The Delphi Murders: Richard Allen Moves to the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility

[00:00:00] Content Warning This episode contains discussion of murder. Today we received some news in the Delphi Murders case that we wanted to share with you all, so we'll be doing a quick little episode here covering it.

[00:00:14] And that news is just that Richard Allen has been moved to a new prison. We'll be talking about his old prison, Westville, his new prison, and any other details we can glean from this story at this point. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:00:31] And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet. And this is The Delphi Murders. Richard Allen Moves to the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility.

[00:00:52] So I want to start by asking some obvious questions. First of all, we've been hearing a lot about Westville over the last few months. Most of us have not heard that much about the Wabash Correctional Facility. One interesting little detail is it's where Keegan Klein is.

[00:01:56] Don't read into that. People should not read into that. That is, I just, things can be adjacent or interesting and worth commenting on, but that doesn't mean that there's some relation there. Does that make sense?

[00:02:11] That makes sense. But if the name of this facility sounds familiar to you, perhaps that's why. Perhaps it's because you've read some of the coverage of the Keegan Klein case, and that's where he's at. What else do we know about the Wabash Correctional Facility?

[00:02:28] Let's talk first of all about the size of this thing. This facility has a capacity of 2,200 beds and it's designated a high-medium slash medium slash minimum adult male center. So it has maximum security and minimum security as well.

[00:02:50] The one notable aspect of this facility is that it has a special needs unit and that's for the most severely mentally ill people. Asking around some of our Correctional Officer sources, this place does not have an infamous reputation as does Westville.

[00:03:08] So if Westville is known as one of the tougher prisons in Indiana, this is not necessarily there. It's a prison so I'm not saying it's necessarily like a, you know, it's not a day camp but just in terms of reputationally it's not there.

[00:03:22] No prison is like an easy place to live. No, no, no, no. It's not downplaying that. It's more of just kind of getting into Westville does stand apart. Westville, Michigan City, those are the ones, even Miami Correctional to a certain extent.

[00:03:37] You mentioned this is known for their ability to have a place for the severely mentally ill to be treated. Do we know if that's relevant in this particular case? No, we do not and I would really caution against making assumptions.

[00:03:54] Nothing we've heard indicates to us that Richard Allen has been transferred to Wabash Valley because he's having some sort of mental health episode. In fact, that's certainly not what we're hearing.

[00:04:08] So just because they have that facility, again, all, you know, in an early, early days of a news story, I think it's important to not jump to any conclusions.

[00:04:17] So I think sometimes people tend to say, Kagan Klein is there. That must be related or this has a special needs unit. That must be related. And I think we need to issue all of that.

[00:04:27] I don't think we need to go with just jumping to conclusions based on every small detail that we find out about this place. Another obvious question that springs to mind is Indiana is not Texas, is not a really huge state, but Indiana is not a small state either.

[00:04:46] So where exactly is this place located, especially in relationship to some of the important sites of this case? So Wabash Valley Correctional Facility is in Carlisle, Indiana, which is in Sullivan County. Sullivan County being in the Terre Haute metropolitan zone.

[00:05:04] You know, just to give you a sense, so this is in the western part of the state. It's a county that borders Illinois and it's in the southern part of the western part of the state.

[00:05:18] And to give you a sense, Delphi is I always say kind of central north Indiana, whereas Westville is at the tippy top northernmost part of Indiana.

[00:05:30] So basically, if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, Richard Allen is being moved from the extreme north part of Indiana all the way down to the extreme southern part of Indiana.

[00:05:46] Yeah, I would say that's fair. Maybe not the most extreme southern part, but certainly in the southern quadrant of the state. And while Westville was, you know, towards the west, this is at the most extreme western part.

[00:05:59] Now let's talk about where this is in relation to other locations because that's something that came up with Westville. You had Bradley Rosie making arguments in a hearing saying that Westville was rather inconvenient for him and his co-counsel Andrew Baldwin to go to.

