Interrogations & The First Set of Confessions - Delphi Trail Day…

DELPHI, Ind. — A marathon Day 10 in the Delphi murders trial Tuesday gave a split screen look at Richard Allen – first as a Delphi CVS clerk who repeatedly asserted his innocence in a pair of police interviews as a 5½-year investigation turned his way in 2022, and then as man who told a warden and a string of guards that he killed teens Abby Williams and Libby Williams as he awaited trial in a solitary cell under 24-hour watch in a maximum security state prison.

In the first version, Allen said he didn’t intend to be the fall guy for investigators looking to close a case that had rocked the community and put national focus on the search for anyone responsible for the Feb. 13, 2017, murders of the Delphi Community Middle School eighth-graders.

In the second, Allen’s attorneys swung back at the jail cell confessions, syncing them with signs that Allen’s mental and physical health were over the edge after months of being in state prisons as a safekeeping measure in the high-profile case.

Here were some of the takeaways from Tuesday’s session in Carroll Circuit Court.

THE POLICE INTERVIEWS: On Saturday, Allen’s defense team asked Judge Fran Gull to allow jurors to see the interviews that led to the 52-year-old’s arrest. That came after lead Indiana State Police investigator Jerry Holeman testified about confronting Allen about forensic firearms tests that ISP concluded matched an unspent Winchester .40-caliber Smith and Wesson cartridge with a Sig Sauer P226 found during a search of Allen’s home.

Tuesday morning, the jury got to see redacted versions of two police interviews that were pivotal in his arrest.

In the first, Steve Mullin – a former Delphi police chief and now an investigator for the Carroll County prosecutor – and Tony Liggett, then a Carroll County deputy a few weeks from being elected sheriff, questioned Allen on Oct. 13, 2022.

Testimony last week told how police had recently revisited information Allen self-reported to investigators days after the murders that he’d been on the Monon High Bridge Trail on Feb. 13, 2017, the afternoon the girls when missing there. Abby and Libby were found dead the following in the woods near the trail and the Monon High Bridge.

After a round of work history, education and even cellphone background history, Allen recounted going for a hike on the Monon High Bridge Trail in the early afternoon after driving back from seeing him mom in the Peru area.

In it, Allen told about once leading a team of Walmart coworkers on a cleanup of the Mears entrance to the trail, just off County Road 300 North. He struggled in the interview to pinpoint for Mullin where he parked his black 2016 Ford Focus that day, but recalled wearing jeans, a black or blue Carhartt or knock-off brand jacket, and walking to the first platform on the abandoned Monon High Bridge to look at fish some 60 feet below in Deer Creek. Allen retold much of what he’d told a DNR officer in 2017 about seeing three girls on the trail at one point, but that he hadn’t paid much attention as he checked a stock ticker on his phone.

Things took a turn when Mullin asked whether Allen would allow police to extract data from his phone to check his story, as they tried to eliminate people from the investigation. Mullin said investigators would prefer to check any phone he had in 2017, but “we can start with this one if it’s all right with you.”

When Mullin asked for a passcode, Allen hesitated.

“Sounds like I’m going to be somebody’s fall guy,” Allen said in the video. “I don’t want to be somebody’s fall guy. Please don’t think I’m questioning your integrity. … From this conversation, it’s like you think I did it.”

Mullin persisted. He asked permission to search Allen’s home. Allen said they’d need to get a warrant for his house, though he was open to letting them look at his phone once he talked it over with his wife, Kathy.

“I don’t want to be associated with this thing any more than anyone else does,” Allen tells the investigators. “I know you want closure for the families, but … . I don’t have anything to do with this.”

At one point, Mullin shows Allen a picture of a man on the Monon High Bridge, taken from a cellphone video that that was final thing on Libby German’s camera roll when her phone was found at the crime scene. Liggett compares what the Bridge Guy has on and what Allen told investigators he was wearing that day.

“The question needs to be, is that you?” Mullin asked.

“I wouldn’t know those girls,” Allen said. “I feel like I’m being interrogated.”

Later, Mullin tells Allen: “Either you were out there to do this to the girls, or you were there to introduce these girls to someone who did.”

“You’re trying to lure me into saying I killed those girls,” Allen said. “We’re done here. Arrest me or take me home. I’m done.”

Mullin continued to ask Allen to explain what happened. Allen asked if he was free to leave. Mullin said he’d always been free to do that.

“Thank you,” Allen said. “You’re an asshole.”

On Oct. 26, 2022, nearly two weeks later, Holeman invited Allen to the Indiana State Police Lafayette Post to pick up things from a search of home in the interim. Police took a car, clothing, knives and the Sig Sauer pistol, among other things.

After some small talk about guns they each used during their days in the military and whether Allen had ever loaned out his gun or other items – Allen said he hadn’t – Holeman said: “Let’s get to the meat and potatoes of this, Rick.”

Holeman told Allen that the round found near the girls came back as a match for the handgun at his house.

At first, Allen kind of laughs. Holeman told Allen that investigators and the prosecutor want to lock him up and throw away the key. Holeman said this was Allen’s chance to get ahead of the situation and “tell us the truth.”

“What happening that day?” Holeman asked.

“I don’t know how my bullet got out there, if it’s my bullet,” Allen said. “There’s no way. I’m telling you there’s not. It’s not my round. … You’re trying to say I killed those little girls.”

