A Walk Through the Woods

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Speaker 1 Tonight on date line.

Speaker 8 It took my breath away. Here is this young girl with her friend out on this bridge on a beautiful sunny day.
They have no idea what's coming.

Speaker 9 Got a call and said that they had found the girls. What did they tell you?

Speaker 3 That they're gone.

Speaker 10 Their lives were stolen from them.

Speaker 11 Those girls matter.

Speaker 12 Were they out there to meet someone?

Speaker 13 Somebody was in contact with Libby. The fake persona.

Speaker 12 People wondered if there was some sort of a catfishing element.

Speaker 8 There was a theory that the girls were killed in a pagan ritual in the woods.

Speaker 9 We found Libby's phone. She secretly was able to videotape this person approaching them.

Speaker 14 You also hear him say something.

Speaker 16 Down the hill. Down the hill.

Speaker 14 The voice of the killer. Voice of the killer.

Speaker 13 They knew something was not right.

Speaker 10 They had to be scared out of their minds.

Speaker 8 We've got a picture. We've got his voice.

Speaker 14 Where is this guy?

Speaker 10 Two girls who had so much to offer. We weren't going to let up till we found this guy.

Speaker 18 A grainy picture on a phone.

Speaker 19 a gravelly voice recorded in secret.

Speaker 18 Could these girls help solve their own mystery?

Speaker 19 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 4 Here's Andrea Canning with a walk through the woods.

Speaker 14 Winter was masquerading as spring,

Speaker 14 teasing those tired of the cold to step outside.

Speaker 14 Two girls set out for a walk through the woods. This is very peaceful here.
It is. I could see why they would want to come here on it.

Speaker 20 It is. We just saw the bald eagle.
Yeah, it's a beautiful place. And then this is the trail.

Speaker 14 A trail that ends here

Speaker 14 at an old railroad bridge. This is kind of scary.

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 14 There's rotted out ties. We're so high up.

Speaker 20 yeah yep water underneath us for part of it

Speaker 13 i walked across that bridge and and i swore i'll never do it again you wouldn't catch me crossing that bridge for anything i i walked as far as i could then i was on my hands and knees

Speaker 14 one of the girls took a photo of the other inching her way across the bridge a final moment of innocence

Speaker 14 Because the real danger wasn't beneath them. It was behind.

Speaker 14 A silhouette taking shape, growing as it picked up speed on the bridge, coming toward them.

Speaker 14 It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Absolutely.
When you think about these two girls, they knew something wasn't right.

Speaker 9 Yep.

Speaker 9 And they were scared.

Speaker 14 All they had left in that moment: a cell phone, each other, and a split second to act.

Speaker 14 Delphi, Indiana, population 3,000, more or less. A rural community about an hour and a half's drive north of Indianapolis.

Speaker 9 Carroll County, Delphi, is a great place to raise your family.

Speaker 14 Tony Liggett is the sheriff.

Speaker 9 I grew up here, choose to be here. I want to be here myself.
It's beautiful. People felt safe.

Speaker 14 Still do, he says, though maybe a little less since that Monday, February 13th, 2017.

Speaker 14 The morning had started off promising. Blue skies, warm weather.
Better yet, classes were canceled to make up for an unused snow day.

Speaker 14 What's the plan for the girls that day, with this day off?

Speaker 11 Well, there wasn't a plan.

Speaker 14 Becky Patty is talking about her granddaughter, 14-year-old Liberty German, and her best friend, 13-year-old Abigail Williams, Libby and Abby. They'd had a sleepover at Becky's the night before.

Speaker 11 Libby came out and she was sitting on the floor in my office.

Speaker 14 Just then, Libby's older sister announced she'd be taking the car out.

Speaker 11 Kelsey popped her head in and said, hey, I'm going to go to my boyfriend's house. And Libby jumped right up and said, hey,

Speaker 14 can you take us to the trails? The public trails on the outskirts of town. Kelsey dropped them off just before two.
They planned to stay for an hour, then call for a ride home. The hour came and went.

Speaker 14 Becky called Libby. Was it ringing or was it going straight to voicemail?

Speaker 11 It would ring and then go to voicemail.

Speaker 11 You're not really thinking anything bad, you know.

Speaker 14 She alerted Abby's family that they couldn't find the girls. Then she reached out to her husband, Mike, Libby's grandfather, and said, hey,

Speaker 11 Libby went to the trails. It's been about an hour.
She's not answering her phone.

Speaker 3 Of course, it's getting cold.

Speaker 23 It is February.

Speaker 2 It was warm out during the day.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 26 we're all thinking, all right, eventually we're going to find him here, right?

Speaker 11 But daylight was waning and it was going to start getting dark.

Speaker 14 Yeah, because it's February.

Speaker 11 And I said, we're going to have to call the police.

Speaker 27 And Libby's afraid of the dark.

Speaker 9 I think we initially got the call somewhere between 5 and 5.30.

Speaker 14 Liggett was a detective back in 2017. He figured the teens would show up soon enough.

Speaker 9 Were we actively looking for them? Absolutely. But there was not a real sense of urgency.

Speaker 14 I'm sure, you know, no evil thoughts were entering your mind at that point. Correct.

Speaker 14 Though when he heard they'd been at the trail, he did wonder about the bridge.

Speaker 9 What we're standing on now,

Speaker 20 this wasn't the way it was back then. This was what it all looked like, these rotting railroad ties, no railings.

Speaker 14 The Monin High Bridge is a relic from a past century. Trains once used it to cross Deer Creek more than 60 feet below.

Speaker 28 It's the thrill.

Speaker 29 What teenagers don't like thrill?

Speaker 14 Libby's cousin, Sadie Mowdy, says the abandoned bridge was where young daredevils chose to hang out.

Speaker 29 I wouldn't even go out to the first platform.

Speaker 4 Nope.

Speaker 14 But the kids do it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 29 My best friend in high school got her senior pictures taken on that bridge.

Speaker 14 Did you know if they were planning to venture out onto the bridge?

Speaker 11 No, we didn't.

Speaker 14 At some point, Libby's sister checked social media.

Speaker 11 We saw a Snapchat photo of Abby that Libby had taken. So we knew that they had been on the bridge.

Speaker 14 Is that reinforcing the thought that maybe this is connected to the bridge? You know, that maybe something happened, they got hurt, or...

Speaker 10 Well, that's what was going through my mind: okay, now either they fell off the bridge or they got down one of the ravines out there.

Speaker 14 Is panic setting in?

Speaker 11 I just knew that something wasn't right.

Speaker 14 When the sun went down, Liggett started to worry. Soon, word was out and Delphi sprang into action.
Its Its residents joined the search.

Speaker 14 Even though not a lot of time has passed, you have a lot of people looking for these two girls.

Speaker 9 Oh, absolutely. That's just the way things work around here.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Neighbors and police armed with flashlights searched for hours in the dark, around trees and brush, along unsteady paths. But yet, no one saw anything around the bridge area.
Correct.

Speaker 14 So they just vanished.

Speaker 13 Correct.

Speaker 14 Now that the sun is up, the search here has resumed outside Delphi and and Carroll County. Liggett was at the station the next day when the call came in.
It was a little past noon.

Speaker 14 It was the worst possible news.

Speaker 9 Got a call and said that they had found the girls' bodies.

Speaker 14 Abby and Libby lay in a hidden depression of the forest floor about a quarter mile beyond the bridge. It was clear the girls had been murdered.

Speaker 22 We are investigating this as a crime scene.

Speaker 14 A shaken town would want answers and an arrest.

Speaker 14 Neither would happen quickly. This was a long journey with a lot of suspects along the way.

Speaker 13 That's correct.

Speaker 12 I think a lot of people looking at this case always wondered if there was some sort of a catfishing element. Why did the girls go out there that day?

Speaker 31 She had the wherewithal to pull that phone out and take a video.

Speaker 14 This man has placed himself by the bridge at the time the girls were there.

Speaker 13 Absolutely.

Speaker 6 A police report that talked about Odinism, and all of a sudden, a whole new world opened up about what might have happened.

Speaker 14 A twisted world.

Speaker 19 It was, it's a very twisted world.

Speaker 14 Sheriff Liggett, back at the station, could hardly believe what he was hearing. Two local girls found murdered near the Monen High Bridge in Delphi, Indiana.
He raced to the area a short drive away.

Speaker 14 What information have you been given before you arrive at the scene about how these girls died?

Speaker 9 No, no, nothing. No information.

Speaker 14 He was directed down a hill near the bridge and onto a patch of privately owned land.

Speaker 14 Where were they ultimately found?

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 20 further around, you see how the creek bends up upstream, up that way.

Speaker 14 It was grim. Abby and Libby lay dead a few feet apart.
Libby at the foot of a tree. Their throats had been cut.

Speaker 9 Abby was wearing clothes. Libby was not.

Speaker 9 Libby's wounds were just devastating. It was obvious that Libby had been moved

Speaker 9 a very, very short distance.

Speaker 26 kind of appeared they were trying to

Speaker 9 conceal her behind a tree. There was a a large tree next to her, and they both had some sticks on top of them.

