Jury begins deliberations in Delphi murders trial – National & International News

After more than 3 weeks of testimony, the jury is now deliberating the fate of Richard Allen, accused of the 2017 murders of two young teens  in Delphi, IN. A review of the last 5 days of testimony is below. You can see last week’s here and click here for the week before.

In Delphi, IN, the trial of Richard Allen for the 2017 murders of Abby Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, is wrapping up this week earlier than expected. Yesterday, the defense rested and the state presented a brief rebuttal case (more on this week of testimony below). Today, the jurors heard closing arguments from both sides,

Nick McLeland delivered the state’s closing argument, which was just under an hour. During his closing, McLeland spoke emotionally about Abby and Libby’s last day on earth, and showed the jury gruesome crime scene photos. He revisited the details of how the case against Richard Allen came together, including the witness testimony that McLeland said suggested Allen was the man caught briefly in a video on Libby’s phone shortly before the girl’s were abducted. McLeland also mentioned the unfired cartridge found at the murder scene which the state’s tool mark examiner matched to Allen’s gun.

Brad Rozzi closed for the defense, taking just over an hour. Rozzi pointed out times the state’s attorneys had been dishonest or kept information hidden from the jury. He also spoke about the absolutely shambolic investigation. He suggested the state had latched onto Allen as a suspect out of desperation after 5 years with no arrest. Rozzi also referred to the state’s “bungled ballistics”, referring to the aforementioned unfired cartridge (more on that below). He played footage of Allen suffering what he described as torture in his cell, showing Allen in restraints and wearing a spit hood. Rozzi suggested that a guilty verdict would essentially condone the state’s inhumane treatment of Richard Allen and asked for an acquittal.

After closings, the jury received their instructions from the judge, and began deliberating. They will deliberate from 9-5 Monday through Saturday until they have a verdict. The jury asked to be dismissed early for the day today and this has led some to home for a speedy verdict tomorrow, but it’s merely speculation.

This case has proven to be highly controversial in many respects. Over more than three weeks of testimony, more information has come to light about glaring missteps by investigators in the case, as well as the harsh and unprecedented treatment of Richard Allen in his pretrial incarceration. These details have caused a stir among those following the trial.

That said, the public’s insight into the case has been severely limited by Judge Gull’s equally controversial decision to bar cameras and recording devices from the courtroom. Members of the media have had access, as have some members of the public, including several attorneys from around the country who traveled to Delphi, IN, to observe and report on the trial. The following summary of the last four days of testimony is based on their reporting and insights. 

Saturday Nov 2 – Day 14

Click here for a live blog from this day of trial (opens in new tab).

Saturday was a half day. On this day, Richard Allen’s defense team played several videos recordings for the jury depicting scenes from Richard Allen’s pre-trial incarceration at Westville Correctional Facility. Despite not having been convicted of anything yet, Allen was kept in solitary confinement for 13 months, supposedly for safekeeping.

He was also placed on suicide watch. This meant he was unable to turn off the lights in his cell, he had a guard monitoring him through the slot in his door 24/7. He was also being videotaped constantly. He was only allowed one hour of rec time three times a week (this was in another cell with a grated skylight over the top). The only other times he was allowed out of his cell were to visit the prison’s doctor, his prison therapist or for showers.

Under these conditions, Allen slipped into deep depression and psychosis. He began harming himself and engaging in troubling behaviors like eating his own feces. During the same time he was having these symptoms and behaviors, he also made 60+ confessions to the murders of Libby and Abby, of varying levels of coherence. The defense has argued these confessions should be dismissed as Allen was not of sound mind.

The videos shown on Saturday showed some of Allen’s transports from his cell. During these movements, he was shackled and escorted by guards. The video was only shown to the jury, but apparently some of the press were able to view the contents surreptitiously on an attorney’s laptop. One video showed Allen getting tased, apparently for failing to move his hand so a guard could shut a door. Another showed him being showered by guards with his hands cuffed behind his back. In some of the videos, he is receiving medical care and appears listless, having to be held up in a chair by a guard.

Monday Nov 4 – Day 15

Click here for a live blog from this day of trial (opens in new tab).

