DELPHI, Ind. — For the first time, a juror in the Delphi double murder trial of Richard Allen is talking and explaining what led to her vote to find Allen guilty of the murders of Abby Williams and Libby German near the Monon High Bridge in February 2017.
The juror, who spoke on the condition of keeping her identity secret, was interviewed by Aine Cain and Kevin Greenlee of the Murder Sheet podcast.
”This juror actually reached out to us and was willing to discuss her experience at the trial with us,” said Cain. ”I think a lot of them had no idea what they were in for.”
The juror told the podcasters that her journey to Delphi began in Allen County in August, when she received a summons for jury duty and filled out a questionnaire.
”The very last question got me the most — ‘Do you know anything about Odinism?’ and then all of those different things,” the juror said. “So, I knew nothing about this at this point, and then it was, ‘Oh, there must be something crazy with this case going on.”
More than 200 potential jurors were summoned to Judge Fran Gull’s Fort Wayne courtroom and were questioned by Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland and defense attorneys Andrew Baldwin and Brad Rozzi.
”They found Prosecutor Nick McLeland to be well prepared, ingratiating and charming,” said Greenlee. “On the other hand, the lead attorney for the defense, Bradley Rozzi, they found him to be arrogant and somewhat off putting.”
The juror said she was put off by Rozzi’s statement during jury selection that he would attempt to “dumb down” a concept for the jury candidates and his questioning of one potential juror’s mental capacity.
The woman said some of the jurors stared down Allen in the courtroom as he looked at them.
”He just has some weird eyes,” the juror said. “I don’t think that makes him a murderer. I would kind of like refrain from looking over there, I guess, because any time we made eye contact, I would just look away really fast. A couple of the other jurors would talk about how he was always staring at us, so they would start staring back and not looking away until he did.”
The juror added that the panel respected Judge Gull and her oversight of the trial.
”I think that she is a very impressive woman,” she said. ”I think she commands a room.”
Judge Gull prohibited Allen’s attorneys from raising an Odinism defense which would have sought to blame the killings on a Nordic ritual with links to Carroll County.
Gull said the defense had failed to prove a nexus of evidence between the theory, first raised by State investigators, to the crime.
”I didn’t know about the Odinist stuff,” said the juror. “I didn’t know there were arguments about what can be shared and what not, like we didn’t know anything about the behind-the-scenes things.”
The defense team wanted to link what police determined was a bloody handprint on a tree to an Odinism symbol.
“So, from that perspective, when you’re hearing, ‘Well, what do you think about the things on the trees? The F on the trees?’ and you’re just wondering, what the hell are they talking about? You’re getting so confused. They think there’s some specific way its on there.”
The juror said she favored the State’s clear, logical presentation of the case.
”A lot of the time, I don’t think we got that with the defense,” she said. “It seemed scrambled, confused, not knowing what they’re gonna do next.”
There were times when the State seemed caught off guard, said the juror, such as when its expert couldn’t account for the activation on Libby’s cell phone found under Abby’s body or whether Allen’s car was the only black Ford Focus cruising around Carroll County in the winter of 2017.
”When we asked the jury question, ‘Did you look and see how many cars there were of this car that year?’ and the next thing we know, they looked that up. I was just like, ‘I can’t believe you wouldn’t have thought to do that already.’”
Greenlee said the jurors dismissed the testimony of Sarah Carbaugh who became combative with Baldwin under cross examination of her account of seeing the suspected killer, Bridge Guy, walking along a nearby county road after the murders.
But another witness on the trail leading up to the bridge that day was found to be more credible, said Greenlee.
”In particular, she singled out the testimony of Railly Vorheis, who saw Bridge Guy, or Richard Allen, on the trails that day. She pointed out that she described seeing Richard Allen and describing him wearing the clothes that Richard Allen acknowledged he was wearing and at the same time Richard Allen, who authorities described seeing her. If these two people are at the scene at that time, how can Bridge Guy be anyone other than Richard Allen?”
The juror said it was often Allen’s own statements to investigators and his confessions that convinced her of his guilt and generated agreement during deliberations.
