July 18, 2025 • 50 mins
Brian approaches the case like a detective on a cold trail: revisiting the timeline, scrutinizing law enforcement’s shifting strategy, and examining what’s been revealed—and what’s been redacted. Dani peels back the emotional and psychological layers, exploring trauma, fear, and how this case embedded itself in the soul of an entire community.
From the chilling Snapchat video to the strange behavior of the suspect now in custody, we go beyond the known facts and push into the uncomfortable space between justice and uncertainty. This isn’t just about who did it. It’s about how it happened, why it took so long, and what it says about the systems we trust to protect us.
Expect sharp contrast, raw insight, and a few tough questions that still haven’t been answered.Whether you’ve followed this case from day one or you’re stepping onto that bridge for the first time, this episode of The Guilty Files: ReVisited delivers what we do best—depth, duality, and discussion that doesn’t flinch.
🔍 Stick around ‘til the very end—this week’s episode includes a sneak peek of our exclusive subscriber-only bonus segments: The Redacted Report, Inside the Mind, and Behind the Badge.
Want early, ad-free access and all three bonus segments for every case?
Join us on Patreon or subscribe right here on Apple Podcasts.
Your support keeps the case files open—and the conversation going.🎧 Press play. Share the show. And indulge your Guilty pleasure.
From the chilling Snapchat video to the strange behavior of the suspect now in custody, we go beyond the known facts and push into the uncomfortable space between justice and uncertainty. This isn’t just about who did it. It’s about how it happened, why it took so long, and what it says about the systems we trust to protect us.
Expect sharp contrast, raw insight, and a few tough questions that still haven’t been answered.Whether you’ve followed this case from day one or you’re stepping onto that bridge for the first time, this episode of The Guilty Files: ReVisited delivers what we do best—depth, duality, and discussion that doesn’t flinch.
🔍 Stick around ‘til the very end—this week’s episode includes a sneak peek of our exclusive subscriber-only bonus segments: The Redacted Report, Inside the Mind, and Behind the Badge.
Want early, ad-free access and all three bonus segments for every case?
Join us on Patreon or subscribe right here on Apple Podcasts.
Your support keeps the case files open—and the conversation going.🎧 Press play. Share the show. And indulge your Guilty pleasure.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome to The Guilty Files, a podcast that rips the
story open, one crime, two hosts, and truths that don't
fit neatly into the box. It's messy, it's real, and
it's all on the table. Now let's open this week's file.
(00:50):
You're listening to The Guilty Files Revisited. I'm Brian and
I'm Danny. Today we're opening a case that shattered to town,
defined it generation of armchair detectives, and left the world
holding its breath for justice.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well talking about the Delphi Murders, the twenty seventeen double
homicide of Abigail Williams and Liberty German, two best friends
thirteen and fourteen years old, who went out for a
walk on an abandoned railway bridge and the woods of Delphi, Indiana,
and never came home.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
This wasn't just a tragedy. It was a system failure,
a community trauma, and a long game of silence, speculation,
and eventually a suspect.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And it's one of the rare cases where the victims
left us a clue. Libby had the presence of mind
to hit record. That moment might be the most haunting
act of courage we've ever seen. In a case file.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
In this episode, we're doing what we always do, pulling
apart the crime, the response, and the ripples, from the
procedural breakdowns to the psychological scars, from how a killer
hides in plain sight.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
To two young girls tried to leave a trail in
the woods when the adults failed to protect them.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
This isn't just a recap. This is where the gloves
truly come.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Off, where the badge comes off.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And where the truth gets unfiltered.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Welcome to the guilty Files revisited. Let's open the Delphi
file all right. Before we go full dark mode on
the Delphi case, let's ease in with this week's round
of Two Truths and a Crime. The game where I
hit Brian with three statements and he has to guess
which one is the impostor.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Ooh, I love this game.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
It's the only time I get to accuse someone of
lying without doing any paperwork.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
You say that, like paperwork wasn't your love language.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
I do love a well formatted report. Don't judge me,
all right, hit me, I'm ready. Let's go the Delphi edition.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
You know it. These are all things said, rumored, or
documented at some point in connection to the Delphi murders.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Ready born, Ready.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Okay, here we go. Number one, one of the original
sketches of the suspect, was based on a psychic's description.
Number two, a local man falsely confessed to the murders
while tripping on meth. And number three, Richard Allen, the
man now charged in the case, was interviewed by police
back in twenty and seventeen and basically told them he
(03:24):
was on the bridge that day.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Okay, wow, that is a trifecta of chaos.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
To be sure, the.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Psychic angle sounds like something that would get whispered over
casse roles.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
At a church fundraiser.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
The meth confession sadly entirely plausible in the Midwest.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
True and Alan.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Delling cops he was at the scene in twenty seventeen.
That feels like a planted twist in a Netflix script,
but also exactly the kind of real world failure that
drives me absolutely insane.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
You got a lock in a choice, counselor all right.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I'm gonna go with number one. The psychic details sound
to Scooby Doo.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
That's my final answer.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Sorry, partner. That one is actually true, Well, at least
according to an internal leak from early in the investigation.
They allegedly followed up on a psychics description for one
of the early sketches. You're kidding me, Nope, But the
fake one was the meth confession. That one's not part
of this case, but it has happened in others. You
(04:25):
were right to think it was believable, though, and that's
the problem.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
See, this is why I have blood pressure issues. We've
got police chasing psychics and a suspect telling you he
was on the bridge and no one followed up for
five years. I need some smelling salts in a legal pat.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
To be fair, The suspect did admit to being there,
but it was brushed off because he said he was
just watching the fish.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
I mean, I've seen a lot of strange behavior on
walking trails, but that ranks up there with I was
just bird watching during the broabery.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
All right, listen, as we want to hear from you,
which one would you have picked as the lie? Head
over to our Instagram stories or drop your verdict in
the comments on this episode post. And if you've heard
any weird rumors, conspiracy theories, or psychic sketches floating around
this case, send them in, you might end up on
our bonus patroons segment.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Remember, in this court room, the audience is the jury,
and so far I'm losing my appeal stick around.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Up next, we're going to crack open what this case
really did to the town of Delphi and why two
girls walking in the woods left the whole country on edge.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
On February thirteenth, twenty seventeen, in Delphi, Indiana, population around
three thousand, a town where everyone knows your name and
your business, two best friends, Liberty German and Abigail Williams,
ask for a lift to the Monon High Bridge trail.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
It was a Monday. They had no school that day.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
They planned to take some photos, hang out, walk the
trail like dozens of other kids had done before them.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
They never came home.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Their bodies were found the next day, just a short
hike from the bridge. The scene was described as odd, staged,
and ritualistic, though details remained sealed. In part to this
very day. And here's the thing, Libby just fourteen recorded
the man suspected of murdering them, caught his voice, got
his image down the hill. That gravel voiced line became
(06:28):
the haunting refrain of this case, a SoundBite that traveled
the globe, and yet no arrest made for more than
five years. The man now facing trial, Richard Allen, was
interviewed by the police back in twenty seventeen. He admitted
to being there, said he was watching the fish, and
for five years that wasn't enough to raise alarms.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I mean, imagine confessing to being at the scene of
a double homicide as it was happening and still going
home to make dinner. Real this case is terrifying, not
because it's rare, but because it's recognizable. Two girls, daylight,
a public trial, no drugs, no party, no wrong crowd,
(07:11):
just two kids who thoughts they were safe. And that's
what hits hardest, because if it can happen to them,
then frankly, it could happen to any of us. These
girls were smart, Libby had a gut feeling something was wrong.
She recorded her killer. That's not just evidence, that's bravery,
that's trauma in real time. And it still took years
(07:33):
to turn into an arrest. And the man they arrested,
he worked at the local CVS, processed family prescriptions, smiled
at the counter, even went home to his wife.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Lived two miles from the crime scene, no priors, no
trail of violence, just a name buried in an old tip.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Log, which is what makes this case more than just
a murder. It's a mirror of the systems we rely
on and how often they may fell us of how
predators don't just hide in shadows, they blend into our routines.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
We're going to dig into that today.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
We're going to talk about the sketch controversy, the law
enforcement missteps, the evidence, the silence, and Wyatt took so
long to bring charges.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And I'm going to pull us into the heart of
this case, not the crime scene, but the people Libby Abbey,
their families, their town, how the trauma of their loss
reshaped an entire community, and how that fear and heartbreak
played out on every front porch and every Facebook post
in Delphi.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
There's also the question to what happens next, because Richard
Allen's trial that's a powder keg, and the longer the fuse,
the more the pressure builds.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
We're also going to talk about who we become when
justice is delayed, what that does to victims, families, and
even investigators.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
So whether you're here for the facts the forend, or
the failures in between.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Or the heartbreak, the psychology and the hard truth.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
We're going there.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
There's something about a small town that makes you believe
in safety by default. Delphi, Indiana, wasn't just small. It
was stitched together by routine. People said hello at the
gas station. Teachers lived next door to their own students,
the kind of place where the loudest thing on Monday
afternoon was the sound of someone's screen door.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
And that's what.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Makes the Delphi case so devastating, because this didn't happen
in a dark alleyway or during a party or after curfew.
It happened at two o'clock in the afternoon in the
woods on a hiking trail. The whole town had walked.
