Jury selection in Delphi murders trial resumes Tuesday; 2 alternates needed
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Jury selection in the trial of Delphi murders suspect Richard Allen will resume Tuesday with two alternate positions still to be decided.
Dozens of potential jurors packed into the Allen County Courthouse in Ft. Wayne on Monday for questioning by state prosecutors, Allen’s defense team, and Special Judge Frances Gull.
Monday’s session ended with 12 jurors and two of four alternates selected. The jury currently consists of eight women and six men.
Allen, 52, is charged with murder and murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the deaths of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German. The girls’ bodies were found near the Monon High Bridge near Delphi on Feb. 14, 2017, a day after they went missing.
Allen was a pharmacy technician who worked and lived in Delphi, the hometown of Williams and German. He was first questioned by investigators in 2017, then again in October 2022 shortly before his arrest.
Jury selection comes roughly five months after Allen’s trial was originally scheduled to begin. A few hundred jury summons were sent out to Allen County residents for the May trial date that did not happen. Those potential jurors were not put back into the jury pool and won’t be for two years, Russell says.
Once the jury is finalized, its members will be transported to Carroll County, which is roughly 100 miles from Ft. Wayne. Jurors will stay at a hotel near the courthouse in Delphi. They will be sequestered for the duration of the trial and will not be able to use cell phones or watch news broadcasts.
Jury selection was originally expected to last for three days, but it may end Tuesday if the two final jurors are selected.
The trial is slated to begin Friday morning at the Carroll County Courthouse.
Judge Gull set aside roughly four weeks for Allen’s trial, with proceedings expected to last until mid-November.
News 8’s Michaela Springer and Kyla Russell contributed to this report.