Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee: Shadow of the Bridge

The murders of Liberty German and Abigail Williams in Delphi, Indiana shook the country. But the impact of the attention, the speculation and the fear is still felt in the community. Now podcasters Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee have written a book about the case, but it feels different from other investigations.  

Their book does focus on the case, but also how the families were impacted because Cain and Greenlee worked closely with the girls’ families. They tell me the story from their book: Shadow of the Bridge: The Delphi Murders and the Dark Side of the American Heartland. 

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See more information on my books: katewinklerdawson.com 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I think they appreciated having that choice, in that sense
of control, because it wasn't like we were going to
just show up at their door and say, hey, talk
to us about the worst thing that ever happened to you.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,

(00:51):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. The murders of Liberty German
and Abigail Williams and Delphi, Indiana, shook the country, but

(01:12):
the impact of the attention, the speculation, and the fear
is still felt in the community now. Podcasters Anya Cain
and Kevin Greenley have written a book about the case,
but it feels different from other investigations. This book does
focus on the murders, but also how the families were
impacted because Cain and Greenley worked closely with the girls' families.

(01:34):
They tell me the story from their book Shadow of
the Bridge, the Delphi Murders, and the Dark Side of
the American Heartland. Let's talk about how you both became
involved with this and how to you know, people who
are crazy about true crime came together also.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Absolutely so we have probably one of the weirder meet cutes,
if you want to even call it that, of all time.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
I got really interested in a particular quadruple homicide that
happened near Indianapolis, Indiana, actually happened in Speedway, Indiana, back
in nineteen seventy eight. And one of the ways I
researched this was I used a website called newspapers dot com,
which allows you to look at a variety of old

(02:21):
newspaper articles and clip the ones that interest you. And
when you clip an article, it is public people can
see who's clipping what. And so one afternoon I happened
to be talking with a detective who was working on
the case, and he said, you know, Kevin it might
be interesting to see who's clipping a lot of articles
about this case, because they might have guilty knowledge, they

(02:44):
might have some secrets, maybe they're the killer themselves. And
so I looked and a suspiciously high number of articles
were being clipped from A. T. Kane and I did
some research and found that it was a reporter in
New York.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
This It was me, boy, I didn't even know that.
That's so interesting. What a good tip from your detective.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
That's great, right, And of course I didn't have anything
to do with the murders because I wasn't born in
nineteen seventy eight, but it was it was funny.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
I got this random email from this guy.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
At the time, I was a journalist at Business Insider
in New York City and I've always been obsessed with crime.
So I pitched them I'm going to do a crime
feature story, and for some reason they were like sure.
I still don't know why they said yes, but I
was looking into it and met Kevin.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
Kevin was kind enough to put me in contact with.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Some of the people in the case, and then afterwards
we just kept talking and sort of realized that we were,
you know, not just interested in the case, we're interested
in each other.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
So that's how we met.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
When I told all my girlfriends, they were just like, uh,
that sounds about right for you, So no one was
too concerned.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
That is adorable. I like that. That was this the
Burger chef murders. Is that what you guys are looking at?
Oh my goodness, boy, I mentioned this before. I assume
you guys saw the was on Paramount, the documentary that
they did.

Speaker 4 (04:01):
Yeah, there was two.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
There was we were on one for investigation discovery, and
then there was a longer one. I think it ended
up coming out on Amazon that kind of got into
some of the different angles.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, there was one. I thought it was so creative
where they had you know, actors replaying it, but they
would actually talk to the camera and say, essentially, we
know we're about to get killed, and this is what
we're thinking, and this is the way it could have gone.
And I found it. It could have gone horribly wrong,
but I actually really liked that way. But it is
a story that a lot of people know about. And
that's so a quadruple murder in Indiana at a burger

(04:33):
joint that is unsolved, right, is what brought you two together.
That is interesting.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
We both have that obsession with true crime and that
kind of went into founding a podcast. And I'm a journalist,
Kevin's an attorney, so we try to bring the different
angles and the different ethos from our perspective professions to
that role.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Kevin, what kind of law is it?

Speaker 3 (04:53):
I actually focused on intellectual property law like copyrights and trademarks,
so not really about criminal law at all. I just
have and to always have an interest in true crime,
and I got interested in this one particular case, the
Burger chef case, and led me to Anya.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
Yeah. I was a retail reporter, so it's like we
don't you know.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
We were coming with the backgrounds where we might have
some training in that, but we're also don't pretend to
be experts. We interview a lot of people who are
the criminal defense attorneys or prosecutors or detectives or crime
beat journalists who might be more immersed and it's it's
been really fun.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Whether you were retail or you know, intellectual copyright, whatever
it is, you know the basics of law and of
course the tenets of journalism, and so you're a step
ahead of other folks who dig into particularly the Delphi.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
Case, I would say, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
So this started, this story started as the podcast as
Murder Sheet. Was it exclusively Delfi that you guys were
digging into or were there other cases before.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
We've always had a very scattershot hodge podge approach to
coverage because we just go with what we're interested in.
So you've actually never been exclusively Delfi. We've always done
other things, and that's probably the detriment. I think sometimes
people want to say, okay, like we know what we're
getting when we go to the show. But for us,
I think we just if there was news, we would

(06:12):
try to cover it. If there was a legal filing,
we would try to analyze it. There'd be some times
where nothing was going on and we would just you know,
kind of do other things.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
So where did the book come from? Did you just
latch onto this case and feel like, you know, you've
talked to some folks who are really interesting and it
deserved a book. Of course? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Part of it was that, and also part of it
is what got us interested in true crime originally, was
true crime books. It's just a terrific way to tell
a story and really be able to go into death
and the Delphi case in particular. It's a complicated case,
and also bits and pieces about evidence have been released

(06:53):
over the year. It's not necessarily in chronological order, so
it can be confusing. And if someone would come to
me and say I just want a basic explainer on
the case, you'd have to say, well, you have to
go listen to these one hundred podcasts, and that's not
really a good way for people to learn about a case.
So we thought a book would be a good way

(07:13):
to do that.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
And I think you know, you're trying to do quality
content control on what you're recommending to people, and it's
really hard when when pretty much anyone can get a
podcast going and talk about some of these really big,
serious cases. So let's go ahead. Since we're talking about
your book, let's go ahead and frame the story. I
know most of our listeners understand Delphi what happened there,

(07:36):
but can you all give me a reintroduction to Libby
and Abbey and what this area of Indiana is like?

