Delphi Murders: Richard Allen & The Search For The Truth

He didn't say "I did it." He said "I think I did it." That was Richard Allen's first confession to his wife — after five months in the most restrictive solitary cell in a maximum-security prison, after being diagnosed as gravely disabled and psychotic, after being forcibly injected with antipsychotics, after his weight dropped to 135 pounds, and after he started confusing nightmares with reality a...

According to the defense's appellate filings, one suspect sat across from Delphi investigators four days after the murders and admitted to practicing pagan rituals involving bloodletting. He owned a .40 caliber firearm — the same caliber as the round found at the scene. They recorded his interview. The tape was erased. They never collected the gun. His employer offered surveillance footage to chec...

The defense at Richard Allen's trial tried to introduce Blair's composite sketch of Bridge Guy — a man in his twenties with poofy hair, rated 10 out of 10 for accuracy, who looks nothing like Allen. Excluded. An expert to challenge the State's bullet methodology — excluded. Audio of Allen's psychotic episodes during solitary — excluded. Expert testimony that the confessions were false — excluded....

Before solitary confinement, Richard Allen told investigators he didn't do it. Said it repeatedly under pressure. Said it to his wife. Said it emphatically: "I am not going to say something I did not do." Five months later, his words to his wife had changed: "I think I did it." According to the defense filings, Allen had been held in the most restrictive solitary cell in Westville for thirteen mon...

According to the appellant's brief, Detective Tony Liggett secured the search warrant against Richard Allen with an affidavit that allegedly omitted and altered key witness statements. Blair described Bridge Guy as a young man in his twenties with brown poofy hair and sketched a car that looked nothing like Allen's Ford Focus — details Liggett allegedly left out. Carbaugh reportedly said tan jacke...

The defense's appellate filings lay out what may be one of the most troubling chapters in the Delphi investigation: two men with documented connections to the victim, to pagan rituals, and to the symbolism at the crime scene — investigated so poorly that the evidence trail was destroyed before it could lead anywhere. One admitted to bloodletting rituals and owned a .40 caliber firearm matching the...

When Richard Allen came forward voluntarily in February 2017, he told law enforcement he'd walked the Monon High Bridge Trail the same afternoon Abby and Libby disappeared. He answered their questions. He wasn't hiding. And then his report was filed under the wrong name and buried in a box until a volunteer found it in September 2022. According to the appellant's brief, that wasn't the only thing...

The .40-caliber pistol is the centerpiece of the physical evidence against Richard Allen. The search warrant that produced it now faces de novo review at the Indiana Court of Appeals — meaning three judges owe no deference to Judge Fran Gull on that issue. If they rule the warrant was deficient, the weapon is gone. Not suppressed for this appeal. Gone from any retrial. Gone from the case permanent...

The Delphi appeal is now fully briefed. Three judges at the Indiana Court of Appeals are reading the full written record. The defense has formally asked to stand in front of them at oral arguments. The State of Indiana has not joined that request. Richard Allen is sitting in an Oklahoma prison for safekeeping while the courtroom that will decide his fate sits more than a thousand miles away. This...

Richard Allen is not sitting in an Indiana prison. He is in an Oklahoma facility, designated for safekeeping, more than a thousand miles from the courtroom that will decide his appeal. The State of Indiana moved him out of state. The State of Indiana is now also the side telling the Indiana Court of Appeals that the conditions of his pretrial confinement at Westville did not amount to coercion. Th...

After five and a half months in solitary confinement at Westville, Richard Allen had reached a state his own defense team described as gravely disabled. He was no longer sure whether he was guilty or innocent. He was no longer sure whether he was dead or alive. According to the appellate brief, he stayed in solitary for another seven and a half months after that. He lost 45 pounds. He confessed. T...

The Delphi appeal is fully briefed. The defense's reply brief landed in late April. Three judges at the Indiana Court of Appeals are now reading the full written record, and what Richard Allen's appellate team has put in front of them is a record Indiana clearly does not want them to read carefully. The defense laid out the van timeline contradicted by FBI cell data and surveillance footage. They...

