The Delphi Murders: The Appeal: Everything Everyone Got Wrong at the Oral Arguments

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_03] I'm Anya, and today we're going to revisit the oral arguments in the Delphi Murders case. Content warning, this episode contains discussion of the murder of two girls. So, today is November 11th, 2026. That's a pretty significant day in many ways. It is the anniversary of Richard Allen's conviction in the Delphi Murders case.

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_03] Right? Yes. Today is the day the jury unanimously decided to convict him of four counts of murder for killing Liberty German, who was 14 years old, and Abigail Williams, who was 13 years old, on February 13th, 2017, as they hiked the trails of Delphi, Indiana. So, that case went unsolved for a while. Then in 2022, he was, Richard Allen was arrested.

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_03] He was arrested and charged with the crimes and ultimately convicted by a jury of his peers and sentenced to what is effectively a life sentence. At this time, he will die in prison. And his team filed an appeal on his behalf to say that the court got it wrong. This was unfair. Do you want to talk about how an appeal typically works and what the focus of an appeal typically is versus a trial?

[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_00] In the trial, the point of the whole proceedings is to determine the facts of what happened. In an appeal, the focus is not so much on determining the facts, it's to look at the process. Did people determine the facts in unfair ways? Were they looking at evidence? They shouldn't have been looking at because the evidence should have been excluded. Were they not getting to see evidence? They should have gotten a chance to look at because it was improperly excluded. Things of that nature.

[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_03] Yes. And so, that's sort of what the focus is here. Although, frankly, I think for reasons we'll probably get into, this is all a lot more, let's just say, theatrical than you would typically expect for an appeal.

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_03] And I mean that derogatory. So, now, when it comes to this, it's a different team that is doing the appeal. It's Mark Lehman and Stacey Giuliani, who are the appellate team. Now, I think they're taking a lot of cues from the defense team based on how this has gone so far.

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_03] So, I mean, just in terms of the rhetoric. On the prosecution side, it's not the Carroll County Prosecutor's Office doing it. It is actually the Attorney General's Office for Indiana. So, we talked to you through all this. We talked to you through all the filings. We talked to you through the oral arguments that Kevin and I actually attended.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_03] But now that it's the anniversary, we thought it might be a good opportunity to revisit this topic because there were a lot of things that were said at this oral arguments session that we felt were inaccurate. Or we felt were heavily skewed or we wanted a highlight in some capacity as we are reflecting on this anniversary of the conviction of Richard Allen. And we thought that might be helpful.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_00] Let's do it.

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_03] Let's get into it. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_00] 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.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_03] And this is The Delphi Murders, The Appeal. Everything everyone got wrong at the oral arguments.

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_03] That was such a salty title. But I will say I was the one who suggested it naturally.

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_00] Naturally. So, should we like read things from the transcript and then offer some commentary? Yeah.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_03] I think that makes sense. We can kind of just go through. Again, these are things we thought worth pointing out that we felt were notable. I think we tried to, if there's areas where it's more up to your interpretation, we tried to leave that alone because I think that's, you know, people have the right to come to different conclusions on things. But...

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_00] And actually, before we get started, I think one question everybody has about this process is a question we frankly don't know the answer to. And I don't want to hide that. And that is, when will the decision come down? When is the court going to make its decision? In theory, it could happen at any time. It could happen today. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen next month. It could happen early next year. We don't know. So, we are waiting along with everyone else.

[00:05:26] [SPEAKER_00] We don't have any inside information as to when this will come down. It has been close to a couple of months since the oral arguments happened. That's not really an especially long time. It's not an unusually long wait. So, we just have to be patient. And I apologize. It's frustrating when people say, I don't know. But we don't know.

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_03] I've got to be honest. I will say this. Yeah, the actual arguments that we're going to be talking about occurred all the way back on September 21st, 2026. And they were heard before. The panel of judges is a panel of appellate judges who hear these things. Judge Nancy Vedic, Judge Robert Altice Jr., and Judge Elaine Brown. Those were the various judges who heard this.

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_03] And as for the prosecutor who made the argument, Mr. Lehman made the argument for the defense. I mentioned him, Mark Lehman. This is the second time he's represented Richard Allen. You know, before it was the whole drama over his attorneys getting kicked off during trial. Ellen Maylander is the supervising deputy attorney general for the criminal appeals section of the Office of the Indiana Attorney General.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_03] So she is the one who made these prosecutorial arguments of saying, no, we didn't get anything wrong.

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_00] So let's get into this. Do you want me to read something from this transcript?

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_03] Sure. Go ahead.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_00] Mr. Lehman said that this case is, quote, unprecedented because for the first time in Indiana's modern history, the state took a pretrial detainee to a cell known as a hole and kept him there. Treated him worse than anyone else in his situation and procured statements by exploiting his decompensation, end quote. So, first of all, I think I would quarrel with a lot in that statement.

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_00] And probably the most trivial thing that I'm going to quarrel with, so I'll just quarrel with at the top is, I don't think there's like a gold or brass plaque outside a particular cell with the words a hole written on it. So I don't know who he said this is known as the hole. I don't know how he's determined that. Is that just what he likes to think of it as? Is it a formal judicial determination? Is there a colorful nickname? I don't know where he's getting that from.

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_00] I don't think it's a formal designation within the system itself.

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_03] If I'm trying to convince you, Kevin, that we need to, you know, spend a ton of money and go broke remodeling our kitchen and I start calling it the bad, sad place that makes Anya very unhappy. You know, that doesn't like that. That doesn't that doesn't mean anything. That's just me using rhetorical flourishes in order to try to sway somebody.

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_01] Yes.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_03] And I'm not doing that, by the way. But, you know, just that it's it's just I find this stuff. Honestly.

[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_00] Maybe too many times. Maybe too many times.

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_00] It is not unusual for pretrial detainees to be kept in the prison system as opposed to a county jail. There are a number of reasons for that which are not sinister. I think we've covered cases where a person was incarcerated or charged with a crime and the county jail didn't have the medical facilities.

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_00] In this case, the county jail, Carroll County, did not feel they had the ability to keep Mr. Allen safe. And I don't think that's an empty claim on their part. We saw what that county jail was like at the time. It has since been renovated. Actually, a completely new building has been built for the jail. It was small. It wasn't especially secure.

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_00] I would be concerned about keeping a notorious, a ban accused of notorious crime in the county safe in that situation. The other thing they're saying here is that they treated him worse than anyone else in this situation. I don't think that's true. There are examples used throughout this, one of which is Mr. Allen broke his electronic tablet device and he was given a new one.

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_00] That's usually not allowed. He got in-person visits from his wife. That's usually not allowed people in this situation. And then the key part, though, is it says they procured statements by exploiting his decompensation. They're saying, well, Mr. Allen went crazy because he was kept in this awful situation and the state was deliberately exploiting that to get statements.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_00] I don't think the record supports that to any degree. And I suspect we're making this point throughout our conversation today. In fact, the record shows that state actors, once they were aware that Mr. Allen was going around making confessions, they were telling him in word, in deed, however they could. And basically, to be blunt, shut up. This is something you should be telling to your lawyers.

[00:11:39] [SPEAKER_00] This is not something you should be telling us. They were not trying to get him to keep talking. Mr. Allen indicated that he wanted the warden to come down to his cell so that Mr. Allen could confess to him. If the state was trying to exploit his situation in order to get confessions from him, I think the word would have been down there within seconds to get this confession.

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_00] But no, the warden said, no, no. Everybody was saying, no, talk to your lawyers. Talk to your lawyers. Don't be confessing to us. We don't want to hear this. That is what the record shows.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_03] We don't want to be involved. I mean, that was pretty much the thing. And as you said, warden John Gallupo, then warden John Gallupo didn't even show up. He got a letter from Allen being like, basically, come down here so I can confess to you. He never comes. He doesn't want to be involved. It's so facetious. And I just want to say, it's rare for pretrial detainees to go to prison. It's rare. But, like, we accidentally found a case where that happened.