The killer didn't break into the town, he was already inside.
What happened to Libby and Abbey didn't just tear apart
(09:51):
two families. It shattered the social contract. Delphi was built on,
the one that says we look out for each other,
the one that assumes e evil is something elsewhere, a
city thing, a stranger thing.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
It exposed the myth that safety is something we can see.
I keep thinking about that two kids just out enjoying
a day off from school. They weren't sneaking around, they
weren't pushing limits. They were just being girls, laughing, taking pictures,
being free. But when you're a woman, freedom always comes
with conditions. When you're a girl, it comes with risk.
(10:26):
What really haunts me is this. They weren't just in
the wrong place at the wrong time. They were in
the right place at the right time, and someone else
turned that into a crime scene. And the fallout wasn't
just grief, It was fear, collective, disorienting, generational fear. Suddenly
(10:47):
every parent in Delphi looked at their kids differently, Every
teacher felt exposed. It's not just the girls who lost
their innocence that day. Everyone did right.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
You know, I've worked in youth detention, managed high risk facilities,
and I've seen the impact trauma has on communities when
kids commit crimes. But this, this was something else. This
was trauma inflicted on children, and it broke the spine
of the town DELFI didn't know how to recover, because
how do you explain to your kid that evil wears khakis,
(11:20):
works retail and lives two miles down the road, that
safety isn't about where we are, It's about who's watching you.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And let's be real, this wasn't a town equipped for
that kind of darkness. It's not just that they were
unprepared procedurally, they were unprepared emotionally. No one had the vocabulary,
no one had the tools for collective grief. So what happened.
People turned to Facebook. Rumors took the place of facts.
(11:48):
Conspiracies stepped in where comfort should have.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Been, and that becomes its own kind of poison. You
start suspecting your neighbor, You stop letting your kids ride
their bike. You check your security cams three times at night,
because once the monster reveals himself and then disappears, every
shadow starts to look just like cam.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And here's the thing I keep coming back to. Libby
and Abby weren't just victims. They were symbols not of weakness,
but of how damn vulnerable we all are when the
people in charge don't act fast enough. This case turned
that town inside out. Parents didn't just become over protective,
they became investigators themselves. Children became witnesses. The bridge became
(12:36):
a crime scene and a shrine.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
It became sacred ground in a way.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, and that's the heartbreak of it, because it means
two teenage girls had to die before anyone realized Delphi
wasn't safe, not because it was broken, but because it
was naive.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
We were romanticize small towns in this country. We build
TV shows around them, Friday Night Lights, Gilmore Girls. But
the truth is small towns carried just as much darkness
as anywhere.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Else until it shows up on your hiking trail.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
And until two kids don't come home.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Libby and Abbey deserved better, not just in those final moments,
but long before that. They deserved a world where a
man like that couldn't walk among them for five years
without being stopped.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
They deserve systems that saw them as worth protecting, and
towns that didn't have to learn that lesson the hard way.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
And now we all carry that lesson, whether we wanted
to or not.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Coming up, we're going to dig into the tactical side
of this case, the terrain, the decision making, the bravery
it took for one teenage girl to hit record.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
And how the bridge to Nowhere became a place where
a killer thought he could vanish and where two girls
may damn sure he didn't.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
The monon High Bridge is over sixty feet tall, and
it doesn't have rails. It's a and in rotting spine
of steel. Strategically, it's the perfect place to isolate your victims.
One way in, one way out. Richard Allen used the
terrain like a weapon.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
And Libby knew. She felt it. You can hear it
in that audio clip. She didn't scream, she hit record.
And that's not just smart, its instinct. It's survival, and
it gave us the only known evidence from the scene
because no one else was watching.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
The bridge was supposed to be scenic, it became surgical,
and that transformation beauty turned battlefield still haunts this town.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
The girls walked into a trap disguised as nostalgia. That's
what sticks with me.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
All Right, we're.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
About to talk about the sketches, because if there's one
piece of this case that symbolizes confusion, breakdown and public mistrust,
this is it. In twenty seventeen, law enforcement releases the
first composite aged man go tee heavy set wearing that
infamous bridge Guy outfit. People start printing flyers, sharing it
(15:08):
on social media. Kids hang the posters in their lockers.
Some folks even tattooed the face on their bodies. Then
two years later, in twenty nineteen, they throw out the
first sketch entirely and release.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
A second one.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And this new suspect looks like you just got cut
from a college indie band. Stay tuned for more of
the guilty files. We'll be right back after these messages.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Brian, the second guy looked like he left band practice
to go commit a double homicide. And I mean, if
the first sketch was your weird uncle who doesn't talk
at Thanksgiving, the second was your ex boyfriend who reads
chemists but can't hold.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
A job, poetic and terrifying.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Here's the problem.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Law enforcement never clarified clearly why.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
They made the pivot.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
The public wasn't told, hey, this is the same guy,
just younger, or we're looking at two persons of interest. No,
they just said, disregard the first sketch. And you can't
just pull the rug out from under someone. After two
years of asking people to treat Sketch number one like.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
It's gospel, exactly, you gave people a face to fear,
a face to hate. They memorized it, some of them
obsessed over it, and then you tell them oops new face,
and you give them zero closure on the first one.
That's not investigative evolution, that's emotional whiplash.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Not to mention it creates chaos and tip response. You
now have two different pools of eyewitnesses trying to identify
two entirely different men. How many legitimate leads got buried
under confusion because people were second guessing their instincts.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
And let's talk about what that does to the community's trust.
You've got grieving families clinging to those sketches. You've got
teachers warning their students. You've got women walking into Walmart
thinking they've just seen the killer because his face matches
the one on the bulletin board. And then just like that,
you tell them never mind.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
It's a procedural misstep with real consequences. I've said it
before and I'll say it again. If you're going to
release a sketch, especially in a case this public, you
better make damn sure you can stand by it.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
And the real story here, the part that chills me
is what it says about how memory works under trauma.
Witnesses are notoriously unreliable and in stress time, pressure from
law enforcement and Suddenly you'll not describing a suspect, You'll
reconstructing a ghost.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
That's exactly it.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It's human nature to fill in the blanks, especially when
we need a face to blame.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
And that's the dangerous part, because this wasn't just about
finding the killer. This was about managing public emotion. The
sketches became symbols. People projected their need for justice on
too those faces.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
You want to know how powerful that first sketch was.
When Richard Allen was arrested and they say he kind
of resembles the second sketch, the public lost their minds
because he looked nothing like the second one.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
He looked like the.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
First, And suddenly all that pent up mistrust exploded. People
were like, wait, you mean we were right the first time,
and you made us doubt that for years.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
That loss of credibility doesn't just hurt the case, it
sets back trust in every case after it.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
It tells people we don't really know what we're doing
and we're not going to explain why.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And in a small town that's enough to start wars
between neighbors.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Brian, I can tell you how many people I've talked
to who say they still scan every man's face they
pass in the grocery store, at school functions, they're carrying
around both sketches in their heads like a rolodex of fear.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
And that's not paranoia. That's a community that has become
its own surveillance system, because when law enforcement confuses the public,
they turn inward.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
And I get it, I really do. But the thing
that breaks my heart is that the sketches could have
helped if they just told the truth about them.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Or even just admitted that they were uncertain. Transparency goes
further than forced certainty.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
You want the public to stay engaged, you don't feed
them a face and yank it away. You bring them
into the process. You tell them this is where we are,
this is what we know, and yeah, it might change.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Because you're not just managing an investigation, you're managing hope.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So here's the takeaway. Those sketches weren't just bad police work.
They were emotional landmines. And Delphi's still walking through that field.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
And some people never stopped looking for the wrong man.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Coming up, We ask the question no one wants to hear,
the answer to how does someone walk into the woods
murder two kids and then go home to dinner like
nothing happened. Next up, let's discuss the layers to law
enforcement and the fact that too many can cause a
strategic nightmare.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Let me be blunt here.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
This case had too many fucking badges, not enough communication.
Local police, state police, FBI. Every agency meant well. But
when everyone's steering, the car goes in circles.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And that makes the beat cops, the ones actually walking
the streets feel paralyzed. I've been there, waiting on word
from higher ups while families are losing their minds. You
feel like you're wearing the uniform, but no one gave
you a weapon.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And worse, Allan's twenty seventeen interviews slipped through those cracks.
He literally told police he was on the trail that day.
That should have been a huge red flag. Instead it
was buried under bureaucracy.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
It's like watching someone fumble the ball at the one
yard line over and over and over. Next, let's discuss
profiling the predator.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Assuming Richard Allen is guilty, We're not talking about a
drifter or a transient. We're talking about someone employed, married, stable.
That's what makes this kind of predator so insiduous. He functions,
he adapts. We're not talking about some drifter living in
the woods. We're talking about a man who held down
(21:25):
a job, smiled at his neighbors, processed your prescriptions at CVS.
He blended in so well that even after admitting he
was on the trail the day of the murders, he
was still overlooked. That's not just disturbing, that is efficient predation.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
That's the monster, and Khaki's exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And in criminal profiling, that's one of the most dangerous types,
the ones who don't look deviant, no drug history, no
rap sheet. They're not spiraling out, they're spiraling in quietly, methodically.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Because what they crave isn't chaos, it's control, and control
looks different depending on who's watching. To the outside world,
he's just a guy with a normal life, But inside
there's a narrative playing out that no one else sees.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
That internal narrative is what we often miss. In law enforcement.
