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I think they appreciated having that choice, in that sense of control, because it wasn't like we were going to just show up at their door and say, hey, talk to us about the worst thing that ever happened to you.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas.

I'm also the co host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects has taken me around the world.

On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true crime cases.

This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories.

The murders of Liberty German and Abigail Williams and Delphi, Indiana, shook the country, but the impact of the attention, the speculation, and the fear is still felt in the community now.

Podcasters Anya Cain and Kevin Greenley have written a book about the case, but it feels different from other investigations.

This book does focus on the murders, but also how the families were impacted because Cain and Greenley worked closely with the girls' families.

They tell me the story from their book Shadow of the Bridge, the Delphi Murders, and the Dark Side of the American Heartland.

Let's talk about how you both became involved with this and how to you know, people who are crazy about true crime came together also.

Absolutely so we have probably one of the weirder meet cutes, if you want to even call it that, of all time.

I got really interested in a particular quadruple homicide that happened near Indianapolis, Indiana, actually happened in Speedway, Indiana, back in nineteen seventy eight.

And one of the ways I researched this was I used a website called newspapers dot com, which allows you to look at a variety of old newspaper articles and clip the ones that interest you.

And when you clip an article, it is public people can see who's clipping what.

And so one afternoon I happened to be talking with a detective who was working on the case, and he said, you know, Kevin it might be interesting to see who's clipping a lot of articles about this case, because they might have guilty knowledge, they might have some secrets, maybe they're the killer themselves.

And so I looked and a suspiciously high number of articles were being clipped from A.

T.

Kane and I did some research and found that it was a reporter in New York.

This It was me, boy, I didn't even know that.

That's so interesting.

What a good tip from your detective.

That's great, right, And of course I didn't have anything to do with the murders because I wasn't born in nineteen seventy eight, but it was it was funny.

I got this random email from this guy.

At the time, I was a journalist at Business Insider in New York City and I've always been obsessed with crime.

So I pitched them I'm going to do a crime feature story, and for some reason they were like sure.

I still don't know why they said yes, but I was looking into it and met Kevin.

Kevin was kind enough to put me in contact with.

Some of the people in the case, and then afterwards we just kept talking and sort of realized that we were, you know, not just interested in the case, we're interested in each other.

So that's how we met.

When I told all my girlfriends, they were just like, uh, that sounds about right for you, So no one was too concerned.

That is adorable.

I like that.

That was this the Burger chef murders.

Is that what you guys are looking at?

Oh my goodness, boy, I mentioned this before.

I assume you guys saw the was on Paramount, the documentary that they did.

Yeah, there was two.

There was we were on one for investigation discovery, and then there was a longer one.

I think it ended up coming out on Amazon that kind of got into some of the different angles.

Yeah, there was one.

I thought it was so creative where they had you know, actors replaying it, but they would actually talk to the camera and say, essentially, we know we're about to get killed, and this is what we're thinking, and this is the way it could have gone.

And I found it.

It could have gone horribly wrong, but I actually really liked that way.

But it is a story that a lot of people know about.

And that's so a quadruple murder in Indiana at a burger joint that is unsolved, right, is what brought you two together.

That is interesting.

We both have that obsession with true crime and that kind of went into founding a podcast.

And I'm a journalist, Kevin's an attorney, so we try to bring the different angles and the different ethos from our perspective professions to that role.

Kevin, what kind of law is it?

I actually focused on intellectual property law like copyrights and trademarks, so not really about criminal law at all.

I just have and to always have an interest in true crime, and I got interested in this one particular case, the Burger chef case, and led me to Anya.

Yeah.

I was a retail reporter, so it's like we don't you know.

We were coming with the backgrounds where we might have some training in that, but we're also don't pretend to be experts.

We interview a lot of people who are the criminal defense attorneys or prosecutors or detectives or crime beat journalists who might be more immersed and it's it's been really fun.

Whether you were retail or you know, intellectual copyright, whatever it is, you know the basics of law and of course the tenets of journalism, and so you're a step ahead of other folks who dig into particularly the Delphi.

Case, I would say, right, yeah.

So this started, this story started as the podcast as Murder Sheet.

Was it exclusively Delfi that you guys were digging into or were there other cases before.

We've always had a very scattershot hodge podge approach to coverage because we just go with what we're interested in.

So you've actually never been exclusively Delfi.

We've always done other things, and that's probably the detriment.

I think sometimes people want to say, okay, like we know what we're getting when we go to the show.

But for us, I think we just if there was news, we would try to cover it.

If there was a legal filing, we would try to analyze it.

There'd be some times where nothing was going on and we would just you know, kind of do other things.

So where did the book come from?

Did you just latch onto this case and feel like, you know, you've talked to some folks who are really interesting and it deserved a book.

Of course?

Yeah.

Part of it was that, and also part of it is what got us interested in true crime originally, was true crime books.

It's just a terrific way to tell a story and really be able to go into death and the Delphi case in particular.

It's a complicated case, and also bits and pieces about evidence have been released over the year.

It's not necessarily in chronological order, so it can be confusing.

And if someone would come to me and say I just want a basic explainer on the case, you'd have to say, well, you have to go listen to these one hundred podcasts, and that's not really a good way for people to learn about a case.

So we thought a book would be a good way to do that.

And I think you know, you're trying to do quality content control on what you're recommending to people, and it's really hard when when pretty much anyone can get a podcast going and talk about some of these really big, serious cases.

So let's go ahead.

Since we're talking about your book, let's go ahead and frame the story.

I know most of our listeners understand Delphi what happened there, but can you all give me a reintroduction to Libby and Abbey and what this area of Indiana is like?

What you're absolutely so.

Liby and Abby are two best friends.

It's Liberty or Libby German and Abigail or Abby Williams, and they're in eighth grade together at Delphi Middle School, and they're growing up in this town or rather it's really a but I mean it's very small.

It's this county seat of Carroll County, Indiana, which is very rural, very agrarian, and you know, somewhat somewhat kind of tiny, close knit, you know, that kind of stereotypical small American midwestern town.

And these two girls are, as I mentioned, very close.

Abby is more shy, she's a little bit slower to open up around new people, but once she does, she's just a really caring, sweet kid who always just wants to help people.