Speaker 2 (07:44):
What you're absolutely so. Liby and Abby are two best friends.
It's Liberty or Libby German and Abigail or Abby Williams,
and they're in eighth grade together at Delphi Middle School,
and they're growing up in this town or rather it's
really a but I mean it's very small. It's this
county seat of Carroll County, Indiana, which is very rural,

(08:07):
very agrarian, and you know, somewhat somewhat kind of tiny,
close knit, you know, that kind of stereotypical small American
midwestern town. And these two girls are, as I mentioned,
very close. Abby is more shy, she's a little bit
slower to open up around new people, but once she does,

(08:28):
she's just a really caring, sweet kid who always just
wants to help people. And Libby's the outgoing one. She
will sass you if she does not like what you're saying.
She will stand up for her friends and she will
speak her mind. But very sweet kid as well. Both
of them are very close to their families. And they
had a sleepover that was basically where they were just

(08:49):
kind of hanging out watching scary movies, being on social media,
and the next day they had off because there was
basically too many snow days that year. There's a quirk
of the calendar, quirk of the school calendar that year
that made it so that they were going to have
that Monday off and that was February thirteenth, twenty seventeen.

Speaker 4 (09:08):
So they went on a walk on.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
These beautiful rails to Trails system in Delphi, which is
still there and still very gorgeous, kind of through the forest.
And they did not tell any adults this, but they
had a plan to go on this moan On high
bridge and to set the scene for your listeners, it's
this massive old railway bridge that spans Deer Creek over

(09:32):
these ravines. It's terrifying and it's been abandoned for years,
but the kids of Delphi sometimes will cross it almost
as kind of a ride of passage, kind of like, oh,
we're going to take selfies on the bridge.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
So they were doing that.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Unfortunately, they disappeared that day and did not return, and
that sort of set off a panicked search for them.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
I have an odd question about that bridge. I haven't
ever asked anybody. Is this a bridge that if you
fell off of it would mean certain death? Or I mean,
has anything ever happened with people crossing the bridge.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
I'm not aware of anything happening with people crossing the bridge.
I believe that in my opinion, it's like sixty feet up,
So I think you'd very likely die or be seriously injured.
I don't quite know what's survivable and what's not. But
I'm telling you we've never gone on it because I
told Kevin i'd be like, we would be the people

(10:24):
to be the first people to fall off this thing.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Okay, So they disappear, and then I think, you know,
most people know they've recovered a cell phone, so kind
of pick up there, what the big clue is?

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yes, So there's searches, and it's becoming increasingly clear as
people are looking that things don't make sense because everyone
anticipated in a town like this, in a situation like this,
that the girls maybe injured themselves and were stuck somewhere.
They're not looking for bodies, they're looking to recover to
live possibly injured children. But they find their bodies instead,

(10:58):
and it's very apparent that it's a crime scene. And
at that crime scene, underneath one of the bodies, they
recover Libby's phone, and on that phone, detectives are surprised
to see that Libby managed to surreptitiously record an interaction
between her and Abby and a mysterious male figure approaching
them on the Moan on Highbridge, and she actually captured

(11:20):
not only this sort of blurry image of the man,
can't really make out his face, but you can see
exactly what he's wearing and also his voice, and he
says to them, guys down the hill.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Wow, what happens once they have this image? What are
the techniques that the investigators have to use? They bring
in the FBI.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Actually, yeah, they do bring in the FBI, and that
was immediate. That's what's interesting. Immediately, because this happened in
such a small community, and because people were so horrified,
and because initially it started as assertion and rescue thing.
You have police officers from other counties, from other cities,
from other jurisdictions immediately pouring into Delphi, and you have

(12:00):
federal agents from the US Marshall Service, you have the
FBI agents, you have Indiana State Police play a huge role,
and you have Carol County investigators. And this is a
situation where that all sounds good to share those resources.
But for the first couple of days, it was just
managerial chaos. It was just no one knows who to
report to. People are just going off and doing what
they think is the most promising thing. But that's not

(12:21):
really good from a management perspective. So it's always one
of those things I think of as the road to
hell is paved with good intentions, And unfortunately that was
the case for the first couple of days. By the
time they sorted it out, unfortunately it was too late.
But they put in all of this. They scour the
crime scene for any possible forensic evidence. They look into

(12:41):
possible sex offenders in the area, They look into possible
people who you know, you know, they look into the
family members. Was there anything there that would cause something
like this to happen. They keep on coming up empty
because unfortunately, you know, people might have a hard time
believing this, but you know, CSI effect is real. We
often think, oh, we're all just leaving DNA everywhere constantly,

(13:02):
But when you're at a very bloody, horrible crime scene,
it can be harder to collect a fender DNA than
you think.

Speaker 4 (13:08):
And they didn't get any here.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
And outside too, I mean it's an outdoor crime scene.
People are tramping around everywhere. You know, we don't know
how well they've cordoned off everything. I'm sure that made
it incredibly difficult. Tell me, did they search through the
night when the girls went missing, or I'm just wondering
how long they were there unattended, you know, by investigators
before they were discovered.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
Yeah, this is an area of controversy.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
So they did search through the night, but they called
off the official search in the middle of the night,
mostly due to liability reasons. Of these are sharp ravines.
People can get hurt if you have civilians wandering around.
But we know for a fact that people did stay
out there all night looking for them, and the area
where they were found, they had not.

Speaker 4 (13:51):
Really gotten to that yet because it was a bit
of a ways away.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
I mean, it was it was nearby, but it wasn't
It wasn't necessarily where anyone thought they would be found.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
You know. It's interesting when I talked to Paul Holes
about outdoor cases and how it's easy to lose people,
we talked about a case I think from like maybe
the nineteen twenties where people were searching around all night
in a forest really lots of vegetation, and where they
were searching, there was a body discovered the next morning
in the daylight, but it was within twenty feet and

(14:25):
they couldn't find it. So I understand I know that
there is controversy around that, but looking at that area point,
it just seems so dangerous and easy to fall and
hurt yourself.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Absolutely. Plus, they're looking for two kids that they're calling
their names. They're not thinking we're looking for bodies that
cannot respond. They're thinking Abby and Libby. One of them
got hurt, twisted in an ankle. They're freaked out, they're scared,
they're huddled somewhere. It's cold out, Let's find them. I
think they were just in that mindset of not really
expecting to find dead bodies.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
So let's go back to something you mentioned before, because
I know that comes into play with the criminal proceedings.
They didn't recover any offender DNA on rape kits or
anything else that they did.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
Yeah, that's the case. Although initially there was a moment
when they thought they did have some DNA, and so
that may explain some of the comments you may recall
investigators making at the time. It turned out that that
DNA was actually linked to a technician, so it was
just a case of contamination and it was a really

(15:27):
frustrating day for the investigators when they realized that this
big piece of evidence they thought they had really was nothing.
In fact, the most important piece of evidence was the
video on that phone and the fact that between the
bodies of the girls they found a gun cartridge. They
had not been fired, but it had been cycled through

(15:49):
a gun. And actually on the video, if you listen,
there is a sound of a gun being racked, So
investigators knew that the man who kidnapped them had a gun.
And then they find this bullet at the crime scene,
and so their hypothesis, relatively early on is that this
bullet belongs to the gun that was used in the kidnapping.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
And no DNA on the bullet, obviously.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
No, nothing like that.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Unfortunately, now some people have pointed out there was small
traces of male DNA from the girls, from like the
swabs and whatnot. But what the experts testified to was
this is the amount that you expect from just being
around a male. It's not something that indicates sexual assault
or anything like that. It's just maybe you live in

(16:36):
a household with a male, or maybe you're interacting with
a male. It's not anything that was a red flag,
and it certainly wasn't enough to get a profile.

