Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language, along with references
Speaker 1: to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: I wrote the book in the way of real time,
Speaker 2: where it was me reacting to what was going on
Speaker 2: in the investigation and the information as it was coming out,
Speaker 2: me investigating the investigation to see what it is that
Speaker 2: they actually knew what they didn't know in this case,
Speaker 2: about who had done it, or even the crimes themselves.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
Speaker 1: true crime podcast Tenfold More Wicked and the co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
Speaker 1: around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
Speaker 1: are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
Speaker 1: crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
Speaker 1: stories with details that have never been published. Tenfold War
Speaker 1: Wicked Presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
Speaker 1: good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
Speaker 1: behind the stories. By now most of you know the
Speaker 1: story of the Delphi murders. Actually, this wasn't a case
Speaker 1: I had kept up with so that's why this episode
Speaker 1: is so interesting for me. My guest is Nick Edwards.
Speaker 1: He's the host of the True Crime Garage podcast and
Speaker 1: he's also an author. Nick wrote a book about the
Speaker 1: murders of Libby and Abby in twenty seventeen, and it's
Speaker 1: called The Delphi Murders The Quest to Find the Man
Speaker 1: on the Bridge. Nick told me a lot of things
Speaker 1: about the case that I didn't know, So I guess
Speaker 1: let's start with the victims, because that's always the most
Speaker 1: important thing to me. And I think probably the you too,
Speaker 1: you called her Libby, is that we should go with Liberty.
Speaker 1: Should we go with Libby?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Liberty German and Abigail Williams are two young girl victims,
Speaker 2: just teenagers, very typical Middle America teenagers, best friends. I
Speaker 2: cannot express that enough. They were so close that they
Speaker 2: were the type that if you saw one without the
Speaker 2: other and you knew them, your first question is where
Speaker 2: is Libby or where is Abby? You just expect to
Speaker 2: see them side by side all of the time. And yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what they're best known as is Libby and Abbey.
Speaker 2: Abbey and Libby. So the way that this story all
Speaker 2: starts for those that don't know anything about this case.
Speaker 2: You have two girls, young teenage girls, the best of friends.
Speaker 2: They're dropped off early in the afternoon on an unseasonably
Speaker 2: warm day in February. Okay, so they go to this
Speaker 2: trail system, beautiful area. Best way to describe it would be,
Speaker 2: this is like a park, you know, like a state park.
Speaker 2: So there's a trail system. And on that trail system
Speaker 2: there's this old abandoned railroad bridge called the moanin high Bridge.
Speaker 2: You could show a picture of this bridge to one
Speaker 2: hundred people and you're going to get a hundred different
Speaker 2: thoughts on this bridge. Some may say, Oh, it's a creepy, old,
Speaker 2: rickety old bridge. Others would say that looks like something
Speaker 2: out of a Bob Ross painting. So they're getting dropped
Speaker 2: off with the purpose of walking across this bridge. Now,
Speaker 2: I have a bit of trouble with heights, so as
Speaker 2: brave and tough as I think I am, i'd probably
Speaker 2: make about five or six steps out onto that bridge
Speaker 2: and turn right around and get back on a solid ground.
Speaker 2: But this is an old abandoned railroad bridge, and it's
Speaker 2: sort of a rite of passage in this area, right
Speaker 2: like the teenagers, the young folks. They go out there
Speaker 2: and it's kind of you go across it at some
Speaker 2: point when you're a young teenager and it's something you
Speaker 2: kind of brag about to your friends after you've done it.
Speaker 1: It's a little dangerous, right, Well yeah, I mean, can
Speaker 1: you fall off this bridge?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not rails, so you could fall off the side.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is just as teenager as it comes. Right.
Speaker 2: The two girls, Libby had already gone across some bridge
Speaker 2: on at least one prior occasion, and so Abby was
Speaker 2: going to walk across the bridge and Libby was going
Speaker 2: to show her how. She was going to teach her friend.
Speaker 2: Here's something I've done. Now it's your turn. I'm going
Speaker 2: to experience this with you. I'll bring my cell phone
Speaker 2: and we can take some pictures to capture the moment.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, there's evil out there on the trails that
Speaker 2: day while the girls are out there, and so the
Speaker 2: girls are supposed to be picked up sometime. It wasn't
Speaker 2: hard and fast time on what time to be picked up.
Speaker 2: It was going to be like three three thirty. So
Speaker 2: Libby's father, Derek was going to be in the area.
Speaker 2: He had finished up some work task earlier that day,
Speaker 2: and the idea was Kelsey, the sister, would drop them
Speaker 2: off at the trailhead. They could run around do whatever
Speaker 2: they're going to do again. The purpose of the trip
Speaker 2: was to go across the Moaning High Bridge, take a
Speaker 2: couple of pictures, and then Derek would pick them up
Speaker 2: sometime between three and three thirty when he happens to
Speaker 2: be in the area. He gets there, he's texting his daughter.
