Five years before he was charged with killing two high school students near an Indiana hiking trail, Richard Allen contacted authorities about the double homicide: He was in the area the day the girls were killed, he told an investigator at the time.
That information, contained in a “lead sheet” kept by police, was inadvertently marked “invisible,” and it wasn’t until 2022 that a volunteer law clerk tasked with organizing thousands of tips in the investigation discovered it and set in motion the events that led to Allen’s arrest.
The revelation came this week in a Carroll County courtroom, where police officers, witnesses and others detailed their involvement in the case during the first full week of testimony about the Feb. 13, 2017, killings of Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13.
Attorneys for Allen, a 52-year-old former CVS employee, have said he is “truly innocent.”
In court documents, Allen’s legal team has said the killings could have been part of a ritual sacrifice, and during the trial they have disputed the prosecution’s timeline and the testimony of witnesses who in one case placed a man “covered in mud and blood” near the area where the teens’ bodies were found.
During Thursday’s trial, defense attorney Andrew Baldwin asked the clerk, Kathy Shank, if his client was trying to “help” the investigation.
The prosecution objected, calling the question “speculation,” and the judge upheld the case, affiliate WTHR in Indianapolis reported.
The investigator who spoke to Allen in 2017 was Dan Dulin, then a conservation officer with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. He testified Thursday that he helped local authorities follow up on leads related to the killings.
On Feb. 16, 2017 — three days after the killings — Dulin said he picked up a lead sheet with Allen’s name and phone number. The officer asked to meet Allen at his home, but he declined, Dulin said, and instead asked to meet in a grocery store parking lot.
During the unrecorded conversation that followed, Dulin testified, Allen told him he parked in a Farm Bureau lot and walked to an abandoned railroad bridge — it’s now part of the Delphi Historic Trails network — where the teens planned to spend their day off from school.
Allen was there between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m., Dulin recalled saying, and he passed three girls along the way.
After about 10 minutes, Dulin said, the conversation was over. Dulin typed up his notes and turned the file in to investigators, he testified.
Five years later, Shank, a retired receptionist for the Department of Children’s Services who volunteered to help with the investigation, was sorting through thousands of leads when she came across a file box containing a tip with the name “Richard Allen Whiteman.”
The tip incorrectly listed Allen’s last name, Shank testified, and was marked “deleted.” But in September 2022, Shank reported it to a detective who testified that investigators had been trying to find a man witnesses had seen on the trail that day.
The detective, Tony Liggett, now the Carroll County sheriff, said he believed the man was someone who had become known to investigators as “the bridge guy.” The phrase referred to a mysterious Snapchat video found on Liberty’s phone that showed a white man wearing jeans and a dark jacket walking across the bridge.
In a statement released after the killing, which included a short clip of the video, authorities described the unidentified man as a suspect in the teens’ murders.
One of the witnesses, Railly Voorhies, testified Tuesday that she greeted a man who was dressed too nicely for the weather, wearing a hat, mask and dark clothing. He didn’t respond when she waved, said Voorhies, then a 16-year-old high school student who was friends with the victims, and he “didn’t seem like a happy person.”
When she saw the Snapchat image, Voorhies testified, she realized it was the same man she had waved to.
An attorney for Allen, Jennifer Auger, noted that Voorhies’ initial description to police of the man on the tracks — a man in his 20s or 30s with curly hair and a square jaw — was different than the one she gave in court.
Asked if the image of the “bridge man” could have affected her memory, Voorhies said, “Possibly.”
Liggett testified that he believed the witnesses who described seeing Allen on Feb. 13 were credible. And he said the information Allen gave authorities days later was marked as declassified when it shouldn’t have been.
Allen “got caught in the loop,” he said.
After Shanks gave Liggett the lead sheet, investigators returned to Allen and questioned him again. Allen gave a similar story, according to former Delphi Police Chief Steve Mullin, who conducted the interview, though Allen said he arrived at the trailhead at noon and left at 1:30 p.m.
When Mullin showed Allen a photo of the “bridge guy,” the former chief testified, Allen responded, “If the picture was taken with the girl’s camera, there’s no way it was him,” Mullin testified.
Authorities then served a search warrant on Allen’s home and found a .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol that prosecutors said matched a bullet found near the girls’ bodies. In his testimony, Liggett said it was the discovery of that bullet, along with witness statements, that led to Allen’s arrest.
Ballistics experts testified Friday about how they were able to match the bullet to Allen’s firearm.