Speaker 9 I don't know how a human being can do

Speaker 9 what they did to anybody, let alone two little girls.

Speaker 14 Becky and Mike were searching in a different area when they heard the girls had been found. They raced back to the trail, assuming they were okay.

Speaker 14 Becky didn't realize her sister was one of the searchers who'd come upon the girls' bodies.

Speaker 11 She just kept saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and she was crying. She just kept saying, I couldn't go back to them.
I said, well, tell me where they are so I can go.

Speaker 14 Even then, it didn't sink in until.

Speaker 11 And I'm waiting. And the coroner's van come driving by.

Speaker 11 That's when I realized

Speaker 11 this isn't good.

Speaker 17 From that point on, a lot of things are really glazed over or a daze.

Speaker 10 Because they're like, this isn't really happening, you know, type thing. But

Speaker 10 they'd made an announcement that they'd found two girls, but they couldn't confirm the identity.

Speaker 14 But you knew?

Speaker 17 Well, yeah.

Speaker 10 Small community. Two girls missing, two girls found.

Speaker 14 Investigators brought the families back to the station where they had set up a command center for the search.

Speaker 11 And I thought at that time that they were

Speaker 11 there to help us.

Speaker 11 that they were asking questions and I was answering and, you know, trying to,

Speaker 11 let's figure out what's going on.

Speaker 27 I didn't even realize until years later.

Speaker 11 Oh my God, they were interrogating us.

Speaker 14 It fell to Mike to formally identify both girls. He remembered how surreal it felt.
Just hours earlier, his granddaughter and Abby had been brimming with life, giggling during their sleepover.

Speaker 11 They were upstairs watching movies. They were painting and silly little videos and stuff, just having a good time.

Speaker 11 It was a normal night. They were being kids, you know.

Speaker 14 Now the Patties and Abby's family had been thrust into a new, terrible kind of normal, one in which their girls existed only in photos and memories.

Speaker 14 I mean, there's so many beautiful photos of Libby and Abby, just two happy-go-lucky girls.

Speaker 14 Abby had been the only child of a single mom. Libby and her sister Kelsey came to live with their grandparents after their mother and father split up.

Speaker 10 I want to say through a course of life events, right, it presented an opportunity and we had spare bedrooms and they came to us and

Speaker 10 gladly welcomed it and took it on and made the best of it.

Speaker 14 Was there any hesitation to take her into your home?

Speaker 14 That's a lot, right, to bring a child in.

Speaker 23 No, not at all.

Speaker 3 We do it again.

Speaker 14 Both Abby and Libby were good students. Abby loved crafts and music.
Libby, music and sports.

Speaker 11 It was softball, then volleyball, swimming,

Speaker 23 soccer.

Speaker 11 She had soccer in the fall. There was about three weeks out of the year she was not in a sport.

Speaker 14 So you must have been doing a lot of driving.

Speaker 3 Lots.

Speaker 14 Abby was the shyer of the two.

Speaker 11 She was quiet and reserved. I think her and Libby complimented each other because Libby was a little more loud and boisterous and she was quiet.

Speaker 14 In fact, Libby was an all-around jokester at home. When you decide to be fancy after shaving, here she is giving a tutorial on shaving for the first time.

Speaker 5 It burns, it burns, it's red, it hurts, it burns, it burns red.

Speaker 14 She loved challenging anyone, especially her uncle, into ridiculous stunts.

Speaker 11 We were gone and she was daring him to jump and do a handstand on the handrail and end up in the pool. And she kept, and you could hear her saying, you won't do it.

Speaker 21 You're scared.

Speaker 11 and he'd said why are you pushing me she said because grandma's gonna be home so you gotta do it you know did he do it yeah he did

Speaker 23 was he okay

Speaker 14 two girls funny and sweet their families and the community were in mourning and on edge then just hours into the case investigators caught a break

Speaker 9 We found Libby's phone.

Speaker 14 I mean, this phone could be everything, depending on, you know, what you find on it. Correct.

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Speaker 14 Mike and Becky Patty knew nothing would ever be the same. Their granddaughter Libby and her friend Abby had been taken from them.
And so violently.

Speaker 26 Their lives were stolen from them.

Speaker 14 I'm a mother of five girls.

Speaker 23 I have a... a

Speaker 14 14-year-old and one that's about to turn 13. Exactly the ages of Libby and Abby.
And it truly is a parent's worst nightmare.

Speaker 14 The rest of the family gathered at the house to help any way they could.

Speaker 29 Some of us were standing around the kitchen island. Some of us were at the kitchen table.

Speaker 14 Sadie Mowdy remembers her Aunt Becky looking for Libby's older sister, Kelsey.

Speaker 29 And I remember her

Speaker 29 yelling up the stairs, Libby, Libby.

Speaker 27 But she meant to say Kelsey, but she was saying Libby.

Speaker 29 And we all just kind of stood there with eyes wide open, like none of us said a word.

Speaker 14 At that point, police were still not releasing the girls' names. But everyone in Delphi knew.

Speaker 8 This is a small town, so a word travels fast.

Speaker 14 This is a community that is hurting. Reporter Emily Longnecker covered the story for NBC's Indianapolis affiliate, WTHR.

Speaker 8 You could see it on people's faces.

Speaker 37 Delphi, nothing happens here. It's like,

Speaker 37 how, how could this be happening here?

Speaker 8 You didn't need a positive identification from the police. You knew, and you knew it in your gut, and you saw it on the faces of everyone you encountered in that town.

Speaker 13 People expect things instantaneously, and I started to feel that.

Speaker 14 The investigation team included Indiana State Police. Doug Carter was the agency's superintendent.

Speaker 14 He was already fielding questions from the public, like, is this the work of a drifter, a serial killer, or someone already known to police?

Speaker 13 And I started to think to myself, oh my gosh, we are never going to be able to meet the expectation that people have.

Speaker 13 And we weren't.

Speaker 14 Investigators were at that moment collecting evidence. You found some clues at the crime scene.

Speaker 9 Correct. The unspent round from a gun.

Speaker 14 A crime scene investigator noticed a bullet peeking through leaves between the girls.

Speaker 14 So very odd that, number one, it's unspent, hasn't been fired through a gun, and also that the girls were not shot.

Speaker 17 Correct.

Speaker 9 In my head at that point in time was that there may have been a gun used to control.

Speaker 9 How does a person control two girls?

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 9 you can do it with a gun.

Speaker 14 Liggett believed the killer racked his gun to scare the girls into submission, not realizing the evidence he was leaving.

Speaker 20 So when you rack a gun,

Speaker 9 it ejects the bullet out the side and lands on the ground.

Speaker 14 There was more. As crime scene investigators moved Abby's body, they discovered a shoe.
And beneath that.

Speaker 9 We found Libby's phone.

Speaker 14 They immediately sent the phone to a forensics analyst for testing.

Speaker 14 Meanwhile, officers continued collecting evidence, hoping for DNA, searched for surveillance cameras on nearby businesses, and spoke to property owners.

Speaker 38 It's so mind-boggling. I haven't haven't really caught up, it hasn't caught up with me yet.

Speaker 14 Like Ron Logan, he spoke to WTHR shortly after the girls were discovered on his property.

Speaker 38 My son grew up here. He's been down here when he was 13 years old.
Never in your wildest dreams, do you think he comes down here to play, he won't come back home.

Speaker 38 I mean, that's just something he doesn't need in your mind, ever.

Speaker 14 Investigators also talked to anyone who'd been in the area that day. Indiana State Police Lieutenant Jerry Holman.

Speaker 13 We were able to identify everybody, interview them.

Speaker 14 Three girls described a man on the trail around 1.30, about 20 minutes before Abby and Libby arrived.

Speaker 13 We knew they saw a white male,

Speaker 13 but the descriptions were slightly different.

Speaker 14 Though they agreed he was overdressed for the warm day and avoided eye contact, a woman walking close to the bridge thought she saw the same man.

Speaker 13 Looking like he was waiting for somebody.

Speaker 14 As she's walking back towards the trailhead where she parked, she sees two girls later identified as abby and libby walking towards the bridge others came forward but had nothing really to offer one woman saw the story on the news and urged her husband to report he'd been out there that day did he see anything unusual no he did not see um

Speaker 13 anybody or uh

Speaker 14 notify us of anything unusual so you had to work with what you had to work with yeah

Speaker 14 but one woman did report something disturbing She saw a man near the trails while she was driving. He was walking along the road, covered in mud and blood.

Speaker 14 Are you thinking, wow, she witnessed the killer?

Speaker 17 Right.

Speaker 14 I mean, who else would have blood and mud on them like that?

Speaker 33 Exactly.

Speaker 14 The girls' autopsies revealed they had been killed with a sharp object. There were no signs of sexual assault.
Police kept those and many other details of the investigation from the public.

Speaker 14 Then, a major announcement. Police had obtained a photo of a man on the bridge that day.

Speaker 39 We've been able to identify almost everybody else that's been on that trail, and this gentleman has not been identified. We want to know what he saw, what he might have seen on the trail.