[00:06:20] So they're saying, listen, this is, you know, this isn't fair because we're based so far away. The important locations I think so Franklin Indiana is where Baldwin is based out of Logan sport Indiana is where Rosie is based out of.

[00:06:34] And then of course, Delphi is the center of all this where the trial is happening. And Fort Wayne is where the two new attorneys for Richard Allen are based out of. And that is of course William Labrado and Robert Scremmond.

[00:06:49] So what's the difference in travel time say between Delphi to Westville and Delphi to this news place? So Delphi to Westville is an hour and a half north as far as driving goes. Wabash Valley to Delphi is two hours and 45 minutes to the southwest.

[00:07:12] So you're adding quite a lot of time when it comes to Delphi. When it comes to Logan sport, Westville is also an hour and a half north. Whereas Wabash Valley is three hours southwest. So for Logan sport, you're also adding a lot of time. Franklin Indiana.

[00:07:35] So Franklin Indiana is three hours to the south of Westville. Franklin Indiana is two hours away from Wabash Valley. So you're knocking an hour off of Franklin. So if Andy Baldwin were to come back on this case, it would be a shorter drive for him.

[00:07:55] But still rather brutal one at two hours one way. What two hours one way is better than what say three hours one way. Yes, it's obviously better, but it's not like it catapults it into the realm of extreme convenience.

[00:08:10] And then two for Fort Wayne Westville is two hours to the south. Whereas Wabash Valley is three hours and 37 minutes away. So you're making it way more inconvenient for everyone except for Baldwin if he stays on.

[00:08:28] And it's not like it is as you say, it's not like it would be extra easy for Baldwin if he were to stay on because that would still be a four hour roundtrip.

[00:08:37] Yes. Now we know Judge Francis Gall sort of smack down Rosie a bit in that hearing where she said, you know, you're talking a lot about how convenient it is for you. This seems more like a you problem than a problem for the inmate.

[00:08:52] So so why whatever reason this transfer was done judging by this information you've given us. It's obvious that it was not done for the convenience of the attorneys. No, yeah. If anyone's kind of getting the idea of like, oh wow, OK, maybe they're making it more convenient.

[00:09:11] This does not make it more convenient if anything this makes it worse in terms of the convenience of people going there. So if you wanted to make a convenient, I imagine you'd go for Miami Correctional that's closer.

[00:09:28] But I don't know. I'd have to pinpoint what exact you know location. We don't know where Kathy Allen is now. She's still living in Delphi or where she's living. But let's assume for the sake of argument that she's living in Delphi.

[00:09:45] It would be more inconvenient for her to have an in person visit. Yeah, I don't think she's in Delphi anymore. But yeah, I would say that, you know, I this is certainly unless she's relocated to somewhere that's, you know, around Carlisle, around Terre Haute.

[00:10:01] And I don't, you know, this doesn't boost convenience. So, you know, we can't really determine why this move happened, why this transfer happened.

[00:10:10] We do know that it is the right of the Indiana Department of Correction, which of course runs the prisons in the state of Indiana to move him around. They can do that. That's at their discretion is my understanding.

[00:10:23] Well, why don't we refresh our memory because the point you're making about the rights of the Indiana Department of Correction, that you're taking that from an order that the judge issued not long after the June hearing. Mm hmm. Yes.

[00:10:39] This order was actually issued on July 19th 2023. And I'm just going to read a couple of sentences from it. The Department of Correction has provided and will continue to provide defendant with the necessary medical services, including any mental health services.

[00:10:57] If the Department of Correction believes a facility other than Westville is more appropriate or more convenient for counsel, the court is confident that the Department of Correction will move the defendant accordingly.

[00:11:09] Okay. So obviously we've debunked the idea that this would be more convenient for counsel, regardless of what set of counsel we're even talking about. So this must have been some sort of internal calculus that this would be a better fit for Allen for whatever reason.

