Shadow of the Bridge /// Part 1 /// 878

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Gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer.

It's a great day in the garage when you have two friends to join you.

We have the captain, of course.

He's here every week, but we are joined today by Anya Kane and Kevin Greenlee, our friends from the Murder Sheet podcast.

We buddied up a few years back and shared a case that we were all four of us very much obsessed with.

And now with the recent release of your fantastic, wonderful book, Shadow of the Bridge, The Delphi Murders, and the Dark Side of the American Heartland.

It's out now.

It's available everywhere.

It's an incredible read.

Anybody that has been eyeballs and earballs deep in this case for years must go and get this and check it out.

The Dust Jacket tells us that on February 13th, 2017, two teenage friends went for a walk in the woods just outside of the small city of Delphi, Indiana.

They should have been safe, but Liberty German and Abigail Williams never made it home.

The next day, searchers found their bodies in a clearing.

The two girls have been brutally murdered.

Incredibly, in the final moments of her life, Liberty somehow managed to capture a video of the man who would soon murder her and her friend.

This blurry recording showed a man lumbering toward the girls and then gruffly commanding them to go down the hill.

A fascinated public obsessed over those clues.

Speculation about the killer's identity ran rampant on social media.

Meanwhile, a sprawling law enforcement investigation led to some of the darkest corners of the heartland.

Still, the case remained unsolved for years.

But that changed when Delphi resident Richard Allen was arrested in October of 2022.

We have the authors of Shadow of the Bridge, Anya Kane, and Kevin Greenlee joining us here today in the garage to talk about this case, case, the podcast, and really any way that the captain and I choose to steer this ship.

So, welcome to the garage, guys.

This is probably long overdue.

Well, thank you guys so much for having us.

We're absolutely delighted to be here and just want to commend both of you for your coverage.

We love you guys.

We really do.

Do you remember when you first learned of the murders?

Where were you?

What were you up to?

Because here you have arguably two podcasts that have, while we are able to shine a light on some other unsolved cases with the murder sheet and our great garage cast here, we both have continued to return time and time again to this case.

But the both of you were not yet seated up high in your powerful podcasting chairs back in 2017 on that horrible day when a tiny little man with hell in his heart decided to abduct and take away two precious and very special little girls, Liberty German and Abigail Williams.

Anya, let's start with you.

Great question.

And honestly, my story is going to make me sound kind of dumb.

I remember vividly, I was in the kitchen at my parents' house, and my mom and I are both very into true crime.

So we would talk about cases that we saw in the news.

And I remember reading, I think it was one of the English tabloids coverage of Delphi.

And my mom was so upset because the girls, Abby and Libby, reminded her of my two youngest sisters.

They're about the same age.

And she was like, I could totally see them going on this bridge to take Snapchats or something innocuous like that.

And I remember just telling her, don't worry, mom, they're going to get the guy.

One of the girls seemingly caught a picture of him on the bridge.

Years and years later, that just didn't seem to be happening.

But at the time, I was like, this is going to be solved quickly.

And as for me, I happened to have a relative in the hospital at the time.

So I wasn't paying much attention to the news for the first couple of weeks.

And then I remember when I did start paying attention to and became aware of this crime, it already felt like it was so incredibly complicated because so many details were being released and speculated about on social media.

I just imagined it would be impossible to really catch up and really understand what happened.

And for the handful of our listeners that are not familiar with the murder sheet, we should point out that you guys are our neighbors.

You are in the great state of Indiana, which of course, this is where this terrible case took place.

Were you both in Indiana at the time?

No, I was living in New York, and Kevin was in Indiana.

I love the title.

It's so very fitting.

Shadow of the Bridge, the Delphi Murders, and the Dark Side of the American Heartland.

Your book is over 400 pages, so it's very much a complete telling of this Indiana tragedy.

And you get so many words, you only get so many words to put onto the cover.

Kevin, what is the story behind the chosen title?

Well, when we thought about it, it really feels like

this case cast a shadow over the town, over the families, and over all of us who have been following it for so many years.

As you so ably said, we keep coming back to it because there is something here we just quite can't quite escape.

It's just like a shadow over all of us.

And I will add to that, one thing we learned during trial that kind of we didn't necessarily know about prior to picking the title, because the title has been something we came up with a long time ago.

But, you know, Libby's phone data shows that the girls, you know, descend after they are being abducted by the killer.

And it sort of was like some police speculated to us that, you know, they were at some point in the shadow of the bridge sort of as as some of these things unfold.

So it kind it kind of took on a new meaning for me when we were at trial.

And not to make this some mystical thing here, but really for five years, over five years, we only had a couple of things to look at and point to that we could recognize as evil.

And it's you have an inanimate object like the bridge that sort of represents some form of evil because to me, the first time

we see

Bridge Guy is from from the footage from Liberty's phone.

It's like this big, scary, tall bridge birthed this evil little man that we see for the first time.

And for five and a half years, it's who is Bridge Guy?

