DELPHI, Ind. (WISH) — Delphi Murders suspect Richard Allen was found guilty Monday after a 21 days in one of the most high-profile trials in Indiana history.

Sentencing was set for Dec. 20. A gag order on people who handled the case and on the families of the suspect and victims will remain in place until the sentencing.

The outcome followed an investigation involving local, state and federal law enforcement that took more than five years before an arrest. The court case has lasted two years, with rulings on the case coming from as high as the Indiana Supreme Court.

The 52-year-old former pharmacy technician in Delphi had been charged with two counts of murder, and two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping in the deaths of Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13, and Liberty “Libby” German, 14. The girls’ bodies were found near the Monon High Bridge and its trail near Delphi on Feb. 14, 2017, a day after they went missing during a hike.

The girls had their throats slit. The coroner who did the autopsies said the cuts could have been made with a box cutter.

Police have said Allen was first investigated shortly after the girls’ bodies were found in 2017. However, he wasn’t charged until Oct. 28, 2022.

Jurors learned during the trial that a tip given to authorities in 2017 had been misfiled, only to be discovered when the tips were being digitized. Once found, that tip led police to talk to Allen again and his subsequent arrest about a month later.

Delphi is a city of nearly 3,000 residents in Carroll County. The county has 20,500 residents. Local officials have faced unprecedented expenditures on the highest-level felonies’ case, a rarity in the small Indiana county.

Once charged, Allen’s case winded through the courts for two years before the trial. Due to conflicts within Carroll County, the case was assigned to an out-of-county arbiter, Judge Frances Gull of Allen County. She deemed pretrial publicity strong enough to bring a jury of residents of Allen County to the Carroll County Courthouse for Allen’s trial.

Gull at one point essentially removed Allen’s defense attorneys over their conduct, only to have the Indiana Supreme Court reinstate them in January. In a formal opinion a month later, the Indiana Supreme Court said it did not find removing Allen’s defense attorneys was not a “necessary last resort.” The ruling created a new standard for the removal of defense attorneys from a case.

The defense attorneys also had asked Gull to step down as the case’s special judge. The Indiana Supreme Court in July refused that request.

The trial also challenged journalists.

Gull met with the media in October at the Carroll County Courthouse before the trial started. She allowed photos to be taken of the empty courtroom, which News 8 has aired. She also provided guidelines for media coverage.

A large amount of interest in the Delphi Murders came from media personalities with murder podcasts and video platforms. The judge’s distrust of the media grew as the case winded through court, leading her to not allow cameras or any electronic devices in the courtroom during the trial. That decision meant written notes from a pool reporter were shared with other reporters after a court session ended. The judge also denied a request to release audio recordings of the sessions.

Indiana became one of the last states to allow cameras in courtrooms starting May 1, 2023, with the permission of the presiding judge. Gull was part of a pilot program for cameras in courtrooms before the Indiana Supreme Court agreed to the change.

The judge at the start of the trial confiscated the cameras of three traditional media journalists, claiming they’d taken photos of jurors as they moved from a van outside the courthouse and into the courtroom. The judge ordered the photos of the jurors to be erased.

The small size of the courtroom also limited public in-person viewing of the trial for all parties involved.

During closing arguments Thursday, Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland told jurors that they should convict Allen because a unfired cartridge found at the crime scene had toolmarks that matched bullets cycled through Allen’s Sig Sauer gun found at his home in 2022. Toolmarks are caused by the harder metals inside a firearm coming into contact with the softer metals that make up a cartridge.

McLeland also told jurors that clothes found at Allen’s home in 2022 were similar to those of the person seen in a video that Libby took at the trail on Feb. 13, 2024. Her cellphone video showed a blurry image of a man walking on the trail; he came to be known as “bridge guy” during the trial. The full video was publicly played for the first time during the trial with enhanced audio, and included the audio first shared by investigators in the later half of February 2017 of a person saying “down the hill.”

Finally, the county prosecutor noted Allen’s confessions while he was in a state prison. Allen was moved to the Indiana Department of Correction’s Westville Correctional Facility because the Carroll Count sheriff said the jail could not safely secure Allen. It’s highly unusual in Indiana for a person facing criminal charges in a county court to be put into a state prison while awaiting a case’s outcome.

Defense attorneys in closing arguments said Allen’s confessions were false, given under duress while he suffered mental health issues while being in a state prison while awaiting trial. Mental health professionals had testified about Allen’s declining mental health while he was at the state prison, and the jury also saw graphic videos and photos of the conditions Allen endured. The defense attorneys said a conviction of Allen would be “endorsing that behavior.”

The defense attorneys also pointed to the state’s broken timeline in its investigation, which included , bungled ballistics, and a lack of DNA or digital forensics from the crime scene to connect Allen to the murders. Also, investigators failed to do a toolmarks test on the gun of another person seen in the area during the girls’ disappearance.

What jurors did not hear about were theories that the girls’ murders may have involved Odinism, an ancient Nordic religion that’s said to be inspire white supremacists. The judge, however, denied allowing any testimony during the trial about those theories.

The trial and the public defense of Allen have cost the county government upwards of $4.3 million.