logo
WATCH: Indiana man who killed girls on hike strikes defiant tone with police in new interrogation video

WATCH: Indiana man who killed girls on hike strikes defiant tone with police in new interrogation video

Yahoo26-04-2025
Recently released videos from 2022 show Richard Allen, the Indiana man convicted of killing two girls on a hiking trail in Delphi in 2017, denying he had any role in the crime when questioned by Indiana officials and his wife.
An Indiana judge in December 2024 sentenced Allen to a maximum of 130 years behind bars for the murders of 13-year-old Abigail "Abby" Williams and 14-year-old Liberty "Libby" German, also known as the Delphi murders.
A jury found Allen guilty of killing the two girls, who disappeared during their walk along the High Monon Trail Feb. 13, 2017. Investigators found them both brutally murdered the next day with their throats cut several times and sticks covering their bodies in a wooded area near the trail.
Delphi Murders Trial: Jury Reaches Verdict For Suspect Richard Allen After Deliberating For 4 Days
"It's sounding more like you're … I'm not going to be somebody's fall guy," Allen told investigators in an Oct. 13, 2022, interview video obtained by YouTuber Tom Webster and shared with Fox News Digital.
"I mean, it's been so long, and I haven't thought about this much, and it's just, like, I don't want to be someone's fall guy. And we're going to try to make pieces of a puzzle fit somewhere they don't fit so we can close this thing … and please don't think I'm questioning you're integrity."
Read On The Fox News App
The interview started out jovially when Allen entered the interrogation room with investigators and laughed along with them.
Allen was initially questioned in 2017 after the murders because he was on the High Monon Trail the day the girls went missing, but his name was scrubbed from the case due to a clerical error, journalist Áine Cain and Indiana-based attorney Kevin Greenlee, who co-host "The Murder Sheet" podcast, first reported.
Delphi Murders Suspect's Confessions To Wife, Mother Sounded 'Calm,' Expert Says: 'Not What I Expected'
Allen was arrested in 2022 after evidence led police to his home, where they found a gun matching an unspent bullet located at the crime scene and a blue jacket similar to the one a man was wearing in a video Libby took on the trail just before her disappearance. Allen's arrest took the Delphi community by surprise at the time because he was a longtime employee at a local CVS.
"I guess I'm starting to feel more like I'm your main lead here, and I'm not gonna do that," Allen told officials in the interview.
Delphi Murders Trial: 'Bridge Guy' Emerges As New Crime Scene Evidence Presented
He also took issue with police asking for permission to search his phones and other personal belongings.
Allen later says he and his wife watch "TV shows and stuff," and he doesn't "want to be associated with this thing more than anybody else does."
"Am I an angel of a person? No," Allen said. "I mean, I'm like anybody else. … Maybe I don't want you looking at every website I visited."
Throughout the interview, Allen can be seen playing with a water bottle, which he finishes about 40 to 50 minutes into the questioning.
He said he understood that police want "closure" for the families of the victims.
"We're here because we haven't found the guy that did this, and I'm not going to turn into that guy. … Like I said, we watch 'Dateline' every week. We watch everything, and … I mean, there's nothing that's going to tie me to it. I'm not worried about that, but to have people come and start searching my house and stuff. … I mean, my wife doesn't even know I'm talking to people," Allen said. "I don't want anyone to know I talked to you guys."
Delphi Murders Suspect Confessed To Killing 2 Girls On Hiking Trail In Small Town, Prison Doc Says
In a separate video obtained by Tom Webster and shared with Fox News Digital from Oct. 26, 2022, Allen denies the crime to his wife.
"They're trying to tell me you actually believe I did it, and I just can't believe that," Allen told his wife in the video. His wife responded that he was trying to figure out how his gun was linked to a bullet at the crime scene.
"I know you know I didn't do this," Allen said. "And I don't know what they're trying to do this, but I'm not going to say something that's not true, and I don't know how to explain something I don't understand. … There's no way a bullet from my gun ended up at a murder scene. I didn't murder anybody. I didn't help somebody murder anybody."
Allen added that he did not see Abby and Libby on the High Monon Trail Feb. 13, 2017, and he did not have his gun with him on the trail that day.
"They're not gonna get away with this," Allen says.
He repeatedly told his wife she knows him, and he knows her, and he does not understand how investigators found a bullet from his gun at the crime scene.
Sign Up To Get The True Crime Newsletter
Allen then goes back-and-forth with an officer who tells Allen police have evidence showing the bullet found at the scene came from his gun.
One key piece of evidence presented during Allen's trial last year was a video Libby recorded on her phone at some point before she and Abby were killed.
Jurors watched 43 seconds of the video, which showed Libby and Abby walking with an unknown man wearing a hat and blue utility jacket in court Oct. 22. The man in the video became known over the last five years as "Bridge Guy." Libby captured the video at 2:13 p.m., less than 25 minutes after she and Abigail's family members dropped them off at the trail.
"Guys, down the hill," the man told the girls in the video.
Prosecutors argued that Allen is "Bridge Guy" after witnesses who testified against Allen said they saw him on the trail around the same time the girls disappeared, and authorities recovered a similar blue utility jacket from Allen's home in 2022.
Delphi Murders Suspect Confessed To Killing 2 Girls On Hiking Trail In Small Town, Prison Doc Says
Allen also admitted in one of dozens of jailhouse confessions that he did order the girls "down the hill." He repeatedly confessed to killing the girls, apparently saying he wanted to rape the girls but was spooked by a van nearby, at which point he decided to kill them.
His attorneys said his declining mental stability led him to make false statements behind bars.
More than five years after their deaths, investigators executed a search warrant at Allen's home in Delphi Oct. 13, 2022, and they recovered a blue Carhartt jacket, a SIG Sauer P226 .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun and a .40-caliber S&W cartridge in a "wooden keepsake box" from a dresser between two closets in Allen's bedroom, according to authorities.
The handgun recovered at Allen's home was consistent with a .40-caliber unspent bullet police found at the site of the murders in 2017, police said.
Fox News' Patrick McGovern contributed to this report.Original article source: WATCH: Indiana man who killed girls on hike strikes defiant tone with police in new interrogation video
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