Speaker 5 (16:44):
So are they saying there was no sexual assault with
either of these girls. Yes, that's right, there was no
sexual assault. There was no sexual trauma, or I should
say this, there was no evidence of sexual trauma to
their bodies. Now, to me, it's clearly a sexually motivated crime.
This is someone to adolescence to strip. Both girls were
naked at some point, because Abby is found wearing Libby's

(17:06):
clothes and Libby is found naked, So there's that indication.
But we all know researching true crime, you don't necessarily
need to have a rape or sexual assault for something
to be sexually motivated.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, absolutely, And you don't have to see trauma on
a body for there not to have been some sort
of assault on the body too. Okay, is that controversial?
Are there a lot of people who don't believe that
that that they absolutely had to have been sexually assaulted
or has that been laid dress?

Speaker 4 (17:33):
Do you think I think that's been laid to dress?

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Just by the evidence, I think a lot of people
have a hard time believing though. They think, well, I mean,
they were naked, so why didn't anything happen? And what
you have to kind of educate people about is like,
here are these other cases where that happened, or you know,
where the actual murder itself was the sexual gratification versus
anything where I think people have you know, everyone who's
not a murderer kind of sometimes has a hard time

(17:57):
getting in the head of why someone would do this,
and it's it's just that's why you rely on the
profilers and the people who are kind of researching this
forensic psychologist to kind of fill that in.

Speaker 4 (18:06):
But it can be difficult for people to understand.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Okay, so let's move on to the investigation. So they're
left with these two young girls' bodies and the cell
phone footage and the cartridge. Where do you go from there?
You know, when you don't have DNA evidence, you don't
have CCTVs, you know what happens.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yes, they were very much calling upon the public to
try to fill in some of this, and I think
what they were hoping was that someone would see the
image of this guy on the bridge and hear his
voice and say, I think I work with that guy,
or I think that's my husband, or something to that effect.
So they were really putting that out there and trying
to call to the public to help them out.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
And you know, they got a lot of tips. People
wanted to help.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
People wanted to say, Okay, I work with this really
creepy guy, and I think he might be good for this.
But the problem, and this is something that happens in
high profile cases, there are a lot of creepy had
people out there, and not all of them are murderers,
and so they were inundated with tips, some of them
helpful and good, and then some that were more nuts,

(19:12):
like hey, you should talk to the Sasquatches under the bridge.
They might be able to help you. You know, It's
like okay, no.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
But they did get some really useful information during this
process because they talked to everybody they could who was
out on the trails. So they were able basically to
map out everybody who was out there except for bridge guy.
And in fact, they talked to more than one witness
who said, oh, yes, I saw a man dressed as

(19:41):
Bridge guy was dressed like around this time at this spot,
so they could even map his movements and all of
this became very important later.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
I'll say this, this is chilling.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
So a group of girls was like Abby and Libby
on a walk that day on the trails and they
passed by bridge guy and one of them, you know,
just being a friendly young lady says you know, hi,
or something to that effect to him, and he just
gives her this death glare and it really stood out
to her as just being kind of like, that's a
weird interaction. And then of course when Abby and Libby

(20:14):
turned up dead, it took on a new meaning. So
all these witnesses, I should say they as witnesses, do
they describe different traits and whatnot. One person thought he
had poofy hair, another person thought he had a pat
or one person who was older thought he looked a
lot younger, and the kids that saw him thought he
looked older. So it's like they're they're describing subtly different things.

(20:35):
But ultimately they all said, no, it's the guy on
Libby's phone.

Speaker 4 (20:38):
I saw that guy.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
So we have this map of bridge guy making his
way to the bridge.

Speaker 4 (20:44):
We just don't know who that is.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
So is the assumption from either profilos or investigators, whoever's
called in. It is the assumption that this must be
a local person number one to know it would be
relatively safe to get off and on this bridge. Number
two to know where to have taken these two kids
when clearly it's daylight and people are hiking around everywhere.
Did this have to be somebody who was at least

(21:07):
a frequent visitor to Delphi.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yes, they felt it was someone who is either currently
local or had grown up there and knew about it, because, honestly,
this bridge and this area not everyone in Delphi goes
out there, So you might meet someone in Delphi where
they're not, like, actually super familiar with it and it's
not something that's part of their family traditions or where
they go out to hang out. So the feeling was,

(21:31):
this is not some random trucker who just has no
idea about this area and just happened to get out
in that bridge. This is a guy who's comfortable doing
something like this because he's familiar with the area, he
knows where to go, he has a sense of where
to look out for different things, and he just couldn't
stumble upon this.

Speaker 4 (21:47):
So they felt there was some level of locality to this.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Is this a state park or federal parker? What is
it exactly?

Speaker 4 (21:53):
I think it's more on the local side of things.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Sort of an old rail system that's been converted to
a trail system, so.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
There's no security cameras or anything in the parking lots
right where you can examine vehicles.

Speaker 4 (22:04):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
So the one thing they did have, though, was the
Hoosir Harvest Store, which is like this farm store not
too far away. They had a camera rolling, so they
had distant footage of passing cars that became important later.
But it's not close enough to see license plates, so
they're not able to say, Okay, this is the car involved,
and this is the license plate.

Speaker 4 (22:26):
Let's track them down.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
And you know, you can't necessarily just say okay, let's
go after all the blue Ford SUVs or whatever. You
have to feel a bit more specific. They didn't have that,
but they are able to use it to perhaps rule
out things.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
I forgot to ask you, guys, so for the book,
did you went out there and I know you didn't
want to get on the bridge. I don't blame you.
How many people did you end up interviewing for this book?

Speaker 4 (22:48):
That is a good question. It was.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
It was a lot. I would say dozens, if probably
over one hundred.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
I'd say well over one hundred. We talked to all
of the investigators, we talked to towns people, we talked
to some family members.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Yeah, we talked to just people in the community who
live through this. We talked to, you know, just as
many people who would be willing to talk to us
as possible.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
It was. It was a tremendous thing because we wanted to.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Get all the different sides because it's so complicated.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
So shifting from the investigation for a moment to the community,
I have to imagine this is a lock all your doors,
don't let your kids out situation for quite a while, right,
I mean, is that the reaction you get from this community.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, I always even when we go up to Delphi,
you know, we go up there. It's a beautiful town
and we've you know, kind of grown to love it
and love the people there, but there's almost a palpable
sense of the trauma of this, and you can see
that in the interactions with people. They're friendly, they're nice,
it's not like they're unwelcoming, but there is a sense

(23:51):
of like this town's been under siege for so long
from a killer, you know, like is my child next?