Speaker 2: He doesn't hear, there's no reply, and so at some
Speaker 2: point there becomes concern, and you have Libby's extended family
Speaker 2: out there searching high and low for the kids. On
Speaker 2: the trails. They're going across the bridge, they're looking all
Speaker 2: over for the two of them. Now, any parent will
Speaker 2: tell you it is not terribly uncommon for teenagers to
Speaker 2: be where they are not supposed to be, right, I'm
Speaker 2: sure that that was probably their thoughts that afternoon. You
Speaker 2: know what, I'm probably a little upset with these kids.
Speaker 2: They were supposed to be here at three three thirty,
Speaker 2: Sure enough, they're not here. These were good kids, so
Speaker 2: maybe that was a leap that was a little difficult
Speaker 2: for them to make. But you can see Mike Patty
Speaker 2: and Abby's mother on the eleven o'clock news out there
Speaker 2: in West Indiana, and neither of them looked like panicked.
Speaker 2: You can tell they're concerned. It's dark now and it's
Speaker 2: getting cold out. It's February. It was warm that day,
Speaker 2: but it's going to be a cold night. You can
Speaker 2: tell their concern, you can hear it in their words
Speaker 2: and their voices and then see it on their faces.
Speaker 2: But you can also tell they're not panicked yet. You know, again,
Speaker 2: they're teenagers. They did have a fairly organized search for
Speaker 2: the girls that evening and night, but at some point
Speaker 2: they had to call off the search. This is rough terrain.
Speaker 2: You just talked about people falling off of the moan
Speaker 2: in high Bridge. That's certain of possibility. So at some
Speaker 2: point they call off the search. The sheriff received a
Speaker 2: lot of criticism.
Speaker 1: For that, but they couldn't do cell phone no cell
Speaker 1: phone activity. Could they even trace that at that point.
Speaker 2: They had pinged her phone a couple of times, but
Speaker 2: this is a very rural area, and what was happening,
Speaker 2: from my understanding, is that the pings actually suggested that
Speaker 2: she was in town and moving around. But from the
Speaker 2: way it's been explained to me multiple times, is that
Speaker 2: in that area at that time, if you were to
Speaker 2: walk from one side of your house to the other
Speaker 2: side of the house, your phone may ping off of
Speaker 2: three different towers. It's just the lay of the land.
Speaker 1: So that wasn't useful and actually bad right because maybe
Speaker 1: they weren't panicked enough to look as you're suggesting, look
Speaker 1: in the places where they were last seen. Instead, they
Speaker 1: thought maybe they'd be in town.
Speaker 2: Well. And one thing that hurt badly too is her
Speaker 2: grandparents attempted to do the find my Phone feature. It
Speaker 2: had not been loaded, so she had did a factory reset.
Speaker 2: Liby had done a factory reset on her cell phone,
Speaker 2: I think just a couple of weeks prior. And some
Speaker 2: of those apps you have to reload them to get
Speaker 2: them up and running, and she had never reloaded that app.
Speaker 1: So the sheriff calls off the search for the night.
Speaker 1: It's getting cold. They're hoping that they just sort of
Speaker 1: decided to be rebellious for once and go to a
Speaker 1: friend's house secretly, or go somewhere and they're warm and safe,
Speaker 1: and they'll pop up in the morning and say sorry,
Speaker 1: please forgive us we're grounded for a week, and that's it.
Speaker 2: And that's not what happened, right, And I think you know,
Speaker 2: some people had expressed that they thought maybe worst case scenario,
Speaker 2: one of them had twisted or broken an ankle and
Speaker 2: the other one wouldn't leave them. But the difficult thing
Speaker 2: is you are out there searching, You are out there
Speaker 2: yelling and calling their names. They would have been vocal
Speaker 2: and had the ability to yell back. That didn't happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, we got firefighters, We had a decent amount
Speaker 2: of people out there that evening. About six am. The
Speaker 2: following day, a very organized search effort is put together
Speaker 2: by the Sheriff's department in firefighters, and it's about twelve
Speaker 2: to twelve fifteen that day that they find the girls
Speaker 2: having been murdered out in the woods.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, how far were they from the bridge.
Speaker 2: They were about a little more than a quarter of
Speaker 2: a mile from the end of the bridge. So from
Speaker 2: my understanding, what you do is you walk across that bridge,
Speaker 2: you have a very quick celebration, and then there's really
Speaker 2: nothing but private property on the other side of that
Speaker 2: moan in High Bridge. So the teenagers just turn around
Speaker 2: and go back there's really not a whole lot to
Speaker 2: do on that other side. That's where they were intercepted
Speaker 2: by this evil individual who then corroused them and essentially
Speaker 2: abducts them and moves them further into the woods, and
Speaker 2: then they were killed a brief time after he encountered
Speaker 2: them on the bridge.
Speaker 1: You know, in a case like this, I talked to
Speaker 1: Paul Holes, you know, he's my co host on Buried Bones.
Speaker 1: I talked to Paul a lot about the citizen sleuth
Speaker 1: and then sort of the anger focused at investigators. It
Speaker 1: feels like, almost immediately in a case like this, you
Speaker 1: don't know what you're doing, You're screwing everything up, you're
Speaker 1: hiding information and all of this. And Paul just said
Speaker 1: with the Golden State killer case, it was terrible. I mean,
Speaker 1: he really had to stop communicating with some people, and
Speaker 1: none of the information that he was given was particularly helpful.