‘Scared to die': Venezuelan who was held in megaprison files complaint against U.S.
‘Scared to die': Venezuelan who was held in megaprison files complaint against U.S.

Miami Herald

time2 hours ago

  • Miami Herald

‘Scared to die': Venezuelan who was held in megaprison files complaint against U.S.

He once dreamed of being recognized for his work — but instead, the U.S. sent him to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Branded a gang member and a terrorist, he spent four months behind bars. Now, after his release and return to Venezuela, he's determined to clear his name. Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel was one of more than 250 Venezuelans detained in the United States who was transferred in March to the Salvadoran maximum-security prison known as CECOT, the Spanish initials for Terrorism Confinement Center. 'I was very scared,' Leon Rengel, 27, told the Miami Herald, describing how guards would frequently insult them, calling them trash, scumbags and worse, and often told them they would never leave the prison. 'Even more so when a Salvadoran officer told me I was going to die there or spend 90 years in prison. While I was in CECOT, I never saw a lawyer or a judge. They wouldn't even let me make a phone call.' Read more: 'I have nightmares': Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador relive terror after return home The League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC, a Washington-based civil-rights organization, has filed an administrative complaint with the Department of Homeland Security on his behalf, alleging Leon Rengel was deported without reason or due process. The complaint also details the abuses Leon Rengel said he endured at CECOT. 'He was beaten in his chest and stomach by guards, who used fists and batons to inflict pain,' the complaint says. 'On one occasion, he was taken to an area of the prison without cameras, where guards routinely brought detainees to assault them without leaving a video record. There, [Leon] Rengel was viciously beaten.' Leon Rengel told the Herald the Venezuelan detainees were kept in a separate module from Salvadoran detainees that housed 32 cells. He said he was placed in one of the cells with 19 other men, though some detainees were held in cells with fewer people, he said. He said he and his countrymen were 'beaten badly' if they complained about prison conditions. He recounted sleeping on bare metal bunks, stacked four levels high, without bedding or pillows. The two toilets in his cell were entirely open, offering no privacy, he added. He said the only time they were given mattresses and sheets was when authorities came to visit. 'Once the photos were taken and the authorities left, the guards would come and take away the mattresses and blankets,' he recalled. During the 125 days the Venezuelans were held at CECOT, they were not allowed outside once, he said: 'We never saw sunlight.' At one point, during a prison riot, he said, inmates were placed in an area called La Isla, the island, 'to beat us with batons. He described the island as a dark, small punishment room with a circular vent and two cross-shaped bars. The space was meant for two people, Leon Rengel said, but guards crammed in more detainees. 'They brought in several prisoners to beat us. We went more than 24 hours without water or light.' After the beatings, he said, they were taken to get medical care, but a doctor falsified the records, claiming their injuries were from playing soccer, something he says never happened. 'We hardly ever left the cells.' The complaint filed on Leon Rengel's behalf by LULAC in partnership with the Democracy Defenders Fund seeks $1.3 million in damages for violations of his civil rights. 'They gave him a document in English stating he could either be deported to Venezuela or appear before a judge,' said Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC. 'Leon Rengel chose to see a judge — but he was never given that opportunity. Homeland Security failed to follow due process.' The complaint is the first step before litigation. Homeland Security has six months to respond. If they fail to do so, a lawsuit will be filed in Washington, D.C., Proaño said. Over the past four months, as both Venezuelan and Salvadoran detainees have been held at CECOT, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele has denied any allegations of torture inside the mega-prison. Responding to reports of abuse, he said, 'Apparently, anything a criminal claims is accepted as truth by the mainstream media and the crumbling Western judiciary.' When Leon Rengel emigrated to the U.S. in 2023, his goal was simple: to become a well-known barber and showcase his art. But in the heightened immigration crackdown during the Trump administration, he was labeled a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, largely because of his tattoos. He was arrested on March 13, his birthday, in the parking garage of his apartment in Irving, Texas, where he was living with his girlfriend. At the time, he was on a video call with his 6-year-old daughter, Isabella, who lives in Caracas, he said. Four Drug Enforcement Administration patrol cars surrounded him and arrested him, he said, although the agency has never clarified its role. 'They asked me to lift up my shirt, and when they saw my tattoos they accused me of being member of Tren de Aragua. But they never showed any evidence of a connection to the gang,' he said. 