And Libby's the outgoing one.

She will sass you if she does not like what you're saying.

She will stand up for her friends and she will speak her mind.

But very sweet kid as well.

Both of them are very close to their families.

And they had a sleepover that was basically where they were just kind of hanging out watching scary movies, being on social media, and the next day they had off because there was basically too many snow days that year.

There's a quirk of the calendar, quirk of the school calendar that year that made it so that they were going to have that Monday off and that was February thirteenth, twenty seventeen.

So they went on a walk on.

These beautiful rails to Trails system in Delphi, which is still there and still very gorgeous, kind of through the forest.

And they did not tell any adults this, but they had a plan to go on this moan On high bridge and to set the scene for your listeners, it's this massive old railway bridge that spans Deer Creek over these ravines.

It's terrifying and it's been abandoned for years, but the kids of Delphi sometimes will cross it almost as kind of a ride of passage, kind of like, oh, we're going to take selfies on the bridge.

So they were doing that.

Unfortunately, they disappeared that day and did not return, and that sort of set off a panicked search for them.

I have an odd question about that bridge.

I haven't ever asked anybody.

Is this a bridge that if you fell off of it would mean certain death?

Or I mean, has anything ever happened with people crossing the bridge.

I'm not aware of anything happening with people crossing the bridge.

I believe that in my opinion, it's like sixty feet up, So I think you'd very likely die or be seriously injured.

I don't quite know what's survivable and what's not.

But I'm telling you we've never gone on it because I told Kevin i'd be like, we would be the people to be the first people to fall off this thing.

Okay, So they disappear, and then I think, you know, most people know they've recovered a cell phone, so kind of pick up there, what the big clue is?

Yes, So there's searches, and it's becoming increasingly clear as people are looking that things don't make sense because everyone anticipated in a town like this, in a situation like this, that the girls maybe injured themselves and were stuck somewhere.

They're not looking for bodies, they're looking to recover to live possibly injured children.

But they find their bodies instead, and it's very apparent that it's a crime scene.

And at that crime scene, underneath one of the bodies, they recover Libby's phone, and on that phone, detectives are surprised to see that Libby managed to surreptitiously record an interaction between her and Abby and a mysterious male figure approaching them on the Moan on Highbridge, and she actually captured not only this sort of blurry image of the man, can't really make out his face, but you can see exactly what he's wearing and also his voice, and he says to them, guys down the hill.

Wow, what happens once they have this image?

What are the techniques that the investigators have to use?

They bring in the FBI.

Actually, yeah, they do bring in the FBI, and that was immediate.

That's what's interesting.

Immediately, because this happened in such a small community, and because people were so horrified, and because initially it started as assertion and rescue thing.

You have police officers from other counties, from other cities, from other jurisdictions immediately pouring into Delphi, and you have federal agents from the US Marshall Service, you have the FBI agents, you have Indiana State Police play a huge role, and you have Carol County investigators.

And this is a situation where that all sounds good to share those resources.

But for the first couple of days, it was just managerial chaos.

It was just no one knows who to report to.

People are just going off and doing what they think is the most promising thing.

But that's not really good from a management perspective.

So it's always one of those things I think of as the road to hell is paved with good intentions, And unfortunately that was the case for the first couple of days.

By the time they sorted it out, unfortunately it was too late.

But they put in all of this.

They scour the crime scene for any possible forensic evidence.

They look into possible sex offenders in the area, They look into possible people who you know, you know, they look into the family members.

Was there anything there that would cause something like this to happen.

They keep on coming up empty because unfortunately, you know, people might have a hard time believing this, but you know, CSI effect is real.

We often think, oh, we're all just leaving DNA everywhere constantly, But when you're at a very bloody, horrible crime scene, it can be harder to collect a fender DNA than you think.

And they didn't get any here.

And outside too, I mean it's an outdoor crime scene.

People are tramping around everywhere.

You know, we don't know how well they've cordoned off everything.

I'm sure that made it incredibly difficult.

Tell me, did they search through the night when the girls went missing, or I'm just wondering how long they were there unattended, you know, by investigators before they were discovered.

Yeah, this is an area of controversy.

So they did search through the night, but they called off the official search in the middle of the night, mostly due to liability reasons.

Of these are sharp ravines.

People can get hurt if you have civilians wandering around.

But we know for a fact that people did stay out there all night looking for them, and the area where they were found, they had not.

Really gotten to that yet because it was a bit of a ways away.

I mean, it was it was nearby, but it wasn't It wasn't necessarily where anyone thought they would be found.

You know.

It's interesting when I talked to Paul Holes about outdoor cases and how it's easy to lose people, we talked about a case I think from like maybe the nineteen twenties where people were searching around all night in a forest really lots of vegetation, and where they were searching, there was a body discovered the next morning in the daylight, but it was within twenty feet and they couldn't find it.

So I understand I know that there is controversy around that, but looking at that area point, it just seems so dangerous and easy to fall and hurt yourself.

Absolutely.

Plus, they're looking for two kids that they're calling their names.

They're not thinking we're looking for bodies that cannot respond.

They're thinking Abby and Libby.

One of them got hurt, twisted in an ankle.

They're freaked out, they're scared, they're huddled somewhere.

It's cold out, Let's find them.

I think they were just in that mindset of not really expecting to find dead bodies.

So let's go back to something you mentioned before, because I know that comes into play with the criminal proceedings.

They didn't recover any offender DNA on rape kits or anything else that they did.

Yeah, that's the case.

Although initially there was a moment when they thought they did have some DNA, and so that may explain some of the comments you may recall investigators making at the time.

It turned out that that DNA was actually linked to a technician, so it was just a case of contamination and it was a really frustrating day for the investigators when they realized that this big piece of evidence they thought they had really was nothing.

In fact, the most important piece of evidence was the video on that phone and the fact that between the bodies of the girls they found a gun cartridge.

They had not been fired, but it had been cycled through a gun.

And actually on the video, if you listen, there is a sound of a gun being racked, So investigators knew that the man who kidnapped them had a gun.

And then they find this bullet at the crime scene, and so their hypothesis, relatively early on is that this bullet belongs to the gun that was used in the kidnapping.