Speaker 4 (23:58):
Or am I next? For the kids in town?

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Or from just some of the kind of bizarre social
media things that unfolded later on. But I would say
that it's a town that's been very adversely affected by this,
and it frightened people, It angered people. It was something
where people knew the girls, people knew the families directly,
so people took it really personally. It wasn't a situation

(24:21):
where it was just, you know, kind of they're removed
from everybody else. It was really an attack on the
whole community.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
How do you two, as authors with a major publishing company,
you know, go out there and when they have just
been drowning in media, I know, how do you go
there and say, listen, we're different, we're podcasters, We've covered
this story, this is serious. We both have professional backgrounds.
Is that enough to get people to talk? How did
you get the families to talk?

Speaker 3 (24:51):
I think a lot of it was the fact that
we did have the podcast, and we did cover the
case extensively, literally for years, and so by the time
it came time to work on the book, people had
already been able to see and evaluate our work, and
they could see that we tried to be fair, we

(25:12):
tried to be objective, we tried to respect everyone.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
And as for the families, I think it was them
seeing what we were doing and I think we also
went to them. And this was very important to us
because everyone grieves differently, everyone has different needs, and certain
family members of crime victims they're going to want to
go out and talk to everyone and do everything, and
that's wonderful and that advocacy is wonderful. It's also okay

(25:37):
for somebody to say this is private for me, and
I do not want to share anything. So what we
did was we went to people and we just said
we're here if you want to talk to us in
any capacity. We're not going to chase after you. We're
not going to run you down and push you. We're
going to let you kind of be in control here.
And I think some people were very responsive in the
way they like, let's talk about everything, and then other

(25:58):
people were saying, we'll talk about certain things and then
kind of back off, and others didn't want to participate,
and that was okay, and I think they appreciated having
that choice, in that sense of control, because it wasn't
like we were going to just show up at their
door and say, hey, talk to us about the worst
thing that ever happened to you.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
And a lot of people do you know that people
show up and are relentless. Did this start in twenty
seventeen for you guys, or did you come in a
little bit later.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
We came in pretty late, so we didn't even know
each other. In twenty seventeen. We were pandemic romance, I
guess you could say, in a pandemic podcast.

Speaker 4 (26:32):
So we came into this.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
In twenty twenty one and our goal was, let's apply
some journalistic principles to this and start to talk to people,
because there's a bit of a lull in what's coming
out about it, and we'd like to amend that and
see what the progress is because this has been going
on for years and it's still unsolved and that seems
hard to believe when we have the guy on camera.
And we were I think, kind of naive about how

(26:55):
true crime is in some ways because we were like,
we'll be doing some reporting and people will be interested
in the information, and it's some of the online stuff
is a lot more complicated than that. But we over
time built up trust I think, in the community and
in people around the case, and that was.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
That was gratifying.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
If you think about a big case like a Jack
the Ripper or a Black Dolly or some of these
massive cases that don't involve children. Now you've got this
mystery video that can be released, and the murders of
two little girls in the Midwest. I can see how
this would create all kinds of conspiracy theories. So is
there a vacuum that has to be filled? What do

(27:31):
you think the kind of the markers are here for
the next kind of big thing that happens.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
So the investigators would argue it never went cold because
they were all working it really extensively for years. And
these this core group of investigators that sort of formed
out of the initial kind of all these people coming in.
There were a couple that kind of remained on or
joined later. They were working it really hard and running
down all these leads and continuing to like, what have

(27:57):
we not done, what can we do? What can we
look at again? But as far as big developments, a
couple of suspects came up, and they would be looked at,
and then either nothing corroborated or no charges would be filed.

Speaker 4 (28:10):
But it really broke open in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
That's when it's sort of all you know, the arrest happened,
and and all the things that happened around that.

Speaker 4 (28:17):
That's when it broke open.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
But I think it went in the sense of going cold,
in a sense of like, you know, it's just nothing
is publicly happening. I would say probably like twenty eighteen,
within a year like the you know, because the thing
is journalists have to get sources and they have to
get things verified and corroborated, whereas I can go on
a social media site and just say, hey, I think

(28:40):
this guy did it, and you know, I don't have
it like for people who don't really have any sort
of ethical foundations of what they're doing and they don't
really have any interest in being fair. You know, those
people are not constrained, and the problem is that the
general public sometimes then turns to those social media sites
where stuff like that is happening because they're not getting
it from the mainstream media. They're just you know, they're saying, well,

(29:02):
maybe this is true, and it's it's understandable because everyone
wants to know what's happening. But I just think this
is a case that should make everyone really pause about
what we're clicking and giving our attention to, because they
can get pretty toxic pretty fast.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
So they're feverioushly working the cases of the FBI. Who's
leading this or is it still is it local police
between twenty seventeen and what happens in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
Yeah, so actually there is a falling out with the FBI.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
So this is actually something you do see a lot
of investigators that we talked to, they have a FBI
agent or two that they absolutely love and are just
you know, obsessed with, but then they have issues with
the overall FBI just in terms of case management.

Speaker 4 (29:42):
And that was something that occurred here.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
There were situations where even the prosecutor had trouble getting
files from the FBI, and it was perceived as a
situation like these are siloed, and ultimately there was a
incident where you know, the FBI was pointing the finger
at state police for messing something up, and state police said,
you know, we're going to back up our guy on
this and this case doesn't have a federal nexus. And

(30:07):
it seems like we'd love to continue to work with
some of these FBI agents who know the case, but
most of the ones that started out with the case
have been transferred or they've retired, and we sort of
need to kind of consolidate. So ultimately the FBI sort
of departed, and you know, there was it's been a
complicated thing here in Indianapolis, the FBI, you know, office here.

(30:30):
There's been some controversies with the doctor Nasser case and whatnot,
So I think it was just things brewing. But interestingly enough,
one of the FBI agents who worked the case, he retired,
he came back, he got like deputized by Carol County
so he could stay on the case. So there was
there was still the contact with the FBI, some drama

(30:51):
between them and the state police. State police were working
it very hard. They had a lot of resources and
people put into this. And then the thing is it
always remained to Carroll County case. It was never something
where the state police took over. It was always something
where they were working at hand in hand with the
Carroll County folks. And it was interesting because the day
of the murders, this was recounted to us a conversation

(31:13):
between two of the detectives in Carroll County, one of
them Tony Leggottho's a major figure in the book. He
was talking to Jerry Holman, who was one of the
main State Police investigators, and you know, he was like,
maybe state police should take it, and then somebody else
was like, well, why don't you call the sheriff. So
Holman calls to Bleslibie, who's the sheriff at the time,
and Lesnibie was like, well, are you guys going to

(31:34):
leave us? And Holman was like, no, we'll never leave
you on this, and he's like, okay, we'll take the case.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
Then, so Carroll County retained it, and that was.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Criticized because people felt like, oh, well, they're so small
and they don't know how the resources.

