2017 Delphi murders - suspect arrested

[Helobious 9464]

I remember hearing about this back when it happened. 2 girls, 13 & 14, killed while going for a walk in the woods near a small Indiana town. One of the girls famously caught an image & audio recording on her phone of their killer right before she died. He had still evaded ID until recently. Richard Allen was arrested & charged today. Hopefully he actually is the guilty party and the families get some justice. 
 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Abigail_Williams_and_Liberty_German

[elfenix 34332]

who the fuck just sees two kids randomly and decides it's time to kill them?

[Brisketexan 105360]

Just now, elfenix said:

who the fuck just sees two kids randomly and decides it's time to kill them?

Well, apparently, Richard Matthew Allen.

[elfenix 34332]

i'm almost certain that's not the first time. 

[Pato del Muerto 52607]

4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Well, apparently, Richard Matthew Allen.

His name is dick mat. 

[Hermanator 7174]

This is another case of social media gone amok. The guy on whose property the bodies were found was hounded and accused by tons of yokels on social media until he died 3 years later. 

[irishtexan 11522]

1 hour ago, elfenix said:

who the fuck just sees two kids randomly and decides it's time to kill them?

A guy that looks like this, apparently:

[Auto Driller 2506]

I’m very interested to learn more about how they caught him once the charging documents are unsealed. They said years ago that they thought the suspect likely had strong ties to Delphi, which has a population of only 3,000. It’s possible they were looking at him as a suspect for a long time but didn’t have strong enough evidence for the arrest until now.

[Pato del Muerto 52607]

24 minutes ago, Auto Driller said:

I’m very interested to learn more about how they caught him once the charging documents are unsealed. They said years ago that they thought the suspect likely had strong ties to Delphi, which has a population of only 3,000. It’s possible they were looking at him as a suspect for a long time but didn’t have strong enough evidence for the arrest until now.

They finally consulted the oracle?

[Bevo 13601]

54 minutes ago, irishtexan said:

A guy that looks like this, apparently:

Seems like you could just arrest dudes who look like that. I'm sure they all have done something bad.

[RDCanecutter 26474]

2 hours ago, elfenix said:

who the fuck just sees two kids randomly and decides it's time to kill them?

Nice try, cop.

[smuggs 9353]

1 hour ago, Bevo said:

Seems like you could just arrest dudes who look like that.

If the murder charges don't stick I'm sure there's a chin pube statute that applies here.

[Herbie Hancock 7376]

who the fuck just sees two kids randomly and decides it's time to kill them?

I mean, there is evil in this world. At this point I thought that much was obvious.

[Nicole44 22078]

Lots of rumors for years on this. Pedo rings…etc. speculation the girls thought they were meeting a teen boy but were catfished. Crime scene information and how the girls died has been kept from the public and even the family members.

POS worked at CVS pharmacy. He lived basically two miles from the crime scene. Wife had taken down all FB posts she made from the year the crime occurred. Has a 28 year old daughter that was photographed on the same bridge the girls were on and captured their killer on with one of their phones. Weird stuff. Police have kept pretty much all the details away from the public. Today’s presser didn’t really do a ton to calm the speculation bc they said they are still looking for tips and also checking to see if anyone else was involved.

Local stories (people comment under them) have comments that suggest their is no way the guy’s wife didn’t know. They had video and audio of the killer captured on the girl’s cell phone right before they died. And it’s been played hundreds of times locally over the years. I get wanting a guilty verdict and keeping the details private but it seems like some of that information could have led to a faster arrest. Would be curious how they zeroed in on this guy. DNA thru one of those ancestry sites? He didn’t have a criminal record but also had aliases. The locals have more information and said they dug up his property over the weekend. The wife did delete all her 2017 FB posts but no one knows why. He was also photographed at a bar was his wife where you can clearly see the sketch of the suspect on the wall behind him. Weird shit. Maybe he liked trolling people? 

Edited October 31, 2022 by Nicole44

[Helobious 9464]

29 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

Lots of rumors for years on this. Pedo rings…etc. speculation the girls thought they were meeting a teen boy but were catfished. Crime scene information and how the girls died has been kept from the public and even the family members.

 

That’s normal. A case this high profile the cops want to be sure any tips or leads they get are legit and not just something anyone in the public could know. 

[EuroHorn 3268]

This site has the video and audio recording of the suspect that one of the girls captured on her phone prior to being killed

 

https://www.wrtv.com/news/delphi/the-delphi-killings-everything-we-know-five-years-after-abby-libby-were-killed

 

[Sawbonz 27589]

6 hours ago, Nicole44 said:

He was also photographed at a bar was his wife where you can clearly see the sketch of the suspect on the wall behind him

[Nicole44 22078]

A few years back maybe two or so they held a press conference and said they were convinced the killer lived in Delphi and was hiding in plain site. Yep. In a town of less than 3,000. Probably everyone or most everyone had gone to the CVS where he worked. With sketches of the killer hanging on the wall. No doubt he was low key and all that. One of the girl’s grandmothers said helped develop film for her (film related to her granddaughter Libby.) surreal isn’t really the right word. I watched some of the HLN news special tonite and they interviewed people close to the victims and they just look more shell shocked than anything else. Like that day finally arrived and there’s an arrest but their minds are blown they interacted with this guy several times…I can’t imagine.