Speaker 14 The officer didn't say who took the photo.

Speaker 13 We were definitely able to tell

Speaker 13 a pretty good description of the person, white male,

Speaker 13 you know, blue coat, sweatshirt, head covering, blue jeans.

Speaker 14 Police described him as a possible witness. Viewers responded, flooding the tip line.
Several identified the same man, Ron Logan, that property owner, and some women had a lot to say about him.

Speaker 12 They had experiences where they woke up in the middle of the night and he was standing at the foot of their bed, watching them sleep.

Speaker 14 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 12 Well, we know the family really well, so it's been overwhelming, the whole thing.

Speaker 14 In the days after the murders, people in Delphi came out to support the families. They released lanterns in remembrance.

Speaker 14 They gathered for prayer vigils and hung ribbons with the girls' favorite colors. Libby's family says a CVS worker even made free copies of the girls' photos for their visitation.

Speaker 14 The line for it stretched the length of the building.

Speaker 10 It was overwhelming how many people showed up to show their support.

Speaker 41 I'm sure, yeah.

Speaker 11 It was supposed to end,

Speaker 23 and

Speaker 11 there still wasn't an end to the line. And I remember somebody asking us, What do you want to do? And we said, These people came.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 11 We can't stop now. So we

Speaker 27 stood there

Speaker 23 a long time

Speaker 14 but the small delphi community was changing people were fearful this town used to not lock their doors when they went to bed it was

Speaker 14 like everyone was scared like nobody went on the trails yeah there's a boogeyman out there i mean unknown could be one of your neighbors yeah

Speaker 3 Didn't know if they were walking amongst us or not.

Speaker 11 The whole community was scared.

Speaker 14 And what about that man in the photo? Investigators described him as a possible witness. Was he something more? Were you trying not to scare the killer, maybe try to draw him in?

Speaker 33 Yeah, a little bit of both.

Speaker 13 That's one of the strategies. You make them start thinking, oh my, are they closing in on me?

Speaker 14 When he doesn't come forward, he becomes your prime suspect that you have named Bridge Guy.

Speaker 3 Correct.

Speaker 14 Bridge Guy. They now believed he had to be the killer.
Officers and agents from almost every corner of law enforcement were scrambling to figure out who he was.

Speaker 14 A week after the murders, they had an important update about that photo.

Speaker 6 This young lady's a hero, there's no doubt.

Speaker 14 For the first time, they revealed where the image had come from. It wasn't taken by some random eyewitness or even a security camera.
Incredibly, Libby herself captured the killer on her phone.

Speaker 9 Libby recorded from just off the end of the bridge way down there.

Speaker 14 You believe then that based on the video that he he followed them across the city?

Speaker 9 Yes, that's what the video shows, that he was behind Abby in the video. So yeah, I believe he followed him across, yes.

Speaker 9 Libby had the presence of mind to know something wasn't right about this person, and she secretly, I assume, was able to videotape this person approaching them.

Speaker 14 It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Absolutely.
When you think about these two girls.

Speaker 14 The phone's data revealed Libby hit record at 2:13 p.m.,

Speaker 14 roughly six minutes after she posted that photo of Abby to Snapchat.

Speaker 14 I hate to even ask this, but the final moments of the girls and the fear that they would have experienced at the hands of that person.

Speaker 10 They had to be scared out of their minds.

Speaker 14 Police did not release the video, only a snippet of sound from it. A man's garbled voice playing on a loop.
Down the hill.

Speaker 14 Down the hill.

Speaker 14 Down the hill.

Speaker 33 Down the hill? Down the hill.

Speaker 14 The voice of the killer.

Speaker 6 The voice of the killer.

Speaker 14 To investigators, it sounded as though the man was ordering the girls down the hill to their deaths.

Speaker 14 And they thought they heard something else in that video, though they didn't reveal it at the time.

Speaker 9 We believe that we hear a gun racking in that video, and that kind of made sense with the bullet being down between the two girls when we found it.

Speaker 14 A young victim recording her killer was more than enough to turn a small town's grief into a national news story.

Speaker 1 Police in Indiana are pleading for help to solve a double murder mystery.

Speaker 14 Tips were pouring in, thousands to sort through.

Speaker 14 When Connie Dillman learned where the girls were found, she believed she knew the killer.

Speaker 12 I just told him that I felt that it was Ron Logan that had done this because he's abusive.

Speaker 14 Ron Logan was Connie's ex-boyfriend. The man who owned the property where the girls were found.

Speaker 23 And I said, oh my God, Ron Logan killed him.

Speaker 12 I really thought he killed him.

Speaker 23 I just

Speaker 12 finally killed somebody.

Speaker 14 Connie said Ron once barricaded her inside his house. Another time she said he attacked her in his yard.

Speaker 12 I was helping him outside do some things, and he just hit me over the head with a cross-hurt ranch.

Speaker 14 Then, when she saw the picture of Bridge Guy, she was even more convinced.

Speaker 12 Just the build, the stance.

Speaker 2 It looked like Ron. Ron

Speaker 42 dressed that way.

Speaker 14 This is Ron Logan's house. This is a guy with a sketchy past and some big accusations from women against him.

Speaker 12 Absolutely, and a lot of reasons for police to look at him.

Speaker 14 Barbara McDonald covered the Delphi murders for Court TV. She spoke to some of those women.

Speaker 12 Two of the women that he had dated told me that after they had broken up, they had experiences where they woke up in the middle of the night and he was standing at the foot of their bed watching them sleep.

Speaker 12 oh my gosh he had broken into their house had broken into their homes they had no idea how he got in that's terrifying

Speaker 14 but logan was never charged with any crimes related to the women's allegations and you know we interviewed ron he would deny all that he would deny any of that those accusations logan was a 77 year old retiree living alone at the time of the murders He told police he wasn't home the afternoon the girls were killed.

Speaker 14 He was out with his cousin running an errand.

Speaker 13 So we followed up. He said he had the cousin drive him to the fish store, so we located the cousin.

Speaker 14 The cousin backed up Logan's alibi. But then, two days later, he changed his story.

Speaker 13 Initially, the cousin was covering for him, but then

Speaker 13 during a separate interview, he said no.

Speaker 14 As in, he had not driven Logan to the store.

Speaker 21 Why would he lie about that?

Speaker 4 Because he... No, why?

Speaker 13 Yeah, exactly. That's what we thought.

Speaker 14 Not only that, the cousin said Logan asked him to lie before the girl's bodies had even been found.

Speaker 14 It was time for investigators to take a closer look at Ron Logan.

Speaker 39 All that has kind of led us back to this location.

Speaker 14 Police were moving in. An arrest was imminent.

Speaker 12 A lot of people, when that happened, thought, okay, well, this is the beginning, right?

Speaker 8 You're thinking back to interviewing him and thinking, my God, did I interview the killer?

Speaker 14 The hunt for a killer was still on, but some in town thought they already knew who it was.

Speaker 14 Ron Logan. His ex-girlfriend, Connie, wasn't the only person to report him.

Speaker 14 As many as 15 tips came in, suggesting he was involved in the girls' murders. The investigation was nearly a month old when police arrested him, but not for the murders.

Speaker 12 He's picked up on a probation violation.

Speaker 14 He's not supposed to be driving.

Speaker 12 He's not supposed to be driving. He's on a suspended license.
And I think a lot of people when that happened thought, okay, well, this is the beginning, right? This is what they're getting him on now.

Speaker 12 And then there's going to be these other charges.

Speaker 14 Investigators pressed Logan about the murders to see if he'd confess, but he denied any involvement. They also searched his house.

Speaker 39 With the information we've received, with

Speaker 39 interviews that we've done, tips that have come in, all that has kind of led us back to this location.

Speaker 8 Everyone is descending on Ron Logan's house. You see them hauling away his truck.
You see them carrying out stuff.

Speaker 8 They're there five and six hours. Then we don't hear anything.

Speaker 14 Emily Longnecker had talked to Logan right after the girls were found.

Speaker 8 You're thinking back to interviewing him and thinking, my God, did I interview the killer?

Speaker 14 Logan pleaded guilty to an unrelated charge and violating his probation. He was sentenced to four years in prison.

Speaker 14 Police continued to investigate him, but Detective Holman had doubts Logan was involved in the murders. Did he look like Bridge Guy at all? His build, his age, his...

Speaker 13 No, not to my opinion. He's very tall, older than the photo.

Speaker 14 They didn't find any direct evidence tying Logan to the case, and investigators eventually cleared him. But if not Logan, then who?

Speaker 8 What's going on? We've got a picture of the man. We've got his voice.

Speaker 14 Where is this guy? Residents worried he would strike again. This was potentially a ticking time bomb with this killer.

Speaker 13 Big time.

Speaker 14 Five months after the murders, investigators released a sketch. It was based on information from that woman who'd reported seeing a muddy and bloody man.

Speaker 39 It's basically just a clear picture of his face compared to what you saw down below.