Speaker 4 (31:47):
But the thing was, I mean they were definitely not
alone at us.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Marshalls worked this really hard to I mean there was
there was like a kind of a task force like
atmosphere where it's like multiple people working it.

Speaker 4 (31:59):
It's just technically still Carol County.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah. Interesting, And you know sometimes those local sheriffs or
you know, the small police departments, they'll get the best
tips because they're local and they know people, and people
don't want to talk to the state police or the
FBI sometimes. So this sounds like, I know there were
some squabbles, but this sounds like a pretty good task
force that was put together and they're working towards stuff
twenty twenty two. What changes when you've got nine million

(32:23):
tips coming in and I'm sure all kinds of conspiracy theories.
How do we go from no suspect or suspects that
you know are then crossed off to Richard Allen?

Speaker 3 (32:34):
Well, a lot of it goes down to Delphi really
is a special place. A lot of people were volunteering
and doing what they could to help the investigators out.
And one of the people who volunteered their time the
most was a local named Kathy Shanks who had a
lot of experience with child protective services in the community,
and so she would spend hours each day helping the

(32:57):
investigators sort out leads things like that. And so one
day she's in the office and she's going through some
old leads and she sees one buried in this box
that she hadn't noticed before. And it's a lead where
a person says, basically, it says I was dressed as
Bridge Guy. I was out on the trails that day

(33:20):
and I saw the witnesses who later said they saw
Bridge Guy. So this was essentially tantamount to this is
Bridge Guy. It's an identification of Bridge guy and so
because of that, that was very significant and she brings
it to the attention of the detective Tony Liggett, and
she says, I'm not aware of anything happening to this.

(33:43):
I think this may have gotten lost.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yeah, I just want to tell you about Kathy Shank
because this woman is incredible and I just I don't
know if this has ever been super conveyed in a
lot of the news coverage. She's tiny, She's this tiny person.
She's so formidable though, because what people don't really she
was like the sole child protective services agent in Carol
County for decades. Her whole career was protecting kids and

(34:11):
doing everything she can and getting up in the middle
of the night to go deal with a situation to
protect children. So she was very used to wrangling police
officers to wrangling paperwork, like she gets stuff done, and
the police trusted her that we were talking and like
there was one thing that came out she was almost
like someone where the police, you know, in the beginning,

(34:32):
they were like, oh, like back in the eighties and stuff,
there might be like okay, she's like this like little woman,
like whatever, But then they began to realize if she
says something's going down and this needs investigating, it needs investigating,
and we'd better listen to her because she knows what
she's talking about. But they also kind of feared her
because she'd come in and they would realize, we're gonna
have to do a lot of paperwork about this situation.

(34:54):
She's an expert in paperwork, she's an expert in sorting
things like she was the person who was gonna uncover this.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
She found this lead where a person, Richard Allen, says,
I was there, I was dressed in Bridge Guy's clothes.
I saw the same witnesses who saw Bridge Guy. So
they realized this quite likely is Bridge Guy, and they
go and they do an interview with him and they talk.

(35:19):
They're able to establish in that interview he also has
a gun, and so they search his home. They recover
the gun and it is tested and it has shown
that the cartridge that was found at the crime scene
had been cycled through his weapon, and so that physically
ties him to being present that.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Day online or just sort of within the town. There
must have been a lot of criticism of the police
for missing this piece of paper that has this statement
on it, and I would imagine that there were literally
hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper in this case.
And I don't know if people understand these case files
are just unreal sometimes, and so I'm never really surprised

(36:04):
when the person who turns out to be the offender
is found within a case file of the thousands of witnesses.
This does seem unusual, though, but this also sounds like
someone Poul Hols would describe as a looney tune inserting
himself into an investigation. This does not sound like an
actual suspect. So he volunteered this information? Is that right?

(36:25):
Did he go to somebody?

Speaker 2 (36:26):
So what came out was that his wife, after he
told her that he had been on the trails that day,
encouraged him go forward. They're looking for people who were
out there, just give them your information, and he did so,
so he called in And this is around the same
time they're starting to release images of the bridge guy.

(36:47):
It's in the first couple of days when the managerial
chaos is at its complete height. And absolutely people were
very upset when they found out that this guy's been
in here the whole time and it was just sitting
in a box, and that's understandable.

Speaker 4 (37:01):
I mean, I think this is.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
A case study in the importance of immediately establishing some
kind of system where somehow you're going to prohibit tips
from getting lost like this, because I think it was
a managerial failure and it was a clerical failure, and
that should be looked at. But you know, I do
think at the same time, people who became the core investigators,

(37:26):
I don't think there's a collective guilt over it in
terms of what they were doing, because it's just it's
one of those things like if this had happened to
one of the stupid tips about sasquatches, like who cares,
But it just happened to be the one tip that pattered.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Well, and you know, we go back to the slew
thing that happens out there. And actually, you know, before
we even get to that kind of thing, this is
more people calling in and inserting themselves, either you know,
purposely just because they want to screw with investigators, or
they legitimately think they can help. But sipping through all
of that stuff is a nightmare, and you have to

(37:59):
do it because if you don't like just what happened here,
you'll miss a piece of information. So Richard Allen, he
was basically calling in because when they release the images,
he thought somebody was going to point at him and
he wanted to preemptively say WHOA, Well it wasn't me,
and I'm just I'm the one who's coming to you guys,
which would be smart. I guess.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah, that's my feeling. He's a guy that we found
out had pretty extreme anxiety issues, and you know, I
do too, and I could understand someone being sort of like, Okay,
I need to get ahead of this. I need to
start explaining this. Also, my wife is pushing me to
do it, so I need to kind of start establishing
some plausible deniability. But as you'll find over the course

(38:42):
of this story, he's increasingly doing things that ultimately hurt
him that you know, this is kind of the first
step in that direction.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
So twenty twenty two, Kathy Shank finds this statement from
Richard Allen that had been taken over the phone, and
what happens next. Obviously they go straight to his house
and question him.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah, and I will say it was taken over the phone,
but then they also went out and interviewed him in
a parking lot. So it wasn't in person thing, so
police go out. They send two investigators out to Allan's
house to interview him, and it starts very friendly and
it ends up being much more confrontational and he storms

(39:21):
out of the interview. So that's their initial contact. But
they get a search warrant from this discussion and they
end up taking his car. They take a bunch of
his clothing. They find this gun in his house. They
find a lot of box cutters and knives, and they
find this was something that really kind of chilled them

(39:41):
when they were looking through this. They find all these
pictures of him hanging out around Deer Creek, around the bridge,
and it turns out that he's a frequent visitor to
those trails with his family. So they're looking at all
that and then ultimately they get him in for a
second interview and he he is really I would say

(40:02):
it's almost like he's resigned to his fate at that point,
because he's he's not. They're giving him all these outs.
They're like, could you have loaned your gun to someone
who maybe like no, He like empties his pockets before
going into this interview, almost as if he knows okay.