And no DNA on the bullet, obviously.

No, nothing like that.

Unfortunately, now some people have pointed out there was small traces of male DNA from the girls, from like the swabs and whatnot.

But what the experts testified to was this is the amount that you expect from just being around a male.

It's not something that indicates sexual assault or anything like that.

It's just maybe you live in a household with a male, or maybe you're interacting with a male.

It's not anything that was a red flag, and it certainly wasn't enough to get a profile.

So are they saying there was no sexual assault with either of these girls.

Yes, that's right, there was no sexual assault.

There was no sexual trauma, or I should say this, there was no evidence of sexual trauma to their bodies.

Now, to me, it's clearly a sexually motivated crime.

This is someone to adolescence to strip.

Both girls were naked at some point, because Abby is found wearing Libby's clothes and Libby is found naked, So there's that indication.

But we all know researching true crime, you don't necessarily need to have a rape or sexual assault for something to be sexually motivated.

Yeah, absolutely, And you don't have to see trauma on a body for there not to have been some sort of assault on the body too.

Okay, is that controversial?

Are there a lot of people who don't believe that that that they absolutely had to have been sexually assaulted or has that been laid dress?

Do you think I think that's been laid to dress?

Just by the evidence, I think a lot of people have a hard time believing though.

They think, well, I mean, they were naked, so why didn't anything happen?

And what you have to kind of educate people about is like, here are these other cases where that happened, or you know, where the actual murder itself was the sexual gratification versus anything where I think people have you know, everyone who's not a murderer kind of sometimes has a hard time getting in the head of why someone would do this, and it's it's just that's why you rely on the profilers and the people who are kind of researching this forensic psychologist to kind of fill that in.

But it can be difficult for people to understand.

Okay, so let's move on to the investigation.

So they're left with these two young girls' bodies and the cell phone footage and the cartridge.

Where do you go from there?

You know, when you don't have DNA evidence, you don't have CCTVs, you know what happens.

Yes, they were very much calling upon the public to try to fill in some of this, and I think what they were hoping was that someone would see the image of this guy on the bridge and hear his voice and say, I think I work with that guy, or I think that's my husband, or something to that effect.

So they were really putting that out there and trying to call to the public to help them out.

And you know, they got a lot of tips.

People wanted to help.

People wanted to say, Okay, I work with this really creepy guy, and I think he might be good for this.

But the problem, and this is something that happens in high profile cases, there are a lot of creepy had people out there, and not all of them are murderers, and so they were inundated with tips, some of them helpful and good, and then some that were more nuts, like hey, you should talk to the Sasquatches under the bridge.

They might be able to help you.

You know, It's like okay, no.

But they did get some really useful information during this process because they talked to everybody they could who was out on the trails.

So they were able basically to map out everybody who was out there except for bridge guy.

And in fact, they talked to more than one witness who said, oh, yes, I saw a man dressed as Bridge guy was dressed like around this time at this spot, so they could even map his movements and all of this became very important later.

I'll say this, this is chilling.

So a group of girls was like Abby and Libby on a walk that day on the trails and they passed by bridge guy and one of them, you know, just being a friendly young lady says you know, hi, or something to that effect to him, and he just gives her this death glare and it really stood out to her as just being kind of like, that's a weird interaction.

And then of course when Abby and Libby turned up dead, it took on a new meaning.

So all these witnesses, I should say they as witnesses, do they describe different traits and whatnot.

One person thought he had poofy hair, another person thought he had a pat or one person who was older thought he looked a lot younger, and the kids that saw him thought he looked older.

So it's like they're they're describing subtly different things.

But ultimately they all said, no, it's the guy on Libby's phone.

I saw that guy.

So we have this map of bridge guy making his way to the bridge.

We just don't know who that is.

So is the assumption from either profilos or investigators, whoever's called in.

It is the assumption that this must be a local person number one to know it would be relatively safe to get off and on this bridge.

Number two to know where to have taken these two kids when clearly it's daylight and people are hiking around everywhere.

Did this have to be somebody who was at least a frequent visitor to Delphi.

Yes, they felt it was someone who is either currently local or had grown up there and knew about it, because, honestly, this bridge and this area not everyone in Delphi goes out there, So you might meet someone in Delphi where they're not, like, actually super familiar with it and it's not something that's part of their family traditions or where they go out to hang out.

So the feeling was, this is not some random trucker who just has no idea about this area and just happened to get out in that bridge.

This is a guy who's comfortable doing something like this because he's familiar with the area, he knows where to go, he has a sense of where to look out for different things, and he just couldn't stumble upon this.

So they felt there was some level of locality to this.

Is this a state park or federal parker?

What is it exactly?

I think it's more on the local side of things.

Sort of an old rail system that's been converted to a trail system, so.

There's no security cameras or anything in the parking lots right where you can examine vehicles.

That's right.

So the one thing they did have, though, was the Hoosir Harvest Store, which is like this farm store not too far away.

They had a camera rolling, so they had distant footage of passing cars that became important later.

But it's not close enough to see license plates, so they're not able to say, Okay, this is the car involved, and this is the license plate.

Let's track them down.

And you know, you can't necessarily just say okay, let's go after all the blue Ford SUVs or whatever.

You have to feel a bit more specific.

They didn't have that, but they are able to use it to perhaps rule out things.

I forgot to ask you, guys, so for the book, did you went out there and I know you didn't want to get on the bridge.

I don't blame you.

How many people did you end up interviewing for this book?

That is a good question.

It was.

It was a lot.

I would say dozens, if probably over one hundred.

I'd say well over one hundred.

We talked to all of the investigators, we talked to towns people, we talked to some family members.

Yeah, we talked to just people in the community who live through this.

We talked to, you know, just as many people who would be willing to talk to us as possible.

It was.

It was a tremendous thing because we wanted to.

Get all the different sides because it's so complicated.

So shifting from the investigation for a moment to the community, I have to imagine this is a lock all your doors, don't let your kids out situation for quite a while, right, I mean, is that the reaction you get from this community.

Yeah, I always even when we go up to Delphi, you know, we go up there.

It's a beautiful town and we've you know, kind of grown to love it and love the people there, but there's almost a palpable sense of the trauma of this, and you can see that in the interactions with people.