We're trained to look at escalation, domestic violence, calls, animal cruelty,
prior assaults. But these kind of predators don't escalate publicly.
They escalate psychologically, and they rehearse, Yes, they rehearse in fantasy.
(22:39):
In secrecy, they construct a scenario in their minds and
refine it until reality is just a final performance.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
And by the time they act, it's not impulsive. It's scripted.
And that's what gives meat chills about the Delphi case.
He didn't just stumble upon those girls. He selected the term,
He leveraged its isolation, and he approached from a blind spot.
He gave direct verbal commands. This was a performance of.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Power in the setting the Monon high Bridge trail. Limited visibility,
difficult access, no surveillance, no fast exit for the victims,
but plenty of escape for someone who knew the woods.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
You want to know what really terrifies me about guys
like this, It's that they live these quiet, obedient public
lives and they weaponize normalcy.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
We used to call it masking back in youth corrections.
I had a kid who could give a therapist the
perfect answers in any session, then stab someone twenty minutes
later in the yard. They knew how to perform stability.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Because manipulation isn't always aggressive. Sometimes it's charming, sometimes it's boring.
The man who hugs his wife or go to work
cracks a joke at the register. That man can still
walk into the woods and commit something unspeakable.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
And when he comes out, he can switch it off.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Which means the real horror isn't just the crime. It's
how many people looked him in the eye after it
happened and never saw a thing.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
And that's not on them, that's on us, on systems
we've built to profile behavior based on visibility, not psychology.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Because we still want killers to look like monsters, but
most of them they look like us.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's the Gacy effect. Everyone remembers the clown, but he
also ran a business, hosted barbecues, took photos with senators.
You don't expect evil to make eye contact.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
But it does every day. That's what makes this so terrifying,
because this case isn't just about what he did. It's
about what we didn't see.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
It's about our systems and how our instincts fail when
someone doesn't fit the mold.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
So if you want a profile of this predator, don't
look for rage, look for ritual. Look for someone who
needed the illusion of a perfect life just long enough
to take someone else's.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
And once the performance ends, the audience is left with
a crime scene and silence.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Next up. How do you investigate someone who doesn't leave
a trail, or worse, one who tells you exactly where
he was and you miss it.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Here's the hard truth. Richard Allen didn't slip through the cracks.
He walked through them because the cracks were wide open,
built into the system itself, and Delphi the tech didn't
fail the case.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
The mindset did.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
We think of a ghost as someone who disappears, But
what if the ghost is the guy you already talked
to and didn't recognize. Alan told police he was on
the trail the day the girls died. He said it casually,
like it didn't matter, and they let him go because
there was no urgency to cross reference tips, no pressure
(26:10):
to vet repeat names, no system that said, hey, this
guy's story keeps circulating the perimeter.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
It wasn't about lacking resources, It was about lacking reflexes.
Law enforcement got flooded with tips, sure, but no one
thought to build a framework for catching the ones that mattered.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
It's like trying to find a fingerprint and a thunderstorm
with your eyes closed.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
And this is what we don't say enough. The longer
a suspect like this exists in the white noise. The
more confident he gets, the more silent he becomes.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Because nothing teaches a predator how to stay invisible like
watching the entire system look right through him. Next up,
we ask whether justice delayed, is justice denied, or if
this case still has time to get it right.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
All right, So let's talk about this five year gap,
that chasm between the murders and Richard Allen's arrest. From
a procedural standpoint, the delay is catastrophic. Evidence degrades, memories
get muddy, eyewitnesses move or even die, and any prosecutor
will tell you the longer you wait, the harder it
(27:22):
is to control the narrative. The defense has more room
to maneuver, the public gets restless, and the margin for
air shrinks fast.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
And emotionally, it's a hostage situation. The families weren't grieving,
they were waiting, waiting and grieving, which is like being
asked to hold your breath under water while crying. There's
no closure, there's no clean wound, just five years of
unanswered questions and birthdays with empty chairs.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
And now the trial itself is a mine field. Public
opinion is volatile, the evidence is old, The sketches don't match,
and the prosecution's going to have to explain why a
man who confessed to being at the scene was allowed
to blend back into civilian life for half a decade.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Meanwhile, the families are stuck hoping the system doesn't mess
this part up too again.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
And let's be real, if the trial collapses under the
weight of its own delays, dil Phi doesn't just lose justice,
it loses faith in every uniform, in every badge.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
It's the kind of collapse that rewrites how a town
sees law enforcement forever. It doesn't matter how hard everyone
worked behind the scenes. What the families remember is what
didn't happen for years.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
That's the question hanging over this trial. Is justice still
justice when it shows up half a decade late, bruised
and missing pieces.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
About to find out coming up how technology helped expose
the killer and how badly it could have helped sooner.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
In order cases, we've talked about footprints and mud, tire tracks,
blood spatter, But in twenty seventeen, Libby Jerman's cell phone
was the crime scene that recording those images. Those are
her fingerprints on the investigation. Her phone captured the killer's
voice her instinct became the cornerstone of this case, and
(29:27):
yet it still took five years to put a name
to the man in the clip.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
That's the irony of our time. We have the tech,
we just don't know how to use it when it
matters most right.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
The forensic toolbox has expanded geolocation data, metadata tagging, search histories,
device pings, but the infrastructure to handle all that, especially
in a small town and a small town department, still
catching up.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
And the training, let's not forget that part. You can
hand some one a microscope, but if they don't know
what bacteria looks like, it's just a piece of glass.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Stay tuned for more of the guilty files. We'll be
right back after these messages. That phone should have been
the first red flag. Alan admitted he was there. If
they had had the right systems in place, Libby's phone
data could have been cross referenced with his location immediately.
(30:25):
Her voice sat in a digital drawer while the killer
kept clocking in at CVS.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
You know what haunts me? That phone, the one Libby
used to capture the image of her murderer. It probably
set on her nightstand for years before that. It took selfies,
It recorded dances, captured a life and progress, and then
in her final moments, she turned it into a weapon.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
A digital witness.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yeah, and maybe the only one that never looked away.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
It's a lesson in modern justice, sometimes the most important
testimony from pixels, not people.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
But it also raises the question how many other victims
leave behind digital footprints that no one ever follows up on?
Speaker 1 (31:10):
And the longer departments rely on outdated systems or undertrained analysts,
the more likely it is those trails just disappear into
the cloud.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
This case reminds us that the killer wasn't the only
one hiding, and plain sight the evidence was too. Next,
we go back to the beginning, the bridge, the moment
and the girls who didn't just die, they fought.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Let's stop talking about Libby and Abbey like they were
passive victims, because they weren't. These were kids, yes, but
in their final moments they were also fighters. And what
Libby did, pulling out her phone, hitting record, capturing her
killer's voice and image, that wasn't luck. That was instinct,
(31:57):
and in law enforcement, instinct is what separate rates survival
from tragedy.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
And she didn't freeze, She didn't panic, she documented. That's
next level awareness. Under pressure, most adults would collapse. That
girl had guts.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
We can train officers to respond under threat with control
and precision. She was fourteen, no training, no badge, no backup,
and she still managed to leave behind the most critical
evidence in the entire case.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
And that tells you everything, because what we're dealing with
here isn't just courage, it's clarity. She knew, she felt it.
You don't hit record unless something inside you says this
might be the only way someone finds us.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
And it worked. Years later, it's still the cornerstone of
the prosecution. Libby gave us the voice, the gait, the
grainy image in a jacket in jeans. She left a map,
however cryptic for law enforcement to follow.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
That's not just resistance, that's legacy. And I want to
say this out loud and clear. We don't talk enough
about what it means to fight back when your options
are taken away. These girls, they weren't armed, they weren't trained,
they were cornered, but one of them thought, I'm going
to leave something behind. That is resistance, That is rage,
(33:26):
that is love.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
It changed the case. But more than that, It changed
the country, It shifted how law enforcement approached social media.
Maybe an Abbey forced apartments to realize sometimes your first
responder is the victim themselves.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
We think about true crime as this dark spiral of
loss and failure, and yeah, it often is. But this moment,
this choice that Libby made, it reminds me that even
in the most horrifying stories, there's still opportunity to fight.
There's still They weren't just the del Phi girls. They
(34:03):
were daughters, sisters, students, and in the end, they're the
reason this case never truly went cold. They didn't give up,
so we don't get to either. We keep going, We
keep asking the hard questions. We stay loud when the
world wants us to get quiet, because.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
That's the job now, not just ours as former cops,
but ours as people, as a community.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
We owe libbyan Abbey that much. All right, it's time
to give your brain and ours a breather. But don't
put away your suspicious minds, not just yet. This week
we're playing around of what's more suspicious, the game where
I throw out too weird, questionable, or downright shady behaviors
and Brian has to choose which one raises more red flax.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Oh I love this already.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It's like training day meets game night.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Okay, first one, Delphi flavored. What's more suspicious a grown
watching the fish on a hiking trail or someone changing
their entire facial hair situation right after becoming a person
of interest in a double homicide.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Easy facial hair change, that's the number one move in
our old crap. They might be looking for me, playbook
you shave it, grow it, bleach it. You're trying to
outrun a composite sketch with grooming products.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Correct. And also, who watches fish standing alone on an
abandoned bridge with no fishing rod, no cooler, and no
visible will to live?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
You forgot no bait and no friends?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Okay, next one, what's more suspicious Someone who never posts
on social media has zero online footprint and doesn't even lurk.