“Richard Allen says he was there at that time window. He said what he was wearing and it was the same clothes as Bridge Guy. So, once you get to that, there’s really no disputing that Richard Allen is Bridge Guy. That’s what I think we got to first. Does anyone disagree that Richard Allen is Bridge Guy? No one did. You really can’t. So, if he’s Bridge Guy, how do we know if he was the kidnapper and murderer? After realizing he’s Bridge Guy it was pretty easy to add all of those things together. But really just things that he reported himself is really what got me closer to guilty.”
The jury deliberated for 19.5 hours over the course of four days.
The juror said the second day the jury took its first vote, coming down 9-0-3 leaning toward a guilty verdict.
The jury told the judge they wanted to watch videos of Allen’s interviews with investigators the next day and review the video of Bridge Guy shot on Libby’s cellphone.
”We wanted to see videos of Bridge Guy video that was edited or remastered or whatever they did to where it stays upright. And then there was one that was just the audio of the Bridge Guy video.”
The juror said she was sold on Allen’s guilt as Bridge Guy by the testimony of ISP Master Trooper Brian Harshman who said he recognized Allen’s voice on the video commanding the girls, “Guys … down the hill,” after listening to hundreds of phone calls the defendant made from prison to his family, including those in which he professed his guilt.
”I really liked Harshman,” she said. “I think professionalism goes a long way with me and all these guys, a lot of these people with ISP.”
The juror said the jury disregarded evidence of a bullet investigators found at the crime scene and linked to Allen’s gun, finding the science of tool marks unconvincing.
They also considered Allen’s deteriorating mental state while being held in solitary confinement in a state prison before his trial as an explanation for his confessions.
“Although it is very eerie, looking back, I think, who would confess that many times that didn’t actually do that? I can’t think of how that would ever happen.”
The jurors also weighed the defendant’s reference to a white van that drove by at the time of the attack, a detail investigators said only the killer would know.
After viewing the videos, the juror said another vote was taken in the jury room with an 8-0-4 margin, indicating no one thought Allen was not guilty though a third of the panel was still undecided.
”We had a whole weekend to think about it on our own,” she said, recalling that the jury was then sent back to its Lafayette hotel to await Monday morning’s return to deliberations. ”I narrowed it down to what do I know for a fact and what do I believe and are those things enough to warrant reasonable doubt. That’s what I pondered all weekend.”
While she was considering Allen’s guilt, and whether she would move from the Undecided column, the juror said she recalled Prosecutor McLeland’s final argument and how he characterized Libby’s decision to shoot video of the man pursuing them off the end of the bridge and Abby hiding the phone under her body.
“When he said that she always wanted to help police solve crimes, like, that broke my heart. And that they both hid the phone, got the video, and if it wasn’t for that we wouldn’t have found Richard Allen. So, that stuck with me.”
When the jury returned to the courthouse that Monday morning, their bags packed, they took a final vote.
”Our foreman was like, “Are you kidding me? We’re unanimous.’ And I was like crying at this point because I knew it would be over and the feeling was like, just, one, it was over, and it’s deciding that it’s pretty sad, the outcome sucks either way, it was just very, very hard for me.”
The juror said since her return home she became more curious about the case she devoted a month of her life to and began researching it on social media.
”We knew we weren’t hearing everything because it was pretty obvious in court that there were things that weren’t being told to us for whatever reason,” she said, having learned more about what jurors weren’t told in the courtroom. ”I think we made the right decision. I really do.”
The Delphi murders captivated social media followers from the start, and the pursuit and prosecution of Allen resulted in lines being drawn in the virtual world.
”There are people out there who for whatever reason hero worship the defense attorneys in this case and Richard Allen,” said Greenlee. “Whenever anyone criticizes them, these people who hero worship them get furious, they harass you, they make threats, they attack you, and it’s really something that is not conducive to justice in this country.”
After Allen was sentenced to 130 years in prison, Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter said he came to the realization that a jury’s verdict was based on the evidence presented in the courtroom, not the full scope of the case known to investigators.
Podcaster Cain agreed.
”I think its fair to say, if we’re really looking at this, that they really got what was important, and it’s important for all of us to kind of remember that there can be a lot of chatter online, but at the end of the day, it can really only matter what is presented in the courtroom and the performances of the attorneys in the courtroom and the rulings of the judge in the courtroom.”
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