Why was he there that day?

What was he up to?

And he just so happened to cross paths with, and I shouldn't say cross paths because I've always believed that it was set like a snare trap, that the

bridge was

his spider web, and he was just waiting for the flies to fall into it.

What was your experience with the high bridge when you went out there?

Great question.

I completely agree with that analysis.

I think the bridge was his trap.

Whoever was going to cross the bridge that day was going to be the person or people he went after.

And for us, neither of us is very athletic.

I don't like heights.

So whenever we would go to the trails of Delphi, first of all, there's a real heaviness there.

There's a real sense of sadness there.

It's often pretty deserted, but I remember the first time we went, we didn't go the main path to like lead to the bridge.

I think that was blocked off.

We headed for the banks of Deer Creek and then we're looking up at this just massive hulking bridge and it looked so unstable and frightening.

And we remember just feeling like, wow, the girls must have felt very trapped up there once they realized they were being followed.

As Anya says, the bridge is unstable.

And people who have walked out across it talk about how when the wind blows, sometimes the bridge itself moves.

And there's even missing planks in the bridge.

And I recall when we spoke with former Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter, he said after he crossed the bridge and then had to go back across it, he felt so uneasy, he actually had to crawl across it.

Yeah, and that was a bit of a shocker to read that in your book with Doug Carter because he's the type of guy, type of man that within 30 seconds of interacting with him, you can tell right away, this is a brave, smart gentleman.

And for him to have to crawl, as so many others were sort of reduced to with this bridge, for him to have to do that, told me, you know, we were offered many times, we were asked by other podcasters, local folks to go out to the bridge.

And I, and

while we, we planned several times to do that, and ultimately the plans would fall apart.

But I knew in advance, I, Anya, I'm like you.

I don't know what happened.

I used to do ropes, courses, jump off of cliffs when I was a kid, but at some point in my early 20s, I became terrified of heights.

And I, I wouldn't have, I don't know that I would have made it out 10 feet onto that bridge.

So don't feel

don't feel any uneasiness because as Kevin says, the bridge would be shaking.

I would be shaking on there as well.

I appreciate that.

And I'm going to tell you, I just, the thing that kept flashing in my mind was like some YouTube video of like podcasters fall off bridge and die.

Like, I was like, we don't want to be those people.

It would be too, I mean,

that would be us.

That would be Kevin and me.

So on February 13th, 2017, we have both the perpetrator and the victims arriving at the trail system roughly at the same time in the early afternoon.

And by all accounts, the victim, this was something that was a hot debate early on in

the goings of this investigation.

But by all accounts, the victims do not know Richard Allen, who is later identified as Bridge Guy.

Yes, that's right.

And they're arriving that day about the same time.

Talk about the search that commenced, and what does that tell us about the

town of Delphi and the county, Carroll County, as well?

So many people out searching for these two girls.

So the search really gets started pretty quickly when Libby and Abby fail to meet back up with Libby's dad, Derek, as they planned.

And, you know, he looks around for them.

And I imagine he's thinking, oh, gosh, teenagers, maybe they're just late.

Although, frankly, that was pretty out of character for Libby not to be in contact.

So when he can't find them, he brings in his family.

Libby's family sort of swarms the trails and they're all looking for her.

When they cannot find her, and and when she is just not responding to texts, not responding to calls,

and

they basically say, this is getting scary.

And they phone in law enforcement and law enforcement sends in sheriff's deputies, police officers from Delphi.

There are firefighters involved.

All these first responders going across the

you know, entire woods looking for the girls.

And I want to do note that they're not looking looking for bodies.

They're looking for maybe girls who got injured or who got lost or something like that.

They really don't suspect any foul play.

They just think maybe someone twisted an ankle and they're hunkered down somewhere scared.

And I want to stress that when Anya talks about the first responders doing the search.

That, of course, is entirely accurate, but that's only part of the story because Delphi is the type of place where everybody wanted to pitch in once they realized what was going on.

Employers, businesses were even telling their employees, if you want, take the day off and go and join in this search.

It was a real community effort.

Yeah, like people were so committed.

And when I ask people, why is Delphi like that almost?

Like, is it just a very friendly town?

People say it is.

It's a town where everyone knows everybody.

And it's a town where it's traditionally like a farming community.

And what we've been told is like sometimes in those rural farming communities, there's there's just this real sense of like if my neighbor is in trouble i'm going to drop everything and help them deal with whatever situation that is and that that definitely came into play here one thing too is indiana for those that have not had the privilege of traveling through or staying in the state of indiana indiana's tends to be quite a bit more religious than many other states as well and i i would think that that has

something to do with the tightness of this community of Delphi and Carroll County.

Yeah, a lot of the people in this story are people of faith, and that's something that did strike me.

Not everybody, but a lot of people who were involved in this case.

Even the police chief of Delphi, Steve Mullen, he is so strongly a man of faith, he doesn't even swear.

He will do he will even say he will go above and beyond to avoid swearing.

