CBS News
The Delphi, Indiana murders trial is underway 7 years after 2 girls were mysteriously killed. Here’s what to know.
The trial against Richard Allen, the man charged in the killing of two teenage girls in a case known as the Delphi murders, has begun.
Allen, 52, is facing two counts of murder and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the killings of Delphi, Indiana eighth graders Abigail Williams and Liberty German in 2017.
The trial is expected to take one month. Here’s what to know about the Delphi murders and the case against Richard Allen.
What happened to Abigail Williams and Liberty German?
Abigail, 13, and Liberty, 14, better known as Abby and Libby, were close friends who had been dropped off by a relative at a hiking trail on Feb. 13, 2017. When they failed to meet the relative later in the day, they were reported missing.
Their bodies were found the next day in a wooded area near the Delphi Historic Trail, about a mile where they were last seen. Authorities determined their deaths were homicides. CBS News previously reported that the girls were stabbed to death.
Police spent years searching for a suspect, investigating thousands of leads and releasing multiple composite sketches of the suspect based on eyewitness accounts. Audio evidence from Libby’s cell phone revealed an unknown man had told the girls to go “down the hill.” Libby also recorded a short video of a man who police believed to be the killer.
CBS
Who is Richard Allen?
Richard Allen, a drugstore pharmacy technician in Delphi, was arrested on Oct. 26, 2022, more than five years after the slayings. He was first interviewed by police in 2017, and said that he had been walking in the area and seen three “females” near a bridge, but hadn’t spoken to them.
He was interviewed again on Oct. 13, 2022, after police searched through former suspects. He said that he had seen three “juvenile girls” during his walk. Investigators searched his home and seized a .40-caliber pistol. Prosecutors said testing found an unspent bullet discovered between the teen’s bodies “had been cycled through” the weapon. Allen told prosecutors that he had never been where the bullet was found and didn’t know how a round cycled through his gun could have gotten there.
Allen has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Indiana State Police
Prosecutors have said previously that Allen admitted to the killings in a prison phone call to his wife in April 2022. During the call, Allen admitted to the murders seven times before his wife quickly ended the phone call, court documents state. Special Judge Fran Gull ruled in August 2024 that those statements, along with other comments Allen made while in jail, can be used as evidence in the trial.
Officials previously said they have “good reason to believe” that more than one person was involved in the killings, but no further arrests have been made.
Allen’s lawyers previously suggested that the girls were killed as part of a pagan ritual sacrifice, and accused police of ignoring evidence from the crime scene. In a search warrant request in March 2017, an FBI agent claimed the girls’ bodies appeared to have been “moved and staged” at the crime scene.
Inside the trial
The trial has been repeatedly delayed because of evidence leaks and the withdrawal of Allen’s public defenders, who were later reinstated by the Indiana Supreme Court. On Friday, Oct. 18, opening statements began.
The trial is expected to last a month. Jurors will be sequestered and kept from using cellphones or watching the news, CBS Chicago reported.
Prosecutors said they plan to call about 50 witnesses, while Allen’s defense attorneys expect to call about 120 people to the stand.
The page cannot be found
The page may have been removed, had its name changed, or is just temporarily unavailable.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
CBS News
Explosion kills 2 Mexican soldiers in suspected booby trap by drug cartel after troops found dismembered bodies
An improvised land mine apparently planted by a drug cartel killed two Mexican soldiers and wounded five others, Mexico’s defense secretary said Tuesday. Before the blast, the soldiers had discovered the dismembered bodies of three people, officials said.
Gen. Ricardo Trevilla acknowledged that the army had already suffered six deaths from such improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, between 2018 and 2024. But he didn’t specify whether those six had been killed by bombs dropped from drones, or by buried roadside bombs, both of which have been used by gangs in Mexico.
Trevilla said that devices like the one that exploded Monday were “very rustic,” and officials in the past have described them as similar to buried pipe bombs. There was no immediate information on the condition of the five wounded in the attack, which included at least one officer.
Trevilla’s description of the location where the two soldiers died Monday in the western state of Michoacan suggested that it may have been a sort of grisly drug cartel booby trap.
Trevilla said the army sent out a patrol to check on reports that there was an encampment of armed men in a rural area. The armed forces detected an area protected by stockades that appeared to be an encampment, but when soldiers approached in vehicles, they found the trail blocked by logs, so they descended and had to approach on foot.
While approaching, they spotted three dismembered bodies near the encampment, which appeared to be abandoned. But as they drew closer, a buried device exploded and struck the soldiers.
Trevilla blamed the blast on the United Cartels, an umbrella group that includes the local Viagras gang, which has been fighting bloody turf battles against the Jalisco cartel in Michoacan for years.
In August, the Mexican army acknowledged that some of its soldiers have been killed by bomb-dropping drones operated by drug cartels.
Previously, officials have said the army encounters far more roadside bombs than drone-dropped ones.
The Jalisco drug cartel has been fighting local gangs for control of Michoacan for years, and the situation has become so militarized that the warring cartels use roadside bombs or IEDs, trenches, pillbox fortifications, homemade armored vehicles and sniper rifles.
Nemesio Oseguera-Cervantes, also known as “El Mencho,” the leader of the Jalisco cartel, which the officials described as “one of the world’s most violent and prolific drug trafficking organizations.” The United States and the State Department has offered a $10 million reward for his capture.
In the only previous detailed report on cartel bomb attacks in August 2023, the defense department said at that time that a total of 42 soldiers, police and suspects were wounded by IEDs in the first seven and a half months of 2023, up from 16 in all of 2022.
Overall, 556 improvised explosive devices of all types – roadside, drone-carried and car bombs – were found in 2023, the army said in a news release last year.