Speaker 4 (40:18):
I'm going to jail.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, do they get a confession out
of him or what?

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Well, not yet, so two investigators. He's adamant, I had
nothing to do with this. He makes it clear that
he cares deeply what other people think about him and
he wouldn't do something like this. And he has a
bizarre interaction with his wife in the second interview where
she comes in and the investigator is sort of like,
you know, tell him to do the right thing, and
she's she's very like stand offish with him, like she

(40:47):
seems like I don't know this man.

Speaker 4 (40:49):
And it's so bizarre.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
And I told Kevin at the time, I'm like, if
you if we were in this situation and you did
this with me, I would know it was over. Because
he hits her up with I know, you know, oh,
I know you didn't do this. It's like he's telling
her what to think and instead of giving any explanations,
and she's saying things like, well, you didn't tell me
you were on the bridge that day.

Speaker 4 (41:11):
He's like, of course I did, sweetie.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
It's like a very manipulative, weird interaction, but he's adamant
he didn't do it.

Speaker 4 (41:19):
At that point. Now that all changed later on.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Okay, and the only thing linking right now him is
he seems to match in the video. But there's also
the gun. But there's no DNA, right, no DNA.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
So this is something that we learned because you think, okay,
a knife stabbing, the guy cuts himself, there's got to
be something. And what we learned is that this is gruesome.
But Libby's blood was all over the scene. It was everywhere,
And what we learned from experts was that blood drowns
out touch DNA. So if there's no semen present, if

(41:56):
there's no rape where semen is left behind, that blood
is going to potentially drown out the little skin cells
that he's possibly leaving behind when he's touching them.

Speaker 4 (42:05):
So no offender DNA is found in general.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Obviously someone killed them, but there's no male offender DNA
that's left.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Behind it the scene.

Speaker 3 (42:13):
And I think the witness testimony from the girls and
the others who saw this person dressed is Bridge guy
walking along the trails, and you have him saying, yes,
I was dressed as Bridge guy and I saw these people.
I think that's also very very crucial because once you
accept that testimony, then either he is bridge guy or

(42:37):
there was someone else on the trails dressed exactly as
he was, who was there at the same time, who
at some point after those girls saw him, like they
tapped him on the shoulder and they switched places, and
there was no indication of anything like that happened.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah, he would say things like I was on the bridge,
and then we had another witness say, oh, yeah, I
went to the bridge and I saw a bridge guyst there.
He seemed to be waiting for somebody. So there's like
all these indications where Richard Allen threw his own words
through what he's saying he's seeing is putting himself again
and again in the path of bridge guy.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
So, you know, a quick question about motive. I know
we've already talked about this obviously being sexually driven, but
it's the thought that he was stalking them, these two
girls while they were in you know, the wooded area,
or was he laying in wait for somebody to come by?
What was the thinking here? How premeditated I think, is
what I'm asking.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, that's a great question, and it would be the
latter laying in wait for a victim of opportunity. So
he actually did a confession where he spoke to that,
and what he indicated was he was looking for a
female to rape, and he didn't necessarily care about age,
and he claims he thought the girls were older.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
So he was.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Basically standing there and I think anyone who might have
crossed that bridge or crossed paths with him in a
moment where he felt safe was going to unfortunately be
abducted and murdered.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
What's his criminal record like up until.

Speaker 4 (44:04):
Now, none? None.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
He is a suburban dad and husband who works at
CBS and has years of retail experience and really is
a very quiet man. He's not a guy with a
lot of friends. He doesn't make a big impact nobody
that you'd be worried about necessarily on the surface. There
was one incident he had tremendous anxiety depression things like that. Struggles.

(44:29):
He talked about how like you get a promotion at
work and then have like some kind of mental breakdown
where he's on the floor crying, his wife has to
comfort him and pick him back up, and he can't
take any kind of pressure. But one thing that did
come out was in one incident he puts a gun
in his mouth and threatens to kill himself in front
of his family. So to me, that's either an act

(44:53):
that says tremendous cry for help or it's a manipulation
tactic to control other people in your family. So there
were instances like that where it's like all may not
be well under the surface. We heard from Walmart employees
that he used to manage that he was a total pervert,
like just the creepy boss you didn't want to be around,
who's going to make sexual comments. But then the CBS

(45:15):
employees they said, no, he wasn't like that with us.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
He was.

Speaker 4 (45:17):
He's a good boss.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
So like it's almost like you're getting different people in
different situations depending on what he thinks he can get
away with.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Yeah, And what's interesting that I think we can make
clear here because I've read other things about this where
they're really connecting what you guys are talking about the
depression and anxiety to the murderers. And we are always said,
I know you all are too, always careful. Bad mental health,
especially in this case, is not going to make you
attempt to assault two girls and murder them. I hate it.

(45:47):
I hate it. I hate it when mental health is
blamed for everything that happens. Sometimes people are assholes and
misogynistic and have sick, you know, desires, and it doesn't
mean they're mentally unwell. Do you think that during the
trial they were able to separate those things or when
we get into a little bit more into the trial,
can you talk about the defense's plan through all those Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
And mental health was certainly a big deal during trial,
and it was interesting because there was an attempt by
the defense to say, we can't count his confessions because
he's psychotic. And we heard from so many people who
deal with schizo effective disorder or different forms of psychosis
or have been through that, and the thing we kept
hearing was, this doesn't sound like psychosis to me, because

(46:34):
psychosis looks.

Speaker 4 (46:36):
It's not just saying anything.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
It has a specific kind of way this takes form
and how it looks, and you can pick up on
it and you can diagnose it.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
So I really don't think he was mentally ill.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
And I don't think that factored into the murders, you know,
And I agree we have to fight back against the
stigma of mental illness because a lot of things get
blamed on mentally ill people. When it's like, we don't
understand it, but it's actually psychopathy, or it's actually misogyny,
it's actually something perhaps even deeper, and we can't pin
that on people.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
You know.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Yeah, I agree. So he has this confession saying he
was basically waiting for any kind of vulnerable woman. What
happens next? Do they place him under arrest at this point?

