The Delphi Murders: A Seven-Year Summary of the Case

[00:00:00] Content Warning. This episode contains discussion of the murder of two children. This episode also contains discussion of suicide and child sexual abuse.

[00:00:11] One request that we frequently get here at the Murder Sheet is that we do an episode that sort of functions as a cliff's notes for the Delphi case. The Delphi case is, of course, a very, very complicated series of events involving multiple suspects, many years of investigation,

[00:00:30] and quite a bit of legal drama recently. So we thought that this was a great idea and a great suggestion by some of our listeners.

[00:00:37] We hope that this episode can essentially function as a primer for those of you who may not feel as familiar with the cases you want to be,

[00:00:44] who want to get caught up, or who just want a boiled-down summary of a lot of the important things that have happened in the seven years since these two young girls, Abby Williams and Liberty German, were murdered in Delphi.

[00:00:57] And we thought that this would be good to release on the seventh anniversary since these tragic slayings. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet.

[00:01:12] We're a true crime podcast focused on original reported interviews and deep dives into murder cases. Where's the Murder Sheet? And this is The Delphi Murders, a seven-year summary of the case.

[00:02:13] In order to talk about the Delphi case, we have to go back to the very beginning. And that, of course, is February 13th, 2017.

[00:02:22] One thing that we've said a lot recently with all of the legal drama is that we feel oftentimes that these two girls who were murdered get lost in a lot of the noise. And that is true.

[00:02:32] Frankly, it's been true for years with a lot of the online noise. And it's very disheartening to see.

[00:02:37] But ultimately, the story goes back to two young girls, two good friends who did a very normal thing by going for a walk on a warm February day that they had off from school.

[00:02:48] And we're talking, of course, about 14-year-old Liberty or Libby German and her 13-year-old friend Abigail or Abby Williams. They had the day off from school, as I mentioned. They went out to the local trails. Now, they were from Delphi, Indiana. That is the seat of Carroll County.

[00:03:06] It's kind of a rural part of Indiana if you've never been there. And this is a small city. So it's the county seat. It's kind of bigger than some of the nearby towns, but it's by no means big.

[00:03:17] There is an extensive trails network there that was converted from the railroad that used to be there. Indiana used to be very much have a lot of railroads crisscrossing the state. Those have mostly become defunct. And sometimes local communities or the state converts them to trails.

[00:03:37] I think it's also worth noting that, as Anya mentioned, Delphi is a small town in a rural area. It is, however, a relatively short drive away from Lafayette, Indiana, which is the home of Purdue University, which is one of the larger universities in the state of Indiana.

[00:03:58] And so that town is bigger, a bit more metropolitan in feel. And for a while there was speculation that perhaps the killer could have come from the Purdue University community. However, there's been no evidence to point to that fact.

[00:04:16] So Libby and Abby, as we mentioned, they're good friends. They're both involved with sports. You know, they're beloved by their friends and family. That afternoon after they had a sleep over the night before and then they went out to walk the trails,

[00:04:30] Libby's older sister, Kelsey, dropped them off near the trails across from a farm at around 1 49 p.m. So the girls walk to the Monon High Bridge. That's a very large railroad bridge that sort of spans a gap over Deer Creek. It's terrifying, to be honest. We've been there.

[00:04:51] We didn't walk on it, but we were under it. It's a very scary. I know they've done renovations since we were there, so it may look different now. But yeah, the time of the murder of these two girls, the bridge was in not great shape.

[00:05:06] I don't know if I would say it was decrepit, but it was not in great shape. It did not look really sturdy or safe. But you know, teenagers would walk on it.

[00:05:15] You know, that's one of those things that when you're young, you might be a little bit less afraid of things like that. And what they wanted to do is take some photos.

[00:05:24] And I mean, it is a very cool photo opportunity to go out there and get a great view of everything. And it just looks cool, even though it looks terrifying to me because I hate heights. So unfortunately, this this very normal outing for these girls turned tragic

[00:05:42] and our best sense of when it started to turn tragic is the time stamp of two 13. It's our understanding that that's the time stamp of an interaction between the girls on the bridge and a man who accosted them. What do we know about that interaction, Kevin?