There was quite a bit of swearing in your book, by the way, Kevin.

Yes, my father pointed that out to me the other day.

Kevin's father was not happy about this.

There was about as many F-bombs as a Guns N' Roses album.

Let's talk about the Patties a bit because really leading the charge on searching for the girls was Mike and Becky Patty.

I know that a lot of this is going to be repetitive because the folks that have been longtime listeners of our show and your show know the case very well.

But there are some people tuning in today that don't know the particulars so tell us a bit about the mike and becky patty so mike and becky patty

are a couple they were libby's grandparents or i should say becky was her paternal grandmother and then mike is her step-grandfather and they're I truly think of them, this is going to sound cheesy, so I apologize to them if they listen, but I think of them as sort of a power couple.

They're a couple that's like gets things done just in, just in life, I mean, mean, beyond this whole situation.

But when the family hit this kind of crisis, they were very much dedicated to each other, dedicated to their family, and dedicated to figuring out what happened to the girls.

They just have that kind of relationship, I think, where they kind of weather some of these storms.

Mike is a lot quieter.

Mike is very practical.

He's, I believe, an engineer.

So he has that sort of logical analysis of things.

Becky is someone who's just kind of a force of nature.

She's going to get things done.

And, you know, they're tough people, but they're also very kind in our experience.

They're very, very kind.

They look out for others and they're, I don't know, just, they have a gentleness about them that's really impressive, just given everything that's happened.

But when Libby turned up missing, and then when things started to happen in the case,

they were going to be people who were never going to give up advocating for Libby and Abby.

The following day, a shoe is found.

And then one of the search teams, a man from the search team spots a body or finds the girls.

He was,

from my understanding, actually hanging out with Mike Patty the night before when the girls were still missing.

And they were trying to strategize and sort of game plan

how to find the girls.

Take us into that meeting as well as the discovery yeah so it goes back to this idea that people know each other and they're calling in their friends and their friends are coming in and dropping everything to help them so that searcher did know mike patty and and there were these communications of what can we do to help where can we search civilians taking it into their own hands because again They don't think they're looking for a crime scene.

They think they're looking for two lost little girls.

So the next day, so many volunteer searchers turn out.

They're being assigned into different groups and sent out there.

A group of them, several groups of them really converge on the spot where the girls are.

And you have some men who are more in, you know, around the creek who are seeing clothing and they're seeing shoes.

And they're saying, okay, these might be clues.

And then on the other side, you have people on foot who are going through the forest and one of them does come across the girls.

It's a shocking sight because they can't really see them.

They're in a bit of a shallow indentation near the banks of the deer, of Deer Creek.

They just come upon them and they're so pale.

He initially thinks they're mannequins and then very quickly realizes this is a crime scene.

So he's able to tell the other searchers with him: don't come any closer.

We need to stay here and make sure no one walks over this crime scene.

When the girls are found, from an investigative standpoint, there are three

clear and

visible findings immediately that are of note with the girls.

The bullet, the phone, and the sticks.

There's been much to do about the branches.

Talk about all three pieces of those

evidence or parts of the crime scene.

So the first thing that's probably noticeable at the crime scene is that the girls are covered in these branches.

And when I say covered, I really do mean they're really just a couple of handful of them.

They don't cover them up as far as someone looking from overhead or someone coming right upon them.

Although I will note that when it comes to the view from the other side of the creek, they do provide more coverage.

So some have speculated that the goal was to render them hidden from the other side of of the creek versus people on the side of the creek with the bodies.

Those are the sticks.

So they basically kind of crossed over them.

And some have seen patterns in them.

And then others just felt and law enforcement felt that it was just somebody trying to make sure they weren't seen from the other side of the creek.

And then another key piece as you indicated was this bullet or this unspent cartridge because it was a chamber that had been in a gun and had been cycled out without being fired.

It was discovered between the bodies of the two girls.

And this became even more crucial once you start considering the phone because the phone was the phone of Liberty German.

And on that phone was a recording of basically their abduction, the abduction of these two girls.

And on that video, you get an idea of what the abductor, the kidnapper, this guy referred to as Bridge Guy.

You can see what he's wearing, and you can also hear what he is saying.

And he says at one point, guys,

and then there was a pause, and then he says, Down the hill.

And during that pause, you can hear the sound of a gun rack.

So it becomes clear that one of the ways he was able to control these two two young girls was through brandishing a weapon.

And so it became clear that the bullet at the crime scene must have come from that weapon.

Now, initially, law enforcement only released a small portion of that video.

What did you guys learn or feel like you might have learned by them releasing the full length of that video?

I felt the thing that really chilled me was I felt I learned how scared the girls were.

So

when

we all saw this initially, I think they released just a still from the video, which was like a zoomed in version of Bridge Guy.

And then a few years later, they released kind of a bit of a clip of him walking and, and, you know, they released audio at different times.

So first it was just down the hill, then it was guys down the hill.

