ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. (WANE) – More than 100 documents were unsealed Wednesday in the Delphi double murder case, in which Richard Allen is accused of killing teens Abby Williams and Libby German in February 2017.
Allen Superior Court Judge Frances C. Gull, who was appointed as a special judge to oversee the case in Carroll County, entered an order for documents to be unsealed in State of Indiana vs. Richard M. Allen.
The unsealed documents, which can be found here, range from mundane procedures and bookkeeping to nuggets of information previously unreleased.
Investigators claim in the documents Allen admitted to the killings no less than five times while speaking to his wife and mother during recorded phone calls from the prison where he’s currently being held.
Also, investigators for the first time gave a cause of the girls’ deaths.
Williams, 13, and German, 14, died from a “sharp object,” a coroner ruled after their autopsies. Their bodies were discovered near the Monon High Bridge Trail. An unspent .40-caliber bullet was found by their bodies, court documents said.
That bullet had been cycled through a Sig Sauer .40-caliber handgun owned by Allen, according to court documents.
Allen is accused of confessing to his wife that he did the killings during a phone call in early April, court documents said.
He exhibited “strange” behavior afterward, court documents said, and began “wetting down” and eating paperwork given to him by his attorneys in lieu of real food. He refused to eat or sleep for several weeks.
Allen’s attorneys tried to argue that conditions at Westfield Correctional Facility were contributing to his mental deterioration, and that he had become unable to help them in his defense. Allen was described in court documents as being “entombed in… a space no larger than that of a dog kennel”.
Prosecutors argued in the court documents Allen had been afforded plenty of amenities at Westfield – including seclusion from the general population, plenty of time for exercise, a tablet to send text messages and make phone calls and plenty of books, court documents said.
Allen was also regularly seen by both medical and mental health professionals.
While serving a search warrant at Allen’s home, investigators collected various knives, including several folding knives, sheathed knives and at least one bowie knife, according to court documents.
The original judge in the case recused himself amidst a public deluge of information requests. He also claimed someone began posting photos of his family online, court documents said. After his recusal, Gull was brought in and has been overseeing the proceedings in Carroll County.
Per Judge Gull’s order, 19 of the original 137 documents in the case are still sealed.
If you can’t access the link to the court documents, you can find scanned copies below:
