Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - LIVE FROM CRIME CON: 2 girls murdered at local Delphi bridge, families search for answers

Episode Date: June 20, 2019

Teen best friends, Abby Williams and Libby German killed while out walking trails in broad daylight in Delphi, Indiana. One of the girls snaps a cell phone photo of the suspect, who has never been caught. Two years later, the families are still searching for answers in this mystery which has gripped the nation.The girls grandparents, Mike Patty, and Eric Erskin, discuss the latest breaking clues in the caseDistinguished scholar of applied forensics, Jacksonville State University, Joe Scott Morgan, and crimeonline.com Investigative Reporter, Leigh Egan, also join the panel.Nancy takes questions from a live audience Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Two beautiful young girls go out for the afternoon at a public park, a trailhead, so to speak. They're never seen alive again. And even now the search goes on for their killer. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories live at CrimeCon in New Orleans. Welcome, everybody. Of course, I'm talking about the unsolved murders of the two little girls, Liberty and Abigail, on that Delphi Bridge. Some of my most important guests are all of you here to help put together the clues left behind and hopefully bring home a killer and put him where he belongs, and that is behind bars. With me, an all-star panel to lead us through the facts that we know,

Judge Ashley Wilcott, forensic professor at Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet, Joseph Scott Morgan, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, Lee Egan, and now our special guest from Delphi. My name is Mike Patty from Delphi, Indiana. I'm the grandfather of Liberty German, and we're here to spread awareness and information about our case that's still unsolved. We're still chasing the guy who murdered our girls. And with events like this and the support of people like you, we hope to continue to spread the word and spread the information

because there's a guy out there somewhere who murdered our girls, and we're out here to catch him. And thank you for your support. I even see some T-shirts from last year, so thank you. Thank you for your support. I'm Eric Erskine, and I'm Abigail's grandpa. And I'm from Delphi, Indiana as well. And I'd like to thank you for the opportunity in CrimeCon to allow us to come and share our story.

And we've got a table up on the third floor. And if you want to help us out, we've got some flyers. And we'd love to talk to you and help share our story and our message. So thanks for having us. You know, I want to start where I start a lot of cases when I would try cases, investigate cases, report on cases. I want to talk for just one moment about Delphi because the actual location, and I don't mean the trestle bridge. For those of you just joining us, we're talking about two beautiful little girls that were kidnapped and lost their lives off a trestle bridge. What I mean by that is one of those suspended railroad bridges that was in an open area, kind of like a park. Would you call it a park? It's part of the trail

system, yeah. That's a better description. It's not like a park as you would know it in a city or a suburb. It's just as he said, there's a trail. There are trails going around it. But a lot of people go there. So in that way, it's akin to a park. But it's more like a trail setting. And there's the bridge. And we know the girls were on the bridge because they took photos, just like my children.

That was a real struggle to decide to give them cell phones, and I regret it every day that I did. But they've got them now. The cat's out of the bag. But they thought to take a photo of a guy approaching them, and I find that in itself very, very interesting because people walk by us all the time, and my twins don't think to take out their camera and take a picture.

So something led them to take that picture. But I want to ask you guys, if you could tell us about Delphi. There's a very low crime rate. How big is it? Where is it? How close is it to an interstate or an airport? And that's very significant in this investigation.

Okay, I think we're between 2,000 and 3,000 people in Delphi. It's a rural setting, you know, a lot of farming community around that. As far as an airport goes, the commercial airport is in Indianapolis, about 60 miles away. Some of the local, you you know we have a few local factories there in Delphi I mean it's pretty small it's a we have a hog plant or a you know swine operation there. It's just a your typical small Midwest town you know where nothing happens it's usually pretty boring you know Friday

night football games and basketball games, you know, from the high school. And then the trail system that goes around town. We used to take the kids in there and we'd put the bikes, because we live out in the country a little bit, and we'd throw the bikes in the back of a pickup and go in there and ride trails all over town. It's a very common place. I mean, that's. Would somebody in a neighboring town know about that trail? Sure.