And all of that kind of gave a sense of like what they were looking for, which was who is this guy?

Does anyone recognize him?

Does anyone recognize his voice or the way he's walking or how he's dressed?

And what the full video did in court was just show us that, you know, these are two girls who I think are being stalked by this man.

I feel like as a woman, I've been in situations where you almost have this kind of voice where you're like more high pitched and you're more of like, okay, if I act really normal, this guy's going to leave me alone.

It's like, they sound scared, but like they're trying to hold it together to avoid setting him off.

and you can tell that they're breathing very heavily it's just it's very upsetting to listen to because I remember when he approaches them one one or both of them says hi to him like they're trying to be friendly they're trying to be nice and they're clearly very scared because I think I think most guys who are not like threatening you know you don't want to do something where you like following behind two young girls on a bridge.

I think most guys, if you're like, oh, I don't want to freak them out, I'm just going to wait till they go and then I'll, you know, come back.

Once they come back, then I'll use the bridge.

You know, you're like, most guys are more thoughtful than that.

So I think they realized something's not right here and we're being followed.

But I think they were just hoping it was a misunderstanding on their parts.

And I think what really stuck with me was Abby saying to Libby at one point, I'm paraphrasing, but something like, don't leave me up here.

And that broke my heart because

they never left each other in the end.

The sticks, as I said, there's been so much talk about and speculation about the branches, that they mean something, that they're significant to tell us who was responsible and why the girls were killed.

But in all reality, the

sense at the scene that investigators are getting immediately is that, no, that

these are not branches that were freshly cut.

They don't show markings of having been cut.

These are, in all likelihood, branches that have by the everyday power of the great mother nature fallen to the the forest floor the killer collected them in haste and attempted to camouflage the the the bodies in some form or fashion it that's that's your description of

of these branches as well, right?

So we don't confuse anybody out there that's made a lot to do about these branches.

Yeah, and I will say, I mean, law enforcement was open to the possibility that their initial hunch was incorrect.

They did seek out expertise from

one expert in sort of Norse runes.

And what the guy said was, these aren't runes.

I mean, like, what I'm looking at, if I basically throw out a bunch of sticks in my yard and I invite you guys over, and for some reason, you come and you're like, what's going on?

And I say, can you read my name in these sticks?

Maybe you could say, well, that kind of looks like an A, and that one off by itself kind of looks like an I, but the rest of it doesn't, you know, it's like you letters have to be in certain shapes in order to spell something.

And these just weren't.

So it, it doesn't look so much like someone's purposely placing sticks as it does someone just hastily putting sticks over bodies in the attempt to conceal.

And I think that's what.

was clear early on and they were open to other things.

But an expert told them, hey, this doesn't spell anything.

These aren't runes.

So at some point, you have to let that go.

Yeah, it's not the same as graffiti or writing pig and blood on the wall at a murder scene.

These branches are really like looking at clouds in the sky.

It's open to interpretation and it's of no meaning at all.

The alarm bells have to be going off immediately with the finding of this bullet, in large part due to the caliber, because.40 caliber is not a common law enforcement caliber of gun that most members, men and women in law enforcement carry.

So immediately, this has to be even prior, I'm guessing, to finding and viewing the footage on the phone and hearing the audio on the phone,

this bullet is significant right out the gate.

Yes, they feel like this bullet could end up tying whoever we're looking for to this crime scene.

And it also gave them the indication.

I think early analysis indicated that they might be looking for a Sig Sauer weapon.

So they had a sense, and they were going to test every weapon against this thing, but I think they had a sense of we might kind of know the type of gun we're looking for.

And the importance of the bullet

also kind of explains why so much about the details of the crime scene were kept secret for years.

Because investigators realize that if we put out oh we recovered a bullet from the crime scene and we feel we can tie it to a gun if the killer reads that or hears that on television obviously the first thing he's going to do is he's going to get rid of his gun so it became very important to keep that and some of these details

secret from the public which did have the tendency to inspire a lot of conspiracy theorizing and confusion and i'm gonna i'm gonna not lie lie, like we were, I feel kind of like we were overly harsh on law enforcement because we were definitely a voice saying, hey, why don't you release more details?

What's going on?

You know, like let us know.

You know, you have to use the public to help you solve this case.

And honestly, if they'd taken our advice, especially around the cartridge and the bullet.

I don't know if this case would have gotten solved.

I think it was important that they did not release anything around that.

And that bullet detail never leaked.

That never came out.

And I think, you know, that shows how important it was.

But

we were definitely people who were like, release stuff.

And now I'm kind of like, no, I think they did the right thing here.

Which, which is incredible,

considering all the other cases you guys have reviewed and cases we've reviewed.

You take one that just had some big break, the yogurt shop.

They had 13 pieces of holdback information, and every one of them managed to leak their way out even before

they arrested and tried Springsteen and Michael Scott.

And so it's not something that's easy to do, especially when you have so many different law enforcement agencies involved.