Holeman testified last week that he sat in a car with Allen during an Oct. 13, 2022, search of his home. Holeman said that when he asked Allen if he wanted to fill out a form for damaged items during the search, he said Allen told him: “It doesn’t matter, it’s over.” Holeman asked Allen during the interview what he’d meant.

“You started something I can’t back out of,” Allen said, mentioning that police had already been talking to his family and coworkers. “The damage is done.”

Holeman testified Saturday that he lied to Allen as part of an interviewing technique. (At one point, Holeman told Allen: “I’m not lying to you, Rick. It’s unethical. … I can’t just type this shit up.”) In the interview, Holeman lied to Allen that Libby’s Bridge Guy video identified him and that five witnesses saw him on or near the trail on Feb. 13, 2017.

“They didn’t see me around the girls,” Allen said. “I don’t care how stressed out I get. I’m not going to fucking admit to something I didn’t do. … You don’t have anything that implicates me, because I wasn’t fucking out there.”

“You conscience is telling you, this is the day,” Holeman said, as the interview escalated.

Holeman stepped out several times during the interview. The recording showed Allen not moving from the chair, his leg crossed, occasionally giving a heavy sigh and looking to the ceiling. He didn’t check paperwork or Holeman’s laptop left open on a desk.

During the interview, Allen submitted to a DNA test, under a warrant.

On Saturday, Holeman testified that Allen denied the allegations 20 or 25 times. That number held up as jurors watched the recording Tuesday.

Kathy Allen, who was being interviewed in another part of the ISP post, joined Richard Allen in the room he was in.

“They say they know it was you,” Kathy Allen said, while weeping.

Richard Allen denied it to Kathy, telling her that she knows he couldn’t do something like that. He got frustrated and quit trying to explain what police were saying when he didn’t understand them himself. He suggested that Kathy get a lawyer. Allen didn’task for one for himself during the course of the interview.

“You’re going to drag your fucking wife and your daughter through this because you’re too fucking bullheaded to get out in front of this and admit you made a mistake,” Holeman said later.

“You’re going to pay for what you’ve done to my wife,” Allen said. “You want to fuck with me, fuck with me, but you leave my wife out of this. Fuck. Leave me out of this.”

“I’m not going to pay for this,” Holeman said. “You’re going to pay for this.”

Allen held his wrists out: “I’m done talking. Arrest me.”

Holeman detained Allen that day. Charges were filed days later.

THE FIRST ROUND OF CONFESSIONS: During pretrial hearings this summer, an Indiana State Police detective testified that Allen implicated himself in the murders of Abby Williams and Libby German more than 60 times since charges were filed.

The first round of those came from nine witnesses Tuesday afternoon who work or previously worked for Westville Correctional Facility of Wabash Valley Correctional facility, where Allen had been sent under a safekeeping order issued by then Carroll Circuit Judge Benjamin Diener shortly after his arrest.

Among the testimony:

John Galipeau, former warden at Westville Correctional Facility, testified that he received a “request for interview” from Allen on March 5, 2023, that included a handwritten note: “I am ready to officially confess killing Abby and Libby. I hope I get the opportunity to tell the family I’m sorry.” Galipeau said Allen confessed to him two times in person and other times via notes.

Eight guards – seven from Westville and one from Wabash Valley – dealt with watching Allen at various times. Most of them had been assigned as “suicide companions,” jobs that required them to log what they saw and heard Allen do every 15 minutes.

They testified Tuesday that they logged times Allen had said:

“God, I’m glad nobody gave up on me after I killed Abby and Libby.”

“I, Richard Allen, killed Abby and Libby all by myself. Nobody helped me.”

“I killed Abby and Libby. My wife wasn’t involved. I would like to confess.”

“I want to confess. I know a lot.”

He stated “that the funniest joke is how he killed them.”

One said Allen had stolen a box cutter from CVS and then had thrown it in the trash at work.

Brad Rozzi, one of Allen’s attorneys, pushed back, about the conditions Allen endured in a 12-by-8-foot observation cell in Westville’s A-Pod – what he described as a prison within a prison, where inmates live in solitary conditions.

Galipeau testified that the unit was where offenders were sent for behavior violations in the prison of roughly 3,000 inmates. Galipeau testified that Allen was the first person to come to the prison pre-conviction that he knew of. He said Allen had come to the prison on suicide watch and was kept in the A-Pod because it was safer for Allen than in the general population. Allen’s cell was monitored by cameras inside and by suicide companions – first as inmates, later as corrections officers – at the door.

Galipeau and the guards who knew Allen testified that his behavior started to change a few months into his time at Westville. Their logs contain times when Allen would smear feces on his face and body, drink from the toilet, bang his head against the door until his face was swollen, mumble and roll on the floor.

Several guards testified they believed Allen did things for attention, not because of mental health issues.

Rozzi’s line of questioning for each poked at questions about how an isolation cell in a prison for a man who hadn’t been convicted and who had a history of anxiety and depression might have exacerbated his mental and physical condition.

About the time Allen was telling guard he murdered, Rozzi asked guards about other observations, including mumbling about wanting KFC, running in place naked in his cell while singing “God Bless America” and contending that he’d never cheated on a cigarette.

They also included claims he’d killed his family and killed grandchildren he didn’t have.

A frequently asked question Tuesday afternoon by Rozzi: Would you agree it was detrimental to mental health to be in that environment?

On Aug. 1, Gull agreed to rescind the safekeeping order and left it to the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office to find a suitable place to keep Allen.