[00:06:01] We know about this interaction because it was caught at least partially on video and audio recording by Liberty German on her phone. Now, we've only seen and heard a relatively small portion of this recording according to court documents. This recording is 43 seconds.

[00:06:22] We've heard maybe just two or three seconds worth of audio and we've seen two or three seconds of video. The video depicts the person coming to be known as Bridge Guy, who is seen to be walking presumably towards the girls

[00:06:41] and the voice that is captured is hymns commanding the girls to go down the hill. He says, guys down the hill. And so it's a really remarkable thing that Libby was able to have the presence of mind to film him

[00:06:56] and what must have been just an absolutely terrifying situation. It's also very important to note that one fact about this encounter that was again captured by Liberty German is that apparently at some point during it there was some sort of communication between the girls pertaining to the fact

[00:07:17] that Bridge Guy was armed, that he had a gun. So they're saying to something to the effect of this man has a gun and then he's ordering them away. So it captures a kidnapping.

[00:07:27] Yes. And the fact that Bridge Guy had a gun was not revealed until many years later. Now, the girls were subsequently forced down a hill. They are taken or forced across a creek, although some have speculated that they were trying to run away. It's unclear either way.

[00:07:51] The killer and the two girls move across the creek and they end up on property belonging to a man named Ronald or Ron Logan. He has many, many acres back here and this is part of his property. And they are subsequently murdered. They are killed with a knife.

[00:08:12] Yes. And we also know that after the murders, there were sticks put on the girls body later as we will discuss there is controversy about what meaning if any, there is to the sticks.

[00:08:27] So Libby's family realizes something is wrong when her father, Derek German, arrives to pick the girls up. That was their plan and he told them that he'd be there between three and three thirty. They don't show up. He can't find them. He looks around.

[00:08:44] You might be thinking, you know, as a parent, maybe these teenagers are just off goofing around, but quickly it becomes clear that something is wrong. These kids are responsible. They're not this is not like them.

[00:08:55] He calls his family for backup and at five twenty they bring in local authorities because at this point it's clear that there's not just some sort of confusion or Miss rendezvous. They're not picking up their phones or Libby's not picking up her phone and something must be wrong.

[00:09:11] Meanwhile, within there at three fifty seven, a woman named Sarah Carbaugh is driving her car on three hundred north and nearby road. She says on the side of the road she sees a man walking who appears muddy and bloody.

[00:09:24] So many have speculated that's the killer leaving the scene. Now at midnight that night, there's still no results. They the searchers haven't found anybody. This is expanded from just law enforcement to volunteer searchers. At midnight, the searches are called off officially, although it is our understanding

[00:09:39] that unofficial searches went on from there. But the reason why an official search would be called off is because it's dark out, there's safety issues, there's liability issues, but people are still looking for them. And around noon the next day, the girls are discovered.

[00:09:57] Yes, their bodies are discovered as we mentioned on property belonging to Ron Logan. This is a he owns many, many acres. So it was not like right near his house. It's just property he owns. It's kind of a stretch, a swath of land.

[00:10:15] So pretty quickly a number of investigative agencies begin to work together on this investigation. This this this team includes the FBI, the Indiana State Police, the Carroll County Sheriff's Department and later at some point, the FBI leaves the U.S.

[00:10:37] Marshals come on to the case, but I think it's important to note that there were a lot of resources put into this case very, very quickly. So at some point we presume in February of 2017, although we do not have

[00:10:55] a specific date and could be incorrect about that, but early on a man named Richard Allen, who is a worker in a local CVS in Delphi came forward and met conservation officer Dan Doolan somewhere and told Doolan that he was on the trails that day.

[00:11:13] We do not know when this happened. He was coming forward saying I was a witness. I was there and this tip is our understanding is that it was subsequently mis-filed that essentially Allen was listed as Richard Whiteman. Whiteman was the street that he lived on at the time.