There was a lot of cooks in the kitchen for this one, and they managed to keep that detail, as you said, perfectly secret to the point that the killer was dumb enough to keep his gun all of that time.

The one thing that would truly tie him to the murders.

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As the information was coming out in this case,

was there a turning point for you?

And this question is for both of you.

Was there a turning point of

I'm just interested or fascinated with this case

to the moment where you go, I need to get involved?

That's a great question.

I think this case was, for me, sort of like being a frog boiled in water.

You know, if someone had just thrown me in in the middle of trial, and I will commend some folks came in from YouTube and different podcasts and they were able to just jump in and go with it.

And they did a great job.

But for me, I think I would have been like, get me out of here.

I think it was so chaotic and it was so depressing and sad and heartbreaking.

But I think for me, it was like we started getting into it and then it just morphed into more of an obsession in a way because we were like, we cannot let this go.

We have to keep reporting on it and try to get answers.

And I think at some point, we just crossed that threshold, perhaps without realizing it.

We never really wanted to get involved because we never wanted to be part of the story.

Although, unfortunately, that did happen kind of against our will.

But

we knew we were going to be involved in the sense of covering it for a long time.

And there were a couple of times there would be so much drama and you'd be like, I don't want to cover this anymore.

And we always kept coming back because it was like we felt we had a duty to

say what was going on, I guess.

And I also think as time passed and we got to know the families better and got to know the city of Delphi better, and just to see how this affected all of them, it became in some way personal that we really did very much want to see justice done.

And we wanted to share the story of how that happened.

Well, and in some ways, you guys became an

authority on the case because, like you said,

you wanted more information to come out.

Why are you holding back so much information?

You do

the longer an investigation drags on, I think it's just human nature to start to wonder,

are these guys able to solve this thing?

Is this above their heads?

I think that's just natural.

But you guys sort of became

an authority on the case because

while this, there was information out there that was public information, the public didn't know about it, right?

So you were able to release information about this case that otherwise was going unnoticed.

Yeah, we were able to get that and we were able to get some trust from members of the communities affected and they were able to give us more information.

So it kind of was a positive feedback cycle where we would do some reporting and people would kind of fill in and we'd be able to do more reporting.

And that was nice.

And I think it kind of shows that the community members, you know, did want to continue to put information out there.

I think with law enforcement,

they were very much not leaking to us and not interested in having those conversations.

And I understand that, you know, and we understood it at the time too.

But it was one of those things where I think they were more of like, why, why are you like, why do you want to cover it in such depth?

You know, and we had to explain to them, it's because there is a strong public interest.

People People want to see what's happening.

So I think over time they came to understand where we were coming from too, and they, they respected that.

And they understood that even though we were criticizing them at times, we were trying to be fair about it.

We weren't just trying to say, oh, they're corrupt or they're evil or they're incompetent.

We were just, you know, we were speaking based on what we knew and trying to be as fair as possible.

Yeah, and they were listening.

I didn't realize this at the time because the prosecutors and the police couldn't really talk to us because there was a gag order in place they weren't talking to us but they we were talking to them through the podcast without knowing it because people would be sending them clips of things we'd said on the show either positive or negative and not just us they'd send them clips of your show and other programs and we didn't realize that and so when it came to the point where we were able to do interviews with some of these people i remember for instance, I was sitting down and Anya was with me, of course.

We were talking with prosecutor Nicholas McCleland.

And I said, oh, you know, some people were pretty critical of you over the secrecy.

And he just waited a beat and said, yeah, Kevin, you were.

I heard the clips.

And then I remember, too, we were talking with one of the investigators on the case.

And he was like, people in his department would like send him, you know, stuff and they'd be like, well, I think I know more about your case than you do because I listened to the murder sheet.

And so he was like, Ugh, like, so I think they were maybe a little annoyed with us at times, but um, I think they understood that we were trying to be fair.

And I think they understood that with time, like, you know, you guys did some great coverage, the prosecutors did some great coverage on their show.

I think they understood that all of these people are just trying to inform the public at the end of the day, and we don't, we don't mean harm.

And you can't say that for everybody in podcasting or YouTube, but but there were shows that were trying to to do a good job.

And I think they understood that for at least some of us.

Do you think the coverage from podcasters and YouTubers helped the case ultimately?

Or do you think it hindered the case?

I think that's a great question.

And I think it really just depends on the show.

And I think for the most part, it didn't necessarily affect things either way.

I'd say for

our show, people sometimes thank us.

They're like, thank you so much.

I think you helped helped solve the case.

And we have to be like, we didn't do anything.

We truly did not help solve the case.

Our show did not have an impact.

It hopefully kept the public informed, but we don't deserve any credit as far as an outcome.

And I think that is where shows did shine, where they could keep the public informed.

I know at the Clue Awards at CrimeCon, Mike Patty, Libby's grandfather, ended up thanking podcasters and people who were covering it in the the media because he said that kept the story alive.