Speaker 14 If the photo of Bridge Guy had been fuzzy, the sketch of him was detailed.

Speaker 43 Today was the first day that I've really been excited through this whole process.

Speaker 43 It was the most optimistic we've been.

Speaker 43 We've, you know, we got a face to the person.

Speaker 43 We're going to get him.

Speaker 14 Instead, it kicked up a hornet's nest. People were accusing each other on social media with little or no proof.

Speaker 13 And that was really the time that people were convinced it was their ex-husband. They were convinced it was their neighbor.
They were convinced it was their son.

Speaker 14 Some people on social media actually thought you could be the killer. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 8 Somebody called in a tip that one of my male colleagues looked like Bridge Guy.

Speaker 8 As I understand it, my boss had to sign an affidavit that said this male colleague was at work the day that Abby and Libby disappeared. Nobody was off the table.
Nobody.

Speaker 14 More months ticked by.

Speaker 14 Libby's grandparents and Abby's mother, Anna Williams, tried to keep the case in the public eye.

Speaker 43 I'm hoping that there's going to be people that haven't heard about the girls.

Speaker 15 See this.

Speaker 42 We just ask that you do the right thing. Do the right thing for our girls and to keep this from happening to the next family.

Speaker 14 Along the way, the two families supported one another.

Speaker 11 Both families were equally committed to doing whatever they could to catch this killer.

Speaker 13 We always had hope that we were going to get to the end of this.

Speaker 14 The first anniversary of the girls' murders came and went. As the second anniversary approached, the families were frustrated there was still no arrest.

Speaker 15 It is sad.

Speaker 42 Nobody even here thought that we would still be looking for somebody in two years in a town this size, but we are.

Speaker 39 That's a clear picture of his face now.

Speaker 30 We got a voice recording. We got a picture.
I'll be as grainy. We got a sketch from eyewitnesses that saw the guy.
How do we not have him in today's world?

Speaker 14 Still, Libby's family remained hopeful.

Speaker 30 Through strength of the Lord, you know, prayer and this faith that

Speaker 30 the good Lord's going to see this thing through.

Speaker 14 A few months after the second anniversary, Superintendent Carter held a press conference. His hope, smoke out the killer.

Speaker 45 Directly to the killer who may be in this room.

Speaker 13 We believe you are hiding in plain sight. I was convinced that he was watching.

Speaker 14 It's an unsettling feeling.

Speaker 13 It was, and I've never experienced anything like that.

Speaker 14 It's like you're talking to a ghost out there.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Investigators believe their killer was someone living among them. Someone from Delphi.

Speaker 9 My gut the entire time was people don't know about these trails. People didn't know about Highbridge.

Speaker 9 The random person from the next town over, you would find very few people that even there knew what it was.

Speaker 9 So I always kind of figured that it was someone here or from here that was familiar with the area.

Speaker 13 We are also releasing video

Speaker 13 recovered from Libby's phone.

Speaker 14 One more thing to come out of that press conference. For the first time, investigators showed a short clip of Bridge Guy played on a loop.

Speaker 13 Watch the person's mannerisms as they walk.

Speaker 8 I can imagine someone studying that walk over and over and over again and saying,

Speaker 8 yeah, that looks like somebody I know.

Speaker 14 The video generated more tips. None panned out.

Speaker 14 Then suddenly, there was a new name in the news. State police are now looking for information about a social media profile with the name Anthony Schatz.
Anthony Schatz?

Speaker 8 This male model type with his shirt off and smiling and nice pecs and good abs.

Speaker 14 Who was this mystery man?

Speaker 14 And what did he have to do with the murders? You learned that Liberty had been in communication with shots. Yes.

Speaker 46 Hey weirdos, I'm Elena and I'm Ash and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 35 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 44 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 47 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 44 Two new episodes drop every week and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 50 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Speaker 14 In early 2020, Delphi investigators were trying to figure out if the murders of Abby and Libby were linked to other crimes in the area. They reached out to Libby's sister, Kelsey.

Speaker 12 Kelsey gets called in by law enforcement and they give her a list of names and among those names is this Anthony Schatz.

Speaker 12 And she says, oh, that sounds familiar to me.

Speaker 14 Kelsey told police in the days before the murders, Libby had been chatting with Schatz.

Speaker 9 Evidence would seem to be that she was saying, oh, I'm talking to this really cute guy.

Speaker 14 The profile showed a floppy-haired heartthrob with abs and tats who was rich and drove fancy sports cars.

Speaker 14 Police learned after the girls went missing, Kelsey looked for clues in Libby's social media.

Speaker 12 Kelsey had the passwords, and she was going through and looking to see if there were messages and she saw this Anthony Schatz account on Libby's on Libby's social media

Speaker 12 and that it had at least liked or commented on one of Libby's images.

Speaker 14 Kelsey even asked Schatz for help.

Speaker 12 So she reaches out and says, my sister's missing. Do you know anything about this? And the response is, no,

Speaker 12 I talked to her earlier. I'm sure she'll turn up.
I'm sure it's fine. And then it didn't go anywhere.

Speaker 14 At the time, Kelsey didn't tell investigators about Schatz.

Speaker 14 But three years later, they knew a lot about him, including a disturbing connection he had with Libby. He had asked for explicit photos.

Speaker 13 This Anthony Schatz was soliciting young girls for nude photos and videos. And some of the girls were friends of Liberty, and one was Liberty as well.

Speaker 14 Which is a very bad sign.

Speaker 33 It's bad. Yep.

Speaker 14 Any idea what Libby was sending to him? Was she sending him nude photos?

Speaker 13 No, no. And the problem with social media, we could tell that they're communicating together, but we don't always get the content of it.
Right.

Speaker 13 But we do know that he was asking for those because she had told people that. He was asking and she wasn't sending them.

Speaker 14 To investigators, Schatz checked a lot of boxes.

Speaker 8 He was one of the last people to communicate with her before she died. People are starting to think, okay, he's communicating with Libby in the days before her death.

Speaker 8 Could be something here.

Speaker 11 I was in shock, first off, that she was even doing that because I kept thinking she would never do that. So it was hard to accept that she had.

Speaker 14 Did you think this person might have had something to do with her deaths?

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 10 You know, and you start to ride up that roller coaster because of the connections made, right?

Speaker 26 We talked to Libby the day the day of or day before?

Speaker 14 Hours before their deaths.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 11 And they were really investigating this Anthony Schatz. They were investigating him hard.

Speaker 14 Becky wondered if he was part of a pedophile operation.

Speaker 11 At that point in time, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this guy was talking to him. Oh my gosh, they were going to kidnap and traffic them.

Speaker 14 And there was something else alarming. Police discovered the guy Libby had been talking to didn't exist.
It turned out Anthony Schatz was not Anthony Schatz.

Speaker 17 Correct.

Speaker 14 Anthony Schatz was just a screen name.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 6 While investigating the murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German.

Speaker 14 More than a year later in 2021, investigators asked the public for help.

Speaker 16 Investigators would like any individual who communicated, met, or attempted to meet the Anthony Schatz profile to contact law enforcement.

Speaker 12 I think a lot of people looking at this case always wondered if there was some sort of a catfishing element. Why did the girls go out there that day? Were they out there to meet someone?

Speaker 12 And so I think that fit in with that theory of the case is that, oh, yes, they're catfished. That's how they got out there.

Speaker 8 As we're covering this, we're thinking, okay, maybe this is the guy.

Speaker 32 An update now, that fake social media profile shared by detectives investigating the murder of two young girls in Delphi.

Speaker 14 As journalists and true crime bloggers race to identify the person who created the fake profile, local NBC station WTHR tracked down the man in those photos.

Speaker 32 Well, now for the very first time, we're hearing from the man whose pictures were stolen and used by that Anthony Schatz profile.

Speaker 14 His real name is Vincent Kowalski. Once a model, he'd changed careers and joined law enforcement.

Speaker 32 Argenyuronovich talked with the former model and now current police officer in Alaska, who frankly was pretty shocked to see his face connected to this investigation in Indiana.

Speaker 14 Kowalski had nothing to do with sordid images of young girls or the murders of Abby and Libby.

Speaker 6 Just seeing your face blasted all over the news is crazy.

Speaker 14 Even though he looked casual interviewing as he worked out, this father of two girls was outraged when he learned someone had used his photos as bait.

Speaker 54 Soliciting videos from young girls, like, that's disgusting.

Speaker 14 And it makes me sick, but to know that two young girls possibly lost their life because of my picture it's it's it's the worst of the worst police had a catfisher on their hands but who was it are you thinking that this guy could be the killer given the fact that he was talking to libby over snapchat not too long before the murders yeah absolutely

Speaker 14 to uncover the truth the investigation would go into dark places he's definitely a bad person was doing bad things and there would be allegations of something even more sinister.

Speaker 9 I believe that would have been the first ritualistic killing of two young girls.

Speaker 12 It was a complete shocker and was absolutely not the direction I thought they were going to go.

Speaker 14 When investigators went public with the Anthony Schatz profile, they actually knew much more about the person behind it than they were letting on.