Speaker 1: Do you think that this was like an immediate knee
Speaker 1: jerk response from people who were following this case early on,
Speaker 1: because it seems like the first strike against investigators is
Speaker 1: they didn't continue the search. So was it sort of
Speaker 1: downhill in the eyes of a citizen sleuth at this point?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, And the thing is, I think in this situation,
Speaker 2: it was a case that was so captivating that it
Speaker 2: drew in a lot of people that didn't even have
Speaker 2: any experience as a citizen sleuth. You know, they had
Speaker 2: maybe never followed a case before, and so look, we
Speaker 2: can point the finger and that's unfortunately that's going to happen,
Speaker 2: so especially in this type of case. So what you
Speaker 2: have here is and I say this, I've said it
Speaker 2: a hundred times on true crime garage, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: that I'll say it one hundred more. When you go
Speaker 2: to a community, especially a smaller town like Delphi, Indiana,
Speaker 2: and you kill a child, that's not a crime against
Speaker 2: that kid, just that kid, or against their family, or
Speaker 2: against where that kid went to school. That is a
Speaker 2: crime against the entire community. That's how it is. And
Speaker 2: this community banded together immediately. Now what ended up happening
Speaker 2: is people want their pound of flesh when something like
Speaker 2: this happens. That's just human nature. People want to very
Speaker 2: quickly identify why and who is responsible, where's the bad guy,
Speaker 2: and any speed bump or any slower route in defining
Speaker 2: that individual. It upsets the masses. In this case, knee
Speaker 2: jerk reaction. Yes, one hundred thousand percent. And the thing was,
Speaker 2: that's part of the reason why I wrote the book,
Speaker 2: was that there were so many things, so much absurd,
Speaker 2: crazy stuff being said online and on social media that
Speaker 2: I'm here tearing my hair out, going let's be reasonable people,
Speaker 2: Let's come back down to earth and deal with this
Speaker 2: thing that's called There's this wonderful thing called logic. Let's
Speaker 2: try to apply it here in this case. And so
Speaker 2: where you have people get ready to get out the
Speaker 2: torches and pitchforks going, well, they called off the search.
Speaker 2: Clearly shows they don't know what they're doing. That's common
Speaker 2: anytime there's somebody that's missing, it gets dark, it gets cold,
Speaker 2: they call off the search. That's just what happens. You
Speaker 2: don't Yes, you were to save one or two, but
Speaker 2: you're not going to risk one or two more in
Speaker 2: the process. If people stayed out there that night and
Speaker 2: still searched against you know, it's not like the sheriff
Speaker 2: is saying go home or you will be arrested. No,
Speaker 2: the sheriff is saying, we are done here for the night.
Speaker 2: We will reconvene at daybreak tomorrow six am. They were
Speaker 2: out there organized and ready to rock by six am. Yes,
Speaker 2: so the people reacting the way they did. You know,
Speaker 2: we end up getting two different composite sketches of the
Speaker 2: of the suspect throughout the course of this investigation. People
Speaker 2: were all up in arms about that. I've seen that
Speaker 2: in multiple cases. It's not uncommon to have more than
Speaker 2: one composite sketch, especially if an investigation last years. A
Speaker 2: lot of the things that people were upset with are
Speaker 2: things that we've seen in a bunch of other cases.
Speaker 2: What was different here, though, was the finger pointing, the
Speaker 2: calling out a specific person online or on social media
Speaker 2: that had nothing to do with the crime at all.
Speaker 2: I mean again, one major reason why I wrote the
Speaker 2: book was to separate not just fact from fiction, to
Speaker 2: separate fact from all the complete craziness out there. People
Speaker 2: openly saying that the mayor was the killer. People openly
Speaker 2: saying that the Superintendent of Indiana State Police, Doug Carter,
Speaker 2: who was the champion of justice in this case, that
Speaker 2: he was the killer. People saying that tob Leslbie, the sheriff,
Speaker 2: was the killer. People saying that Mike Patty, the grandfather
Speaker 2: of one of the girls, was the killer. So it
Speaker 2: was through that aggravating aspect of the case that just
Speaker 2: kept nudging me and nudging me and nudging me to
Speaker 2: keep covering it on true crime garage, speak for the
Speaker 2: truth and put pen to paper, write the book The
Speaker 2: Delphi murders.
Speaker 1: Well, let's go back to the day that the two
Speaker 1: girls were discovered. If we could just sort of summarize
Speaker 1: the discovery, who discovered them, what that whole scene was like,
Speaker 1: and then how do you get into an investigation after this?
Speaker 1: So what's the scene like when they find them?
Speaker 2: Well, they released very little information, and still to this day,
Speaker 2: even after the arrests, have released very little information. And
Speaker 2: some of those details don't help to lead us to
Speaker 2: the suspect anyway, so they're not always necessary to discuss.
Speaker 2: But on that day, yeah, the two girls were found
Speaker 2: by one of the search parties, and this was around noon,
Speaker 2: about twelve to fifteen that afternoon. They're discovered. Immediately based
Speaker 2: off of the discovery, police know we're dealing with foul play.
