Arrest documents unsealed in 2017 killing of 2 Indiana teens

Documents related to a man’s arrest in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls have been unsealed by an Indiana judge

Missing Teens Indiana (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Documents related to a man’s arrest in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls were unsealed Tuesday by an Indiana judge, allowing for the first public disclosure of evidence authorities have against the suspect since he was arrested last month.

Court documents were sealed last month at the request of the local prosecutor, after Richard Matthew Allen, 50, of Delphi, Indiana, was arrested Oct. 28 and charged with two counts of murder in the killings of Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13.

State police have revealed incremental details since investigations began after the February 2017 killings. Calls from the public and the media for additional information were granted Tuesday by Allen County Judge Fran Gull’s order, which released a redacted version of the probable cause affidavit in Allen’s arrest.

Several news organizations, including The Associated Press, had filed a brief with the court Nov. 21 urging Gull to unseal the probable cause affidavit and charging information that would document what evidence authorities have linking Allen to the killings.

The deaths of the teens, known as Libby and Abby, were ruled homicides, but police have never disclosed how they died or described what evidence they gathered.

The killings have haunted the northwestern Indiana city of about 3,000 — where Allen lived and worked at a local CVS store.

Earlier Tuesday, Allen’s attorneys filed a motion to relocate the case out of Carroll County, arguing it will be difficult to form an impartial jury in the current location because of the county’s small size and intense public scrutiny surrounding the case.

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Arleigh Rodgers is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Arleigh Rodgers on Twitter at https://twitter.com/arleighrodgers