Indiana man wants new trial in killing of teens with pagan ritual evidence introduced

A man serving 130 years in prison for killing two teen girls in Indiana is asking an appeals court to overturn his convictions, saying that he confessed while he was having a psychological crisis and was unfairly barred from arguing at trial that the girls were killed by unknown participants in a pagan ritual.

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Jurors convicted Richard Allen of murder in 2024 in the deaths of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14, known as Abby and Libby. The case in the tiny town of Delphi went unsolved for more than five years before Allen was arrested, becoming a magnet for true-crime enthusiasts.

Allen’s case goes before the Indiana Court of Appeals for an hour of arguments on Monday.

Prosecutors said some of Allen’s incriminating statements came before he showed signs of mental illness and continued after he improved. Even without his confessions, they said jurors had enough evidence to find Allen guilty.

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They said Allen admitted to being on the trail near where the girls were killed at the time one of them took a brief video of a suspicious man nearby saying, “Down the hill.” Prosecutors said that if the judge had allowed a defense expert to testify about a possible pagan ritual it would have turned the trial into a sideshow.

Unusual evidence found along with bodies of the teens

The girls’ bodies were found down a steep hill from an abandoned railroad trestle on a hiking trail just outside of Delphi on Feb. 13, 2017. The eighth graders were dropped off and never made it to their pickup point.

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