INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Wednesday is Day 17 in the trial of Delphi Murders suspect Richard Allen at the Carroll County Courthouse in Delphi.

Allen, 52, is charged with murder and murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the deaths of 13-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams and 14-year-old Liberty “Libby” 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 first investigated in 2017 and again in October 2022. After a second police interview, he was taken into custody.

The trial began Oct. 18 and was expected to continue through mid-November. Originally, 16 Allen County residents sat as the jury on the case, but one juror was dismissed on Oct. 25.

Cameras are not allowed in the courtroom.

Tune into News 8 and follow our daily live blogs throughout the trial for the latest developments.

NOTE: The times listed in the blog headers are the times which the entries were added. Specific times for courtroom events will be listed in the entries if available. These notes are compiled from photographs of written notes provided by reporters in courtroom and emailed to the WISH-TV news desk.

For a brief summary of Day 16 in the Delphi Murders trial (Tuesday), scroll to the bottom of the page.

To view all of our previous trial coverage, click here, and follow News 8’s Kyla Russell on X as she covers the trial live from Delphi.

• More Delphi Murders trial on WISHTV.com

12:43 p.m.

At 10:25 a.m., court went back into session and both sides approached the bench — the jury had not returned to the courtroom.

At 10:52 a.m., court went back into session and the prosecution said their witness was ready to testify.

The jury was seated at 11 a.m.

Diener called their witness, Breann Wilbur to the stand.

Diener asked Wilbur if she had a Snapchat photo of the Freedom Bridge taken on Feb. 13, 2017.

Wilbur said she did. The photo was introduced as state’s exhibit #318.

Defense attorney Andrew Baldwin asked when Wilbur gave Diener the bridge photo.

Wilbur said she didn’t know exactly when she supplied the photo, but it was before her testimony earlier in the trial.

The photo, taken in a sequence with others, indicates Wilbur arrived at the bridge at 12:25 p.m., according to News 8’s Kyla Russell.

Wilbur said she walked from Freedom Bridge to the Monon High Bridge but did not see “Bridge Guy” or Abby and Libby on her walk.

Baldwin said Wilbur had a good memory and asked her about remembering details of Feb. 13, 2017.

Diener interjected and said Wilbur was interviewed shortly after the murders.

A short time later, Wilbur was allowed to step down.

Next to testify is Brian Harshman, the Westville correctional officer who listened to Allen’s phone calls from jail.

He confirmed that Richard Allen has been in a one-man cell at Westville, Wabash, and Cass County.

Harshman said that Allen has a chair in his cell in Cass County and that the cell is bigger than the one at Westville was.

He told the court that there is less human interaction in Cass County than in Westville and that Allen has no “neighbors.”

Harshman also said that Richard Allen threatened the staff at Cass County.

Dr. John Martin, a licensed psychiatrist with 40+ years of experience in corrections, was next to testify.

Martin said he started working at Westville as third-party contractor in Feb. 2022 and began seeing Allen that November.

“He was stable. He had a history of depression but did not seem depressed,” Martin told the court.

Three weeks later, the doctor said, Allen seemed “fine” again. When they met on Nov. 24, 2023, sixteen days after their first session, Allen signed a consent form for Prozac.

Martin said he would type up notes on his computer after meeting with Allen and that the computer system was “secure” — no one else had access.

He told the court he would prescribe Allen medication and knew Allen was on Prozac before arriving at Westville. He said he also had a record of when Allen took his medication because staff members would initial a certain log if he was successful.

The state introduced two exhibits, including records of medications ordered for Richard Allen and medication logs signed by staff.

Martin said Allen was kept in “what could be referred to as solitary confinement, others say ‘one man cell.’”

He added that solitary confinement has a “punitive reason,” while a one-man cell does not.

“Mr. Allen had not done anything wrong, and yet he was being treated as though he had, or at least that’s what he could have felt,” Martin told the court.

He said that the prison had a responsibility to keep him safe and there were “many meetings” to ‘make life more comfortable” for Allen.

Martin said he knew Allen had suicide companions and had expressed suicidal interests. He also knew that Allen was sometimes moved to be seen by himself or Dr. Wala.

He testified that he saw Allen again in April 2023 after he got a “phone call that prompted him to visit Allen unplanned.”

Martin said he saw Allen lying naked on a cell mattress with feces smeared on his body.

He told prison staff he needed to see Allen and “they practically dragged him” to a shower cell and gave him a gown, Martin recalled.

