Former pharmacy technician and accused killer Richard Allen confessed in a jailhouse phone call with his wife, during which he admitted to murdering Delphi, Indiana teens Libby German and Abby Williams on a hiking trail in 2017, investigators say.
The revelation is contained in one of more than 100 court documents released Wednesday by order of Allen County Judge Frances Gull, who is overseeing Allen’s case. The tranche of filings also specifies for the first time that autopsies found the two girls were knifed to death after Allen allegedly abducted them by brandishing a gun. Several articles of the girls’ clothing were missing from the crime scene, including a pair of underwear and a sock, the document says.
Allen, a 50-year-old father of two, was arrested last October for the shocking double homicide, which had kept the small town of Delphi, a suburb of Lafayette, on edge for years.
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According to a filing made public on Wednesday, Allen called his wife Kathy on April 3, some six months after he was booked into the Westville Correctional Facility in the northwest corner of the state.
“In that phone call, Richard M. Allen admits several times that he killed Abby and Libby,” the filing states, noting that a transcript of the call says Allen confessed “several times within the phone call that he committed the offenses as charged.”
Allen’s wife “end[ed] the phone call abruptly” after the alleged confession, according to the filing.
Allen also admitted to investigators that he has been walking on the same trail where the girls were found, cops say.
During a court hearing earlier this month, Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland said Allen had in fact made “multiple confessions to multiple people” since his arrest. Allen’s attorneys have attempted to downplay the news, arguing that their client’s mental health has degenerated while locked up.
“At one minute, Rick is saying one thing, and another minute he’s saying something else,” defense lawyer Bradley Rozzi said at that same hearing.
Wednesday’s document dump also includes a handwritten letter from a fellow inmate of Allen’s, who claimed to have witnessed other inmates calling Allen “a kid killer” and telling him to commit suicide. In a separate filing, Allen’s defense team says Allen has recently exhibited “various psychotic symptoms which counsel would describe as schizophrenic and delusional,” that his memory is failing, and that he is “demonstrating an overall inability to communicate rationally with counsel and family members.”
“The conditions under which Mr. Allen has been forced to endure are akin to that of a prisoner of war,” the filing states.
Allen reportedly began refusing to eat or sleep for days on end, broke a tablet computer he had been given by jail staff, and had been “wetting down paperwork he had gotten from his attorneys and eating it,” according to another document filed by prosecutors.
At the same time, prosecutors suggested Allen might be faking aspects of his supposed condition, arguing that his defense team only started making claims about their client’s declining psychological state after Allen reportedly confessed his guilt to his wife.
A team made up of two psychiatrists and one psychologist evaluated Allen on April 14, and “determined that… Allen did not need involuntary medication,” and that he had begun to eat and sleep again, according to prosecutors.
“He [sic] behavior has began [sic] to return to what it was prior to making the admission on April 3, 2023,” the filing states.
Libby German and Abby Williams went for a walk together on Feb. 13, 2017, and never returned. Their bodies were discovered two days later, along with a brief video on Libby’s phone, which detectives said showed a man now thought to be Allen walking towards them on a narrow bridge.
“Down the hill,” the man can be heard saying.
An unspent .40 caliber round later traced to a firearm owned by Allen was found between the two girls’ remains, police said. A newly released court filing says that in a search of Allen’s home, detectives recovered a Sig Sauer P226 .40 caliber semiautomatic handgun, numerous knives and sheaths, and several articles of potentially incriminating clothing.
Allen has pleaded not guilty to two counts of felony murder. His trial is scheduled to begin in January 2024.
With additional reporting by Josh Fiallo