Or someone who's a little too eager to insert themselves
into every town Facebook group about the case.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Oh boy, that's a tough one, but I'm going to
go with the Facebook sleuth. That's textbook insert yourself into
the narrative behavior. History is full of killers who hovered
around investigations like mauves around a porch light.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Right, it's giving please notice me, but not too much energy.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Though, I will say the zero digital footprint guy, that's
getting harder to explain. And at this point, if you
don't exist online at all, I assume you've either got
something to hide or you were raised by wolves in
a bunker, or are you planning something exactly everyone's online.
If you're not, it's probably on purpose.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Guilty as charged, all right, last one, what's more suspicious
a man who owns a creepy, cluttered shed in the
woods or a man who owns a shed that's too clean,
with perfect organization, labeled bends and a single empty cooler
just waiting.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Okay, have you met me hands down the clean shed?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah. One of those was like you and camouflage, and
the other one was me mm hm.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Mess is normal. Mess is human, but meticulous. That's where
you find the trophy drawers, the sterile workspaces, the planning.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
There's no chaos to heighten. That's calculated evil, you.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Know, all jokes aside.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Those what ifs are the same instincts investigators have to
work with in real time. It's not just about the facts,
it's about pattern disruption exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
It's about learning to trust your gut and being willing
to ask the uncomfortable question, what if it's someone we know?
Speaker 1 (37:40):
And what if the thing we've been dismissing is the
very thing we should have paid attention to.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
More on that and the legacy this case leaves behind
coming up next, when we tackle the modern, parallel and
relevance of this week's case file.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Let's talk about how this case doesn't just live in
the past, because the truth is DELFI isn't just a
crime scene. It's a mirror, a reflection of where we've
been and where we still are when it comes to
crime solving, tech and the justice system. Had the same
crime occurred today with the resources we've got in twenty
(38:16):
twenty five, it could have looked very different. Start with technology, bodycams,
license plate readers, real time data sharing between departments, digital
forensic tools powered by AI that can identify behavioral anomalies.
Biby's phone might have been enough to match Richard Allen's
voice to a database. Geotracking could have triangulated multiple overlapping
(38:39):
tips and zeroed in on in before the second sketch
was even necessary.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
And yet here, we are still struggling to use the
tools we do have because of slow policy, outdated training,
or worse, just a lack of urgency until a body
shows up.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
That's why communication between departments is critical. One centralized hub
for data, no more siloed case files. Delphi could have
been the catalyst for a nationwide update and how missing
persons and.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Tips are tracked. But we're still behind.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
And the longer we stay behind, the more space we
leave for people like this to keep moving in plain sight.
Because this wasn't just a failure of systems, it was
a failure of expectation. Everyone thought he doesn't look like
a threat, clean cut, married, friendly, and that's exactly why
he got away with it.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
That's the part we can't teach in a training manual,
how to trust your gut when the guy handing you
your medication might also be hiding something horrific.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Right, because we still don't know how to see beyond
this mask of normal. That's not just a procedural issue,
that's cultural. We protect people who perform goodness, who show
up to work, who make eye contact and say the
right things. We ignore red flags because we don't want
to believe danger can smile at us from the pharmacy counter.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
And yet he admitted to being there. That loan should
have triggered more scrutiny. If a suspect says I was
on the trail and then a double homicide happens on
the trail, you don't just write that down and move on.
You triangulate, verify, and act.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
But that's the psychological fallout, right. We want danger to
be obvious, We want monsters to look the part, but
most predators they wear khakis, they pay their taxes, they
mow the lines and blend in. And it's not just
about this one case. This happens across the board. Look
at how predators manipulate social trust, clergy, coaches, teachers, it's
(40:48):
the same pattern. Present is helpful, create a shield of
normalcy and isolate the vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
And law enforcement can fall for that too, because bias
runs deep even among professionals.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Absolutely, and let's not forget the trauma of living that
double life for the predator, sure, but also the people
around him who suddenly realize they never really knew who
they were living with, or trusting or working along side.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
That's where predictive behavioral profiling could have helped in some departments.
Now AI tools and psychological modeling are used to flag
people whose behavioral patterns show signs of escalation before they act.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
But let's be careful here too, because tech isn't neutral.
Predictive profiling can also reinforce bias, especially against marginalized communities.
We need nuance tools that are trauma informed and not
just data driven.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
It comes down to balance. We need better tools, but
we also need better people behind those tools. People training
to recognize when something feels.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Off, even if it looks polished.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
And on the other side, we need to talk about
why someone like Alan would double life himself into a
killer that doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's often shame, suppression,
rage without direction. Sometimes people snap because they've been pretending
for so long they forget who they actually are.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
And that's where I think true crime has power, not
just to tell these stories, but to teach. What Delphi
teaches us is that evil doesn't always knock. Sometimes it
lets itself in and smiles politely while it waits.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
And we keep asking how did no one see it?
The better question is what are we still refusing to see? Now?
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Up next, we open the floor, listener reactions, your theories,
and one final verdict.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
And a bonus question for you all, What does safety
actually look like if it doesn't look like the person
we've been told to trust.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
There's something about the Delphi case that sticks, not just
because of what happened, but how it happened and what
didn't happen fast enough to stop it. As a former cop,
I see the missed opportunities. I see the sketch blunders,
unresearched tips, the failures to connect digital dots. But more
than that, I see a pattern that stretches back decades.
(43:25):
We've seen this before, when Ted Bundy was bouncing between states,
when Israel Keys buried kill kits like he was prepping
for doomsday. When Dennis Raider typed reports at city hall
and murdered families after work. Each time the system lagged
behind the predator. Each time, we said never again. But
(43:46):
the tools change faster than the training, the predators adapt
faster than protocols, and so the real question becomes how
many more Delphis are waiting in the gaps, in places
where good intentions aren't enough, and we're silence is still
safer than action.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
And that's the part that keeps me up at night,
because from a sociological standpoint, the scariest thing about predators
like this isn't just what they do, it's how well
they hide while doing it. They don't announce themselves. They
build trust, They bake castle roles, they remember your kid's birthday.
They know the rules of the social game, and they
(44:27):
play them better than anyone else. And that's what makes
these cases so hard to process, because the danger doesn't
look like danger. It looks like normal, It looks like friendly.
It looks like the guy next to you in.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Church or behind the pharmacy counter.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Right, And as a culture will not good at holding
both truths at once. That someone can seem kind and
also be capable of unimaginable harm. So we bury the discomfort.
We turn away. We say he didn't seem like the type,
and we forget that there is no type. There's only opportunity,
(45:07):
and silence creates that opportunity each and every time.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Stay tuned for more of the guilty files. We'll be
right back after these messages, which is why I keep
going back to the systems, Because while we can't control
people's secrets, we can design systems that make it harder
for those secrets to hide, Stronger interagency communication, better public transparency,
(45:34):
real time tip tracking that flags repeat names. We have
the technology, The question is whether we have.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
The will to use.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
It and whether we have the courage to say something
when something feels wrong, even if the person in question
doesn't fit the profile we've been trained to expect.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
So here's my challenge to you, our listeners.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
If you work in law enforcement, what outdated system are
you still depending on? What protocol do you know is
broken but haven't said out loud? Because this case should
be your wake up call?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
And here's mine. What does your gut say about the
people around you? But you keep dismissing it because they're nice,
because they're respected, because they do everything rights in public?
And deeper still, how many red flags have you explained
away in your own life because the alternative was too
(46:29):
uncomfortable to admit?
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Because predators count on that discomfort. They depend on the pause,
the hesitation.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
And every second you spend doubting yourself is a second
they're still free.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
So we want to hear from you. Drop us a
message dm us on Instagram, email us. This isn't just
an episode it's an open file, and we want your
voice in it.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Tell us what's the red flag you ignored once and
never forgot, or what kind of normal are we still
mistaking for safety. We'll feature some of your responses and
our upcoming listener segment, and we might even take a
few of you behind the curtain on Patreon.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Because these aren't just stories, they're warnings, lessons, maps, and
maybe invitations to pay attention a little closer than we
did last time.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
That's it for this week's case file, libby Jerman Abigail
Williams the Delphi Murders. We've cracked it open across three episodes,
from the facts to the fiction, from the failures to
the fallout. And if you stuck with us all week,
you didn't just listen to a story, you unraveled it
with us.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
From the uncovered case file on Monday to rewireds deep
Dive on Wednesday to today's Raw and unfiltered Revisited. I
think we've done justice to the complexity, the tragedy and
the chilling silence that followed those two girls into the woods.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
But we'll not just here to tell stories, well here
to ask questions, to challenge what we think we know
to hold space for the messy middle. So before we go,
let's leave you with one more a question we want
you to answer here.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
It is, what do you think justice looks like when
it finally shows up years too late?