[00:11:27] Now, I should note that we don't even know if this stay at Wabash Valley is temporary or permanent. That's important to note. For whatever reason, I get envisioned scenarios where an inmate is moved and transferred from one prison to another on some sort of temporary measure.

[00:11:46] Maybe one facility has more state-of-the-art amenities around something that is needed for that individual. I'm not saying that that's happening here, but I'm just saying that I don't necessarily know if we can say that this is a permanent shift.

[00:12:02] And it's possible that something will come up later on where I'm just speculating here. I'm just noting that we don't know everything, so I don't want to necessarily jump to any permanent conclusions. Yeah, that's fair.

[00:12:14] And another thing worth noting is a few moments ago I was saying, assuming just for the sake of argument that Kathy Allen still lives in the Delphi area, this would be more inconvenient for her.

[00:12:27] Also, the fact is we know that the trial and all the pretrial proceedings take place in Delphi.

[00:12:36] So this new location, since it's further away, at least in theory, is going to make it more difficult for the sheriffs or whoever to transport Richard Allen from his cell to court.

[00:12:55] Just in terms now, you said that Westville is about an hour and a half away from Delphi. That's a three-hour round trip. Now we're looking at a seven-hour round trip. That just adds more time to the transfer process to get him into court for a pretrial hearing.

[00:13:17] So Carol County or whoever has to devote more manpower and more time to it. Yeah, so it's definitely interesting. We have reached out to the to IDOC.

[00:13:28] We've reached out to the Attorney General's office, Todd Rakita's office for reasons that we'll get into in a moment to ask them about this and see if we could get any further information about why this has happened. What are the reasons? Is this temporary? Is this permanent?

[00:13:46] And we've not heard back at this point. I sort of doubt we will hear back given that the gag order in this case has mostly prevented people from making public comments or at the very least it's been a convenient excuse for officials to not make public comments.

[00:14:04] But we'll be kind of monitoring if there's any more information we can get about why this has happened. I will say there's some things that do come to mind.

[00:14:16] But before we talk about that, why don't we actually just peruse the language of today's order so we can get a sense of what exactly was stated. Notice to the court regarding transfer of defendant.

[00:14:34] The Indiana Department of Correction, a non-party by council respectfully notifies the court as follows.

[00:14:40] One defendant Richard M. Allen was placed under a safekeeping order by this court on November 3 2022 and confined within the Indiana Department of Correction throughout the pendency of this action or as otherwise determined by the court.

[00:14:55] Two pursuant to Indiana code 3533111 the commissioner of the Indiana Department of Correction may transfer an individual under a safekeeping order to a facility deemed suitable for their confinement with available space. Three on December 6 2023 Mr. Allen was transferred from the Westfield Correctional Facility to Wabash Valley Correctional Facility.

[00:15:20] Four the Indiana Department of Correction anticipates continuity of services and care provided to Mr. Allen at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility respectfully submitted Theodore E. Rakita Attorney General of Indiana.

[00:15:35] So one thing that jumps out at me there is that earlier of course we mentioned how what the judge wrote earlier indicated that to her mind, I. Doc, Indiana Departments of Corrections has the authority to move Richard Allen from one place to another within the Department of Correction system if they think it's appropriate.

[00:15:59] But in this order they're not saying well we're doing this because we think it's appropriate. They're saying we're doing it because we have the authority under this one specific rule.

[00:16:10] So we should go look at that rule. I'm going to read the rule and then I'd love to hear what you have to think about what it might mean on you. Absolutely.

[00:16:20] Upon motion by the sheriff prosecuting attorney defendant or his counsel attorney general or court alleging that an inmate in a county jail awaiting trial is in danger of serious bodily injury or death or represents a substantial threat to the safety of others.

[00:16:41] The court shall determine whether the inmate is an imminent danger of seriously bodily injury or death or represents a substantial threat to the safety of others.

