(DELPHI, Ind.) — The wife of convicted Delphi, Indiana, double murderer Richard Allen is breaking her silence on the shocking crime that catapulted her small town into the national spotlight.
A new three-part series, “Capturing Their Killer: The Girls on the High Bridge,” is a deep dive into the mysterious case, with interviews from key players including the victims’ friends and relatives. The series also reveals exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage of defense attorneys as they verdict came in, and an interview with Richard Allen’s wife, Kathy Allen, who opens up for the first time about her marriage and her perspective on the killings that captured the nation’s attention.
ABC News Studios’ “Capturing Their Killer: The Girls on the High Bridge” is streaming in its entirety on Hulu from Tuesday, Aug. 5.
A big crime in a small town
On Feb. 13, 2017, best friends Abby Williams, 13, and Libby German, 14, were enjoying a day off from school and decided to walk along a hiking trail in their hometown of Delphi.
They were near the Monon High Bridge when they were attacked; their throats were slit and they were dumped in the nearby woods.
When they didn’t come home, their frantic families called the police, who launched a massive search. Their bodies were found the next day.
“The whole town was devastated,” Kathy Allen said. “I felt so badly, especially for the mothers.”
“I don’t know how we got through it,” Libby’s grandmother and guardian, Becky Patty, said. “I do remember we learned how Libby died because the funeral director told us we needed to bring in clothes, and he said, ‘You need to make sure you have a scarf.'”
No arrests were made, but police did have a major clue.
Moments before the murders, Libby posted a photo of Abby on Snapchat showing her on the Monon High Bridge. After crossing the bridge, the girls saw a man behind them — who became known as “bridge guy” — and Libby started a recording on her phone.
As police looked for the suspect, they released footage from Libby’s phone to the public: a grainy image of “bridge guy” and an audio clip of him telling the girls to go “down the hill.”
“The first time I saw the picture of ‘bridge guy,’ it could’ve been anybody,” Kathy Allen said.
‘My husband’s not a monster’
Richard and Kathy Allen married right after high school and their daughter, Brittany, was born in 1994.
“He is a family man,” Kathy Allen said. “Ricky is a wonderful, caring, compassionate father. Non-judgmental, very giving. He has good morals.”
In 2006, the family moved to Delphi, where Richard Allen worked at the local CVS.
On Feb. 13, 2017, Richard Allen had the day off. Kathy Allen said when she got home that evening, her husband was on the couch.
When she saw on the news that night that two girls were missing, she said her husband seemed surprised.
Richard Allen told her he was out on the trail that day. When Kathy Allen asked him if he saw the girls, he said no, she recalled.
“Ricky called the police department to speak to the officers — he was more than willing to help,” she said.
Richard Allen met with an officer, she said — and “then we heard nothing.”
As the Allens’ lives went on, Abby and Libby’s families worked through their grief and pleaded for answers.
More than five years ticked by. Each year, police said they were continuing to follow leads in the mysterious slayings.
Then on Oct. 13, 2022, Kathy Allen said officers knocked on their door and took Richard Allen to the police station for an interview.
When officers descended on their home with a search warrant, she said her husband consoled her as they waited outside.
“Ricky said something like, ‘Well, it’s over, it doesn’t matter anymore,'” she recalled.
On Oct. 26, 2022, Kathy Allen joined her husband in a police interrogation room. She said Richard Allen told her, “You know I’m not capable of something like this.”
“Capturing Their Killer: The Girls on the High Bridge” is the first streaming documentary to feature newly-released interrogation footage.
On Halloween 2022, police announced Richard Allen’s arrest in the double homicide. He admitted he was on the trail that day, but he denied being involved.
“I was floored, quite honestly,” Abby’s mom, Anna Williams, said. “We really had somebody living amongst us that had done this and never let on.”
Kathy Allen was also in disbelief, but adamantly believed her husband.
“My husband’s not a monster. He’s not the monster that people think he is,” she said.
The case against Richard Allen
Police said they zeroed in on Richard Allen after discovering a misfiled statement.