Speaker 3 (48:20):
Is it enough? Does it matter?
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Or is it already broken by the time it gets there.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
I've been thinking about that all week, and here's where
I land. Justice isn't always a verdict. Sometimes it's a
community refusing to forget. Other times it's two girls who
recorded a killer so they couldn't be erased. And sometimes
it's people like you listening, questioning and making damn sure
(48:47):
these stories don't disappear into silence.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
I couldn't have said it any better. And speaking of stories,
we're not done. We're opening up another case file that
turns everything sideways. A case where facts seems simple until
they don't.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
A cover up, maybe occults, possibly a crime with too
much evidence and not enough answers.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Definitely, So subscribe now, Tell a friend. Join us on
Patreon if you want add free episodes bonus content.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
If you're listening on Apple podcasts, hit that subscribe button
and become a detective. You get early access all the
extras and are eternal love.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Until next time.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
I'm Brian, reminding you that the truth doesn't mind being questioned,
but lies hate exposure.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
And I'm Danny. I'll keep asking the uncomfortable questions so
you don't have to scream into the void alone. This
has been the Guilty Files revisited good Night in it
Welcome to The Guilty Files, a podcast that rips the
story open, one crime, two hosts, and truths that don't
fit neatly into the box. It's messy, it's real, and
it's all on the table. Now let's open this week's file.
(00:50):
You're listening to The Guilty Files Revisited. I'm Brian and
I'm Danny. Today we're opening a case that shattered to town,
defined it generation of armchair detectives, and left the world
holding its breath for justice.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well talking about the Delphi Murders, the twenty seventeen double
homicide of Abigail Williams and Liberty German, two best friends
thirteen and fourteen years old, who went out for a
walk on an abandoned railway bridge and the woods of Delphi, Indiana,
and never came home.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
This wasn't just a tragedy. It was a system failure,
a community trauma, and a long game of silence, speculation,
and eventually a suspect.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And it's one of the rare cases where the victims
left us a clue. Libby had the presence of mind
to hit record. That moment might be the most haunting
act of courage we've ever seen. In a case file.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
In this episode, we're doing what we always do, pulling
apart the crime, the response, and the ripples, from the
procedural breakdowns to the psychological scars, from how a killer
hides in plain sight.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
To two young girls tried to leave a trail in
the woods when the adults failed to protect them.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
This isn't just a recap. This is where the gloves
truly come.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Off, where the badge comes off.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And where the truth gets unfiltered.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Welcome to the guilty Files revisited. Let's open the Delphi
file all right. Before we go full dark mode on
the Delphi case, let's ease in with this week's round
of Two Truths and a Crime. The game where I
hit Brian with three statements and he has to guess
which one is the impostor.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Ooh, I love this game.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
It's the only time I get to accuse someone of
lying without doing any paperwork.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
You say that, like paperwork wasn't your love language.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
I do love a well formatted report. Don't judge me,
all right, hit me, I'm ready. Let's go the Delphi edition.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
You know it. These are all things said, rumored, or
documented at some point in connection to the Delphi murders.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Ready born, Ready.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Okay, here we go. Number one, one of the original
sketches of the suspect, was based on a psychic's description.
Number two, a local man falsely confessed to the murders
while tripping on meth. And number three, Richard Allen, the
man now charged in the case, was interviewed by police
back in twenty and seventeen and basically told them he
(03:24):
was on the bridge that day.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Okay, wow, that is a trifecta of chaos.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
To be sure, the.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Psychic angle sounds like something that would get whispered over
casse roles.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
At a church fundraiser.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
The meth confession sadly entirely plausible in the Midwest.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
True and Alan.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Delling cops he was at the scene in twenty seventeen.
That feels like a planted twist in a Netflix script,
but also exactly the kind of real world failure that
drives me absolutely insane.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
You got a lock in a choice, counselor all right.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I'm gonna go with number one. The psychic details sound
to Scooby Doo.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
That's my final answer.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Sorry, partner. That one is actually true, Well, at least
according to an internal leak from early in the investigation.
They allegedly followed up on a psychics description for one
of the early sketches. You're kidding me, Nope, But the
fake one was the meth confession. That one's not part
of this case, but it has happened in others. You
(04:25):
were right to think it was believable, though, and that's
the problem.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
See, this is why I have blood pressure issues. We've
got police chasing psychics and a suspect telling you he
was on the bridge and no one followed up for
five years. I need some smelling salts in a legal pat.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
To be fair, The suspect did admit to being there,
but it was brushed off because he said he was
just watching the fish.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
I mean, I've seen a lot of strange behavior on
walking trails, but that ranks up there with I was
just bird watching during the broabery.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
All right, listen, as we want to hear from you,
which one would you have picked as the lie? Head
over to our Instagram stories or drop your verdict in
the comments on this episode post. And if you've heard
any weird rumors, conspiracy theories, or psychic sketches floating around
this case, send them in, you might end up on
our bonus patroons segment.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Remember, in this court room, the audience is the jury,
and so far I'm losing my appeal stick around.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Up next, we're going to crack open what this case
really did to the town of Delphi and why two
girls walking in the woods left the whole country on edge.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
On February thirteenth, twenty seventeen, in Delphi, Indiana, population around
three thousand, a town where everyone knows your name and
your business, two best friends, Liberty German and Abigail Williams,
ask for a lift to the Monon High Bridge trail.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
It was a Monday. They had no school that day.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
They planned to take some photos, hang out, walk the
trail like dozens of other kids had done before them.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
They never came home.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Their bodies were found the next day, just a short
hike from the bridge. The scene was described as odd, staged,
and ritualistic, though details remained sealed. In part to this
very day. And here's the thing, Libby just fourteen recorded
the man suspected of murdering them, caught his voice, got
his image down the hill. That gravel voiced line became
(06:28):
the haunting refrain of this case, a SoundBite that traveled
the globe, and yet no arrest made for more than
five years. The man now facing trial, Richard Allen, was
interviewed by the police back in twenty seventeen. He admitted
to being there, said he was watching the fish, and
for five years that wasn't enough to raise alarms.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I mean, imagine confessing to being at the scene of
a double homicide as it was happening and still going
home to make dinner. Real this case is terrifying, not
because it's rare, but because it's recognizable. Two girls, daylight,
a public trial, no drugs, no party, no wrong crowd,
(07:11):
just two kids who thoughts they were safe. And that's
what hits hardest, because if it can happen to them,
then frankly, it could happen to any of us. These
girls were smart, Libby had a gut feeling something was wrong.
She recorded her killer. That's not just evidence, that's bravery,
that's trauma in real time. And it still took years
(07:33):
to turn into an arrest. And the man they arrested,
he worked at the local CVS, processed family prescriptions, smiled
at the counter, even went home to his wife.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Lived two miles from the crime scene, no priors, no
trail of violence, just a name buried in an old tip.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Log, which is what makes this case more than just
a murder. It's a mirror of the systems we rely
on and how often they may fell us of how
predators don't just hide in shadows, they blend into our routines.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
We're going to dig into that today.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
We're going to talk about the sketch controversy, the law
enforcement missteps, the evidence, the silence, and Wyatt took so
long to bring charges.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And I'm going to pull us into the heart of
this case, not the crime scene, but the people Libby Abbey,
their families, their town, how the trauma of their loss
reshaped an entire community, and how that fear and heartbreak
played out on every front porch and every Facebook post
in Delphi.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
There's also the question to what happens next, because Richard
Allen's trial that's a powder keg, and the longer the fuse,
the more the pressure builds.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
We're also going to talk about who we become when
justice is delayed, what that does to victims, families, and
even investigators.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
So whether you're here for the facts the forend, or
the failures in between.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Or the heartbreak, the psychology and the hard truth.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
We're going there.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
There's something about a small town that makes you believe
in safety by default. Delphi, Indiana, wasn't just small. It
was stitched together by routine. People said hello at the
gas station. Teachers lived next door to their own students,
the kind of place where the loudest thing on Monday
afternoon was the sound of someone's screen door.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
And that's what.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Makes the Delphi case so devastating, because this didn't happen
in a dark alleyway or during a party or after curfew.
It happened at two o'clock in the afternoon in the
woods on a hiking trail. The whole town had walked.
The killer didn't break into the town, he was already inside.
What happened to Libby and Abbey didn't just tear apart
(09:51):
two families. It shattered the social contract. Delphi was built on,
the one that says we look out for each other,
the one that assumes e evil is something elsewhere, a
city thing, a stranger thing.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
It exposed the myth that safety is something we can see.
I keep thinking about that two kids just out enjoying
a day off from school. They weren't sneaking around, they
weren't pushing limits. They were just being girls, laughing, taking pictures,
being free. But when you're a woman, freedom always comes
with conditions. When you're a girl, it comes with risk.
