If there was ever any doubt, the double murder definitively proved there are monsters among us.
Two teen girls out for a hike outside the small Indiana hamlet they called home were viciously murdered in the middle of the day.
And then, for five years an aura of terror and little headway — or answers — in the brutal murders of Liberty “Libby” German, 14, and her best friend, Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13.
Now, the man the cops say is their killer is on trial.
Prosecutors said in their opening statements on Friday that Richard Allen, armed with a gun, came across the two teens. He used “power” and “fear” to force them “down the hill” before slitting their throats in February 2017.
Their bodies were discovered the following day after they had been reported missing.
Court heard that Libby was covered in blood and naked while Abby was clothed in her friend’s sweatshirt and jeans. The rest of their clothes had been dumped in a nearby creek.
As Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland outlined the case for jurors, at times he choked up while detailing the heartbreaking scene.
“The last face the girls saw was Allen’s,” he claimed.
But what the alleged killer didn’t know at the time was that courageous Libby captured photos of him on her cellphone and recorded his voice. The recording and the photos were released to the media but the case went cold fast — and stayed that way.
McLeland told the court that local resident Allen later told cops he was walking along the trial that terrible day. The prosecutor said Allen confessed to his wife that he murdered the girls and that witnesses would put him on the trail that day.
Allen, now 52, shook his head at the prosecutor’s arguments.
His lawyer, Andrew Baldwin, claimed his client was innocent and that cops had blown the investigation that was “messed up from the beginning.” Baldwin added that a strand of hair discovered on Abby’s fingers is not from Allen.
Instead, Baldwin suggested it should be tested to determine if it matches one of the teens’ relatives. Baldwin said there is evidence indicating the girls were abducted in a vehicle and their bodies later dumped.
“There is reasonable doubt in this case,” Baldwin said.
After opening remarks in which McLeland said the teens were more like sisters than friends, Libby’s older sister Kelsi Siebert said she drove the girls to the trail on Feb. 13, 2017. Libby’s father, Derrick German, was slated to pick them up.
He said he began calling his daughter around 3 p.m. but she did not pick up her phone. When he arrived, there was no sign of Libby and Abby.
Libby’s sister and her father agreed they were initially unconcerned.
“We thought they were out in the woods,” Siebert said. A search party was eventually established and one of the volunteers came across the horrific scene in the woods.
The nature of the investigation resulted in a wide-ranging gag order until Allen — a married pharmacy tech — could be tried. He was not arrested until five years after the murders.
“For five years, he lived in this community,” McLeland said. “He worked in this community. He hid in plain sight.”
Homicide detectives interviewed Allen not long after the murders but it took a lot longer for cops to zero in on him.
The prosecutor said the audio and video evidence from Libby’s phone is expected to be crucial.
The judge has already torpedoed one of Allen’s lawyers’ alternative theories. In the discarded narrative, it was claimed the girls were murdered in a ritualistic sacrifice by a coven linked to Norse pagan religion Odinism.
@HUnterTOSun