[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_03] We weren't looking for it. We just happened to be covering the murder of Laurel Jean Mitchell, who was murdered in 1975, 17-year-old girl. And two men were arrested after the cold case heated up due to DNA and a confession. And those perpetrators were Fred Bandy Jr., John Wayne Lehman. John Wayne Lehman. And it's all there in my case. There's, like, messages back and forth between the Department of Correction and the local sheriff's office where they're like, we cannot handle this guy.

[00:13:17] [SPEAKER_03] He's super elderly, frail. He's going to get hurt. You know, like, you need to take him. I don't even think Department of Correction really wanted him. I think there was some back and forth drama. But, like, that tells you we weren't looking for that. It just happened in another case we were covering. So it's not exactly completely unheard of.

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_00] And let's move on. I wanted to mention something else that Mr. Allen's attorney, Mr. Lehman, said. This is a different Lehman than who was in that case you just mentioned.

[00:13:46] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, different spelling.

[00:13:47] [SPEAKER_00] I believe we highlighted this in our original coverage of the oral arguments. He said, quote, we don't care about whether they're true or not. And he's referring there to the confessions. He's saying he doesn't care whether or not Mr. Allen's confessions are true or not. And that's just worth noting, I guess.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_00] A defense team, they don't really – it's not their role to care about the truth of a particular assertion made by their client. They're just trying to protect their client's rights. But it is worth highlighting you did say that on the record.

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_03] I mean, I credit him for being honest. I think it's more of something to highlight because you have people who are essentially Richard Allen truthers who have this whole conspiracy about this case, about how he's been framed. And I think, you know, they very conveniently ignore a lot of the indications like that. But it's like, yeah, I mean, as far as the appellate team, it doesn't matter. It's supposed to be about whether the trial was fair and whether his rights were violated.

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[00:19:50] [SPEAKER_03] But, unfortunately, Lehman doesn't really keep up with this sort of position. He starts, you know, again, caterwauling the whole time about, oh, my client, it's the guy who cares about sticks that's the real killer. Like, okay. And he even was reprimanded by the judges at one point where they were like, stop retrying the case. Just make your argument about the appeal. So, yeah, I think it's, I mean, I don't know.

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_03] It just kind of underscores to me, like, some of the facetiousness of these arguments.

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_00] Another thing we wanted to bring up, there was a lot of discussion here when Judge Goal allowed the confessions that Mr. Allen made into the trial. She did so because she made the determination that they were voluntary. And Mr. Lehman was saying, oh, she used the wrong standard. That's not the case, at least not in my judgment.

[00:20:48] [SPEAKER_00] The analysis about whether or not an accused person's confessions is voluntary begins in the state of Indiana by looking at whether or not there was any coercive state action. If the state is doing something like having an interrogation of someone lasting like 26 hours and they're sleep deprived, that's a coercive action by the state.

[00:21:14] [SPEAKER_00] And yeah, the state should have to go through a lot of hoops to prove that, oh, even though this coercive situation existed, it was still a voluntary thing. But the first thing that has to be established is, was there coercive state action? And we sat at the hearing where this was discussed. And to my satisfaction, I believe to your satisfaction, the state and the former prosecutor

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_00] Nicholas McClellan demonstrated there was no coercive state action here. The point of putting Mr. Allen in protective custody was not to coerce him to make statements. It was to protect him. It was to keep him alive. I 100% believe that if he was not placed in protective custody, Mr. Allen would not be alive today. And maybe you're a person who thinks that that's fine.

[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_02] More's the pity, right?

[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_00] But the fact is, the state had an obligation. The state continues to have an obligation to protect him. They did what they did to protect him. It was not coercive state action in order to get a confession. So that's why I felt that this whole question of, oh, the burden doesn't really apply here.

[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_03] I think I would hope and I would imagine that the appellate judges would be looking at more than just the order that Judge Francis Gull wrote.

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_00] Look at the transcript of the hearing.

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_03] Look at the transcript of the hearing. I think it's very clear where the burden lay. And I think it's very clear that the burden was appropriately applied here. I think that is what you need to look at. I've been underwhelmed frequently in this case by some of Judge Gull's orders and record keeping. And we even filed into the case to try to rectify that. So I think when you're only looking based on her order, it can be easy to be like, well, what's this all about? Because it may leave like what is exactly she saying?

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_03] But when you actually look at the transcript of this hearing, yeah, it's not really a question anymore.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_00] They also refer to a couple of other cases. They maintain support different points they're trying to make. One was the, pardon me if I'm mispronouncing this, the Spano case. It says that when you're evaluating coerciveness, you look at the tactics that the state uses with the unique individual characteristics of the person and their mental health, blah, blah, blah. I don't really feel that the Spano case applies here. It's a completely different situation.

[00:23:50] [SPEAKER_00] I'll just tell you very briefly. I don't want to go too much off track, but I'll tell you what the Spano case is very briefly. Guy involved in a murder. He's indicted for it. They take him in. And it turns out that a friend of his is currently in training to become a police officer. Dear friend of his. Close dear friend of his.

[00:24:14] [SPEAKER_02] Uh-oh.

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_00] So Mr. Spano is the man accused of the crime. His buddy is named Bruno. They bring Bruno in and they tell Bruno, Bruno, we want you to go in there, play on your friendship and tell him that if he doesn't confess to you, you're going to get fired. Even though we know that's not true. So they do stuff like that. They exploit Mr. Spano's friendship with Bruno and get a confession.

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_00] And yes, that is found to be coercive and the confession is thrown out. So I don't really see anything remotely like that.

[00:24:52] [SPEAKER_02] How is it similar at all?

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_00] In this case, the defense team, as I guess you would imagine they would, they're just presupposing that there is coercive state action in this case. That's the lens they are looking at everything through. In my judgment, after evaluating all the facts and attending all the hearings and reading way too many pages of filings in this case, I see no indication that there was coercive state action here.

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_00] I do not believe he was put in protective custody in order to get him to confess. I'm repeating myself, but it seems like this entire case is about people repeating the same arguments over and over again. So again, he was put in protective custody to protect him. He is alive today because he was put in protective custody.

[00:25:45] [SPEAKER_03] I truly don't know what else they were going to do. I mean, he was always going to have to be in a one man cell, which is what he was in even when he was transferred to Cass County. So to me, this argument that like, oh, we should have done it this way. Like I don't. Barring having a whole new prison that's just for people accused of crimes against children to keep them safe. Which I don't really know if that's economically feasible.

[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_03] It just seems like they did what they had to do to keep him safe. That was priority number one. And I also think that if he'd gotten put in gen pop, first of all, he would be dead. Second of all, even if he didn't die, he would have gotten severely harmed. And then that would be an issue for the defense. You know, you coerced him by putting him in gen pop and then he was hurt. Like it's like the state is damned if they do and damned if they don't.

[00:26:41] [SPEAKER_03] And I, again, I, to me, I don't really, I guess I just don't find this super compelling because of that. I don't think at all that this was some sort of coercive tactic. If it had been, why wouldn't they have had people trying to go and like interrogate him? Like trying to exploit that.

[00:27:00] [SPEAKER_00] Look at stuff like what I mentioned a few minutes ago about the warden. Mr. Allen wanted the warden to come down and listen to a confession. If the state was interested in doing everything they can to trick and manipulate Mr. Allen into confessing, then the warden would have rushed down there to get that confession. I think that's obvious. So what did the warden do? He said, no, I don't. I don't want to hear this.

