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The 50-year-old married man arrested in connection with the 2017 Delphi murders has now been charged for more than five years in the double murder of teenage best friends Libby German and Abby Williams. Richard Matthew Allen, of Delphi, Indiana, was taken into custody Wednesday (Oct. 26) and booked into the Carroll County Jail. He has since been transferred to a state facility for his own safety. On Monday, Indiana State Police announced that Allen has been charged with two counts of murder and has pleaded not guilty. Officials said the affidavit is currently under seal and declined to provide additional details about the bombshell development in the high-profile case that has rocked the small, tight-knit community of Delphi and remained unsolved for more than half a decade. Local network FOX59 obtained a government-issued photo of Mr. Allen, which a government source confirmed shows the man behind bars. The photo resembles police sketches of the suspect released during the investigation – while the teen killer remained at large. Libby’s sister, Kelsi German, tweeted Friday before the arrest was made public that “today is the day” they’ve been waiting for. “Know how grateful I am for all of you. No comments at this time, any questions please see the Carroll County District Attorney’s Office. There is tentatively a press conference on Monday at 10 am. We’ll say more then. Today is the day,” he said. Before his sudden arrest, Mr. Allen’s name had never before been publicly linked to the murders. Here’s what we know about him:
Who is Richard Allen?
It is unclear what information led to Mr. Allen’s arrest now, more than five years after the 2017 murders. In August, Indiana State Police were spotted investigating the Wabash River in Peru — about 40 minutes east of Delphi — in connection with the case. At the time of the murders, Mr. Allen would have been 44 years old. The 50-year-old is a resident of the area of Delphi, where the teenagers lived with their families. Richard Allen, a 50-year-old married man from Delphi, is pictured in a government photo (Indiana State Police) According to online records, Mr. Allen has lived in Delphi since at least 2006 and in Indiana his entire adult life. He is married and works as a pharmacy technician, receiving his most recent pharmaceutical license in February 2018 – a year after the murders. A local resident told Fox59 that Mr. Allen currently works at the local CVS store – interacting with community members as part of his job. “When I would go to CVS as a customer myself, he would say ‘do you need help?’ I’d be like, ‘no,’” said Chandler Underhill, manager of the local Brick & Mortar pub, where he said Mr. Allen was a regular. “Just like a normal guy I’ve been seeing for the past couple of years, thinking nothing of it.” Mr Underhill said Mr Allen always seemed “normal” when he walked into the pub where he works. “I would talk. he wouldn’t say much. He seems like a normal guy,” she said. “One of my servers was telling me he wouldn’t talk much.” Police sketches released in 2019 (left) and 2017 (right) in search of the killer (Indiana State Police) Mr. Allen appears to have no prior criminal record. However, the Carroll County Jail record lists Mr. Allen under the alias Craigh Ross Rentfrow.
What happened to Libby and Abby?
Libby and Abby disappeared on February 13, 2017 after setting out for a hike along the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi, Indiana. Their bodies were discovered the next day in a wooded area about half a mile off the trail. For years, police have refused to say how the girls died and have released few details about the crime scene. However, shocking new details about the murders have come to light in a search warrant application obtained by The Murder Sheet podcast and shared with the Independent in May. The warrant, filed by an FBI agent investigating the murders in 2017 and partially redacted, was to search the home of local man Ronald Logan. Libby Germanos (left) and Abby Williams (right) are pictured together (Facebook) In it, the agent revealed that the girls had lost “a lot” of blood during their deaths and that their killer was believed to have moved and staged their bodies, before taking some sort of memento from the scene. For the first time, the warrant also revealed that the teenagers had been killed by some type of weapon. The word for the weapon was spelled out in the document. The killer would be covered in the blood of the victims in the aftermath of the murders due to the “large amount of blood lost from the victims at the crime scene,” it says. “Due to the nature of the victim’s injuries, it is almost certain that the perpetrator of the crime would have had blood on his face/clothing.”
Chilling footage of the suspect
On the day the girls went missing, Libby had posted photos on Snapchat of herself and Abby walking down the trail. The happy picture of the two best friends is believed to be their last photo before they died. In a move that pushed the investigation forward, Libby also recorded grainy video on her phone of a man dressed in blue jeans, a blue jacket and a hat walking along the abandoned railroad bridge. Investigators released a grainy image from the video and chilling audio of the man telling the two girls: “Get down the hill.” This grainy image was taken on Libby’s phone on the trail the day the girls went missing. Investigators believe the man is the killer (Indiana State Police) Investigators have long suspected this man is the girls’ killer and have praised the girls for documenting the video as evidence. So far, the man has never been identified. Police described the man as a white male between 16 and 40 years old, between 5’6″ and 5’10” tall and weighing between 180 and 200 pounds. Multiple police sketches were released featuring a man matching the description of the man in the footage.
Other names linked to the case
Mr Allen’s arrest marks the first time his name has been publicly linked to the unsolved murders. Over the years, authorities have rounded up several other men. A 27-year-old Indiana man came under fire last year when the online account he used to groom underage girls online was linked to the teenage victims. His home was searched on suspicion of child pornography charges just two weeks after the 2017 murders. In December 2021, Indiana State Police announced that officials had “uncovered” a fake online profile called anthony_shots. Kegan Anthony Kline is the man behind the fake account anthony_shots (Miami County Sheriff’s Office) The profile was used from 2016 to 2017 on platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram and used photos of a well-known male model, portraying him as extremely wealthy and the owner of several sports cars. Investigators said the person behind the account was Kegan Anthony Kline, a 27-year-old man with addresses in Kokomo and Peru, near Delphi. According to an affidavit, Kline posed as a model to groom underage girls and get them to send nude photos and their addresses and try to get them to meet him. The male model whose photos were used had nothing to do with the case. Klein was arrested on charges of child sexual abuse images and child exploitation linked to the account in 2020. He allegedly admitted to investigators that he groomed underage girls online. The affidavit said Indiana State Police and the FBI executed a search warrant on Feb. 25, 2017 — less than two weeks after Abby and Libby’s murders — at Klein’s home in Peru after locating profile user anthony_shots on property. Ron Logan lied to investigators about where he was the day Libby and Abby went missing (Carroll County Sheriff’s Office) Klein allegedly told investigators he would use social media accounts to talk to underage girls and had exchanged messages and received about 100 sexual photos and about 20 sexual videos from about 15 underage girls. However, he denied any knowledge or involvement in the deaths of the two teenagers. Kline was charged with 30 felonies in 2020 in the case. The documents, filed in 2020 and heavily redacted, do not mention the murders of Libby and Abby, and he was not charged with involvement in their deaths. Libby’s grandmother, Becky Patty, told the Independent in December that the teenager had never reported speaking to anyone online before her death and that there was never any indication that the two girls had arranged to meet anyone online. day they were killed. Investigators urged anyone who had contacted, met or attempted to meet the person impersonating anthony_shots to come forward with information. Before that, Ronald Logan was previously on the police radar, according to the 2017 search warrant application. Logan owned the land where Libby and Abby’s bodies were found, and his home was only 1,400 feet from the crime scene. The families of Libby German and Abby Williams are expected to be at the press conference on Monday (AP) The warrant application cites multiple allegations that he was violent toward women and that he possessed multiple weapons, including handguns and knives. Mr Logan also allegedly lied about his whereabouts at the time the teenagers disappeared, claiming he was out in the area with a friend on the evening of February 13 when mobile phone location data placed him in the area around path. The document also states that his voice was “not inconsistent” with the man captured on video by Libby. Logan was never charged and died in 2020, before the case was solved. It is currently unclear whether Mr Allen has any connection to…