[00:11:32] So there was some sort of classification error and that tip got lost, even though obviously it's highly significant that a Caucasian male was coming forward saying I was on the trails that day. He's not the only Caucasian male that was on the trail that day to be

[00:11:46] clear, but anybody matching that description going to come under scrutiny and that's not what happened here. Why was Doolan involved? Well, it's our understanding that a lot of different, as we said, a lot of different agencies were getting involved with this.

[00:12:00] Perhaps that will come to be regarded as a mistake because more agencies bring more resources, but they also lead to possible issues, things getting lost, balls getting dropped. He wasn't considered a suspect. Our understanding is a number of other people were considered suspects,

[00:12:19] many of whom names have never been revealed. Now I think it's fair to say that in the course of this investigation, investigators have taken seriously the possibility that a number of people have been involved with the crime.

[00:12:39] And I think it's also fair to say that the majority of people who they have taken seriously have names that have not been released to the public. And I think it would be interesting at some point to learn

[00:12:52] about some of the people that they considered and dismissed as being involved in the crime. But all of that being said, there are, there have been some suspects or people, people alleged to have been involved in this crime whose identities did get out to the public.

[00:13:14] So it's important to remember that because when we talk about people coming up on the radar, that's like an iceberg. We can see the tip of that. We cannot see what's underwater. On February 22nd 2017, an image of Bridge Guy was released from Libby's phone and along with audio.

[00:13:31] The image depicts a guy in a blue jacket. He's walking. It's very blurry. You can tell he's on a bridge. You can't really make out a lot about his face. And the audio had a man saying down the hill. Through investigation, as we mentioned, a number of leads

[00:13:49] came up. One came to a head on February 25th 2017. A young man named Kagan Klein's home was raided in Peru, Indiana. Peru is not that near Delphi. It's the county seat of Miami County. Kagan Klein was a young man who lived there with his father Tony

[00:14:08] and was engaging in rampant activity around catfishing children and collecting a cache of child sexual abuse materials that was found on his phone during that raid. And that day, a member of the FBI gave a statement to a reporter publicly clearing Kagan of involvement in the murders.

[00:14:31] That was despite the fact that even if they didn't think he was good for the murders, he should certainly should have been arrested based on the CSAM alone. So a bit of a baffling situation there. And he was not charged in connection with the CSAM for several years.

[00:14:47] On March 6th 2017, Logan's house was searched. Now we mentioned Logan. He was the property owner. He had some bad things in his past. Abusive behavior allegedly towards romantic partners, drinking excessively, having problems with his license because of that.

[00:15:03] So he had some trouble in his past and he was being heavily scrutinized and those search warrant. He was busted for probation violations for drinking alcohol and driving. And he was subsequently gotten to legal trouble over that, although nothing seems to indicate that he was ever

[00:15:23] charged or anything like that. That came close to anything around the Delphi case, but certainly they were looking at him and maybe even applying pressure on him with the probation violation. On July 17th 2017, a sketch was released in the case

[00:15:39] depicted an older looking man and it was from the sighting of Sarah Carbaugh, what she saw. So it's an older looking man. This was actually the second, not the first sketch drawn. There's a number of sketches in this case that have

[00:15:52] never even been released, but this was of the two that are known. This was the second drawn first released. But most people call it the first sketch because that's the one that was released first and that's what the public knows it as or the old man sketch.

[00:16:07] Nicholas McCliland became the prosecutor of Carroll County in December of 2017. And so that means that he took over the case for the state if there was going to be a prosecution. The original prosecutor was Robert Ives. So he was not original to this case, but has certainly

[00:16:26] been on it for a very long time. McCliland, yes. There was a very dramatic press conference held on April 19th 2019. It was this press conference and investigators announced they were moving in a new direction. They didn't really explain why they were moving in a new

[00:16:43] direction, but they did offer a new sketch. The sketch was from witness Betsy Blair and showed a much younger person of interest. And they also released a video of Bridge Guy walking and they added a word to the quote down the hill.