[00:27:27] [SPEAKER_00] When Mr. Allen started making incriminating statements and confessions to his therapist, again, if the state wanted to exploit his deteriorating, his allegedly deteriorating mental condition in order to get these confessions, they would have had her encourage him. Yes, yes. Keep on confessing. I want to hear more, more, more. Give me details. That's not what happened. His therapist repeatedly told him, no, this is something you should talk to your lawyers about.

[00:27:55] [SPEAKER_03] He's saying, Lehman's saying essentially, well, you have to look at what the state's tactics were in conjunction with the individual characteristics of who they're targeting. I think the point is Richard Allen was really sad and depressed. So they were doing things to make him even more depressed to exploit that. I just feel like that is just so, I don't know. I find that silly. I find that really, really a stretch. And that's a nice way of putting it.

[00:28:18] [SPEAKER_00] And also, I would have concerns if this court said, yeah, if a guy's in prison or if a guy's behind bars in jail and he's sad and he confesses, we got to throw that out. Does that mean that from now on?

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_02] Everyone's going to be depressed in prison.

[00:28:37] [SPEAKER_00] Does that mean that any time a person is placed into custody, we can no longer listen to that person if they make a confession? Does that mean that would have to be thrown out because, oh, they must have been sad because they were in custody?

[00:28:52] [SPEAKER_03] Prison's not a good experience for anybody.

[00:28:54] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I don't know where that doctrine and where that line of thought would end, but it certainly doesn't seem to be logical or helpful to the administration of justice. And also, I don't see how it's really protecting anyone's rights.

[00:29:07] [SPEAKER_03] It's not.

[00:29:09] [SPEAKER_00] So let's talk about another case that Mr. Lehman brought up. This is a Virginia case. So let me give just a little bit of background. Some of the evidence against Mr. Allen was what we call the ballistics or tool mark evidence. This is evidence where there was a bullet left at the crime scene and the state had an expert testify to the effect that, oh, I was able to match that bullet to a weapon that Mr. Allen owned.

[00:29:39] [SPEAKER_00] And by Mr. Allen's own words, no one else had access to that weapon but him. So they wanted, the defense wanted to put on a witness who said, oh, this ballistics science, it's hogwash. It's just like astrology. We can't take it seriously. I completely reject this line of science and so should you folks. And in addition to that, they wanted to put on a witness who believed in this type of science

[00:30:04] [SPEAKER_00] to say, well, I think the prosecution's witness made some mistakes. I disagree with that person's analysis. They were allowed to put on the witness who said, I disagree. I'm also an expert in this field. I disagree with the state's analysis.

[00:30:20] [SPEAKER_02] Dr. Eric Warren.

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_00] They were allowed to present that witness. That was allowed. So the state's ballistics expert was not unchallenged by the defense. What they weren't allowed to do was put on this man, Mr. Tobin.

[00:30:34] [SPEAKER_03] Mr. William Tobin.

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_00] Who was going to say, oh, this is just junk science. And Mr. Allen's team indicated this is unfair. We should have had an opportunity to just completely question this entire field of science.

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_02] We should have a trial for... For science. For ballistics. Yeah.

[00:30:56] [SPEAKER_00] Here's the thing about that. You know, courts have to be allowed to make initial determinations about the validity of science and set the bounds of reality in the courtroom. Let's say, for instance, there is fingerprint evidence linking Anya to a theft of a cereal box. Should Anya be able to present some sort of mystic seer who's going to come in and testify

[00:31:23] [SPEAKER_00] about how fingerprint science isn't really valid?

[00:31:26] [SPEAKER_02] Or cereal doesn't exist.

[00:31:28] [SPEAKER_00] No. But Anya would be allowed to present some sort of evidence that says, oh, the person who did this, person who took this fingerprint made some mistakes. Here are some reasons why to doubt that analysis. So with all of that lengthy preamble, there was a case in Virginia where there was strong evidence that a particular person, Mr. Welsh, committed a murder and there was a weapon

[00:31:56] [SPEAKER_00] belonging to Mr. Welsh is linked to the crime through ballistics. And the same person, Tobin, wanted to testify and wasn't allowed to testify by the judge. The judge said, oh, if this person testifies, there'll be calling the credibility of this other person into doubt, which I think is the whole point of the expert.

[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, that kind of seems the point.

[00:32:18] [SPEAKER_00] So they weren't allowed to testify. Mr. Chilbin wasn't allowed to testify. And they apparently didn't have anybody else testify to challenge the results of the ballistics test. The Supreme Court of Virginia said, no, they made a mistake and it is not harmless error because this important testimony wasn't challenged. I feel there are differences there.

[00:32:43] [SPEAKER_00] One of the most significant to me is that in this case, the conclusions of the ballistics expert presented by the state were allowed to be challenged by another expert. And that didn't happen in the Virginia case. So even if you were to conclude that Judge Gull made a mistake and that Mr. Tobin should have been allowed to call this branch of science into question in front of the jury, I would

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_00] think it was a harmless error because the results of the tests were themselves challenged by another expert presented by the defense. So does that make sense?

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_03] Yes. And I would just add to that that, you know, I don't know. It would seem odd to me if all of the appellate and Supreme Courts in this in the country suddenly started trying to contribute to the Bill Tobin cottage industry. You know, I mean, when you talk about the Virginia case, it does seem like, OK, if that's all they had, maybe they should be given that opportunity. In this case, it's different.

[00:33:43] [SPEAKER_00] I will say that Virginia case, there was also a whole lot of other evidence against that man.

[00:33:47] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, I guess I don't think that I think I think at times in history, firearm, forensic firearms examinations have been overstated as evidence. I don't think it qualifies as a junk science for the record. For that's my opinion. I think if. If they used to overstate things, I feel like some of the critical community overstate things today. OK, it's something that you can have as a part of the case without.

[00:34:15] [SPEAKER_00] Here's the thing about science, about any type of science. It is a process that continually improves and people continually find, oh, here's a better way to present our findings. Here's a better way to analyze things. Here's a better things to test things.

[00:34:31] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[00:34:32] [SPEAKER_00] So the science of ballistics, the science of toolmark evidence is continuing to evolve and improve. And there are critics within it who are part of that process and improving it. That doesn't mean we throw the whole thing out.

[00:34:47] [SPEAKER_03] Well, it sounds like people like Tobin would have you do that. I mean, here's here's the thing. Are we seriously like are we going to make not calling Bill Tobin reversible error in Indiana? And then what's the impact of that on. Like all other cases.

[00:35:04] [SPEAKER_00] I guess Bill Tobin would have to be called in to testify in every case.

[00:35:09] [SPEAKER_03] He's a Hoosier now. Come on in. He's going to have to live here. And no, I mean, but I mean, or some other similar person to come in and be like, this is astrology. Again, that feels like a vast overstatement. I again, I don't think firearms people should be overstating anything either for the record. I just think like that seems a bit over the top. But I don't know. I'm not a scientist.

[00:35:31] [SPEAKER_00] Mr. Lehman also was critical of Nick McClellan. So at one point, the Mr. Allen's defense team, shortly after Mr. Allen starts making his confessions. I'm sure this is just coincidence. Shortly after he starts making his his confessions, his defense team files a motion saying, oh, he's really miserable in prison. He needs to have better conditions.

[00:35:56] [SPEAKER_00] And in that motion, they say a lot of things that Nicholas McClellan, the prosecutor described as colorful and dramatic. They also, frankly, said some things that weren't borne out by the facts. That's just not me saying that. I believe Judge Gull indicated that there were things in there that were not worn out by the facts.

[00:36:14] [SPEAKER_02] In other words, they lied.

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_00] They also said things like, oh, it's similar to prison of war conditions. They really.

[00:36:21] [SPEAKER_03] It was honestly disrespectful to actual prisoners of war.

