The Delphi murders suspect’s lawyers claim a pagan cult sacrificed two teenage girls who were snatched from a hiking trail, and the confessed killer is innocent.
Libby German, 14, and Abby Williams, 13, disappeared on February 13, 2017, while hiking the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi, Indiana.
Richard Allen, 51, was charged with their murders in October 2022 after police linked a bullet found at the scene to his gun.
Very little about the case has been revealed over the past seven years, other than leaks from inside the investigation, until three days of hearings this week.
Libby German, 14, (left) and Abby Williams, 13, (right) disappeared on February 13, 2017, while hiking the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi, Indiana
Richard Allen, 50, was charged with the double murder in October 2023. He has pleaded not guilty
The Carroll County court heard the girls were found with their throats cut, branches laid on top of their remains, and Abby’s body wearing Libby’s clothes.
Abby and Libby set out on the trail at 1:35 pm and Libby posted a photo at 2:07 pm of Abby walking along the bridge. Police believe they were kidnapped at 2:14 pm and killed within 18 minutes.
Prosecutors told the court that Allen confessed to the murders more than 60 times in jail phone calls to his wife and mother, and to another inmate.
Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland also claimed Allen’s ‘intent was a sexual assault’ when he allegedly kidnapped the girls.
Allen’s lawyers, led by Bradley Rozzi, claimed the confessions were the result of his degrading mental state due to being locked in solitary confinement.
They last year named four other people as members of a cult to the Norse god Odin, arguing the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice.
Indiana State Police Detective Brian Harshman testified about the confessions after listening to 150 hours of phone calls.
He said the confessions began in late March 2023 after he had a ‘come to Jesus moment’, and Allen spoke ‘very specifically’ about details of the crime and why he did it.
Abbie was seen in a Snapchat video posted by her friend Libby in February 2017, moments before both were murdered
Indiana State Police Lieutenant Jerry Holeman also testified that an inmate alleged Allen confessed to him as well, and revealed the murder weapon.
Allen allegedly told him he murdered the girls with a boxcutter, than dumped it in a dumpster outside a CVS.
Defense lawyers want the confessions thrown out because they were a product of Allen’s mental breakdown while being treated like ‘a prisoner of war’ in jail.
They brought in a psychologist contracted by the Indiana Department of Corrections to testify in support of that argument.
Rozzi’s team instead point the finger at the four Odinists, including the father of Abby’s boyfriend at the time of her death.
Dawn Perlmutter, an expert on ritualistic crimes, testified that ‘this crime scene is a textbook for ritualistic murder’.
She claimed the crime scene had seven indicators of an Odinist ritualistic killing, including the positioning of the branches on their bodies.
Perlmutter said she reviewed autopsy records, crime scene photos and social media posts of some of the alleged Odinists, and when asked if he had any doubt the girls were sacrificed in a pagan ritual, she replied ‘none at all’.
Family members of Liberty German and Abigail Williams at a press conference after Allen’s arrest
McLeland moved to discredit her testimony by noting she came to the same conclusion in a CourtTV report last year, before she saw any of the evidence.
He asked her what her response would be if the alleged killer ‘said that the intent was a sexual assault.’
The prosecutor also contested her theory that the branches were laid over the bodies to form runic symbols, noting Allen ‘said that the branches were there to cover the girls’ bodies’.
Perlmutter argued blood smeared on a tree in one leaked crime scene photo was painted to form the letter F, which holds significance in Norse mythology.
But Patrick Cicero, a blood specialist and forensics expert from the LaPorte County Sheriff’s Office, said it was more likely a ‘transfer stain’ from Libby’s bloody hand.
Purposely painting a symbol on the tree would have involved the killer repeatedly dipping their hand on blood, he said.
Perlmutter admitted there was no physical evidence tying any of the four men to the crime scene.
Other witnesses claimed one or more of the supposed Odinists also confessed to killing the girls.
The Carroll County court heard the girls were found with their throats cut, branches laid on top of their remains, and Abby’s body wearing Libby’s clothes
Kevin Murphy, a retired Indiana State Police officer who worked on the case from 2017 to 2019, told the court there was an ‘undeniable link’ between Delphi and there Odinist cult in nearby Rushville.
He said police believed the murders were the work of two to six people, and he focused on one of the alleged cultists, Elvis Fields.
Murphy told the court Fields’ sister gave ‘very specific’ information that only someone at the crime scene would know.
In a recorded call with her brother, she blurted out, ‘Elvis, why did you kill those girls?’
Fields denied the accusations to police, but Murphy said he asked them if he would get in trouble if his spit was found on the girls.
Brad Holder, the father of Abby’s girlfriend and accused Odinist, was another person Allen’s defense zeroed in on.
His ex-wife Amber Holder testified that Holder told her a third alleged cultist, Patrick Westfall, confessed to killing Abby – but she acknowledged Holder was drunk when he relayed the story to her.
She claimed he told her ‘to keep my mouth shut and if I didn’t, they’d kill me’.
