It was the stuff of nightmares.
Grainy footage of 13-year-old Abigail ‘Abby’ Williams, dressed in jeans, sneakers and a hoodie, her hair up in a loose bun, gingerly making her way across the rickety, abandoned Monon High Bridge towards the camera.
Looming behind her, a mystery man dressed in blue jeans, a blue jacket and a cap, coming into view and lumbering toward her.
Behind the camera was 14-year-old Liberty ‘Libby’ German chronicling the two teenage best friends’ final moments and showing the world the blurry face of their killer.
The camera panned down to the ground as the girls appeared to consider their next steps after reaching the end of the desolate old railroad trail.
‘There’s no path so we have to go down here. See the trail ends here,’ Libby is heard saying.
Then came the chilling voice of the man and those now infamous words: ‘Guys, down the hill.’
That haunting footage marked the last sign of life of the two beloved teens from Delphi, Indiana.
Libby German (left) and Abby Williams (right) set off on a walk along the Monon High Bridge trail in Delphi, Indiana, on February 13 2017 and never returned
The following day on Valentine’s Day 2017, after their families, community members and law enforcement officers hunted high and low to find Abby and Libby, their bodies were found down that very hill from the trail on the other side of Deer Creek.
For years, the man in the footage believed to be their killer was known only as ‘Bridge Guy.’
Now, he is known as Richard Allen – a local married man who worked in Delphi’s CVS store and was a father to a girl himself.
Ultimately, it was Libby and Abby’s own heroic efforts that have been credited with leading investigators to their killer and putting him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Libby, who in the midst of unimaginable terror at what this looming man might do, managed to film the killer, providing investigators with some of the most critical evidence used to solve the case.
And Abby, whether by accident or intentionally, managed to conceal the cellphone under her body so that it was found by investigators – and not the perpetrator – at the crime scene and the video could be recovered.
Without that video, it is unclear if justice would ever have been served for Abby and Libby.
For Abby’s mom Anna Williams, speaking to DailyMail.com on what marks the first anniversary of the murders since their killer was brought to justice, this is the one thing she is grateful for about that devastating day.
Abby Williams with her mom Anna Williams. Anna speaks DailyMail.com on what marks the first anniversary of the murders since the killer was brought to justice
The abandoned Monon High Bridge in Delphi, Indiana, where Abby and Libby were murdered
‘I was always very grateful that the girls stayed together,’ she says, her voice choking with emotion.
‘And whether or not things turned out the way we would have hoped, resolutions came about because of how they were that day and how they stayed together.
‘Both of their actions helped us get to solving their crime.’
It took almost eight years, but the heinous crime that has haunted the tight-knit Indiana town was finally solved this November when Allen was convicted of Abby and Libby’s murders and sentenced to life behind bars.
Now, for Abby and Libby’s families, this year’s anniversary of those dark days marks the first since the killer was brought to justice.
But for Williams, it doesn’t feel any different: it’s still another year she can’t spend with her daughter.
‘It’s still just another year that the girls aren’t with us so I haven’t really thought a whole lot about how this year is different,’ she tells DailyMail.com.
‘Every year, at the start of February, you’re just on a countdown to the 13th and the 14th and the days after that, because it wasn’t just the first day and the day they were found. It was all of those days after that for the first few weeks.
Richard Allen leaves the Carroll County Courthouse in December after being sentenced to 130 years in prison for the 2017 murders
Allen worked at the local CVS store in Delphi and helped develop photos there for the girls’ funerals. He is pictured posing in front of a police composite sketch of the Delphi murders suspect
‘You just remember those days all over again and how exhausting and horrible and sad everything was.’
She adds: ‘But now we’re done with the trial and done with the wondering and worrying about who took our girls, I guess we’re looking at the next steps in the process and in moving forward in life.’
Williams isn’t exactly sure what those next steps look like for her.
‘It’s really hard to tell because when this all first happened eight years ago, we were all so confident, including law enforcement, that this was going to be a very quick, very fast process,’ she says.
‘And, you know, everybody was just kind of on hold for the first couple of years and then it was three years and four years and five years and six years and then finally there was an arrest. And, even then it was holding your breath and waiting for the next thing to happen.
‘I feel like I lost most of my 30s. I feel like I lost a decade just waiting to see what would happen next… you’re just waiting. You’re just waiting.’
She adds: ‘So I don’t even know what the next step looks like. It would seem more healing, more moving forward, but what direction that is in I just don’t know.’
While she’s glad that Abby and Libby’s killer is now behind bars, Allen’s conviction still doesn’t bring a sense of closure.