[00:16:51] If the court finds that the inmate is in danger of serious bodily injury or death or represents a substantial threat to the safety of others, it shall order the sheriff to transfer the inmate to another county jail or to a facility of the Department of Correction designated by the commissioner of the department as suitable for the confine.

[00:17:11] The court shall determine whether the inmate is in danger of serious bodily injury or death or represents a substantial threat to the safety of others.

[00:17:26] I don't really know what to make of that. So they're saying, does this indicate the fact that they cited this rule that they're saying that he was in danger to himself or others at Westville?

[00:17:38] They're saying we're moving him under the authority of this rule and this rule seems to say you can move an inmate if he's a danger to himself or others.

[00:17:51] But it confuses me frankly because it also indicates that for this rule to be invoked, the court shall have to make a determination as to whether the inmate is an imminent danger or serious bodily injury.

[00:18:06] Right and we've seen no indication that they've done so. Wouldn't that be public if they did? I would imagine but in this case who knows.

[00:18:16] Yeah, it's very confusing. I think it's disturbing if he's a danger to himself or others or in danger from others in Westville. That sort of is a troubling reason for him to be moved.

[00:18:32] Was there anything else about the language or the contents of this order that stood out to you?

[00:18:39] The way they've worded it makes it sound like it's going to be a permanent shift. It is my analysis of the way this is phrased. I could be wrong but they're not hedging and all they're just saying if we determine something's better for him, we'll move him there.

[00:18:54] How does that sound to you? Yeah, it makes you wonder. As we mentioned before they're known for their ability to treat people with severe mental illness. We have in the past heard stories about Richard Allen having extreme mental health conditions. We've heard about him eating paper and stuff.

[00:19:17] Breaking his tablet. We don't know if that sort of thing is ongoing. And we don't know if that's the reason for this.

[00:19:25] Right. Well, as I indicated at the top we've not heard anything to indicate that the shift here is due to some massive mental health episode. In fact, we've very much not heard that.

[00:19:38] But if there are ongoing concerns that perhaps would be better served by one facility over another then that would make sense to have the shift.

[00:19:48] The one thing that stands out to me about this document is the continuity of services and care. So that was something that came up during the whole safekeeping argument back and forth, especially at that hearing.

[00:20:03] The sheriff of Cass County actually testified and while he had been portrayed in the safekeeping objection or the old attorneys fighting to get him out of Westville as being very open to taking in Richard Allen to his jail.

[00:20:26] On the stand, if you recall Kevin, he was a lot more cagey, essentially saying that he would do it if ordered by a court but he did not want to at all and didn't did not necessarily, you know, want to go down that path.

[00:20:44] I indicated that the mental health treatment and services that his county would be able to provide in the jail facility would be much less than that of the what would be available to the prisons with I dock. Is that your recollection of that day as well?

[00:21:06] That's my recollection of that day.

[00:21:08] Okay, so access to a mental health treatment or various treatments seems to be, you know, very important in Alan's case. There's been talk of suicide watch where at the beginning other inmates and then later correctional officers have been posted to his cell to make sure that he doesn't harm himself.

[00:21:31] We have the whole bizarre saga of he's eating paper. He's non responsive to his counsel. He's breaking his tablets. Robert Bastone and a fellow inmate who we've talked about on the show before also wrote to us that he was smearing feces, although we don't have that confirmed from anyone else.

[00:21:54] So given bestones credibility issues. Who knows? Who knows let's take that with a grain of salt but I'm just mentioning it because there was this sort of drumbeat of symptoms of mental health distress. Then that went away. Yeah, it went away.

[00:22:10] But let's talk about why like when it went away. Certainly the last time we saw Alan in the hearing he seemed. He looked a lot better actually. He looked a lot healthier. He'd been very gaunt thin pallid.

[00:22:24] He came in having a healthy color to his skin. He seemed to have gained some weight as opposed to being emaciated as he had been appearing before.