If you Google Delphi and historic trail systems, I mean, there's information out there. Okay, you say Google. But would somebody in the next town over or the next town over know about the trestle bridge and that trail system? Sure. That bridge is, bridge is 100 years old

something of that nature it's a part of an you know non operating railroad system so I would say very common you know the people in the area you know what they're saying is really significant to the investigation to you just got just got Morgan with us he is a professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University. He's the author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, and I'm happy to have you with us. Joe Scott, the significance of that in a nutshell, a nutshell, that's about that big. Let me just say a peanut shell, not a walnut shell. Go ahead.

Yeah, Delphi is markedly isolated. This is, in my opinion, this is not some place that you wind up by accident. This is something that is known. It is a location that is familiar. And this railroad trestle, I'm sure, you know, a lot of us are from the rural areas of the country. We have specific locations like that that are known to us. You know, they'll say, well, we're going down to the tracks, we're going down to the bridge, we're going down to the railroad trestle, or down to, you know, the covered bridge or whatever. That's probably

a significant area. People would have to know that. Right. In where I grew up in Bibb County not even in this incorporated city would go is that by seven bridges nobody would know that unless you're from there and which is a series of bridges over swamp area with me Ashley Wilcott judge lawyer anchor you can find her at Ashley Wilcott dot com ash lawyer, anchor. You can find her at ashleywilcott.com. Ash, the significance of it being a rural area, it's important. It's a huge importance. So I think if it were Metro, you'd think it could have just been a crime of opportunity. When you think of rural, I think of probably not a crime of opportunity,

probably someone went there with a plan, and I think that they will do it again if they're not caught. It's hard for me to believe, guys, that this was the perps' first time at the rodeo. To go from zero to 200 MPH in one day, and this is anecdotal, but I guarantee you, I bet you there are statistics to back it up. Whenever I would have a murder or an assault of this nature, it was not the first offense. There had been a peeping Tom. There had been a grab and snatch. There had been something leading up to that. And that makes me think the perp had offended before

whether or not he was caught, which means he wouldn't be in the system if he wasn't caught. And I want to know your thoughts on that. Well, it's purely speculation, obviously. Yeah, I would think that the person who did this, I can't say whether they've done it before or not. I'd sure like to find that information out when we get him in custody. But more importantly, I want to make sure he doesn't do it again.

So when we get him caught. But I'm sure he has to have something in his past that triggered this. I mean, normal people don't do things like this. I know we're trying to understand the psychics of why people do these kind of things to other human beings. Can I just correct you? Because I used to do that in court, and after about five years, literally, of trying cases, I finally said, I'm going crazy trying to figure out why. And that is not my job.

My job is to identify who did it and prove the case and know in my heart I got the right guy so I can stand in front of a jury and explain it to them. So my why, I don't have time to think about why. I'm trying to figure out who. And if I thought for a minute that this guy had offended before, that would give me a clearer picture of who. Do you think, from what you know, that this person has offended before? I, you know, kind of agree with what Mike says. We don't know, but you could speculate all day, and what we do know, the fact is that he took our girls. And that's the bottom line.

And I agree with you that we've all lost a lot of sleep trying to figure out why and how could somebody do this. But the bottom line is they're out there. And so we have to share the message and stay on track and share the photo that the police feel most confident with or the sketch that they're most comfortable with. And so in our fear as families that somebody doesn't do this once and then turn over a new leaf

and never do a horrible, horrific act like this. So that's another element that drives us to stay on track is that we don't want any other families to suffer what we've gone through at the hands of a person like this. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Lee Egan joining us, everybody. CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Let's give me a nutshell at the beginning and then bring us up to date. Okay, Nancy.

Well, the girls on February 13th, they went out for a walk. February 13th, so it was cold. It was cold, yes. And they went on a walk on the moonen high bridge and according to indiana state police doug carter this is a type of bridge where you have to know what you're doing because it's rickety some ropes are falling off so you have to have been on that bridge before to be able to just to walk freely on it. So obviously these girls, they asked their parents permission and they went on the bridge and it was a typical day. You know, many children did that.