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_00] They really overstated things dramatically. And yes, they used colorful and dramatic language. Mr. Lehman tried to make it sound like, oh, the fact that Mr. McClellan criticized the language of this motion, the fact that Mr. McClellan may have been critical of some of the alleged facts in the motion, that's somehow disrespectful and shows he doesn't care.

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_03] It's mean. Oh, I mean, this is why I can't stand listening to Lehman like this kind of stuff. It's histrionic. It's like to stick with the facts. Stop getting in your little cheap points. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. That was the most ridiculous. Filing. I mean, they topped it with the Frank's motion, the Frank's memorandum, rather. So it wasn't the most ridiculous one in the case, but it was definitely a taste of what was to come.

[00:37:12] [SPEAKER_03] They were putting pictures of Richard Allen holding a little dog and looking happy and then, oh, sitting in a chair in prison and looking sad. I mean, it was colorful and over the top. If they wanted to be taken seriously as a legal document, they could have written it with the judge in mind rather than the press. And that's and, you know, they could have made some of the same points. I truly feel, given that Judge Gull ultimately approved of his transfer to Cass, that had

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_03] they approached that task with some seriousness and didn't act like clowns, that that would that process would have happened a lot sooner. And let's not forget that Mr. McClellan didn't even really like I believe at that hearing. He was like, I don't even care what like he can go wherever as long as he's safe. But like I'm going to push back on all these allegations of corruption that you're making for some reason, even though that has nothing to do with anything.

[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_03] And, you know, if they want to play the press and then have a blow up in their faces, that's not McClellan's fault. That's their own fault.

[00:38:12] [SPEAKER_00] And just very quickly, if you want to have a conversation about the most ridiculous filings in this case, we would be remiss if we did not at least allude to the filing they made where they said Judge Gull was mean and didn't smile at them and didn't call them ding dongs. Yeah, I think that may have been the most absurd filing.

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_03] Also, probably one of the more sexist filings, because would they be filing that about a male judge? I don't think so. I think these gentlemen have a problem with women. I'm not going to lie, but that's just me. I think that when we're talking about this, it's a situation where oftentimes this defense team had two options. One was to do right by their client, keep their heads down, work hard, do the boring, important work of really getting to know this case and defending him to the best of their abilities.

[00:39:00] [SPEAKER_03] Or two, get attention from the media, from the social media, from YouTube. And consistently they went with door number two and their case suffered for it. But I think that is neither here nor there as far as this. The fact that Lehman is trying to rehabilitate it and make it someone else's problem. Again, I find embarrassing. And it also feels like Lehman may be falling into that same trap. Why are you trying to defend these people? You know, just make your arguments.

[00:39:27] [SPEAKER_03] Why are you like I mean, these these are ridiculous filings. I would be embarrassed to defend that.

[00:39:33] [SPEAKER_00] The next item on this list we have is just another indication where Lehman made some comments about the state trying to exploit Richard Allen by getting information out of him. And again, they weren't trying to talk to him.

[00:39:46] [SPEAKER_03] He was at the Wabash facility. I don't know if it qualified as the whole. I'm sorry. Are there like whole qualifications that the Department of Correction holds every year?

[00:39:55] [SPEAKER_00] The Indianapolis Zoo recently lost some sort of certification for their dolphins or whatever. Maybe there's similar whole certifications. Maybe there's a whole a whole whole process.

[00:40:05] [SPEAKER_03] Get Stanley Yelnats in here. I mean, I just I don't I don't. It's just again, it's facetious, but it's like dressed up like it's official language. And it's like, do you think everyone listening is stupid?

[00:40:16] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I think they do. OK, why don't you take over?

[00:40:21] [SPEAKER_03] All right. I'm coming in. One thing I thought was interesting was they were talking about, you know, at one point, you know, Lehman saying no DNA evidence. They want to make you know, they want to make this case and blah, blah, blah. I just want to point out he's absolutely right here. I agree with Mark Lehman. There is no DNA evidence against Richard Allen. But one thing I think two things that we know. One thing is that these girls were murdered. Somebody slit their throats. And left them to die after forcing them to strip in the woods.

[00:40:48] [SPEAKER_03] So this isn't a situation where it's ambiguous if a crime was committed. Somebody did that. And yet, largely due to the conditions of the scene and being outdoors and there being water and dirt involved and there being a ton of blood. There was no offender DNA recovered. There was no usable offender DNA that was recovered and found. It might have been there, but they didn't find it. And that happens in these kinds of cases. So when people say no DNA, it's like, but there's no DNA for anybody.

[00:41:19] [SPEAKER_03] Like, it's not like we found DNA. Like, the closest thing they had was like very, very, very, very, very minuscule amounts of male DNA. That was testified to, I believe, Stacey Bozinovsky, a forensic scientist with the Indiana State Police, that that amount of male DNA could be accrued just simply from being around a male. It didn't indicate sexual contact at all. So, yeah.

[00:41:41] [SPEAKER_03] When people say, well, there's no DNA against him, that would be very compelling if there was male DNA found at the scene that pointed to somebody else. But we don't, that's not the crime scene we're dealing with here.

[00:41:53] [SPEAKER_00] Right. What's next?

[00:41:54] [SPEAKER_03] In terms of what's next, here we get into a lot of Odinism stuff. We get into, I thought it was interesting. There's been, you know, especially on the Richard Allen Truther side, which I include the defense as a part of at this point, there's been so many different suspects that have come up. Ron Logan was definitely a favorite of these people for a while. But Lehman very much wanted to talk about Brad Holder in this, which, again, baffles me.

[00:42:24] [SPEAKER_03] Brad Holder was somebody that the defense consistently wanted to point out to and basically accused him of killing the girls as part of an Odinist ritual. And there are indications that Brad Holder was into Norse paganism of some kind. And we've talked about all the nuances with that in the show countless times. So I'll sum it up, though, basically saying that the problem with Brad Holder as a suspect is that he has a tenuous connection to this.

[00:42:50] [SPEAKER_03] His son knew Abby, one of the victims. OK. But he had an alibi for the day of the murders. And it's a it's a it's quite a good alibi. And I'll get more into that momentarily. But you had you had Lehman saying it's not a solid alibi. Tips identified him as having the voice of Bridge Guy and looked similar to him. And, you know, they didn't they didn't do enough with his alibi.

[00:43:16] [SPEAKER_03] And he had a tattoo that looked like one of the runes and all this stuff. And, you know, I just want to point out a lot of people had tips called in on them. Many people. Right. A lot of people, members of the public who are trying to be helpful or trying to get people they didn't like in trouble would call in and say this bridge guy sounds and looks like this guy. You should look into him. And the police would. Those people are not all guilty. If they're all guilty, there'd be like hundreds of bridge guys.

[00:43:44] [SPEAKER_03] But, you know, that's that's that's neither here nor there. That doesn't mean anything. You need more than that to really tie someone to this crime. Lehman also claims there was this failure to investigate the Odinists. He says, we think that the failure to investigate them is a constitutional error and abuse of discretion. On the judges, I guess, I mean, the judge. I get I know.

[00:44:07] [SPEAKER_03] It doesn't make any sense because not only was there an effort to investigate Brad Holder and other people tied to Odinism. That's the reason why we know all this information about Brad Holder and people tied to Odinism.

[00:44:19] [SPEAKER_03] We heard testimony at the three day hearing all about how much they looked into this and about how people like Nick McClelland, the prosecutor, when you know, when some of these people who are proponents of the Odinism side of things came to him and said, oh, we think, you know, we think there's something here is basically like run with it. Give me probable cause. They couldn't.