So in terms of continuing to make it clear to everyone that Libby and Abby were important and that we all wanted to see this case solved, I think that's a benefit.

And as far as hurting the case, I think in some instances there were attempts to hurt the case or misinform the public, but that was probably more specific shows doing that.

So I think it was kind of across the board and it depends on what we're talking about.

But for the most part, I think it was probably a neutral to positive impact i would agree with that yeah i often wonder because of the podcasters because of

the youtubers that created also media coverage i would see you guys on the news often and you just kind of wonder that puts some pressure on law enforcement and maybe they wouldn't have gone back and double checked their work and maybe would be sitting here with the case still not solved after all these years.

I thought that for a time too, but meeting those investigators, I think on some level, they were as obsessed with it as all of us were.

I think they were really emotionally locked in in a way that almost surprised me because you're talking about all these like veteran law enforcement guys and they're also, you know, Midwestern middle-aged men for the most part.

And when we finally sat down to interview them for the book, a lot of them were like crying because because like, I think Abby and Libby just came to mean a lot to them.

So I feel like I, for a long time thought, okay, we need to keep the pressure up because otherwise they might just ditch the case.

Although maybe that's possible in the macro sense, but just having met some of them, I think they were in it for as long as it was going to take.

And perhaps it was helpful for them because it ensured that higher ups knew, hey, this is really important and the public wants to see movement on this.

So maybe, maybe it did help with resources and giving them the space to do it.

But yeah,

it was interesting to finally meet some of these people.

And I don't think I'm giving away any secrets when I say Anya and I have had talks with both of you in real life about this case.

And in those conversations,

You could tell that all of us were really obsessed with finding answers and we really cared deeply about this case.

And when you feel that way about a case, you can recognize it when you're talking with someone else who feels about the case.

And what the obsession and the compassion for the victims and the desire for justice that I felt coming from both of you was very, very similar to what I felt coming from these investigators.

I will also add that is something I do love about Nick's book on Delphi, because I know we're talking about our book, but I felt like Nick's book, you captured the,

for lack of a better term, vibe of why everyone is so obsessed with this case.

Because it becomes almost, and I thought your book, again, captured this really well.

It becomes almost like a personal mission.

And not every case has that effect.

And it's not that every case isn't important.

All of them are important, I think, and deserve attention.

It's just there's something about Delphi that makes everyone feel if I can just dig a little harder, I might be able to get somewhere.

And that, that was what sucked a lot of people in.

I think that's partly what sucked us in.

And it was, yeah, I mean, it just, it kind of takes over your life for a lot of people.

Well, this is going to turn into just one big love fest here because compliments all around the room, all around the garage today.

One thing I loved about your guys's coverage of the case when it was ongoing before Richard Allen was identified and then after.

And this carried over to the book.

And that's what makes the book so good, right?

If you like Anya, if you like Kevin, if you love the murder sheet, you're instantly going to love this book because it's an extension of all of the work that you guys have done on that.

And the thing that I loved about your guys' work on this case was even as passionate and as obsessed as you may have become at certain times, you manage to stay as level-headed as one can in the moment, but you also don't pull any punches, right?

You, you guys, I love that you call people out when they deserve to be called out and you do that on the show and you do it in the book.

And I think that that's one thing that sets you guys apart: that you're able to do that in a way that is also fair and level-headed.

Thank you.

That means a lot.

We, we tried.

It sometimes we didn't feel level-headed, but we tried to maintain some kind of fairness and balance throughout.

And I think I've been very lucky in that regard because I'm married to a wonderful person to work with on this.

Anya has a journalistic background that I really,

really rely on.

I really rely on her judgment and her expertise.

And a lot of the positive things that you've just said, I feel are really attributable to her.

And I just feel very, very lucky not only to be married to her, but to be working with her.

Oh, thank you, Kevin.

I didn't force him to say that, by the way.

That was all organic.

Hey, Kevin, blink twice if you're being held against your will.

He just just blinked 365 times.

Oh my God.

And, you know, on, I don't know about behind the scenes on your guys's end, but on our end, you're absolutely right.

We got, we got up in our feelings about this case plenty of times.

And there were a handful of times that we are microphones off in a disagreement about the case or the investigation or what's going on with it, trying to read too much between the lines.

And more than once, we had to look at each other and go, what's going on here?

You You know, you didn't kill him.

You don't know who did it.

I don't know who did it.

What are we getting all worked up here for?

It's a case that drew so many people in.

And so many people had very loud voices.

Some of them should not have had a loud voice at all.

But it was a case that drew so many folks in.

And as you say, I think that...

the good podcasters and the and the good youtube shows that were doing it correctly and that carried themselves with a level of integrity in a way i think helped the overall encompassing story because I think it did manage to keep some of the public at bay and

keep them a little more reserved because there were people that were going off the rails here and saying some crazy shit, shit that just wasn't even, wasn't plausible, wasn't practical, wasn't in the realm of reality.