Abby Williams was thirteen. Libby German was fourteen. They were best friends who went to a bridge on a February afternoon in 2017 and never came home. Their families have been living inside this nightmare for over nine years. Richard Allen was convicted. He’s serving a hundred and thirty years. And his defense team just told the Indiana Court of Appeals that the jury only heard half the story. Yo...

He confessed to killing them. He told his prison psychiatrist he shot Abby Williams and Libby German. They were not shot. They were killed with a blade. And in ninety-four pages, the Indiana Attorney General's response to Richard Allen's appeal does not explain why a man supposedly confessing to the murders he committed described a method of killing that did not happen. That is not a minor inconsi...

The Indiana Attorney General's response to Richard Allen's appeal was supposed to shut down the defense's arguments. It didn't. If anything, the State's brief — filed in March 2026 — raises more questions about what Indiana is willing to do to protect this conviction than it answers about whether the conviction was fairly obtained. Allen's appellate attorneys laid out a detailed, sourced case: a s...

They used the word "irrefutable." The Indiana Attorney General filed 94 pages telling the appeals court that the case against Richard Allen is so strong, so complete, so beyond question that nothing the defense raises could change the outcome. We read every page. And we found what they left out. This week we look back at the most important development in the Delphi case since the verdict. The man...

You've been inside these documents. You know the warrant. You know the confessions. You know what the jury never heard. Now the State has filed their formal answer to the appeal — and we're going through every argument they make, and every argument they avoid, in this complete three-part panel with defense attorney Bob Motta. The frame: 94 pages from the Indiana Attorney General calling this convi...

The State has filed their response. The defense gets a reply. Three appellate judges will evaluate whether this conviction can stand. In this final session of our three-part panel, defense attorney Bob Motta goes forward. Not backward through the evidence — forward through the process. What does the reply brief need to land on to give the Court of Appeals a reason to move? Where did the State leav...

You know the van timeline. You know the cause of death discrepancy. Now get the legal analysis. The prosecution's most important argument was that Richard Allen's confession contained something only the killer could know — that he saw a van drive past during the attack on Abby Williams and Libby German. They traced it to a real neighbor. They called it corroboration. They called it proof the confe...

You've read the headlines on the State's response brief. Here's what they actually mean. The Indiana Attorney General filed 94 pages telling the Court of Appeals that Richard Allen's conviction is solid and the trial was fair. The brief calls the evidence "conclusive and irrefutable." It leans on procedural waiver to shut down most of the appeal before the court ever has to evaluate the substance....

You've been following every development in the Richard Allen appeal. This is the one you've been waiting for. Indiana's Attorney General just filed the State's formal response brief — their full argument for why Allen's 130-year conviction should stand without any intervention from the Court of Appeals. They call the evidence "conclusive and irrefutable." They say the trial was fair. They say the...

The judge who controlled what the jury saw and heard in Richard Allen's trial just announced her retirement. Frances Gull will step down from the bench at the end of 2026 after nearly thirty years. Her press release talks about Drug Court, veterans, and "second chances." It says nothing about Delphi. Nothing about Abby and Libby. Nothing about Richard Allen. But the 113-page appellant's brief file...

The state's case against Richard Allen came down to his confessions. Without them, there's no eyewitness identification, no DNA, and a bullet "match" that even the state's own expert admitted is subjective. The confessions were everything. So let's talk about what those confessions actually looked like. According to the Appellant's Brief filed in December 2025, Richard Allen confessed while declar...

This is the Delphi appeal — start to finish. Defense attorney Bob Motta walks through the full scope of the case now before the appellate court: a warrant allegedly built on omissions and altered statements, a year of extreme solitary confinement that preceded multiple confessions, and a trial where critical defense evidence was never allowed in front of the jury. At every stage, the appeal raises...

The jury convicted Richard Allen — but the appeal argues they never saw the full picture. They didn’t see the eyewitness sketch rated “10 out of 10” by the witness who helped create it — a sketch that looked nothing like Allen. They didn’t hear expert testimony challenging the reliability of the State’s bullet-matching evidence. They didn’t hear about alternative suspects, unverified alibis, or in...