Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Delphi Murders: 3 New Developments Shake Up Richard Allen's Case

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Richard Allen, the man accused of murdering two teenage girls in Delphi, Indiana, is back in court facing new charges as his lawyers try to get the case against him thrown out. We have the fireworks from court. Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Richard Allen's trial for the murders of Abby Williams and Libby German is now scheduled to begin on May 13th. That's very soon. He wants a speedy trial now that his original lawyers, Brad Rosie and Andrew Baldwin, are back on the case.

Starting point is 00:00:43 Judge Francis Gall had removed them from the case after a friend and former employee of Baldwin's leaked crime scene photos to a podcaster unbeknownst to Baldwin. The attorney's removal was a debacle, and the Indiana Supreme Court reinstated them because Allen wanted them as his lawyers. Now the prosecutor wants Rosie and Baldwin held in contempt for the leak of those photos. But this week, Allen's defense team argued the charges against him should be thrown out because of some errors in the investigation, including their claim that interviews from the first 70 days of the investigation are missing and were erased. Abby and Libby, you'll recall, were found murdered on Valentine's Day in 2017. It's an awful, awful case. The girls had been

Starting point is 00:01:33 dropped off at the Monon High Trail the day before, but didn't meet up with their parents later that day and were reported missing. The FBI released that clip of the suspect in 2019. Richard Allen was arrested and charged more than three years later in 2022 with Abby and Libby's murders. With me to discuss the very latest in the Delphi murders case is Joe Giacalone. He is a retired cold case sergeant, also the host of True Crime with the Sarge on YouTube, and Bob Mata. He's a defense attorney and the host of the Defense Diaries podcast. Bob, I'll start with you. Tell us what happened in court this week. So on Monday, we had two hearings took place, and they were both pretty highly anticipated. The first hearing was the motion by the state for contempt against Allen's two attorneys, Andrew Baldwin and Brad Rosie.

Starting point is 00:02:35 It's kind of a continuation of, if people aren't familiar with the case, a few months back, the judge in that case, Judge Gull, had removed both of Rick Allen's attorneys. And, you know, she had felt that they had been what she termed grossly negligent in their representation of him. Those guys then went up to the Supreme Court of Indiana. They had it out up there. Supreme Court said, look, we're reinstating him because we're concerned about Richard Allen's Sixth Amendment rights. So those guys came back on the case. So after that was done, the prosecutor said, well, you know what? I still want them to be found in contempt of court. So we had this hearing set up. So that was the better part of the day, actually. So

Starting point is 00:03:18 packed courtroom, tons of people in line waiting to get in there in the early mornings and the bitter cold in Indiana. And so that hearing took, like I said, the better part of the day. And then the later portion of the day was filled with the defense's motion to dismiss the entire case based on evidence that was either lost or destroyed that the defense was claiming could contain exculpatory evidence. So for me personally, I was much more interested in the second hearing because it was really more in tune with the trial itself, whereas the first one was really just the prosecutor wanting to punish the defense attorneys. At this point, 56 days out from trial, which is set for May 13th, everybody needs to be focusing on that trial. It's a huge trial.

Starting point is 00:04:13 Let's talk about the defense's claim that exculpatory evidence has been destroyed. They're claiming that 70 days worth of interviews in this case, basically the first 70 days or so of interviews with witnesses, other people in this case have been destroyed. What was the prosecution's response to that? I just can't even imagine you go into a case and you're trying to comb through the discovery and boom, all of this stuff is gone from the most important stages or what could be argued, arguably the most important part of the investigation, the very early stages. Yeah. There really was no viable excuse in terms of what the answer to that was, because, and of course the prosecutor didn't have any control over what

Starting point is 00:05:07 they're claiming happened which was that the DVR that they used in the police station which was used to record multiple rooms and I'm talking about interrogation or interview rooms that somebody had changed a setting on it and that it was running continuously 24 7 from and it started and there's two different periods so there's there's from February 14th and as you said aptly and Jeanette we're talking about the day after actually the day that the girls are discovered so when they start interviewing people immediately and that in those critical first days of an investigation all of that was lost because what they're claiming is that the video just continued to run and run and run went through

Starting point is 00:05:57 six terabytes which i don't know if that's actually possible. I've had people that work security that said that one terabyte can typically do 24 seven for 30 days. And they were saying that this was a six terabyte memory and that it ran all the way through it and then overrode everything that had been taped or videotaped in those first days so i mean there wasn't really like a like an excuse that would satisfy anybody at the end of the day the judge is going to deny that motion she would never dismiss this case for that sure there were summary reports that were prepared by law enforcement that were summarizing what was said in those particular interviews. I believe that she's going to find those to be sufficient as a substitute. You know, so I think as shocking as it is the conscience and, you know, I mean, evidence does get lost. Like this isn't this isn't a situation where it doesn't happen, where, you know, videos don't get overridden.