(10:26):
What really haunts me is this. They weren't just in
the wrong place at the wrong time. They were in
the right place at the right time, and someone else
turned that into a crime scene. And the fallout wasn't
just grief, It was fear, collective, disorienting, generational fear. Suddenly
(10:47):
every parent in Delphi looked at their kids differently, Every
teacher felt exposed. It's not just the girls who lost
their innocence that day. Everyone did right.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
You know, I've worked in youth detention, managed high risk facilities,
and I've seen the impact trauma has on communities when
kids commit crimes. But this, this was something else. This
was trauma inflicted on children, and it broke the spine
of the town DELFI didn't know how to recover, because
how do you explain to your kid that evil wears khakis,
(11:20):
works retail and lives two miles down the road, that
safety isn't about where we are, It's about who's watching you.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And let's be real, this wasn't a town equipped for
that kind of darkness. It's not just that they were
unprepared procedurally, they were unprepared emotionally. No one had the vocabulary,
no one had the tools for collective grief. So what happened.
People turned to Facebook. Rumors took the place of facts.
(11:48):
Conspiracies stepped in where comfort should have.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Been, and that becomes its own kind of poison. You
start suspecting your neighbor, You stop letting your kids ride
their bike. You check your security cams three times at night,
because once the monster reveals himself and then disappears, every
shadow starts to look just like cam.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And here's the thing I keep coming back to. Libby
and Abby weren't just victims. They were symbols not of weakness,
but of how damn vulnerable we all are when the
people in charge don't act fast enough. This case turned
that town inside out. Parents didn't just become over protective,
they became investigators themselves. Children became witnesses. The bridge became
(12:36):
a crime scene and a shrine.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
It became sacred ground in a way.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, and that's the heartbreak of it, because it means
two teenage girls had to die before anyone realized Delphi
wasn't safe, not because it was broken, but because it
was naive.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
We were romanticize small towns in this country. We build
TV shows around them, Friday Night Lights, Gilmore Girls. But
the truth is small towns carried just as much darkness
as anywhere.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Else until it shows up on your hiking trail.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
And until two kids don't come home.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Libby and Abbey deserved better, not just in those final moments,
but long before that. They deserved a world where a
man like that couldn't walk among them for five years
without being stopped.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
They deserve systems that saw them as worth protecting, and
towns that didn't have to learn that lesson the hard way.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
And now we all carry that lesson, whether we wanted
to or not.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Coming up, we're going to dig into the tactical side
of this case, the terrain, the decision making, the bravery
it took for one teenage girl to hit record.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
And how the bridge to Nowhere became a place where
a killer thought he could vanish and where two girls
may damn sure he didn't.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
The monon High Bridge is over sixty feet tall, and
it doesn't have rails. It's a and in rotting spine
of steel. Strategically, it's the perfect place to isolate your victims.
One way in, one way out. Richard Allen used the
terrain like a weapon.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
And Libby knew. She felt it. You can hear it
in that audio clip. She didn't scream, she hit record.
And that's not just smart, its instinct. It's survival, and
it gave us the only known evidence from the scene
because no one else was watching.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
The bridge was supposed to be scenic, it became surgical,
and that transformation beauty turned battlefield still haunts this town.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
The girls walked into a trap disguised as nostalgia. That's
what sticks with me.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
All Right, we're.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
About to talk about the sketches, because if there's one
piece of this case that symbolizes confusion, breakdown and public mistrust,
this is it. In twenty seventeen, law enforcement releases the
first composite aged man go tee heavy set wearing that
infamous bridge Guy outfit. People start printing flyers, sharing it
(15:08):
on social media. Kids hang the posters in their lockers.
Some folks even tattooed the face on their bodies. Then
two years later, in twenty nineteen, they throw out the
first sketch entirely and release.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
A second one.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And this new suspect looks like you just got cut
from a college indie band. Stay tuned for more of
the guilty files. We'll be right back after these messages.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Brian, the second guy looked like he left band practice
to go commit a double homicide. And I mean, if
the first sketch was your weird uncle who doesn't talk
at Thanksgiving, the second was your ex boyfriend who reads
chemists but can't hold.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
A job, poetic and terrifying.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Here's the problem.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Law enforcement never clarified clearly why.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
They made the pivot.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
The public wasn't told, hey, this is the same guy,
just younger, or we're looking at two persons of interest. No,
they just said, disregard the first sketch. And you can't
just pull the rug out from under someone. After two
years of asking people to treat Sketch number one like.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
It's gospel, exactly, you gave people a face to fear,
a face to hate. They memorized it, some of them
obsessed over it, and then you tell them oops new face,
and you give them zero closure on the first one.
That's not investigative evolution, that's emotional whiplash.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Not to mention it creates chaos and tip response. You
now have two different pools of eyewitnesses trying to identify
two entirely different men. How many legitimate leads got buried
under confusion because people were second guessing their instincts.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
And let's talk about what that does to the community's trust.
You've got grieving families clinging to those sketches. You've got
teachers warning their students. You've got women walking into Walmart
thinking they've just seen the killer because his face matches
the one on the bulletin board. And then just like that,
you tell them never mind.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
It's a procedural misstep with real consequences. I've said it
before and I'll say it again. If you're going to
release a sketch, especially in a case this public, you
better make damn sure you can stand by it.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
And the real story here, the part that chills me
is what it says about how memory works under trauma.
Witnesses are notoriously unreliable and in stress time, pressure from
law enforcement and Suddenly you'll not describing a suspect, You'll
reconstructing a ghost.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
That's exactly it.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It's human nature to fill in the blanks, especially when
we need a face to blame.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
And that's the dangerous part, because this wasn't just about
finding the killer. This was about managing public emotion. The
sketches became symbols. People projected their need for justice on
too those faces.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
You want to know how powerful that first sketch was.
When Richard Allen was arrested and they say he kind
of resembles the second sketch, the public lost their minds
because he looked nothing like the second one.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
He looked like the.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
First, And suddenly all that pent up mistrust exploded. People
were like, wait, you mean we were right the first time,
and you made us doubt that for years.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
That loss of credibility doesn't just hurt the case, it
sets back trust in every case after it.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
It tells people we don't really know what we're doing
and we're not going to explain why.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And in a small town that's enough to start wars
between neighbors.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Brian, I can tell you how many people I've talked
to who say they still scan every man's face they
pass in the grocery store, at school functions, they're carrying
around both sketches in their heads like a rolodex of fear.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
And that's not paranoia. That's a community that has become
its own surveillance system, because when law enforcement confuses the public,
they turn inward.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
And I get it, I really do. But the thing
that breaks my heart is that the sketches could have
helped if they just told the truth about them.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Or even just admitted that they were uncertain. Transparency goes
further than forced certainty.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
You want the public to stay engaged, you don't feed
them a face and yank it away. You bring them
into the process. You tell them this is where we are,
this is what we know, and yeah, it might change.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Because you're not just managing an investigation, you're managing hope.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So here's the takeaway. Those sketches weren't just bad police work.
They were emotional landmines. And Delphi's still walking through that field.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
And some people never stopped looking for the wrong man.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Coming up, We ask the question no one wants to hear,
the answer to how does someone walk into the woods
murder two kids and then go home to dinner like
nothing happened. Next up, let's discuss the layers to law
enforcement and the fact that too many can cause a
strategic nightmare.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Let me be blunt here.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
This case had too many fucking badges, not enough communication.
Local police, state police, FBI. Every agency meant well. But
when everyone's steering, the car goes in circles.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And that makes the beat cops, the ones actually walking
the streets feel paralyzed. I've been there, waiting on word
from higher ups while families are losing their minds. You
feel like you're wearing the uniform, but no one gave
you a weapon.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And worse, Allan's twenty seventeen interviews slipped through those cracks.
He literally told police he was on the trail that day.
That should have been a huge red flag. Instead it
was buried under bureaucracy.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
It's like watching someone fumble the ball at the one
yard line over and over and over. Next, let's discuss
profiling the predator.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Assuming Richard Allen is guilty, We're not talking about a
drifter or a transient. We're talking about someone employed, married, stable.
That's what makes this kind of predator so insiduous. He functions,
he adapts. We're not talking about some drifter living in
the woods. We're talking about a man who held down
(21:25):
a job, smiled at his neighbors, processed your prescriptions at CVS.
He blended in so well that even after admitting he
was on the trail the day of the murders, he
was still overlooked. That's not just disturbing, that is efficient predation.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
That's the monster, and Khaki's exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And in criminal profiling, that's one of the most dangerous types,
the ones who don't look deviant, no drug history, no
rap sheet. They're not spiraling out, they're spiraling in quietly, methodically.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Because what they crave isn't chaos, it's control, and control
looks different depending on who's watching. To the outside world,
he's just a guy with a normal life, But inside
there's a narrative playing out that no one else sees.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
That internal narrative is what we often miss. In law enforcement.
We're trained to look at escalation, domestic violence, calls, animal cruelty,
prior assaults. But these kind of predators don't escalate publicly.
They escalate psychologically, and they rehearse, Yes, they rehearse in fantasy.
(22:39):
In secrecy, they construct a scenario in their minds and
refine it until reality is just a final performance.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
And by the time they act, it's not impulsive. It's scripted.
And that's what gives meat chills about the Delphi case.
He didn't just stumble upon those girls. He selected the term,
He leveraged its isolation, and he approached from a blind spot.
He gave direct verbal commands. This was a performance of.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Power in the setting the Monon high Bridge trail. Limited visibility,
difficult access, no surveillance, no fast exit for the victims,
but plenty of escape for someone who knew the woods.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
You want to know what really terrifies me about guys
like this, It's that they live these quiet, obedient public
lives and they weaponize normalcy.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
We used to call it masking back in youth corrections.
