Five years before was accused of killing two secondary school students near a trailhead in Indiana, Richard Allen contacted authorities about the double murder: “He had been in the area the day the girls were killed,” he told an investigator at the time.

This information, contained in a “lead sheet” held by law enforcement, was inadvertently marked clear, and it wasn’t until 2022 that a volunteer clerk tasked with helping organize thousands of tips in the investigation discovered it and put set in motion the events that led to Allen’s arrest.

The revelation came in a Carroll County courtroom this week, where law enforcement officers, witnesses and others detailed their involvement in the case during the first full week of testimony about the Feb. 13, 2017, slayings of Liberty German, aged 14, and of Abigail Williams. , 13.

Attorneys for Allen, a 52-year-old former CVS employee, said he is “genuinely innocent.”

In court filings, Allen’s legal team said the murders may have been part of a ritual sacrifice, and at trial they disputed the timing of the charge as well as witness accounts that, in one case, placed a man “covered in the mud and blood” near the area where the bodies of the teenagers were found.

During Thursday’s trial, defense attorney Andrew Baldwin asked the clerk, Kathy Shank, if his client was trying to “assist” the investigation.

The prosecution objected, calling the question “speculation,” and the judge held, NBC affiliate WHHR in Indianapolis reported.

The investigator who spoke with Allen in 2017 was Dan Dulin, then a conservation officer with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. He testified Thursday that he helped local authorities follow up on leads related to the murders.

On Feb. 16, 2017 — three days after the murders — Dulin said he picked up a sheet of lead with Allen’s name and phone number. The officer asked to meet Allen at his home, but he refused, Dulin said, and asked them to meet in a grocery store parking lot.

During the ensuing off-the-record conversation, Dulin testified, Allen told her he parked in a Farm Bureau lot and walked to an abandoned railroad bridge — now part of the Delphi Historic Trails network — where the teenagers had planned to hang out the day off from school. .

Allen was there between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m., Dulin recalled saying, and passed three girls on the way.

After about 10 minutes, Dulin said, the conversation ended. Dulin wrote his notes and turned the file over to investigators, he testified.

Five years later, Shank, a retired Department of Children’s Services receptionist who volunteered for the investigation, was searching through thousands of leads when she came across a file box containing a tip with the name “Richard Allen Whiteman.”

The tip incorrectly identified Allen’s last name, Shank testified, and was marked “removed.” But in September 2022, Shank reported it to a detective who testified that investigators had been trying to find a man witnesses reported seeing on the trail that day.

Detective Tony Liggett, now the Carroll County sheriff, said he believed the man was someone who had become known to investigators as “the bridge guy.” Phrase he referred to a mysterious Snapchat video found on Abigail’s phone showing a white man wearing jeans and a dark jacket walking on the bridge.

In a statement released after the killing, which included a short clip of the videoauthorities have described the unidentified man as a suspect in the teenagers’ murder.

One of the witnesses, Railly Voorhies, testified Tuesday that he greeted a man who was overdressed for the weather, wearing a hat, mask and dark clothing. He didn’t respond when she waved at him, said Voorhes, then a 16-year-old high school student who was friends with the victims, and he “didn’t seem like a happy person.”

Once she saw the Snapchat image, Voorhies testified, she said she realized it was the same man she had dumped.

A defense attorney for Allen, Jennifer Auger, noted that Voorhies’ initial description to police of the man on the trail — a man in his 20s or 30s with curly hair and a square jaw — was different from what he offer it in court.

Asked if the image of the “bridge guy” might have influenced his memory, Voorhies replied, “Possibly.”

Liggett testified that he believed the witnesses who described seeing Allen on Feb. 13 were credible. And he said the information Allen gave authorities days later was marked as cleared when it shouldn’t have been.

Allen “got lost in the cracks,” he said.

After Shanks gave Liggett the lead sheet, investigators returned to Allen and interviewed him again. Allen provided a similar account, according to former Delphi Police Chief Steve Mullin, who conducted the interview, although Allen said he arrived at the track at noon and left at 1:30 p.m.

When Mullin showed Allen a photo of the “bridge guy,” the former chief testified, Allen replied, “If the photo was taken with the girl’s camera, it couldn’t have been him,” Mullin testified.

Authorities then served a search warrant at Allen’s home and found a .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun that prosecutors said matched a bullet found near the girls’ bodies. In his testimony, Liggett said the discovery of that bullet, along with witness accounts, led to Allen’s arrest.

Ballistics experts testified Friday about how they matched the bullet to Allen’s gun.