Verdict reached in Delphi murder trial for killings of 2 teenage girls

DELPHI, Ind — Jurors in the Delphi murders trial have found Richard Allen guilty of murder on Monday.

Deliberations stretched into a fourth day before jurors found Richard Allen guilty in the killings of 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German.

The former drugstore worker was convicted of two counts of murder and two additional counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit kidnapping. Allen, 52, could now face up to 130 years in prison, the AP reported.

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The seven women and five men began deliberations Thursday afternoon after hearing closing arguments in the weekslong murder trial.

The case has drawn outsized attention from true-crime enthusiasts, with repeated delays, a leak of evidence, the withdrawal of Allen’s public defenders and their reinstatement by the Indiana Supreme Court. It has also been the subject of a gag order.

Allen was arrested in October 2022. He became a suspect after a retired state government worker who had volunteered to help police with the investigation found paperwork in September 2022 showing that Allen had contacted authorities two days after German and Williams’ bodies were found.

That paperwork indicated that Allen had told an officer he had been on the hiking trail the afternoon the girls went missing, according to testimony.

For more than five years after the teens were killed, Allen still lived in Delphi while working at a local pharmacy.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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