‘I think we’re led to believe that we’ll feel some kind of way about it and honestly it’s still just very raw,’ Williams says.
She adds: ‘Getting answers and justice and closure are not the same thing.’
Grainy footage captured on Libby’s cellphone showed the man who for years was known only as ‘Bridge Guy’
From the very beginning, the so-called Delphi murders sent shockwaves across America due to the horror nature of the killings and the notorious ‘Bridge Guy’ footage.
Over the years as no arrests were made and the case remained unsolved, speculation fell on a handful of men: Ron Logan, a man who owned the property where the girls were found and who lied about his alibi that day, and Kegan Kline, a convicted child sex offender who groomed young girls online and admitted to speaking to Libby hours before she was killed.
Following the bombshell 2022 arrest of Allen – a man who had never before been on the radar – the shocking twists and turns in the case only continued to ramp up.
There were dozens of jailhouse confessions made by Allen, claims about his ‘prisoner of war’ style mistreatment in prison, the disturbing leak of graphic crime scene photos and, perhaps most bizarre, claims that the murders were actually the work of a local Odinist cult.
Even following Allen’s conviction, the interest in the disturbing case and the rampant speculation and theories have not gone away.
In recent weeks, Allen’s attorneys have filed new legal documents alleging Logan once confessed to the murders. Logan’s former girlfriend has also come forward to claim she believes he was ‘Bridge Guy.’ And new crime scene photos have been publicly shared for the first time.
It was February 13 2017 when Abby and Libby, the two inseparable best friends, decided to go for a walk along the Monon High Bridge trail in Delphi.
The two girls had the day off school and it was an unusually warm spring day. And so they were dropped off at the start of the trail by a family member, with plans for Libby’s dad to pick them up a few hours later.
Abby Williams (left) and Libby German (right) were off school that day and decided to go for a walk along the local trail
Family members of Libby and Abby during a news conference in Delphi in October 2022 announcing the arrest of their killer
At first, it appears it was just a fun day out for two teenage girls, with Libby posting a photo on Snapchat of Abby walking along the bridge.
But the girls failed to show up to the meeting point as arranged. They were reported missing and a search was quickly launched, with family members, law enforcement and local volunteers scouring the dense wooded land around the trail well into the night.
The next day, their bodies were found near Deer Creek, around half a mile from the trail.
Libby was naked while Abby was fully dressed in some of Libby’s clothes. Both of their throats had been slit, with experts believing the killer used a box cutter as his murder weapon.
In the days after the murders, a still photo of ‘Bridge Guy’ and an audio clip from the video captured by Libby was released to the public to try to help identify this prime suspect in the killings.
A composite sketch of a suspect was also released that year, before a new starkly different sketch was shared in 2019.
Despite ‘Bridge Guy’ being shared far and wide, no suspects were named and no arrests made in the case.
Court documents which later came to light revealed that Logan, who carried out media interviews following the murders, was a person of interest in the early days.
Libby posted this photo on Snapchat of Abby walking along the bridge not long before they were murdered
The horrific crime stunned the close-knit community of Delphi and sent shockwaves across America. Pictured: police tape blocks access to the trail and creek in Delphi on Thursday February 16 2017
Logan owned the land on which the girls’ bodies were found, owned multiple weapons and got a friend to give him a false alibi for the time the teens disappeared. A search warrant was executed at his home in 2017 but he was never charged. Logan died in 2022.
Then, in 2021, there appeared to be something of a new break in the case when investigators announced they were looking into an online catfishing account in connection to the murders.
The account was called anthony_shots and used a photo of a male model.
But the man actually behind the account was Kline, a 29-year-old Indiana man.
Court documents revealed he was in contact with Libby through the account before the murders. Kline’s home had been searched in February 2017 but he was not charged in connection to the case.
However, he was charged with a string of child exploitation and child porn charges for grooming underage girls online into sending him sexually explicit videos and images and trying to get them to meet him in person. He is now serving more than 40 years in prison.
Another year passed then, in a bombshell development that no one saw coming, Allen was arrested and charged with the murders of Libby and Abby in October 2022.
Allen’s name had never been publicly linked to the case before then.
A composite sketch of a suspect was released in 2017 (left) before a new starkly different sketch was shared in 2019 (right)
He had no criminal record, was married, had a daughter and worked as a pharmacy technician at the local CVS. He lived around a five-minute drive from the trail.
Libby’s grandparents Becky and Mike Patty realized they had met him once before. Following the murders, the Pattys had taken some photographs to be developed at the CVS store where he worked. It was Allen who served them.