[00:17:00] Now they released it as guys down the hill. So an additional word from Bridge Guy, a new look to the possible suspect and a lot of pretty baffled people at home who are wondering what does this mean?

[00:17:12] I think a lot of people felt that an arrest was imminent to that moment, but it was not. On August 19th 2020, Kagan Klein was arrested on the C. Sam charges and interrogated by Detective Dave Vito of the state police and Deputy U.S. Marshall Jeremy Clinton.

[00:17:30] They talked to him about his contact with Libby via his catfishing Anthony shots account and indicated that they believed he was talking to her right before her death and that there were plans to meet up. We've subsequently learned that part of Kagan's M.O.

[00:17:46] was to try to get locations of some of his catfishing victims, although there's no indication that you know he's involved with any other murders. All these other situations were him praying remotely on these children and getting them to send him. Disturbing images.

[00:18:05] In January of 2022, Ronald Logan died of COVID. He never faced any charges in relationship to the murders. Yeah, his death day has been reported as 2020 and 2021, but he died on January 24th 2022. In August of 2022, there was a river search that we

[00:18:26] exclusively reported out and that was done by the state police to attempt to corroborate things that Kagan Klein was saying about the Delphi case. I think the fact that no charges were brought around that indicates that there was nothing found to corroborate his statements.

[00:18:43] That's just me drawing a conclusion. At some point in the fall of 2022, we believe that there was a review of the case done by the prosecutor's office and at that time they determined that a man named Richard Allen had come forward shortly after the murders to

[00:19:00] mention that he had been in the area of the murders at the time of the killings and that tip apparently had not been sufficiently investigated. And so now investigators decided to prioritize it. Based on the PCA, we believe that this had to occur

[00:19:19] at least early September or before that. Because the PCA mentions now Sheriff Tony Liggett going through the Orion FBI tip management system about Richard Allen in September. So we imagine that he came on the, you know, he came on the radar either right before that or shortly

[00:19:42] before that or a number of weeks before that. It's not clear though. That represented the most dramatic shift yet in this investigation because in October of 2022, Allen becomes a huge focus. Police talk to him. He gives them more details about his activities that day.

[00:20:06] They talked to his wife, Kathy. She gives them more details as a result of those conversations, a search warrant is obtained and their house is searched. They seize knives, clothing and Allen's Sig Sauer handgun, which is subsequently tested and turns out to match a

[00:20:31] unspent round found at the scene next to the two bodies that that is considered perhaps the most concrete evidence against Richard Allen in this case. And Allen is detained and arrested in October of 2022. Then Sheriff Toby Blesenby of Carroll County was concerned

[00:20:54] about his ability to maintain Richard Allen safely in his jail at Carroll County. And so he sought to transfer him to the Indian Department of Corrections for safe keeping and Judge Ben Deener agreed to that. It's important to note that at this time, Richard Allen

[00:21:15] was not represented by any attorneys and it is unclear if Richard Allen knew that this was being sought or if Richard Allen wanted this or if Richard Allen himself felt in any danger. It was November 2nd, 2022. And then the subsequent day of the transport order was

[00:21:34] granted and it adds some unexpected information within it because Judge Benjamin Deener resigned pretty quickly taking on the case citing concerns about social media and the public's extreme interest in the case. And then a day after his resignation, the Indiana

[00:21:52] Supreme Court came in and appointed Judge Francis or Fran Gull of Allen County as a special judge in the case. So she took on the case. Then began the hunt for attorneys to represent Richard Allen. Our understanding behind the scenes is that a lot of people got calls.

