Delphi suspect went to police 3 days after the murders, but he ‘fell in the cracks’ for years: Sheriff

Jeremy Edwards and Emily Shapiro, ABC News

October 25, 2024

(DELPHI, Ind.) -- Delphi, Indiana, double murder suspect Richard Allen self-reported being at the crime scene in the days after the killings, but the tip sheet "fell in the cracks," leaving him "hiding in plain sight" in the small town for years, the sheriff told the jury at Allen's trial.

Best friends Libby German, 14, and Abby Williams, 13, were walking along a Delphi hiking trail when they were killed on the afternoon of Feb. 13, 2017. Allen, a Delphi resident, was arrested in October 2022 and has pleaded not guilty to murder.

Kathy Shank, a volunteer file clerk who arranged boxes of information and tips in the case, testified Thursday that on Sept. 21, 2022 -- weeks before Allen's arrest -- she came across a file folder that was not with the others she was managing.

The sheet said that on Feb. 16, 2017 -- three days after the murders -- a person listed as "Richard Allen Whiteman" self-reported being on the trails between 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. on the day of the crime. According to Shank, the self-reporter listed seeing three girls.

Shank testified that she wrote a lead sheet and changed the name to Richard Allen. Allen lived on Whiteman Drive, so she said she believed the names were transposed and it was misfiled.

She said she notified the sheriff after finding Allen's tip sheet.

Allen's defense attorney asked Shank, "There was no other tip, to your knowledge, that involved Richard Allen?" Shank replied, "To my knowledge, no."

Carroll County Sheriff Tony Liggett acknowledged on the stand that Allen was never a suspect from 2017 to 2022 and said the tip sheet generated about him was marked "clear." When pressed by Allen’s defense on how that could have happened, Liggett responded, Allen "got lost" and "fell in the cracks."

The sheriff also conceded that Allen came forward on his own and never left town. "He was hiding in plain sight," Liggett said to defense attorney Andrew Baldwin.

When Allen was arrested, Liggett was running for sheriff, which Allen’s attorneys argued was good timing for his campaign. Liggett denied the two were linked.

"This was about the murders of two little girls," he said. Indiana State Police investigator Jerry Holeman testified about his conversation with Allen during the search of Allen's home in the fall of 2022.

Holeman said, as the two sat in his police car, he told Allen that once the search was done he could file a claim for any damage to his house.

Holeman claimed that Allen replied, "It doesn’t matter. It’s over."

Holeman said he didn’t record that conversation even though Allen was considered a suspect at the time. Defense attorneys pushed back on Holeman’s story, saying the jury could only take his word for it.

Indiana State Police trooper David Vido, who helped administer the search warrant at Allen’s home, testified there was no physical evidence in Allen's car or on his jacket that linked him to the crime scene.

Prosecutors said police analysis of Allen's gun determined that the .40-caliber unspent round discovered by the girls' bodies was cycled through Allen's gun.