Delphi murders suspect faces 2 additional charges
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WISH) — Much back and forth about evidence in the Delphi murder suspect’s case happened during an hourslong hearing that ended late Monday afternoon.
Richard Allen, 51, of Delphi, was arrested on Oct. 28, 2022, for the February 2017 murders of 13-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams and 14-year-old Liberty “Libby” German near the Monon High Bridge in Delphi.
Special Judge Frances Gull agreed Monday to add two new charges of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping. The judge rejected a prosecutor’s bid to add standalone kidnapping charges, though.
The biggest issue of the morning half of Monday’s hearing was the leak of crime scene pictures that were taken by a consultant working for Andy Baldwin, one of Allen’s attorneys. The defense argued the leak was an accident, and that the person shared the pictures without Baldwin’s knowledge.
The prosecutors argued that it was an ongoing leak because Baldwin was giving that case information to that consultant for a while.
Defense argued that is common practice of defense attorney’s to bounce case ideas off of consultants.
The prosecutors also said an email with case info sent by Baldwin to a random person also violated the gag order.
Defense said that was an accident, and it was intended to be sent to Allen’s other attorney.
Once both sides offer other arguments in writing, the judge will have 30 days to decide whether Allen’s attorneys should face contempt of court charges and potential punishment.
In the afternoon, the court hear a motion to dismiss the murder charges against Allen. The request from Allen’s attorneys centers around a taped interview from 2017 done by law enforcement in the early days of the murder investigation. As revealed Monday during the hearing, a technology malfunction essentially recorded over all interviews done in Delphi from Feb 14-20 in 2017. The defense says that constitutes the destruction of evidence that would exonerate Allen.
The defense says the malfunction wasn’t intentional, and that the interviews were memorialized in a written report.
The interview in question was of a person the defense is pointing the finger at as the person who committed the murders.
The morning and afternoon hearings were contentious, and got heated at points over what evidence the judge would and would not allow to be brought into the record.
Allen’s murder trial remained scheduled for May 13 in Carroll County with a jury from Allen County, where Gull serves.