It wasn't like they were off in some secluded area. This is like a park area. And on that particular day, there happened to be a stranger on the bridge with them. And this stranger, one of the little girls obviously felt fear, pulled out her phone and recorded him saying, down the bridge. From that point, that's the last anyone heard from them. And then the following day, police found the girls' bodies not far from the bridge in a ditch. Hold on, we've got a question right here. But to spring forward from there,

the search goes on at first, the families couldn't take in that they were actually missing because it seems so surreal. There has been a massive effort put into catching the perp. And recently, a photo was released of somebody already with a record that really looked a lot like the guy on the bridge.

And remind me, Ash, I want to circle back to how you can enhance photos and get a better look of who is on the bridge. What's your question? Well, my thought is school was out that day. That person, he would know school's out that day, and there could be children on the track, women on the track. So if it was out that day, they would be familiar with that schedule possibly. Yeah, what day of the week was it, guys?

It was a Monday. Yeah. And just a couple things. No disrespect, but it was actually fairly warm that day. It was T-shirt weather. It was like 65 degrees, uncannily warm for February 13th in the middle of Indiana. I noticed that guy has on a hoodie and a jacket and a lot of clothes. That's a great point you picked up on that.

I mean, in fact. He was homeless. In fact, the girls, when they left, they didn't want to wear, even take a sweatshirt. They were in T-shirts. My wife said, no, you guys grab a sweatshirt. In fact, when Kelsey dropped them off, she said, you grab the sweatshirts and take them with you. You know what? I think I remember them telling me that.

Last year, she made him take something with them. I do that to Lucy all the time. John David will do it without a problem. Lucy is the issue. She's 80 pounds of hair and eyelash sass. That's it. That's what she is. You know, interesting, he has on a shirt. It looks like a shirt, a hoodie, and a jacket, and a hat for 65 degree weather. Now, what does that say to you? Overdressed is what I saw. I know that, but what can I deduce from it?

Why is he dressed like that? Because he didn't have a car to leave his stuff in? Because he had to wear it? Because he's homeless and he's wearing everything he's got? He didn't look homeless to me. No. But why would he be wearing all that? What's he hiding underneath?

Yes. Ash, to the photo. Because I swear, I do not think this guy looks like the photo and to me the photo is the more reliable thing but they had to enhance it and enhance it and enhance it so what do we really know about the photo right so one from a judicial perspective when I see evidence come before me and it's a photo Nancy often after they've enhanced it enhanced it enhanced it it does look different than maybe a shot like this where you can't see the entire face of the man in the photograph but I'm gonna

tell you this this is what's interesting to me usually when they enhance enhance enhance it looks so much like the defendant I am here to tell you I see the evidence presented it's like holy moly those drawings often do look like the person charged with the crime. So this one I struggle with because I agree with you. Does it look exactly like the person in the photo from what we can see in the photo? No. But I'm not going to mean that doesn't mean that's not necessarily a killer.

What are you guys doing? Well, the new information and the new sketch that came out in April you know because I get asked that question you know how do we get here now we've been going for two over two years well what that has done and really we were at crimecon last year we're sat down with you tips come come pouring in after crimecon all that information has allowed this case to move to the next step there may be another step after this one. These sketches are taken from eyewitness people who saw people out there in that area around the bridge

and are on the trails that day. Obviously, the picture that is on the flyer, and if you actually go out there, we released a couple of steps of him walking, like two and a half steps that Libby had captured on a video. That's the guy we want to talk to. We haven't talked to that guy yet. And so the pictures, the first one that was out there, we've collected enough information. There was over 40,000 tips on that. So that information has allowed police or the investigators the law enforcement group to either make a determination that that first sketch that while that guy may

have been there may not have been in the area that day but they've collected enough information that says we got an information now that says this is our guy and they think he's more local as if you noticed Doug Carter made that in his press release now if I if I was local, I wouldn't be anymore after they released something like this. So that's why we're here. You know, he could be anywhere. He could travel across the U.S., you know what I mean? We both drove all the way down here from Indiana, you know, a day. So where could he be? He could be here. He could be there. I don't know. Do you believe that police could get any DNA?

Could get, you said? There's DNA at every crime scene. That's what they tell me. That's true. Just got explained. There is DNA at every crime scene, whether you get it or not. Yeah, there is, and it depends upon how you process the scene keep in mind DNA is very very fragile but again on the other hand it can be resilient and that's heavily dependent upon how crime scenes are processed my belief is that great care great care was taken on the part of the investigators at the scene. This is not something that they rushed. It was not something that they just kind of haphazardly went through.