I had a kid who could give a therapist the
perfect answers in any session, then stab someone twenty minutes
later in the yard. They knew how to perform stability.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Because manipulation isn't always aggressive. Sometimes it's charming, sometimes it's boring.
The man who hugs his wife or go to work
cracks a joke at the register. That man can still
walk into the woods and commit something unspeakable.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
And when he comes out, he can switch it off.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Which means the real horror isn't just the crime. It's
how many people looked him in the eye after it
happened and never saw a thing.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
And that's not on them, that's on us, on systems
we've built to profile behavior based on visibility, not psychology.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Because we still want killers to look like monsters, but
most of them they look like us.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's the Gacy effect. Everyone remembers the clown, but he
also ran a business, hosted barbecues, took photos with senators.
You don't expect evil to make eye contact.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
But it does every day. That's what makes this so terrifying,
because this case isn't just about what he did. It's
about what we didn't see.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
It's about our systems and how our instincts fail when
someone doesn't fit the mold.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
So if you want a profile of this predator, don't
look for rage, look for ritual. Look for someone who
needed the illusion of a perfect life just long enough
to take someone else's.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
And once the performance ends, the audience is left with
a crime scene and silence.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Next up. How do you investigate someone who doesn't leave
a trail, or worse, one who tells you exactly where
he was and you miss it.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Here's the hard truth. Richard Allen didn't slip through the cracks.
He walked through them because the cracks were wide open,
built into the system itself, and Delphi the tech didn't
fail the case.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
The mindset did.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
We think of a ghost as someone who disappears, But
what if the ghost is the guy you already talked
to and didn't recognize. Alan told police he was on
the trail the day the girls died. He said it casually,
like it didn't matter, and they let him go because
there was no urgency to cross reference tips, no pressure
(26:10):
to vet repeat names, no system that said, hey, this
guy's story keeps circulating the perimeter.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
It wasn't about lacking resources, It was about lacking reflexes.
Law enforcement got flooded with tips, sure, but no one
thought to build a framework for catching the ones that mattered.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
It's like trying to find a fingerprint and a thunderstorm
with your eyes closed.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
And this is what we don't say enough. The longer
a suspect like this exists in the white noise. The
more confident he gets, the more silent he becomes.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Because nothing teaches a predator how to stay invisible like
watching the entire system look right through him. Next up,
we ask whether justice delayed, is justice denied, or if
this case still has time to get it right.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
All right, So let's talk about this five year gap,
that chasm between the murders and Richard Allen's arrest. From
a procedural standpoint, the delay is catastrophic. Evidence degrades, memories
get muddy, eyewitnesses move or even die, and any prosecutor
will tell you the longer you wait, the harder it
(27:22):
is to control the narrative. The defense has more room
to maneuver, the public gets restless, and the margin for
air shrinks fast.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
And emotionally, it's a hostage situation. The families weren't grieving,
they were waiting, waiting and grieving, which is like being
asked to hold your breath under water while crying. There's
no closure, there's no clean wound, just five years of
unanswered questions and birthdays with empty chairs.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
And now the trial itself is a mine field. Public
opinion is volatile, the evidence is old, The sketches don't match,
and the prosecution's going to have to explain why a
man who confessed to being at the scene was allowed
to blend back into civilian life for half a decade.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Meanwhile, the families are stuck hoping the system doesn't mess
this part up too again.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
And let's be real, if the trial collapses under the
weight of its own delays, dil Phi doesn't just lose justice,
it loses faith in every uniform, in every badge.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
It's the kind of collapse that rewrites how a town
sees law enforcement forever. It doesn't matter how hard everyone
worked behind the scenes. What the families remember is what
didn't happen for years.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
That's the question hanging over this trial. Is justice still
justice when it shows up half a decade late, bruised
and missing pieces.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
About to find out coming up how technology helped expose
the killer and how badly it could have helped sooner.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
In order cases, we've talked about footprints and mud, tire tracks,
blood spatter, But in twenty seventeen, Libby Jerman's cell phone
was the crime scene that recording those images. Those are
her fingerprints on the investigation. Her phone captured the killer's
voice her instinct became the cornerstone of this case, and
(29:27):
yet it still took five years to put a name
to the man in the clip.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
That's the irony of our time. We have the tech,
we just don't know how to use it when it
matters most right.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
The forensic toolbox has expanded geolocation data, metadata tagging, search histories,
device pings, but the infrastructure to handle all that, especially
in a small town and a small town department, still
catching up.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
And the training, let's not forget that part. You can
hand some one a microscope, but if they don't know
what bacteria looks like, it's just a piece of glass.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Stay tuned for more of the guilty files. We'll be
right back after these messages. That phone should have been
the first red flag. Alan admitted he was there. If
they had had the right systems in place, Libby's phone
data could have been cross referenced with his location immediately.
(30:25):
Her voice sat in a digital drawer while the killer
kept clocking in at CVS.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
You know what haunts me? That phone, the one Libby
used to capture the image of her murderer. It probably
set on her nightstand for years before that. It took selfies,
It recorded dances, captured a life and progress, and then
in her final moments, she turned it into a weapon.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
A digital witness.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yeah, and maybe the only one that never looked away.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
It's a lesson in modern justice, sometimes the most important
testimony from pixels, not people.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
But it also raises the question how many other victims
leave behind digital footprints that no one ever follows up on?
Speaker 1 (31:10):
And the longer departments rely on outdated systems or undertrained analysts,
the more likely it is those trails just disappear into
the cloud.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
This case reminds us that the killer wasn't the only
one hiding, and plain sight the evidence was too. Next,
we go back to the beginning, the bridge, the moment
and the girls who didn't just die, they fought.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Let's stop talking about Libby and Abbey like they were
passive victims, because they weren't. These were kids, yes, but
in their final moments they were also fighters. And what
Libby did, pulling out her phone, hitting record, capturing her
killer's voice and image, that wasn't luck. That was instinct,
(31:57):
and in law enforcement, instinct is what separate rates survival
from tragedy.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
And she didn't freeze, She didn't panic, she documented. That's
next level awareness. Under pressure, most adults would collapse. That
girl had guts.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
We can train officers to respond under threat with control
and precision. She was fourteen, no training, no badge, no backup,
and she still managed to leave behind the most critical
evidence in the entire case.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
And that tells you everything, because what we're dealing with
here isn't just courage, it's clarity. She knew, she felt it.
You don't hit record unless something inside you says this
might be the only way someone finds us.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
And it worked. Years later, it's still the cornerstone of
the prosecution. Libby gave us the voice, the gait, the
grainy image in a jacket in jeans. She left a map,
however cryptic for law enforcement to follow.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
That's not just resistance, that's legacy. And I want to
say this out loud and clear. We don't talk enough
about what it means to fight back when your options
are taken away. These girls, they weren't armed, they weren't trained,
they were cornered, but one of them thought, I'm going
to leave something behind. That is resistance, That is rage,
(33:26):
that is love.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
It changed the case. But more than that, It changed
the country, It shifted how law enforcement approached social media.
Maybe an Abbey forced apartments to realize sometimes your first
responder is the victim themselves.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
We think about true crime as this dark spiral of
loss and failure, and yeah, it often is. But this moment,
this choice that Libby made, it reminds me that even
in the most horrifying stories, there's still opportunity to fight.
There's still They weren't just the del Phi girls. They
(34:03):
were daughters, sisters, students, and in the end, they're the
reason this case never truly went cold. They didn't give up,
so we don't get to either. We keep going, We
keep asking the hard questions. We stay loud when the
world wants us to get quiet, because.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
That's the job now, not just ours as former cops,
but ours as people, as a community.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
We owe libbyan Abbey that much. All right, it's time
to give your brain and ours a breather. But don't
put away your suspicious minds, not just yet. This week
we're playing around of what's more suspicious, the game where
I throw out too weird, questionable, or downright shady behaviors
and Brian has to choose which one raises more red flax.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Oh I love this already.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It's like training day meets game night.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Okay, first one, Delphi flavored. What's more suspicious a grown
watching the fish on a hiking trail or someone changing
their entire facial hair situation right after becoming a person
of interest in a double homicide.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Easy facial hair change, that's the number one move in
our old crap. They might be looking for me, playbook
you shave it, grow it, bleach it. You're trying to
outrun a composite sketch with grooming products.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Correct. And also, who watches fish standing alone on an
abandoned bridge with no fishing rod, no cooler, and no
visible will to live?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
You forgot no bait and no friends?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Okay, next one, what's more suspicious Someone who never posts
on social media has zero online footprint and doesn't even lurk.
Or someone who's a little too eager to insert themselves
into every town Facebook group about the case.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Oh boy, that's a tough one, but I'm going to
go with the Facebook sleuth. That's textbook insert yourself into
the narrative behavior. History is full of killers who hovered
around investigations like mauves around a porch light.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Right, it's giving please notice me, but not too much energy.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Though, I will say the zero digital footprint guy, that's
getting harder to explain. And at this point, if you
don't exist online at all, I assume you've either got
something to hide or you were raised by wolves in
a bunker, or are you planning something exactly everyone's online.
