Authors of book on Delphi murders believe jurors got the case right

INDIANAPOLIS - Murder Sheet podcasters Kevin Greenlee, an attorney, and Aine Cain, a journalist, attended every court proceeding and read every legal filing in the case against Richard Allen, the man arrested in 2022 for the murders a half-decade earlier of Abby Williams and Libby German near the Monon High Bridge just outside of Delphi, Indiana.

Over the last five years, they've spoken on and off-the-record with nearly every significant participant in the proceedings and several tangential sources not necessarily with firsthand knowledge of the investigation but the experience to put the whole case in context.





They lined up well before dawn outside the Carroll County Courthouse for three weeks last fall to secure one of the limited and coveted seats in the courtroom.








Cain and Greenlee have now written a book, "Shadow of the Bridge: The Delphi Murders and the Dark Side of the American Heartland," to be released on Tuesday by Pegasus Books.




"We really do want to put people in that courtroom and throughout this investigation in these different rooms where these important decisions were being made or where a lead was just found or take you through and make you feel like you were just there," said Cain.




Though it took detectives, lawyers and jurors more than seven-and-a-half years to investigate, try and convict Allen of the killings, the authors claim the case could have been solved in the first week if not for the misplaced notes of an interview Allen gave to a DNR officer about what he was doing on the bridge the day the girls disappeared.




"My view is this case absolutely could have been solved immediately if this tip had not been misplaced, unfortunately," said Cain. "And I would say that is fundamentally the original sin. I think that's the exact way to put it. It kind of permeates and pervades through everything."




"This case could've been solved," said Greenlee, recalling the dozens of law enforcement officers and federal agents who flocked to Delphi in the early days of the probe. "There were too many cooks in the kitchen. The case could've been solved very, very quickly. Just too many people wanting to help out. I think that was a big problem."




Another huge problem, from the start, was the presence of social media surrounding the investigation; many times, well-meaning followers simply interested in a baffling case, but, said the authors, other times, posters reported inaccurate information without a full grasp of the facts.




"I would say that, by and large, social media muddied the waters," said Cain, whose Murder Sheet podcast covered the case and trial intensely. "As far as the rampant speculation, and even people accusing one another of possibly being involved in the crimes, that certainly muddied the waters."




"I think traditional media reports on things when there are things to report," said Greenlee. "I think social media tends to report on things that will get the clicks. Social media kind of took over and they reported, for lack of a better word, even when there was nothing to report and they filled their time and space with speculation that ultimately went nowhere."




Allen was charged in October 2022 after his long-lost interview was discovered and he was confronted by investigators who convinced a judge they had found enough evidence to warrant the filing of a probable cause affidavit for his arrest.

After less than one month on the case, defense attorneys Bradley Rozzi and Andrew Baldwin so raised the ire of Special Judge Fran Gull that she issued a gag order on all parties to the case, the first of several rulings from the bench that precluded full disclosure of case and trial details to the public.




"The defense was quickly turning into a clown show at even that early date," said Cain. "It looked to me frequently like this was a defense that was preening and posing for the media and the public and the social media of fandom that they accrued."




The defense team was faced with explaining away a bullet at the scene that matched Allen's gun, his resemblance to Bridge Guy, the image of the killer captured on Libby's cell phone, and their client's own confessions to his family and prison authorities.




Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland told jurors that Libby and Abby were the heroes of the investigation, hiding away a cell phone that contained the image of Bridge Guy.




Cain and Greenlee point to McLeland's prosecution team and the investigators who refused to give up the hunt for the killer as the case heroes, as they also stood up to pressure to charge other suspects when the evidence wasn't forthcoming.




Judge Gull's courtroom on the third floor of the century-old Carroll County Courthouse was a crucible for justice where jurors, the defense and prosecution, Allen, the victims' families and a packed gallery listened to days of expert testimony, viewed traumatic crime scene photographs and listened to the defendant confess his guilt to loved ones.




A juror told Cain that Allen's courtroom presence, literally just a few feet away from the jury box, could be unsettling.




"Richard Allen, we found from speaking with a juror, was staring down the jury the whole time."




Three weeks of testimony and evidence gave way to four days of deliberations before jurors returned guilty verdicts.




"And then having sat through that same evidence presented at trial and then saying, 'Oh, my gosh. They've boxed him in. They've completely boxed him in. He has nowhere to go," said Cain. "This was not close. There was no one on that jury who was voting for acquittal at any point. We had a majority of people saying guilty and a handful of people saying, 'I'm uncertain. I need to be convinced.'"




"If I had been on that jury, I would have voted guilty," said Greenlee.




"You get a lot of, 'Did they really get the right guy?' That's a question we get a lot," said Cain. "And I think if you read this book, you're going to understand at the very least why the jury certainly felt that they got the right guy."




A month later, just before last Christmas, Allen was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.

"For instance, Richard Allen phoned his family and told them not to come to the sentencing and said, 'If you do come to the sentencing, I'm gonna attack the judge,'" said Greenlee. "Things like that really give a picture of what this person is really like."




Allen, his wife and his attorneys did not grant on-the-record interviews to the authors while they were writing the book, which leaves unanswered the question - why did he do it?




"He was drinking that morning and he was interested in going to the trails to find a woman to sexually assault," said Greenlee, recalling Allen's interview with a prison psychologist. "That's what he told Dr. Wala."




Allen told the psychologist that he was both a child molest victim and victimizer.




"I view Richard Allen as a pathetic little man who wanted to assert his dominance over a female, whether that's a woman or a girl," said Cain. "He was not picky."




Last month, Allen was moved, reportedly at his own request, to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to serve his sentence, though he is no longer listed on the prison website.




Allen has engaged appeals attorneys in an attempt to overturn his conviction.




"I think for all intents and purposes, it is over," said Greenlee. "The appeals process does have to play itself out, but realistically, very few people get a second bite at the apple, very few people get a second trial. I sat through every day of that trial, I sat through every pre-trial hearing. I didn't see any mistakes made that would come anywhere close to granting this man a second trial."





via: https://fox59.com/news/authors-of-book-on-delphi-murders-believe-jurors-got-the-case-right/