Liberty Libby German and Abigail Abby Williams (FBI), Richard Allen (Indiana State Police), and the location where the victims’ bodies were found (WXIN screenshot)
Attorneys representing Delphi murder suspect Richard Allen have filed court documents accusing prosecutors of withholding or losing evidence supporting Allen’s innocence, claiming that over two months of police interviews from 2017 have disappeared without a trace.
The filing, an amended motion to compel discovery and request sanctions against Carroll County prosecutors, was one of several filings from both the defense and prosecutors and the latest twist in what has become one of the most bizarre murder cases cases in recent memory.
Allen is facing murder charges in connection with the February 2017 killings of Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13, and Liberty “Libby” German, 14, whose bodies were found in a wooded area near the Delphi Historic Trails system.
Williams and German disappeared while walking the Monon High Bridge Trail near Delphi, Indiana, on Feb. 13, 2017. The trail crosses an old trestle over a small river or creek. The girls were found dead the next day near the trestle, and their deaths were ruled as homicides.
According to the amended motion, prosecutors provided Allen’s attorneys with a previously unseen report detailing “how all videos between April 28, 2017 and June 30, 2017” had been lost. Those lost tapes come in addition to two recorded interviews from February 2017 with men that the defense has indicated were “key suspects” in the girls’ murders which authorities said were accidentally erased.
“This is news to the defense as the defense was aware that certain videos did not contain audio, but was unaware that videotaped interviews between April 28, 2017 and June 30, 2017 were missing,” Allen’s attorneys, Brad Rozzi and Andrew Baldwin wrote. “This is most concerning.”
The attorneys, who were previously removed from the case by the presiding judge only to be reinstated by the Indiana Supreme Court, also said that the report from prosecutors was incomplete. That report claimed the State purchased equipment from China to try and recover the lost interview files, but Allen’s attorneys say it is still unknown whether that equipment was ever actually purchased “or if an attempt to recover the missing interviews was attempted.”
Furthermore, when the defense requested a list of all persons whose interviews were recorded but subsequently lost, the State said that was not possible. Prosecutors said there was “no comprehensive written log that was used to document date, time, subject and participants” for interviews conducted during that time period.
“Again, it is extremely concerning to the defense and Mr. Allen that potential exculpatory witnesses and statements are apparently forever lost and not even a log of which witnesses were interviewed exists,” Allen’s attorneys wrote. “Furthermore, it is very disconcerting that the defense just learned of this lost evidence and only upon request of the defense of such a report and more than 14 months after the defense should have learned of this lost evidence.”
The defense also requested the court to force prosecutors to provide any phone data dump evidence from multiple people involved in the case to assist with the timeline of events before and after the girls were killed. While prosecutors have stated that such evidence does not exist, Allen’s lawyers argued that the State’s response was inadequate.
“It is still uncertain whether that phone dump evidence did exist at some point in time, which question is more than fair considering the loss of 70 days of investigative activity,” the filing states. “It would be hard to believe that law enforcement would not have obtained the phone dump data from the parties identified in this paragraph to at least determine timelines.”
On Monday morning, Special Judge Fran Gull dismissed two counts of kidnapping that prosecutors had sought to charge Allen with but allowed prosecutors to charge him with additional counts of murder, Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR reported.
Allen’s murder trial is scheduled to begin on May 13, 2024.