How a white van might hold the key to Delphi murders suspect’s innocence or guilt
Richard Allen, 52, in on trial for the 2017 murders of Abby Williams and Libby German
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In one of the many confessions Delphi murders suspect Richard Allen allegedly made from prison, he claimed that he was spooked by a white van which caused him to abandon his plan to rape two teenage girls on a hiking trail in the small Indiana town and quickly kill them instead.
But now the credibility of Allen’s confessions is once again in question after a witness testified about a detail that only the killer would know.
Brad Weber, who is a key witness for the prosecution in the case, claims he drove his white van home from work on February 13, 2017, the day Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13, and Liberty “Libby” German, 14, were murdered. At around 2:30 p.m. on that fateful day, he drove by the stretch of Deer Creek where the girls’ bodies were discovered a day later.
The timeline appears to line up with the case laid out by the prosecution which claims that the killer led the girls down the hill at 2:31 p.m., according to pings from Libby’s phone. The phone’s last ping was at 2:32 p.m.
Allen, 52, is on trial for the murders of Abby and Libby, whose slain bodies were found a day after they went missing on February 13, 2017 while walking on a trail at the Monon High Bridge near Delphi. Allen was arrested five years later in October 2022.
Weber was recalled to the stand by the defense this week as attorney Andrew Baldwin tried to discredit his testimony by pointing out that he had given conflicting statements about his timeline to investigators in the days following the murders.
Weber acknowledged that he gave two different stories during two separate interviews in February 2017. In one, he said he drove his white van straight home from work on February 13, 2017, the day of the murders. In the other interview, he said he left work and went to service some ATM machines.
This difference is significant because if Weber did not go straight home from work, the state’s timeline for Allen seeing the van just before the murders does not match up with the way it was told to the jury, Fox 59 reported.
And it further raises questions on the credibility of Allen’s prison confessions, which his attorneys say were made in the throes of a mental health crisis brought on by months of solitary confinement.
Last week, the court heard from psychologist Dr. Monica Wala, who told jurors how Allen confessed to the crimes in detail to her while he was at the Westville Correctional Facility.
She claimed that Allen told her that his intention was to rape the girls but said he was “spooked” by a white van. He then forced them into the woods and slashed their throats before covering the girls with sticks, a detail which matched the crime scene.
Allen, who said he had been following the girls on the bridge, had “messed with his gun,” which he speculated might’ve led to the round being found at the scene, he told Wala.
Weber, who owns the white van, took the stand after Wala. He also owns property next to the Monon High Bridge trails that was searched in the initial hours after the girls went missing.
During cross-examination, Baldwin pressed Weber about his timeline, claiming that according to one of the previous interviews, he had not gone straight home, but had gone to drop off a trailer. Weber denied this multiple times in an exchange that grew heated.
When Weber was recalled by the defense, he explained to the court that he got upset on the stand last week because he thought the defense was trying to tell him what he did after he got off work the day of the murders.
Baldwin also confronted Weber about an inconsistent statement he made to police on February 19, 2017, in which Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Adam Pohl wrote that Weber indicated he might have gone to service ATMs that day.
Weber told the court that he did not remember saying that and claimed he went directly home that day after work and took a nap.
He said he did not know about the missing girls until officers woke him up when they showed up at his house that afternoon and asked if he had seen the girls on the trails or near the bridge that day. He said he had not seen them and then gave officers permission to search the area.
When former Delphi police chief Steve Mullin took the stand on Monday, the defense questioned him about whether Allen was told about the white van prior to his confession.
Baldwin argued that Allen could have learned this key detail from Dr. Wala, who was obsessively following the Delphi case, reading and posting online about it, listening to podcasts and even traveling to the Monon High Bridge, according to Fox 59, some of which she reportedly shared with Allen during their sessions.
“You don’t know what Dr. Wala told Richard Allen about a van?” Baldwin asked Mullin, to which he replied “no.”
But Mullin added that Allen’s admission about being “spooked by a van” was the first time the prosecution had even heard about the van.
Many details of Allen’s confession match the crime scene, but it’s unclear if Allen was already privy to these details due to receiving the discovery paperwork from his lawyers around the time he made these confessions, Fox 59 reported.
Allen’s long-awaited trial comes more than seven years after the girls were killed and two years after his arrest.
Prosecutors say Allen is the man known as “Bridge guy” seen in footage captured on Libby’s cellphone. A grainy image of the man was one of the few pieces released to the public after the killings as police hunted for a suspect. The case became a favorite among the true crime community and it took years to arrest Allen.
A jury of five men and seven women will decide Allen’s fate. They have been sequestered since testimony began last month. As closing arguments are expected today, the case will soon be in the hands of the jury.