[00:44:43] [SPEAKER_03] So that's more of an investigative failure on their parts, because I don't I think they had blinders on and I think they really wanted it to be that outcome. And they did some pretty shoddy police work as a result to act as if this wasn't investigated. How how do like that doesn't even make any sense. The only reason the defense team knows about it is because. It was investigated.

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_03] He also makes a claim that the girls were treated differently, that essentially the crime was was different and there was different treatment of them. And I think, again, this is this is something that is just a very superficial statement on the case based on what we know. I don't think the girls were treated particularly different. Let's talk about the similarities. Both died from sharp edge wounds to the neck.

[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_03] Both were forced across the creek at gunpoint and undressed at some point. The difference is that Abby was wearing Libby's clothes when she died. So she's clothed. But by the fact that she's not wearing her own clothes, it indicates that she was forced to strip at one point, too. Libby is found naked. Between that, the. Injury to Abby's neck is. Less. Less.

[00:45:58] [SPEAKER_03] I guess I'll say more slashes were used to kill Libby. But something like that could be the difference between something I'm speculating here, but Abby passing out immediately and Libby struggling. So there's it's foolish to read into that and it's foolish to say they look that different because there are factors that could explain that. That don't mean that the killer had any particular animosity toward one versus the other or that the goal was different of either. So.

[00:46:27] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, I think it kind of speaks to someone who has just very, very basic knowledge of the actual facts of the case. So. So. At one point they were talking about, OK, they did a bad job with the Brad Holder investigation and they didn't even collect his gun. Now, I just want to note. When police are investigating.

[00:46:48] [SPEAKER_03] You know, it's not their job to expend untold and eternal police resources on every lead once they hit up against something that basically clears somebody. An alibi is one of those things that will clear you. So if you have an alibi, you don't get to then tear apart that person's house in a search warrant and get their gun and get their phone and all these things like there's a point where it's like, OK. That checks out and you're cleared. So.

[00:47:18] [SPEAKER_03] When we're talking about Brad Holder, let's talk about his alibi. So he worked at the Liberty Landfill in Buffalo, Indiana. Buffalo, Indiana is 30 to 40 minutes away from Delphi. So it's not it's not that far, but that's it. That's it. That's a drive. He clocked in at 4.55 in the morning that day, 4.55 a.m.

[00:47:41] [SPEAKER_03] So when the girls are dropped off at the trails that day, Holder is still working at the Liberty Landfill, which, again, 30 to 40 minutes away. The girls start posting pictures of their walk around, I think, like 2.05, I want to say. And at that point, Brad Holder is still at work. At 2.13, that's the famous video of an adult male approaching the girls. We hear a gun clicking. We hear the girls talking.

[00:48:11] [SPEAKER_03] We hear the man telling them to guys down the hill. And that is where they abducted. So they're abducted at 2.13 p.m. Holder is still at work. At 2.32 p.m., Libby's phone stops moving. It ends up under a shoe under Abby's body. That is a pretty good, I think, approximate time for when things started to go down and when they were killed. Not necessarily right at 2.32, but around there.

[00:48:38] [SPEAKER_03] Because one of the bodies being on top of the phone sort of speaks to that, I think. At 2.45 p.m., Brad Holder clocks out. So he was at work for all of that. In order to believe that he's involved, you have to believe a lot of nonsense. You have to believe that this crime went on well past 2.32. He gets there, you know, gets there for this, you know, 30 to 40-minute drive. Immediately knows where to go in the trail system.

[00:49:08] [SPEAKER_03] Which I can tell you, as people, when we first started looking into this case, we had a hard time finding this place. I mean, I don't know. So at 3.57 p.m., Sarah Carboss sees Richard Allen walking muddy and bloody along County Road 300 North. Okay? Slightly over. So at that point, technically, Holder could have gotten to Delphi. And I think there's enough time for him to do that.

[00:49:34] [SPEAKER_03] But slightly over 10 minutes later, at 4.08 p.m., Holder checks into the workout anytime location in Logansport, Indiana. So Logansport is about 30 minutes away from Delphi. So I guess he time-traveled or teleported to the gym from being muddy and bloody guy, which I think is what they're trying to imply here. I find this so facetious. I think it's also just highly irresponsible to accuse somebody of child murder like this, even if it's in a legal setting.

[00:50:03] [SPEAKER_03] I think there were more serious possibilities that this defense team could have gone with in general. And they didn't pick them. And now they're having to make all these kind of ridiculous arguments about a man with a very strong alibi. Right.

[00:50:19] [SPEAKER_03] What they're claiming is that Brad Holder must have gotten somebody to clock in and work his shift that day and also clock in or, you know, check into the gym. And one thing that has come out is that his role at Liberty Landfill involved operating specialized machinery. And everybody had a role there.

[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_03] And if you didn't do your job, it would kind of cause a lot of problems. So I guess by that dent, he must have had some kind of apprentice who he was training in his specific role and then having him, you know, do all this stuff for him. The more you try to explain it, the more ridiculous it sounds. And I think we can all just kind of at some point use common sense and set that aside. I think it's foolish. I think it was bad strategy of them to even go down this road. So at one point I thought it was kind of weird.

[00:51:15] [SPEAKER_03] One of the judges was like, well, maybe the ritual evidence wasn't admissible. But do you think that the court went too far regarding not letting anything about Brad Holder in? And I just want to point out. I understand the question, but the defense's main argument was what tied Holder was all of this evidence of ritual and runes and his Norse pagan beliefs.

[00:51:39] [SPEAKER_03] So if you have a man with a strong alibi and then you also eliminate any of the ritual evidence, then there's nothing against him other than his son, New Abby. And that's nothing. You're not that's not third party defense. So. Next part was. Gosh, Mark Lehman argues that. Different. Pieces of evidence show this quote stick arrangement was purposeful, intentional.

[00:52:08] [SPEAKER_03] And, you know, Brad Holder was posting on Facebook with, you know, a tattoo on his hand that mirrors that on Abby and different sticks. He at one point says, I mean, you can't even make this up. He says that he posted a picture of dead girls on Facebook. OK. What do you think about that, Kevin?

[00:52:30] [SPEAKER_00] This alleged photo. There's no reason to believe that the females in that photo are deceased. Like it's a joke.

[00:52:39] [SPEAKER_03] It's a joke photo. It's something about like if a tree falls in the woods when anyone here and his two like figures, one of whom appears female, the other whom it's a little bit ambiguous to me, are like lying beneath a tree. If those girls are dead, then who are they? Like what other double murder are we looking at here or double disappearance? Like what are we talking about? Lehman sounds like a ridiculous conspiracy theorist when he talks like this. The connection is unprecedented. No, it's not. OK.

[00:53:08] [SPEAKER_03] Second of all, we ourselves did an analysis of Brad Holder's Facebook years ago with a really smart Internet researcher and looking at all the supposedly similar symbols that match the crime scene. What we found went completely against the defense's claims. A lot of these things don't match up at all and they look barely similar. The whole thing was vastly overstated. Third of all, at one point, Lehman argues that.

[00:53:36] [SPEAKER_03] The man, you know, who who went to help police. Couldn't be the killer because he was trying to be helpful. He's he's like, you know, he's he's on the good side. I'm going to talk more about why that is ridiculous later. I am because I mean, that's that's simply not something that anyone should state universally.

[00:54:00] [SPEAKER_03] And then fourth of all, no one was willing to actually come forward and state that the sticks left at the crime scene formed runes. I mean, the defense could have very easily called a witness if if one existed who could have come forth and say, yes, this looks like this rune. This looks like this rune. This is what that means. They could have called academics. They could have called anyone who would be able to speak to that. But they didn't. At the three day hearing, all they had was Don Perlmutter, who is is not an expert of ruins. So.

