‘I thought they were mannequins’: Jury hears emotional testimony from searchers who found Delphi teens’ bodies
Richard Allen is on trial in Carroll County for the 2017 murders of Libby German and Abby Williams
The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday
Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US
Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US
An Indiana jury heard emotional testimony in court on Saturday from a man who found the bodies of two missing teenage girls alongside a creek seven years ago.
Pat Brown took the stand in the long-awaited trial of 52-year-old Richard Allen, who is charged with the 2017 murders of Libby German, 14, and Abby Williams, 13, a case now known as the “Delphi murders.”
The best friends disappeared on February 13, 2017, while walking near Monon High Bridge, an abandoned rail bridge, near the small community of Delphi, Indiana.
Brown, a friend of Libby’s grandfather who was out looking for the teens along Deer Creek, came across their bodies the next day and defeatedly called out to the other searchers, “We found ’em.”
“I thought they were mannequins,” he told the court, his voice cracking, according to local news outlet FOX59.
He trembled as he asked the court for a moment to gather himself before he continued.
“I turned around and I yelled we had found them,” he added.
The search for the girls was launched when they failed to show up at a planned pickup spot the prior afternoon and after several calls to Libby’s phone went unanswered.
For years, the case went unsolved. Until 2022, when Indiana State Police announced the arrest of Allen, who prosecutors claim to be “Bridge Guy,” the man believed to be the one who allegedly forced the girls to walk down the hill before killing them.
Before Libby was killed, she managed to capture grainy video on her phone of a man dressed in blue jeans, a blue jacket and cap walking along the abandoned railroad bridge. In the footage, the man who is believed to be the killer, can be heard telling the girls to “go down the hill.”
In court on Saturday, Jake Johns, another member of the search party, testified that he and a fellow searcher had seen shoe prints in the area, and that looking back toward the bridge, “you could see where the rocks and dirt had been disturbed, absolutely.”
Johns told the court that he spotted a flash of color, which turned out to be Libby’s tie-dyed shirt caught in the branches and brush along the creek, shortly before Brown called out that he had located their bodies.
The trial began on Friday with Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland claiming in opening statements that both girls’ throats had been slashed. Libby was found nude and covered in blood while Abby was found wearing some of Libby’s clothing, he said.
McLeland argued that Allen marched the girls down from the bridge with a gun and killed them.
A bullet that had not been fired was found by the girls’ bodies, leading investigators to believe that a gun may have also played a role in the crime.
Allen told investigators he was on the bridge trail the day the girls vanished but he has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His family home is less than a five-minute drive away from where the bodies of Libby and Abby were found.
His defense attorney, Andrew Baldwin, argued that there is substantial reasonable doubt in the case against his client.
The defense team has suggested the two teenagers died at the hands of a white nationalist pagan cult, adding the girls were killed as part of a “ritualistic sacrifice” by a group of Odinists.
They have claimed that “possible Odinism signatures” were left behind by the killers at the crime scene, with the victims’ bodies staged by trees with branches and sticks laid across their bodies in the shape of pagan symbols.
A request for the theory to be presented to the jury was denied by Special Judge Frances Gull, who said there was not sufficient evidence to bolster the claim.
Testimony will continue on Monday in Carroll County.