The man who was hunted for years in the 2017 killing of two girls on an Indiana hiking trail has been sentenced to 130 years in prison. Richard Allen, 52, was convicted in November of murdering 13-year-old Abigail Williams and 14-year-old Liberty German. Allen, who like his victims lived in the small town of Delphi, wasn't arrested until October 2022. The CVS employee, a husband and father, would later confess to family members and prison staffers to killing Abigail and "Libby," whose cellphone had captured an audio clip and grainy photos of the girls' killer.
During the trial, prosecutors told how the girls' throats were slit and their bodies dumped in the woods along the trail they'd taken to a historic bridge on Feb. 13, 2017. Allen's attorneys, who suggested the murders were committed by members of a Norse pagan religious group, argued their client's many confessions to family members and prison staff resulted from mental duress experienced while detained in isolation for months, per WCBD-TV. In a memo this week, defense attorneys said Allen "maintains his innocence and is hopeful that the appellate process will provide him with an opportunity to present a full defense at a second trial," per Fox News.
Allen faced between 45 years and 130 years in prison at Friday's sentencing. A judge gave him 130 years—65 for each murder, to run consecutively. "These families will deal with your carnage forever," the judge said, per NBC News. Apart from the confessions, prosecutors said they linked an unspent cartridge found with the girls' bodies to a firearm owned by Allen. They also said a black 2016 Ford Focus was seen near the scene and that Allen's vehicle of that description was the only one registered in Delphi's Carroll County. (More Richard Allen stories.)
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