[00:54:30] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, let's talk about that some more. Let's revisit the state's response to defense's third motion for Frank's hearing filed on April 3rd, 2024 by Carroll County prosecutor Nick McCleeland. And the defense acted like this Purdue University professor, Jeffrey Turco. Backed them up and was agreeing that things looked like runes and that he was like, you know, he was their guy. So let's look at this filing quote.

[00:55:00] [SPEAKER_03] Professor Turco's initial report from 2017 clearly states in the introductory summary. It is not self-evident that these markings are runic inscriptions, nor is it immediately clear what they would mean if they were. End quote. If I throw a bunch of sticks in our front yard. And I start saying, well, this kind of looks like an A. This kind of looks like a J. Like that. That's basically what this is.

[00:55:29] [SPEAKER_03] And someone might someone who speaks English might come over and say that doesn't spell anything. That's those aren't those don't really look like letters. When you have sticks, it's like there's usually kind of straight lines. And if you pile them on top of each other, they might look like something. But that doesn't mean they are something. Anyway, let's go back to Jeffrey Turco. Quote, however, the argument that these markings constitute an inscription inspired by Norse runes or modern recreations thereof is quite plausible.

[00:55:54] [SPEAKER_03] The following are conjectures based on the working assumption that these lines do in fact constitute a runic or runically inspired inscription. Back to Nicholas McCleeland. Quote, Clearly, Professor Turco was asked to assume the line formations or runes. Lieutenant Holman. And then they get into like basically they're accusing Lieutenant Jerry Holman of the Indiana State Police of hiding information from Turco's report. Well, they got to depose Turco on March 21st, 2024.

[00:56:21] [SPEAKER_03] And under oath at that deposition, he stated very clearly that Lieutenant Holman's description of what he said and what he thinks is accurate, whereas the defense's is not. And that the defense was trying to conscript him into their stupid narrative. And he doesn't agree with it. He said that it's not clear that these are even runic script.

[00:56:43] [SPEAKER_03] Like the idea that this is a sacrificial killing doesn't match up with anything I know about Odinism, which doesn't conclude child sacrifice. And yeah, I mean, as as Nicholas McCleeland writes, quote, the defense outright lied in their motion and misrepresented the true findings of protect Professor Turco, end quote. Now, the thing is, they didn't just have to get Turco. They could have gotten someone else, but they didn't. I mean, what do you make of that, Kevin?

[00:57:12] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, it's just.

[00:57:13] [SPEAKER_03] A defense attorney can get anybody to be an expert in anything and say whatever they want in most cases. So the fact that they couldn't get a professional to just say, yeah, these are runes tells me that they're really not runes. They're really, really not runes. They wouldn't get anyone to stake their credibility on that except Don Perlmutter, which you all know how I feel about that one.

[00:57:34] [SPEAKER_00] So what's next?

[00:57:36] [SPEAKER_03] So. At one point they talked about, you know, at one point Lehman says, you know, they're talking about the keepsake box in which they found a cartridge matched to that found at the crime scene that was the same brand. And Lehman says, you know, they're like, well, is that a keepsake box? One of the judges is asking him. He says, I don't know. I haven't asked my client. It looks like a box in a closet. I don't know if it was his wife's or his or his daughter's. There's a box with miscellaneous stuff in it. End quote.

[00:58:05] [SPEAKER_03] Now let's hear from Detective David Vito of the Indiana State Police and his testimony at trial. Why don't you read A and I'll you read. Q and I'll read A. So I'll be Vito and you'll be. I don't remember. I think it was Nicholas McClelland. A direct examining him. This is a picture of a memory box or keepsake box that was located in the master bedroom.

[00:58:29] [SPEAKER_00] State's exhibit 270.

[00:58:30] [SPEAKER_03] This is a picture of the inside of the box that contained numerous items from Richard Allen's previous employment, graduation cards, a note from his mother. And there was also a 40 caliber hollow point Winchester round located on the left, lower left side of the box that was similar to the round found at the crime scene.

[00:58:44] [SPEAKER_00] State's exhibit 271.

[00:58:46] [SPEAKER_03] Another picture of the box with different items located in it. OK. So, yeah. Why? He's he's like I just find this like like take the take the L guy. Like like I guess his daughter has a box with her dad's employment records in them. Like I never had that with my dad, but I guess every family is different.

[00:59:05] [SPEAKER_00] Every family is different.

[00:59:06] [SPEAKER_03] I don't. Yeah. Did you have that with your dad's like volunteer firefighting papers?

[00:59:12] [SPEAKER_00] I did not.

[00:59:13] [SPEAKER_03] On your nightstand. No. OK.

[00:59:15] [SPEAKER_00] So what's next?

[00:59:16] [SPEAKER_03] This was a this was one of the things that I believe that Ellen Milander got wrong from the attorney general's office. So she at one point the judge asked her, was the Carhartt jacket recovered from Richard Allen's home? Was it tested for blood residue? And my lender said, I don't believe so. End quote. That is not true.

[00:59:35] [SPEAKER_00] The police tested that.

[00:59:36] [SPEAKER_03] The police just tested that jacket along with a lot of other things. Now, it didn't it didn't result in anything. They didn't find any evidence. Those I mean, my explanation for that is it's a different jacket. He just replaced the old one or I don't know. I guess it's possible enough washes stuff comes out. But I think it's as possible that he just, you know, if I committed a really grisly, heinous murder and my clothes got all buttlutty and I was known to do, to have a certain type of jacket, I would probably just buy a new one, to be honest, and get rid of it. So that's speculation.

[01:00:06] [SPEAKER_03] But that's what I think happened. Again, that's it. Don't accuse us of picking on Lehman. So, I mean, the state got something wrong there, too. Now, there's a lot of stuff about Richard Allen's mental illness claim. Kevin, can you talk about how that is important for the appeal as far as him being psychotic and mentally ill and all these various things?

[01:00:29] [SPEAKER_00] One of the contentions by the team representing Mr. Allen is that Mr. Allen was driven to a psychotic state by being incarcerated and that the state did this deliberately and then exploited his deteriorating mental state in order to extract confessions from him. Obviously, we look at all that in a different light if he was not truly psychotic and was only faking it.

[01:00:54] [SPEAKER_03] Right. And so the psychotic side, obviously, people who are in the grips of psychosis say things that are not true. Someone might claim to be God or Jesus or something, and that's not true. And that's something they can't help because they're in the middle of a psychotic state. They also might say things that they did that they didn't really do. So but I think what you have to look at is the totality of everything we actually heard from Dwenger.

[01:01:21] [SPEAKER_03] So Dr. Deanna Dwenger was a psychologist working at the Indiana Department of Corrections. She supervised Dr. Monica Walla, who was the psychologist treating Richard Allen, and they would work together on this stuff. And she actually testified at one point a lot of the symptoms of different styles of psychosis. And one thing that it was like basically things jump around a lot for people there. It's nonlinear thought.

[01:01:46] [SPEAKER_03] And everything she said, I thought, was devastating for Allen in front of the jury because the jury got to listen to his phone calls. And those were consistently cogent, focused. He wasn't saying anything wild. He was simply making an argument to somebody and consistently sticking with that argument. So that was bad. But she also said something else. Well, actually, I will say this.

[01:02:11] [SPEAKER_03] Before I get into this, at one point, the judges are, you know, talking about, oh, he's in solitary confinement. Now, this may feel like pedantic to people, and I'm sorry if it does, but I think it's important to note. There's solitary confinement. There's also life in a one man cell. In some ways, they can look pretty similar. But the one man cell, the issue there is they're trying to protect him. He's in protective custody, and they don't want him to get killed by other inmates. And that's what he has to do.

[01:02:39] [SPEAKER_03] Unlike people in solitary confinement, he had his tablet. He had the ability to call and message his family whenever. He had visits from his family, from his wife. He had privileges. He was able to go out, do exercise. And my understanding is that a true solitary confinement situation would be very much more about punishing somebody and would be very much more about some of those things would not be present. So, anyways, here's Dwenger.