They're friendly, they're nice, it's not like they're unwelcoming, but there is a sense of like this town's been under siege for so long from a killer, you know, like is my child next?

Or am I next?

For the kids in town?

Or from just some of the kind of bizarre social media things that unfolded later on.

But I would say that it's a town that's been very adversely affected by this, and it frightened people, It angered people.

It was something where people knew the girls, people knew the families directly, so people took it really personally.

It wasn't a situation where it was just, you know, kind of they're removed from everybody else.

It was really an attack on the whole community.

How do you two, as authors with a major publishing company, you know, go out there and when they have just been drowning in media, I know, how do you go there and say, listen, we're different, we're podcasters, We've covered this story, this is serious.

We both have professional backgrounds.

Is that enough to get people to talk?

How did you get the families to talk?

I think a lot of it was the fact that we did have the podcast, and we did cover the case extensively, literally for years, and so by the time it came time to work on the book, people had already been able to see and evaluate our work, and they could see that we tried to be fair, we tried to be objective, we tried to respect everyone.

And as for the families, I think it was them seeing what we were doing and I think we also went to them.

And this was very important to us because everyone grieves differently, everyone has different needs, and certain family members of crime victims they're going to want to go out and talk to everyone and do everything, and that's wonderful and that advocacy is wonderful.

It's also okay for somebody to say this is private for me, and I do not want to share anything.

So what we did was we went to people and we just said we're here if you want to talk to us in any capacity.

We're not going to chase after you.

We're not going to run you down and push you.

We're going to let you kind of be in control here.

And I think some people were very responsive in the way they like, let's talk about everything, and then other people were saying, we'll talk about certain things and then kind of back off, and others didn't want to participate, and that was okay, and I think they appreciated having that choice, in that sense of control, because it wasn't like we were going to just show up at their door and say, hey, talk to us about the worst thing that ever happened to you.

And a lot of people do you know that people show up and are relentless.

Did this start in twenty seventeen for you guys, or did you come in a little bit later.

We came in pretty late, so we didn't even know each other.

In twenty seventeen.

We were pandemic romance, I guess you could say, in a pandemic podcast.

So we came into this.

In twenty twenty one and our goal was, let's apply some journalistic principles to this and start to talk to people, because there's a bit of a lull in what's coming out about it, and we'd like to amend that and see what the progress is because this has been going on for years and it's still unsolved and that seems hard to believe when we have the guy on camera.

And we were I think, kind of naive about how true crime is in some ways because we were like, we'll be doing some reporting and people will be interested in the information, and it's some of the online stuff is a lot more complicated than that.

But we over time built up trust I think, in the community and in people around the case, and that was.

That was gratifying.

If you think about a big case like a Jack the Ripper or a Black Dolly or some of these massive cases that don't involve children.

Now you've got this mystery video that can be released, and the murders of two little girls in the Midwest.

I can see how this would create all kinds of conspiracy theories.

So is there a vacuum that has to be filled?

What do you think the kind of the markers are here for the next kind of big thing that happens.

So the investigators would argue it never went cold because they were all working it really extensively for years.

And these this core group of investigators that sort of formed out of the initial kind of all these people coming in.

There were a couple that kind of remained on or joined later.

They were working it really hard and running down all these leads and continuing to like, what have we not done, what can we do?

What can we look at again?

But as far as big developments, a couple of suspects came up, and they would be looked at, and then either nothing corroborated or no charges would be filed.

But it really broke open in twenty twenty two.

That's when it's sort of all you know, the arrest happened, and and all the things that happened around that.

That's when it broke open.

But I think it went in the sense of going cold, in a sense of like, you know, it's just nothing is publicly happening.

I would say probably like twenty eighteen, within a year like the you know, because the thing is journalists have to get sources and they have to get things verified and corroborated, whereas I can go on a social media site and just say, hey, I think this guy did it, and you know, I don't have it like for people who don't really have any sort of ethical foundations of what they're doing and they don't really have any interest in being fair.

You know, those people are not constrained, and the problem is that the general public sometimes then turns to those social media sites where stuff like that is happening because they're not getting it from the mainstream media.

They're just you know, they're saying, well, maybe this is true, and it's it's understandable because everyone wants to know what's happening.

But I just think this is a case that should make everyone really pause about what we're clicking and giving our attention to, because they can get pretty toxic pretty fast.

So they're feverioushly working the cases of the FBI.

Who's leading this or is it still is it local police between twenty seventeen and what happens in twenty twenty two.

Yeah, so actually there is a falling out with the FBI.

So this is actually something you do see a lot of investigators that we talked to, they have a FBI agent or two that they absolutely love and are just you know, obsessed with, but then they have issues with the overall FBI just in terms of case management.

And that was something that occurred here.

There were situations where even the prosecutor had trouble getting files from the FBI, and it was perceived as a situation like these are siloed, and ultimately there was a incident where you know, the FBI was pointing the finger at state police for messing something up, and state police said, you know, we're going to back up our guy on this and this case doesn't have a federal nexus.

And it seems like we'd love to continue to work with some of these FBI agents who know the case, but most of the ones that started out with the case have been transferred or they've retired, and we sort of need to kind of consolidate.

So ultimately the FBI sort of departed, and you know, there was it's been a complicated thing here in Indianapolis, the FBI, you know, office here.

There's been some controversies with the doctor Nasser case and whatnot, So I think it was just things brewing.

But interestingly enough, one of the FBI agents who worked the case, he retired, he came back, he got like deputized by Carol County so he could stay on the case.

So there was there was still the contact with the FBI, some drama between them and the state police.

State police were working it very hard.

They had a lot of resources and people put into this.

And then the thing is it always remained to Carroll County case.

It was never something where the state police took over.

It was always something where they were working at hand in hand with the Carroll County folks.

And it was interesting because the day of the murders, this was recounted to us a conversation between two of the detectives in Carroll County, one of them Tony Leggottho's a major figure in the book.

He was talking to Jerry Holman, who was one of the main State Police investigators, and you know, he was like, maybe state police should take it, and then somebody else was like, well, why don't you call the sheriff.