Martin said it was at this point he decided Allen was “psychotic.”

He told the court that in order to treat Allen’s psychosis, he had to put him on an antipsychotic medication.

Martin explained he wanted to put Allen on Haldol (Haloperidol), an antipsychotic drug commonly used to treat schizophrenia, but Allen’s mental state was such that he could not consent to treatment.

9:36 a.m.: Defense rests their case

News 8’s Kyla Russell confirmed the defense rested their case Wednesday morning.

The defense only took six days to call forward over 20 witnesses to present their case, nearly half as many as the prosecution.

At 9:07 a.m., just after the jury entered the courtroom, Russell reports defense attorney Brad Rozzi immediately said, “Your Honor, the defense rests.”

State prosecutor Nick McLeland requested a sidebar with Special Judge Fran Gull. Gull said several witnesses weren’t available yet so she dismissed the jury for a quick break.

She then said she wanted to set jury instructions with the attorneys, including relating to the defendant not testifying and prior inconsistent statements.

It was noted that Richard Allen will not testify.

The defense left to discuss the instructions in private, and returned to the courtroom around 9:50 a.m. The courtroom awaited their return in total silence.

McLeland chimed in and said the state had no objections to the instruction as proposed, but defense attorney Andrew Baldwin drew attention to instruction regarding if Richard Allen testified or not. The pool reporter noted that instructions about jurors not drawing inferences out of absence of testimony is different from passages he’d seen before but he “accepts the modified language.”

Rozzi asked for time until the afternoon to “finalize instructions relating to jurors judging credibility of Allen’s incriminating statements,” whether they were voluntary or involuntary.

Gull said she planned to give the jurors instructions before closing statements and will limit the argument lengths to 2- 2.5 hours. “Two hours is a long time for folks to be sitting in these really uncomfortable chairs,” Gull said. The judge also told the attorneys if they go over the time, she “will kindly ask them to stop.”

Court was in recess at 10 a.m.

The next step in the trial is closing arguments from the prosecution and defense, then it will turn to the jury to make final decisions.

9 a.m.: Court in session for Wednesday

Brief summary of Day 16 in the Delphi Murders trial

Tuesday’s first testimony came from Betsey Blair, a witness who told police she saw “Bridge Guy” on the Monon High Bridge in Delphi. She said she went to the trails two times on Feb. 13, 2017, but left for good around 2:15 p.m. She told the jury she left through the Mears entrance, turned left, and saw one vehicle in the CPS lot. It was backed into the parking spot and not a bright color, according to Blair.

She told the defense she only saw the side of the vehicle and couldn’t tell if it was a hatchback like Richard Allen’s vehicle. After a brief cross examination, Blair told the jury the CPS building was abandoned so it couldn’t have belonged to an employee or someone inside.

Next on the stand was Dr. Stuart Grassian. Grassian is Harvard-educated and has been on faculty at the Harvard University School of Medicine for 25 years. He said he has a special interest in what solitary confinement does to someone’s mental health. He has interviewed hundreds of people in those conditions.

Grassian reviewed reports from Allen’s psychologist in Westville, Dr. Monica Wala, and said Allen met the requirements for slipping into psychosis and given his environment and lack of mental stimulus. He also said solitary confinement can cause behaviors noted from Allen, like smearing feces and acting out sexually. He also said the conditions can always impact memory and define the difference between solitary and protective custody. He later told the jury that a normal person could absolutely become psychotic after being in solitary confinement for more than 6 months.

Grassian left the stand and the defense called Dr. Eric Warren, a toolmark specialist based out of Memphis.

He said he was asked by the defense to review toolmark conclusions made by Melissa Oberg, a former firearms analyst who examined the bullet found by Libby and Abby’s bodies and Richard Allen’s gun. He described the different characteristics of a bullet, including class, subclass, and individual, and explained the difference between cycling and firing a bullet.

Warren then confirmed that Oberg used a fired round to compare the cycled round to, which he said wasn’t right as it isn’t repeatable and reproducible, and also produce different markings on the cartridge.

Prosecutor James Luttrell began his cross examination, asking if Warren only looking at the report and photos and not physical evidence would impact his ability to draw conclusions. But Warren disagreed.

He said Oberg didn’t examine the actual extractor in the gun to determine if there were potential subclass characteristics.

Defense attorney Brad Rozzi then showed Warren a picture of triangular marks on the cartridge, which are ejector marks. He says those were “hallmark of subclass characteristics.”

