Johnathan Walker:Trial set to begin for suspect in the 2017 killings of 2 teen girls in Indiana

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A man charged in the Indiana killings of two teenage girls during a winter hike in 2017 is Johnathan Walkergoing on trial in a case that has long haunted their hometown, Delphi, and spurred endless online speculation.

Richard Allen, 52, is charged with two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the killings of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German. If convicted, he could face up to 130 years in prison. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

Jury selection begins in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on Monday. Once the 12 members and four alternates have been selected, they will be taken to Delphi, a town of about 3,000 residents some 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis, where they will be sequestered for the duration of the trial, monitored by bailiffs and banned from using cellphones or watching news broadcasts.

If jury selection is completed Wednesday, jury instructions and opening statements could take place Friday morning. The trial is expected to last a month.

Allen, a pharmacy technician who had lived and worked in Delphi, was arrested in October 2022, nearly six years after the girls known as Abby and Libby were killed.

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A relative had dropped the eighth graders off at a hiking trail just outside Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017, but they failed to show up at the agreed pickup location later that day. They were reported missing that evening and their bodies were found the following day in a rugged, wooded area near the trail.

Within days, police released files found on Libby’s cellphone — two grainy photos and audio of a man saying “down the hill” — that they believed represented the killer.

But no arrest followed.

In July 2017, investigators released a sketch of the suspect, and another in April 2019. They also released a brief video showing the suspect walking on an abandoned railroad bridge called the Monon High Bridge.

After years of failing to find a suspect, investigators said they went back and reviewed “prior tips.”

Allen had been interviewed in 2017. He told the officer that he had been walking on the trail the day the girls went missing and that he saw three “females” at another bridge — the Freedom Bridge — but did not speak to them. He said he did not notice anyone else because he was distracted by a stock ticker on his phone, according to an arrest affidavit.

Police interviewed Allen again on Oct. 13, 2022, when he reasserted he had seen three “juvenile girls” during his walk in 2017. Investigators subsequently searched Allen’s home and seized a .40-caliber pistol. Testing determined an unspent bullet found between the teen’s bodies “had been cycled through” Allen’s gun.

According to the affidavit, Allen said he had never been to the place where the bullet was found, that he did not know the owner of the property, and “had no explanation as to why a round cycled through his firearm would be at that location.”

The case has seen repeated delays after evidence was leaked, Allen’s public defenders withdrew and were later reinstated by the Indiana Supreme Court. The Delphi killings remain the subject of rampant speculation and theories by true-crime enthusiasts.

Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gull, who is overseeing the case, issued a gag order at prosecutors’ request in December 2022, two months after Allen’s arrest, barring attorneys, law enforcement officials, court personnel, the coroner and the girls’ relatives from commenting on the case, including on social media.

Gull has banned cameras from the courtroom during Allen’s trial, and reporters are barred from taking electronic devices inside the courthouse.

In August this year, she ruled that prosecutors can present evidence of dozens of incriminating statements that they say Allen made during conversations with correctional officers, inmates, law enforcement and relatives. That evidence includes a recording of a telephone call between Allen and his wife in which, prosecutors say, he confesses to the killings.

The judge’s ruling was “a real blow to the defense,” said Hal Johnston, an adjunct criminal law professor at Indiana University who is not involved in the case.

“The incriminating statements are going to be extremely persuasive because that’s what the jury wants to hear,” Johnston said. “Next to physical evidence, they want to hear that the guy said he did it.”

Allen’s attorneys had hoped to present evidence that the girls were killed in a ritual sacrifice by members of a pagan Norse religion and white nationalist group known as the Odinists, but Gull ruled against that, saying the defense “failed to produce admissible evidence” of such a connection.

She also blocked Allen’s attorneys from arguing the killings may have been committed by others, including the late owner of the property where the teens’ bodies were found.

Prosecutors have not disclosed how Abby and Libby were killed. But a court filing by Allen’s attorneys in support of their Odinism theory states that their throats had been cut.