Join History Uncovered in exploring the 2017 Delphi Murders of two teenage girls in small-town Indiana — and the chilling photographs that were left behind.
February 13, 2017 started out as a surprisingly warm winter day in the small town of Delphi, Indiana. But the events of that one day would shatter the sense of calm and safety that Delphi’s few thousand citizens had always enjoyed. That afternoon, 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German were out for a walk in the woods when they simply disappeared.
With the day off from school, the girls had decided to go for a hike through the Delphi Historic Trails. Libby’s older sister dropped them off near Monon High Bridge around 1 p.m. — and that was the last time anyone saw them alive.
At 2:07 p.m., Libby posted a photo to her Snapchat account showing Abby walking across the bridge. Just an hour later, Libby’s father arrived to pick the girls up, but they were nowhere to be found.
The town initially held out hope that the girls had merely wandered off the trails and gotten lost. Soon, however, a sense of unease began to ripple through the community.
Any sliver of hope vanished the next day when Abby and Libby’s remains were found. A volunteer search team discovered the girls about a half-mile from the bridge. Immediately, the town demanded answers — answers that have remained elusive to this day.
In the years since the girls turned up dead, investigators have released few details about what happened to Libby and Abby. But the girls left some chilling clues of their own. Libby recorded a brief and blurry video on her phone of a man walking toward them on the bridge just before they disappeared. She even managed to capture a man’s voice saying: “Down the hill.”
Twitter/@DiscoveryIDThe final photo of Abby Williams, taken by Libby German less than an hour before the girls disappeared.
Police believed that the man could be their killer. Over the years, they investigated several suspects, but they never found enough evidence to charge anyone with the deaths — until late 2022. Then, a pharmacy worker named Richard Allen was arrested for murder.
He’d first spoken with investigators about the murders in 2017, when he admitted that he’d been on the trail the day the girls disappeared. However, officers didn’t interview him again until October 2022 — after which they charged him in the deaths.
While in jail, Allen allegedly confessed to his wife over the phone that he had killed the two girls. Police also recovered a knife that they believe he used to stab Abby and Libby to death.
Allen will stand trial for the killings in January 2024, but until then, the exact circumstances surrounding the girls’ deaths are still unknown.
Learn more about the heartbreaking Delphi murders and the theories surrounding them.
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