Speaker 13 He's definitely a bad person, was doing bad things.

Speaker 14 So you just knew that he had been misrepresenting himself to young girls? Yes. Turned out he'd been the target of an entirely different investigation two counties away from Delphi.

Speaker 14 Back in 2017, a few days after Abby and Libby were murdered, the man posing as Anthony Schatz got an underage girl to send him her address.

Speaker 14 A day later, she saw a figure in a ski mask peeping through her bedroom window and reported the scary encounter. Police investigated and traced the account to a 22-year-old man named Kegan Klein.

Speaker 14 Who is Kegan Klein?

Speaker 13 Kegan Klein is the person that was using Anthony Schatz profile to solicit girls to send them pornographic photos.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 9 Kegan Klein was a big, overweight, not somebody that these girls would talk to kind of of person. So he changed who he was.

Speaker 14 Not long after that peeping Tom incident, law enforcement raided Klein's home. They turned up more than 100 sexually explicit photos and videos of underage girls on his electronic devices.

Speaker 14 It took three years, but he was arrested on child pornography charges. And that's when Delphi investigators spoke with him.

Speaker 13 He's a bad guy. He's a pathological liar.
He would tell us something we'd look into and it'd be a lie. He He lied a lot.

Speaker 14 Klein seemed to have a strong alibi that he was in Vegas at the time of the murders. But after a deep dive into the data on his phones, the Delphi investigators found out that wasn't true.

Speaker 14 It's determined, though, that he was not in Las Vegas. He's in Peru, Indiana, which is not far from here.

Speaker 13 That is true. They checked it and they thought he was in Vegas, but we knew shortly after that he wasn't in Vegas.

Speaker 14 Are you thinking that this guy could be the killer, given the fact that he was talking to Libby over Snapchat

Speaker 14 not too long before the murders?

Speaker 33 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 13 He was definitely someone who we believe that could have been capable of doing that.

Speaker 14 Kagan Klein

Speaker 14 was on the radar of police early on, but he came back on the radar because someone looked at him again and said, wait a second, he was not in Las Vegas. He was in Peru, Indiana.
Yep.

Speaker 10 Seems like a suspect. This seemed like it had the most potential up to that point.

Speaker 15 So you're just waiting for that call.

Speaker 14 Maybe they'll arrest him, you know, for the murders?

Speaker 10 That's that's how we said we were going to operate and that we stuck to that.

Speaker 14 When Court TV's Barbara McDonald learned Klein was in jail on child pornography charges, she contacted him.

Speaker 12 What happened? He talked to me. He gave me an interview from jail.
Hi, Keegan. How are you?

Speaker 14 Did Kegan have any history of violence violence that you could see?

Speaker 12 No history of violence. He seemed to be the type of guy who sat behind a computer and

Speaker 12 did his crimes that way. So are you aware that there's a bunch of news stories out there linking you to the Delphi murders?

Speaker 55 Yeah, I saw that on the news.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 48 you...

Speaker 12 You have admitted that you created this fake profile, Anthony Schatz. Is that correct?

Speaker 12 Uh, yeah. Why did you create that profile?

Speaker 55 I was just lonely, you know what I mean?

Speaker 55 Just talking to people. I don't know why I did it, really.

Speaker 14 He did admit, though, to being involved in child pornography. Absolutely.

Speaker 12 You were committing crimes against children. Right.
You were asking children to send you inappropriate images, correct?

Speaker 23 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 12 He said, yes, the things that I'm accused of so far, the charges I have, I did that.

Speaker 14 But when it came to contact with Libby, Klein seemed evasive.

Speaker 12 So Anthony Schatz was communicating with Libby. Was that you? That's what they said.
Was that you?

Speaker 55 No, not that I remember, but that's what they're saying.

Speaker 12 Are you aware whether you may have talked to Libby on the 13th?

Speaker 55 That's what the police told me.

Speaker 12 And do you have any recollection of that? No. Not at all.
He said he had no plans to meet Libby or Abby or anyone else that day. Where were you on February 13th, 2017?

Speaker 55 I was at my house.

Speaker 14 In Peru, Indiana?

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 He says he'd never been to Delphi except for a high school football game and that he didn't know about the bridge or where it was.

Speaker 12 But with Kegan, it was always really hard to determine what was true and what wasn't. Did you have anything to do with the murders of Abby or Libby?

Speaker 55 Not at all. And I've gave up my DNA, a hair follicle test.
I've I've done everything they wanted me to. Immediately, I was like, well, give me a polygraph test, a DNA, whatever you want.

Speaker 55 I'll do anything. I'm innocent of this, and I would love to find out who did it.

Speaker 14 Klein's phone activity showed he was at his grandmother's house 40 minutes from Delphi.

Speaker 13 We could never put his phone or any technology of him being in Delphi. During the time of the murders, he was actually at his grandmother's house.

Speaker 14 And in the end, investigators couldn't prove he killed Abby and Libby.

Speaker 13 We conducted a thorough investigation and ruled him out.

Speaker 14 Another dead end.

Speaker 13 Another dead end.

Speaker 14 Klein would eventually plead guilty to 25 charges, including child porn and child exploitation. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Speaker 14 Then, after years of dead ends, investigators would finally get a break. A conscientious volunteer happened to find a box.
and stumbled upon a new name on a tip sheet. I mean, could you believe it?

Speaker 14 A new name.

Speaker 35 This is, this is potentially huge.

Speaker 9 And not just a new name, a name and a timeline in this tip that fits what we've been looking for for, at that time, five and a half years.

Speaker 21 Hey, weirdos, I'm Alina and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 35 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 44 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 47 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 44 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 50 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 35 Yay! Woo!

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Speaker 53 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 14 The double murder case that law enforcement once thought would be solved quickly had haunted them for over five long years.

Speaker 13 I knew it wasn't from lack of effort. We had a great team.
We were working extremely hard, you know, 10, 12, 15 hours a day, a lot of sleepless nights.

Speaker 13 We were really focused on finding the killer, and we weren't going to give up.

Speaker 14 By then, they'd received tens of thousands of tips. Some from the earliest stages of the investigation hadn't been filed away properly.

Speaker 13 There was so much coming in that we couldn't handle. We just couldn't handle it.
We just couldn't.

Speaker 22 I'm here to help in any way I can.

Speaker 14 Over the years, a local volunteer named Kathy Schenck dedicated countless hours organizing and digitizing those files.

Speaker 32 Felt like that, I need to be here and I need to help.

Speaker 15 Excuse me, me, that's what I do.

Speaker 14 She was a former investigator with Child Protective Services and had an eye for detail.

Speaker 20 When she would come across things throughout the years that she wasn't aware of, she would bring it to an investigator.

Speaker 9 And most of the time, that was me.

Speaker 14 In September 2022, as the team prepared to move to a new location, Kathy was packing up files and stumbled on a box in the bottom of a drawer.

Speaker 14 Inside was a tip from early in the investigation before Kathy joined. It involved that man whose wife had seen the story on the news and urged him to report he'd been at the trail that day.

Speaker 14 And so now this is a new name.

Speaker 9 Correct, yeah.

Speaker 14 To Kathy Schen, this could be their man. This could be Bridge Guy.

Speaker 35 This is, this is potentially huge.

Speaker 9 A name and a timeline in this tip that fits what we've been looking for for, at that time, five and a half years.

Speaker 14 Back then, a conservation officer met and spoke to the man who explained he'd been out of the trails around 1.30 to 3.30. The officer's report somehow got overlooked until now.

Speaker 13 So it was misfiled as cleared, so no one followed up on it.

Speaker 14 So something fell through the cracks where this tip did.

Speaker 13 Whoever wrote cleared on it, everybody ignored it.

Speaker 14 This man has placed himself by the bridge at the time the girls were there.

Speaker 33 Absolutely.

Speaker 12 What did you think

Speaker 8 when you saw that?

Speaker 13 I thought that, you know,

Speaker 13 that's Bridge Guy. So I'm like, we need to talk to that guy.
That's the guy that we were missing.

Speaker 14 Oh my gosh, are you just dying when you hear this? Like, is this what we've been waiting for?

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 14 The man who'd come forward all those years ago was Richard Allen, a 50-year-old Delphi man who worked at the local CVS. He was married with a grown daughter.

Speaker 14 So this is an average Joe, it seems like.

Speaker 14 That's what it appeared. Squeaky clean as far as law enforcement goes.
Correct.

Speaker 14 Investigators went back over the evidence, including surveillance video from a business near the trail.

Speaker 14 In it was a black car. They couldn't confirm the license plate or who was driving, but they knew Alan owned something similar.
Was his vehicle on that video?

Speaker 4 It was.

Speaker 9 It lined up with the time that Richard Allen said he was there.

Speaker 14 A few weeks later, they paid Alan a visit.

Speaker 9 Went to his house and knocked on the door and asked him to come talk to us.

Speaker 14 He willingly went with you?

Speaker 4 He did. Yep.

Speaker 14 Back to the investigation center, where Sheriff Liggett and another detective began their interview. Alan chose not to have an attorney present.