[00:22:34] And of course Alan's previous attorneys Rosie and Baldwin never indicated at least publicly a desire to use Alan's mental health as a defense. Well, there's there's a bizarre wrinkle to this that I think gets overlooked.

[00:22:52] There was a filing at one point where they were talking about possibly forcibly medicating Alan and that he met with three mental health professionals within Westville. And that together they all determined that that would not be necessary.

[00:23:07] So the fact that there was some sort of intervention, whatever you want to call it. Let's sit down and talk about your behavior. Do we need to do this? And the answer is no, you don't.

[00:23:19] I think it's telling either that means that whatever mental health crisis that was genuine passed on some level and was over at that point or it was not a mental health crisis. And those symptoms were not involuntary.

[00:23:38] And in terms of timing, it would appear when you look at the timeline that we all know, of course, that Richard Allen at the very least is said to have made incriminating statements or confessions over the phone to his wife and mother on certain dates.

[00:24:00] And it's around those dates that this behavior on his part is said to have occurred. And with the old defense team, the lack of interest in not just a mental health defense but also any real examination of mental health beyond their initial push against the safekeeping order.

[00:24:21] In that document, the attorneys indicate they throw around a lot of mental health terms that don't really appear to be strictly accurately used but are more of a common parlance. So they're talking about schizophrenic. He's behaving in a schizophrenic manner.

[00:24:40] Obviously, they're not in a position to diagnose him with schizophrenia and the onset of schizophrenia in middle age is quite rare from what we've heard from mental health professionals. They're also using words like psychotic. Now that can present itself for a number of reasons.

[00:25:00] And so that would not necessarily be out of the realm of possibility. But they're using these mental health terms and their conjuring image of a man in mental health distress.

[00:25:11] And by the time of the Frank's memorandum in which the attorneys laid out their theory of the case, which is that it's an odinous cult that killed the girls and also framed Richard Allen.

[00:25:26] Then you have things shift and instead of perhaps doubling down on the idea that mental health challenges may have prompted Allen to make incriminating statements, which I think is something that a lot of people could understand or imagine happening.

[00:25:45] You know, a man in distress may be saying things he doesn't mean, you know, or that don't make sense. It shifted from that to assigning blame for his incriminating statements on quote unquote odinous guards who are threatening him.

[00:26:04] Although in the document itself, they walk that back and saying, well, he never told us that we're just kind of speculating, which was a heck of a footnote to put in there.

[00:26:14] So that to me, when you have a perfectly good excuse for something and to me mental health is a perfectly good excuse for a lot of things.

[00:26:25] Because if you're in distress, you might do things that people find strange or, you know, self harm, you know, and or something that's against your own interests. Well, perhaps it's less of an excuse than a reason or an explanation.

[00:26:40] Okay, it what that shift tells me is that we went from having mental health being a possible reason for him making incriminating statements to that reason somewhat being taken off the table abruptly in a way that I found strange. Because to me, mental health crises.

[00:27:00] I mean, that is such a that's such a understandable reason for certain things being said or happening the way they're happening because it's it's that's not that's not within the realm of someone's control, especially if they're in a high stress environment.

[00:27:15] But when you shift away from that understandable reason for something happening, and then you go to Odinist conspiracy forcing people but it's not caught on camera apparently and, you know, nobody actually said anything we're just guessing.

[00:27:32] I mean, that's a pretty prominent shift in strategy and the thing that you and I have talked about behind the scenes that always seem to coincide with that is Nicholas McCliland, the prosecutor of Carroll County going for Allen's mental health records.

[00:27:50] If you can if you're a defense attorney and you really don't want the prosecutor to get the prison mental health records of your client, you can't be banging on the mental health drum, because that makes it relevant to the case.

[00:28:05] You have to show the judge. Oh, that doesn't even matter. He shouldn't have those. And it doesn't matter if he didn't make incriminating statements because of mental health reasons.

[00:28:15] He made them because of some Odinist guards being clued into an Odinist network that prompted them to want to help their co Odinists frame this guy.