So Holman calls to Bleslibie, who's the sheriff at the time, and Lesnibie was like, well, are you guys going to leave us?

And Holman was like, no, we'll never leave you on this, and he's like, okay, we'll take the case.

Then, so Carroll County retained it, and that was.

Criticized because people felt like, oh, well, they're so small and they don't know how the resources.

But the thing was, I mean they were definitely not alone at us.

Marshalls worked this really hard to I mean there was there was like a kind of a task force like atmosphere where it's like multiple people working it.

It's just technically still Carol County.

Yeah.

Interesting, And you know sometimes those local sheriffs or you know, the small police departments, they'll get the best tips because they're local and they know people, and people don't want to talk to the state police or the FBI sometimes.

So this sounds like, I know there were some squabbles, but this sounds like a pretty good task force that was put together and they're working towards stuff twenty twenty two.

What changes when you've got nine million tips coming in and I'm sure all kinds of conspiracy theories.

How do we go from no suspect or suspects that you know are then crossed off to Richard Allen?

Well, a lot of it goes down to Delphi really is a special place.

A lot of people were volunteering and doing what they could to help the investigators out.

And one of the people who volunteered their time the most was a local named Kathy Shanks who had a lot of experience with child protective services in the community, and so she would spend hours each day helping the investigators sort out leads things like that.

And so one day she's in the office and she's going through some old leads and she sees one buried in this box that she hadn't noticed before.

And it's a lead where a person says, basically, it says I was dressed as Bridge Guy.

I was out on the trails that day and I saw the witnesses who later said they saw Bridge Guy.

So this was essentially tantamount to this is Bridge Guy.

It's an identification of Bridge guy and so because of that, that was very significant and she brings it to the attention of the detective Tony Liggett, and she says, I'm not aware of anything happening to this.

I think this may have gotten lost.

Yeah, I just want to tell you about Kathy Shank because this woman is incredible and I just I don't know if this has ever been super conveyed in a lot of the news coverage.

She's tiny, She's this tiny person.

She's so formidable though, because what people don't really she was like the sole child protective services agent in Carol County for decades.

Her whole career was protecting kids and doing everything she can and getting up in the middle of the night to go deal with a situation to protect children.

So she was very used to wrangling police officers to wrangling paperwork, like she gets stuff done, and the police trusted her that we were talking and like there was one thing that came out she was almost like someone where the police, you know, in the beginning, they were like, oh, like back in the eighties and stuff, there might be like okay, she's like this like little woman, like whatever, But then they began to realize if she says something's going down and this needs investigating, it needs investigating, and we'd better listen to her because she knows what she's talking about.

But they also kind of feared her because she'd come in and they would realize, we're gonna have to do a lot of paperwork about this situation.

She's an expert in paperwork, she's an expert in sorting things like she was the person who was gonna uncover this.

She found this lead where a person, Richard Allen, says, I was there, I was dressed in Bridge Guy's clothes.

I saw the same witnesses who saw Bridge Guy.

So they realized this quite likely is Bridge Guy, and they go and they do an interview with him and they talk.

They're able to establish in that interview he also has a gun, and so they search his home.

They recover the gun and it is tested and it has shown that the cartridge that was found at the crime scene had been cycled through his weapon, and so that physically ties him to being present that.

Day online or just sort of within the town.

There must have been a lot of criticism of the police for missing this piece of paper that has this statement on it, and I would imagine that there were literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper in this case.

And I don't know if people understand these case files are just unreal sometimes, and so I'm never really surprised when the person who turns out to be the offender is found within a case file of the thousands of witnesses.

This does seem unusual, though, but this also sounds like someone Poul Hols would describe as a looney tune inserting himself into an investigation.

This does not sound like an actual suspect.

So he volunteered this information?

Is that right?

Did he go to somebody?

So what came out was that his wife, after he told her that he had been on the trails that day, encouraged him go forward.

They're looking for people who were out there, just give them your information, and he did so, so he called in And this is around the same time they're starting to release images of the bridge guy.

It's in the first couple of days when the managerial chaos is at its complete height.

And absolutely people were very upset when they found out that this guy's been in here the whole time and it was just sitting in a box, and that's understandable.

I mean, I think this is.

A case study in the importance of immediately establishing some kind of system where somehow you're going to prohibit tips from getting lost like this, because I think it was a managerial failure and it was a clerical failure, and that should be looked at.

But you know, I do think at the same time, people who became the core investigators, I don't think there's a collective guilt over it in terms of what they were doing, because it's just it's one of those things like if this had happened to one of the stupid tips about sasquatches, like who cares, But it just happened to be the one tip that pattered.

Well, and you know, we go back to the slew thing that happens out there.

And actually, you know, before we even get to that kind of thing, this is more people calling in and inserting themselves, either you know, purposely just because they want to screw with investigators, or they legitimately think they can help.

But sipping through all of that stuff is a nightmare, and you have to do it because if you don't like just what happened here, you'll miss a piece of information.

So Richard Allen, he was basically calling in because when they release the images, he thought somebody was going to point at him and he wanted to preemptively say WHOA, Well it wasn't me, and I'm just I'm the one who's coming to you guys, which would be smart.

I guess.

Yeah, that's my feeling.

He's a guy that we found out had pretty extreme anxiety issues, and you know, I do too, and I could understand someone being sort of like, Okay, I need to get ahead of this.

I need to start explaining this.

Also, my wife is pushing me to do it, so I need to kind of start establishing some plausible deniability.

But as you'll find over the course of this story, he's increasingly doing things that ultimately hurt him that you know, this is kind of the first step in that direction.

So twenty twenty two, Kathy Shank finds this statement from Richard Allen that had been taken over the phone, and what happens next.

Obviously they go straight to his house and question him.

Yeah, and I will say it was taken over the phone, but then they also went out and interviewed him in a parking lot.

So it wasn't in person thing, so police go out.

They send two investigators out to Allan's house to interview him, and it starts very friendly and it ends up being much more confrontational and he storms out of the interview.

So that's their initial contact.

But they get a search warrant from this discussion and they end up taking his car.

They take a bunch of his clothing.

They find this gun in his house.

They find a lot of box cutters and knives, and they find this was something that really kind of chilled them when they were looking through this.