Speaker 9 In the beginning, his demeanor was fine.

Speaker 9 I believe he drank a lot of water, but

Speaker 9 in the beginning, he was fine.

Speaker 14 When detectives showed Alan the picture of Bridge Guy, he bristled.

Speaker 14 He said it wasn't him, that he never saw Abby or Libby at the trail. And he changed his timeline.
Now he said he was there earlier in the day.

Speaker 14 But what about that video of the black car? Did you confront him with that?

Speaker 9 Yes. He was abrasive about it and said, you don't know that that's my car and things like that.

Speaker 14 Did he look nervous?

Speaker 9 And he got to that point, yes.

Speaker 14 The interview ended. He was free to go.

Speaker 14 But the investigation into Alan was just beginning. They got a search warrant and went back to his Delphi home.
What do you find from the search warrants?

Speaker 13 He had a lot of knives, a lot of clothing that matched the description that matches

Speaker 4 the bridge guy? Yes.

Speaker 14 And they found something else, a Sig Sauer pistol, like this one. They sent the pistol to the crime lab, where a state firearms expert tested it using.40 caliber bullets.

Speaker 14 She then compared markings on the bullets made by the gun with markings on the bullet found at the crime scene.

Speaker 14 Soon after, Sheriff Liggett got a call. Was it a match?

Speaker 9 It was a match.

Speaker 14 This news is

Speaker 3 everything.

Speaker 4 It's huge.

Speaker 14 Investigators thought they heard someone racking their gun on that video from Libby's phone. Now, with the bullet match, they were convinced it was Alan.

Speaker 13 Once we got the result back that the round matched his gun, we decided to call him back in for another interview.

Speaker 14 Alan agreed to come in. Again, without an attorney.
Lieutenant Holman did the interview this time and told Alan how the crime scene bullet matched to his gun.

Speaker 13 Why is your round from your gun at the crime scene and he just denied it and could never give us an explanation?

Speaker 14 The tone in the interrogation room quickly became heated and the lieutenant says Alan eventually threatened him.

Speaker 13 He just made the comment that I was going to pay for this and I told him, no, you're going to pay for this.

Speaker 14 The detective had heard enough and soon after that interview, police arrested Richard Allen for the murders of Abby and Libby.

Speaker 14 After so many false leads, Libby's grandparents were cautious when they heard the news.

Speaker 11 And we asked them, do you have enough evidence to convict? Are you sure? Are you positive? Are you, you know,

Speaker 14 they were sure. And on Halloween 2022, today is not a day to celebrate.
Police unmasked the alleged killer.

Speaker 13 But the arrest of Richard M. Allen.
of Delphi on two counts of murder is sure a major step in leading to the conclusion of this long-term and complex investigation.

Speaker 14 You waited five days to announce the arrest?

Speaker 14 Why not rush out and tell the public that we got the man we believe is?

Speaker 13 We didn't rush out and do anything throughout the course of this.

Speaker 14 What was the reason, though?

Speaker 13 Global attention.

Speaker 14 The case had become an international story, even more so after a stunning allegation surfaced. Could others have been behind the murders?

Speaker 12 These men who practice Odinism were perhaps performing some sort of a ritualistic sacrifice in the woods.

Speaker 14 What did you make of that Odinism theory?

Speaker 4 It needed to be investigated.

Speaker 14 For the people of Delphi, the news was still settling in that there'd been an arrest.

Speaker 3 We're going to keep pushing all the way.

Speaker 14 Libby's grandparents were, of course, relieved. And as for the identity of the suspect,

Speaker 14 do you know Richard Allen? No. If law enforcement is correct, the suspect has been hiding in plain sight this whole time, just like they thought.

Speaker 14 Many in Delphi did know Richard Allen,

Speaker 14 or at least had seen him working at that neighborhood CVS. A disturbing detail is that this man is the man who prepared the photos for the girls' funerals.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 11 That was the first thing my daughter thought of when they showed his picture and said he worked at CVS. She said, Oh, mom, mom, he's the one that developed those pictures.

Speaker 14 For the victims' families, the arrest marked the first of many more startling revelations. The defense was about to drop an alternate theory of who did this and why, and it was a shocker.

Speaker 12 It was a complete shocker and was absolutely not the direction I thought they were going to go.

Speaker 14 Eleven months after his arrest, Allen's attorneys surprised many with a pretrial filing, claiming the girls might have been killed in those woods by members of a pagan religion called Odinism.

Speaker 12 This theory that these men who practice Odinism,

Speaker 12 which is this Norse pagan religion, were perhaps performing some sort of a ritualistic sacrifice in the woods and decided to target these two girls.

Speaker 14 Are there any known groups like that in the area?

Speaker 12 There are these sort of

Speaker 12 different groups in the area. There are these people who practice this Norse pagan religion.

Speaker 14 To explain that theory, Alan's attorneys met us in an area similar to the crime scene. We should say these are not the woods where Abby and Libby were found.

Speaker 14 Jennifer Oger, Brad Rosie, and Andy Baldwin represented Alan.

Speaker 14 They say those sticks that were partially covering the girls' bodies were meant to send a message

Speaker 14 and demonstrated for us how some of them were placed.

Speaker 20 We had

Speaker 6 sticks that were arranged in a certain pattern. I mean, it's to me, it's just plain silly to say that these were thrown on there to hide the body.

Speaker 14 And they certainly didn't hide the bodies.

Speaker 9 Did not.

Speaker 14 They believe the sticks formed letters from an ancient alphabet known as runes. A way Odinism followers can communicate.

Speaker 6 It sends a message to the person that made them and created them.

Speaker 14 So what could it have meant in this case?

Speaker 6 That it's only known to the person that

Speaker 6 created the rune. Their bodies were forming a V as well, and we think that that is likely symbolic to the person or people that did this.

Speaker 14 And they point out that Libby's blood was found on a nearby tree and say it appears someone used it to create another Odinistic symbol that looked like this, an F.

Speaker 14 There's just no natural way that that shape gets on the tree accidentally.

Speaker 14 While some thought the ritualistic killing theory was far-fetched, Allen's attorneys said they weren't the first to bring it up.

Speaker 57 If we're going to come up with a defense, we're not going to pull Odinism out of the air. That's fantastical, right?

Speaker 58 I mean, mean, this was driven by the evidence that was given to us.

Speaker 14 Soon after the murders, it was the police who had looked into the possibility of a ritualistic killing.

Speaker 13 It was definitely investigated very thoroughly by multiple people. No stone unturned.
We did not have tunnel vision.

Speaker 13 Multiple officers spent multiple hours, multiple months looking into that connection.

Speaker 14 What did you make of that theory, Odinism?

Speaker 4 theory.

Speaker 10 It needed to be investigated. They investigated that Odinism.

Speaker 14 Sheriff Liggett says law enforcement concluded there was no connection between Odinism and the murders.

Speaker 9 I believe that that would have been the first ritualistic killing of two young girls. That's not what Odinism, it's a religion.
I wasn't aware of it, but it's evidently not uncommon.

Speaker 14 Then Allen's attorneys found themselves in hot water after some crime scene photos were leaked to several media outlets. Turned out they came from their camp.

Speaker 14 You've been accused of trying to put your narrative narrative out there of this Odinism by leaking these photos, true or false?

Speaker 1 100% false and offensive.

Speaker 14 Alan's attorneys say a former associate who had access to their office copied the photos and unbeknownst to them sent the images around.

Speaker 6 It is very upsetting to me that anybody would say that we intentionally made any of that happen.

Speaker 14 So this was unintentional.

Speaker 3 It's yeah.

Speaker 11 Absolutely.

Speaker 45 There was nothing to gain by leaking those documents. I mean, there's just, there's no plausible gain for that.

Speaker 14 The judge was so angry. She took you off the case.
Yeah.

Speaker 14 Fired us. What was your reaction to that?

Speaker 6 Deep despair, getting in the fetal position in my bed for days, you know, thinking my life is over, my career is over.

Speaker 14 The attorneys appealed the judge's decision, and the state Supreme Court reinstated them.

Speaker 14 But the fallout from those leaked photos continued.

Speaker 11 Somebody said, I've got some pictures I want you to see, you need to see.

Speaker 14 A podcaster texted them to Becky. It was the first time she and Mike had seen the gruesome images of the girls.

Speaker 11 The photos, the things that we learned,

Speaker 11 only confirmed

Speaker 3 our

Speaker 11 most horrible imaginations.

Speaker 10 Those photos should have been protected.

Speaker 10 Should have never got to that point.

Speaker 30 I'm sorry, I'll call it out.

Speaker 10 The defense team has culpability in that.

Speaker 14 Would you be open to

Speaker 14 saying sorry to them for what happened?

Speaker 6 I would love to do it in person. I would love to sit down and talk with them if they would want to do that.
Absolutely.

Speaker 14 The defense now had to focus on the trial, which was just weeks away. Did you feel it was an uphill battle going to trial?

Speaker 28 Well, it felt

Speaker 45 from a defense perspective. It felt like a stacked deck.

