years in prison for the 2017 murders of two teenage girls who disappeared while hiking near Delphi. Richard Allen, was found guilty last month of killing 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German.
During a brief hearing on Friday, 52 year old Allen was sentenced by Judge Fran Gull to the maximum 65 years for each of the two murder charges, to be served one after the other. The hearing, which lasted less than two hours, saw victim impact statements from six of the girls’ relatives. Following the sentence, Allen’s defence team revealed that they would appeal the verdict.
“Thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims. What they went through was unimaginable,” defense attorney Jennifer Auger said. She further added, “but today is not the day for that.”
Allen had faced between 45 years and 130 years in prison in the killings of the Delphi teens.
The jury, consisting of seven women and five men, was kept in isolation throughout the trial, which started on October 18 in Delphi, the girls' hometown. Located about 60 miles (100 kilometres) northwest of Indianapolis, Delphi has a population of around 3,000 residents.
Allen, a resident of Delphi, was arrested in October 2022, five years after the girls were killed. At the time, he was working as a pharmacy technician just a short distance from the courthouse. His trial had been delayed multiple times, and his defence lawyers were replaced and reinstated after a series of complications.
Abby and Libby went missing on February 13, 2017, after being dropped off for a hike. Their bodies were found the next day, both with their throats cut. Prosecutors presented evidence, including a gun and a bullet, tying Allen to the crime.
In his closing arguments, Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told the jury that Allen, who possessed a gun, forced the girls off the hiking trail and initially intended to assault them.
However, he changed his plans after a van drove by and instead slit their throats. McLeland also pointed out that an unspent bullet found between the teens’ bodies had been "cycled through" Allen’s .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun as per the news agency AP.
A grainy video filmed by Libby before she died also showed a man following the girls, which prosecutors argued was Allen.
They also played a recording of Allen admitting to his wife, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”
Despite these confessions, Allen’s defence team argued that they weren’t reliable, claiming he was under intense mental stress and isolation at the time. They also pointed out that no physical evidence linked him to the crime scene. They also suggested that the murders might have been part of a ritualistic killing by a white nationalist group, however this theory was rejected by the judge, stating there was no credible evidence to support it.
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