They took their time in collecting this. What do you mean by resilient? Well, it depended upon where the DNA is, okay, and no disrespect in any way, but the DNA is literally on their person, on the bodies. Well, I mean, you can get touch DNA from me doing this. You can, but that's the reality is that the touch DNA is, if you guys will think about this, if you'll put like talcum powder in your hands and take it and go like this, that's sloughed dead skin cells. We lose, I don't know know 100,000 per day so

you're dropping DNA all the time so it's very very fragile and it can be lost but if we're talking about a biological deposit let's say any kind of body fluid that's a bit more resilient also if everybody right now will just look at your fingernails okay anything that's beneath your fingernails can latch on. And these can be collected. At this point, though, we don't know what the police have. They have alluded to the fact that they do, in fact, have DNA samples. That's been alluded to, but we don't know in what form that is. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

Nobody saw any struggle of him pulling the girls? If there were other people out there walking or jogging or riding their bikes, nobody saw a struggle ensue at all on the trestle bridge? Do we know? I'm not aware of, you know. The police have not told me anything along that line. Then how do you think, other than showing a weapon underneath all those clothes, did he get them to follow him? You also got to remember you're talking about a 13- and 14-year-old girl.

A grown man can be pretty intimidating, in my opinion, to somebody. Nancy, can I just say one more thing relative to this point? We're talking about a grown man, all right? Y'all heard his voice, okay? Now, one thing that came out that they, you remember the little, what was the little piece that they added? What did, it was a directive. What did he say? He said, guys, and if you listen to that very carefully, you know, I'm a daddy, all right? So, guys, he's trying to get somebody's attention. Guys, like, I want your attention. This is what I want you to do.

And then he says, downhill, downhill. Guys, downhill. You've got a grown man talking to these little angels out there. They're by their self. In this environment, he's giving them a directive. And that's, you know, that's what I think. I don't know that he's wield them a directive. And that's what I think. I don't know that he's wielding a knife or anything like that. You've got a grown man that's telling them to do this.

More than likely they're going to be compliant. Tell me about them. What would their nature be? If they were told by an adult to do something, would they do it? Or would they have known enough to run or fight? What were the natures of Abigail and Liberty? Well one thing that always sticks in my mind is they stuck together. We don't know the events other than the guys down the hill, they stuck together. And, you know, we lost a lot of sleep trying to run that scenario through our minds. So you can think, well, there could have been a weapon.

We don't know. At that moment why. We know there were other people visiting the trails that day. I mean, there's been, you know, we know that there are people before and after. That's documented. You know, so was this scouted? I mean, at that moment, at that location? That person looked around and knew that within eyesight that there was nobody present.

We don't know. Did he already have a grasp of one of the girls? Also, they were up on a trestle. What if he had said, I'll push you off, we need a weapon. Or do you think that Abby and Liberty would have gone along just because he ordered them to? My opinion for Libby, she would have tried to give the guy space, like just leave me alone. I'm in my own world, I don't need you in my space but I mean my first reaction is if she said down the hill she probably if I'd have told her that she said you go down the hill you know I

don't know if she would have you know said that to him or not but you know like Joe was saying you got a man who's a stranger to them That that gives a directive, you know a direct order or direct, you know Order to do something guys down the hill I Think you know, like I said their age and their innocence Yeah, they were scared they were scared in my mind the video was taken before the command I have no validation of that or nobody's ever give me a timeline but if the or picture was taken prior to the command,

what caused Libby, what did she sense, what did she feel, what did she see that made something, you know, click, you know? The reason each one of these details are so important, every detail, I remember a guy that we all knew to be a serial killer. And I had a chance of getting him on one case. We never knew the name of the victim. Joe Scott, you and I have talked about unidentified bodies all across our country. Never knew her name. Still don't know her name. But I thought I could get him on one case. There was an earring found at the scene where her body was found.