Speaker 2: They didn't go into details, but obvious signs all of
Speaker 2: these years later. In fact, it wasn't until June of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three that we learned that they were killed
Speaker 2: with a sharp instrument or sharp weapon. That's obviously going
Speaker 2: to tell the investigators that we're talking about foul play immediately.
Speaker 2: They did make the announcement at some point or the
Speaker 2: statement months after they were found that they believed everything
Speaker 2: was done and over with by five pm. And again
Speaker 2: they're releasing so little information that That's what a lot
Speaker 2: of them book is about is me. I've through true
Speaker 2: crime garage and through my charity work that I've done,
Speaker 2: I've reviewed and again I'm not law enforcement, I'm not
Speaker 2: retired law enforcement, but I've reviewed hundreds of cases, and
Speaker 2: there is some experience that comes with that, and so
Speaker 2: I could look at their words and look at their
Speaker 2: statements and deduce for myself what it is that they
Speaker 2: knew about the killer, what it is that they knew
Speaker 2: from the evidence that they're seeing about what went down
Speaker 2: that day, and also how they were going to pursue
Speaker 2: finding and identifying the killer. So that's what a lot
Speaker 2: of the book is me going through their information through
Speaker 2: their press conferences and reading between the lines and sharing
Speaker 2: that with the reader and so on that day, what
Speaker 2: we learned very quickly in this investigation, that is very
Speaker 2: different from other murder investigations is that Libby God bless her,
Speaker 2: she was so brave that she captured the killer's image
Speaker 2: and voice on herself phone, and that is partly what
Speaker 2: led to people being more upset about this case. They're going,
Speaker 2: you got the killer's picture, you got the killer on video,
Speaker 2: you got the killer talking recorded talking to the girls,
Speaker 2: and we can't find this guy. Either there's a cover
Speaker 2: up or you guys don't know what you're doing. And
Speaker 2: here's the thing. At the end of the day, it
Speaker 2: wasn't a great picture. It wasn't a great video. You
Speaker 2: could use that video or that picture to go, Okay,
Speaker 2: well this person and this guy and that guy, they
Speaker 2: are not the guy. But it's it was not a
Speaker 2: good enough picture that it's going that you could look
Speaker 2: at another person to go, yep, that's our guy. No,
Speaker 2: the video pretty much told us we're looking for a
Speaker 2: very average looking white.
Speaker 1: Male, yeah, in Indiana.
Speaker 2: In Indiana exactly, and so we could we could hear
Speaker 2: his voice. And Libby was so brave to capture all
Speaker 2: of that information there that day, risking putting herself at
Speaker 2: further harm because keep in mind, when he approaches them,
Speaker 2: they don't know what they're in for.
Speaker 1: Well, that's my question. Why is she recording? What is
Speaker 1: on the recording? And at what stage does she feel
Speaker 1: threatened and that's why she's recording him?
Speaker 2: Or do we not know?
Speaker 1: Why was she recording? And then she heard a voice
Speaker 1: and swung around and just started recording this guy.
Speaker 2: So that's very interesting. We can't say with any certainty
Speaker 2: why she decided to record. I think a couple things
Speaker 2: probably took place. Either one, they had seen him or
Speaker 2: encountered him prior and then see him again later and
Speaker 2: it kind of spooked them a little bit and thought, well,
Speaker 2: here's this weird guy. Maybe I should just record him
Speaker 2: for a bit. Let's keep in mind too, she had
Speaker 2: just taken a photograph that was sent out on Snapchat
Speaker 2: of Abby walking across the bridge, so she may have
Speaker 2: had her phone in hand when she first notices him
Speaker 2: on the bridge. So she sends that out on Snapchat.
Speaker 2: And this is at like two thirteen pm. We know
Speaker 2: everything's fine at two thirteen pm. After that this man
Speaker 2: they see him walking across the bridge, and earlier I
Speaker 2: had talked about the state of the bridge. I believe
Speaker 2: played a factor in us having difficulty identifying him. Well,
Speaker 2: that's because he's looking down as she's filming him while
Speaker 2: he's on the bridge. But he's looking down to make
Speaker 2: sure he doesn't lose his footing, make a wrong step,
Speaker 2: and I mean he could fall off the bridge himself.
Speaker 2: So I'm guessing here, because she filmed him for her phone,
Speaker 2: is capturing forty three seconds of video and or audio.
Speaker 2: We the public, we only get to hear or see
Speaker 2: a very small clip of that video. So later we
Speaker 2: hear guys down the hill that's the killer's voice. We
Speaker 2: also see a very brief clip of him taking like
Speaker 2: one and a half steps on the mon And High
Speaker 2: Bridge and he's looking again. He's looking down, so she
Speaker 2: could have they could have encountered him prior on the
Speaker 2: trails and thought, oh this is weird, here's this guy again,
Speaker 2: and maybe just filmed it for that purpose. We do
Speaker 2: later learn that they're unaware of a major threat until
Speaker 2: after she was already filming. What I think happened is
Speaker 2: she probably already had her phone out because she had
Speaker 2: just documented Abby going across the bridge, and it was
Speaker 2: kind of an instinct and natural instinct to just hit
Speaker 2: the button again and start filming this guy. Now, we
Speaker 2: do know Libby was being raised by her grandparents, Mike
Speaker 2: and Becky Patty, and what they have said to the
Speaker 2: media is that their opinion is that for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: this guy they probably just thought was weird for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: and just was going to take a picture or film
Speaker 2: him for a few seconds and then show it later
Speaker 2: to Grandma and Grandpa, like, look at this weird guy
Speaker 2: we saw at the park today, you know, just kind
Speaker 2: of very innocent. But that forty three seconds, it was
Speaker 2: never released in its entirety to the public, and on
Speaker 2: a portion of that we can only speculate what else
Speaker 2: is on that video. But at one point one of
Speaker 2: the girls does say to the other gun, just like gun.