Speaker 14 The prosecution, on the other hand, had a possible ace up its sleeve. Prison calls that would reveal some stunning conversations.
When you heard that, did you think game over?

Speaker 31 And just confirm that we had the right guy.

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Speaker 14 In the summer of 2024, Richard Allen's lawyers were revving up for trial.

Speaker 14 At a pre-trial hearing, they presented that key part of their defense that followers of a pagan cult killed Abby and Libby.

Speaker 45 Richard Allen has the right to present these alternative theories if they have some basis.

Speaker 14 And then the judge says you can't bring them up in trial as alternate suspects. That's a blow to your defense.

Speaker 4 Huge.

Speaker 14 Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McCleland acknowledged that as strong as some of the evidence appeared to be, his case had holes too.

Speaker 14 Male DNA had been recovered at the crime scene, but the sample was too small to match to anyone. There was no DNA, no fingerprints, no text messages tying Richard Allen to the girls.

Speaker 14 The image from the phone was grainy, the voice isn't perfect. So many things that would be cons, you to a prosecution.

Speaker 31 Correct. I think you have bad facts in almost every case.
And so those are just hurdles that we had to overcome by other circumstantial evidence that we had.

Speaker 14 Was there anything you learned about Richard Allen's past that would explain why he could be capable of something like this? How do you explain this behavior that it suddenly just happens?

Speaker 31 I am not the person asked to explain the criminal psychology of one's mind that convinces them that they need to kill two little girls.

Speaker 31 I don't think anything in his past would justify or explain why he did this.

Speaker 14 Nearly eight years after the murders, Richard Allen's trial got underway.

Speaker 8 People lined up, news crews from all over, tons of security. This little quiet, sleepy town suddenly is ground zero.
for this trial.

Speaker 12 People from Australia, Finland, I mean, just everywhere. It's been a fascination for so many people, I think, because of how unusual it is.

Speaker 14 Libby's and Abby's families did their best to drown out the noise. They sat on the same side of the courtroom in a show of solidarity.

Speaker 11 There would have never been another option. We walked through this thing from the beginning together.

Speaker 15 You know, we have to finish it together.

Speaker 14 This is everything.

Speaker 14 And all eyes are on you when you walk in the courthouse.

Speaker 17 I didn't care about any of that.

Speaker 10 I cared about the 12 jurors in there and what they thought and how the information and facts are going to be presented to them.

Speaker 14 No cameras were allowed in court. Prosecutor McCleland set out to convince the jury there was only one man responsible for these murders, Richard Allen, aka Bridge Guy.
He opened with this.

Speaker 14 This is about Bridge Guy, this is about a bullet, and this is about two young girls who were murdered. He made it very straightforward.

Speaker 31 My openings are always very, very short and very, very to the point. I would rather just keep the jury kind of on the hook.

Speaker 14 He began his case by calling officers who described the crime scene and evidence gathered in vivid detail.

Speaker 12 The prosecutor went with a little more of the emotion in the beginning to get the jury to really sense how horrific this thing was that happened to these two girls.

Speaker 14 He drove home the full horror of the murders by showing photographs of what had been done to Abby and Libby.

Speaker 8 To watch the jury during that was

Speaker 8 they were visibly shaken and emotional. I wish that I had never seen those.

Speaker 14 It was awful.

Speaker 12 There were some members of Abby's family who chose not to be in the room. There were a few members of Libby's family that left as well.

Speaker 8 I remember that one juror, he could not,

Speaker 8 he would lean forward and put his head in his hands. He couldn't look.

Speaker 14 Becky testified for the

Speaker 27 My goal was to tell the jury

Speaker 11 about Libby. I wanted them to know that those girls mattered and they need to think of that throughout this whole trial.

Speaker 14 McCleland laid out for the jurors his theory of how Alan carried out the murders.

Speaker 31 He went out to the trails that day. He laid in wait.
He then saw the two girls, forced them down the hill with a firearm.

Speaker 31 We believe there's a sexual assault that was going to occur and then we believe he got spooked and he decided to kill them. He left the crime scene and continued on with his life.

Speaker 14 The prosecutor put the state's firearms expert on the stand.

Speaker 14 Her opinion was the bullet found between Abby's and Libby's bodies had to have come from Richard Allen's gun based on marks matching the gun's mechanism.

Speaker 31 The bullet to me was huge because it tied Richard Allen to the crime scene where the girls were found.

Speaker 31 Racking the gun in that situation would be such a powerful statement that if you don't do what I say, I am going to shoot you or I am going to hurt you.

Speaker 31 And so we just believe that was how he was able to control the girls with this firearm.

Speaker 14 McCleland argued the moment Allen racked the gun could be heard on the 43 seconds of video captured by Libby.

Speaker 8 You're hearing Abby and Libby talk. You're hearing

Speaker 8 one of them say, is he behind me?

Speaker 14 The fact that Libby had the wherewithal to hit record on her phone and capture these images and keep rolling,

Speaker 14 she was in death, almost your star witness.

Speaker 31 I agree. In her dying moments, she had the wherewithal to pull that phone out and take a video and help solve her own crime.

Speaker 14 The prosecution said the phone provided a key timeline for the murders and a link to the killer.

Speaker 14 A number of witnesses testified the man in the video was the one they saw that day, including the woman who reported a man covered in mud and blood. All agreed he was Bridge Guy.

Speaker 14 You didn't have them in court actually look at Richard Allen and say, is that the man you saw? Which is what we're all used to on TV, right? That's the big powerful moment. Is that the man?

Speaker 14 And you didn't do that. Why not?

Speaker 31 Just a strategic move.

Speaker 14 Was there fear that if you did say, is that the man, that they would say, you know, honestly, I can't be sure.

Speaker 31 There's always that fear they're going to say that, but we had in our minds what we want to identify as Bridge Guy and then tie in that Richard Allen is Bridge Guy. That was our strategy from day one.

Speaker 14 As the trial progressed, the prosecutor used Richard Allen's own words against him.

Speaker 14 He argued Allen told law enforcement, before later changing his story, that he was on the trails during the window of the murders.

Speaker 31 We believed he was on the trails from 1.30 to 3.30, like he had originally said in 2017. In 2022, he changed that.
from 1230 to 1.30.

Speaker 14 McCleland also played Richard Allen's voice in court.

Speaker 14 It turned out that while he had been in jail, officers recorded some 700 phone calls between Allen and his wife and mother. In some of those calls, he confessed.

Speaker 14 He told his wife, I wanted to apologize to you. I did it.
No, I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.
When you heard that, did you think game over?

Speaker 31 And it just confirmed that we had the right guy.

Speaker 14 Libby's family listened intently to the recordings. Did they seem believable?

Speaker 5 Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 30 And it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, by the way, I I did kill those Zelphi girls, you know.

Speaker 11 And she said, no, you didn't. They're messing with your mind.
And he said, why would I tell you I did it if I didn't?

Speaker 14 And Alan didn't just make confessions to his family.

Speaker 14 Over the course of 21 months in jail, he made more than 60 apparent confessions to corrections officers, inmates, and also to the jail psychologist, Dr. Monica Walla.

Speaker 14 She said he told her he marched the girls across the creek and killed them with a box cutter, that he had planned to rape them, but got spooked by a passing van on a nearby drive.

Speaker 31 What can we confirm in that confession? He said he saw a van. Let's start looking around.
Were there any vans in the area?

Speaker 14 A local man named Brad Weber took the stand.

Speaker 31 And sure enough, Brad Weber was coming home from work that day, and sure enough, he was driving a van.

Speaker 14 As the prosecution rested, it appeared it could be game over for Richard Allen. But Allen's attorneys argued nothing was what it seemed.

Speaker 14 They would counter that those weren't real confessions, that it wasn't Allen's bullet, and there was no proof he was Bridge Guy.

Speaker 58 None of the people on the trail gave a description that matched Richard Allen.

Speaker 14 As Richard Allen's defense team saw it, even though they had some setbacks before trial, the case against their client was thin.

Speaker 58 There's just not much there.

Speaker 14 One of the things that really jumps out at you is that this is a man who had never been in trouble with the law.

Speaker 14 He works at CBS, and then suddenly he's responsible for this very gruesome crime with these young girls.

Speaker 45 And no forensic evidence. No forensic evidence.

Speaker 14 But the defense had some major obstacles to overcome. What does look really bad for Richard Allen is that he places himself in that area that day.

Speaker 12 He didn't have to do that.

Speaker 45 I don't know how somebody's supposed to react when the law enforcement gets on the TV saying, we need help. The easiest thing for him to do would have been to say nothing and leave Delphi.

Speaker 45 He did the exact opposite, which was he cooperated.

Speaker 14 One of the things the prosecution pounced on was they say that Richard Allen changed his story as far as the time. that he was out there.

Speaker 58 Five and a half years passed.

Speaker 47 Who,

Speaker 58 anyone here, anyone listening, who can tell you what they were doing to a specificity five and a half years ago?

Speaker 6 He wasn't the one that changed his story. It was the police who lost recordings of the initial conversation with Richard Allen.
Richard says, I was on those trails between noon and 1.30.