After a short break, Rozzi continued questioning Warren, asking about characteristics of firearms, including force of the slide, if there was research on slide integrity over time, and the quality of the Sig Sauer. He said the slide force was a “blueprint characteristic” and the Sig Sauer should maintain integrity over time.

Luttrell began his cross-examination, asking Warren about cartridge characteristics. After back-and-forth about cartridges, where Luttrell was “hammering into Warren on why he didn’t request or physically examine the cartridge and gun,” Rozzi asked if Warren wrote a report. He said no, but said he was available to the defense when they wanted to depose him, but he was in Morocco.

The jury asked Warren 16 questions. Here are a few:

• Would individual markings be different depending on who cycles? Warren says, “documentation of Oberg does not support conclusion.”
• What are the chances that the cartridge at the scene matches the test bullets? Warren says, “higher likelihood of guns just in Indiana.”
• Would removing, cleaning, disassembling change individual characteristics of a firearm? Warren says, “No, only if there was some sort of damage.”

The next witness was Stacy Eldridge, an expert in computer information management. She examined Libby German’s cell phone after Indiana State Police’s investigation.

She explained what tools she used to examine the phone, primarily Axiom opposed to ISP’s use of Cellebrite. She told the jury there were three level 6 extractions you can do for pulling data, each of them pulling a different amount of information. Libby’s extraction from early 2017 only covered basic information.

Eldridge said ISP had the capacity to do a full extraction in early 2017, but didn’t until later that year. She said this caused issues and caused the loss of “current power log” data, which stays saved between a phone being turned all the way off and on.

Eldridge says that log can also say if the phone went into airplane mode. She said her priority was figuring out what was going on with the phone at 4:34 a.m. on Feb. 14, 2017 to make the phone receive multiple text messages.

After a brief sidebar from Judge Gull, Eldridge left the witness stand to discuss her report on Libby’s phone. She said she generally agrees with the state expert’s examination, but there are things she disagrees with about Libby’s examination. She didn’t agree with some of the times, texts, calls, and FaceTimes delivered between Feb. 13 – 14.

Eldridge said Libby’s phone last connection time was Feb. 14 at 4:33 a.m. and before that, 5:45 p.m. on Feb. 13, and said there is evidence messages weren’t received during that time period. Some texts did have time stamps, but weren’t received until Feb. 17.

Eldridge said she doesn’t know why the phone did not ping in that time frame, even though it was under Abby’s back and was stationary. She said, “I can only conclude something external happened to the phone,” meaning it could have been moved, blocked by metal or have been blocked from the tower.

She said she now knows that at 5:45 p.m. to 10:32 p.m. on Feb. 13, the phone had wired headphones plugged in.

At 3:09 p.m., prosecutor Nick McLeland starts cross-examination. He asked Eldridge about her training on cell phone extraction. She said this is the first time she has testified about cell phone extraction, other than in July.

She said she mainly focused on the phone’s health data, and also reviewed the Bridge Guy video. She said that the phone wouldn’t have logged movement if it were in a car, and couldn’t find evidence that the phone was turned off. Libby’s phone appeared to be “hopping in and out of service.” She added that phone movement to plug in headphones could have registered as health data, but she didn’t test that, and there could have been a signal blocking on the phone.

The jury asked Eldridge six questions, including if she wrote her own timeline for the cell data, if it could be connected to Libby’s iPad, and if she could review Allen’s location timeline if he was using a phone. She said she didn’t have time to make a timeline, the iPad and phone weren’t synced, and she could track Allen’s timeline if it was available.

The last session Tuesday began with Gull scolding the jury for talking and said she would kick out anyone talking in court.

The final two witnesses were ISP First Sgt. Chris Cecil and ISP Lt. Brian Bunner. The defense asked Cecil to explain an “audio output start,” but he said he didn’t know and also didn’t have the knowledge to explain why a cell phone would or wouldn’t connect to a cell tower.

McLeland began his cross examination, starting by saying he Googled a question the jury asked to Eldridge. They asked if a phone made contact with water, would the phone register it as movement? According to Google, a phone could register water or dirt in the headphone port as having headphones plugged in.

The defense redirects, asking Cecil if he Googles things while conducting a criminal investigation. Cecil said he didn’t and normally looks over peer-reviewed research.

The defense asked, “You and the state have had 7.5 years to research this?”

“That’s correct,” Cecil said.

Brian Bunner came to the stand, and also said he didn’t know what “audio output start” was and didn’t perform any Google searches.

Court adjourned at 4:25 p.m.