They find all these pictures of him hanging out around Deer Creek, around the bridge, and it turns out that he's a frequent visitor to those trails with his family.

So they're looking at all that and then ultimately they get him in for a second interview and he he is really I would say it's almost like he's resigned to his fate at that point, because he's he's not.

They're giving him all these outs.

They're like, could you have loaned your gun to someone who maybe like no, He like empties his pockets before going into this interview, almost as if he knows okay.

I'm going to jail.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Okay, do they get a confession out of him or what?

Well, not yet, so two investigators.

He's adamant, I had nothing to do with this.

He makes it clear that he cares deeply what other people think about him and he wouldn't do something like this.

And he has a bizarre interaction with his wife in the second interview where she comes in and the investigator is sort of like, you know, tell him to do the right thing, and she's she's very like stand offish with him, like she seems like I don't know this man.

And it's so bizarre.

And I told Kevin at the time, I'm like, if you if we were in this situation and you did this with me, I would know it was over.

Because he hits her up with I know, you know, oh, I know you didn't do this.

It's like he's telling her what to think and instead of giving any explanations, and she's saying things like, well, you didn't tell me you were on the bridge that day.

He's like, of course I did, sweetie.

It's like a very manipulative, weird interaction, but he's adamant he didn't do it.

At that point.

Now that all changed later on.

Okay, and the only thing linking right now him is he seems to match in the video.

But there's also the gun.

But there's no DNA, right, no DNA.

So this is something that we learned because you think, okay, a knife stabbing, the guy cuts himself, there's got to be something.

And what we learned is that this is gruesome.

But Libby's blood was all over the scene.

It was everywhere, And what we learned from experts was that blood drowns out touch DNA.

So if there's no semen present, if there's no rape where semen is left behind, that blood is going to potentially drown out the little skin cells that he's possibly leaving behind when he's touching them.

So no offender DNA is found in general.

Obviously someone killed them, but there's no male offender DNA that's left.

Behind it the scene.

And I think the witness testimony from the girls and the others who saw this person dressed is Bridge guy walking along the trails, and you have him saying, yes, I was dressed as Bridge guy and I saw these people.

I think that's also very very crucial because once you accept that testimony, then either he is bridge guy or there was someone else on the trails dressed exactly as he was, who was there at the same time, who at some point after those girls saw him, like they tapped him on the shoulder and they switched places, and there was no indication of anything like that happened.

Yeah, he would say things like I was on the bridge, and then we had another witness say, oh, yeah, I went to the bridge and I saw a bridge guyst there.

He seemed to be waiting for somebody.

So there's like all these indications where Richard Allen threw his own words through what he's saying he's seeing is putting himself again and again in the path of bridge guy.

So, you know, a quick question about motive.

I know we've already talked about this obviously being sexually driven, but it's the thought that he was stalking them, these two girls while they were in you know, the wooded area, or was he laying in wait for somebody to come by?

What was the thinking here?

How premeditated I think, is what I'm asking.

Yeah, that's a great question, and it would be the latter laying in wait for a victim of opportunity.

So he actually did a confession where he spoke to that, and what he indicated was he was looking for a female to rape, and he didn't necessarily care about age, and he claims he thought the girls were older.

So he was.

Basically standing there and I think anyone who might have crossed that bridge or crossed paths with him in a moment where he felt safe was going to unfortunately be abducted and murdered.

What's his criminal record like up until.

Now, none?

None.

He is a suburban dad and husband who works at CBS and has years of retail experience and really is a very quiet man.

He's not a guy with a lot of friends.

He doesn't make a big impact nobody that you'd be worried about necessarily on the surface.

There was one incident he had tremendous anxiety depression things like that.

Struggles.

He talked about how like you get a promotion at work and then have like some kind of mental breakdown where he's on the floor crying, his wife has to comfort him and pick him back up, and he can't take any kind of pressure.

But one thing that did come out was in one incident he puts a gun in his mouth and threatens to kill himself in front of his family.

So to me, that's either an act that says tremendous cry for help or it's a manipulation tactic to control other people in your family.

So there were instances like that where it's like all may not be well under the surface.

We heard from Walmart employees that he used to manage that he was a total pervert, like just the creepy boss you didn't want to be around, who's going to make sexual comments.

But then the CBS employees they said, no, he wasn't like that with us.

He was.

He's a good boss.

So like it's almost like you're getting different people in different situations depending on what he thinks he can get away with.

Yeah, And what's interesting that I think we can make clear here because I've read other things about this where they're really connecting what you guys are talking about the depression and anxiety to the murderers.

And we are always said, I know you all are too, always careful.

Bad mental health, especially in this case, is not going to make you attempt to assault two girls and murder them.

I hate it.

I hate it.

I hate it when mental health is blamed for everything that happens.

Sometimes people are assholes and misogynistic and have sick, you know, desires, and it doesn't mean they're mentally unwell.

Do you think that during the trial they were able to separate those things or when we get into a little bit more into the trial, can you talk about the defense's plan through all those Yeah.

And mental health was certainly a big deal during trial, and it was interesting because there was an attempt by the defense to say, we can't count his confessions because he's psychotic.

And we heard from so many people who deal with schizo effective disorder or different forms of psychosis or have been through that, and the thing we kept hearing was, this doesn't sound like psychosis to me, because psychosis looks.

It's not just saying anything.

It has a specific kind of way this takes form and how it looks, and you can pick up on it and you can diagnose it.

So I really don't think he was mentally ill.

And I don't think that factored into the murders, you know, And I agree we have to fight back against the stigma of mental illness because a lot of things get blamed on mentally ill people.

When it's like, we don't understand it, but it's actually psychopathy, or it's actually misogyny, it's actually something perhaps even deeper, and we can't pin that on people.

You know.

Yeah, I agree.

So he has this confession saying he was basically waiting for any kind of vulnerable woman.

What happens next?

Do they place him under arrest at this point?

Yeah, they arrested him immediately after this second interview.

And I should stress this confession that Anye referred to did not happen prior to arrest.

It happened after he was arrested and incarcerated.

And it was the defense's contention that the conditions under which he was incarcerated was so severe that it caused him to confess falsely.