Speaker 2: And so at some point he is showing them that
Speaker 2: he's going to be taking control of them in the situation,
Speaker 2: and they are aware of it, and one voices that
Speaker 2: to the other one. Now again they were already recording
Speaker 2: at this time. At some point I believe that she
Speaker 2: concealed her phone either just kind of held it down
Speaker 2: to her side or put it in a pocket, because
Speaker 2: that's where I think the audio of the killer comes from,
Speaker 2: because he's much closer when he says, guys down the hill.
Speaker 2: It sounds like he's standing right next to them. She
Speaker 2: must have rushed and put that phone away real quickly.
Speaker 2: Whether she intended to have it keep running or not,
Speaker 2: we can't say. But I've had people ask me, does
Speaker 2: that video so? Did that video hurt or help the investigation?
Speaker 2: And the best answer I can give is we need
Speaker 2: to give credit where credit is due. This is something
Speaker 2: very brave that this little girl did. Yeah, this was
Speaker 2: a choice that she made, and she did this, and
Speaker 2: it took five and a half years to make an arrest.
Speaker 2: In this case, I'm a firm believer. If you ask
Speaker 2: me if this video helped or hurt the investigation, it
Speaker 2: took five and a half years with the video to
Speaker 2: make an arrest. How many years do you think it
Speaker 2: would have been without the video?
Speaker 1: Why would it have hurt because it made it so
Speaker 1: much more mysterious that you have all of these people
Speaker 1: speculating and blowing it up even bigger, or well, what's
Speaker 1: the reason why it would be negative in the case.
Speaker 2: The negative is that the investigation gets inundated with tips.
Speaker 2: And of course only you know or a very small
Speaker 2: few are responsible for what happened. That day. So we're
Speaker 2: talking just months into the investigation, and they have to
Speaker 2: turn over the tip line to the FBI because the
Speaker 2: state police cannot handle the volume of calls and tips
Speaker 2: that they're receiving. So at one point, I want to say,
Speaker 2: this was like six or eight months into the investigation,
Speaker 2: they had said they had received over forty seven thousand tips. Wow,
Speaker 2: And so I can only imagine how many that they
Speaker 2: ultimately received over the course of five five and a
Speaker 2: half years before they arrested anybody. I guess, you know,
Speaker 2: that would be the only way that you go, Well,
Speaker 2: maybe it hurt the investigation. I think, if anything, has
Speaker 2: slowed it down because now you have all these people
Speaker 2: that need to be looked at because they you get tips,
Speaker 2: and some of these people you're getting multiple tips on
Speaker 2: did the police make any mistakes? Sure? And these things.
Speaker 2: A lot of the movements and a lot of the
Speaker 2: actions done by law enforcement in this case, we're probably
Speaker 2: heavily debated behind the scenes on okay, do we do
Speaker 2: this or do we not do this? And one thing
Speaker 2: that I don't like, but we've seen it dozens and
Speaker 2: dozens of times unfortunately, is right away, of course, media
Speaker 2: is peppering the officials with questions, and they're attempting to
Speaker 2: do some kind of information release the day after the
Speaker 2: girls were found, and unfortunately these officers weren't given much
Speaker 2: information at all. But the question that I always hate
Speaker 2: because I hate the answer is, oh, you said this
Speaker 2: is foul play. So is there a threat to the community.
Speaker 2: And you know, police, they always want to try to
Speaker 2: calm the masses, right, you don't want to send everybody
Speaker 2: into panic mode. And they said, no, we don't believe
Speaker 2: that there's any direct threat to the community. Okay, I
Speaker 2: get what you're trying to do, guys, but we have
Speaker 2: somebody out there that is killing children. There is a
Speaker 2: threat to the community.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me what investigators have to work with once
Speaker 1: they find the girls' bodies the next day, what are
Speaker 1: the physical clues I'm assuming they're taking swabs, right, they're
Speaker 1: taking for sexual assault? And is the cell phone? Is
Speaker 1: Libby's cell phone found quickly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they recover the cell phone. They are aware,
Speaker 2: obviously of the video and the audio before the public is.