And one thing when we, this shows the, the level of class of the Patties,

you guys just you guys just came to and witnessed your first CrimeCon this last year, and we were so glad to see you guys there.

You're a natural fit.

You should have been there the whole time.

But in 2018, and Kelsey,

Kelsey, Libby's older sister, talks about this in Susan Hendricks' book, Down the Hill, how

she was in a very dark place in a world of hurt.

Of course, why wouldn't she be?

Until she, there was the healing sort of started for her,

as she says in Susan Hendricks' book at the Nashville 2018 Crime Con.

What is still very difficult for me to wrap my head and heart around is that in 2018, Mike and Becky Patty come up to the true crime garage table.

They go way out of their way.

They've just experienced the most horrific tragedy anybody could possibly ever experience.

And they come up to us and say, Thank you guys for covering Libby and Abby's case and keeping the case and getting it out there.

And it just, I, I told them, I don't know if I would have the strength to do what you guys just did, to go out of your way and say something so nice to some

folks that

you've never met.

And we are

retelling your tragedy over and over again.

And what was so

one thing that I think was lost on a lot of folks out there was

what these families had gone through.

And then their names to be smeared on the internet daily was just sick.

And it was perverse and disgusting.

And yet they walked and carried themselves.

And talk about the folks that helped them.

I think there's they, it's weird.

I said this in my book that I think in some weird, strange way, Mike and Becky Patty taught all of us how to handle and how to live with something that they had to experience firsthand.

And I know you've guys had a lot of interaction with them, but talk about them.

Talk about

talk about Doug Carter as well, because he's a big part of this story.

Absolutely.

And yeah,

I know they appreciated so much of this podcast coverage.

And that was, you know, as you said, we felt uncomfortable too, because it's like we are making a podcast about your guys' personal tragedy, but they had so much grace.

They had so much grace.

They're remarkable people.

I want to say something that Becky did that just astonished me.

As you indicated a moment ago, they got a lot of unwarranted grief on the internet.

There would be people online saying, these people killed these girls.

Becky Patty was involved.

Kelsey was involved.

Just awful, vile things without a shred of truth to them.

And some of the people who were saying that online came to the trial and would wait in line at the trial to get in.

And Becky Patty, more than once, she would look at these people in line and think they're here because they care about the girls.

And she would bring the people in line food.

And she would go and she would look right in the eyes of some of these people, including people who had accused her of murder, and she would give them freshly baked banana bread just out of the kindness of her heart.

And I don't understand how she was able to do that, but I have so much respect for her.

I told her, Becky, I would be throwing the the banana bread in the pan at some of these people's heads based on what they were doing.

And she was like, well, you know, I mean, she's, she's just a very genuinely nice person.

She's a lot nicer than I could ever be in a situation like that.

But I felt like that was something that was remarkable to us.

And they taught us too.

I mean, we had the same thing where, you know, we had to learn to, how to communicate with, you know, victims' families in a way that would inform them and keep them feeling like we were giving them that information and sort of like passing that on to them a way that they felt comfortable with, right?

Because I mean, it's like we're trying to break news, but we had to always keep in mind that it's not just news to two families.

It's their lives.

How do you balance gathering the news and trying to report on that with ensuring you're not doing harm or hurting people who care deeply about this because it's literally their lives.

So they were very patient with us.

And that was something that we always strive to honor was our relationship with them in terms of saying,

we're going to respect you.

We're going to be compassionate and we're going to ensure that you get this information and that we explain to you why we think it's newsworthy.

So that was helpful to us too.

Doug Carter, of course, the former superintendent of the Indiana State Police, if you followed this case at all, you've probably seen him on television talking about the case.

And he always speaks with such emotion that I'll admit at the very beginning, I was cynical and thought, oh, he must be putting on a show.

But when you see him behind the scenes, when there's no cameras present, there's just as much emotion there.

And when you talk with people who work with him, they say, this is just Doug Carter.

He feels things very, very deeply.

He's a very, very sensitive and caring man to an extraordinary extent.

And I want to say this about Doug Carter because I thought this, I think, I don't know, I think he should write a book on leadership or something because the choices he made with this case were ultimately about protecting his team.

And by his team, I mean his men on the Indiana State Police who were working this case, but I also mean like the overall team of Delphi, which also included people from other agencies.

And to me, it seemed like when he was doing things like getting up there and doing a press conference and being the voice and being more of the face, he was providing them a level of cover where they could do the work they needed to do.

And he could basically take the public scrutiny.

And he would do things like all of the detectives in the beginning were like working around the clock, just working themselves to the bone on this case.

And he at some point went to one of them, Jerry Holman, who was one of the kind of leaders for the state police on this case and was just like, you know, I think Holman had been, you know, he and his wife had been scheduled to go to a concert prior to all this going on, but he's like, I'm just going to blow that off.

And Carter was just like, no, you're going.

And like sent him a car to go because he was trying to reinforce to them, you have to take care of yourselves and you have to take care of your team members because we're in this for the long haul.