Starting point is 00:07:03 It's happened to me many many times there's typically a workaround um and it typically is you know like a narrative summary report i as in a defense attorney i don't love that we all hear things differently joe may have an interview that he does and he writes up a report and he may think that something that I think is incredibly important when he's drafting his report is, I think it's critical. You know what I mean? So the best evidence is always going to be the actual video. I agree with you a hundred percent. There's no way Judge Gall is dismissing this case. But Joe, I want to bring you in on this. You have overseen cold case investigations. You're a cop for decades. This is not good. I mean, this is a high profile case. There may be narrative reports outlining

Starting point is 00:07:53 what was said in these interviews, but still there's nothing like capturing on video what somebody said, what a potential witness said in an interview. And we're talking about 70 days of interviews. I mean, it just seems like a mistake. Mistakes can happen in investigations. But this just seems mind boggling to me. I mean, I know it was a small town, small police department. They brought Indiana State Police in to help. Eventually, the FBI gets involved. But your thoughts on 70 days of interviews being lost. Yeah, so this is a problem in regards to, you know, do they have redundant systems, right? And if not, if police departments are watching this all over the country, they need to install

Starting point is 00:08:37 a redundant system that makes sure that this never happens. Because, listen, when you're dealing with an investigation, and from the supervisor point of view, not only even in the Col case squad, but it was also a squad supervisor too, and you're signing off on cases and you're doing all these things. And I can tell you one thing that I preach, that the department preached all the time, is documentation, documentation, and documentation. If it's not documented, it's never done. So here's the problem. Not every time did the detective write a report in a timely manner. And as you know, as well as I do, the longer it goes, you know, the worse that detective's memory gets.

Starting point is 00:09:12 And that's why they can go back to a video and look at it again and then, you know, dot their I's and cross their T's as kind of like a fail safe. Like, oh, I have the video. I can always watch it. Well, that's not going to be possible now in this case. So they can't go back. So if reports weren't done on time, and that's a supervisor's job to make sure that it gets done on time, that's going to be some big issues. Specifically now, they're going to be caught, not caught, but they're going to be on the stand and they're going to have to now explain why something wasn't documented. Why didn't you write the report? Or when did you write the report? So for instance, the time you write the report should be on it, right? So everything's electronic now. So if I did the interview on Monday and I don't write the report until Friday,

Starting point is 00:09:54 that's documented on the actual form. This becomes an issue for police departments. That's why we strongly recommend through training, as soon as you're done, you want to take a quick break, I get it, but write it down before your memory fades. You got your notes, you got your, maybe a tape recorder or whatever it may be, but please document it. I think we're going to find out that some of this stuff wasn't documented on time in regards to this case. And that is critical. The documentation is critical because that's how you run an investigation. I mean, you see the police officers, I mean, at scenes and stuff

Starting point is 00:10:31 like that. I mean, these days they have body cameras, some departments, not all. I mean, I remember even covering a case back in 2005 in Wisconsin, a really big case. And I remember being really impressed back then when the case went to trial and one of the detectives was walking through the scene with a video camera. I mean, just like a camcorder. And I was like, wow, that's really cool that he did that. So documentation and videotape doesn't lie. So I think that's always very critical. Let's talk now about these new murder charges. Judge Gall approved some new murder charges. She denied the prosecution's request to add some other charges. Richard Allen is now charged, Bob but she did not allow the prosecution to charge him with kidnapping separately. So how big of a deal is that? It's not a big deal at all. And what actually what occurred is they ended up dismissing the state because it would have been

Starting point is 00:11:40 a redundancy with respect to the kidnapping charges because now the the new amended charges include kidnapping within them so they didn't need uh counts five and six so they that's why they dismissed those the judge didn't force that to happen the state the state said that we're going to withdraw them because they didn't need it so in terms of what we're looking at um as far as the charges goes it didn't move the needle at all. It's the exact same thing. So ultimately, they still have to prove the same thing for both. Now, originally, in Indiana, they don't call it the felony murder rule.

Starting point is 00:12:17 But if you're familiar with felony murder, that essentially means that they only need to prove that the kidnapping occurred and that as a result of that kidnap, that the girls were killed in order to get the conviction on the murder. So, which still remains the case. You know, when McClellan came out and said that I want to amend the charges to add just the straight murder, I think it was done in a way to say, to boost the public's confidence in saying that, look, we have a strong case against Richard Allen. Remember, perception is everything in cases going into a trial. And as a defense attorney, when we see felony murder as the primary counts, we know that they don't have the evidence at that time on the underlying

Starting point is 00:13:06 charge because otherwise they would have brought it on the murder. So we knew when they came with the felony, our version of what they call felony murder, that they didn't have a strong case of the murder, but they had a strong case that they believed in terms of him being the one who corralled the girls and got them down to where they ultimately met their demise. Yeah, it's just a horrible, horrible case. I mean, Abby and Libby, those poor little girls. I mean, it's just horrific. You know, there are three pieces of evidence that the defense calls critical in this case, Joe. One being the bullet found at the crime scene that they say was cycled through a gun that Richard Allen owned.