Speaker 2: They held onto that information for a little bit. They
Speaker 2: were originally trying to get the guy seen in the
Speaker 2: video to come forward. They were taking the approach of
Speaker 2: this guy. We believe he's a witness or may have
Speaker 2: seen something out on the trails that day. He's just
Speaker 2: a guy that we want to talk to. And then
Speaker 2: after about a week, you know, they come out and say, no,
Speaker 2: this is our suspect. We believe that this is the
Speaker 2: person that's responsible for these two murders. Now you ask,
Speaker 2: what do they have to work with, Well, we later
Speaker 2: learn what they had to work with, but at the
Speaker 2: time they weren't saying anything. It was over six years
Speaker 2: after the murders that we even learned how the girls
Speaker 2: were killed. So they were trying to keep as much
Speaker 2: close to the vest as they could, hoping that when
Speaker 2: they did speak to the right person that they would
Speaker 2: start going down roads with different information that have not
Speaker 2: been released yet and the investigators would know we're talking
Speaker 2: to the right guy. He knows too much about this
Speaker 2: case or the crimes that he has to be the guy.
Speaker 2: So early on they executed a search warrant on one
Speaker 2: of the neighbors. The girls were actually found on private property.
Speaker 2: They were walked from the edge of that bridge the
Speaker 2: end of the bridge over on the private property where
Speaker 2: they were assaulted and killed, and they executed a search
Speaker 2: warrant for the owner of that property. His name was
Speaker 2: Ron Logan. I do think that some of the investigators
Speaker 2: behind the scenes thought that he was probably responsible, but
Speaker 2: we would later learn that no, he wasn't. And this
Speaker 2: was the case too, that they never really cleared anybody, right,
Speaker 2: They would look at somebody, look at him pretty deep,
Speaker 2: and take a good look at them, and the public
Speaker 2: would become aware of that, but they never officially publicly
Speaker 2: cleared anybody that they had looked at. They weren't closing
Speaker 2: any doors in this case. And it was and remains
Speaker 2: the biggest case in Indiana since the crime occurred, and
Speaker 2: so there were a lot of eyes on this case
Speaker 2: and a lot of scrutiny.
Speaker 1: What happened If we're skipping ahead between twenty seventeen, five
Speaker 1: and a half years later for them to then be
Speaker 1: able to make an arrest, what was the big change.
Speaker 2: Well, they realized that somebody that they had spoke to
Speaker 2: back in twenty seventeen that at one time was treated
Speaker 2: as more of a witness, probably should be looked at
Speaker 2: as a suspect. Because look, you get fifty thousand tips
Speaker 2: come in saying this is your guy. He looks just
Speaker 2: like the picture of bridge guy that you guys released
Speaker 2: to the public. The problem with ninety nine percent of
Speaker 2: those people that the masses are providing to law enforcement
Speaker 2: is that they weren't there. They were not in the
Speaker 2: area that day. One thing that we know has to
Speaker 2: have taken place is the killer had to have been
Speaker 2: there on the trails that day. He had to be
Speaker 2: in Delphi, Indiana on that Monday afternoon. No IF's hands
Speaker 2: or butts about it. So this individual, a man named
Speaker 2: Richard Allen, had spoke to a I keep calling him
Speaker 2: a resource a natural resource officer, because that's what we
Speaker 2: call him in my neck of the woods. But I
Speaker 2: believe this individual is referred to as a conservation officer.
Speaker 2: So to be clear, like because now the investigators are
Speaker 2: taking even after the arrest, they're still taking a lot
Speaker 2: of blame and criticism here because people were going, well,
Speaker 2: you talk to the guy five and a half years ago,
Speaker 2: what's the problem. He was right there all this time. Now,
Speaker 2: to be clear, it does not sound like Richard Allen
Speaker 2: went marching into the Sheriff's department said let me speak
Speaker 2: to your homicide detective. No, it sounds to me like
Speaker 2: he might have been out somewhere and spoke to this
Speaker 2: conservation officer and said, look, I was out on the
Speaker 2: trails that day. This is what I was doing, This
Speaker 2: was the time I arrived, this is the time I've
Speaker 2: who did you see while I was out there? I
Speaker 2: saw a couple of girls, But they weren't the victims.
Speaker 2: They were a couple of the other girls are okay.
Speaker 2: And so a note was made of this information. They
Speaker 2: are reviewing all of their information years later, in fact
Speaker 2: that this was late summer of last year, and somebody goes,
Speaker 2: wait a second, has anybody followed up and talked to
Speaker 2: this guy that says he was there that day? And
Speaker 2: they realized No, nobody's talked to him a second time.
Speaker 2: Nobody's called him into the sheriff's department. Nobody's had proper
Speaker 2: investigators talk to him. And when they do that, that's
Speaker 2: when they go hold on, this guy makes for a
Speaker 2: far better suspect than he does potential witness. After we've
Speaker 2: talked to him, tell me.
Speaker 1: About Richard and Allen. What do we know about him.
Speaker 2: He's a short guy that has lived in Delphi for
Speaker 2: at least six or seven years before the murders took place,
Speaker 2: worked at a CVS, so he's somebody that would have
Speaker 2: been known to other people there. He had a concealed
Speaker 2: weapons license for several years. According to him, he took
Speaker 2: regular walks on those trails. He lived about a five
Speaker 2: minute drive from there, so not far at all, and
Speaker 2: by his own admission, he was there that day on
Speaker 2: the trails. What we don't know. What we didn't know
Speaker 2: is that they were looking for a gun, and they
Speaker 2: were looking for whatever sharp instrument killed the girls. And
Speaker 2: in their interview, in their official interview with Richard Allen
Speaker 2: and his wife late last year, in late summer of
Speaker 2: last year, they learned that he yes, he owns firearms.