Allen’s lawyers, led by Bradley Rozzi, claimed his 60 confessions were the result of his degrading mental state due to being locked in solitary confinement
Amber told the court Holder had a special knife he used to cut his hands during Odinist rituals, which could be the murder weapon.
Former Rushville Police Department officer Todd Click, who helped with the investigation, told the court he believed the Odinist theory.
He said his theory was the girls interrupted a pagan ritual and were killed for it. He also believed Holder and Westfall were on the trail that day – but there was no ‘smoking gun’ physical evidence tying them to the crime scene.
Click told the court he was ‘shocked and confused’ when Allen was charged, and not any of the four alleged Odinists.
Holder was cleared by the main investigators based on an alibi of him clocking out of work at a landfill site half an hour from Delphi at 2.45pm, when the crime was believed to have ocurred at 2.30 to 3.30pm.
He then used a key fob to get into a gym in Logansport at 4.08pm.
Prosecutors asked Judge Fran Gull to throw out all testimony claiming the Odinists were responsible and ban the theory from the trial. She is yet to rule on this.
A CrimeNation documentary in February further claimed Libby was almost beheaded ‘out of rage‘ and named yet another suspect.
The admission was seen in texts from someone on the scene that later leaked online, also claiming ‘whoever did it targeted Libby for sure’, and that the 14-year-old ‘fought like hell.’
The documentary pointed to the man who owned the property where the girls were discovered, Ron Logan, with chilling new claims from his ex-girlfriend.
Logan, who died in January 2022 from Covid, was one of the first suspects investigators looked into, and he made several media appearances in the aftermath of the murders as they gained national attention.
Ron Logan, who owned the property where the teen girls were found, is claimed to be the true killer in the new documentary by his ex-girlfriend. He died from Covid-19 in January 2022
A key piece of evidence in the case was a grainy video found on Libby’s phone of a man walking along the trail saying ‘guys, down the hill’.
Police released the footage on February 22, 2017, and said the man in the video was the prime suspect.
When the video emerged, Logan appeared on Inside Edition to claim he didn’t recognize the person or the voice from anyone he’d seen on his property.
But his ex-girlfriend Connie Dillman has claimed she is in no doubt it was Logan in the clips, and said she insisted to authorities her ex is the killer.
‘That’s your voice,’ she said of Logan. ‘I heard the voice of “down the hill” thousands of times. It’s Ron Logan.’
Dillman said she began her six-year relationship with Logan after meeting him in a bar in Delphi, and they quickly bonded over their love of horses and the outdoors.
But she said their relationship went downhill before long, as he began controlling her everyday life and treating her like a ‘sex tool.’
‘When I didn’t want to have sex, he forced it on me,’ she said. ‘I was helpless.’
She claimed one time that she tried to leave, he struck her across the head with a wrench, leaving her with seven stitches.
Shortly after ending their relationship, the murders of the two teen girls rocked the Delphi community and made national headlines – leading Dillman to be sure her former lover was the killer when she saw him on TV.
The last video taken on Libby’s cellphone showed a man in a blue Carhartt jacket and jeans approaching the two teens
After the murders captured national attention, law enforcement came under fire for not releasing details of the crime, a factor they cited in wanting to keep control over the investigation and not release information only the killer would have known.
Amid the frustration for information, lurid text messages leaked online from someone at the crime scene, which the documentary claimed were shared by Abby’s uncle, David Erskin.
The text read: ‘Me and my other sisters boyfriend are the ones who found the girls Tuesday. Coroner’s report stated everything was over by 3:30. No rape. Abby was dressed. Libby was nude.
‘Libby’s top half was covered with leafs (sic) and sticks, almost like they were trying to cover her.
‘The only DNA would be from Libby’s fingernails. She fought like hell. Whoever did it targeted Libby for sure and knew what they were doing with Abby. It was personal with Libby.’
An expert in the case added that there was ‘talk of Libby almost being decapitated, which looks like it was done out of rage.’
Scrutiny has fallen on the investigation and arrest of Allen following his arrest, particularly due to the evidence produced in Allen’s probable cause affidavit.
Logan was one of the first suspects to land on cops’ radar following the murders, and his ex-girlfriend said he was physically and sexually violent with her
Logan’s ex-girlfriend Connie Dillman (pictured) said after seeing her former lover on TV following the murders, she was left with no doubt that he was the true killer
In November 2022, the affidavit cited just a single piece of evidence linking Allen to the murders, an unspent shell casing from the scene.
The .40 round was found unfired within two feet of the girls, and analysis of the round found it was a match to Allen’s firearm.
It is unclear how the round would have been cycled into the gun, never fired, then ended up between the two bodies.
Two weeks later, DailyMail.com exclusively revealed that, shortly after Allen’s arrest, one of his neighbors saw police digging in his yard to exhume his family’s dead cat.
The feline’s hair also proved to be a match to samples found on one of the victims.
The bombshell report also revealed investigators were looking into whether the girls were victims of a botched kidnapping plot by a local pedophile ring.
Sources close to the investigation claimed that Allen was acting with at least two other men and was involved in a child sex ring, and McLeland openly stated that he believes ‘Allen is not the only actor involved in this’.