Starting point is 00:13:47 They said they were able to do a comparison. They were able to, you know, the striations and everything. They were able to tell that that bullet found at the scene was cycled through the gun that Richard Allen owned that was found in his home. So you've got that. You've got cell phone evidence and the data surrounding that. And then his alleged confession that the defense basically says is not, they think it's bunk because he was in solitary confinement at a prison, a maximum security prison, which is a whole nother issue. I mean, this guy, this guy was not convicted of anything

Starting point is 00:14:22 and he's being held in a maximum security prison, not a county jail. It just boggles my mind. So there are some critical pieces of evidence here that the defense feels they really have to attack in this case. So do you look at this as a strong case for the state? Do you think this is a challenging case for the defense, Joe? Well, here's the problem with this, what they're referring to now as the magic bullet, right? The question comes down to is when was this found? There have been reports in the news that says that this bullet was found after the crime scene had been completed, broken down, and then had to come back, you know, whether it was a few days later or what have you.

Starting point is 00:15:02 That becomes a huge problem, right? So in crime scene investigation, we teach the detectives, you get one chance to do it right. Going back to a crime scene is never ideal because you open yourself up to, you went back and planted it, or somebody else went back from the time you closed it off to the time you went back. And this becomes an issue, right? So there were reports that this bullet was actually even buried in the dirt

Starting point is 00:15:25 and then there's also reports saying that the bullet was found in between where the two girls were lying so there is some this there's some misinformation out there in regards to this quote-unquote magic bullet so i need to know about that and here's the other thing about this and the defense is going to be looking at the chain of custody who found it when did they find it who did they give it to who got it at the lab right everybody who's in that chain is going to be looking at the chain of custody. Who found it? When did they find it? Who did they give it to? Who got it at the lab? Everybody who's in that chain is going to be, they're going to have a parade of people coming into that courtroom. We're going to talk about that bullet because it becomes a major piece of this investigation. Bob, your thoughts?

Starting point is 00:16:00 I'm with Joe on that, and he's exactly right. Aside from what I construe to be issues with what are going to be the tool marking issues that are going to come up, because remember, this was an unspent casing, meaning that it didn't cycle through the country where that was the piece of evidence that got somebody convicted. It's just different than when it cycles through. You're not going to get the stridations and the markings like you will if the bullet's passing through the barrel of the gun. And we're just talking about it popping out probably when the gun was racked so i i think that that's the that's a big issue for them and then you compound it with what exactly joe was saying with the the fact that we don't know when this thing was found you know and and i'm in the same position with with uh you know with respect to where joe's at i'm hearing the same things now i i don't know we'll have to wait till trial to see if any of these things that we're hearing are accurate.

Starting point is 00:17:07 Because I've heard everything from they found it the day of, they found it three days later, that somebody found it with a metal detector that wasn't even long for it. I've heard just a variety of things. I've been doing this long enough to know that we just have to wait until trial to find out what's what. But if it is the case that they actually shut the scene down, they considered it to be fully processed. And then days later, they came back and that's when they recover. Joe's exactly right. That is going to be a huge issue at trial. And when you compound it with the fact that I don't know that that's not junk science with respect to being able to have somebody give their subjective opinion on tool markings of a ejected unspent casing.

Starting point is 00:17:52 It could be a problematic and I think it'll be a lot less of a magic bullet than the state's hoping. And the cell phone evidence could be very interesting too. The defense has mentioned, Joe, in some of its documents that, you know, they're looking for information about who did the geofencing stuff. That's where basically they can tell who was in an area or whose cell phone was in an area. They block it off and they do all these. It's all data driven. So what are your thoughts on that? Well, listen, we know cell phones are a big part of every investigation, and this is going to be another one of those case for experts to battle.

Starting point is 00:18:31 I don't know if Indiana is a Frye or a Daubert state or a combination of the two, but it basically, you know, if it's a Frye state, it's going to be really difficult to get some of this evidence in, right, because the judge makes the decision. And we know that a lot of people are worried about this. So the issue that comes down to is that the evidence that they have with the cell phones and the towers is going to be disputed, of course. I've been to the location. It's very remote. There's not a lot of cell towers so that they can probably zone in and say there's no other way that this person could be there because this is the only tower that pinged him or what have you so it's going to be uh quite interesting i mean we're all going to be watching this because there's a lot of this new technology including this geo fencing stuff that's going to come into play

Starting point is 00:19:17 because we're seeing it in other cases too like idaho and some other places so this will be the first crack at it and see how it goes down. Well, we are all going to be watching. Joe Giacalone and Bob Mata, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. My pleasure. You're welcome. And that's it for this edition of Crime Fix. I'm Annette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us. We'll see you back here next time. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite podcasts and new episodes post each weeknight at 6 Eastern Time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel Camacho does our video editing. Our head of social media is Bobby Zoki.

Starting point is 00:19:56 Our senior director of social media is Vanessa Vine. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers. Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabee is our audio editor.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Delphi Murders: 3 New Developments Shake Up Richard Allen's Case

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Delphi Murders: 3 New Developments Shake Up Richard Allen's Case

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