[00:22:11] There was definitely a search. There was not a sense that the bar in Carroll County would really, you know, the defense bar would be able to do this. It's so it's such a small legal community there. And ultimately on November 14th 2022 Judge Gull appointed

[00:22:27] Bradley Rosie of Logan's Fort and Andrew Baldwin whose headquarters is based in Franklin but who takes cases all around Indiana to represent Richard Allen. So he now had attorneys on November 22nd Judge Gull issued a gag order prohibiting witnesses and parties

[00:22:46] to the case including the attorneys from commenting publicly about it. One thing we should note is that Nicholas Mckelyland fought to have the PCA remain sealed, which is very unusual and the defense and media interveners asked for it to be released.

[00:23:01] So on November 29th 2022 Gull ruled against the prosecution for the defense and released the PCA. It revealed more information about the crime that took place and the evidence against Allen. As we mentioned, the spent bullet was a key part of

[00:23:19] it, witness sightings of cars and individuals at the scene and the fact that Allen admitted to being on the trails that day. At some point in December of 2022 defense attorney Andrew Baldwin sent some discovery product to Brandon Woodhouse and the prosecution didn't learn

[00:23:38] about this until seeing a YouTube video that Brandon Woodhouse made about this some months later. Brandon Woodhouse is a man who's been on a lot of legal trouble up in Carroll County. And the reason given for this error was that Bradley

[00:23:52] Rosie and Brandon Woodhouse both start with BRA and it was just a mistake. In spring of 2023 Richard Allen made incriminating statements about the case in a recorded phone conversation with both his wife and mother. So we don't know what specifically was said. It's not clear to us.

[00:24:12] All we know is that they're apparently repeated incriminating statements and it was made in a situation where there is a record of it and it was two trusted family members, not a jailhouse or prison house snitch and not a law enforcement officer.

[00:24:30] So seemingly immediately after that the defense filed an emergency request to modify the safekeeping order on April 5th 2023 and that request outlined what the defense characterized as burgeoning mental health issues including psychosis and schizophrenia. Obviously the mental health professionals listening

[00:24:57] will know that those are very specific terms and as lawyers you know they're not mental health professionals they're lay people but that was them saying what they felt they had seen from their client. And they were arguing for him to be there for

[00:25:10] moved from Westfield to a jail in Cass County on April 20th 2023 the prosecution responded by asking for his mental health records. That request was ultimately declined by the judge. Then there was a development in the Kagan Klein case. That Kagan Klein ended up pleading guilty and he

[00:25:35] was sentenced to some 40 years in prison. Kagan Klein never faced any charges connected to the deaths of Abby and Lily. So Kagan Klein pled guilty that was all over that once promising angle of the case seemingly was wrapped up with with no real indication that there

[00:25:53] was involvement from him in this murder. Of course he continues to deny that any involvement was given to this day but there was a lot of interesting stuff ahead in Richard Allen's case. On September 18th 2023 the defense team released a Frank's motion and a Frank's memorandum.

[00:26:14] Now what a Frank's motion does is essentially say I'm going to boil this down in a very simplistic way but the police are lying we need to have a hearing to show that and maybe this case needs to be thrown out as a result.

[00:26:27] Is that a fair summary? Yes. So the motion was brief but the memorandum was very long went into a lot of detail graphic detail on the murder of the two children and also named a lot of specific people as part of constructing

[00:26:46] an alternate theory away from Richard Allen pointing to other suspects. And what the defense said was that they felt that this crime was part of a widespread conspiracy a cult if you will that they characterized as Odinist meaning Odinists are white supremacists who worship

[00:27:10] Norse Germanic religion so think Odin Thor. It's complicated because there's also heathens who are not white supremacists. There's been a lot of debate since about what's Odinist, what's heathen, what exactly is going on here but what the defense said was that a lot

[00:27:28] of the hallmarks of the crime scene meaning like a smear of blood on a tree sticks that were used to cover the bodies that Kevin mentioned earlier were actually should be read into as symbols left by the Odinist to telegraph their sacrifice.