It turned out that, just days after the murders, Allen had admitted to investigators that he was on the Monon High Bridge trail around the time the girls had gone missing.
But, this lead had slipped through the net and gone forgotten, collecting dust in a file for more than five years.
That is until Kathy Shank, a volunteer working with Indiana investigators to trawl through old tips and information about the case, stumbled across that snippet of information.
It turned out Allen and his own words placing himself at the scene of the murders had never been properly followed up on.
Five years later, investigators brought Allen in for questioning and searched his home.
Inside, they found a ‘Bridge Guy starter kit’ – a Carharrt jacket and blue jeans – matching the infamous outfit captured in Libby’s video that dark day.
Ron Logan (seen speaking to the media after the murders) owned the property on which the girls’ bodies were found and lied about his alibi that day
They also found a gun – a Sig Sauer Model P226 – that Allen admitted only he had access to. Ballistics testing found that an unspent round found next to the girls’ bodies had been cycled through that very gun.
Allen was charged with Libby and Abby’s murders.
Williams tells DailyMail.com that, even with eight years passing, she never gave up hope that her daughter’s killer would be caught one day.
‘I didn’t ever lose hope because the head of law enforcement and the main folks working on it were very convinced that we would get this. I never doubted that we would get an answer someday,’ she says.
‘I’m grateful for it only being eight years and not ever because there are still a lot of families out there that have no answers after 10 years, 20 years, 40 years. We can be grateful for that.’
But two more years would pass following Allen’s arrest before he would finally go on trial.
Child sex offender Kegan Kline was also looked at in connection to the case as it emerged he had used a catfish account to speak to Libby before she died
During that time, Allen confessed to murdering the girls a staggering 61 times while behind bars. Several of the damning confessions were made in jailhouse phone calls to his wife Kathy Allen and his mom.
Allen’s attorneys claimed his confessions were the result of a mental health crisis caused by his ‘medieval torture’ treatment at the prison Westville Correctional Facility.
There were further twists in the case.
In court documents filed ahead of the trial, Allen’s legal team took the extraordinary step of alleging Libby and Abby were actually murdered as part of a ‘ritualistic sacrifice’ by a white nationalist cult called Odinists – even publicly naming four individuals as the killers.
Those four men have never been named as suspects or persons of interest and have never charged in connection to the case.
As part of the shocking theory, Allen’s defense pointed to sticks found on the victims’ bodies, claiming they were arranged specifically into Pagan symbols. They even claimed these cult members were working inside the prison where Allen was housed. Judge Fran Gull ultimately blocked the defense from introducing the Odinism theory into Allen’s trial – or introducing any alternative suspects.
In another disturbing turn of events, a friend of one of Allen’s attorneys leaked graphic crime scene photos showing the girls’ butchered bodies. That individual died by suicide as cops zeroed in on him as the source of the leak.
It was a monumental scandal that ultimately saw Allen’s defense team quit, accuse the judge of forcing them off the case, and then them being reinstated by a higher court.
Richard Allen’s house was just 1.7 miles from the Monon High Bridge – a 34 minute walk
When Allen finally went on trial in October, the jurors were shown the full 43-second ‘Bridge Guy’ video for the first time.
They heard from witnesses who saw ‘Bridge Guy’ on the trail that day.
They saw evidence tying Allen’s gun to the crime scene, heard his confessions in his own words and saw the timeline placing him at the scene of the murders when they took place.
In one damning confession presented at trial, Allen had given away information that only the killer could have known. He said he had planned to take the girls into the woods to rape them but was startled by a white van driving past and so quickly killed them.
The man in the white van testified that he drove home from work at around 2.30pm that afternoon, to his property close to Deer Creek. It was around that time that Libby’s cellphone had last recorded movement – and minutes after the ‘Bridge Guy’ video was recorded – and so is believed to be the time when the girls were killed.
Williams says it was ‘really hard’ to sit through the trial and be faced with all this harrowing detail about her daughter’s final moments.
‘It was hard to go and it was hard to not go,’ she says. ‘It was difficult. You don’t know how you’re supposed to feel about it.’
She says she chose not to go to court on the days that the graphic crime scene photos of the girls’ bodies were shown. ‘I refused to see that. I refuse to let that live in my head,’ she says.
Anna Williams says it was ‘really hard’ to sit through the trial and be faced with harrowing details about the final moments of Libby and Abby (pictured together)
After the weeks-long trial, the jury convicted Allen of two counts of murder and two counts of felony murder. The two latter counts were vacated under double jeopardy rules.
