WATCH: Indiana man who killed girls on hike strikes defiant tone with police in new interrogation video
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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."
"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."
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.
"They want you to think I done it."
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.
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.
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.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Insider
4 hours ago
- Business Insider
Prosecutors cite Diddy's freak offs in opposing his latest bail try: He's no 'ordinary John'
Sean "Diddy" Combs is no "mere John," federal prosecutors say in urging he be kept behind bars. Combs is "far from being an ordinary and casual consumer of commercial sex," they argue, lambasting the rap mogul and his baby oil-soaked history of freak offs in an 11-page court filing opposing his latest bail effort. Combs hopes to be set free from a notorious Brooklyn jail pending his October 3 sentencing. He argues that last month's split verdict found him guilty of being, at most, a "John" who paid for male escorts he didn't even sleep with. Instead, his lawyers argue, trial testimony consistently described Combs sitting in the corner of a series of luxury hotel suites in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles, watching, masturbating, and recording as his girlfriends had sex with muscular strippers and porn stars. But if Combs is a John, he's a very, very bad one, prosecutors say in opposing bail in a filing made public early Friday. "The defendant transported individuals for the purpose of prostitution on hundreds of occasions over the course of decades," wrote the five remaining members of the Manhattan-based prosecution team — minus lead attorney Maurene Comey. (Comey, who also prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, is the daughter of former FBI director and longtime Trump nemesis James Comey. She was fired by the Department of Justice two weeks after the Combs verdict.) Far from being a "mere John," the remaining team wrote, Combs "plied Cassie Ventura and Jane (as well as male commercial sex workers) with drugs to ensure their continued participation in the days-long freak offs." R&B artist Ventura spent four days on the stand describing Combs' violence and her own regret and humiliation in the decade ending in 2018. The second girlfriend, who testified as Jane Doe, told a similar tale from dating Combs in 2021 to 2024. Combs "used violence against both Ms. Ventura and Jane in connection with freak offs, and employed a small army of personal staff to ensure that his every need was met during freak offs," the prosecutors' filing tells US District Judge Arun Subramanian.. "The defendant's actions surely distinguish him from an ordinary 'John.'" In his own filing earlier this week, Combs had asked Subramanian to let him live at his Miami mansion on $50 million bail in the two months between now and sentencing. His lawyers argued that the stakes are lower now, because he has been cleared of the most serious charges against him. On July 2, the jury in Combs' six-week Manhattan trial rejected prosecutors' allegations that he sex-trafficked two girlfriends. The jury also rejected a racketeering charge that alleged he ran Combs Global, his multimillion-dollar media, entertainment, and lifestyle empire, as a criminal enterprise. Combs was found guilty only of the least serious counts he had faced. The jury convicted on two violations of the federal Mann Act, finding that Combs caused the two girlfriends and several male escorts to be transported across state lines for purposes of commercial sex acts. The felony Mann Act convictions are flawed and should be tossed out, Combs argues. Combs "lacked a commercial motive and did not intend for paid escorts to have sex with him," his lawyers argued Wednesday night in a legal filing signed by defense attorney Alexandra Shapiro. Instead, Combs was creating "amateur porn," filming as the male escorts had sex with longtime girlfriend Shapiro argued. Combs was "primarily a bystander" to the encounters, Shapiro argued. "Paying people to film them in sexual performances is protected by the First Amendment," she also argued. This is Combs' fifth attempt at bail since his September arrest. In denying the previous bail attempts, Subramanian said that by law, Combs' felony conviction requires that he remain in jail pending sentencing. In previous bail denials, Subramanian and two other judges cited Combs' admitted domestic violence against his girlfriends, including in the months before his September arrest, when he knew he was under investigation. They also cited prosecution allegations that Combs possessed illegal drugs when he was arrested and had tried to obstruct the trial by reaching out to witnesses from jail before it started, claims the defense has denied. Prosecutors have said they plan to seek a sentence of five years or more on the two Mann Act convictions.