And the earring bothered me. And from that one earring being at the location it was in proximity to her body, we figured out how the whole thing went down. That she was lured there, that the struggle and the murder took place there. We figured out like 15 different points about the attack and the murder from that one earring and where it laid in proximity to her body. So what I'm trying to say is one fact, one detail, believe it or not, can crack a case wide open like this. He's saying he thinks the video was before the command. It matters. We may not know why it matters, but it's a tiny piece of a puzzle that doesn't make any sense right now. So every detail matters, Ashley. I say this on the show all the time,

again, judicial perspective, trust your gut. And I believe in kids' kids guts and I think I agree with that I think the video was taken first because I think that she probably sensed evil she probably sensed something's wrong something's amiss she's a hero for doing that I don't care what age you are trust your gut because I see it on the bench all the time you're usually right lately we've gotten the idea that the police are going in a new direction. Lee, do you know anything about a new direction? They absolutely are. With the release of the new mugshot, you guys may notice it looks totally different from the first one. He looks younger, much younger, and police said that this

man could be anywhere from as young as 18 to 40 years old. If he is that young, that could explain why we don't have him in APHIS. Correct. No fingerprints. The DNA data bank or the fingerprint data bank. Because, Ash, one of your expertise is juvenile law. None of that would have been made public, even if it exists.

No, that's right. If they commit any crime prior to 18 throughout the nation, they don't have a record once they become an adult, except unless it's aggravated circumstances, but yeah, that's an exception. Police think that this man, whoever he is, has some kind of ties. He knows Delphi. He knows the community. He knew how that bridge worked. So it's somebody that could be hiding in plain sight. How can you hide in plain sight in a town of 3,000 people? Because it's somebody that they don't suspect. Maybe a family man.

Could be a police officer. Could be a firefighter. It's somebody that nobody is suspecting. What about that, guys? All are good possibilities. I wish I had the answer. Why are they saying it's a local? Why do you believe they are now focusing on a local? I think it's based on the information they have that they're not sharing with us. You know, I mean, obviously, they don't share much more with us than what's out there in the public, to be honest with you.

Even his family. It's really about protecting the integrity of the investigation, and I know people, you know, we all know what that's about, because that is critical to when comes time when we get this guy arrested that we're able to actually put him where he needs to be, which is behind bars. You know, and we don't want to be able to, you know, have any mishaps there, you know, with too much, you know, releasing more information like they did, which was a new sketch, which was another part of the voice command, which was taking a couple of steps across the bridge, you know, that's showing more cards in your hand, you know, from the law investigators, you know,

that from their perspective, they're putting more cards out on the table. I don't know how many cards they got up their sleeve yet, but obviously they're not going to lay them all out there. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. What's your question, dear? So with the new, I guess, DNA with genealogy and all of that, is that kind of coming into play? And also, when I hear the directive, guys down the hill, I think it's very informal, and I think that if they were comfortable enough

to follow that directive, they may have been familiar with that person so I wonder if that kind of falls if that's ever come to mind for you guys as far as the DNA and analysis the police departments law enforcement's they have not told us how and which methods what's being done okay there again like Mike said it's not like you see on TV okay we're in 50 minutes it's a done deal so you know we're not brought in every week and and debriefed on the 3,000 tips that have come in and we're talking to this person and this person. It's not like that. So our hope with the technology that's out there

and with the message that law enforcement has delivered to the families, we have faith that they're using utilizing all the tools that are available it's not like that I had Paul holds explain at one time we were on dr. Oz I had to go corner him I'm like like, what did you just say? And it's a whole thing. They go all the way back to like over 100 years because they've got to match up mom and dad all the way back. And then it comes way down like 10, 12, 15 descendants. It takes a long time to do it, to do the genealogy matchup. So for all we know they are doing it. Or trying to do it, trying to do it.

Could we be remiss to assume that they didn't fight when they were going down? I mean he gave a directive. Was the ground messed up there? Did they try to say no? I mean, we don't have that information. I think we're assuming they just went down and weren't complacent. They might not have been. And something could have happened right there at the beginning of the hill. And then made them say, we better go down. I mean, I just keep hearing, like, oh, they went down, they went down, and I don't know if we can assume that. I don't know if there's a struggle there or not. That information, I don't know if it's been collected or known.