Speaker 14 What's more, they argued, none of the witnesses could say for sure that Richard Allen was Bridge Guy.

Speaker 58 None of the people on the trail gave a description that matched Richard Allen. Even the witnesses on the trail couldn't agree on what Bridge Guy was wearing.

Speaker 58 And, you know, it was jeans and a Carhartt type coat. You're in a rural county in Indiana.
Probably half the men in that county have those clothes.

Speaker 14 And while Allen stands about 5'6 ⁇ , some witnesses described Bridge Guy as medium height or even tall.

Speaker 14 So many different opinions about how old this person was, how tall they were, how heavy.

Speaker 6 One of the key witnesses for the state, she described to the police a guy that was in his early 20s that had brown poofy hair.

Speaker 6 That's the guy that she said was a bridge guy. And that doesn't match the guy that's on the bridge.

Speaker 14 The defense attorneys also poured cold water on the 43 seconds of audio and video captured by Libby.

Speaker 14 They argued the audio was muddy, the video grainy.

Speaker 12 With everything in this case on the surface, you hear, okay, there's a video of the suspect, and then you find out, okay, well, it's grainy and it's from far away and it's not real clear.

Speaker 14 But what about the unfired bullet found at the scene? The defense pushed back hard on the state's expert who said it was a match to Alan's gun.

Speaker 45 I was fairly well-versed in the ballistics arena. It's not what we would call or what a layperson would call science.

Speaker 14 You didn't trust the science behind this so-called match.

Speaker 45 It's not a science.

Speaker 30 No.

Speaker 14 He argued there's a difference between fired bullets and unfired bullets ejected from a gun after it's been wrapped.

Speaker 45 There's no dispute

Speaker 14 that

Speaker 45 the round, the magic bullet that was found allegedly at the scene, was cycled and not fired.

Speaker 45 But when they conducted the examination, the test-fired rounds that they actually compared to our client's firearm were fired rounds. They were not test-cycled rounds.

Speaker 45 And so the simple way of describing that is they were comparing apples and oranges.

Speaker 8 I will say about this jury,

Speaker 8 they listened and took notes and leaned into every detail.

Speaker 14 But perhaps the most insurmountable evidence would be those 60-plus jail confessions. Richard Allen at one point says to his wife, I wanted to apologize to you.
I did it. No, I did it.

Speaker 14 I killed Abby and Libby.

Speaker 58 Those conversations, he would later go on to say, I think I killed them. Maybe I killed them.

Speaker 4 In the same conversation.

Speaker 58 Yeah, in the same conversation.

Speaker 14 The defense argued they were false confessions made under duress.

Speaker 14 Following his arrest, Richard Allen was jailed for months in a maximum security segregation unit. The state said it was for his own safety.
His lawyers disagreed.

Speaker 45 The three of us here have been in this business a long time. We've all represented some of the worst humans on this planet.

Speaker 45 And none of us have ever seen somebody detained on a pretrial basis in the most secure unit in the state of Indiana.

Speaker 14 That made him lose touch with reality, they said.

Speaker 58 When you're stuck in those circumstances, when you have no outside stimuli, you're stuck in a gray steel box day in, day out, lights on, day in, day out, and you're trying to...

Speaker 58 figure out why you might be held in this condition. It's not unrealistic that that's where you go.
That's where your brain goes.

Speaker 45 It's medieval, the way he was detained.

Speaker 14 He started losing his mind in there? Is that through your eyes? Is that what

Speaker 28 you would?

Speaker 45 It's psychological warfare on a man who's a pretrial detainee.

Speaker 14 They argued those conditions also played into Alan's confessions to the psychologist.

Speaker 45 It's textbook for an environment where somebody would spew some kind of false confession, where basically a man says, I give, I've had enough.

Speaker 58 At the time that these statements are being made, it's hard to believe that you could give a lot of credibility to anything he was saying.

Speaker 14 To bolster their argument, defense attorneys pointed to Alan's police interviews. Time after time, he insisted he was innocent.

Speaker 8 In the police interviews, he's saying,

Speaker 8 I didn't do it. I didn't do it.
This isn't me. And when his wife comes in, he's saying,

Speaker 8 I didn't do it. You know I couldn't do this.

Speaker 14 He's not admitting to anything.

Speaker 12 At this point.

Speaker 12 No, he's insisting that he was out there on the trails to go for a walk, that he was looking at fish from the bridge, that he was looking at the stock ticker on his phone, said he never saw Abby or Libby.

Speaker 14 And with that, the defense rested.

Speaker 12 I think a lot of people who were watching the trial thought there's a possibility this is going to be a hung jury, that this could go either way.

Speaker 14 For nearly three weeks, jurors and the Delphi community were consumed by a trial that was as grueling as it was heartbreaking.

Speaker 14 Enduring it all and sitting together were Abby's and Libby's families.

Speaker 15 We were brought together by an event.

Speaker 11 Even though we are totally two different types of families, we are basically family and

Speaker 15 we are bonded forever.

Speaker 14 In closing arguments, the defense told jurors not to trust much of the state's case, especially the testimony about the crime scene bullet matching Alan's gun.

Speaker 45 The ballistics and the magic bullet, that it's just, this stuff is totally unreliable.

Speaker 14 The prosecution hammered home that confession Alan gave to his prison psychologist. about seeing the van on the day of the murders.

Speaker 14 That's a big aha moment, if you you will. Something that only the killer would know.

Speaker 31 Yeah, it was, we felt that way. We felt that only person that would know a van went down that private drive on that day would be the two girls and the killer.

Speaker 14 The case was now in the hands of the jury. The defense felt confident.

Speaker 6 I felt like we tried a great case on reasonable doubt. That's what the case was about.
There's reasonable doubt here.

Speaker 14 A verdict wouldn't come quickly. Hours soon turned into days.

Speaker 14 The jury goes out and they're out for four days. Days? That's a long time for a jury.

Speaker 12 It's a long time. There's a possibility this is going to be a hung jury.

Speaker 40 We've got breaking news coming out of Carroll County this afternoon. We have learned there is a verdict in the Delphi murders case.

Speaker 3 This is

Speaker 11 probably the biggest moment of our lives.

Speaker 10 Something we've been working so hard to get to this day,

Speaker 10 now, this hour, this moment, this minute.

Speaker 14 The judge read the decision.

Speaker 6 I mean, there was a couple of gasps we could hear.

Speaker 14 Guilty on all charges.

Speaker 14 Outside the courthouse, where the press and spectators had gathered, cheers erupted.

Speaker 11 We got our verdict,

Speaker 11 but that didn't bring the girls back.

Speaker 11 You know,

Speaker 11 it doesn't give us closure.

Speaker 11 It gives us a little bit of peace to know that he can never hurt another person again.

Speaker 11 And that he's where he should be.

Speaker 14 Libby's cousin Sadie was overwhelmed.

Speaker 29 I instantly started crying.

Speaker 3 And I called my mom. And my mom started crying.

Speaker 29 So it was like, I don't know if it was tears of happiness.

Speaker 28 tears of this our nightmare is

Speaker 27 coming to a close.

Speaker 16 Good morning.

Speaker 14 A few weeks later, at a press conference, the prosecutor recognized an unsung hero of the case, Kathy Schenck.

Speaker 14 She was the woman who, five years after the murders, found that file that led to Richard Allen.

Speaker 22 Without her,

Speaker 22 we would not be here. Without her, we would not have an arrest, a conviction, and a sentence.

Speaker 14 That sentence was 130 years, 65 years for Libby, and 65 for Abby. Alan is appealing.

Speaker 14 Yet out of all the pain and sorrow came a ray of light.

Speaker 11 People in the beginning didn't know what to do, so they started sending us money.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 11 we didn't want that money.

Speaker 15 So we decided we would do something

Speaker 2 in honor of Libby.

Speaker 14 They checked with Abby's family and together came up with a plan.

Speaker 11 We decided we were going to buy bleachers for the girls' softball field because their bleachers are horrible. But the money kept coming in and coming in

Speaker 14 so they went bigger much bigger

Speaker 15 it started out as bleachers

Speaker 11 and ended up a 22 acre complex

Speaker 10 we have three ball fields on it we host tournaments They have an amphitheater where you can hold concerts, musicals, and car shows.

Speaker 14 Amazing.

Speaker 23 All in their honor. Yeah.

Speaker 14 It's called Abby and Libby Memorial Park, a place where Delphi's heartbreak is slowly rewritten in every cheer, every moment of joy. A tribute to two best friends.
Forever together.

Speaker 15 What would you say to people watching?

Speaker 10 Keep your faith. In your deepest, darkest times, sometimes a good prayer or somebody say they're saying a prayer for you.

Speaker 10 It does help.

Speaker 10 Don't ever take for granted what you have today.

Speaker 10 Hug those kids and tell them all you love them.

Speaker 18 That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast.
Andrea Canning and Blaine Alexander will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.

Speaker 18 Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9-8 Central.

Speaker 33 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 18 For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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