The Hill
5 hours ago
- The Hill
Judge blocks DHS from stripping protections for 60K from Nepal, Honduras, Nicaragua
A federal judge ruled against Trump administration plans to end protections from deportation for citizens of Nepal, Nicaragua and Honduras, barring their removal while the case continues. San Francisco-based U.S. District Court Judge Trina Thompson agreed the plaintiffs had shown there was sufficient racial animus behind the decision and that the Trump administration had failed to undertake an 'objective review of the country conditions' before ending protections. 'The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood,' Thompson wrote. 'The Court disagrees.' The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Nepal in June and for Nicaragua and Honduras in July. Each country initially was initially designated after natural disasters, but the protections can also be offered to those unable to be deported to their home country due to civil unrest. The moves would require 51,000 Hondurans and nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans who have been in the country for roughly 25 years to leave the county by September. Some 7,000 Nepalese citizens were also set to lose protections in just days. Thompson reviewed a number of prior comments from President Trump as well as Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, including comments from the secretary referring to migrants as criminals and gang members while the president has stated that migrants were 'poisoning the blood of our country.' 'Indeeed, code words may demonstrate discriminatory intent,' she wrote. 'Color is neither a poison nor a crime.' Thompson said DHS failed to do the fulsome review required to end TPS, determining that the Trump administration did not consider conditions beyond recovery from the hurricanes that rocked the Central American countries and the earthquake that sparked the designation for Nepal. 'Unlike previous iterations of DHS notices on Honduras, the Honduras notice does not mention political violence or crime,' the judge wrote. 'The new notice also omits the anti-democratic human rights violations and the humanitarian crisis which has led to 108,000 people fleeing the country,' Thompson said of Nicaragua. She added, 'The notice concedes that 'Nepal has continued to experience subsequent regional environmental events, including flooding and landslides' and that 'Nepal remains one of the poorest countries in the world' but nevertheless finds that modest economic growth (two percent) and reconstruction efforts support a termination of Nepal's TPS designation.' The Trump administration has argued citizens of all three nations have remained in the country well beyond the natural disasters that ignited TPS and that past administrations have abused a protection that is designed to be temporary. But Thompson determined that administration failed to rebut arguments that citizens of the three countries should be allowed to remain in the U.S. while the trial continues. 'Although Defendants argue that a delay in the Secretary's decisions would undermine United States foreign policy and national interests, Defendants have failed to identify the exact foreign policy or national interest at stake,' she wrote.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Cincinnati councilwoman stands by her remarks that white couple ‘begged' for ‘beat down' in viral brawl amid backlash
Councilwoman Victoria Parks was unbothered and unrepentant amid public outrage involving Black suspects whom Vice President JD Vance called 'lawless thugs.' A Cincinnati City Council member is standing by her remarks about a viral brawl involving a white couple, despite outrage and calls for her to resign from community leadership. 'They begged for that beat down! I am grateful for the whole story,' Councilwoman Victoria Parks commented on a video of the violent incident posted on Facebook. The brawl, captured by a camera phone, occurred on July 26 and involved a group of Black people, including men and women, having a dispute with a white man and a white woman who eventually came to his aid. The details of the dispute are not clear; however, the viral brawl ended with the white couple being punched and kicked to the ground. The pair reportedly suffered multiple injuries and a concussion. Parks, a Democrat who has served in office since 2022, sparked public backlash from elected officials and a police union chief–some of whom called for her resignation. Her comments swiftly drew the attention of right-leaning and conservative outlets, with critics airing their grievances. 'It's unconscionable that an elected official would be celebrating violence in the very city she was voted to serve,' Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police President Ken Kober told Fox News Digital. 'This highlights the poor political environment that police officers, residents, and visitors are currently enduring. Thankfully, there's an election in November. I urge voters to vote for change!' Republican State Rep. Phil Plummer also called for Park's resignation, writing, 'Defending violent criminals who viciously beat innocent people is disgusting.' Plummer also appeared to point to the racial aspects of the incident by urging prosecutors to charge the suspects involved with a hate crime. Councilwoman Parks was even criticized by a fellow Democratic Councilwoman, Meeka Owens. 'Making comments that inflame a violent incident is never acceptable,' Owens said in a statement. She said council members should not speculate on the motives of the fight and that Parks' remarks did not reflect the council's sentiments. 'The Councilmember is entitled to her opinion; however, it is not beneficial to the city nor the region when she advocates for violence as a means of retribution,' said Owens. Parks, who had already announced in January that she was not running for re-election, did not appear to be phased by public criticism. She told Cincinnati's The Enquirer, 'In this country, we have freedom of speech; however, you may not run into a crowded theater and scream fire.' The councilwoman told the outlet that someone in the brawl said something akin to screaming fire in a crowded theater. She did not specify what exactly was said, which caused her to say the brawl was justified. 'There are unintended consequences, but that's what happened,' said Parks. 'I'm just going to let people draw their own conclusion.' According to reports, five people were charged in the incident for crimes including felonious assault and aggravated rioting. During a trip to Ohio to promote President Donald Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill,' U.S. Vice President JD Vance called the suspects 'lawless thugs.' 'Take the thugs who engaged in that violence and throw their asses in prison,' said Vance, who once refused to acknowledge Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and downplayed violent threats against Mike Pence during the January 6th insurrection. Harmeet Dhillon, Trump's Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, suggested the assault on the white couple may have been motivated by race, and that suspects could also be charged with federal hate crimes. More must-reads: 'It is a hot mess': Rep. Jasmine Crockett calls out GOP gerrymandering plot after redrawn map kicks her out of her own district Senate rejects bid to halt sale of bombs and rifles to Israel, but Democratic opposition grows Former Vice President Kamala Harris finally makes decision about her political future—for now