He was sentenced to 130 years in prison in December.
Williams says she is still coming to terms with the fact her daughter’s killer has now been convicted and will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
‘It still doesn’t seem very real. The whole thing still just seems so far out there,’ she says.
‘Maybe it’s because we spent eight years to get to this point from when they told us the girls were gone… it still doesn’t seem very real. So it’s just taking some time for everything to set in.’
Allen has already revealed he plans to appeal the conviction.
And, in new court documents filed last month, Allen’s attorneys are arguing that his conviction should be overturned due to a series of errors they allege were made by the state.
Among them is the claim that Logan made a detailed confession to killing Libby and Abby while in prison back in 2017.
A makeshift memorial to Libby and Abby seen in October 2022 near where the girls’ bodies were discovered five years earlier
According to the documents, fellow inmate Ricci Davis came forward to law enforcement in May 2017 – three months after the murders – to claim Logan had confided in him that he was the killer. In the alleged confession, Logan allegedly said he was walking the girls through the woods to his property when it had ‘got out of hand.’
Davis claimed Logan said he killed Libby then took Abby with him ‘for a while’ before killing her too. Logan allegedly claimed he had cut both their throats with a box cutter.
Allen’s attorneys claim that some of the details in Logan’s alleged confession were not known to the public at the time – and that the state withheld this information from the defense before the trial.
Prosecutors have responded to the argument by pointing out that the information was handed over to the defense during the discovery process in January 2024, that many of the details – including the claim that Abby was taken elsewhere – contradict evidence in the case, and that Davis the informant ‘miserably’ failed a polygraph test about the confession.
Allen’s attorneys have also argued that a defense expert testified at trial that data from Libby’s cellphone showed headphones had been inserted into the phone at around 5.44pm that day and then taken out at around 10.32pm.
An Indiana State Police phone expert had countered that testimony saying that water or dirt entering the phone could have given the appearance of something being plugged in. The phone did not record movement after 2.32pm.
Allen’s defense challenged this theory. And in response, the state has now released crime scene photos for the very first time showing Libby’s phone on the ground among dirt and sticks, drops of moisture visible on the screen.
Despite Allen’s conviction, these latest filings from the defense – along with the likes of the shocking Odinism claims prior to the trial – appear to be fueling ongoing speculation and questions about the case.
Libby (pictured) and Abby have been credited with helping to catch their own killer through the crucial ‘Bridge Guy’ video
Libby’s grandparents Mike and Becky Patty pictured together. The families of Abby and Libby finally have answers eight years after the brutal murders
In social media groups dedicated to the case, some followers are throwing their support behind Allen, arguing that he is an innocent man and naming others they believe to be responsible. Others are pushing various conspiracies about the case, from baseless accusations against family members to claims of a wider cover-up.
Journalist Áine Cain and attorney Kevin Greenlee, the husband and wife team behind ‘The Murder Sheet’ podcast and authors of upcoming book ‘Shadow of the Bridge: The Delphi Murders and the Dark Side of the American Heartland,’ tell DailyMail.com that, rather than Allen’s conviction putting this speculation to rest, conspiracy theories and, in some shocking cases, online attacks on the victims’ families have actually ramped up since the trial.
‘It’s definitely been going on for years but it’s come more out into the open now,’ says Cain.
Cain believes there’s a number of reasons why the Delphi murders case in particular has fueled such rampant speculation even after the killer’s trial and conviction.
‘This case since the beginning has really involved and engaged the public as the police asked for the public’s help in identifying ‘Bridge Guy.’ So it inspired members of the public to try to figure out who the killer was and people online became very invested and the story of the girls resonated with them,’ she says.
‘They cared about them and there was a lot of support for the families of the girls and that was wonderful as it kept a lot of focus on the case.’
But there’s also the darker side to the online world of true crime, she says.
‘There’s also a very dark side to that and that’s the people who come in and say I know it’s this person and they become very invested in being right. I think there is a loud minority of people who basically become so wrapped up in it, it becomes like a hobby.’
Journalist Áine Cain and attorney Kevin Greenlee, the husband and wife team behind ‘The Murder Sheet’ podcast, believe the trial should have been televised
Richard Allen’s defense has filed court documents calling for his conviction to be overturned
She adds: ‘I think there’s a level of denial about the outcome. But when you see people making posts and attacking some members of the girls’ families and extolling the virtues of a guy who’s been convicted of slaughtering girls in a forest because he wanted to rape them, I think most people should not want to be part of that.’
Cain feels that the defense team has helped fuel these conspiracies and speculation through the likes of the Odinism theory.