So at the time they arrested him, a lot of that was based on the fact of the gun cartridge, which he had opportunities to say, oh, somebody else was using the gun, or he could have said, oh, I like to walk out along that trail with my gun when I hunt mushrooms or something.

He could have come up with alternative explanations.

He didn't.

He said, no, I'm the only one that uses the gun.

No, one else could have been using it that day, so he was tying himself to the crime scene, at which point they had little choice but to arrest him.

Yeah, and the confessions start rolling into the specific point.

And this is why I don't buy the mental illness argument whatsoever.

So he finds religion in prison, as many people do.

And I say prison not jail, because the Carroll County jail was so small, people were sleeping in the jail library at the time.

They did not feel it would be secure enough for him because people in jail and prison hate people who have harmed children or even are accused in this situation, so they didn't want him there.

I remember somebody told us, like we felt the jail, I'm sure they wouldn't agree with it in Carroll County, but somebody was like someone might break into the jail to kill him.

It was that, like, you know, it just wasn't going to be a good situation, so they put him in prison instead.

It's unusual, but it's not unheard of in cases where people have like a special need medically, or it's going to it's overcrowding.

There could be reasons this happens, but they put him in there and he finds religion, he finds God, and he starts trying to confess to his wife and mother, predominantly telling them I did do this.

And this is all recorded on the phone line in the prison, and to be very clear, his wife and mother do not want to hear it.

They are telling him, no, you didn't, you couldn't have done this, and he's saying, very calmly, very forcefully, I did.

And they're going back and forth, and there's multiple calls like this.

He's starting to tell other inmates that he did it.

He's starting to tell correctional officers that he did He's trying.

To unburden himself.

And when you hear the calls, because those are the ones that are recorded, he doesn't sound out of control.

He's not saying aliens made me do it.

He's saying like we need almost, like we need to talk.

I did it.

I need you to accept that and do do you still love me?

So he has this confession and then he ends up going on trial.

I know he's in prison for of being held in prison.

He ends up going on trial.

What are they going for?

Are they going for first degree murder?

On these both of these cases.

Yeah, he was initially charged with the equivalent of felony murder, which is basically, oh, he was kidnapping the girls.

They died as a result of that, but then later it was murdered.

Yeah, they had four counts, so they gave the jury options.

When did the conspiracy theories start that Richard Allen is innocent?

What is the grain of this?

They actually started pretty early on.

Of course, when a person is arrested, or prior to the arrest, the police and the prosecutor prepares something called a problem cause affidavit or a PCA, this is where they're basically explaining, here is the case against this person, here's why we chose to arrest him.

When Richard Allen was arrested, that document was not revealed to the public right away.

That started making people curious and maybe even suspicious is not too.

Strong of a word.

And then when it was finally unsealed and people were allowed to read it, they were underwhelmed.

It wasn't really written in a super clear fashion or a compelling fashion.

People really expected more.

And I also think for a lot of people, this was almost like a mystery story.

And if I'm reading a mystery novel.

I don't want to turn to the last chapter and find out that the person who did it is someone who hadn't appeared in the book before, which is what happened here.

People who've been following this case had their own particular suspects, and so they began coming up with ideas and theories.

Or my suspect is correct, there's some sort of conspiracy to protect him.

Yeah.

I want to emphasize that because a lot of this doesn't start when Richard Allen is arrested.

That's the culmination of it.

What we really saw was these people who said, you know, it was sort of like this bizarre mishmash of conspiracy theorists that have sort of been debating and having their own suspect for years and then suddenly they're told, no, you're wrong.

You just spent three years of your life accusing someone wrongly on the internet.

Congratulations, And they got really mad about that.

Yeah, And it's like this like ego thing where it's like, well, I can't be wrong, the police are wrong.

They're you know, they're going to railroad this guy, and I know in my heart to this guy instead, and it's it was a bad situation, and I think unfortunately social media amplified that.

But I do want to say most people who followed this case online were not in those camps.

Most people I saw were like, Okay, yeah, I don't know if he's guilty or not.

I guess we'll find out a trial and that's the right way.

Or how about thank god they caught somebody ill.

I mean, wouldn't that be the normal human reaction?

Two little girls dead, traumatized until they were killed, and thank for God that they got this guy, instead of well, there's no way that they're right about this, because I'm right about it.

Yeah, they're They're terrible because the ones in this case at least were not content to just say, well, we disagree.

They were stalking people.

They were stalking the prosecutor, they're harassing police, they're harassing anybody they perceived as an enemy.

And it got really out of control, and it was just a situation where ITAs like, we doesn't need to be this way, could just be normal online.

That one percent that I'm talking about who were doing the stalking, and you know, all of these things and pushing theories that have no base whatsoever.

Are these the people who get monetary gain because they're sort of quote unquote reporting on TikTok about this, or are these the people who just are simply anonymous online sloops who are jerks.

I'm so glad you asked this, because I've thought about this a lot, and I think there are two categories.

I think there are grifty creators who cater to the conspiracy theory audience, and the reason and they do that is because they are small.

But they will throw money at them, and they will throw their time and attention, and they will fiercely defend them, so they perceive them as a lock as far as an audience goes, so they will target them.

And these people largely know better.

They know what they're saying is stupid, but they're gonna say it, and they're going to perform like a trained monkey for this very kind of conspiratorial audience.

But I think the people are the most virulent.

I mean, they're fanning the flames those creators, and they certainly, you know, should be condemned.

But I think the people.

Who are the most extreme are true believers who they're not necessarily unintelligent.

They just may have a hard time sorting patterns in their minds, So that makes them more conspiratorial in they're thinking, and they're mostly seeking community, They're seeking attention.

They're not necessarily getting money because oftentimes their viewerships are very small and they're just not going to ever be big enough, and most people are not going to want to listen to them because they're just kind of horrible.

But I think it's more of a community and it's also a moral crusade.

I mean, what better way of feeling good about yourself that I'm fighting evil corrupt police who have done something horrible to an innocent man.

Everything I do is justified, My rage is justified, my actions are justified.

And I think that's where it kind of comes down to it.

It's about justifying the anger that they probably feel in other aspects of their life, but they're channeling it through this new hobby.