Speaker 2: Yes he owns knives, and the ones that he owned
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen are still in his house till this day.
Speaker 2: And so they rushed out and got a search warrant
Speaker 2: for his property and searched his home that night after
Speaker 2: speaking with him and his wife, because they were worried that, oh,
Speaker 2: this guy threw our questioning of him in our interviews,
Speaker 2: we might have tipped him off that he is a suspect,
Speaker 2: and now he may feel the need to get rid
Speaker 2: of some of that stuff that he has at his house.
Speaker 2: Let's go and get it now before he has the
Speaker 2: opportunity to. So what had happened was they had found
Speaker 2: a bullet. Now this was a live round. This was
Speaker 2: not a shell casing. This was a bullet that had been,
Speaker 2: for a lack of a better term, racked through a gun.
Speaker 2: And when that happens, if it's a live round and
Speaker 2: you're racking it again so you can rack it to
Speaker 2: load it into the chamber to be fired, if you
Speaker 2: hit the rack again, it's going to expel that bullet
Speaker 2: out this typically out the side of the gun, and
Speaker 2: then it's going to load another bullet. So what happened,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, either he purposely racked it to gain
Speaker 2: control of the girls at some point, or during the
Speaker 2: course of a scuffle it accidentally gets racked through the gun,
Speaker 2: or maybe he was unaware that he had already lowed
Speaker 2: you loaded the gun and decided to rack it. But
Speaker 2: they were not killed by a gun. But what they
Speaker 2: found at the scene, very close to one of the
Speaker 2: victim's bodies, is this bullet that had been racked through
Speaker 2: a gun, and it had it had markings on it
Speaker 2: that would tell us what kind of gun? What gun
Speaker 2: this bullet came from. So they're not doing ballistics like
Speaker 2: we're used to, where somebody shoots somebody and they have
Speaker 2: rifling and exactly so in this situation, this is a
Speaker 2: microscope comparison by an expert, and this person is saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: this gun we confiscated from Richard Allen's home. We racked
Speaker 2: the bullet through there and it has the same markings
Speaker 2: as the bullet that we found at the murder scene.
Speaker 2: And Richard Allen's own words are, no, I've never lent
Speaker 2: that gun to anyone. It's never been out of my possession.
Speaker 2: And no, I've never been on that piece of land
Speaker 2: where the girls were out. So that statement to police
Speaker 2: has set a very high hurdle for his defense team
Speaker 2: to clear when this thing gets to a trial.
Speaker 1: What about DNA, Well, if they.
Speaker 2: Have Richard Allen's DNA at the murder scene, they've not
Speaker 2: told us that. Now, the court documents that have been released,
Speaker 2: and some of them not all have been released, but
Speaker 2: some of them have. The court documents do not suggest
Speaker 2: that that's what they were seeking when building their case
Speaker 2: against Richard Allen.
Speaker 1: Does that seem odd to you?
Speaker 2: Well, yes, it's easy to speculate that this is some
Speaker 2: type of sexually motivated crimes, and so one would believe
Speaker 2: that there was some kind of sexual assault. You could
Speaker 2: have trace DNA. There's all kinds of DNA that we
Speaker 2: could have at the scene. Now we do have law
Speaker 2: enforcement on record saying yes we have DNA in this case.
Speaker 2: Yes we have fingerprints in this case. We just don't
Speaker 2: know if they're the suspects. And so keep in mind
Speaker 2: it was a search party that found them and at
Speaker 2: some point you have law enforcement, paramedics, you have all
Speaker 2: kinds of people in and out of this outdoor scene.
Speaker 2: An outdoor murder scene is completely different from an indoor
Speaker 2: murder scene where it's a controlled environment. So that made
Speaker 2: the situation difficult for law enforcement. And I look, do
Speaker 2: I think Richard Allen is some kind of brilliant criminal. No,
Speaker 2: but I think that he just got lucky and he
Speaker 2: didn't leave his DNA there that day. Because one thing
Speaker 2: that took place is they finally solved the April Tinsley
Speaker 2: case from the eighties. This was the murder of a
Speaker 2: little girl and they had DNA. They had suspect DNA
Speaker 2: in that case, and what they did was they went
Speaker 2: the genealogy route with April Tinsley, and that didn't take
Speaker 2: place until after Abby and Libby were killed in Delphi, Indiana.
Speaker 2: So I was of the belief that those two things
Speaker 2: were not completely a coincidence that they went down that
Speaker 2: route to solve what is probably one of the most
Speaker 2: well known and worse crimes in Indiana state history, the
Speaker 2: murder of April Tenseley. They use genealogy DNA detection work
Speaker 2: to solve that case. I don't think it was a coincidence.
Speaker 2: I think they went down that road and thought we
Speaker 2: might have to go down that road here for the
Speaker 2: Delphi case. Again, if they have Richard Allen's DNA at
Speaker 2: the murder scene, that's something we'll learn at trial. But
Speaker 2: it doesn't appear that that's the case.