[00:28:28] Oh, those are excellent points. Now we've been like trying to read the tea leaves and like looking at Wabash and try to feet figure out possible reasons for why Richard Allen might be sent there.

[00:28:44] It also might be worth a while to take a look at what's happening at Westville and see if there is reasons or possible explanations for why he might be being moved from Westville at this time. So what is going on at Westville?

[00:29:02] I got this information from a website called Elevators Architecture and that's an architectural firm that is working on this project. But Westville is in the process of being renovated. It is a massive project and it's gotten a good amount of ink spilled over it.

[00:29:24] But Indiana is closing down Michigan City, which also known as the Indiana State Prison. We call it Michigan City because it's based in Michigan City.

[00:29:35] That's being shuttered. And of course if that's shuttered then more pressure is going to be put upon Westville, which is in the same...it's not too far away. And as a result they're doing a renovation project and it's going to overhaul the Westville campus.

[00:29:54] One thing to note is that Westville is very old. It used to be some sort of, I believe, mental hospital. And as a result we've had inmates, former inmates of there who've told us like it's not very comfortable, it's not very state-of-the-art.

[00:30:10] So it's not considered one of the nicer prisons just from a facility level, to say nothing about the safety issues. They're overhauling this. I don't necessarily think that that's why they moved him but you never know.

[00:30:26] It's worth noting because if there's some sort of schedule going down where they're saying, okay we're going to start changing these cell blocks out or we're going to start focusing on this rather than that,

[00:30:35] perhaps that at least sets things in motion. But yeah, that is something going on. In this construction project at Westville just to give you an idea, it's budgeted at $1.2 billion. Wow. That's B isn't boy. That is a lot of, yeah that's a lot of money.

[00:30:59] But yeah they're kind of in a transitional phase right now. Whereas Wabash Valley is relatively newer facility is my understanding so they're not necessarily going to have those same issues.

[00:31:15] I guess you know and then to repeat, we know that Keg and Klein is also being held at Wabash Valley. We really would encourage people to not read into that.

[00:31:24] I don't even know what the scenario would be that they're moving him so that they can talk together and entrap each other. I just don't think that that's happening.

[00:31:32] Keep in mind at Westville according to what we've heard, Richard Allen has basically been isolated, kept in a cell by himself. Right. And there's no reason to imagine that that would really change at Wabash.

[00:31:48] So we shouldn't assume he and Keg and Klein are going to be paling around together in the prison yard. No, also to repeat our previous reporting we've never found any direct connection that they knew each other so it's important to note that as well.

[00:32:04] I think there's a real tendency within true crime but especially within Delphi to just try to connect everything at all times. And it's really important to leave some things unconnected if there's no evidence and people happening to be in the same prison facility is not evidence.

[00:32:24] It is very well could just be a coincidence. And that's what I think in this situation it is. But we will be keeping an eye on this and seeing if there's any further activity out of Wabash Valley and getting a feel for the situation.

[00:32:47] And also I should note that we actually just heard back from IDOC which is perfect because we're about to wrap up this episode. I don't even know what it says, Anya's looking at her computer screen.

[00:32:58] Well it's not very interesting. They can't make any comment on this is the exact quote from IDOC comms director Greg Dunn. Due to court orders the IDOC can't make any comments on this case at this time so that's pretty much what we were expecting.

[00:33:16] But you have to try. You've got to try, you've got to always reach out for comment and hopefully talk to a person and usually they shoot you down but you know you've got to try. Did we hear back from the attorney general?

[00:33:29] We did actually. They pointed out they said we should reach out to the IDOC. Oftentimes when there's multiple agencies involved with something in my experience everybody just starts in a circle. Well go to this person, go to that person and no one wants to give you a comment.

[00:33:45] Well thank you all so much for listening. We hope you found some of this contextualization of Richard Allen's recent move helpful and informative and we hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet.

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