Yeah, where does the case stand now?

What ends up happening?

So we go to trial?

Trial is very dramatic.

The defense team, for whatever reason, ended up sort of adopting some of these conspiracy theories in their defense, which is not really super normal, and it almost was like they were catering to the YouTube audience with some of the things they did, and it was kind of baffling.

We were there every session except one, and there every day, and we felt this is a case where it doesn't have a big sexy hook.

It's not like a DNA case where you can just explain it in two minutes.

But what we saw come together was incredibly strong and a strong performance by the prosecutorial team, Nicholas mcleland, James Lettrell, and Stacy Deaner.

I mean, they were like amazing.

The defense kind of fell apart.

Richard Allen the whole time is acting really squirreling in his seat, and he's staring down the jurors and he's turning around.

He was pointing at us.

At one point.

It was like, what is this guy doing.

I think he was trying to act crazy.

I don't think he actually is mentally ill though.

Were they going for that kind of defense or now it was just basically he didn't do it.

You don't enough evenans.

Yeah, no, it was they did not go for an insanity defense.

They went for Initially, they went for this whole elaborate conspiracy theory about there being a Norse pagan cult in the woods of Delphi that sacrificed.

These two girls were white supremacists, and you may be wondering, why would white supremacists ritually sacrifice two white girls, because that doesn't really make any sense, and typically violent white supremacist target minorities.

But you know, but I would say that they went for that, but then the judge would not let them use that third party defense because there was no factual basis for it, and they ended up doing just more of a kind of down the middle.

I mean, they were calling witnesses at the trails who were there like hours later, and it was sort of like what is this supposed to do?

Or like, oh, this woman says she saw a guy by a mailbox that she didn't recognize and that was near the bridge.

Okay, what time did it happen?

Eight am?

Okay, who cares?

You know, it was like they were kind of grasping at straws.

So we felt very strongly that it was either going to be a hung jury or a conviction.

And the jury deliberated for a while and they came back with a conviction on all four counts.

So we were once we heard there was a verdict, we were like, it's you know, he's being convicted.

Now, a lot of the reporters we were there with who were not necessarily as familiar with the case, they felt differently.

They felt like, oh, well, there's no DNA, so they're not going to convict him.

And I think it's like it's a strong, circumstantial case and he's admitted to it, and he's included in his confessions details only the killer would know, so like, so it ended up being a conviction.

And right now we're all waiting on the appeal to come in.

What is his family saying.

Have they made any statements at all?

Do they stand behind him?

Yeah, they've said that they stand behind him, which I find interesting.

There there were some media statements from his wife, Kathy Allen, who sort of was very adamant that he must be innocent, he's such a good husband and father.

But in these media statements, she's never addressed the bizarre gun incident where he threatened to kill himself in front of her family, kind of indicating that he might have some pretty serious issues or manipulation tactics.

Nor has she ever indicated like why do you think he didn't tell you that he was on the bridge that day, or why do you think you know, because I'm going to tell you if Kevin were married, right, if Kevin was out somewhere that day and he said, oh, I told the police about this, but they didn't care, I might be kind of weirded out by that because it's like, okay, but you were out there, and also you kind of look like that picture.

Good to know, Kevin, are you hearing this for the first time?

This is what you get from marrying a chick who's into true crime.

I think Kevin, I mean, like he's such a gentleman, but like I'm like, yeah, Kevin's gonna call his lawyer now, But I you know, but it's a situation.

I think anyone with their spouse, you recognize them, you hear their voice.

I think personally, I have view his family members as being in some deep denial.

And we can understand that because, I mean, what a traumatic incident to go through where you go from thinking, yeah, things are at least okay with your spouse to being like a murdered two kids for no reason.

So I think we could all be understanding of a situation like that.

But I think there's denial.

There circling back just to kind of wrap this up circling back to the community, and that includes the online community here.

Now that there is a conviction, and I know there's an appeal which he's likely to lose, especially if he keeps the same lawyer as he had before, at this point, do you think that the bemoaning and the chatter and the gossip and the r are done and they're moving on to something else?

Like is this case closed for most people, especially in Delphi, which is what really counts.

I think it is closed for most people.

There are some diehards, though, who will never let it go, and they will be very loud.

A lot of them have multiple accounts on some of these social media platforms to try to make themselves look larger than they are.

They're still proclaiming that he was framed, that it was a conspiracy, and that he will be free someday and get a huge check from the government for his trouble.

I don't see people engaging with their content as much as they did a year ago, or even frankly six months ago.

I think a lot of people, now that more information has come out, I think they're seeing through it.

I agree, yeah, and I mean I think you're going to see that with any of these cases, even like something like Idaho, when you have Colberger pleading guilty and there's DNA, I still think there's chatter out there about he didn't do it, you know, and then you just have to go on and think, this is a case not about you guys, not about me or you two.

It's about these two little girls and their family that's left behind and the media deluge that they've had to deal with, and hopefully, you know, with this conviction, they've been able to to sort of continue to mourn but move on past at least the circus that has been created in a small city that has never had anything significant I'm sure happen.

Yeah.

No, that's really well said, and I love that.

I think what I want to convey with this book is these two girls helped solve their own murders.

They were incredibly brave.

What they went through before they died is horrifying to contemplate.

They had the presence of mind to in Libby's case, film this creep.

And in Abby's case, she was the one over the phone over Libby's phone, so did she hide it perhaps?

And that was crucial, And they brought this man to justice, and every time we talked to, you know, investigators, we would talk to them about it and they would say they helped solve this case, like this was crucial evidence that they collected.

And I think there's something beautiful about that.

We want the legacy to be Abby and Libby.

And you know, there's a park in their name in Delphi now where kids can play safely.

There is a scholarship fund in their name because they never got to go to college.

But I mean, think about this, the families still they're seeing Abby and Libby's peers grow up, get jobs, move out, have kids of their own, and they're not getting to experience any of that with them, and so they're fighting to have these girls still have a legacy because they're not here to leave it themselves at this point, the families have to go and do that, and I think that's where I think people should be focusing their energy.

How can we support them in that mission.

If you love historical true crime stories, check out the audio versions of my books The Sinners All Bow, The Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and Don't Forget.

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