In the days after the killings, Richard Allen did self-report being at the crime scene — but that statement “fell in the cracks,” Carroll County Sheriff Tony Liggett testified at Allen’s trial.
A volunteer file clerk who arranged boxes of information and tips in the case testified that in September 2022 — weeks before Allen’s arrest — she came across a file folder that was not with the others she was managing.
The sheet said that three days after the murders, a person listed as “Richard Allen Whiteman” self-reported being on the trails between 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. on the day of the crime. The self-reporter listed seeing three girls.
The volunteer testified that she wrote a lead sheet and changed the name to Richard Allen. Allen lived on Whiteman Drive, so she said she believed the names were transposed and it was misfiled.
At Richard Allen’s fall 2024 trial, the prosecution’s key physical evidence was a .40-caliber unspent round discovered by the girls’ bodies. Prosecutors argued that police analysis determined that the unspent round was cycled through Richard Allen’s Sig Sauer Model P226. Even though the girls were stabbed, authorities believed their killer used a gun to intimidate them.
Prosecutors also focused on multiple confessions Richard Allen made in jail to his psychologist, corrections officers and his wife.
In one call, according to testimony, he told his wife, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”
“No, you didn’t,” Kathy Allen said. He replied, “Yes, I did.”
“Why would you say that?” Kathy said. “I know you didn’t. There’s something wrong.”
One psychologist testified that Richard Allen confessed to her that he ordered the girls “down the hill” and intended to rape them, but then he saw something — either a person or a van — and was startled. An Indiana State Police trooper testified that he believed that van belonged to a man who lived near the crime scene; the trooper said the time it would’ve taken the man to drive home from work fits with the timing of the murders.
The defense argued Richard Allen’s mental health deteriorated rapidly while in solitary confinement, which lasted 13 months, and that he was in a psychotic state during the confessions.
Despite the emotional pain of hearing the details of the case, Libby’s mom, Carrie Timmons, said, “I was there for the entire trial, every day.”
“I did that for her,” Timmons said. “It was the least I could do.”
When the case went to the jury, Timmons said the four days of waiting for a verdict “were excruciating.”
Kathy Allen said, “I felt pretty positive that [the jury is] gonna make the right decision, because reasonable doubt was written all over the place. … On my phone conversations with Ricky, I heard some joy in his voice.”
‘The girls are still gone’
In November 2024, Richard Allen was found guilty on all charges: felony murder for the killing of Abby while attempting to commit kidnapping; felony murder for the killing of Libby while attempting to commit kidnapping; murder for knowingly killing Abby; and murder for knowingly killing Libby.
Kathy Allen sobbed when the verdict was read.
“Ricky looked confused, and I wanted to stand there and scream for him,” she said.
The convicted double murderer was sentenced to 130 years in prison.
Judge Fran Gull said to him at sentencing, “I’ve spent 27 years as a judge and you rank right up there with the most heinous crimes in the state of Indiana.”
After sentencing, prosecutor Nicholas McLeland thanked Abby and Libby for helping catch their own killer.
Libby had the “wherewithal to pull out her phone … to know that something wasn’t right” and record the suspect as he walked across the bridge, McLeland said at a news conference, calling it “arguably the biggest piece of evidence that we had — that recording.”
He praised Abby for hiding the phone from the killer so law enforcement could find it.
As Richard Allen begins his life sentence, his wife is still in his corner.
“I want true justice for Abby and Libby, but it should not be at the expense of an innocent person,” Kathy Allen said, holding back tears.
“I’m very hopeful for an appeal,” she said in February. “It was definitely our dream to grow old together, and it still is. I’m looking forward to that. I’m not giving up.”
But for Abby and Libby’s families, the pain persists.
“It still feels much like it did the first day the girls were gone,” Abby’s mom, Anna Williams, said.
“You think hearing ‘guilty’ is gonna be enough, and you think the sentencing is gonna be enough. And it’s just not true,” Williams said. “This doesn’t bring her back. The girls are still gone.”
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