Speaker 1: Is this confirmed to sexual assaults both of them or no.
Speaker 2: Not confirmed sexual assaults. But the other thing too, these
Speaker 2: guys that commit these types of crimes, they can be
Speaker 2: of a sexual nature or sexually motivated without it being
Speaker 2: obvious to the rest of us, So that could play
Speaker 2: a big part in this case. The other thing too,
Speaker 2: to keep in mind with how dangerous this type of
Speaker 2: individual is. I'm not saying that he would have morphed
Speaker 2: into a serial killer or went out even did this again,
Speaker 2: but it's difficult to believe that he would not have.
Speaker 2: And the fact of the matter at the end of
Speaker 2: the day is Libby filming him. Can you imagine what
Speaker 2: he experienced when he's watching the news and realizes, holy shit,
Speaker 2: they got my picture, Holy shit, they got my voice.
Speaker 2: That little girl saved lives that day. If there ever
Speaker 2: was a one to go out and do something like
Speaker 2: this again, we could have had that situation here. And
Speaker 2: I firmly believe that any idea that this guy would
Speaker 2: have thought about doing this a second time was completely
Speaker 2: squashed by this brave little girl and her actions that day.
Speaker 1: There does seem to be a lot of missing information
Speaker 1: that prosecutors and investigators have held on to, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure that does drive people crazy. How as a citizen sleuth,
Speaker 1: are people able to help legitimately help investigators without hindering
Speaker 1: an investigation. It seems to me to be able to
Speaker 1: provide actual, real confirmed clues and keeping it in the media,
Speaker 1: but not this wild, crazy speculating that is hurtful and
Speaker 1: so unhelpful.
Speaker 2: Well, and you had said knee jerk reaction earlier, and
Speaker 2: I think that's the thing to hone in here too,
Speaker 2: that people need to not just react immediately right If
Speaker 2: you got to you got to picture somebody you think
Speaker 2: might be responsible, do a little bit of the work yourself.
Speaker 2: Can you put that individual in Carol County on that day?
Speaker 2: If the picture of the guy you have he's born
Speaker 2: and raised in Hawaii and has lived most of his
Speaker 2: adult life in a Hawaii, do a little work to
Speaker 2: see if you can put that guy in the state
Speaker 2: of Indiana. So as far as citizens sleuthing goes, in
Speaker 2: this case, one thing that they did which was really good,
Speaker 2: and I hope that this carries on to other cases
Speaker 2: where there's a lot of tips coming in. They kept
Speaker 2: reminding the public that they prefer, they strongly prefer, that
Speaker 2: you email your tip rather than call it in because
Speaker 2: it creates a paper trail. It's something that they can
Speaker 2: return to and guess what, When you call in a tip,
Speaker 2: your tip is open to interpretation from the person that
Speaker 2: takes the tip and writes down the information and catalogs
Speaker 2: the information. If you yourself are typing that out on
Speaker 2: an email, that's firsthand, that's coming from you as a
Speaker 2: potential witness or you as a person with some potential
Speaker 2: insider knowledge. So that's documentation, documented information that they can
Speaker 2: return to, and it's not open to interpretation from phoning
Speaker 2: something in. So look, the public certainly helped and did
Speaker 2: hurt in this case, but you can't fault people for
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, wanting to do something
Speaker 2: to help. I don't retaliate too much when people had
Speaker 2: bad information. It's more of the it's more of the
Speaker 2: stuff that was just completely sort of out of bounds
Speaker 2: and people saying things about the family families are weird
Speaker 2: or whatever. It's like, No, there was nothing weird about
Speaker 2: any of these families. And I said this a couple
Speaker 2: times in the book. In the end, the way that
Speaker 2: these family members conducted themselves with such strength, courage, and
Speaker 2: grace in the face of you know, one's character is
Speaker 2: best judged in the time of tragedy. I cannot think
Speaker 2: of any greater tragedy than this. And to see the
Speaker 2: way that these individuals handled themselves in a weird way,
Speaker 2: they were teaching us how to be strong through this,
Speaker 2: teaching the rest of the community how to be strong
Speaker 2: through this. So It's one of those cases that, unfortunately
Speaker 2: we sit here all these years later, we don't have
Speaker 2: a whole lot of the information, which makes it all
Speaker 2: that more mysterious. But I do hope now that since
Speaker 2: there has been a rest, the public is still crying
Speaker 2: out and screaming, we want more information, we want more information. No,
Speaker 2: let's stop that right now, because what we will have,
Speaker 2: what we are going to be faced with soon, is
Speaker 2: trying to get a judication in this case, trying to
Speaker 2: get a conviction in this case. And I do not
Speaker 2: want to be setting the table for a hung jury,
Speaker 2: a mistrial, or lining up a bunch of appeals for
Speaker 2: the guilty party. In this situation, they very likely have
Speaker 2: the guy that's responsible. Let's let this thing work itself
Speaker 2: out the appropriate way and the correct way in the courts.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
Speaker 1: right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi. Our
Speaker 1: associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed by
Speaker 1: John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer, artwork by Nick Toga,
Speaker 1: Executive produced by Georgia Hartstark, Karen kil Gareff and Danielle Kramer.
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