Dr Polly Westcott – neuropsychologist 

Defense expert, neuropsychologist Polly Westcott, examined Richard Allen during his incarceration at Westville and also reviewed some of the video footage. She forensically examined some of Allen’s pre- and post-incarceration writing samples, as well as reviewing the notes of Allen’s prison therapist, Dr. Monica Walla. Dr. Westcott called into question Dr Walla’s initial finding that some of Allen’s symptoms were feigned, and also did not believe that Allen’s psychosis had resolved at the time when Walla and other prison psychiatric professionals claimed it did.

Based on her examination of Allen, and her review of video footage of him at the time, she believes that Allen’s psychotic state was genuine and persistent from about April until at least July of 2023, during which times at the time his confessions were made.

It was during July that Dr. Walla recorded the most detailed of Allen’s self-incriminating utterances in her notes. Dr. Westcott noted that Dr. Walla’s recording of this entry differed significantly from the way she had recorded Allen’s other utterances. Westcott said this “confession” read more like a narrative rather than a quotation from Allen.

Max Baker defense team intern 

Baker was tasked with viewing the footage of Allen’s time at Westville and putting together presentations of the evidence for the jury. Baker presented some video footage of Allen, this time footage from within his cell. According to someone who spoke to WTHR, the video showed Allen around the time of his confessions, eating his own feces, and banging his head repeatedly against the wall of his cell.

Richard Allen’s sister Jaime Jones and his daughter Brittany Zapanta

Jones and Zapanta took the stand to answer whether Allen had ever molested either of them as children. Allen apparently claimed to have molested them while in his psychotic state at Westville. Both women said that no such abuse had ever occurred. When asked, they answered that they loved their brother and father but would not lie for him.

Steve Mullins- investigator 

The defense called former Delphi Police Chief Steve Mullins to the stand. Mullins was PC during much of the investigation, and is now chief investigator for the local district attorney. Mullins had previously testified that Allen possessed the only car in the county that matched a suspect vehicle caught on camera near the scene of the crime. On Monday, the defense forced Mullins to reveal that in fact this was not the case. There were many other similar vehicles that could have matched the description of the vehicle briefly caught on camera. 

The defense also delved into the fact that investigators lost videotaped interviews with witnesses and potential suspects that had been taken from the days immediately after the crime.

Last week, the prosecution had alleged that in his confession to Dr. Walla, Allen mentioned a van that supposedly scared him at the time he abducted the girls. The prosecution insisted this was a detail “only the killer would know”. Following this statement by Allen, Mullins reinterviewed Brad Weber, a local Delphi man who owns property near the Monon High Bridge, the local beauty spot where police say Abby and Libby were abducted (also only a stone’s throw from where their bodies were discovered). Weber allegedly told police that he had a white van and had driven down his driveway near the crime scene as he returned from work on at the day of the murders (more on this below).

On the stand, Mullins was forced to admit that he had not reviewed discussions of the white van in social media forums dedicated to the Delphi case. Mentions of the white van went all the way back to 2017, five years before Allen was even arrested. The defense suggests that Dr. Walla may have known about the van and fed that information to Allen for his “confession”. Walla previously admitted that she had followed the Delphi case intently for years, long before she treated Allen. She was even active on some of these discussion forums during the time she was treating him.

Brad Weber

As mentioned previously, Weber owns property near the Monon High Bridge. The crime scene where the girls’ bodies were found is also just across Deer Creek from his property. This is Weber’s second time on the stand; he had been one of the state’s final witnesses last week. The defense brought him back to confront him with prior inconsistent statements.

Weber was forced to admit on the stand that he had told two different stories to investigators about his movements on the day of the crime. Initially, he had told local investigators that he had driven straight home on Feb. 13, 2017, the day Libby and Abby were kidnapped. He later told the FBI that he had serviced some ATM machines he owned around town before driving home. When Steve Mullin reached out to him in 2024 (after Allen’s “confession”), Weber reverted to his original story of having driven straight home in the white van.

Tuesday Nov 5 – Day 16

Click here for a live blog from this day of trial (opens in new tab).

Dr. Stuart Grassian – psychiatric researcher

The defense called Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist specializing in solitary confinement, false memories and false confessions. Grassian told the court that prolonged solitary confinement, such as that suffered by Richard Allen can lead to serious psychosis, loss of memory, and detachment from reality. Such conditions can lead to false confession. A person in this state accused of a heinous crime can form misplaced feelings of guilt and start to imagine that they actually did the crime. If this is reinforced through information gleaned from one’s environment (such as the discovery paperwork from his lawyers, or perhaps a less than impartial therapist), these can form false memories.

