Jury selection begins in the trial of man accused in 2017 killings of 2 teenagers

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Eight women and six men have been selected so far to a jury in the trial of a man charged in the Indiana killings of two teenage girls during a winter hike in 2017.

Jury selection opened Monday in the case against Richard Allen, which has long haunted the girls’ hometown of Delphi and spurred endless online speculation.

Allen, 52, is charged with two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the killings of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German. If convicted, he could face up to 130 years in prison. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

Jury selection is expected to continue Tuesday at a location in Fort Wayne, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from where the killings occurred.

Once the 12 members and four alternates are selected, they will be taken to Delphi, a town of about 3,000 residents, sequestered during trial and banned from using cellphones or watching news broadcasts.

If jury selection is completed on Wednesday, jury instructions and opening statements could take place Friday morning. The trial is expected to last a month.

Prosecutors said they plan to call about 50 witnesses during the trial, while Allen’s defense attorneys expect to call about 120 witnesses.

Allen, a pharmacy technician who had lived and worked in Delphi, was arrested in October 2022, nearly six years after the girls known as Abby and Libby were killed.

A relative had dropped the eighth graders off at a hiking trail just outside Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017, but the two failed to show up at the agreed pickup site later that day. They were reported missing that evening and their bodies were found the following day in a rugged, wooded area near the trail.

Within days, police released files found on Libby’s cellphone — two grainy photos and audio of a man saying “down the hill” — that they believed represented the killer.

But no arrest followed.

In July 2017, investigators released a sketch of the suspect, and another in April 2019. They also released a brief video showing the suspect walking on an abandoned railroad bridge.

After years of failing to find a suspect, investigators said they went back and reviewed “prior tips.”

Allen had been interviewed in 2017. He told the officer that he had been walking on the trail the day the girls went missing and that he saw three “females” at another bridge but did not speak to them. He said he did not notice anyone else because he was distracted by a stock ticker on his phone, according to an arrest affidavit.

Police interviewed Allen again on Oct. 13, 2022, when he reasserted he had seen three “juvenile girls” during his walk in 2017. Investigators searched Allen’s home and seized a .40-caliber pistol. Testing determined an unspent bullet found between the teen’s bodies “had been cycled through” Allen’s gun.

According to the affidavit, Allen said he’d never been where the bullet was found, did not know the property owner, and “had no explanation as to why a round cycled through his firearm would be at that location.”

The case has seen repeated delays after evidence was leaked, Allen’s public defenders withdrew and were later reinstated by the Indiana Supreme Court. The Delphi killings remain the subject of rampant speculation and theories by true-crime enthusiasts.

Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gull, who is overseeing the case, issued a gag order at prosecutors’ request in December 2022, two months after Allen’s arrest. It bars attorneys, law enforcement officials, court personnel, the coroner and the girls’ relatives from commenting on the case, including on social media.

Gull has banned cameras from the courtroom during Allen’s trial.

In August this year, she ruled prosecutors can present evidence of dozens of incriminating statements they say Allen made in conversations with correctional officers, inmates, law enforcement and relatives. That evidence includes a recording of a telephone call between Allen and his wife in which, prosecutors say, he confesses to the killings.

The judge’s ruling was “a real blow to the defense,” said Hal Johnston, an adjunct criminal law professor at Indiana University who is not involved in the case.

“The incriminating statements are going to be extremely persuasive because that’s what the jury wants to hear,” Johnston said.

Allen’s attorneys had hoped to present evidence the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a pagan Norse religion and white nationalist group, but Gull ruled against that, saying the defense furnished no “admissible evidence” of such a connection.

She also blocked Allen’s attorneys from arguing the killings may have been committed by others, including the late owner of the property where the teens’ bodies were found.

Prosecutors have not disclosed how Abby and Libby were killed. But a court filing by Allen’s attorneys in support of their ritual sacrifice theory states their throats had been cut.

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