Indiana man wants new trial in killing of teens where pagan ritual
evidence can be introduced
[September 21, 2026]
By JEFFREY COLLINS
A man serving 130 years in prison for killing two teen girls in Indiana
is asking an appeals court to overturn his convictions, saying that he
confessed while he was having a psychological crisis and was unfairly
barred from arguing at trial that the girls were killed by unknown
participants in a pagan ritual.
Jurors convicted Richard Allen of murder in 2024 in the deaths of
Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, known as Abby and Libby.
The case in the tiny town of Delphi went unsolved for more than five
years before Allen was arrested, becoming a magnet for true-crime
enthusiasts.
Allen’s case goes before the Indiana Court of Appeals for an hour of
arguments on Monday.
Prosecutors said some of Allen’s incriminating statements came before he
showed signs of mental illness and continued after he improved. Even
without his confessions, they said jurors had enough evidence to find
Allen guilty.
They said Allen admitted to being on the trail near where the girls were
killed at the time one of them took a brief video of a suspicious man
nearby saying, “Down the hill.” Prosecutors said that if the judge had
allowed a defense expert to testify about a possible pagan ritual it
would have turned the trial into a sideshow.
Unusual evidence found along with bodies of the teens
The girls' bodies were found down a steep hill from an abandoned
railroad trestle on a hiking trail just outside of Delphi on Feb. 13,
2017. The eighth graders were dropped off and never made it to their
pickup point.
The teens' throats were cut, and a few branches were scattered over
their bodies. One was found nude while the other was wearing the first
victim's clothes. There was no evidence they had been sexually
assaulted.
Prosecutors said Allen was armed with a gun and forced the girls off the
hiking trail. They said he confessed to planning to rape them before a
passing van made him change his mind and he killed them. An expert
testified an unspent bullet found between the teens’ bodies “had been
cycled through” Allen’s handgun.
Defense lawyers at his trial said no witness explicitly identified Allen
as the man seen near the trail the afternoon the girls went missing.
They also said no fingerprint, DNA or forensic evidence linked Allen to
the murder scene.
[to top of second column]
|
Allen's lawyers say isolation led to mental breakdown and false
confessions
Allen was held in solitary confinement while awaiting trial. He
denied killing the girls for months, but his attorneys said mental
stress from isolation led to a steep psychological decline.
Eventually, his mental state became so bad he convinced himself he
killed the girls and confessed several times, his lawyers said.
“Allen lost forty pounds, was unable to care for himself, was tased,
his face was black and blue and at times bleeding, and he was
poisoned by fecal matter and toilet water," attorneys Stacy Uliana
and Mark Leeman wrote in their brief.
Prosecutors said the statements coincided with Allen seeing evidence
in the case including the conditions of the teens' bodies.
“The discovery materials forced Allen to face the horrifying
evidence of what he did ... images and events he had been able to
ignore and repress over the five years in which his guilt had gone
undiscovered,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita wrote in his
office's brief.
Expert on pagan killings not allowed to testify
Allen's trial attorneys wanted to put an expert witness on the stand
to testify the killings appeared to be a ritual sacrifice by people
who worshipped Odin, the king of the gods in Norse mythology.
The expert was expected to say the positioning of the bodies, the
branches on the remains, the outdoor location of the crime and knife
wounds to the victims all were indications of pagan rituals.
Prosecutors said the expert had limited examples and that defense
lawyers shouldn't be able to present just any theory without
evidence to back it up.
Other issues Allen's attorneys are expected to argue before the
appeals court are inconsistencies in how witnesses described the
suspicious man near the trail, pointing to a sketch of a potential
suspect that didn't look like Allen. They also question why an
expert for Allen's defense wasn't allowed to question whether marks
on an unfired bullet can be traced to a specific gun.
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