This is a marathon, not a sprint.

And if everyone burns out, you're not going to solve it.

You're not going to be able to do anything.

So I think he led by example.

He was such an impressive person.

And, you know,

when he was okay with writing our introduction, we were just, we were delighted and we were really honored by that because we knew how important this was to him.

But back to the banana bread, in fairness, I think Becky put laxatives in it.

Becky's revenge.

I would not blame her.

Is there something that you have learned with this deep dive into this case that you will take forward into other deep dives into other cases?

Yes.

For me, it's a sense of humility because there were so many times where Kevin and I would be looking in from the outside and we would make an assumption.

And it's not like we would even report on it.

We would just have it in our hearts.

We'd make an assumption or we would think the wrong thing, or we wouldn't have a grasp on how things really worked behind the scenes.

And I think going forward, I'm just going to be a lot more comfortable saying, hey, I literally don't know what's happening, and I'm not going to assume anything.

And we're just going to try to dig into this and then I'll start kind of coming to some conclusions.

I think it's just, there's no prize for being first when it comes to thinking up something.

And in this case, again, as I mentioned, you know, we were pretty hard on them for not sharing more information.

And it turns out we were totally wrong about that.

So I think stuff like that, I'm not going to be as quick to form an assumption because it's like, I've never worked in law enforcement.

I've never worked as a prosecutor.

That's another example.

We were

extremely critical of prosecutor Nicholas McCleland in this because we were like, he's hiding the PCA and, you know, transparency and all that.

And like, I understand where we were coming from, but he had some pretty good reasons for doing what he was doing.

And we also were like, listen, he's a young guy.

He's, you know, not, he's not really had any really high-profile big cases yet.

Is he ready for this?

And then when we saw him in action, I mean, he was more than ready.

He was amazing.

So, you know, I think we

will just try to check our assumptions.

We always do when it comes to trying to report things fairly.

But I think, even just internally, I might just sort of say, let's just see how this plays out.

And I think there is something extraordinary in the world when you have a situation where the absolute worst of humanity, the absolute worst things we are capable of as a species, exist side by side with the absolute best of people.

This murder, what Richard Allen did was horrible.

And that can be overwhelming.

But there's also stories like Becky Patty giving the banana bread.

Anya just mentioned Nicholas McCleland.

This is an attorney.

His dream in life is to become a judge.

And during the course of this case, he has not one, but two opportunities to become a judge.

And when he gets the second one, he even goes to the families and says, I hate to do it, but I have to think of my future.

I'm going to resign to the prosecutor and become a judge.

And they give him their blessing, but he finds that he can't walk away from the case because he cares about it so much he just has such a deep feeling of connection to these girls that he gives up his dream perhaps forever in order to work to do the right thing and get justice for these girls and so there is something just very

special

about things like that.

And I'm always going to try in the future when reporting on some terrible cases to remember that and to look for the heroism and the grace that also exists within these cases.

Yeah, like people like Lieutenant Holman, this is a guy who's worked as, you know, worked in law enforcement for years.

He took this case extremely personally.

I feel like he was the glue that held this group together in terms of what they doing what they needed to do to stick with it and continue the case.

And I know it stressed him out a lot.

I mean, this was something that ate at him for years, but he stuck with it.

There's people like Tony Liggett.

He's now the sheriff of Carroll County.

He

knows what it's like to experience this tragedy to a certain extent.

He lost his teenage son in a really horrifying car wreck years ago.

And so he was able to bring some of that empathy.

And he's the first to note, hey, it's different when it's murder, but he does know the loss of a child.

And there's people like Dave Vito, right?

He's a very young detective who comes onto this case and he gets assigned along with some other detectives.

They have to look into this really horrible child predator.

And there's stuff that they had to see with that part of the investigation that they'll never unsee, but they stuck with it.

People like Brian Harshman, who had to listen to this guy's calls in prison all the time.

I mean, all of these people lost something.

The two prosecutors who helped McCleland, Stacey Diener and James Luttrell, they did an amazing job.

They came into this and basically volunteered themselves to help him with it.

And I think that is, I mean, the one that really stands out to me though, you know, all these people stand out to me, but the one that really comes to mind is Kathy Schenk.

She's a woman who was like the CPS agent of Carroll County for years.

Like her whole thing is protecting children.

And she's this like tiny little lady, but she's also like a badass because, I mean, she was just doing this incredible work.

You You know, I think law enforcement locally was like pretty intimidated by her because, you know, she was going to come in and she was going to tell you what needed to happen.

So she volunteered her time with helping these investigators organize their files and be a receptionist when they had people come in with tips.

And

she's ultimately the one who found the lead on Richard Allen and brought it to their attention.

And she's a remarkable person because she will not take any credit for that.

But she,

somebody who I think is a hero because she was just doing this out of the kindness of her heart to help the investigation.

And I think people like that are what Kevin's talking about when we talk about the best of humanity.

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