[01:03:08] [SPEAKER_03] She's talking about discussing Alan's case with Walla. Quote, she was explaining some of the symptoms that she was beginning to see, and she was talking out loud about believing that he was feigning those symptoms. And so she was using as a sounding board of whether he was feigning or if he was really starting to become psychotic, at which point I asked for an MDT because I had never seen him. I was not driving up there to see him.

[01:03:31] [SPEAKER_03] I don't do clinical work at this point, so we had a multidisciplinary team that included Dr. Martin, the psychiatrist, and I asked him to go see Mr. Allen so that we could have a second opinion about some of the symptoms he was having and whether it was genuine or more feigned. End quote. Fainting, as a reminder, means faking. So, this is, why don't you be Stacey Diener, the Q, she was the one doing the cross-examination masterfully, I might add, and I'll be Dwenger.

[01:03:57] [SPEAKER_00] And so at that point then, if Dr. Walla was concerned about feigning, how did the MDT team approach the concern about faking behavior versus something that needed treatment?

[01:04:06] [SPEAKER_03] So at that point, the symptoms were severe enough where whether he was faking them or feigning them or they were genuine, it, again, it was unlikely to stop given that now he was not eating, not sleeping. Right. Those things that keep your body healthy and your mind healthy, he had stopped doing those. So whether he had chosen not to sleep or chosen not to eat, those behaviors were going to impact his mental health. So at that point, we needed to intervene because we knew that it would not get better on its own. End quote. Okay.

[01:04:35] [SPEAKER_03] So to me, I think it's interesting. At one point, the judges are saying, one of the judges say, no one disputes by April he's psychotic. And my lender says, yeah, no, by mid-April he becomes psychotic. That's correct. I don't know whether the state is simply bound by the fact that at some point the medical team said, yeah, he's psychotic. We need to get him on Haldol in order to make that fit. But to me, I think Dwenger's testimony reveals that this is a lot more ambiguous than it's being presented.

[01:05:02] [SPEAKER_03] And it troubles me that the judges are sort of saying, well, he must just be psychotic. It sounds like to me what Dwenger is saying is that he could have been psychotic or he could not have been. He could have been feigning. And in fact, that's what they assumed it was at first because that's the behavior they noticed. And I'll talk about that in a minute. But we need to give him medicine anyway. Why? Because at a certain point, if you're not sleeping and not eating, it doesn't matter if it's your choice or not. It's going to hurt you anyway. And they need to get that situation under control.

[01:05:32] [SPEAKER_03] That's not a clear psychosis situation for me. The reasons I personally do not, and I mean, even one of the judges says you protected him into psychosis. I think all of this is a lot more disputed than even my lender was acting like at this hearing. And again, I find it troubling. There's there's indications that he was faking.

[01:05:53] [SPEAKER_03] One thing I will note is that observers, correctional officers who testified spoke again and again about how his behavior would always worsen at a certain time. Do you remember when he would be at his worst, Kevin?

[01:06:06] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, after a visit from his attorneys.

[01:06:08] [SPEAKER_03] What does that mean?

[01:06:10] [SPEAKER_00] Don't know.

[01:06:10] [SPEAKER_03] Well, it's certainly these are not people who are trying to coerce him. I mean, I don't know. Well, scratch that. These are not these are people who are trying to defend him. So either he's having such guilt over what he did or somebody is telling him, hey, if you act crazy, that's going to be good for you in court. I'm not saying I mean, I don't know what happened. I wasn't there. But to me, that's highly suspect.

[01:06:34] [SPEAKER_03] Another thing that's suspect is we heard again and again testimony that he would stop whatever he was doing and wait for someone to pay attention to him and then start behaving in an erratic manner. He was almost waiting for that attention. I feel like someone who's truly psychotic is just psychotic and it doesn't matter who's watching acting relatively.

[01:07:00] [SPEAKER_03] I don't want to say normal because I don't think that's fair to people who have this real mental issue. If your behavior is only psychotic when people are paying attention, I think that points away from this being legitimate. I also think we had testimony where he would eat his feces or he would do something that was disgusting or self-harming, but he would almost have to like talk himself into it. Almost like he knew he didn't really want to do this and was performing.

[01:07:29] [SPEAKER_03] I think he's a highly manipulative, performative person. I think he was like that even before he committed these murders. And I think this speaks to him trying to garner sympathy. I think it speaks to perhaps some level of guilt over what he did. But in general, I don't really know if it even really I don't think he was actually psychotic. I think he was just freaking out, honestly. And I think the idea that the judges have come away with, you know, he was definitely psychotic or even the state saying he's definitely psychotic.

[01:07:58] [SPEAKER_03] I just don't think is borne out by the record. And I would hope that they would really look at the testimony of Dr. Wenger, the testimony of Dr. Martin. And the, you know, the various whatever they can with that, because I just think that that is not the takeaway that I had, at least. And I think it's a lot more up in the air than anything else.

[01:08:18] [SPEAKER_00] Well said. So what's next?

[01:08:21] [SPEAKER_03] They talk about how awful it was that he couldn't, he could only dim the lights in his cell. And, you know, that would bother people. That would certainly bother me. I definitely like darkness to sleep. So I sympathize with that to a certain extent. But I will.

[01:08:36] [SPEAKER_00] When a person is on suicide watches, Mr. Allen is. Part of the term itself involves being able to watch somebody. And you need to have lights of some capacity on to make sure the person isn't doing harm. I think that's just common sense.

[01:08:50] [SPEAKER_03] Another thing that was said by Lehman in his, I think, kind of like rebuttal section where he came back at the end was, you know, that. The it is the man who cares about sticks enough to carefully arrange them on the bodies. It is not the pharmacy technician who on his day off goes for a walk and commits this bizarre crime. OK. First of all, like, what are you even talking about?

[01:09:14] [SPEAKER_03] My understanding from speaking with CVS workers who worked with Richard Allen is that he was not a pharmacy technician, that he was, in fact, a shift manager. So maybe, like, get your facts straight. It's our understanding. I mean, again, he talked about having rape fantasies and wanting to do something and sexually assault somebody and going out that day to do it. So I don't really know how confusing that is. Just because he has a job doesn't mean he's not capable of that. The question is, was there more than one man on the trail that day? Absolutely, there was. And it's the man that Betsy Blair saw. We'll talk more about that in a moment.

[01:09:43] [SPEAKER_03] But as far as there being more than one man on the trail, the defense called multiple witnesses. Some of them offered evidence that they hadn't seen anything interesting. And it would turn out that those people had been there not at the time when this was happening. In the case of Teresa Liebert, who seemed to actively be having memory issues on the stand, she saw some guy there at like 8 a.m., hours and hours before. And again, it wasn't it wasn't even like it was near the crime scene, but it wasn't at the crime scene. It wasn't even on the bridge.

[01:10:12] [SPEAKER_03] So it's like you had all these opportunities for them to put another man on the trail. Their big thing is Betsy Blair seeing a guy who looked younger. We'll talk about that momentarily. But this idea that no that Richard Allen coming forward to help police in 2017 means he couldn't have done it. Let me just rattle things off. And I want to note, I actually only picked child murderers and I only picked I mean, there were a couple that actually were double murders of children. So, I mean, this is how common this phenomenon is.

[01:10:41] [SPEAKER_03] There are plenty of killers who come forward to the police or the media or the community in order to, quote unquote, help in the wake of their own crime. It's a way to manipulate. It's a way to get off on feeling smarter than everyone else. It's a way to deflect suspicion from yourself. There's all these reasons they do it. Lloyd Lee Welch Jr.