'They just laughed while wishing me happy birthday.' U.S. immigration agents have been targeting Venezuelan men based on tattoo images like animals, basketballs or reggaeton lyrics, even in the absence of any criminal record. Experts have said Tren de Aragua doesn't typically use tattoos as gang markers, and relying on them as indicators of gang ties risks serious miscarriages of justice. READ MORE: 'Crime of tattooing': Why experts say body ink is no way to ID Venezuelan gang members 'When I entered the U.S., nobody questioned me about my tattoos or anything related to a gang. It wasn't until after 2024 that I first heard officers mentioning tattoos and the gang,' Leon Rengel said. Records show that Leon Rengel entered the U.S. on June 12, 2023, through the Paso del Norte port of entry on the Mexico-Texas border after a prescheduled appointment on CBP One, a digital portal created by the Biden administration designed to manage the flow of migrants at the southern border. When he was arrested in March, Leon Rengel had been living in the U.S. for 21 months, with a pending Temporary Protected Status application, and was scheduled to appear before an immigration judge on April 4, 2028. He had one arrest in the U.S., in November 2024, for possession of drug paraphernalia — a non-jailable misdemeanor under Texas law. He was a passenger in a vehicle that was pulled over. According to Irving city records, he later pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and was fined $492. He received no jail time or probation. In a statement issued in April — at a time Leon Rengel's family had no knowledge of his whereabouts — and repeated again in July, Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said he had 'entered our country illegally in 2023 from Venezuela and is an associate of Tren de Aragua.' But DHS did not provide any documentation to support the claim or explain why Leon Rengel was sent to El Salvador— especially given that the U.S. and Venezuela have been cooperating in the deportation of Venezuelan nationals directly back to their home country. For weeks after his detention in Texas his family had no idea where he was. He hadn't been returned to Venezuela, where his mother, Sandra Rengel, and three of his four siblings live, nor was his name in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee locator system or even on CECOT records obtained by media outlets. His relatives only learned of his whereabouts on April 23 through media reports, 39 days after he was deported to El Salvador. READ MORE: Weeks after disappearance, DHS confirms Venezuelan man was deported to El Salvador 'The most difficult part was for my mother and daughter, who didn't know where I was — whether I was alive or dead,' Leon Rengel said. 'My daughter suffered a lot. She prayed every day to see me again.' After his detenton in Irving he was briefly held at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas and later transferred to the East Hidalgo Detention Center, a privately run facility used by ICE in La Villa, Texas. Two days later he was deported to El Salvador. Leon Rengel said he and dozens of other Venezuelan detainees were told they were being deported to Venezuela. ICE agents 'never told us we were going to El Salvador,' he said. 'They said we were being sent to Venezuela and even made us lower the airplane window shades. The surprise came when we landed in San Salvador.' On July 18, the United States and Venezuela carried out a wide-ranging prisoner swap. As part of the agreement, 252 Venezuelans who had been deported from the U.S. and held in El Salvador's maximum-security prison were exchanged for dozens of political prisoners and 10 Americans imprisoned in Venezuela — including a Venezuelan-American who had been convicted of committing a triple murder in Spain. Leon Rengel said his only goal in filing the complaint is to clear his name. 'It's unfair they detained us without any evidence of wrongdoing. I have no criminal record in Venezuela or Colombia. All I want is for them to be held accountable for the harm the government did to me.' More than 75 other Venezuelan men that were held in CECOT are preparing similar claims, some of which involve allegations of head trauma, sexual violence and other forms of abuse, according to Proaño, the LULAC executive. 'This claim is too important to ignore,' Proaño said. 'If the Department of Homeland Security can deport Venezuelans without due process, they can do it to anyone — migrants of other nationalities, even U.S. citizens who are mistakenly identified. What's to stop them from sending people to third countries they're not even from?' He added: 'We can't let that become the norm. They need to be held accountable — and that means financial consequences.' Proaño said if the U.S. government is forded to pay '$1 million to each of the 250 people wrongfully deported to El Salvador, that's $250 million. That's a small amount compared to the billions already being spent to deport Latinos. It's the only way they'll learn.' Leon Rengel was born in 1998 — the same year Hugo Chávez rose to power, marking the beginning of Venezuela's unraveling. Growing up in a poor neighborhood of Caracas, his generation faced blackouts, food shortages and the crumbling of institutions. Before moving to the U.S., he spent six years in Colombia with his partner and daughter, maintaining a clean record, according to Colombian authorities. Inspired by friends who had successfully built new lives in America, he decided to emigrate. Now, he regrets that choice. 'If everything changes in the U.S., I'd go back just to visit — to see places I've always dreamed of,' he said. 'But I wouldn't try to build a life there again. This government is destroying the future of many Hispanics, especially Venezuelans.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store