Obviously, there's somebody that knows. There's three people in the world that knows what happened. Two of them are gone. We know there's at least one other person. Do you think that they may have known the perp? I find that doubtful. Because you probably would have known the perp i find that doubtful because you probably would have known the purpose they knew the perp yeah and or if in my opinion if libby knew the person why would she record it like it'd be like sort of recording it would have been you know hey

sam what are you doing out here today gotcha yes so is there anything that you want us to know that you wish people would ask you, but you just don't get a chance to say? That's a great question. The thing I think that I would like most, most everybody to help us with, just share this information. We got two things going on here. I don't know if you know, but we're building a memorial park for the girls, you know, because at some point we're going to get this case, we're going to get this guy, and it's going to be over. We're going to close it. You know what I mean? We're going to put this guy behind bars.

It's not going to bring our girls back. So we're building a memorial park on the other side over here, and we're keeping those separate. I mean, it's a two-pronged approach, but we're trying to keep them separate for a reason, because the memorial park will live on this case, you know, will go away um yeah so um i don't want to give you false but i know it's like abbyandlibby.org and that that site uh is devoted to the case okay abbyandlibby.org. Hi. I was wondering, with all the forensic technology, with the new audio and any of the audio, can you do any analysis like dialect or, you know, age?

Can they tell anything from the audio? Yeah, regionalized linguistics. The FBI has an entire section that's devoted to that where they listen to tapes. You know, I mean, you guys can tell where I'm from the south, all right, and that's kind of broad. But you can kind of keep it in a nutshell. So, yes, kind of, they can, I think is what he's trying to say. Can you guys give me what you want out there, what you want everyone to hear?

I think one of the things that I struggle with trying to understand is the reward is over $200,000 and I think there's a lot of people that have ratted out people for a lot less than that and and so I'm quite puzzled and within a few days of the murder the this reward fund got started and I can remember you know seeing in the news and hearing on the news how that thing was just ramping up Jim Mercer that owns the Annapolis Colts pledged a bunch of money. The punter, can't think of what his name is, he's retired now, you know, put up some money. And that thing just escalated.

And I'm sitting there thinking, okay, we're going to get this guy. We're going to get him, you know, because we're not talking about $5,000. You know, at that time it was like $120, $150. And, I mean, this thing is just rolling. And I am just – thing is just rolling and, and I am just, it just puzzles me that that that's life changing amount of money where somebody could, you know, rat out this person and collect their money and start a new life. Okay. I'm just puzzled that with the circle that somebody like this must run with you know criminals I

you know that that's a different culture as I like to tell juries he ain't hanging out with nuns and priests and virgins you know well according this it's $225,000. That's a good thing to get out there. $225,000. $225,000. A quarter of a million dollars. Dang. And it's like my wife says, well, not everybody does good because there's money involved. Because we know there's one evil person that's turned our life upside down,

but we also know that there's a lot of good people. And our families have reaped blessings from people literally around the world, you know, that have reached out to us. And hardly a week goes by where families, we don't get a card, we don't get a letter, we don't get something, you know, where somebody's just saying, hey, like the lady said, hey, we're praying for you, you know. And we feel that and we sense that and um and honestly that's what helps us just keep going you know to the next event and the next day nothing's ever going to bring our girls back that's right and these girls deserve justice our family our community continue to share this information out there continue to make this guy's life smaller this

whole world's got to be smaller it confuses me on how even people close to our community, meaning they live within 50 or 60 miles, 100 miles, haven't even heard of the case, believe it or not. And we just need that right person to say, you know what, that looks like my great aunt's cousin's boyfriend, whatever, somebody's going to look at that and say huh i do recognize that i used to work with him used to live down the road he comes in the diner you know i see this guy turn that in somebody out there knows something i i can almost you know i can't guarantee but in my heart somebody out there knows this guy he's acting different acting strange he may be even acting the same way, but they know something. Something's just up.

800-382-7537. Repeat. 800-382-7537. And 844-459-5786. 844-459-5786. And I know it's contrary to everything that many people hold dear but I'm going to say a prayer right now Father, please bless these families

and bring us justice Amen Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off You're listening to an iHeart podcast