If you're not, it's probably on purpose.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Guilty as charged, all right, last one, what's more suspicious
a man who owns a creepy, cluttered shed in the
woods or a man who owns a shed that's too clean,
with perfect organization, labeled bends and a single empty cooler
just waiting.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Okay, have you met me hands down the clean shed?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah. One of those was like you and camouflage, and
the other one was me mm hm.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Mess is normal. Mess is human, but meticulous. That's where
you find the trophy drawers, the sterile workspaces, the planning.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
There's no chaos to heighten. That's calculated evil, you.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Know, all jokes aside.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Those what ifs are the same instincts investigators have to
work with in real time. It's not just about the facts,
it's about pattern disruption exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
It's about learning to trust your gut and being willing
to ask the uncomfortable question, what if it's someone we know?
Speaker 1 (37:40):
And what if the thing we've been dismissing is the
very thing we should have paid attention to.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
More on that and the legacy this case leaves behind
coming up next, when we tackle the modern, parallel and
relevance of this week's case file.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Let's talk about how this case doesn't just live in
the past, because the truth is DELFI isn't just a
crime scene. It's a mirror, a reflection of where we've
been and where we still are when it comes to
crime solving, tech and the justice system. Had the same
crime occurred today with the resources we've got in twenty
(38:16):
twenty five, it could have looked very different. Start with technology, bodycams,
license plate readers, real time data sharing between departments, digital
forensic tools powered by AI that can identify behavioral anomalies.
Biby's phone might have been enough to match Richard Allen's
voice to a database. Geotracking could have triangulated multiple overlapping
(38:39):
tips and zeroed in on in before the second sketch
was even necessary.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
And yet here, we are still struggling to use the
tools we do have because of slow policy, outdated training,
or worse, just a lack of urgency until a body
shows up.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
That's why communication between departments is critical. One centralized hub
for data, no more siloed case files. Delphi could have
been the catalyst for a nationwide update and how missing
persons and.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Tips are tracked. But we're still behind.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
And the longer we stay behind, the more space we
leave for people like this to keep moving in plain sight.
Because this wasn't just a failure of systems, it was
a failure of expectation. Everyone thought he doesn't look like
a threat, clean cut, married, friendly, and that's exactly why
he got away with it.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
That's the part we can't teach in a training manual,
how to trust your gut when the guy handing you
your medication might also be hiding something horrific.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Right, because we still don't know how to see beyond
this mask of normal. That's not just a procedural issue,
that's cultural. We protect people who perform goodness, who show
up to work, who make eye contact and say the
right things. We ignore red flags because we don't want
to believe danger can smile at us from the pharmacy counter.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
And yet he admitted to being there. That loan should
have triggered more scrutiny. If a suspect says I was
on the trail and then a double homicide happens on
the trail, you don't just write that down and move on.
You triangulate, verify, and act.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
But that's the psychological fallout, right. We want danger to
be obvious, We want monsters to look the part, but
most predators they wear khakis, they pay their taxes, they
mow the lines and blend in. And it's not just
about this one case. This happens across the board. Look
at how predators manipulate social trust, clergy, coaches, teachers, it's
(40:48):
the same pattern. Present is helpful, create a shield of
normalcy and isolate the vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
And law enforcement can fall for that too, because bias
runs deep even among professionals.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Absolutely, and let's not forget the trauma of living that
double life for the predator, sure, but also the people
around him who suddenly realize they never really knew who
they were living with, or trusting or working along side.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
That's where predictive behavioral profiling could have helped in some departments.
Now AI tools and psychological modeling are used to flag
people whose behavioral patterns show signs of escalation before they act.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
But let's be careful here too, because tech isn't neutral.
Predictive profiling can also reinforce bias, especially against marginalized communities.
We need nuance tools that are trauma informed and not
just data driven.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
It comes down to balance. We need better tools, but
we also need better people behind those tools. People training
to recognize when something feels.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Off, even if it looks polished.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
And on the other side, we need to talk about
why someone like Alan would double life himself into a
killer that doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's often shame, suppression,
rage without direction. Sometimes people snap because they've been pretending
for so long they forget who they actually are.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
And that's where I think true crime has power, not
just to tell these stories, but to teach. What Delphi
teaches us is that evil doesn't always knock. Sometimes it
lets itself in and smiles politely while it waits.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
And we keep asking how did no one see it?
The better question is what are we still refusing to see? Now?
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Up next, we open the floor, listener reactions, your theories,
and one final verdict.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
And a bonus question for you all, What does safety
actually look like if it doesn't look like the person
we've been told to trust.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
There's something about the Delphi case that sticks, not just
because of what happened, but how it happened and what
didn't happen fast enough to stop it. As a former cop,
I see the missed opportunities. I see the sketch blunders,
unresearched tips, the failures to connect digital dots. But more
than that, I see a pattern that stretches back decades.
(43:25):
We've seen this before, when Ted Bundy was bouncing between states,
when Israel Keys buried kill kits like he was prepping
for doomsday. When Dennis Raider typed reports at city hall
and murdered families after work. Each time the system lagged
behind the predator. Each time, we said never again. But
(43:46):
the tools change faster than the training, the predators adapt
faster than protocols, and so the real question becomes how
many more Delphis are waiting in the gaps, in places
where good intentions aren't enough, and we're silence is still
safer than action.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
And that's the part that keeps me up at night,
because from a sociological standpoint, the scariest thing about predators
like this isn't just what they do, it's how well
they hide while doing it. They don't announce themselves. They
build trust, They bake castle roles, they remember your kid's birthday.
They know the rules of the social game, and they
(44:27):
play them better than anyone else. And that's what makes
these cases so hard to process, because the danger doesn't
look like danger. It looks like normal, It looks like friendly.
It looks like the guy next to you in.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Church or behind the pharmacy counter.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Right, And as a culture will not good at holding
both truths at once. That someone can seem kind and
also be capable of unimaginable harm. So we bury the discomfort.
We turn away. We say he didn't seem like the type,
and we forget that there is no type. There's only opportunity,
(45:07):
and silence creates that opportunity each and every time.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Stay tuned for more of the guilty files. We'll be
right back after these messages, which is why I keep
going back to the systems, Because while we can't control
people's secrets, we can design systems that make it harder
for those secrets to hide, Stronger interagency communication, better public transparency,
(45:34):
real time tip tracking that flags repeat names. We have
the technology, The question is whether we have.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
The will to use.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
It and whether we have the courage to say something
when something feels wrong, even if the person in question
doesn't fit the profile we've been trained to expect.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
So here's my challenge to you, our listeners.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
If you work in law enforcement, what outdated system are
you still depending on? What protocol do you know is
broken but haven't said out loud? Because this case should
be your wake up call?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
And here's mine. What does your gut say about the
people around you? But you keep dismissing it because they're nice,
because they're respected, because they do everything rights in public?
And deeper still, how many red flags have you explained
away in your own life because the alternative was too
(46:29):
uncomfortable to admit?
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Because predators count on that discomfort. They depend on the pause,
the hesitation.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
And every second you spend doubting yourself is a second
they're still free.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
So we want to hear from you. Drop us a
message dm us on Instagram, email us. This isn't just
an episode it's an open file, and we want your
voice in it.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Tell us what's the red flag you ignored once and
never forgot, or what kind of normal are we still
mistaking for safety. We'll feature some of your responses and
our upcoming listener segment, and we might even take a
few of you behind the curtain on Patreon.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Because these aren't just stories, they're warnings, lessons, maps, and
maybe invitations to pay attention a little closer than we
did last time.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
That's it for this week's case file, libby Jerman Abigail
Williams the Delphi Murders. We've cracked it open across three episodes,
from the facts to the fiction, from the failures to
the fallout. And if you stuck with us all week,
you didn't just listen to a story, you unraveled it
with us.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
From the uncovered case file on Monday to rewireds deep
Dive on Wednesday to today's Raw and unfiltered Revisited. I
think we've done justice to the complexity, the tragedy and
the chilling silence that followed those two girls into the woods.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
But we'll not just here to tell stories, well here
to ask questions, to challenge what we think we know
to hold space for the messy middle. So before we go,
let's leave you with one more a question we want
you to answer here.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
It is, what do you think justice looks like when
it finally shows up years too late?
Speaker 3 (48:20):
Is it enough? Does it matter?
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Or is it already broken by the time it gets there.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
I've been thinking about that all week, and here's where
I land. Justice isn't always a verdict. Sometimes it's a
community refusing to forget. Other times it's two girls who
recorded a killer so they couldn't be erased. And sometimes
it's people like you listening, questioning and making damn sure
(48:47):
these stories don't disappear into silence.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
I couldn't have said it any better. And speaking of stories,
we're not done. We're opening up another case file that
turns everything sideways. A case where facts seems simple until
they don't.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
A cover up, maybe occults, possibly a crime with too
much evidence and not enough answers.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Definitely, So subscribe now, Tell a friend. Join us on
Patreon if you want add free episodes bonus content.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
If you're listening on Apple podcasts, hit that subscribe button
and become a detective. You get early access all the
extras and are eternal love.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Until next time.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
I'm Brian, reminding you that the truth doesn't mind being questioned,
but lies hate exposure.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
And I'm Danny. I'll keep asking the uncomfortable questions so
you don't have to scream into the void alone. This
has been the Guilty Files revisited good Night in it
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