[00:27:45] So that's how they're constructing the defense. It's a pretty elaborate theory and also explains a way or at least attempts to Richard Allen's incriminating statements. Gone is the claim that mental health issues had anything to do with this and what's in now is

[00:28:02] that prison guards may have forced him to confess through threats or coercion. They do not offer any evidence of that and even note that they have none and that he never said that but they do include that and it appears

[00:28:17] to be a way to kind of explain the confessions without dragging his mental health records into this case. On October 5th 2023, Oni and I received graphic crime scene photos from a man in Texas named Mark Cohen. Cohen was connected with Brandon Woodhouse.

[00:28:36] Oni and I alerted the prosecution and the defense of this a subsequent investigation revealed that the ultimate source of the pictures was a man named Mitch Westerman who is a former close employee of defense attorney Andrew Baldwin. Another person involved in this leak subsequently died of suicide.

[00:29:03] Westerman and Baldwin had a meeting during the course of the law enforcement investigation. During this meeting, Westerman told Baldwin that he had leaked the photos Baldwin sent an email about this to Rosie, but Rosie did not see the email until the next day.

[00:29:27] Westerman's story is that he basically went into the conference room of criminal defense attorney Andrew Baldwin when Baldwin was on a phone call in his private office and that Westerman saw the crime scene pictures lying on a table and there and took pictures of them and shared them

[00:29:49] with a friend of Westerman's but it's also a fact that Baldwin sent Westerman the Frank's memorandum ahead of time and also had extensive conversations with Westerman about the case and the defense strategy. So this is essentially derailed the case to a certain

[00:30:11] extent a group of adult mostly men wanting to share photos of dead children has essentially turned this case into a circus because there's been a lot of legal back and forth ever since then instead of things proceeding smoothly to trial. Judge Gall resolved that the defense attorneys

[00:30:35] ought to be thrown off the case for this breach of her protective order and indicated that there would be an embarrassing hearing that would be televised unless they withdrew they subsequently withdrew then they came back and said we never intended to withdraw

[00:30:51] and there was a whole legal fight at the Indiana Supreme Court. In the meantime new defense attorneys William Labrado and Robert Scrimman to Allen County public defenders were brought in appellate lawyers got to work in the case on behalf

[00:31:07] of Allen to restore to the defense and also throw off Judge Gall on January 18th 2024 on the same day as the actual hearing the Indiana Supreme Court came back with a ruling that please nobody saying that the defense should be restored to protect

[00:31:25] Allen's rights but that essentially Judge Gall's actions were understandable given the gravity of the leak and that she should remain on too. So they're both on their everyone's back and then the end of January prosecution in the January prosecuted Nick McLean filed for

[00:31:42] contempt of court charges against Rosie and Baldwin over the leak and we envision that the legal wrangling around this leak in its consequences and the removal of the attorneys and the restainment of the attorneys will drag things on a lot and result in more delays.

[00:31:59] That's my forecast for this case. It's very very unfortunate. It's tragic all around but when people talk about how chaotic the Delphi case is a lot of that goes back to what Westerman did. And so when we also say that the girls are getting

[00:32:19] forgotten you can kind of see how that has happened over the years. There's been so much seven years on it's it's sort of sad and depressing to think about because people it's very easy for people to say Justice for Abby

[00:32:34] and Libby and whatnot but I don't really think that that is at the heart of anything anymore. Yeah, it's hard to believe it's been seven years. Let's try to think of Abby and Libby and try to imagine what sort of life they could be leading now if their

[00:32:53] lives have not been taken away from them. Yes, and let's think about their families who seven years on there's no end in sight. Even though they may feel like they're closer to answers by the fact a trial may be coming.

[00:33:06] The fact of the matter is that while the trial is currently scheduled for October who knows when it's going to happen. It's all very much up in the air and at the end of the day all of us as observers on the outside that

[00:33:24] can be frustrating but I can't imagine it's any it's much worse than the frustration felt by the families over this. But anyways, you know keep keep Abby and Libby and your thoughts today. It is the anniversary and hopefully as things go

[00:33:39] on everything will happen in the light and in public and we'll go as smoothly as possible and there can be a fair trial for Richard Allen and things will just go as as they're meant to go under our criminal justice system. Thanks for listening.

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