[NoRagrets 1125]

Thanks for posting, OP. I actually was so disturbed by the Crime Garage podcast on this case that I often google it to see if an arrest had been made or any new suspects. It was hinted on the podcast that the crime scene was pretty disturbing and that the girls suffered.

[billfromlaketravis 11524]

On 10/31/2022 at 10:29 PM, Nicole44 said:

A few years back maybe two or so they held a press conference and said they were convinced the killer lived in Delphi and was hiding in plain site. Yep. In a town of less than 3,000. Probably everyone or most everyone had gone to the CVS where he worked. With sketches of the killer hanging on the wall. No doubt he was low key and all that. One of the girl’s grandmothers said helped develop film for her (film related to her granddaughter Libby.) surreal isn’t really the right word. I watched some of the HLN news special tonite and they interviewed people close to the victims and they just look more shell shocked than anything else. Like that day finally arrived and there’s an arrest but their minds are blown they interacted with this guy several times…I can’t imagine.

I believe you’re paraphrasing from the podcast Down the Hill. It’s far and away the most thoughtful and respectful podcast on the Delphi Murders. 

[Nicole44 22078]

29 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

I believe you’re paraphrasing from the podcast Down the Hill. It’s far and away the most thoughtful and respectful podcast on the Delphi Murders. 

Yes. And some others. Podcasts are great. Then I dig. This particular case for whatever reason has very few details. I don’t know if it was a mistake early on to say or mention something was missing from both girls. Like a trophy. I figured an article of clothing (most people speculate it was of a sexual nature yuck. Unless bridge guy has a gun (again I’m not 13-14 years old) I can’t see how one person subdues them both and brutally kills them. I still think right now it was a catfish thing (girls were lured online thinking they’d meet a hot teen guy) and got ambushed. But was it just the perp or more? 

[smuggs 9353]

So they linked an unfired .40 caliber round from the crime scene to a Sig the guy had in his house (meaning the stupid cocksucker racked his weapon to scare them but he already had a round in the chamber). Also revealed one of the girls said "gun" in the video they recorded as he approached them. He admitted to being at the bridge at the time of the murders when he was initially interviewed in 2017,  and that multiple witnesses saw him there as well... Sounds like they knew this dude was the perp and have been watching him this whole time, although I'm not sure why they didn't move on the gun angle sooner.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bullet-found-bodies-2-indiana-teens-delphi-killings-linked-suspects-gu-rcna59235

 

Police report:

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2022 by smuggs

[bschoolprof 6272]

It's obvious when reporters know nothing about guns.  From the article:

Quote

An analysis performed on a .40-caliber pistol owned by Richard M. Allen, 50, determined that a .40-caliber unspent round found by the bodies of the victims — Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13, and Liberty “Libby” German, 14 — was allegedly fired from the weapon, according to a probable cause affidavit released Tuesday.

An unspent round by definition has not been fired from any gun.  What the examiner matched was the ejection marks when he racked it.  

"matching" bullets to guns has always struck me as too subjective to be reliable, and arguably unscientific.  Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence cumulatively seems very strong.  

some questions:

why did they just now search his house?

why the fuck did he hang on to the gun so long?

[Helobious 9464]

15 minutes ago, bschoolprof said:

 

"matching" bullets to guns has always struck me as too subjective to be reliable, and arguably unscientific.  Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence cumulatively seems very strong.  

 

That’s nonsense

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2018/02/how-good-match-it-putting-statistics-forensic-firearms-identification

[smuggs 9353]

24 minutes ago, bschoolprof said:

why the fuck did he hang on to the gun so long?

I doubt he even realized he had left a round at the scene. He certainly didn't realize his gun already had a round in the chamber when he racked it in front of the girls, like a real tough guy does in the movies... Also the cops didn't question him about a gun when they originally interviewed him in 2017.

[bschoolprof 6272]

2 hours ago, Helobious said:

That’s nonsense

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2018/02/how-good-match-it-putting-statistics-forensic-firearms-identification

no- the article you cited makes exactly the point I did.  Historically, this has been a field based on subjectivity and judgement, similar in some respects to arson investigation.  It's only very recently that there has been an attempt to make this a more scientific field.

Quote

The new approach also seeks to transform firearm identification from a subjective method that depends on an examiner’s experience and judgment to one that is based on objective measurements. A landmark 2009 report from the National Academy of Sciences and a 2016 report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology both called for research that would bring about this transformation.

 

[Helobious 9464]

26 minutes ago, bschoolprof said:

no- the article you cited makes exactly the point I did.  Historically, this has been a field based on subjectivity and judgement, similar in some respects to arson investigation.  It's only very recently that there has been an attempt to make this a more scientific field.

 

You should maybe read the article instead of stopping at the point that you felt validated at. It’s not some random blind guessing game as you suggest, there is science put into it. It’s imperfect as almost everything is, but that doesn’t mean it’s invalid.

[bschoolprof 6272]

21 minutes ago, Helobious said:

You should maybe read the article instead of stopping at the point that you felt validated at. It’s not some random blind guessing game as you suggest, there is science put into it. It’s imperfect as almost everything is, but that doesn’t mean it’s invalid.

I did read it, along with the 2016 report cited in the article commissioned by the Obama whitehouse.  Maybe you should do the same.  It says the same thing I did - the methods have historically been unscientific and subjective and there are significant reliability concerns.  I never said it was a random, blind guessing game.