The mother of one of the two teenagers who was murdered after crossing a bridge in Indiana broke down in court as she heard her daughter’s voice in a video of her final moments.
Prosecutors played the 41-second footage that 14-year-old Liberty ‘Libby’ German took on February 13, 2017 showing her and Abigail ‘Abby’ Williams, 13, crossing the Monon High Bridge in court on Tuesday as they accused 52-year-old Richard Allen of murdering the girls.
Caught in the footage, several feet behind Abby, is a man, dressed in a blue jacket, jeans and a hat. His hands were in his pockets with his chin tucked down so that his face was not visible beneath underneath his hat.
The figure – whom authorities assert is Allen, who lived near the bridge – was seen moving with purpose behind the girls one day before their bodies were found.
As he approaches, Libby pans her camera around to show the steep slope to their left and the track which disappears before them.
At that point, Libby could be heard telling her friend, ‘Um there’s no path so we have to go down here. See the trail ends here.’
The sound of her voice prompted her still-grieving mother to cry and become very emotional, according to WRTV.
Moments later a male voice can be heard uttering the now infamous words, ‘Guys down the hill,’ and one of the girls lets out a yelp as if startled.
Investigators have since said they were able to track the pistol used in the girls’ death to Allen’s home less than two miles from the bridge, and three separate eyewitnesses confidently stated that they saw ‘Bridge Guy’ and identified him from a screen shot of the video.
One even recalled seeing the man in the footage walking back along the same trail.
The witness said he was ‘kind of creepy’ and appeared ‘muddy and bloody’ at the time.
Allen later allegedly admitted to cops that he was in the area that day, but has denied being involved in the girls’ murders.
He said he decided to walk along the new Freedom Bridge, where he saw three females — saying one of them was taller and had brown or black hair.
He also admitted in 2022 that he was wearing a blue or black Carhartt jacket, blue jeans, a skull cap and military boots or tennis shoes.
But Allen has pleaded not guilty to two felony murder charges – which implies murder during the act of another crime, in this case kidnap – and two separate murder charges.
His attorneys have instead floated the idea that the girls were murdered by multiple people as part of an Odinist ritual.
They claim that the evidence of Crime Scene Investigator Ryan Olehy, who testified across Monday and Tuesday, is grounds for Judge Frances Gull to review her earlier decision to deny it at an August hearing.
The attorneys wrote in a new court filing that during Olehy’s testimony, jurors heard and saw crime scene photos that showed sticks, and in Libby’s case a large bough, arranged over the girls’ bodies.
Attorney Bradley Rozzi pushed for Olehy to concede that there was ‘intentionality’ in the way the sticks were arranged. But the CSI officer resisted the attorney’s efforts to paint the crime scene as ‘odd’ or to find anything other than an attempt to conceal the bodies in the placement of the sticks.
Still, the defense attorneys argue, ‘The State of Indiana has provided its explanation of what the sticks represent (concealment of the bodies), and Richard Allen has a Sixth Amendment right to offer the jury his alternative theory as to the reasons the sticks are aligned and arranged in the manner in which they are arranged.’
Rozzi had also attempted to draw from Olehy a concession that blood found on a tree near the bodies was not simply splatter but a more deliberate marking. He referred to the tree as ‘the F tree’ suggesting that the letter had been written on the bark in blood.
Again, Olehy resisted his attempts and stated that, to him, it simply looked like a blood stain on the tree, roughly four feet above the ground.
But the defense had previously presented the testimony of Dr Dawn Perlmutter, who has trained with the FBI and worked with several local, state and federal law enforcement and specializes in identifying ritualistic crime scenes.
Now, they have reasserted, ‘After reviewing the crime scene photographs and other reports and documentation, Dr. Perlmutter’s testimony including her assessment that the sticks on the bodies, F tree, and other aspects of the crime scene were textbook signs of a ritualistic murder related to Odinism/Norse Paganism, including using sticks and blood on the tree to form runes and bind runes.’
In fact, the new motion states, law enforcement investigated the possibility of Odinist involvement as early as the second day after the girls were found, until 2021 when law enforcement officer Greg Ferency was killed in an ambush on an FBI office in 2021.
According to Allen’s attorneys, a failure to allow them to put forward their theory would be unfairly prejudicial, leaving ‘the jury with ONLY one explanation – the explanation provided by the State of Indiana.’
Judge Gull has yet to rule on the motion.
If convicted, Allen, a married father-of-one, faces a maximum penalty of 130 years in prison.