Speaker 4 (47:20):
Yeah, they arrested him immediately after this second interview.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
And I should stress this confession that Anye referred to
did not happen prior to arrest. It happened after he
was arrested and incarcerated. And it was the defense's contention
that the conditions under which he was incarcerated was so
severe that it caused him to confess falsely. So at

(47:46):
the time they arrested him, a lot of that was
based on the fact of the gun cartridge, which he
had opportunities to say, oh, somebody else was using the gun,
or he could have said, oh, I like to walk
out along that trail with my gun when I hunt
mushrooms or something. He could have come up with alternative explanations.
He didn't. He said, no, I'm the only one that

(48:08):
uses the gun. No, one else could have been using
it that day, so he was tying himself to the
crime scene, at which point they had little choice but
to arrest him.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Yeah, and the confessions start rolling into the specific point.
And this is why I don't buy the mental illness
argument whatsoever. So he finds religion in prison, as many
people do. And I say prison not jail, because the
Carroll County jail was so small, people were sleeping in
the jail library at the time. They did not feel
it would be secure enough for him because people in

(48:39):
jail and prison hate people who have harmed children or
even are accused in this situation, so they didn't want
him there. I remember somebody told us, like we felt
the jail, I'm sure they wouldn't agree with it in
Carroll County, but somebody was like someone might break into
the jail to kill him. It was that, like, you know,
it just wasn't going to be a good situation, so
they put him in prison instead. It's unusual, but it's

(49:01):
not unheard of in cases where people have like a
special need medically, or it's going to it's overcrowding. There
could be reasons this happens, but they put him in
there and he finds religion, he finds God, and he
starts trying to confess to his wife and mother, predominantly
telling them I did do this. And this is all

(49:22):
recorded on the phone line in the prison, and to
be very clear, his wife and mother do not want
to hear it. They are telling him, no, you didn't,
you couldn't have done this, and he's saying, very calmly,
very forcefully, I did. And they're going back and forth,
and there's multiple calls like this. He's starting to tell
other inmates that he did it. He's starting to tell

(49:43):
correctional officers that he did He's trying.

Speaker 4 (49:45):
To unburden himself.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
And when you hear the calls, because those are the
ones that are recorded, he doesn't sound out of control.
He's not saying aliens made me do it. He's saying
like we need almost, like we need to talk.

Speaker 4 (49:56):
I did it. I need you to accept that and
do do you still love me?

Speaker 1 (50:01):
So he has this confession and then he ends up
going on trial. I know he's in prison for of
being held in prison. He ends up going on trial.
What are they going for? Are they going for first
degree murder? On these both of these cases.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Yeah, he was initially charged with the equivalent of felony murder,
which is basically, oh, he was kidnapping the girls. They
died as a result of that, but then later it
was murdered.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Yeah, they had four counts, so they gave the jury options.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
When did the conspiracy theories start that Richard Allen is innocent?

Speaker 3 (50:33):
What is the grain of this? They actually started pretty
early on. Of course, when a person is arrested, or
prior to the arrest, the police and the prosecutor prepares
something called a problem cause affidavit or a PCA, this
is where they're basically explaining, here is the case against
this person, here's why we chose to arrest him. When

(50:56):
Richard Allen was arrested, that document was not revealed to
the public right away. That started making people curious and
maybe even suspicious is not too.

Speaker 4 (51:07):
Strong of a word.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
And then when it was finally unsealed and people were
allowed to read it, they were underwhelmed. It wasn't really
written in a super clear fashion or a compelling fashion.
People really expected more. And I also think for a
lot of people, this was almost like a mystery story.

(51:29):
And if I'm reading a mystery novel. I don't want
to turn to the last chapter and find out that
the person who did it is someone who hadn't appeared
in the book before, which is what happened here. People
who've been following this case had their own particular suspects,
and so they began coming up with ideas and theories.
Or my suspect is correct, there's some sort of conspiracy

(51:52):
to protect him.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
I want to emphasize that because a lot of this
doesn't start when Richard Allen is arrested.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
That's the culmination of it.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
What we really saw was these people who said, you know,
it was sort of like this bizarre mishmash of conspiracy
theorists that have sort of been debating and having their
own suspect for years and then suddenly they're told, no,
you're wrong. You just spent three years of your life
accusing someone wrongly on the internet. Congratulations, And they got
really mad about that. Yeah, And it's like this like

(52:23):
ego thing where it's like, well, I can't be wrong,
the police are wrong. They're you know, they're going to
railroad this guy, and I know in my heart to
this guy instead, and it's it was a bad situation,
and I think unfortunately social media amplified that. But I
do want to say most people who followed this case
online were not in those camps. Most people I saw

(52:44):
were like, Okay, yeah, I don't know if he's guilty
or not. I guess we'll find out a trial and
that's the right way.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Or how about thank god they caught somebody ill. I mean,
wouldn't that be the normal human reaction? Two little girls dead,
traumatized until they were killed, and thank for God that
they got this guy, instead of well, there's no way
that they're right about this, because I'm right about it.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Yeah, they're They're terrible because the ones in this case
at least were not content to just say, well, we disagree.

Speaker 4 (53:12):
They were stalking people.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
They were stalking the prosecutor, they're harassing police, they're harassing
anybody they perceived as an enemy. And it got really
out of control, and it was just a situation where
ITAs like, we doesn't need to be this way, could
just be normal online.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
That one percent that I'm talking about who were doing
the stalking, and you know, all of these things and
pushing theories that have no base whatsoever. Are these the
people who get monetary gain because they're sort of quote
unquote reporting on TikTok about this, or are these the
people who just are simply anonymous online sloops who are jerks.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
I'm so glad you asked this, because I've thought about
this a lot, and I think there are two categories.
I think there are grifty creators who cater to the
conspiracy theory audience, and the reason and they do that
is because they are small. But they will throw money
at them, and they will throw their time and attention,
and they will fiercely defend them, so they perceive them
as a lock as far as an audience goes, so

(54:11):
they will target them.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
And these people largely know better.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
They know what they're saying is stupid, but they're gonna
say it, and they're going to perform like a trained
monkey for this very kind of conspiratorial audience.

Speaker 4 (54:23):
But I think the people are the most virulent. I mean,
they're fanning the flames those creators, and they certainly, you know,
should be condemned. But I think the people.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Who are the most extreme are true believers who they're
not necessarily unintelligent. They just may have a hard time
sorting patterns in their minds, So that makes them more
conspiratorial in they're thinking, and they're mostly seeking community, They're
seeking attention. They're not necessarily getting money because oftentimes their

(54:53):
viewerships are very small and they're just not going to
ever be big enough, and most people are not going
to want to listen to them because they're just kind
of horrible. But I think it's more of a community
and it's also a moral crusade. I mean, what better
way of feeling good about yourself that I'm fighting evil
corrupt police who have done something horrible to an innocent man.

(55:14):
Everything I do is justified, My rage is justified, my
actions are justified. And I think that's where it kind
of comes down to it. It's about justifying the anger
that they probably feel in other aspects of their life,
but they're channeling it through this new hobby.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Yeah, where does the case stand now? What ends up happening?