[01:11:04] [SPEAKER_03] After the disappearance and murder of Catherine and Sheila Lyon in 1975 came forward to police and claimed to see the girls talking to a man with a tape recorder. Ian Huntley, the Soham murders. That was Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. That was 2002. He gave multiple television interviews to reporters about the case, acting how sad he was, right? John Cooey in the Jessica Lunsford murders in 2005. This is horrifying.

[01:11:29] [SPEAKER_03] He helped on searches in the neighborhood while holding her captive in his own trailer before murdering her. Wesley Allen Dodd murdered the siblings William and Cole Neer in 1989. He offered to help police, you know, with what they were doing. Again, this is not an uncommon phenomenon. Him coming forward is neither here nor there.

[01:11:51] [SPEAKER_00] Right. So what's next?

[01:11:54] [SPEAKER_03] Basically, what Lehman keeps arguing is the sketch. Was never shown to the jury of that was done from the memory of Betsy Blair, a witness who described kind of more of a baby face looking guy with curly hair. And, you know, that's that's bad because that sketch proves that Richard Allen didn't do that. Can you speak to that claim a little bit?

[01:12:16] [SPEAKER_00] Eyewitness testimonies and descriptions can be inconsistent. The fact that there were some minor differences between the sketches doesn't really prove anything. The fact of the matter is that the witnesses on the trail that day were consistent in describing what the person was wearing. And they were all consistent in saying that the person they saw was the person that appeared in the video.

[01:12:37] [SPEAKER_03] Well said, Kevin, because it doesn't it does. I mean, again, this is very common for eyewitnesses. Betsy Blair was an older woman. Sarah Carbaugh was younger and described an older looking guy. None of them identified Richard Allen as being the guy. So it's not like any of this even goes to identity. And the attorneys were able to impeach Betsy Blair on the stand with her description. They don't need the sketch. The sketch is merely an investigative tool. The sketch proves nothing. I think he's really overstating this.

[01:13:06] [SPEAKER_03] What's more, I think if you actually look at the young man sketch, if you look at the eyes and the nose, I don't think it's that dissimilar to Allen. I think the trappings of it are. It looks much younger. But it's not quite as out of the ballpark as it maybe looks at first glance. And we've talked to jurors in this case, Kevin. Do you think now that they've seen everything, they've seen the sketches, they've seen all the other theories. Are they swayed by any of this?

[01:13:31] [SPEAKER_00] They've indicated to us that they would return the same verdict today that they returned two years ago today.

[01:13:37] [SPEAKER_03] And this is while Lehman is saying, well, the jury would have realized that the state was parading liars like Master Trooper of the Indiana State Police Brian Harshman. And they were lying because they were saying that they thought it sounded like him. No, don't speak for the jury, Lehman. We've talked to the jury. They do not think that. They think your guy's guilty. They still do. And he again reiterates this myth that Dr. Walla was trying to get evidence. She wasn't really a doctor. She was a spy for the state and trying to get evidence from him.

[01:14:07] [SPEAKER_03] Again, this is not backed up by the testimony. It's not backed up by the record. I hope that's something the judges are actually looking at. OK. We conclude with some things about Weber's van. OK. You have the following claims from Lehman. You have his van wasn't there at the time. You have there was there was mention of the van in Discovery, so it's not that big of a deal. So, OK, interesting.

[01:14:36] [SPEAKER_03] Let's look at both of those claims on in terms of the was the van in the area at the time. So, you know, in terms of Richard Allen stories, he's saying he wants to sexually assault the girls and then a van scares him. And in their January 20th, 2025 motion to correct errors, the defense team claims that, well, look, in Discovery, there's this footage that shows that at 2.44 p.m.

[01:15:04] [SPEAKER_03] on February 13th, 2017, you see a van go down this access road. And that debunks the state's case because they said basically the crimes happened closer to 2.32. And this is too late for all this to be happening. So. Like. Like. Why is it bizarre, first of all, Kevin, that the defense would file this after the case was over when it was clear that they knew about this before the trial?

[01:15:33] [SPEAKER_00] Usually if you want to correct an error that you know about while the trial is happening, you correct it during the trial. You don't wait till afterwards.

[01:15:40] [SPEAKER_03] Now, what would be a reason why they actually would not want the jury to see this? That it could they feel like it could very much could backfire on them?

[01:15:50] [SPEAKER_00] Perhaps they didn't want to acknowledge that the van was anywhere near the vicinity at the time.

[01:15:54] [SPEAKER_03] It acknowledges that the van at some point on the afternoon of that day of the murders went down that road exactly like the state said. And in case you're wondering, in case you forgot about this and say, well, 244 is kind of late on you, that that might actually kind of hurt the state's case. Let me remind you that these timestamps were not authenticated. They were not the universal timestamps that there's a way to, I guess, get them to if you get it early enough to put the right timestamps on these things. But in this case, that wasn't done.

[01:16:23] [SPEAKER_03] So anytime you have a power outage, anytime something goes minorly wrong with your surveillance footage, the timestamps could get messed up. Anyone who has a camera might be able to tell you this. So the fact that they're about like 10, 15 minutes off is actually damning. It's damning for their case. So, of course, they didn't put in front of the jury because the state would have been able to say, well, those aren't accurate. And then the jury would be like, are you kidding me? So you're showing us the van going down the road. If anything, this is devastating.

[01:16:51] [SPEAKER_03] The fact that Lehman mentions it at all is, again, like it hurts them. So and then this claim that there was no mention of the van in Discovery. I think it's important to remember it's possible in Discovery that there are tips of people calling in and saying, hey, there was a white van in Kokomo and maybe that's related. But what's important to remember is that it's about a specific van going down a specific road at a specific time.

[01:17:18] [SPEAKER_03] That is what Richard Allen presents in his confession. And upon learning about that, the detectives are able to run down Brad Webber. Now, of course, they knew Brad Webber was there at that time. They had searched his property. They had searched his gun. He had cooperated with every aspect of the investigation. But they weren't like focusing on his van because at a certain you know, that's not that's not what they're really looking at. They're able to go to him and say, well, what were you driving that day?

[01:17:46] [SPEAKER_03] And he's able to pull up these text records that show that, yeah, I would have had my van that day because I was towing something for a friend. And again, then you have the video that backs this up. It's it's damning. So I don't know what Lehman's talking about, but that was not in Discovery. And that was something that Richard Allen would have to come up with on his own. And I think that's all I wanted to say.

[01:18:08] [SPEAKER_03] I think I would hope that the judges are looking at all of this in the transcripts and not nearly I would imagine they're not simply taking the attorney's words for it. Right.

[01:18:19] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, of course not.

[01:18:20] [SPEAKER_03] I really think especially in the case of Lehman, some of what he said, I think, was outright deceitful. But, you know, that's my opinion. I would I would like to think that they're, you know, just going to look at this for what it is. I feel like the oral arguments were kind of. I don't know, like I don't want to say silly or a waste of time, but like it felt like it really got away from the idea of constitutional rights being violated or his rights being violated. It really went more into like relitigating the case.

[01:18:48] [SPEAKER_03] And I felt like that, like, what's the point of that? That's not what an appeal is supposed to be about. What do you think?

[01:18:55] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Lehman, the judges at the time, said he was acting like he was talking to a jury instead of talking to a panel of appellate judges.

[01:19:03] [SPEAKER_03] Of course, we have no way of knowing what the judges are going to rule, what their order is going to be. I mean, I don't know. I think personally that this was a strong case and that they didn't really raise anything that made me say, wow, OK, maybe his rights were violated here.

[01:19:18] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I imagine that Richard Allen's side will lose.

[01:19:22] [SPEAKER_03] All right. Well, anything else to say, Kevin? That's it. All right. Thanks for listening.

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