Grassian reviewed the recordings of Allen’s phone calls to his mother and wife in which he confessed to killing Libby and Abby. During the phone call, Allen repeatedly said “I think I did it” or “I believe I did it”. Grassian said these “I think” and “I believe” statements are consistent with the formation of false memories.

At one point, a member of the jury asked Grassian if an otherwise normal person could become psychotic after prolonged solitary confinement. Grassian answered, “Absolutely, I’ve seen it happen”.

Dr. Eric Warren- certified firearms examiner

The defense called Dr. Warren to rebut the evidence given by former Indiana State Police crime lab technician Melissa Oberg. During the first week of trial, Oberg testified that she was able to match an unfired .40 caliber cartridge found at the murder scene to a fired cartridge from Allen’s Sig Sauer P226. Warren said that in this case, comparing a cycled cartridge to a fired cartridge was improper

Stacey Eldridge – forensic examiner

Eldridge is a former FBI forensic examiner with a specialty in computer information management. She examined the data from Libby’s cellphone, which was found at the murder scene under Abby’s body. Eldridge was able to extract more information from the full data extraction than the state’s examiners. Her most significant finding was that at 5:45 p.m. on Feb 13, 2017, the phone registered either a headphone jack or an auxiliary cable being plugged into the audio output. The cable was then unplugged at 10:32 p.m that night. If this is correct, this would through the state’s entire theory of the case into disarray. The state contends that Richard Allen kidnapped the girls shortly after 2pm and that they were dead by 2:32, which is the last time the phone registered a movement.

Eldridge could not explain the headphone jack insertion and removal any other way except by human intervention. She noted that milliseconds before the jack was inserted, a call came in to Abby’s phone. Inserting the headphones would have muted the call.

After Eldridge, the defense called First Sergeant Chris Cecil from ISP. He performed the original extraction on the phone. He admitted that he could not explain the headphone jack input. However, he said that over the break, he did a Google search and found that water infiltration can sometimes cause the phone to act as if a jack is plugged in when it isn’t. There was no indication if Cecil’s Google search revealed how this infiltration would register on the “knowledge c” event log on the phone, which Eldridge was examining.

Wednesday Nov 6 – Day 17

Click here for a live blog from this day of trial (opens in new tab).

The defense rested in the morning and the state hastily called its three rebuttal witnesses. The first two witnesses were fairly inconsequential. However, the third witness was very consequential, but arguably more of a help to the defense than to the state.

Dr. John Martin – psychiatrist, former contractor at Westville Correctional Facility

Dr. Martin saw Allen 15 to 18 times during his 13-month incarceration at Westville, starting when he arrived in November. Martin started off with an admission that despite having no conviction, Allen was treated the same in solitary confinement as a convict who had committed infractions in prison. He also said he was concerned that this would have a detrimental effect on Allen’s mental health.

Still, Martin initially saw no cause for concern with Allen’s mental health. Then in mid-April, he was called to the prison because Allen was harming himself, eating his own feces etc. Martin got an order to medicate Allen against his will with Haldol. There was no improvement throughout April or May, but then Martin claimed that by June 20, 2023, he saw “no evidence of psychosis” and that he had heard Allen make a vague “confession”. Regardless, Martin says he kept Allen on Haldol (still without Allen’s consent) to prevent a recurrence of psychosis.

On cross, the defense played video from that very same day, June 20^th, 2023. The video showed Allen in a room receiving some sort of medical exam. He was restrained in a chair by his chest and arms. According to people who saw the video in the courtroom, Allen appeared dazed, staring blankly and unblinkingly, unresponsive to stimuli. One observer described him as appearing “catatonic”. This video played for a few minutes. At one point, the video shows Alan slumping forward in the chair, at which point a guard places a hand on his shoulder to hold him up. 

After viewing the video, Martin was at several times by different people, prosecution, defense, and a jury member whether this would change his assessment of weather Alan was indeed psychotic on that day. Martin was evasive. The prosecution asked him twice, and he answered no. The defense asked him once and he answered yes. The jury asked whether he could have been in and out of psychosis, and Martin answered yes.