She likens it to the ‘Satanic panic’ that swept America in the 1980s and 1990s, ‘making out that people are about to sacrifice children in the woods.’
Three months before the trial, a hearing was held for the defense to present its theory about an alternative suspect or suspects being responsible for the murders – including the Odinist members, Logan and Kline. At the end of the hearing, the judge ruled she would not allow it to be entered into the trial.
While Allen’s defense has long argued the jury should have been allowed to hear about the Odinism theory at trial, Cain and Greenlee do not believe it would have changed the verdict.
Cain says that, had she not been in the courtroom for that three-day hearing, she might ‘have been surprised’ by the judge’s decision.
But while it seemed like a shocking, bombshell theory, in reality the defense argument and evidence was ‘incredibly weak,’ she says.
‘It was honestly shocking how little they had. We watched the Odinism theory collapse in real time… it was demolished,’ she says. ‘Based on that performance there, I could understand where the judge was coming from.’
Crime scene photos have been released for the very first time showing Libby’s phone on the ground among dirt and sticks, drops of moisture visible on the screen
She adds: ‘I personally think that if they brought Odinsim into the trial, I think the jury would have come back in 30 minutes. It was an insult to intelligence.’
Rather than a conspiracy, Cain and Greenlee say that – having also sat in the courtroom each day of the trial – it was simply clear the prosecution put on a ‘very strong case.’
Greenlee believes the public perception of the case would be very different now if the trial (as well as that three-day hearing) had been televised.
‘I think the judge in this case made a terrible decision when she did not allow cameras in the courtroom,’ he says.
‘I think if the public saw what we saw in the courtroom they’d have much fewer doubts about this. So I think a lot of the conspiracies and theories that go on are part of [Judge] Gull’s legacy on this case.’
Following the trial, one of the jurors, who wished to remain anonymous, has revealed what it was that convinced the panel that Allen was guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
There was the unspent bullet found at the scene, the white van and Allen’s confessions.
But, the juror said that the biggest piece of evidence that proved Allen’s guilt was the timeline of the case.
The Monon High Bridge seen in February 2017 days after the shocking murders of the teenage best friends
Police tape blocks access to the trail and creek in Delphi on Thursday February 16 2017, two days after the girls’ bodies were found
‘A timeline in a criminal case is not always the sexiest piece of evidence – it’s not the DNA, it’s not the murder weapon,’ says Cain.
‘But that’s what this juror told us the jury kept looking at. Richard Allen said he saw these people and they saw ‘Bridge Guy’ so Richard Allen is ‘Bridge Guy’. And time and time again he’s putting himself in places where people saw ‘Bridge Guy,’ he’s putting himself in the same clothing as ‘Bridge Guy’…. He’s the only one it could be. So ultimately through his own words Richard Allen became the star witness for the prosecution.’
In the end, it was the heroic actions of Abby and Libby that convinced the jury that Allen was their killer, through the video they filmed and guarded right up until the end.
It was this video that captured ‘Bridge Guy’ and placed him at the scene – and which also kept attention on the case for so many years.
Now, with their killer behind bars, Abby’s mom wants the focus to shift onto remembering her daughter and her best friend for who they were.
‘I want Abby to be remembered for the bright, beautiful, kind girl that she was. She was all of those things. They were both of a giving nature and were very kindhearted and they always spent a lot of time thinking about other people and being positive for other people and helping other people,’ she says.
That’s why this year and on every other anniversary, Abby and Libby’s families choose to spend time helping others in their memories.
Each year, they host a food drive in their honor for people in the county and encourage people across the US to do the same in the areas where they live.
Abby Williams (pictured) and Libby German were ‘very kindhearted and they always spent a lot of time thinking about other people and being positive for other people and helping other people,’ Abby’s mom says
Anna Williams and her daughter Abby. To mark the anniversary of their murders, the girls’ families are hosting a food drive in the community
‘Please donate in their honor in your county wherever you live and not just food for people. They were really big on their special pets. So we always do a pet food drive as well,’ Williams says.
‘It’s very important in our community. They’ve been so supportive of us throughout the years that it is important to us to continue to honor and respect the girls, but also help our community. The girls would have wanted that.’
Williams adds that she is ‘so very grateful’ for the support they receive from all around the world.
‘We hear from people from all over, not just locally but globally. And it really does mean a lot that people care. It shows you the world is not trash and people care and that’s very touching,’ she says.
‘I’m very grateful for the people who continue to show interest and care about what happened to my daughter, without even knowing her.’