Speaker 4 (55:34):
So we go to trial? Trial is very dramatic.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
The defense team, for whatever reason, ended up sort of
adopting some of these conspiracy theories in their defense, which
is not really super normal, and it almost was like
they were catering to the YouTube audience with some of
the things they did, and it was kind of baffling.
We were there every session except one, and there every day,
and we felt this is a case where it doesn't

(56:01):
have a big sexy hook. It's not like a DNA
case where you can just explain it in two minutes.
But what we saw come together was incredibly strong and
a strong performance by the prosecutorial team, Nicholas mcleland, James Lettrell,
and Stacy Deaner. I mean, they were like amazing. The
defense kind of fell apart. Richard Allen the whole time
is acting really squirreling in his seat, and he's staring

(56:22):
down the jurors and he's turning around.

Speaker 4 (56:23):
He was pointing at us. At one point.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
It was like, what is this guy doing. I think
he was trying to act crazy. I don't think he
actually is mentally ill though.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Were they going for that kind of defense or now
it was just basically he didn't do it. You don't
enough evenans.

Speaker 4 (56:35):
Yeah, no, it was they did not go for an
insanity defense.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
They went for Initially, they went for this whole elaborate
conspiracy theory about there being a Norse pagan cult in
the woods of Delphi that sacrificed. These two girls were
white supremacists, and you may be wondering, why would white
supremacists ritually sacrifice two white girls, because that doesn't really
make any sense, and typically violent white supremacist target minorities.

(56:59):
But you know, but I would say that they went
for that, but then the judge would not let them
use that third party defense because there was no factual
basis for it, and they ended up doing just more
of a kind of down the middle. I mean, they
were calling witnesses at the trails who were there like
hours later, and it was sort of like what is
this supposed to do? Or like, oh, this woman says

(57:20):
she saw a guy by a mailbox that she didn't
recognize and that was near the bridge. Okay, what time
did it happen? Eight am? Okay, who cares? You know,
it was like they were kind of grasping at straws.
So we felt very strongly that it was either going
to be a hung jury or a conviction. And the
jury deliberated for a while and they came back with
a conviction on all four counts. So we were once

(57:43):
we heard there was a verdict, we were like, it's
you know, he's being convicted. Now, a lot of the
reporters we were there with who were not necessarily as
familiar with the case, they felt differently. They felt like, oh, well,
there's no DNA, so they're not going to convict him.
And I think it's like it's a strong, circumstantial case
and he's admitted to it, and he's included in his
confessions details only the killer would know, so like, so

(58:05):
it ended up being a conviction. And right now we're
all waiting on the appeal to come in.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
What is his family saying. Have they made any statements
at all? Do they stand behind him?

Speaker 2 (58:14):
Yeah, they've said that they stand behind him, which I
find interesting. There there were some media statements from his wife,
Kathy Allen, who sort of was very adamant that he
must be innocent, he's such a good husband and father.
But in these media statements, she's never addressed the bizarre
gun incident where he threatened to kill himself in front
of her family, kind of indicating that he might have
some pretty serious issues or manipulation tactics. Nor has she

(58:37):
ever indicated like why do you think he didn't tell
you that he was on the bridge that day, or
why do you think you know, because I'm going to
tell you if Kevin were married, right, if Kevin was
out somewhere that day and he said, oh, I told
the police about this, but they didn't care, I might
be kind of weirded out by that because it's like, okay,
but you were out there, and also you kind of

(58:58):
look like that picture.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
Good to know, Kevin, are you hearing this for the
first time? This is what you get from marrying a
chick who's into true crime.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
I think Kevin, I mean, like he's such a gentleman,
but like I'm like, yeah, Kevin's gonna call his lawyer now,
But I you know, but it's a situation. I think
anyone with their spouse, you recognize them, you hear their voice.
I think personally, I have view his family members as
being in some deep denial. And we can understand that because,
I mean, what a traumatic incident to go through where

(59:28):
you go from thinking, yeah, things are at least okay
with your spouse to being like a murdered two kids
for no reason.

Speaker 4 (59:34):
So I think we could all be understanding of a
situation like that. But I think there's denial.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
There circling back just to kind of wrap this up
circling back to the community, and that includes the online
community here. Now that there is a conviction, and I
know there's an appeal which he's likely to lose, especially
if he keeps the same lawyer as he had before,
at this point, do you think that the bemoaning and
the chatter and the gossip and the r are done

(01:00:01):
and they're moving on to something else? Like is this
case closed for most people, especially in Delphi, which is
what really counts.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
I think it is closed for most people. There are
some diehards, though, who will never let it go, and
they will be very loud. A lot of them have
multiple accounts on some of these social media platforms to
try to make themselves look larger than they are. They're
still proclaiming that he was framed, that it was a conspiracy,

(01:00:32):
and that he will be free someday and get a
huge check from the government for his trouble. I don't
see people engaging with their content as much as they
did a year ago, or even frankly six months ago.
I think a lot of people, now that more information
has come out, I think they're seeing through it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
I agree, yeah, and I mean I think you're going
to see that with any of these cases, even like
something like Idaho, when you have Colberger pleading guilty and
there's DNA, I still think there's chatter out there about
he didn't do it, you know, and then you just
have to go on and think, this is a case
not about you guys, not about me or you two.
It's about these two little girls and their family that's

(01:01:13):
left behind and the media deluge that they've had to
deal with, and hopefully, you know, with this conviction, they've
been able to to sort of continue to mourn but
move on past at least the circus that has been
created in a small city that has never had anything
significant I'm sure happen. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:01:34):
No, that's really well said, and I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
I think what I want to convey with this book
is these two girls helped solve their own murders.

Speaker 4 (01:01:41):
They were incredibly brave.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
What they went through before they died is horrifying to contemplate.
They had the presence of mind to in Libby's case,
film this creep. And in Abby's case, she was the
one over the phone over Libby's phone, so did she
hide it perhaps? And that was crucial, And they brought
this man to justice, and every time we talked to,

(01:02:04):
you know, investigators, we would talk to them about it
and they would say they helped solve this case, like
this was crucial evidence that they collected. And I think
there's something beautiful about that. We want the legacy to
be Abby and Libby. And you know, there's a park
in their name in Delphi now where kids can play safely.

(01:02:25):
There is a scholarship fund in their name because they
never got to go to college. But I mean, think
about this, the families still they're seeing Abby and Libby's
peers grow up, get jobs, move out, have kids of
their own, and they're not getting to experience any of
that with them, and so they're fighting to have these
girls still have a legacy because they're not here to

(01:02:47):
leave it themselves at this point, the families have to
go and do that, and I think that's where I
think people should be focusing their energy.

Speaker 4 (01:02:54):
How can we support them in that mission.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Sinners All Bow, The
Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and
Don't Forget. There are twelve seasons of my historical true
crime podcast tenfold More Wicked. Right here in this podcast feed,
scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already.

(01:03:29):
This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer
is Alexis a Morosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is
our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark,
Karen Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram

(01:03:50):
and Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on Twitter at
tenfold More. And if you know of a historical crime
that could use some attention from the crew at tenfold
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